The Federal Circuit significantly limited the patentability of software and business methods today. Mike Masnick at TechDirt summarizes the holding of the case as follows: the court has said that there’s a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or [...]
Debates about online privacy often seem to assume relatively homogeneous privacy preferences among Internet users. But the reality is that users vary widely, with many people demonstrating that they just don’t care who sees what they do, post or say online. Attitudes vary from application to application, of course, but that’s precisely the point: [...]
Google has just announced that it is now accepting applications from undergraduate, graduate and professional students for its summer 2009 Google Policy Fellowship. Three think tanks employing TLFers are among the host organizations participating in the program: The Progress & Freedom Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Applications are due by December 12, 2008. The program [...]
The Progress & Freedom Foundation has just launched the new Center for Internet Freedom. CIF offers an alternative to the proliferation of advocacy groups calling for government intervention online by offering timely analyses and critiques of proposals that diminish the vital role of free markets, free speech and property rights. We aim to drive the Internet policy [...]
Congress has very wisely cancelled the National Reconnaissance Office’s proposed Broad Area Space-Based Imagery Collection (BASIC) satellite system. The proposal to build two new imaging satellites at a cost to taxpayers of $1.7 billion would have represented a major break from what is possibly the U.S. government’s most successful effort to promote space commercialization to date: buying the imagery [...]
A few weeks ago, I outlined the amazing keynote address that Harvard University law professor Laurence H. Tribe delivered at PFF’s annual Aspen Summit. Now you can read it for yourself. PFF has just published the transcript of his speech, which was entitled, “Freedom of Speech and Press in the 21st Century: New Technology Meets [...]