Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Public Policy Analyst/Computing and IT Policy A leading organization of computing professionals is seeking a Public Policy Analyst in its Washington DC Office of Public Policy. The position will assist in carrying out the society’s policy agenda by working with the federal government, the organization’s volunteer leadership and other organizations. The position’s duties include: • [...]
A year ago, I filed a joint amicus brief with the Electronic Frontier Foundation urging the Supreme Court to overturn California’s paternalistic law on the dangerous grounds that videogame depictions of violence constituted “obscenity” unprotected by the First Amendment. Fortunately, we won. Thus, the First Amendment protects all media, while parents have a variety of tools [...]
[NOTE: The following is a template for how to script congressional testimony when invited to speak about online safety issues.] Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you inviting me here today to testify about the most important issue to me and everyone in this room: Our children. There is nothing I care more [...]
On the podcast this week, Derek Bambauer, associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, discusses his forthcoming University of Chicago Law Review article entitled Orwell’s Armchair. In the paper, Bambuer writes that America has begun to censor the Internet, and he distinguishes two forms of censorship: hard and soft. He defines hard censorship as open and transparent, and where the government directly controls what information can and cannot be transmitted. Soft censorship, says Bambauer, is indirect, where government tells third parties to prevent users from accessing information, and it’s not clear what is being censored. He submits that if America is going to censor the Internet, it should do so through hard censorship. Indirect censorship strategies, he writes, are less legitimate than direct regulation.
California police will now be able to conduct warrantless searches of optical disc (DVD, CD, BluRay) factories to look for piracy and seize pirated discs, under a bill just signed by California Governor Jerry Brown (full text). Even those who think copyright law has gone much too far, or cherish fair use, shouldn’t defend such [...]
I’m currently finishing up my next book. It addresses various strands of “Internet pessimism” and attempts to explain why all the gloom and doom theories we hear about the Internet’s impact on modern culture and economy are not generally warranted. A key theme of my book is that most Internet pessimists overlook the importance of [...]
On NPR’s Marketplace this morning, I talk about net neutrality litigation with host John Moe. Nearly a year after the FCC passed controversial new “Open Internet” rules by a 3-2 vote, the White House finally gave approval for the rules to be published last week, unleashing lawsuits from both supporters and detractors. The supporters don’t [...]
Remember when you had to wait until the end of the month to see your bank statement? Last week, on the cusp of failing to pass any annual appropriations bills ahead of the October 1 start of the new fiscal year, congressional leaders came up with a short-term government funding bill (or “continuing resolution”) that [...]
In his latest weekly Wall Street Journal column, Gordon Crovitz has penned a review of the new Jeff Jarvis book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. Gordon’s review closely tracks my own thoughts on the book, which I laid out last week in my Forbes essay, [...]
Here’s a sharp editorial from The Economist about Internet governance entitled, “In Praise of Chaos: Governments’ Attempts to Control the Internet Should be Resisted.” In the wake of the recent Internet Governance Forum meeting, many folks are once again debating the question of who rules the Net? Along with Wayne Crews, I edited a huge [...]
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.
