Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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 [...]
Here is a chart of the Bitcoin-dollar exchange rate for the past six months. The arrow notes the date my column on the virtual currency was published in TIME.com. The day after that piece was published, the Bitcoin exchange rate reached an all time high at $1.19. Yesterday, just over a week later, it was [...]
“Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade” is the title for a conference event held May 5 and 6 at the American University School of International Service in Washington. See the full program here. Featured will be a keynote by the NTIA head, Assistant Secretary for Commerce Lawrence Strickling. TLF-ers [...]
I’m gratified that my recent writing on the Bitcoin virtual currency project has stirred much conversation and I thought I’d take a moment to continue that conversation. Tim Lee has written two posts critiquing the viability of Bitcoin from the supply and demand side. Dan Rothschild has responded in part. Tyler Cower also weighed in. [...]
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 [...]
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and TechFreedom are hosting a panel discussion this Thursday featuring intellectual property scholars and Internet governance experts. The event will explore the need for, and concerns about, recent legislative proposals to give law enforcement new tools to combat so-called “rogue websites” that facilitate and engage in unlawful counterfeiting and copyright infringement. [...]
What I hoped would be a short blog post to accompany the video from Geoff Manne and my appearances this week on PBS’s “Ideas in Action with Jim Glassman” turned out to be a very long article which I’ve published over at Forbes.com. I apologize to Geoff for taking an innocent comment he made on [...]
In response to civil unrest, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. According to the blog post at the link just above, Egypt’s four main ISPs have cut off their connections to the outside world. Specifically, their “BGP routes were withdrawn.” The Border Gateway [...]
Every once and awhile it’s worth taking a step back and looking at the long view of how Internet policy developments have unfolded and consider where they might be heading next. We’ve reached such a moment as it pertains to efforts to police the Internet for copyright piracy, objectionable online content, privacy violations, and cybersecurity. [...]
Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, is a familiar figure to anyone who follows Internet governance issues. He has established himself as a leading Net governance guru thanks to his extensive academic record in this field with books like Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (2002) [...]
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.
