OT: Misogyny and Facebook

Last night I attended my local Take Back the Night event as part of April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. For those that are unfamiliar, Take Back the Night is an annual event that takes place in communities across the country and encourages victims of sexual assault and rape to share their stories and empower themselves […]

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April 25, 2013 – 5:05 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Off Topic, Social | Tagged , | Comments (1)

TDIF: Expression (Part 3: Financial)

This post is really a continuation of Threats to the Declaration of the Internet: Expression (Part 2: Institutional). Below is an excerpted introduction from that post and then we’ll jump right in. The past several posts here have looked at the recently released Declaration of Internet Freedom (rundown here) and threats that it faces. In the […]

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April 23, 2013 – 7:47 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Free Speech, Intellectual Property | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Anil Dash, Race, and Privately Owned Public Spaces

Anil Dash recently gave a presentation at Harvard’s Berkman Center and I wanted briefly map out just a couple of my reactions to what he said. You can get some context and read all about the presentation here, there is a nice outline of the talk here, and you can read Anil’s bio here. I’ve […]

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April 20, 2013 – 12:50 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Digital Divide, Free Speech, Open Internet, Social | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Good News, Bad News — Aereo and ReDigi

This past week saw two interesting and important court decisions come down, both relating to copyright in the digital space. One involving innovative ‘online broadcaster’, Aereo, brought goods news, while the other, involving digital music reseller ReDigi, brought some not so good news. Lets start with the good. Aereo Aereo is an interesting service which was […]

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April 10, 2013 – 11:32 am | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Cloud Computing, Intellectual Property, Open Internet | Tagged , | Comments (4)

TDIF: Access

Previously in this series we discussed the issue of transparency in creating internet related policies as well as well as the threats to expression online. In this post we will address the second principle in the Declaration of Internet Freedom which reads, Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks. Universal access is important because as […]

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April 7, 2013 – 4:23 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Digital Divide, Open Internet | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013

Today Congress introduced yet another bill to address the recent ban on cell phone unlocking, which prevents cellphone owners from using their phones on different wireless carriers. The Digital Millienlium Copyright Act (DMCA) forbids the of circumvention of digital lock,s but givae the Librarian of Congress the ability to grant exceptions every 3 years. In […]

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March 9, 2013 – 12:42 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Intellectual Property | Tagged , | Comments (0)

OT: New God Flow and Sampling

We interrupt the regular scheduled blogging for a brief off topic hip hop link-fest regarding G.O.O.D. Music’s recent track New God Flow and a recent article/discussion about Hip Hop sampling. Starts with this article The court case that changed hip-hop — from Public Enemy to Kanye — forever from the Washington Post. The article talks about this 1991 […]

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July 14, 2012 – 5:36 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Intellectual Property, Off Topic | Tagged | Comments (0)

TDIF: Expression (Part 2: Institutional)

The past several posts here have looked at the recently released Delcaration of Internet Freedom (rundown here) and threats that it faces. In the last post we looked at how the Expression principle is constantly being objected to in the United States on morality grounds. Today we’ll look at an even greater threat to expression […]

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July 10, 2012 – 1:11 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Free Speech, Intellectual Property, Open Internet | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

TDIF: Expression (Part 1: Morality)

In our ongoing series about the Declaration of Internet Freedom (you can read my previous posts here and here) today we’ll look at the Expression principle. Expression: Don’t censor the Internet. This principle seems simple enough, but then again nothing is as simple as it seems. The argument for censorship usually comes in one of […]

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July 5, 2012 – 5:49 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Free Speech, Open Internet | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

TDIF: Preamble

Yesterday I posted about the recently published Declaration of Internet Freedom (read my post here). Today I’ll be taking a look at some of the issues brought up in the declaration and reflect on what they mean. Before reaching the first of the 5 stated principles the preamble itself brings up an interesting point. We […]

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July 4, 2012 – 7:49 pm | By Greg Epstein @lwThinking | Posted in Open Internet | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)