Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The English language is public domain (the language itself, not everything said with it). So it’s worthless, right? No dollars change hands when people use it. Perhaps it could be made worth something if someone were to own it. The owner could charge a license fee to people who use English, making substantial revenue on [...]
I’ve posted a long article on Forbes.com this morning on the Global Network Initiative. A non-profit group aimed at improving human rights though the agency of information technology companies, GNI has never really gotten off the ground. Since its formal launch in 2008, following two years of negotiations among tech companies, human rights groups and [...]
The FTC today announced it has reached a settlement with Google concerning privacy complaints about how the company launched its Buzz social networking service last year. The consent decree runs for a standard twenty-year term and provides that Google shall (i) follow certain privacy procedures in developing products involving user information, subject to regular auditing by an [...]
Mark Stevenson, writer, comedian, and author of the new book An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer “What’s Next?”, discusses his book. Stevenson calls An Optimist’s Tour of the Future a travelogue about science written for non-scientists, and he talks about why he traveled the world to try to draw conclusions about where human innovation is headed. He discusses his investigation of nanotechnology and the industrial revolution 2.0, transhumanism, information and communication technologies, and the ultimate frontier: space. Stevenson also discusses why he’s hopeful about the future and why he wants to encourage others to have optimism about the future.
The New York Times reports that, “Facebook is hoping to do something better and faster than any other technology start-up-turned-Internet superpower. Befriend Washington. Facebook has layered its executive, legal, policy and communications ranks with high-powered politicos from both parties, beefing up its firepower for future battles in Washington and beyond.” The article goes on to [...]
Here’s an interesting SmartPlanet interview with Paul Ohm, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, in which he discusses his concerns about “reidentification” as it relates to privacy issues. “Reidentification” and “de-anonymization” fears have been set forth by Ohm and other computer scientists and privacy theorists, who suggest that because the [...]
I’m very excited to announce that I now have a regular Forbes column that will fly under the banner, “Technologies of Freedom.” My first essay for them is already live and it addresses a topic I’ve dealt with here extensively through the years: Irrational fears about tech monopolies and “information empires.” Jump over to Forbes [...]
In the latest example of big government run amok, several politicians think they ought to be in charge of which applications you should be able to install on your smartphone. On March 22, four U.S. Senators sent a letter to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion urging the companies to disable access to mobile device applications [...]
FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch puts the brakes on some of the Do-Not-Track excitement that has been bubbling up in this (wouldn’t you know it) Advertising Age piece. The concept of do not track has not been endorsed by the commission or, in my judgment, even properly vetted yet. In actuality, in a preliminary staff [...]
Last night, Declan McCullagh of CNet posted two tweets related to the concerns already percolating in the privacy community about a new Apple and Android app called “Color,” which allows those who use it to take photos and videos and instantaneously share them with other people within a 150-ft radius to create group photo/video albums. [...]
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.
