Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I’ve always viewed web traffic numbers with great suspicion, if for no other reason than they are all over the board. But the amazing Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal’s “numbers guy,” does us another great service today in his latest column, “The Trouble With Web-Traffic Numbers,” by walking us through exactly how big of [...]
As I noted here a few days ago, the Federal Communications Commission held a workshop on Tuesday about “Speech, Democratic Engagement, and the Open Internet.” It was a shockingly one-sided affair with the deck being stacked almost entirely in favor of advocates of Net neutrality regulation. Worse yet, those advocates shamelessly made up spooky stories [...]
On July 27th, The Progress & Freedom Foundation hosted a Capitol Hill panel discussion entitled “Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States.” The event featured remarks from: Parry Aftab, Executive Director, WiredSafety.org Todd Haiken, Senior Manager of Policy, Common Sense Media Jim Halpert, Partner, DLA Piper [...]
You really have to hand it to the folks over at the (Un)Free Press with their endlessly shameful attempts to use doublespeak to remake the entire media, communications, and Internet landscape in their preferred Big Government image. Their latest bit of charlatanism is the so-called “Stop the Internet Rip-Off of 2009” campaign. It’s another one [...]
Adam Thierer & I have just released a detailed examination (PDF) of brewing efforts to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to cover adolescents and potentially all social networking sites—an approach we call “COPPA 2.0.” As Adam explained on Larry Magid’s CNET podcast, COPPA mandates certain online privacy protections for children under 13, most [...]
Here’s a terrific piece by Harry McCracken over at Technologizer asking “Whatever Happened to the Top 15 Web Properties of April, 1999?” McCracken goes through the hottest web properties of April 1999 and asks, “How many of 1999’s Web giants remain gigantic today — assuming they still exist at all?” Instead of reproducing his entire [...]
A classic piece here by Farhad Manjoo of Slate about how “the Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today.” It’s a fun look back at just how far the Internet has come over the past 13 years. I love this passage: We all know that the Internet has changed radically [...]
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.
I can’t believe we’re actually asking whether Obama—the candidate who promised to bring the Federal government (and perhaps everyone else) into the Web 2.0 era whether they like it or not—will have a “personal computer.” The “webiness” of Obama’s predecessors is just embarrassing: Clinton famously sent only two e-mails while he was president, one to test [...]
Back in June, Adam Thierer and I denounced (PDF) Kevin Martin’s plans to create broadband utility to provide censored (and very slow) broadband for free to all Americans. The WSJ reports that this scheme is now at the top of Martin’s December agenda: The proposal to allow a no-smut, free wireless Internet service is part of a [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
