Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Is the Internet in clear and present danger? Yes, say proponents of neutrality regulation of the Internet. In his speech last month calling for FCC neutrality regulations, Chairman Julius Genachowski stopped short of quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, but did all he could to paint a dire picture of the Internet’s future: “This is not about [...]
Update: The article is now online. Citizen Tools has collected some responses to it at the end of this post. Lawrence Lessig has a provocatively titled article in the October 21 issue of The New Republic: “Against Transparency: The Perils of Openness in Government.” (Couldn’t find a link.) As a reader, I found it alternately [...]
Playboy’s newly released 2009 College Sex Survey found that 49% of college students admitted to “Sexting” (having sent or received sexually explicit messages and pictures via cell phones). A survey conducted a year ago by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com found that 20% of teens (13-19) and 33% young [...]
In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, I address the once-again raging topic of “net neutrality” regulation of the Web. On September 21, new FCC chair Julius Genachowski proposed more formal neutrality regulations. Then on September 25, AT&T accused Google of violating the very neutrality rules the search company has sought for others. The gist of the complaint was [...]
In his latest Slate column, Tim Wu endorses a modified Google Books Search settlement because he fears that without such a deal–through which a giant like Google gets a de facto monopoly–we will never see an online library that includes orphan works and out-of-print books. He writes: Books in strong demand, whether old (Dracula) or [...]
Please pardon its vulgarity, but for those of you out there who are as tired of the b.s. dished out by many self-labeled “social media gurus” as I am, I think you will very much enjoy this bit of humor from freelance journalist Markham Nolan. Too funny.
Is going on this weekend in New York. Check out the program here. I can’t wait to see all the video! Also check out the suggested reading list—in particular, Why Work Toward the Singularity. Here’s a teaser: Why is the Singularity worth doing? The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence can’t possibly speak for everyone who cares [...]
A deep fissure between federal lawmaking practices and the Internet-fueled expectations of the people is just starting to open. Here’s a fascinating interview with Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), in which he justifies not reading the legislation that he votes on. He’s right that the bills Congress passes are almost incomprehensible, but he draws the wrong [...]
Diversifying your investments. We’ll learn soon enough why product lines across the Googlesphere are down this morning, and Google will grow stronger from learning how to protect against or prevent whatever is happening. Consider this another reason to be dubious of “cloud” computing, though. If your data was on your own server, you’d be accessing [...]
Middlemen have been criticized as unnecessary for centuries, but as Mike Munger (Chairman of the Duke Political Science department and my undergrad mentor) explains, they are actually “market makers,” rather than parasites (or listen to his appearance on Russ Robert’s excellent EconTalk podcast). Warren Lee explains why ad networks—the middlemen who sell publishers’ (website operators) [...]
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.
