Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
User-driven websites — also known as online intermediaries — frequently come under fire for disabling user content due to bogus or illegitimate takedown notices. Facebook is at the center of the latest controversy involving a bogus takedown notice. On Thursday morning, the social networking site disabled Ars Technica’s page after receiving a DMCA takedown notice [...]
When it comes to information control, everybody has a pet issue and everyone will be disappointed when law can’t resolve it. I was reminded of this truism while reading a provocative blog post yesterday by computer scientist Ben Adida entitled “(Your) Information Wants to be Free.” Adida’s essay touches upon an issue I have been [...]
Thanks to all of you who have sent your comments about Tate Watkins and my new cybersecurity paper. It’s been getting a good reception. James Fallows of The Atlantic, for example, noted yesterday that the paper “represents a significant libertarian-right voice of concern about this latest expansion of the permanent national-security surveillance state,” and that [...]
I’ve written a long article this morning for CNET (See “Privacy panic debate: Whose data is it?”) on the discovery of the iPhone location tracking file and the utterly predictable panic response that followed. Its life-cycle follows precisely the crisis model Adam Thierer has so frequently and eloquently traced, most recently here on TLF. In [...]
Today my colleague Tate Watkins and I are releasing a new working paper on cybersecurity policy. Please excuse my patently sleep-deprived mug while I describe it here: Over the past few years there has been a steady drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric coming out of Washington about potential catastrophic cybersecurity threats. For example, at a Senate [...]
Jane Yakowitz, a visiting assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, discusses her new paper about data anonymization and privacy regulation, Tragedy of the Data Commons. Citing privacy concerns, legal scholars and privacy advocates have recently called for tighter restrictions on the collection and dissemination of public research data. Yakowitz first explains why these concerns are overblown, arguing that scholars have misinterpreted the risks of anonymized data sets. She then discusses the social value of the data commons, noting the many useful studies that likely wouldn’t have been possible without a data commons. She finally suggests why the data commons is undervalued, citing disparate reactions to similar statistical releases by OkCupid and Facebook, and offers a few policy recommendations for the data commons.
It is disappointing that the Obama administration, which campaigned against George W. Bush’s poor record on civil liberties protection, is pursuing a course that aims to limit Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to the use of location tracking technology. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Obama administration has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court [...]
Here is a chart of the Bitcoin-dollar exchange rate for the past six months. The arrow notes the date my column on the virtual currency was published in TIME.com. The day after that piece was published, the Bitcoin exchange rate reached an all time high at $1.19. Yesterday, just over a week later, it was [...]
Consumers are buying more and more stuff from online retailers located out-of-state, and state and local governments aren’t happy about it. States argue that this trend has shrunk their brick and mortar sales tax base, causing them to lose out on tax revenues. (While consumers in most states are required by law to annually remit [...]
Melissa Yu is the winner of first prize in the middle school category of C-SPAN’s StudentCam 2011 competition. Her video, “Net Neutrality: The Federal Government’s Role in Our Online Community,” is an eight-minute look at the push for regulation of Internet service with an emphasis appropriate for students on how the three branches of government [...]
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.
