Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
So I say in Politico today. Highlights: During his first two years in office, the president generated a lot of heat in the transparency area — but little sunlight. House Republicans can quickly outshine Obama and the Democratic Senate. It all depends on how they implement the watch phrase of their amendment package: “publicly available [...]
This is Part IV of a five-part commentary on the FCC’s Dec. 23, 2010 “Open Internet” Report and Order. Part I looked at the remarkably weak justification the majority gave for issuing the new rules. Part II explored the likely costs of the rules, particularly the undiscussed costs of enforcement that will be borne by [...]
A group of regulatory advocates that includes Free Press, Media Access Project and the New America Foundation, have fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting action against the nation’s #5 mobile provider, MetroPCS. These regulatory groups claim that “new service plans being offered by mobile provider MetroPCS block and discriminate against [...]
I laughed out loud when I read the following line in Harlan Yu’s post, “Some Technical Clarifications About Do Not Track“: “[T]he Do Not Track header compels servers to cooperate, to proactively refrain from any attempts to track the user.” (Harlan’s a pal, but I’m plain-spoken with friends just like everyone else, so here goes, [...]
Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET and former Washington bureau chief for Wired News, discusses WikiLeaks. McCullagh gives a quick recap of the WikiLeaks saga so far, comments on the consequences of the leaks themselves, and talks about the broader significance of the affair. He also offers a few insights into Julian Assange’s ideology based on his interactions with Assange in early ’90s “cypherpunk” circles. Lastly, McCullagh discusses the future of diplomacy and the chance that Assange will be indicted in the United States.
Near the end of Tron: Legacy, the character CLU (short for Codified Likeness Utility), on the verge of releasing his army of re-purposed computer programs into the brick-and-mortar world to destroy humanity, confronts Kevin Flynn, his creator-turned-nemesis, with a plaintiff, “I did everything you asked.” Flynn, older and wiser than the character we met in 1982’s Tron, and his techno-idealism tempered by the realization that to save humanity he must destroy both his physical and virtual self, wistfully answers, “I know.”
It’s a rather poignant scene that punctuates the film’s unique take on technology and humanity. Traditionally in the movies, when technology turns evil, does so with a will of its own. The Matrix and Terminator films are just two examples. Tron: Legacy, however, upends the idea. CLU, sure enough, turns on his human creator, but not out of rebellion, but to carry out his human-engineered programming.
The Technology Policy Institute has released an interesting new study from Robert Crandall and Charles Jackson on “Antitrust in High-Tech Industries,” which takes a close look at the impact of antitrust law in the three most high-profile technology cases of the last half century: IBM, AT&T and Microsoft. Crandall and Jackson conclude: In each of [...]
For CNET, I posted a long piece describing a full day at CES’s Tech Policy Summit largely devoted to spectrum issues. Conference attendees in several packed sessions heard from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and three of the four other FCC Commissioners (Commissioner Copps was absent due to illness), as well as former Congressman Rick Boucher [...]
It might take Facebook a while to turn identity provision into a revenue opportunity, but if it is a money-maker, it could be a substantial one. Simson Garfinkel has a piece in Technology Review that goes into some of the things Facebook is doing with its “Connect” service. As security professionals debate whether the Internet [...]
Here at TLF, our privacy discussions often center around such concepts as expectations of privacy, notice and choice, opt-in/out, and the like. These are all important and legitimate of course, but the privacy issue that seems to make news more than any other is Google Spy-Fi, and the defiant attitude Google has against governments. And [...]
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.
