Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The English language is public domain (the language itself, not everything said with it). So it’s worthless, right? No dollars change hands when people use it. Perhaps it could be made worth something if someone were to own it. The owner could charge a license fee to people who use English, making substantial revenue on [...]
It seems peculiar to me that some of the same individuals and groups who so vociferously opposed a “broadcast flag” technological mandate in past years are now in a mad rush to have federal policymakers mandate a “Do Not Track” regulatory regime for privacy purposes. The broadcast flag debate, you will recall, centered around the [...]
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. [...]
On November 18, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” (COICA). The bill would enable the U.S. Attorney General to obtain a court order disabling access to web domains that are “dedicated to infringing activities.” These “rogue websites” are a real problem, as the website Fight Online Theft explains, [...]
As a cyber-libertarian, I’ve been lucky enough to work with people of all ideological stripes in pursuit of various public policy objectives. I’ve made selective alliances with people on the Right on economic policy issues (like opposing Net Neutrality regulation, Internet taxes, etc) and also worked closely with folks on the Left on speech and [...]
Toy Story 3 offers many pleasures and not a little wisdom. I absorbed them with a shocking output of tears, both the laughing kind and otherwise. At one point, too, I raised my fist in solidarity, moved by the political philosophy voiced by Barbie (brilliantly played by Barbie). I liked Barbie’s quote so much that [...]
The grandly-named Public Domain Archive, evidently a production of Osaka-based Digirock, Inc., offers a few MP3s of classical music and historical speeches. Thanks to a suggestion from Tyler Cowen, I’m enjoying a 1942 recording of Beethoven’s 9th even as I type. Am I breaking the law in so doing? The copyright notice posted on the [...]
In their 2006 Cato Policy Analysis, Amateur-to-Amateur: The Rise of a New Creative Culture, Gregory Lastowka and Dan Hunter wrote about how the functions that make up the creative cycle—creation, selection, production, dissemination, promotion, sale, and use of expressive content—are undergoing revolutionary decentralization and disintermediation. The only thing professional in the clip below was the [...]
Check out the Volokh post and the clip to which it links. The post is titled “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Meta.”
May 23, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
