Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I’m pleased to report that the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released my huge new white paper, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle.” I’ve been working on this paper for a long time and look forward to finding it a home in a law journal some [...]
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 [...]
I really enjoyed my Second Life appearance on “Government’s Place in Virtual Worlds and Online Communities,” which was hosted by Metanomics. You can watch the entire segment on the Metanomics site. But the folks at Metanomics have also posted 6 clips from the show at YouTube that highlight some of the topics we discussed. Here’s [...]
Today I was invited to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to testify at one of the agency’s Broadband Working Group workshops. This particular workshop was on “Broadband Consumer Context,” which focused on “a range of challenges and opportunities as the internet becomes a focal point for commercial transactions, social networking, and a host of activities [...]
My friends Anne Collier and Larry Magid, two of America’s leading experts on Internet safety matters, have just released a terrific new “Online Safety 3.0” manifesto. Anne is the editor of Net Family News, Larry pens the “Safe and Secure” blog for CNet News, and together they run ConnectSafely.org. Everything they do is must-reading for [...]
I like this new document about guarding your online reputation that has just been jointly published by Reputation Defender and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe). They list these “3 Key Tips for Parents” for how to deal with concerns about their children’s online safety, privacy, and reputation: 1. Keep Current with Technology: Talk to [...]
What Unites Advocates of Speech Controls & Privacy Regulation? [pdf] by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka The Progress & Freedom Foundation, Progress on Point No. 16.19 Anyone who has spent time following debates about speech and privacy regulation comes to recognize the striking parallels between these two policy arenas. In this paper we will highlight [...]
The Economist magazine has just released an important feature article entitled, “Sex Laws: Unjust and Ineffective.” In an indirect way, the article makes a point that I have been trying to get across in my work on this issue: If you want to keep your kids safe from real sex offenders, we need to scrap [...]
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 [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
PFF & EFF File Joint Comments in FCC’s “Empowering Parents & Protecting Children” NOI
by Adam Thierer on February 24, 2010 · 3 comments
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer This morning, The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed joint comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the inquiry “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape.” (MB Docket No. 09-194) As Adam summarized here before, the stated purpose of [...]