More on Net Neutrality

Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute takes on civil liberty groups’ arguments for net neutrality by pointing out that the alleged “violations” regarding neutral access to the internet seem to be misrepresented by these groups:

I harp on this because I think it indicates how muddled a lot of the debate over “neutrality” has gotten. People have a whole welter of heterogeneous concerns about the future of the Internet that increasingly seem to be lumped under the rubric of “non-neutrality” or “network discrimination,” which both obscures the plurality of potential problems and begs the question of whether, assuming a policy remedy is necessary, “neutrality” regulation is actually the ideal silver bullet response to all these diverse concerns.

Net Neutrality ancd Property Rights

Despite claims by Net Neutrality supporters that they are simply looking to protect freedom of speech and access to public information, it is becoming more and more apparent that what they truly want is for the government to regulate what services companies are allowed  to provide and to whom.

Facebook Outs Gays?

Via Jesse Walker at Reason Magazine, an interesting tidbit on some flaws in Facebook’s security setup. Apparently, Facebook reveals information about users sexual orientation to advertisers, even when that information is hidden.

“The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-orientation and a unique identifier (cookie, IP address, or email address if he signs up on the advertiser’s site),” wrote the researchers.

If the advertiser in question also collects other data, such as Facebook ID, the info can be tied together without much thought, even if the user has not made that information public. As we saw earlier this week, Facebook IDs and other user info are running rampant across ad networks and third-party app developers, and the collection of such information (especially when tied to something as sensitive as sexual orientation) could spell disaster for a user who thinks he’s being fastidious when keeping his profile private.

Read the whole thing here.

Daily Kos Blogger Slams Obama

Even hard leftists are getting annoyed by Obama’s ineptness in office.

Dan McLaughlin at Red State tells of his Twitter chats with leftist blogger Markos Moulitsas, founder of the infamous and influential Left-wing blog DailyKos.

First Contact Protocol

Eugene Volokh points us to some lulzworthy advice for the event that you and you alone happen to be the person who first makes contact with extraterrestrials. (Big image file below the fold …)

Knee-Jerk Anti-Bullying Legislation

Recently, a teenage girl committed suicide in Suffolk County, New York. Her parents are contemplating prosecuting other students who posted bullying and harassing comments on their daughters Facebook page, even though they do not believe that those comments caused her daughter to commit suicide. They just want the “hurtful” comments, which are still being posted to her Facebook page,  to stop.

Well, none too soon, the government has come to help! Suffolk County is drafting legislation to stop “cyber-bullying,” whatever that is.

Federal Court Strikes Down FCC’s Net Neutrality

I’m mentioned the regulatory farce that is Net Neutrality here and here. The real issue underlying it is the ability of the government to regulate access to and content on the internet, and probably to tax it as well.

Jim Harper at the Cato Institute relates the details leading up to the ruling:

NY Times Falls for Hoax Intended for Bloggers; Blogs Don’t Bite

This is pretty priceless. Apparently, a New York personal injury lawyer and legal blogger took advantage of April 1st to post a false story in an effort to prove that political bloggers simply spread rumors and don’t fact check anything. In the fake blog post, he claimed to have been named as the White House’s “official White House law blogger” and sat back to watch the political blogs fall over themselves reporting on the story.

Well, no one did. The bloggers couldn’t confirm the story, so no one ran with it.

Except the New York Times.

Do a Topeka Search on Google, KS

When Topeka mayor Bill Bunten decided to unofficially change the name of Topeka to Google, KS in the most public display of brown-nosing I’ve ever seen, I called him an idiot.

Well, I suppose and publicity is good publicity and all that, and it appears that for April Fool’s Day this year, the folks at Google have decided to prove that are bigger idiots than the mayor of Topeka.

The US by Facebook Grouping

Here’s a rather interesting data clustering analysis on regionalism in the US as defined by Facebook profile connections. What region do you live in?