Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Planet Moron.com has taken a humorous look at the FCC’s pending National Broadband Plan (“We’re Digitally Distressed At How Much This Is Going To Cost Us.”) It’s quite entertaining. They note: If you are like most Americans, three questions probably pop into your mind: 1) Am I paying for this? 2) Seriously, am I paying [...]
Reihan Salam of National Review Online has a great piece on the US Trade Representative’s Special 301 Watchlist today. Salam points out that this list, which is supposed to identify nations that are a threat to intellectual property, may include Brazil, India, and Indonesia not because of any piracy occurring there, but because of their [...]
Here’s a great conversation at Slate.com about Shane Harris’ new book The Watchers. We’ll be having the author here at Cato on March 10th for a similar discussion of his book and the growth of the surveillance state. Register here.
Congress gets dinged a lot for slowing down innovation, but sometimes that is just what the doctor ordered. Thirty-five years ago, a Democratically controlled Congress passed the Magnuson-Moss Act in an attempt to check a hyperactive FTC. Like a kid set loose in a candy store, the FTC at the time had gone on a [...]
Yesterday I engaged in a lively luncheon debate about Net neutrality regulation with Ben Scott of Free Press at a Catholic University Law School event on “Implementing the National Broadband Plan.” To open the debate, I made a very quick 5-Part Case against Net Neutrality Regulation. I argued that the the objections to a Net [...]
Jim Harper and I have been having one of our periodic tussles over the Lower Merion school laptop spying case. Jim thinks the search in this case may pass Fouth Amendment muster; I disagree. This is especially tricky because the facts are still very much unclear, but I’m going to follow Orin Kerr in assuming [...]
NetChoice filed comments today with the FCC in its inquiry on Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape. PFF’s comments (jointly filed w/ EFF as described in their TLF post) are comprehensive, excellent, and very highly recommended (well done Adam and Berin). I took a narrower approach. My goal was to dismiss [...]
There’s been some considerable comment over my February 11 post that, had the the FCC’s proposed Network Neutrality regulation been in force a few years ago, products like the Apple iPhone and Amazon Kindle would not have been possible. In fact, the otherwise levelheaded Mike Masnick at TechDirt called my assertion “ridiculous.” I beg to [...]
Today I am attending, and speaking at, a terrific event in downtown DC sponsored by the Catholic University Law School on“Implementing the National Broadband Plan: Perspectives from Government, Industry, and Consumers.” It’s being held at the offices of the law firm of Wiley Rein LLP. Edward Lazarus, Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski [...]
January 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
PFF & EFF File Joint Comments in FCC’s “Empowering Parents & Protecting Children” NOI
by Adam Thierer on February 24, 2010 · 3 comments
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer This morning, The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed joint comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the inquiry “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape.” (MB Docket No. 09-194) As Adam summarized here before, the stated purpose of [...]