Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
“We’re at the beginning of an unmanned revolution.” That’s what Gary Kessler, who oversees unmanned aviation programs for the US Navy and Marines, told the AFP. According to the article, “Robots or “unmanned systems” are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps [...]
This month, the Federal Communications Commission begins drafting a national broadband plan as part of the 2009 stimulus package. This is not the first government attempt at broadband ubiquity, so the FCC can learn from past failures. The commissioners have less than eight months to “ensure that all people of the United States have access [...]
Here’s an informative article from h+ magazine on how the FDA currently argues that culturing adult stem cells amounts to the creation of a new drug. This of course would mean long time lags for getting stem cell procedures approved, which has prompted the creation of at least two groups: the American Stem Cell Therapy [...]
Here’s a new study released by the FreedomWorks Foundation regarding yet another Hollywood lawsuit — this time against RealNetworks. FreedomWorks Chief Economist Dr. Wayne T. Brough argues that “the lawsuit will do little to achieve its stated goal of curbing DVD piracy and protecting intellectual property since the RealDVD product does not permit users the [...]
Earth Day is fast approaching, yet despite the awareness this day brings, most people are powering their computers with electricity from coal-burning power plants, delivered by “dumb” networks. Change is long overdue, and it’s not a difficult matter. The electricity grid’s basic structure hasn’t changed much since Thomas Edison came up with the idea back [...]
This week, a federal judge blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls in northeastern Pennsylvania over risque cell phone pictures they took of themselves. This respite from the bizarre “sexting” scandal allows time for a national dialogue on an issue that goes deeper than simple changes in technology. “Sexting” is [...]
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased print publication this week to focus solely on the Web, a transition that frightened some in the publishing business, coming so shortly after the Rocky Mountain News shut down. However, as many in the tech industry are aware, this is simply a form of “creative destruction” that should boost both choice [...]
As the Associated Press put it recently, “Talk of a New York tax increase just got a little, er, hotter.” But seriously, at a time when the nation is about to spend $787 billion on a so-called “stimulus,” new taxes on top of what we will already be paying is scandalous. New York is going [...]
The news of octuplets born recently near Los Angeles shocked many people, especially since the mother, Nadya Suleman, already had six children and is reported to be jobless and living with her parents. Such rare stories certainly sell newspapers, but they can also lead to knee-jerk calls for overly restrictive regulation, which threaten freedom and [...]
Here’s an excerpt from my column at TNW today: Currently, 60 percent of Facebook’s teen users have implemented privacy controls, compared with only 25 percent to 30 percent of adult users. This is an interesting statistic, given the common assumption that members of the younger generation don’t care who sees their data. It is probably [...]
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.
