Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The Reason Foundation today has published the Telecommunications and Internet section of its 2011 Annual Privatization Review. Although there’s been a bit of lead time since the articles were written, they are still timely. Notable is the discussion on the collection of state sales taxes from Internet retailers, back in the news now that Amazon.com [...]
A few weeks back, now-former Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn blamed the retailer’s $1.7 billion quarterly loss and its decision to close 50 stores nationwide on the fact that its online competitors, Amazon.com in particular, “aren’t encumbered by the costs of running physical locations and in many cases don’t have to collect sales tax.” Dunn’s [...]
Reason.org has just posted my commentary on the five reasons why Federal Trade Commission’s proposals to regulate the collection and use of consumer information on the Web will do more harm than good. As I note, the digital economy runs on information. Any regulations that impede the collection and processing of any information will affect [...]
[Cross-posted at Reason.org] This week Google announced that it is grouping 60 of its Web services, such as Gmail, the Google+ social network, YouTube and Google Calendar, under a single privacy policy that would allow the company to share user data between any of those services. These changes will be effective March 1. Although we [...]
(Cross posted at Reason.org) Americans got a preview of what life would be like under the U.S. Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) when the Department of Justice and the FBI yesterday shut down Megaupload.com and arrested its founder and six other executives on charges of illegally sharing copyrighted material. The move comes in the [...]
(Cross posted at reason.org) It’s rare when the entire Internet industry rises up with one voice. Perhaps that’s why the protest against the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), is getting so much attention. In policy circles, usually one segment of the online industry [...]
[Cross-posted at Reason.org] One of the more critically praised films this year has been Shame, which has been in limited release around the country since December. Although it’s an independent production, the film is being distributed by 20th Century Fox, a major studio, and stars Michael Fassbender, an actor who appears to be in the [...]
[Cross-posted at www.reason.org] While shoppers were hitting the malls Friday–a fair percentage of them no doubt evaluating the many choices of wireless smartphones and service plans available–AT&T said it was withdrawing its FCC application to merge with T-Mobile. AT&T’s move was in response to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s decision to refer the merger to an [...]
Cross-posted at Reason.org The big news in online gambling circles these past two weeks has been the busting of BLR Technologies, a software supplier for a number of online gambling sites, after a leading gaming mathematician determined the variance against winning at its craps game was statistically off the charts. While most online gambling sites [...]
[Cross-posted at Reason.org] In the wake of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit to stop the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA, there has been some discussion about where T-Mobile would end up if the government effort proved successful. While debate continues whether a merged AT&T-T-Mobile would harm consumers, there is no disputing that T-Mobile itself [...]
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.
