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 [...]
Should ISPs be barred under net neutrality from discriminating against illegal content? Not according to the FCC’s draft net neutrality rule, which defines efforts by ISPs to curb the “transfer of unlawful content” as reasonable network management. This exemption is meant to ensure providers have the freedom to filter or block unlawful content like malicious [...]
According to the Threat Level blog, the Obama Administration has declared the text of a proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement a national security secret. Thing is . . . it can’t be. And that would also be contrary to Obama administration policy.
I’ve been hammering Jonathan Zittrain pretty hard here over the past year for the thesis he sets forth in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It that digital “generativity” is at risk today. The reason I have been doing so is because all signs point in the exact opposite direction, and more [...]
I used to have a (semi-crazy) uncle who typically began conversations with lame jokes or bad riddles. This sounds like one he might have used had he lived long enough: What do Thomas Jefferson, a moose, and cyberspace have in common? The answer to that question can be found in a new book, In Search [...]
My piece about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event last Friday on U.S. intellectual property attachés giving a report, and taking a hard line, on the enforcement of U.S. intellectual property, overseas, is now live on ip-watch.org. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs: WASHINGTON, DC – Nations ranging from Brazil to Brunei to Russia are [...]
I attended the Federal Trade Commission hearing about the state of intellectual property on Friday, and wrote a piece about the event, “With US Patent Overhaul Dead, Agencies Ponder Changes As Industry Debates Role Of ‘Trolls’.” The piece appeared in ip-watch.org, the excellent Geneva-based publication run by my friend and former colleague William New. Those [...]
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it will hold “a series of public hearings beginning on December 5, 2008, in Washington, D.C., to explore the evolving market for intellectual property (IP).” It’s timely, then, that we will be having a forum Monday on a provocative book whose thesis is the title: Against Intellectual Monopoly. [...]
Arts+Labs, a new coalition “committed to a better, safer internet that works for both artists and consumers,” has written up Friday’s Cato Institute book forum on The Crime of Reason on their ArtLab blog. Author Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University will present his book, then we’ll have comments from Tom Sydnor of the Progress [...]
If you find the title of this post provocative, you’ll be interested in a Cato Institute book forum on Friday, October 10th. In The Crime of Reason, Nobel laureate in physics Robert Laughlin argues that intellectual property laws and government security demands threaten the development of new knowledge. Without change, we risk bequeathing our heirs [...]
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.
