Larry Downes

In May, Veterans Affairs Secretary R. James Nicholson told Congress he was “mad as hell” when he learned that a laptop computer containing unencrypted personal information on 26.5 million military personnel had been stolen from a VA employee’s home. Soon afterward, the White House released a memorandum recommending but not requiring basic security rules for […]

Tired of hearing about “net neutrality”? Better go away for a while then, because the overheated debate, which has spilled into television attack ads, isn’t ending any time soon. For one thing, net neutrality has become a potentially lethal obstruction in efforts by Congress to pass a major overhaul of federal communications law—it may even […]

A British court recently decided a case that pitted Apple Computer against Apple Corps, the latter being the record company created by the Beatles and owned today by the band’s former members. (The complete and only occasionally incomprehensible decision is available here) Apple Corps argued that Apple Computer’s entry into the music business with its […]

Ten years ago, two defining events occurred that altered the course of evolution—specifically, the evolution of the Internet from an academic experiment to the global infrastructure it has become. First, President Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which, on paper, radically deregulated the provisioning of telephone, data and other information services. A […]

A few statistics have been bothering me for a while. Here’s one: 72 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 years old who use the Internet say “they do not care whether the music they download onto their computers is copyrighted or not.” That’s from a survey performed by the Pew Internet and American Life […]

“Everybody talks about the weather,” Mark Twain said, “but nobody does anything about it.” Judging from recent headlines, blogs and lawsuits, Twain’s observation could apply equally to the patent system, especially for information technology. Over the past 20 years, there has been an explosion in the number of applications to the patent office, creating multiyear […]

“Who steals my purse steals trash,” says Shakespeare’s Iago, “but he that filches from me my good name/Robs me of that which not enriches him/And makes me poor indeed.” As we all know by now, the modern identity thief can enrich himself quite nicely by stealing your good name—as long as he also gets your […]

Here we go again. Late last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving a key provision in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (FCC v. Brand X Internet Services). This will be, depending on how you count, the 15th time the court has weighed in on what Congress did or didn’t do when […]

“Patriotism,” said Samuel Johnson, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” In software, it seems, despair more often takes the form of lawsuits, and, in particular, intellectual property claims of the most dubious variety. If your market share keeps slipping, and you’ve lost the ability to innovate your way back to victory, Plan B is […]