DISQUS

Technology Liberation Front: What Was the Biggest Tech Policy Story of 2006?

  • Noel Le · 2 years ago
    It was a pretty big year for patent law, with eBay, RIM and KSR. There you have the presumption of validity, patent trolls, a judge who set precedent for how *not* to let USPTO re-examination take its course and the non-obvious standard. All you need now is to mix in some mystery, seduction and conspiracy to come out with a real life drama.
  • Richard Bennett · 2 years ago
    AT&T;'s cave-in on neut netrality (see tomorrow's WSJ) has to rank pretty high, and so does the story of the Great Asian Spam Blackout caused by the earthquake's destruction of the Taiwan Tube to the US.
  • eric · 2 years ago
    Thanks to the continuing debate and information on this blog, I did write my Congresscritters to protest that Net Neutrality was a solution to a virtually non-existent problem. Hopefully these communications have a little bit of impact, at least.

    The possibility of regulation should be held over the heads of industry for a while, though, so they won't create a problem that needs regulating. I think we had the best possible outcome, in which legislation was threatened, but not passed.
  • eee_eff · 2 years ago
    There's no doubt in my mind that the big story was the nearly total discrediting of e-voting, especially e-voting that is not backed up by a paper trail, where the paper trail is the actual vote.

    This happened incrementally though, so it wasn't ever a big story all at once.

    But, by the end of 2006, e-voting without a verified a legally binding paper trail is DOA...