Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Kevin Drum and Tim Lee have been having an interesting exchange about whether those of us who oppose granting copyright holders stronger enforcement powers feel this way because we are ideologically opposed to IP protection. Tim points out that copyright owners have, as a matter of fact, received greater and greater enforcement powers–almost on an [...]
Tate Watkins and I have an essay in Wired today looking at how the overheated rhetoric and unsupported claims around cybersecurity inflate the threat and may lead us to a new cyber-industrial complex. It’s the same theme we explore in our recent Harvard National Security Journal article and also in a feature in Reason a [...]
On the podcast this week, Jonathan Coulton, a musician, singer-songwriter, and geek icon, who releases his music under a Non-Commercial Creative Commons License, discusses his thoughts on piracy from an artist’s point of view. Coulton talks about quitting his day job so he could focus on his music. He bypassed the traditional route of becoming a musician, which usually means signing to a record label, and began releasing one song per week on his website. This lead to eventual success, according to Coulton, who now makes his living as a full-time musician by touring and selling his music on his website. The discussion then turns to piracy. Coulton explains why he thinks piracy cannot be stopped and describes what he considers “victimless piracy.” He goes on to discuss the difficulties of addressing piracy issues, especially when taking fairness and practicality into account.
Over at TIME.com I write that we should keep a close eye on moves by Russia, China and other countries to move Internet governance to the UN: All this year, and culminating in December at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, the nations of the world will be negotiating a treaty to govern [...]
Folks, I wanted to bring your attention to this conference on Feb. 24 from the Information Economy Project at George Mason University. The pitch: The assembly line of our knowledge-based economy begins with technology discovery and ends with the moving target of a consumer market. Connectivity is funded and rewarded through exchanges of time, money, [...]
On the podcast this week, Catherine Tucker, Douglas Drane Career Development Professor in IT and Management, and Assistant Professor of Marketing at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, discusses her paper with Avi Goldfarb in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics entitled, Substitution Between Offline and Online Advertising Markets. According to Tucker, the FTC treats online advertising as a distinct market from offline advertising for antitrust purposes. She describes the study she and Goldfarb conducted, where they sought to determine whether online advertising could serve as a substitute for offline advertising. Tucker also discusses Google’s role in online advertising, how its auction mechanism affects pricing, and the difference between search advertising and display advertising. The conversation ends with a discussion on policy implications on how dominant players in online advertising should be viewed.
Over at TIME.com I take a look at the different approaches to cybersecurity now being considered by Congress: But what can congress do to improve cybersecurity? One line of thinking reportedly embodied by the Senate legislation, though details of that bill are not yet available, would tell network owners how to protect their systems. The [...]
Over at TIME.com I write that if you didn’t like SOPA because it threatened free speech, then you probably won’t like the new “Right to be Forgotten” proposed in the EU. Prof. Jane Yakowitz contributes some great insights to the piece. What I dislike most about the rule is that it subordinates expression to privacy: [...]
On the podcast this week, Reuben Grinberg, a recent Yale Law School graduate now in private practice in New York City, discusses his paper, published in the Hastings Science & Technology Law Journal entitled, Bitcoin: An Innovative Alternative Digital Currency. Grinberg first gives a brief overview of Bitcoin, the decentralized, digital currency. According to Grinberg, Bitcoin can maintain sustainability, even though it is not backed by an institution or commodity, but it must overcome several hurdles. Grinberg then discusses the potential security problems and legal issues Bitcoin faces. He also describes some of the unique qualities of Bitcoin, including the ability to conduct transactions anonymously. Grinberg ends the discussion with his thoughts on what Bitcoin could potentially become.
Cybersecurity is one of the issues that the President may touch upon tonight in his State of the Union speech, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he is ready to move on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation soon. This all raises the question: what is the problem we’re trying to fix? In an important new [...]
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.
