Federal legislation introduced last week could threaten electronic commerce as it further entrenches middlemen who normally profit from every bottle of alcohol that passes from producers to consumers.
April 2010
Secrecy breeds suspicion, and little in the intellectual property area has garnered more suspicion than ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is a multilateral trade agreement that has been under negotiation since 2007. But the negotiations haven’t been public, and access to key documents has only been provided to people willing to sign a non-disclosure [...]
As mentioned here before, PFF has been rolling out a new series of essays examining proposals that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. We’re releasing these as we get ready to submit a big filing in the FCC’s “Future of [...]
Google has just launched a new tool that lets users view the total number of requests received “from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products.” As the FAQ explains, the tool overlays the requests received over the last six months, except [...]
Stephen Lawson reports here on BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker’s comments about net neutrality regulation at the eComm conference yesterday. Klinker used the word “regulation” to mean a couple different things in his remarks, but nothing he said justifies the headline PC World gave the story. Here’s Lawson reporting Klinker’s comments: “There is no ambiguity. There [...]
After reading over some of the postings from the few weeks and exchanging emails with TLF’s Richard Bennett, I am coming to see how disastrous a decision it was for the FCC to pursue sanctions against Comcast over its throttling of BitTorrent files. True, the case, and the court decision has allowed activists to foam [...]
The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee is hosting their second annual State of the Mobile Net conference this Wednesday, April 21 at the DC Hyatt Regency (400 New Jersey Ave NW). The conference runs 12-5 pm followed by a cocktail reception. This conference and the larger State of the Net conference are probably the two best [...]
I have a long opinion piece on CNet today, arguing that much of the talk of “reclassifying” or “relabeling” broadband Internet access to bring it under the FCC’s regulatory authority is just that—talk. On April 6th, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled definitively that the squishy doctrine of “ancillary jurisdiction” provides no authority for [...]
By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka Opt-in mandates may soon be coming to an Internet near you! Rick Boucher, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman, is expected to soon introduce the privacy bill he’s been working on behind closed doors for many months. At the heart of the bill is supposed to be a mandate [...]
Check out this amazing map of the “Dogs of War” of online competition created by Gizmodo’s Shane Snow (view full size here): For all the complaining about these three tech titans, they’re locked in fierce competition with each other. This chart doesn’t even mention other players in the vibrantly competitive online ecosystem, like Facebook, Yahoo!, [...]
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.