Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Note the disclaimer below, emphasized here Seventy years ago yesterday, German troops invaded Poland. Thus began World War II—after twenty years of rising tension in Europe. For the next eight months, the world sat waiting for the other shoe to drop—the sitzkrieg (literally “sitting war”) or “Phoney War,” as the English dubbed it. Finally, Germany [...]
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 [...]
Regular readers will know that Adam and I have been waging a lonely defensive action in the war on “Free!” (ad-supported) content and services online, pointing out that restrictions on data collection and use for advertising would ultimately hurt consumers by reducing funding for the sites they love (1, 2, 3, 4). In short, there is no free [...]
We’ve just published an op-ed over at Forbes.com about today’s big Yahoo!-Microsoft deal. Searching For Success: Web 1.0 Titans Struggle to Reinvent Themselves by Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer Yahoo! and Microsoft on Wednesday announced a partnership in which Microsoft’s Bing search engine technology will power search for both companies, but Yahoo! will manage advertising sales and content [...]
Great piece in Wired by Fred Vogelstein asking “Why Is Obama’s Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?” It paints a pretty good picture of the coming antitrust ordeal that Google is likely to be subjected to by the Obama Administration. And, as usual, I couldn’t agree more with the skepticism that Eric Goldman of Santa [...]
In an earlier post, I mentioned an important new online child safety task force report that has just been released from the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group. It’s a great report and I encourage you to read the whole thing. It was my great pleasure to serve on this task force, and [...]
The leading trade associations in the online advertising industry have just released their new self-regulatory principles—the first comprehensive self-regulatory principles industry has produced, which track closely with the suggested guidelines released by the FTC in February. I commend the industry for setting a new standard in transparency, consumer control and data security. These Principles do much [...]
Adam Thierer and I have been trying to drive home a simple message in the ongoing debate about targeted online advertising and privacy: ”There is no Free Lunch!” We don’t have a lot of friends in this debate, since nearly everyone else seems to assume that online content and services will just continue to fall [...]
Come one, come all. ACT will be hosting a lunch event next Tuesday (June 23) at noon on privacy, free software, and government procurement. We’ll discuss “free” software (ie. no license fees, free as in beer). It’s a nuanced take on some of what Chris Anderson will surely be talking about in his upcoming book [...]
by Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer This morning, the House Energy & Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on “Behavioral Advertising: Industry Practices And Consumers’ Expectations.” If nothing else, it promises to be quite entertaining: With full-time Google bashers Jeff Chester and Scott Cleland on the agenda, the likelihood that top Google officials will be burned in [...]
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.
