Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I thought Todd Zywicki, a senior scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, did a nice job on Judge Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” show addressing the contentious question of whether government should be regulating food advertising in order to somehow make American kids healthier. Todd pointed out how the advertising guidelines currently being developed [...]
For CNET today, I have a long analysis and commentary on the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” introduced last week in the House. The bill is advertised as the House’s version of the Senate’s Protect-IP Act, which was voted out of Committee in May. It’s very hard to find much positive to say about the House [...]
For CNET this morning, I offer five crucial corrections to the Protect IP Act, which was passed out of committee in the Senate back in May. Yesterday, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, told a Silicon Valley audience that the House was working on its own version and would introduce it in [...]
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 [...]
I’ve written a long article this morning for CNET (See “Privacy panic debate: Whose data is it?”) on the discovery of the iPhone location tracking file and the utterly predictable panic response that followed. Its life-cycle follows precisely the crisis model Adam Thierer has so frequently and eloquently traced, most recently here on TLF. In [...]
On this week’s John Stossel show on Fox Business Network, I debated Internet privacy, advertising, and data collection issues with Michael Fertik of Reputation.com. In the few minutes we had for the segment, I tried to reiterate a couple of keep points that we’ve hammered repeatedly here in the past: There’s no free lunch. All [...]
Today, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on “The State of Online Consumer Privacy.” The push for online privacy regulation has real momentum, as proposed privacy legislation from numerous lawmakers, a Department of Commerce report proposing a compulsory Do Not Track mechanism to regulate business marketing practices, and the Obama Administration’s proposed “Privacy [...]
We’ve said it here before too may times to count: When it comes to the future of content and services — especially online or digitally-delivered content and services — there is no free lunch. Something has to pay for all that stuff and increasingly that something is advertising. But not just any type of advertising [...]
In this essay, I will suggest that (1) while “moral panics” and “techno-panics” are nothing new, their cycles seem to be accelerating as new communications and information networks and platforms proliferate; (2) new panics often “crowd-out” or displace old ones; and (3) the current scare over online privacy and “tracking” is just the latest episode [...]
Today I filed roughly 30 pages worth of comments with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in its proceeding on “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: a Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policy Makers.” [Other comments filed in the proceeding can be found here.] Down below, I’ve attached the Table of Contents from [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
