Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
White House Takes Another Step Toward Greater Transparency
The Obama Administration today issued its long-awaited Open Government Directive (OGD), a blueprint for transparency that the President promised on January 21, his first full day in office. The OGD is “intended to direct executive departments and agencies to take specific actions to implement the principles of transparency,...
Destabilizing the UK's Digital Economy
Much of the coverage of the UK's proposed Digital Economy bill has centered, and rightly so, on the damaging consequences to civil liberties for Britons caused by its Internet termination provisions. Less documented is quite how damaging these regulations are for the bill's own namesake: Britain's present and future...
Senator Bayh Responds on ACTA
Senator Evan Bayh recently responded to a constituent's concerns about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Sadly, Senator Bayh's letter is troubling and frustrating. He echoes the USTR's misleading conflation of "counterfeiting" and "copyright infringement," doesn't address the draconian Internet provisions, and, worst of all, fails to acknowledge the most egregious...
The Xbox Live Bans: A Cautionary Tale of the TOS
"Your console has been banned." For many gaming enthusiasts, perhaps nothing is more unnerving than the prospect of losing the ability to duel with friends and strangers over the Internet for hours on end. Yet earlier this month, this fear became a reality for many Xbox owners when Microsoft...
DVD Customers are Not DVD Pirates
I've published an op-ed over at The Wrap, a leading blog for Hollywood insiders. It makes the point that Hollywood's attacks on DVD innovators (RealDVD, Kaleidescape, Redbox) amount to an attack on legitimate DVD customers who are trying to pay for content that they could almost...
More Freedom Necessary as Top Developers Abandon iPhone
UPDATE: Macworld reports that Apple has changed its mind and approved the "Bobble Rep" app, which is now available in the App Store.Apple's ridiculous iPhone app approval process has hit a new low, with rejections for “ridiculing public figures" and using Apple's own APIs to access Apple icons. These...
Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA
Update: The leaked European Commission memo is now online.
Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week's closed negotiations will focus on "enforcement in the digital environment." Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted...
DVR is TV's New BFF
Digital Video Recorders, once considered a mortal threat by the entertainment industry, have now become its new best friend. It's just the latest example of how the industry's constant warnings of the dangers of "piracy" frequently turn out to be baseless hysteria.
Remember 2001? Digital Video Recorders ("DVRs") like...
Is Net Neutrality a FCC Trojan Horse?
UPDATE (9/4/14): The net neutrality landscape has changed in the last few years, and not for the better. Here's a discussion about EFF's updated stance and here's our issue page, with links to our most recent blog posts.
On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski...







