Policy & Regulation

There is a practically non-stop flow of threats to the Internet.  That’s because the Internet is fundamentally empowering and therefore also threatening to those whose power is diminished. This week, there are two big things on the forefront, which my colleague Albert has written up today.  Both iss...

It’s been a fascinating few days in the politics of information. Late in the day last Friday, the House Republican Study Committee released a report that took a fresh look (for American major political parties) at copyright reform, which has since set off a firestorm. The report addresses three comm...

It’s been a big year for predictive analytics.   I’ve been following Nate Silver’s blog on the election, and his deep data analysis cut through the noise, was consistent, and ultimately proved correct.   And to look at another (eerily prescient) example, look at this 2006 prediction of what a major ...

Steven Johnson, one of my all time favorite writers and thinkers has a new book out: Future Perfect – The Case for Progress in the Networked Age. Go buy it; I’ll be here when you get back (I love it when bloggers say that — I almost always do it myself). In Future Perfect, Steven… Continue reading

Yesterday, I wrote a guest post on the Google Public Policy blog on “the clothesline paradox and the hidden economies of the web“, fleshing out an idea that was raised at the USV Hacking Society event back in April.  I’ll include the video, below, of the conversation that kicked off this thinking: T...

Yesterday afternoon, I caught up for a coffee with Andrew Parker.  After a wide-ranging and enjoyable discussion about app ecosystems and tech policy, we talked a bit about speed.  This post (which I’ll keep short, in its own spirit) is about why speed is so important, awesome, and magical. I wrote ...

Today is the last day to submit comments to the White House on its plans for Intellectual Property enforcement for the coming year. This is yet another act in the fight for the future of everything, and it’s a relatively obscure and quiet one (as we expect many more will be, in the wake of… Continue...

I haven’t been following the story of the Digg acquisition too closely, and have no perspective on the economics of it, but it does seem kind of awesome in a way.  In that, the acquirers of the various parts of digg seem to have each gotten something uniquely valuable (to them) and likely have the… ...

One of the things I’ve learned over the past few months is that the fight for the future is being fought on many, many fronts — and these fights take all shapes and sizes, and are constantly shifting and re-forming. Here are a few that are hot this week — each of which will be… Continue reading

Last week at the Media Lab, we had the pleasure of hosting USPTO Director Dave Kappos and several members of the PTO’s senior staff, to brainstorm ways that we might use technology in creative ways to help the patent office work better, and to help the patent system work better in general.  The meet...

This morning started out in such a great way.  I’m on a mailing list at the Media Lab called “awesome”, and this morning Kasia Hayden sent around a link to this incredible piece of creative work: It’s a marriage proposal presented as a “live lip-dub” of Bruno Mars’ “Marry You“.  Basically a live mus...

In the spirit of posting highlights from this week’s Freedom to Connect conference, I’d like to next point to the talk given by former FCC chairman Michael Copps, entitled “Step Number One to Getting our Democracy Right”.  Here’s the video: The full text is here, and it’s probably a quicker read tha...

Last week, Twitter did something big: they introduced a new patent assignment agreement that binds them to use their patent arsenal only for defensive purposes.  In an environment where things are getting ugly in software patent land, this is a bold move. The agreement (here on GitHub), which they’l...

When the Internet erupted on January 18th to voice its discontent with SOPA and PIPA, it was a moment of loud power.  Fight for the Future has a nice infographic describing everything that happened that day: 115,00 websites blacked out, 10mm signatures gathered, 8mm calls to congress; all in one day...