Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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 [...]
Here’s an amazing graphic that appeared in today’s Washington Post depicting how digital information has grown exploded over the past two decades. It’s better viewed on a large monitor from this link on the Post website. And here’s the accompanying Post article. The underlying data come from a new study by Martin Hilbert and Priscila [...]
Today the Mercatus Center has released a short new paper I have authored on “Unappreciated Benefits of Advertising and Commercial Speech.” I begin the piece by noting that: Federal policy makers, state legislators, and state attorneys general have recently shown interest in regulating commercial advertising and marketing. Several new regulatory initiatives are being proposed, or are already underway, that could [...]
Wow, what a year for cyberlaw and information technology policy books! Both in terms of number of titles and the gravity of the books released, 2010 was one of the biggest years of the past decade (perhaps matched only by 2006 or 2008 in terms of significance). So, here’s my annual list of the Most [...]
This morning at the Newseum in Washington, DC, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered remarks on Internet freedom and the future of global free speech and expression. [Transcript is here + video.] It will go down as a historic speech in the field of Internet policy since she drew a bold line in [...]
As I pointed out here before (see, “And so the Comcast-NBC Merger Hysteria Begins: Help Me Document It!“), every time a media merger is proposed we hear all sorts of silly Chicken Little predictions of impending doom as well as preposterous conspiracy theories about supposed nefarious schemes to take over the media universe and control [...]
I just finished Ken Auletta’s latest book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, and I highly recommend it. Auletta is an amazingly gifted journalist and knows how put together a hell of good story. It helps in this case that he was granted unprecedented access to the Google team and their [...]
I cannot in strong enough terms recommend that everyone read Gordon Crovitz’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Free Speech, Now that Speech is Free.” It perfectly encapsulates everything we stand for here and makes the case that I have made again and again: Speech regulation — of all flavors — makes less and less sense [...]
I recently finished Tyler Cowen’s latest book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. Like everything he writes, this book is worth reading and it will be of interest to those who follow technology policy debates since Cowen makes a passionate case for “Internet optimism” in the face of recent [...]
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 [...]
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.
