Google today unveiled the Data Liberation Front, a team of engineers in Chicago dedicated to ensuring that Google build “liberated products”—ones that have “built in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you’d like to take it elsewhere.” We’ve spent a lot of time [...]
You might have noticed that we’ve added a Tweetmeme button at the top of each TLF post showing how many times each post has been “retweeted” on Twitter. If you like a TLF post, please take a second to retweet it. Retweeting is an easy way to spread the TLF’s message that politicians should keep their hands [...]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka — (Ver. 1.0 — Summer 2009) We are attempting to articulate the core principles of cyber-libertarianism to provide the public and policymakers with a better understanding of this alternative vision for ordering the affairs of cyberspace. We invite comments and suggestions regarding how we should refine and build-out this [...]
This is just a quick reminder to both faithful and fair-weather readers that there are many ways to keep up with what we’re saying here at the Technology Liberation Front, including: (1) RSS Subscribe in a Reader (2) Twitter (3) Facebook (4) Daily email alert (5) Podcast < p style=”padding-left: 30px;”> … Or just make [...]
On this episode “Tech Policy Weekly,” Technology Liberation Front contributors Ryan Radia and Berin Szoka join me for a discussion of the flare-up over Facebook’s recent changes to the data retention provisions of its Terms of Use agreement and whether there are any serious privacy issues in play here—or if this is all much ado [...]
Savvy TLF Readers probably realize that the TLF was preceded by the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. I suspect neither group has much of a sense of humor (although I’m glad to see from their Wikipedia pages that neither organization appears to have actually killed anyone, despite their use of terrorist tactics). A TLF reader [...]
I often ponder what the TLF is all about. Of course, our official mission is “keeping politicians’ hands off the ‘net and everything else related to technology.” You can read more on our “About Us” page. But this quote from Robert Heinlein‘s 1973 classic Time Enough for Love (among my top five favorite novels) really hits the [...]
This article focuses on cookies–not the cookies you eat, but the cookies associated with browsing the World Wide Web. There has been public concern over the privacy implications of cookies since they were first developed. But to understand them , you must know a bit of history.
As TLF readers may know, I took over in July as Chairman of the Board of the Space Frontier Foundation. As I explained in my recent interview on The Space Show, SFF has been the leading citizens’ advocacy group for space commercialization since 1988. Dedicated to promoting Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill‘s vision of space settlement, as described [...]
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 [...]