Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Today I testified at a hearing by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on commercial sexual exploitation and the Internet. When I first learned about it, I feared the worst: time to demonize the Internet. After all, the hearing announcement openly targeted Craigslist and websites generally. But this was not the case at all—as we heard, NGOs, law enforcement, and [...]
Chalk up another victim to unwarranted political intimidation by state attorneys general. On Friday evening, Craigslist, which has long been under intense pressure to crack down on sex crimes, replaced its adult services section in the U.S. with a black censor bar. This move comes on the heels of a scathing letter sent to Craigslist [...]
If you really want to understand this year’s retail sales picture, wait for statistics about the online shopping that happens the Monday after Thanksgiving.
by Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer, Progress Snapshot 5.11 (PDF) Ten years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lamented the “Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse:” the persistent propensity to persecute one’s competitors through regulation or the threat thereof. Friedman asked: “Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft?” After [...]
Last night, thanks to Craig’s List and a Web-enabled cell phone, I unloaded two extra tickets to tonight’s World Cup qualifying game between the U.S. and Costa Rica in under an hour. (8:00, ESPN2 “USA! USA! USA!”) Wanting to avoid the hassle of selling the tickets at RFK, I placed an ad on Craig’s List [...]
Last year, my PFF colleague Adam Thierer asked whether State AGs + NCMEC = The Net’s New Regulators? Adam noted that NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private non-profit organization, was playing a law enforcement role in regulating child pornography—but without any clear mechanisms for ensuring its accountability and effectiveness. Adam’s [...]
craigslist has filed a complaint against South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, seeking to enjoin him from prosecuting the site for displaying the solicitations to prostitution that sometimes appear there. The complaint cites section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the First Amendment, and a few other laws that craigslist believes protect it from liability. [...]
Over the past year, I have been monitoring a very interesting trend with important ramifications for the future of Internet policy. State Attorneys General (AGs) — often in league with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) — have been striking a variety of “voluntary” agreements with various Internet companies that deal with [...]
Register here for what looks like a very interesting event: In 1995, Internet entrpreneur Craig Newmark started Craigslist — an online community featuring free classified ads. Thirteen years later, Craigslist serves 567 cities in 55 countries and is a good example of how the power, reach and openness of the Internet can help turn a simple idea [...]
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.
