Free Speech Now! Kinda…
Free speech is taking a beating on the Internet and ISPs have nothing to do with it. This is peculiar because activists have long insisted that ISPs are the greatest – and…
Internet Pioneers Discuss Network Architecture and Regulation
Internet regulation is like the Game of Thrones, a battle between parochial interests that ignores the threat of an innovation-less winter.
The Coming Productivity Boom with Bret Swanson
[powerpress] In this edition of the HTF podcast, we talk with Entropy Economics founder Bret Swanson about his recent paper (with Michael Mandel), The Coming Productivity Boom. Swanson sees high…
FCC Wants to Know if Ernestine Rules the Internet
Broadband ISPs are in the same game as dial-up ISPs: providing customers the ability to access and share information. This is not a complicated issue. Hence, Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator Ernestine is not really part of the picture any more. She was a great lady, but like Manu Ginóbili of the San Antonio Spurs, she’s retired.
Congress Gives the FCC a Privacy Mulligan
“Don’t collect what you can’t protect” seems like a reasonable approach. Given that the current discourse is all about collection, we probably won’t have the conversation we need to have for a long time. And in the meantime we’re going to hear nothing but nonsense about gatekeepers, “sensitive” browsing histories, and how hard it may be to switch ISPs (as if we don’t do that several times more often than we switch social networks and search providers.
Five Myths About Internet Privacy
Our web activity is tracked by “edge services” such as Google and Facebook even if we don’t go to their web sites. This is because they both operate tracking networks with the cooperation of web sites that carry their tracking code.
Congress is Watching You: What to Look For in the House Internet Privacy Debate
Yes. Does Google track you outside of google.com? Yes. Does Google share sensitive data about you with third parties it collects from sites like edmarkey.com and standtallforamerica.com? I don’t know that it does, but it’s entitled to by its privacy disclosures. And the same goes for a dozen other trackers unleashed on web users who visit these two sites.
What’s a Tracker Network and What Can it See?
In Wednesday’s Senate floor debate over the Congressional Review Act resolution on the Wheeler FCC’s privacy regulations, each Democratic Senator made the same claim: ISPs can see all the web…
Senate Internet Hearings
As a technical matter, it is the case that the Internet is more like cable TV than the telephone network. While the Internet does support interpersonal communication, its primary role is publishing audio, video, pictures, and text. And like cable TV, it’s a platform in which advertising is a very important source of revenue.
Playing God with the Internet?
At yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee’s hearing, “Wrecking the Internet to Save It: The FCC’s Net Neutrality Rule,” Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert delivered some impassioned comments on the FCC’s common…