The Web changed Washington in one of most powerful uses of the Internet as a platform for collective action the world has ever seen. What does that mean for the future? This afternoon, a powerhouse panel of of big thinkers will talk about the implications of the networked protests that halted the progress of the [...]
At the request of the government of India, Google India and Facebook have removed content from Blogger and the world’s largest social network after a court order. As Alex Kirkpatrick reported at Mashable, “Indian prosecutors are suing a host of Internet companies on behalf of a Muslim religious leader who has accused them of hosting [...]
I’m watching a lot of reactions roll across the social Web to the news that Twitter will now be able to censor tweets, if required by law, on a country-by-country basis. Tweets still must flow blog.twitter.com/2012/01/tweets… — Twitter (@twitter) January 26, 2012 “In the face of a valid and applicable legal order,” Twitter spokeswoman [...]
In a guest post on TechPresident, Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, aYochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and author of The Wealth of Networks and The Penguin and the Leviathan. “Seven Lessons from SOPA/PIPA/Megauplaod and Four Proposals on Where We Go [...]
As Wikipedia prepares to go dark in protest, prospects for controversial online anti-piracy laws have dimmed in Congress. Now that Wikipedia has committed to such a bold move, will other tech, blogs or media companies follow? In some cases, the answers is clearly yes: Reddit and BoingBoing, for instance, have both said that they’ll be [...]
The Friday night news dump lives on: at 12:30 AM last night, I received an email from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: according to the release, Rep. Lamar Smith said he will remove the domain name provision from the Stop Online Piracy Act. Rep. Darrell Issa says he’ll suspend next week’s [...]
As part of what it is calling “21st Century Statecraft Month,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland will be taking questions from Twitter from up at the podium during the Daily Press Briefing each Friday afternoon during the month of January. Questions can be submitted using the #AskState hashtag. The questions will be selected from the [...]
On Wednesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development called on its members to defend Internet freedoms. “It’s really a milestone in terms of making a statement about openness,” said Karen Kornbluh, the U.S. ambassador to the O.E.C.D., quoted by Eric Pfanner in the New York Times. “You can’t really get the innovation you need [...]
Last week, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Representative Zoe Lofgren sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to the other members of the House of Representatives entitled “A bipartisan attempt to regulate the Internet?” I’ve posted the letter below in its entirety, adding a link to the bill page for [...]
Last month, Cory Doctorow talked with Al Gore, Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee in Mexico City about privacy, freedom, neutrality and democracy in the context of the Internet and the Web. Shaky handheld video is embedded below — the audio is worth tuning in, however, even if the video is a bit jumpy. Hat tip [...]
Alexander B. Howard is a DC-based a technology writer and editor. Previously, he was the Washington Correspondent at O'Reilly Media, where he covered the voices, technologies and issues that matter in the intersection of government, technology and society.
