Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
My colleague Cord Blomquist brought to my attention this amazing info-graphic, which depicts the stunning volume of activity unfolding every 60 seconds online. [Click on the image to enlarge it.] It appears the graphic was created by Go-Globe.com, a web design firm, although I’ve not been able to find the original. [Update: The folks at [...]
I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal essay by Daniel H. Wilson on “The Terrifying Truth About New Technology.” It touches on many of the themes I’ve discussed here in my essays on techno-panics, fears about information overload, and the broader battle throughout history between technology optimists and pessimists about the impact of new technologies on [...]
Last week the Senate Commerce Committee passed–with deep bi-partisan support–the Public Safety Spectrum and Wireless Innovation Act. The bill, co-sponsored by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, is a comprehensive effort to resolve several long-standing stalemates and impending crises having to do with one of the most critical 21st century resources: [...]
The Supreme Court will be issuing its opinion in the case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association any day now (TLF’s previous coverage is here). The case was previously known as Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, but Mr. Schwarzenegger has been trying to stay out of court of late. I was just sent a draft of [...]
Have you heard about 3D printing yet? Bre Pettis, founder of Makerbot, a company that sells a $1300 home 3D printer, was Wednesday night’s guest on the The Colbert Report. And back in April, Public Knowledge kicked off what’s sure to be a long public debate over the legal and policy questions raised by 3D [...]
This morning, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its eagerly-awaited “Future of Media” report. The 475-page final report is entitled, “The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.” [Here's a 2-page summary and the official press release.] The report is a bit overdue; the effort was supposed to be wrapped [...]
A couple of news items this week have vindicated some opinions I’d previously expressed here, and they’re all about Apple, so how can I can pass up the opportunity to note them, right? A while back I wrote that as long as iOS devices had a standards-compliant browser, innovation would be safe: Apple has come [...]
The day many had expected is finally here. This Reuters headline says it all: Senators seek crackdown on “Bitcoin” currency. The main target of Sens. Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin is Silk Road–the online illicit drug bazaar run via the TOR network–but bitcoin, the currency of choice on Silk Road, is also in their sights. [...]
Facebook announced yesterday that it had finished most of the global roll-out, begun in the U.S. last December. Now ZDNet reports that European Privacy regulators are already planning a probe of this. Emil Protalinski writes: “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” Gerard [...]
Wired’s Brian Chen writes today about the “damage” caused to Apple’s competitors and there own developers by products announced at yesterday’s WWDC keynote, making several claims that are bit dubious, the most suspect of which was this claim about Apple’s new cloud-focused trio: Now, here’s why iCloud, iOS 5 and Lion pack such a deadly [...]
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.
