Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In the lead essay for the “Cato Unbound” symposium this month, I analyze recent political movements that have been aided by Internet-based communication by positing a set of questions, Activists played important roles in bringing down dictators in the Arab world, stopping the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress and electing Barack Obama—just to [...]
Yesterday, the International Center for Law and Economics and TechFreedom jointly filed comments [pdf] with the FCC on the Verizon SpectrumCo deal. In the comments, ICLE Executive Director Geoffrey Manne and TechFreedom President Berin Szoka counter the primary arguments against the deal: Critics lament the concentration of spectrum in the hands of one of the [...]
Today, the FCC issued a Notice of Inquiry, responding to an emergency petition filed last August regarding temporary shutdown of mobile services by officers of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) district. The petition asked the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling that the shutdown violated the Communications Act. The following statement can [...]
Sen. Carl Levin wants Facebook to pay an extra $3 billion in taxes on its Initial Public Offering (IPO). The Senator claims the Facebook IPO illustrates why we need to close what he calls the “stock-option loophole.” (He explains that “Stock options grants are the only kind of compensation where the tax code allows companies to [...]
The White House’s “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World” report outlines a revised framework for consumer privacy, proposes a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” and calls on Congress to pass new legislation to regulate online businesses. The following statement can be attributed to Berin Szoka, President of TechFreedom, and Larry Downes, TechFreedom Senior Adjunct [...]
Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in U.S. v. Jones, unanimously holding that law enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment by affixing a GPS tracker to a vehicle to monitor its movements without obtaining a search warrant from a court. The following statement can be attributed to Berin Szoka, President of TechFreedom: This was an [...]
[Cross posted from TechFreedom] Today, the Digital Advertising Alliance, a group of leading digital ad agencies and online ad networks, unveiled a campaign to bring attention to AdChoices, its icon-based system allowing users to opt-out of behavioral advertising. The following statement can be attributed to Berin Szoka, President of TechFreedom: In the 1990s, Congress tried [...]
Tune in here 12-1:45pm today for the livestream (below) of TechFreedom‘s joint Capitol Hill briefing, “Unintended Consequences of Rogue Website Crackdown,” co-sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute. Our expert panel will discuss the recent outpouring of public opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), what’s next for these troublesome bills, [...]
By Berin Szoka, Geoffrey Manne & Ryan Radia As has become customary with just about every new product announcement by Google these days, the company’s introduction on Tuesday of its new “Search, plus Your World” (SPYW) program, which aims to incorporate a user’s Google+ content into her organic search results, has met with cries of [...]
[Cross posted from Huffington Post] Does the First Amendment allow the FCC to censor “indecent” content like the occasional curse word or a brief glimpse of a bare butt on broadcast TV? The Supreme Court hears arguments on this question Tuesday in FCC v. Fox—the first time in more than 30 years the Court will [...]
May 22, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
