Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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 [...]
NetChoice filed comments today with the FCC in its inquiry on Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape. PFF’s comments (jointly filed w/ EFF as described in their TLF post) are comprehensive, excellent, and very highly recommended (well done Adam and Berin). I took a narrower approach. My goal was to dismiss [...]
Rep. Bart Stupak, (D-MI) recently introduced the ‘‘Online Age Verification and Child Safety Act’’ (H.R. 4059), which would require mandatory online age verification for “any pornographic website accessible by any computer located within the United States to display any pornographic material, including free content that may be available prior to the purchase of a subscription [...]
On July 27th, The Progress & Freedom Foundation hosted a Capitol Hill panel discussion entitled “Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States.” The event featured remarks from: Parry Aftab, Executive Director, WiredSafety.org Todd Haiken, Senior Manager of Policy, Common Sense Media Jim Halpert, Partner, DLA Piper [...]
The latest edition (Version 4.0) of my PFF special report on “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods” is now up. For those not familiar with the report, it explores the market for parental control tools, rating schemes, education and media literacy efforts, and various other tools, methods, and initiatives [...]
Maine has just enacted a law severely restricting marketing to kids: the Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices against Minors, summarized by Covington & Burling. Adam and I released a major paper in June about such laws: COPPA 2.0: The New Battle over Privacy, Age Verification, Online Safety & Free Speech. Maine is following the lead of several other states [...]
The Gawker offers a fascinating discussion of the legal right to anonymity: “There is clearly a moral case that some people should be able to join the public debate and retain their anonymity,” Tench told Gawker. “And I think this will have a chilling effect. Blogs like this can only exist anonymously, and I imagine [...]
Berin recently encouraged me to re-read Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, which I hadn’t looked at since I first read it back in 1995 or 96. I’m glad I did since Sowell’s work has always been profoundly influential on my thinking (especially his masterpiece, A [...]
As Berin mentioned last week, we have a new paper out on proposals to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998. We generically refer to those COPPA-expansion efforts as “COPPA 2.0.” Hence, the title of our paper: “COPPA 2.0: The New Battle over Privacy, Age Verification, Online Safety & Free Speech.” To [...]
Adam Thierer & I have just released a detailed examination (PDF) of brewing efforts to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to cover adolescents and potentially all social networking sites—an approach we call “COPPA 2.0.” As Adam explained on Larry Magid’s CNET podcast, COPPA mandates certain online privacy protections for children under 13, most [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
