February 2012
34 posts
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January 2012
33 posts
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“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you lack, but reckon up the blessings...”
– Marcus Aurelius
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Anonymous And The War Over The Internet →
Saki Knafo:
“You’ve heard Anons say before that this is a war,” he said. “A full scale information war. That’s not mere propaganda, many regard that as a perfectly accurate description. And the stake at play is, simply, ‘Who will control access to information? Everyone or a small subset?’”
In case it wasn’t clear, he then labeled that...
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What Europe’s ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Has in...
Over at TIME.com I write that if you didn’t like SOPA because it threatened free speech, then you probably won’t like the new “Right to be Forgotten” proposed in the EU. Prof. Jane Yakowitz contributes some great insights to the piece. What I dislike most about the rule is that it subordinates expression to privacy:
[T]he new law would flip the traditional understanding...
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DDoS Attacks Increased by 2000% in Past 3 Years,... →
What’s amazing about this is not the increase, but how resilient the Internet is and how well it adapts.
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How Thick Is Your Bubble? →
In case you haven’t seen it, here is a quiz that goes along with Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. His thesis is that the elite that influences the course of the country is out of touch with the mainstream middle class more than ever given that they live in coastal Arugula-lined bubbles. (The obvious question is: So what? I guess I’ll...
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What Europe’s ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Has in... →
Me at TIME.com: “In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth employs a “memory hole” to eliminate inconvenient facts. If a previously published photo or record later proves to be embarrassing for the government, it is thrown down the hole. The facts are erased from the face of the earth and the world is led to believe that something that happened never actually happened. The European...
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In case you didn’t know, every week I host a...
Is there a market failure in cybersecurity? It's...
Cybersecurity is one of the issues that the President may touch upon tonight in his State of the Union speech, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he is ready to move on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation soon. This all raises the question: what is the problem we’re trying to fix?
In an important new working paper for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Eli Dourado...
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Why We Won’t See Many Protests like the SOPA...
Over at TIME.com, I consult public choice theory to glean the meaning of last week’s SOPA protest success:
The SOPA blackout protest last week was an unprecedented event. Its massive success — with dozens of members of Congress switching their stance in one day under the withering intensity of thousands of phone calls — surprised even the activists who spurred the protest. So does this...
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Why We Won’t See Many Protests like the SOPA... →
Me at TIME.com: “The SOPA blackout protest last week was an unprecedented event. Its massive success — with dozens of members of Congress switching their stance in one day under the withering intensity of thousands of phone calls — surprised even the activists who spurred the protest. So does this mean that we are entering the much-heralded era of Internet-powered citizen democracy?”
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Some thoughts on Megaupload
The Megaupload folks are not the most sympathetic defendants, to say the least. They likely knew very well they were profiting from piracy, and they probably induced it as well. Anonymous’s attacks in retaliation for the arrests and domain seizures, therefore, threaten to destroy the good will the Internet community generated the previous day with the SOPA protests. That all said, we can’t lose...
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“[A] very broad law that gives the government the power to start saying who can...”
– That’s Mitt Romney at yesterday’s GOP debate. I like this very broad statement on free speech, but sadly marking this one for later claim chowder.
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Why Google’s Biggest Problem with ‘Search Plus...
Over at TIME.com, I write that while some claim that Google Search Plus Your World violates antitrust laws, it likely doesn’t. But I note that Google does have a big problem on its hands: market reaction.
So if antitrust is not Google’s main concern, what is? It’s that user reaction to SPYW and other recent moves may invite the very switching and competitive entry that would have to be...
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“Back when search wasn’t personalized, Google could defensibly say that one...”
– John Batelle
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At the Top of Congress’ New Year Agenda? Regulate...
Over at TIME.com, I recap the latest on SOPA and PIPA and look at what’s ahead once Congress reconvenes. I also address the argument that the piracy bills don’t amount to censorship since they’re aimed at unprotected speech.
Both bills would likely affect non-infringing speech because they allow for entire sites to be blocked — even if they also include otherwise legal...
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At the Top of Congress’ New Year Agenda? Regulate... →
This week in TIME I recap the latest on SOPA and PIPA and look at what’s ahead once Congress reconvenes. I also address the argument that the piracy bills don’t amount to censorship since they’re aimed at unprotected speech.
