I was quoted this morning in Sara Jerome’s story for The Hill on the weekend seizures of domain names the government believes are selling black market, counterfeit, or copyright infringing goods. The seizures take place in the context of an on-going investigation where prosecutors make purchases from the sites and then determine that the goods [...]

If I ever had any hope of “keeping up” with developments in the regulation of information technology—or even the nine specific areas I explored in The Laws of Disruption—that hope was lost long ago.  The last few months I haven’t even been able to keep up just sorting the piles of printouts of stories I’ve [...]

Better late than never, I’ve finally given a close read to the Notice of Inquiry issued by the FCC on June 17th.  (See my earlier comments, “FCC Votes for Reclassification, Dog Bites Man”.)  In some sense there was no surprise to the contents; the Commission’s legal counsel and Chairman Julius Genachowski had both published comments [...]

I’m late to the party, but I wanted to say a few things about the District Court’s decision in the Viacom v. YouTube case this week and.  This will be a four-part post, covering: 1.  The holding 2.  The economic principle behind it 3.  The next steps in the case 4.  A review of the [...]

I’ve added almost twenty new posts to the Media Page from April and May. These were busy months for those interested in the dangerous intersection of technology and policy, the theme of The Laws of Disruption. A major court decision upended the Federal Communications Commissions efforts to pass new net neutrality regulations, leading the Commission [...]

I was interviewed yesterday for the local Fox affiliate on Cal. SB1411, which criminalizes online impersonations (or “e-personation”) under certain circumstances. On paper, of course, this sounds like a fine idea.  As Palo Alto State Senator Joe Simitian, the bill’s sponsor, put it, “The Internet makes many things easier.  One of those, unfortunately, is pretending [...]

I write in “The Laws of Disruption” of the risk of unintended consequences that regulators run in legislating emerging technologies.  Because the pace of change for these technologies is so much faster than it is for law, the likelihood of defining a legal problem and crafting a solution that will address it is very slim.  [...]

After attending last week’s Federal Trade Commission online privacy roundtable, I struggled for several days to make some sense out of my notes and my own response to calls for new legislation to protect consumer privacy. The result was a 5,000 word article—too long for nearly anyone to read. More on that later. Even as [...]

Two stories in the news today about online privacy suggest a paradox about user attitudes. But not the one everyone always talks about, in increasingly urgent terms. One story from CNET’s Don Reisinger reports on a study conducted by an Australian security firm. The company created two phony Facebook users and tried to “friend” 100 [...]

Julia Angwin’s column in The Wall Street Journal argues that identity theft is nothing but a “fear campaign.” Not exactly. I also have some strong words about the overuse and abuse of the term “identity theft” in The Laws of Disruption, and have written elsewhere in this blog on the subject. But I don’t think [...]