Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In their 2006 Cato Policy Analysis, Amateur-to-Amateur: The Rise of a New Creative Culture, Gregory Lastowka and Dan Hunter wrote about how the functions that make up the creative cycle—creation, selection, production, dissemination, promotion, sale, and use of expressive content—are undergoing revolutionary decentralization and disintermediation. The only thing professional in the clip below was the [...]
Over at TechDirt, Mike Masnick has an interesting post asking “Why Did Apple Approve Spotify?” which builds on an AdAge column asking a similar question: “Did Apple Sacrifice ITunes With Latest Apps?” As the title of that AdAge piece suggests, some folks are wondering if Apple shot itself in the foot by approving Spotify, a [...]
The latest edition (Version 4.0) of my PFF special report on “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods” is now up. For those not familiar with the report, it explores the market for parental control tools, rating schemes, education and media literacy efforts, and various other tools, methods, and initiatives [...]
I’ve just had a new article published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in which I make the case against “techno-panics,” which refers to public and political crusades against the use of new media or technologies by the young. The article is entitled “Parents, Kids & Policymakers in the Digital Age: Safeguarding Against ‘Techno-Panics‘” [...]
Check out “Magic Flute: Primal Find Sings of Music’s Mystery“ in yesterday’s WSJ. The article describes the development of music as a central part of what Jacob Bronowski called the “Ascent of Man“: “I believe that before we evolved language, our communication was more musical than it is now,” says cognitive archaeologist Steven Mithen at the [...]
As I am getting ready to watch the Super Bowl tonight on my amazing 100-inch screen via a Sanyo high-def projector that only cost me $1,600 bucks on eBay, I started thinking back about how much things have evolved (technologically-speaking) over just the past decade. I thought to myself, what sort of technology did I [...]
The Isle of Man may soon implement a “blanket license” whereby Manx broadband users could download as much music as they like in exchange for paying a “fee” (also known as a “tax,” since this would be non-optional) to their ISP that would supposedly be as low as $1.38/month. The Manx proposal sounds a lot like how SoundExchange administers [...]
Like it or not, we live in the belly of Leviathan. Friends of liberty tend not to like it. Rather than giving in to death-by-digestion, or the dreaded Lower Intestines of Statism, they struggle to escape. Hello, Jonah, describes that plight, prescribes a cure, and wryly notes the outcome: As with Nice to Be Wanted, [...]
I’m finishing up Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig’s latest book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy and wanted to make a brief comment about his call for a “simple blanket license” to solve online music piracy. Overall, I thought Prof. Lessig made a good case regarding the benefits of “remix [...]
“The doggone law. The consarned law. The lousy, frickin’, nit-pickin’, noveau-Prussian, freedom-crushin’ . . . .” Nice to Be Wanted twangs the sad tale: Like Sensible Khakis and Take Up the Flame, Nice to Be Wanted comes with a license allowing pretty free non-commercial use. Also like those songs, this one requires commercial licensees to [...]
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.
