Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
This afternoon the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith of the House Judiciary Committee. This bill is a companion to the PROTECT IP Act and S.978, both of which were reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May. There’s a lot some to like about the bill, but I’m uneasy [...]
I’ve written two articles on the Protect IP Act of 2011, introduced last week by Sen. Leahy (D-Vt.). For CNET, I look at some of the key differences, better and worse, between Protect IP and its predecessor last year, known as COICA. On Forbes this morning, I have a long meditation on what Protect IP [...]
Last November, I penned an essay on these pages about the COICA legislation that had recently been approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. While I praised Congress’s efforts to tackle the problem of “rogue websites” — sites dedicated to trafficking in counterfeit goods and/or distributing copyright infringing content — I warned that the [...]
POLITICO reports that a bill aimed at combating so-called “rogue websites” will soon be introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy. The legislation, entitled the PROTECT IP Act, will substantially resemble COICA (PDF), a bill that was reported unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee late last year but did not reach a [...]
A federal judge in Illinois has refused to allow a plaintiff to match IP addresses to individual names in a piracy case, indicating that use of IP addresses without any other evidence is too unreliable in identifying actual perpetrators, and as such, violates the rights of those caught in what he termed a “fishing expedition.” [...]
User-driven websites — also known as online intermediaries — frequently come under fire for disabling user content due to bogus or illegitimate takedown notices. Facebook is at the center of the latest controversy involving a bogus takedown notice. On Thursday morning, the social networking site disabled Ars Technica’s page after receiving a DMCA takedown notice [...]
Yesterday the FBI effectively shut down three of the largest gambling sites online and indicted their executives. From a tech policy perspective, these events highlight how central intermediary control is to the regulation of the internet. Department of Justice lawyers were able to take down the sites using the same tools we’ve seen DHS use [...]
In the ongoing copyright debates, areas of common ground are seemingly few and far between. It’s easy to forget that not all approaches to combating copyright infringement are mired in controversy. One belief that unites many stakeholders across the spectrum is that more efforts are needed to educate Internet users about copyright. The Internet has [...]
Early in President Obama’s term it became clear that efforts to close the revolving door between industry and government weren’t serious or the very least weren’t working. For a quick refresher on this, check out this ABC news story from August of 2009, which shows how Mr. Obama exempted several officials from rules he claimed [...]
Today, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a proposed class action settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and a coalition of publishers. Had it been approved, the settlement would have enabled Google to scan and sell millions of books, including out of print books, without getting explicit permission [...]
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.
