Stupidity

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

After more than a year of palace dramas worthy of a Shakespeare play, the FCC voted this morning to impose new rules on Internet access providers aimed at "preserving the open Internet."

Today's action is both anticlimactic and incomplete. Despite soap opera hand-wringing the last three weeks from fellow Democratic commissioners, there was little doubt that Chairman Julius Genachowski had the votes he needed to pass this most recent version of the so-called "Net neutrality" rules, which he introduced on December 5. The … Read more

In a sign that the new airport screening procedures may be altered, two key politicians told the Transportation Security Administration today that the rules may be unconstitutional and a waste of government resources.

"We are concerned about the new enhanced pat-down screening protocols and urge you to reconsider the utilization of these protocols," Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the influential chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), chairman of a transportation subcommittee, told the TSA in a letter (PDF). They asked TSA to turn over internal documents, studies, and traveler complaints by December 1. … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

As lawmakers gear up for the post-election Congress that convenes in January, the multiyear debate over new laws to keep ISPs from blocking Web sites or managing traffic in anticompetitive ways--the so-called Net neutrality rules--is heating up again.

The result can be safely predicted: more wasted energy and a continued failure by policymakers to focus on the real challenges of our increasingly important broadband infrastructure.

The latest round of fighting follows this month's midterm elections. Those who oppose additional regulations point to the strong Republican victory as … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

In "1984," George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, protagonist Winston Smith is a low-level bureaucrat in the Ministry of Truth. His job: to "rectify" old newspaper articles in which Big Brother's predictions or promises turned out to be false. Once the articles are rewritten, the original text--and the truth they represent--is dropped down a pneumatic tube known as a memory hole, "to be devoured by the flames."

The European Commission has recently proposed a real-life version of this fictional device, though … Read more

I have never been a Nicaraguan general, but I imagine that the job has its fun parts.

So one might just put it down to naive enthusiasm that Eden Pastora--such an idyllically peaceful name for a general--might have accidentally wandered with his troops into territory that would seem to be owned by its neighbor, Costa Rica.

And yet, no. General Pastora doesn't blame general euphoria. No, he blames Google Maps.

The dispute that has ensued over Google's version of the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border has become rather serious. So much so that the secretary general of the Organization of … Read more

A magazine accused of publishing a blogger's story without permission has seen a dramatic rise in the number of its Facebook friends, although they're not all that friendly.

The tale of writer Monica Gaudio hit the Web on Wednesday after she reported that her story, "A Tale of Two Tarts," was apparently lifted and published by the print magazine Cooks Source with her byline, but without her knowledge or any compensation. After tracking down the editor at the magazine, Gaudio asked for an apology on Facebook and in the magazine, as well as a $130 donation … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments in Schwarzenegger v. EMA, a case that challenges California's 2005 law banning the sale of "violent" video games to minors. The law has yet to take effect, as rulings by lower federal courts have held it to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

There's little doubt that banning the sale of nearly any content to adults violates the protections of free speech, including, as decided last year, video depictions of cruelty to animals.

In … Read more

Social networking now has so much power that even North Korea was alleged to have begun to bow to its supreme leadership.

Just recently, the mysterious home of Kim Jong Il, and, so word would have it, a few other ills too, had reportedly launched Twitter.com/uriminzok. The appearance of the similarly named Facebook.com/uriminzokkiri was also said, by normally reliable sources, to be North Korea's foray onto the world's most important social-networking site.

However, the North Korean government has now communicated through more traditional channels that it is not behind these modern vehicles.

According to a Forbes report, … Read more

Police departments maintaining a presence on Facebook and Twitter are nothing new, but Evesham Township, N.J., is taking social-media law enforcement a step further by controversially posting arrest photographs on its Facebook page--like the names and photographs of people arrested for drunk driving. While the police department's Facebook page has been around for about six months, the decision to add DUI photos was added only on Monday.

Before you ask, no, this is not the township in New Jersey where "Snooki" was arrested for disorderly conduct. But if the rabble-rousing "Jersey Shore" … Read more