This is a lightly edited version of a blog post published on Harold’s personal blog, “Tales from the Sausage Factory,” on WetMachine.com. In any cliche villain scene, there’s a bad guy threatening to hurt someone else — an innocent bystander, perhaps — unless the protagonist does what the bad guy wants. Although no one would […]

I’m happy about the Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision in Google v. Oracle, affirming that Google’s reimplementation of the Java API for Android was a fair use and thus not copyright infringement. Google and Oracle’s competitions can breathe a sigh of relief, since a result that went the other way could have seriously inhibited the ability […]

In January of 2012, an unprecedented coordinated protest took place online in opposition to two federal bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). More than 115,000 websites published protest content or even completely shut down for the day in an attempt to shut down these internet blacklist attempts. The […]

Broadband allows people to participate in the digital world, which encompasses our daily lives. It connects people with their families and friends, news on what is happening in the country and abroad, and gives access to an unlimited amount of important information and resources. During the COVID-19 pandemic, broadband has been critical in supporting online […]

To kick off our 20th year,  the founders of Public Knowledge discussed the history of the organization and how it’s grown over time. Panelists also discussed the role of public interest groups in tech policy, our wins and losses over the last 20 years, and how our work shifted over the years in response to […]

Pop quiz! What wireless phone network are most of your friends and family on? I don’t have a clue and it’s likely you don’t either. While today’s three major wireless carriers are far from paragons of competition, there’s one thing they do well: interoperability. We can seamlessly message or call anyone on another network, a […]

Join us for “A Seat at the Table: How Tech Policy Groups Can Welcome Diverse Talent” on Friday, February 19 and 1:30pm ET. Register at DiversityInTechPolicy.eventbrite.com. Technology is increasingly integrating into our daily lives at a breakneck pace. Although we love the latest apps and enjoy the ability to freely express ourselves online, we must […]

Have you heard? The COVID-19 pandemic has entered a new phase. No, it’s not the new, more contagious “super strains” of the virus, or the beginning of the vaccine rollout. It’s the shift in focus of the disinformation peddlers, from the virus itself (remember the “infodemic”?) and the 2020 election to the ramping up of […]

Section 230 of the Communications Act has been dubbed the “twenty six words” that created the interactive free expression of the internet: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.  Yet in the past year or so, […]

France and Australia have moved forward with plans to force Google (and, in Australia, also Facebook) to pay existing media companies for linking to news content. In theory, the laws adopted in France and Australia are designed to compensate these news organizations for the benefit Google and Facebook derive from linking to news. But both […]