Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I highly recommend this important new study on “Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook about Age: Unintended Consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” by danah boyd of New York University, Eszter Hargittai from Northwestern University, Jason Schultz from University of California, Berkeley, and John Palfrey from Harvard University. COPPA is a [...]
TechFreedom, in association with the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), will host a lunch panel with a number of leading experts to discuss the FTC’s recently-proposed revisions to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Opening remarks will be delivered by the Federal Trade Commission’s Phyllis Marcus, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Division of Advertising [...]
A year ago, I filed a joint amicus brief with the Electronic Frontier Foundation urging the Supreme Court to overturn California’s paternalistic law on the dangerous grounds that videogame depictions of violence constituted “obscenity” unprotected by the First Amendment. Fortunately, we won. Thus, the First Amendment protects all media, while parents have a variety of tools [...]
Hot-tempered police offers, pushover judges, and vague laws make for a dangerous combination. In July, a controversy erupted in Renton, Washington (a Seattle suburb) when the town’s police department launched a legal assault on an anonymous YouTube user for merely uploading a few sarcastic videos poking fun at the department’s scandals. In an op-ed in The Seattle Times, Nicole [...]
My latest Mercatus Center white paper is entitled “Kids, Privacy, Free Speech & the Internet: Finding The Right Balance.” From the intro: Concerns about children’s privacy are an important part of [the ongoing privacy debate]. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) already mandates certain online-privacy protections for children under the age of [...]
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on March 2 entitled “Helping Law Enforcement Find Missing Children.” While this is just about the most popular topic for a hearing one could imagine, and I’m as much in favor of finding missing children as anyone, I’m a little concerned to see Sen. Klobuchar presiding over a hearing [...]
.bbpBox40164296998649860 {background:url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/188721185/background.gif) #333333;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block} FTC Chairman says will probe Apple in-app purchases for marketing practices: http://wapo.st/fX3uWnless than a minute ago via TweetDeckceciliakangceciliakang The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang reports that the FTC will [...]
Bucking a trend seen in other states, Texas lawmakers are taking steps to separate teen “sexting,” the sending and receiving sexually explicit photos via cell phone or email, from child pornography. A bill proposed by State Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin, and backed by Texas State Attorney General Greg Abbott, would classify sexting as a [...]
Recent media attention has resurrected the notion that criminal background checks for online dating sites are helpful and should even be required by law. Sunday’s front page article in the New York Times described how companies selling background checks can “unmask Mr. or Ms. Wrong.” And today’s Good Morning America featured a segment called “Online [...]
At today’s FCC “Generation Mobile” forum — chock-full of online safety experts, company reps, Jane Lynch of the TV show Glee, and even Chairman Genachowski himself — it was the kids that made the show about mobile technology worthwhile. On a panel about generation mobile, here are a few of the statements we heard from [...]
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.
