A press release from direct-mail king Richard Viguerie calls attention to a measure in a new lobbying reform bill that could, in effect, require bloggers to register as lobbyists. The relevant provision, Section 220, dubs as “grassroots lobbying”: any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general […]

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Network Performance Daily has an interview with Chris Yoo, probably the leading academic opponent of Net Neutrality legislation.

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The always-sharp P.J. Doland has one of those five-dollar-bill-on-the-sidewalk ideas that, once you’ve read it, seems so naturally sensible that you almost can’t believe it hasn’t already been implemented: The Not Safe for Work HTML attribute. The idea is that coders adopt, and browser makers begin to recognize, a “nswf” tag that can be applied […]

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Geekademic legal theorist and free software guru Eben Moglen gave an excellent keynote address at this year’s Plone conference. Check it out.

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There is (as usual) a very long discussion in the comments at Unfogged over New York Times “Ethicist” columnist Randy Cohen’s advice to a tech support guy wondering what to do about pornographic images he’d found on his boss’ computer, some depicting “young children — clearly less than 18, possibly early teens.” I’m not accustomed […]

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John Aravosis links to this YouTube video captured by a student at UCLA’s student library. An Iranian Muslim student had been asked to leave after being unable to produce ID. When he stayed anyway, campus police were called to eject him. It looks like he was on his way out, but the confrontation with the […]

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So, here’s an interesting scam (or probable scam) I noticed just a few minutes ago. I’m sitting in a free WiFi cafe in Adams Morgan called Tryst. Their open network is, creatively enough, called “tryst.” But I’m also detecting an ad-hoc computer-to-computer network called “tryst.” And if, as happens every couple hours here, the main […]

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One of my favorite tech policy blogs, the Technology Liberation Front, has inexplicably decided to surrender any claim to be taken remotely seriously. The anti-science mujahadeen at the Discovery Institute, in a classic (for them) play, had opened a tech policy shop with the rather transparent goal of lending their crackpot ideology some sort of […]

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Last week, the House passed the Deleting Online Predators Act, a bill requiring public schools to block chat rooms and social networking sites (which Dave Weigel blogged about earlier this month). However much a symptom of moral panic this is, it’s probably not a complete disaster in itself if kids can’t log in to MySpace […]

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About a year back, I wrote about a copyright safe-harbor Congress had created to protect companies that create Bowlerized versions of Hollywood movies for consumers who prefer their entertainment extra wholesome. The catch, however, is that the protection applies only to services that don’t create any “fixed copy” of the G-rated version. So selling a […]

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