Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Today I testified at a hearing by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on commercial sexual exploitation and the Internet. When I first learned about it, I feared the worst: time to demonize the Internet. After all, the hearing announcement openly targeted Craigslist and websites generally. But this was not the case at all—as we heard, NGOs, law enforcement, and [...]
When the only tool you have is a hammer, as the old cliché goes, everything looks like a nail. Net neutrality, as I first wrote in 2006, is a complicated issue at the accident-prone intersection of technology and policy. But some of its most determined—one might say desperate—proponents are increasingly anxious to simplify the problem [...]
I’d like to draw your attention to a recently released GAO report analyzing the challenge of implementing the 200+ recommendations included in the FCC’s Broadband Plan and comparing the U.S. to broadband efforts in other countries. Turns out things are not as dire as the FCC and the Administration would have us believe. Some highlights: [...]
Kevin Kelly, a founding editor of Wired magazine, a former editor and publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog, and one of the most compelling thinkers about technology today, talks about his new book, What Technology Wants. Make no mistake: the singularity is near. Kelly discusses the technium–a broad term that encompasses all of technology and culture–and its characteristics, including its autonomy and sense of bias, its interdependency, and how it evolves and self-replicates. He also talks about humans as the first domesticated animals; extropy and rising order; the inevitability of humans and complex technologies; the Amish as technology testers, selecters, and slow-adopters; the sentient technium; and technology as wilderness.
The WSJ ran a front page, above-the-fold headline screaming that Facebook has had a privacy breach. But as Steve DelBianco discusses over at the NetChoice blog, today’s WSJ “breach” is all smoke and no fire. The WSJ is saying that some of Facebook’s applications are accidentally sharing the public username on my Facebook page, in [...]
Today’s hot topic is that thousands of Cablevision customers in New York were faced with blacked out News Corp. channels, including Fox, when the two companies were not able to come to an agreement on fees. As a result, Cablevision did not carry the Giants-Lions game and may not carry the next game against the Cowboys. [...]
Late last month, the National Research Council released a book entitled “Biometric Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities” that exposes the many difficulties with biometric identification systems. Popular culture has portrayed biometrics as nearly infallible, but it’s just not so, the report emphasizes. Especially at scale, biometrics will encounter a lot of challenges, from engineering problems to [...]
Next week marks another “National Freedom of Speech Week” and each year I use this occasion as an opportunity to recall how lucky we are to live in a country that respects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I wrote up a longer essay on this back in 2006 explaining why I am [...]
One of the old saws we hear from those who wish to impose more stringent regulations on advertising or product placement is that “it’s for the children.” That is, critics such at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and other organzations fear that, because children’s brains are less developed or they have not yet learned [...]
If you want another prime example of how self-serving Washington interests often seek to wield the stick of Big Government to their advantage, look no further than the effort the FCC is currently undertaking to extend its “CableCARD” set-top box industrial policy. The regulatory shenanigans here got started 14 years ago with Section 629 of [...]
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.
