Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
PFF today released the fifth installment in our ongoing series on “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.” This series of papers explores various tax and regulatory proposals that would have government play an expanded role in supporting the press, journalism, or other media content. In the latest essay, Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I discuss [...]
No, I’m not here to tell you more about the “supersized” FTC. Berin has done yeoman’s work to highlight that issue, among other things with the PFF event you can review here. On TechDirt, Mike Masnick wrote this morning about how the feds are itching to regulate the Internet. This is about the direct government [...]
The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly on the verge of suing to block Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob. The deal’s antitrust implications were discussed in a panel earlier this month on Capitol Hill featuring Berin Szoka. (For other interesting perspectives on the topic, see Geoff Manne and Tom Lenard). In an opinion [...]
What makes a joke funny is that there is often a kernel of underlying truth. And when Senator Rockefeller quipped that COPPA’s age should be extended beyond 12 to age 18, or even 25, nervous laughter followed. Because unfortunately there’s existing movement afoot from some advocates to expand COPPA’s reach and scope to adolescents. I [...]
I write in “The Laws of Disruption” of the risk of unintended consequences that regulators run in legislating emerging technologies. Because the pace of change for these technologies is so much faster than it is for law, the likelihood of defining a legal problem and crafting a solution that will address it is very slim. [...]
We’d get better and quicker decisions from the FCC if it followed the same regulatory procedures as the FTC.
I’m testifying this morning before the Senate Commerce Committee’s Consumer Protection Subcommittee on Examining Children’s Privacy: New Technologies and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act at 10 am in 253 Russell. I offered an overview of my testimony in a PFF TechCast interview yesterday. MP3 file: PFF TechCast #4 – Senate COPPA testimony of Berin [...]
Facebook is in the spotlight—unfairly. Yesterday, four Democratic U.S. senators — Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Michael Bennet (D-Col.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) — published a letter to Facebook expressing their concern over Facebook’s privacy policies. They asked Facebook to “fix” its privacy policy? Privacy is a complex and often personal concept – how do [...]
On Friday, May 7th from 9:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. at the National Press Club, The Progress & Freedom Foundation will hold a panel discussion entitled, “What Should the Next Communications Act Look Like?” This event will consider the implications of the recent Comcast v. FCC court decision, the FCC’s pending “Net Neutrality” Notice of [...]
In this latest PFF TechCast, Berin Szoka and I discuss the two latest installments in our ongoing “Wrong Way to Reinvent Media” series. These two recent installments dealt with “media vouchers” and expanded postal subsidies as methods of assisting struggling media enterprises or promoting more hard news. In this 7-minute podcast, PFF’s press director Mike [...]
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.
