Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
So reports the Wall Street Journal: Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. It’s the natural evolution of the policy called “internal enforcement” of immigration law, as [...]
Should ISPs be barred under net neutrality from discriminating against illegal content? Not according to the FCC’s draft net neutrality rule, which defines efforts by ISPs to curb the “transfer of unlawful content” as reasonable network management. This exemption is meant to ensure providers have the freedom to filter or block unlawful content like malicious [...]
The Treasury Department today announced that it would grant the State Department’s December request (see the Iran letter here) for a waiver from U.S. embargoes that would allow Iranians, Sudanese and Cubanese to download “free mass market software … necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant [...]
Just a heads up that on my weekly tech policy podcast, Surprisingly Free Conversations, we’ve just posted an interview with Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He recently published an excellent blog post on the limits to internet censorship circumvention technologies, and that’s the topic of our discussion. Ethan writes, So [...]
The way Ben Kunz puts it in a new Business Week article, “Each device contains its own widening universe of services and applications, many delivered via the Internet. They are designed to keep you wedded to a particular company’s ecosystem and set of products.” I like Ben’s article a lot because it recognizes that “walling [...]
“We’re from government and we’re here to help save journalism.” That seems to be the hot new meme in media policy circles these days. Last week, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) kicking off their “Future of Media” effort with a workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” This week, it’s [...]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka We’re hoping that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has made some sort of mistake, because it’s hard to believe its latest findings about the paperwork burden generated by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory activity. In late January, the GAO released a report on “Information Collection and Management at the [...]
Sorry to use the blog as a job board, but I wanted to let readers know that the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) has a couple of positions we’d like to find good people to fill: Senior Economist: PFF is looking for a skilled economist (PhD-level preferred) with experience in the high-tech arena or network-related [...]
A couple weeks ago the Google Books Settlement fairness hearing took place in New York City, where Judge Denny Chin heard dozens of oral arguments discussing the settlement’s implications for competition, copyright law, and privacy. The settlement raises a number of very challenging legal questions, and Judge Chin’s decision, expected to come down later this [...]
Yesterday, NetChoice joined the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Maine Civil Liberties Union (and PFF, who submitted written testimony) before the Maine legislature to oppose a bill that would restrict how health-related products can me marketed to minors under age 17. The bill, LD 1677, is a repeal and replacement for current law [...]
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.
