I just noticed this in Cory Doctorow’s sig; sorely tempted to add it to mine:
READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (”BOGUS [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Tech and Tech Policy'
The Anti-EULA
June 7th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Tags: Law · Tech and Tech Policy
Gosh, Y’think?
February 2nd, 2010 · 2 Comments
The New York Times on China’s hacker underground:
Three weeks ago, Google blamed hackers that it connected to China for a series of sophisticated attacks that led to the theft of the company’s valuable source code. Google also said hackers had infiltrated the private Gmail accounts of human rights activists, suggesting the effort might have been [...]
Tags: Tech and Tech Policy
Anonymity Loves Company
December 14th, 2009 · 6 Comments
It’s something of a cliche among privacy researchers that “anonymity loves company“: Anonymizing mix networks (e.g. Tor) are more secure and more anonymous the more people are using them. Glossing the geekalicious details, the basic idea is lots of different encrypted communications, going to and from lots of different people, get chopped, scrambled, and sent [...]
Tags: Privacy and Surveillance · Tech and Tech Policy
Journamalism!
October 28th, 2009 · 9 Comments
Via some outfit called VoIP News, I’m intrigued to learn that my insidious paymasters at Cato number among the 15 greatest enemies of net neutrality. Scary! Turns out Cato is a “hired voice of reason” which, along with CEI “seems to draw its funding from a smattering of every major corporation ever to fund lobbyists.” [...]
Tags: Journalism & the Media · Tech and Tech Policy
Non-Neutral about Neutrality
October 14th, 2009 · 11 Comments
Speaking of (1) old stuff I’d meant to comment on, and (2) journalistic objectivity… Saul Hansell is, on the whole, a solid tech reporter, but golly, what do you think his view on net neutrality regulation might be?
F.C.C. Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data
In a move to make good on one of President [...]
Tags: Tech and Tech Policy
Weirdest Neutrality Argument I’ve Read This Week
September 23rd, 2009 · 10 Comments
Richard Koman at ZDnet on proposed legislation to block FCC net neutrality rules:
The amendment is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to assert Congressional control of an executive function. They try to get around this by controlling “expenditures,” and I certainly don’t know the Supreme Court holdings on such approaches, but it seems to me that controlling [...]
Tags: Journalism & the Media · Law · Tech and Tech Policy
Net Neutrality and the Architecture Avoidance Doctrine
September 22nd, 2009 · 5 Comments
If I can amplify a bit on a post at the Cato blog earlier today, I want to clarify that I fully agree some of the ISP behaviors that net neutrality proponents have identified as demanding a regulatory response really are seriously problematic. My point of departure is that I’d rather see if there are [...]
Tags: Law · Tech and Tech Policy
Not Dead, Merely Resting
September 8th, 2009 · 6 Comments
And not even resting that much, but as I noted earlier, expect to see a good deal more of my blogging over at Cato@Liberty these days. Here’s a long one on the recent call for more regulation of behavioral ads—which, believe it or not, I only mostly disagree with.
Tags: Self Promotion · Tech and Tech Policy
It’s, Like, Even Steven for Everyone
August 20th, 2009 · 10 Comments
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say “net neutrality is crap,” but John Dvorak’s column sums up the substance if not quite the tone of my feelings on the issue—which is to say, it’s a disconcertingly nebulous solution to a thus-far largely hypothetical problem. It’s certainly understandable that people think it’s important [...]
Tags: Tech and Tech Policy
Patents and Tacit Knowledge
August 12th, 2009 · 6 Comments
The stories appear so frequently these days that it’s practically a new genre: The lawsuit over some patent claiming monopoly on a bang-your-head-on-a-desk obvious procedure, emerging from the shadows to threaten a technology that’s long been ubiquitous. The most recent instance is likely to get some play outside the tech press because it’s resulted in [...]
Tags: Law · Tech and Tech Policy