Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In the wake of last week’s big SOPA showdown, a lot of people are talking about the expanded presence and power of the Internet, online operators, and digital Netizens in Washington policy debates. I certainly don’t mean to diminish the importance of this particular episode. It certainly is historic, regardless of how you feel about [...]
Twenty years ago, one of the best books ever penned about freedom of speech was released. Sadly, many people still haven’t heard of it. That book was Freedom, Technology and the First Amendment, by Jonathan Emord. With the exception of Ithiel de Sola Pool’s 1983 masterpiece Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic [...]
Over on his Google+ page, cyber-guru Andrew McLaughlin posted a bit of a rant about libertarians and Net neutrality arguing, among other things, that “the pro-freedom position is to enforce net neutrality.” Needless to say, I disagree and posted a long comment explaining why and trying to help him and others on the Left understand [...]
FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell delivered a terrific speech this week on “Technology and the Sovereignty of the Individual” at a broadband conference in Stockholm, Sweden. The speech serves as another reminder that McDowell is one of those ultimate rare birds: a regulator who is a first-rate intellectual thinker and a great champion of individual [...]
I’m very excited to announce that I now have a regular Forbes column that will fly under the banner, “Technologies of Freedom.” My first essay for them is already live and it addresses a topic I’ve dealt with here extensively through the years: Irrational fears about tech monopolies and “information empires.” Jump over to Forbes [...]
Nate Anderson of Ars Technica has posted an interview with Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) about Defining Internet “Freedom”. Neither Sen. Franken nor Mr. Anderson ever get around to defining that term in their exchange, but the clear implication from the piece is that “freedom” means freedom for the government to plan more and for policymakers [...]
In his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morozov aims to prick the bubble of hyper-optimism that surrounds debates about the Internet’s role in advancing human freedom or civic causes. Morozov, a native of Belarus, is a tremendously gifted young cyber-policy scholar affiliated with Stanford University and the New [...]
Today I appeared on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” to debate Net neutrality issues and the specific role of pricing in this debate. [video down below] Specifically, the producers wanted to know whether websites should be allowed to pay a higher fee to allow consumers faster access to their sites or should it be equal for every [...]
[cross-posted from BigGovernment.com] In the battle over media and communications freedom, no group poses a more serious threat to a free and independent press than the insultingly misnamed regulatory activist group Free Press. Along with their founders, the prolific neo-Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney and Nation correspondent John Nichols, Free Press has engaged in [...]
Today, China renewed Google’s license to do business in the country, reports The Washington Post. The announcement means that Google will maintain its presence in the country for the foreseeable future. Google will likely meet criticism, but this is good news nonetheless for Chinese Internet users. The rapidly unfolding Google-China saga has made headline after [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
