Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
If you’re a lawyer, and you use the crazy-outmoded PACER system to access federal court documents, check out the new RECAP system launched today by Tim Lee, Harlan Yu, and Steve Schultze with the help of Princeton’s CITP. If you use PACER, you know it’s difficult to use. It also charges citizens to access what [...]
Five years ago today the Technology Liberation Front (the “TLF”) got underway with this post. The idea for the TLF came about after I asked some tech policy wonks whether it was worth put together a blog dedicated to covering Internet-related issues from a cyber-libertarian perspective. The model I had in mind was a “Volokh [...]
Please join us tonight for a very special Alcohol Liberation Front happy hour at Rocket Bar, 714 7th ST (7th & G) right across from the Chinatown/Verizon Center metro (Red/Green/Yellow) in D.C., 6:30-8:30ish. Please join us as we celebrate, commiserate and plan for the next five years of fighting the good cyber-libertarian fight. We’ll even [...]
In a couple of blog posts on Cato@Liberty recently, I’ve used graphics to illustrate my very good points. To sass the PR-ey use of Whitehouse.gov to advocate for health care regulation, and make a point or two about transparency, I modified the “Reality Check” image the White House created for their campaign. That was a [...]
An Illinois bill to ban convicted sex predators from social networking sites (HB 1314) is now law. Gov. Pat Quinn signed the bill yesterday. Even if predation on social networking sites is very rare, we certainly prefer to see efforts that target bad actors instead of tech mandates or age verification requirements. Given the broad [...]
In my last post, I touted an often-ignored benefit of targeted ads: that they directly enhance the browsing experience, compared to seeing dumb ads. This post argues that no one has a “right to her data” that ad-targeting takes away. “Privacy” is a word of many meanings. The best explanation of the myriad ways the [...]
We here at TLF have long been pointing out the benefits of targeted ads. But recently, we have focused on what I call the “supply-side” benefits – that targeted ads make free content possible by increasing the price advertisers are willing to pay for each pageview and therefore the amount of revenue content providers collect. [...]
I was very pleased to read in Federal Computer Week this morning that the Office of Management and Budget will begin tracking earmark requests next year for the fiscal 2011 budget cycle. OMB makes available some years’ approved earmarks, but not the earmark requests put forward by members of Congress. Tracking and publishing requests will [...]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka — (Ver. 1.0 — Summer 2009) We are attempting to articulate the core principles of cyber-libertarianism to provide the public and policymakers with a better understanding of this alternative vision for ordering the affairs of cyberspace. We invite comments and suggestions regarding how we should refine and build-out this [...]
Dan Rather actually made the following two contradictory statements in the same speech: I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media. and then: A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom. He’s right that the free press is a “watchdog on power.” [...]
January 29, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
