It’s been a pleasure to blog this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation and I’d love to continue it. If you’re interested in reading more, check out our book, Wild West 2.0. It is the most-discussed Internet policy book of 2010 (Jimmy Wales called it “an invaluable guide” to the “brave new world of […]
Author Archive | David Thompson
Fixing the CDA 230 Subsidy While Preserving Online Anonymity
Thanks again for the great responses in comments. I’ve learned a lot about how people think about the Internet of 2010 and whether it fits the “Wild West 2.0” model. On Monday, we discussed why the Internet of 2010 resembles the closing of the Wild West frontier. On Tuesday, we talked about whether CDA 230 […]
Google Changed Reputation and Privacy Forever
In the early Internet, it was impossible to find isolated references to people, places, and things. Many users navigated using directories like the original Yahoo, and early search tools like Gopher (structured documents) and Archie (FTP) were limited . The search engines changed everything. Starting with Lycos and AltaVista, information was freed from obscurity. Suddenly, […]
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 Meets the Closed Frontier
By David Thompson on June 8, 2010 12:15 pm in Anonymity, Cyberspace Law, Freedom of Speech, Internet
(Thanks for the great comments! I’ll be speaking in Las Vegas this afternoon 3:45 pm today at the EduComm conference at the Mirage, Ballroom D.) Anonymous and pseudonymous speech dates back at least to the early days of the printing press. Anonymous online speech has been a powerful force for change in situations ranging from […]
The Closing of the Internet Frontier?
A gold rush. A wide-open anything-goes frontier. Prostitution. Gambling. Drugs. Lax law enforcement. Vigilantism and mob justice. Petty scammers at every turn. The subject? Not the dusty Wild West of American history, but instead the Internet of just 10 years ago. In the last decade, the Internet has gone from open frontier populated by a […]