Continuations

I recently wrote a post about requiring APIs for social and other applications that have more then 1 million users. Now that is an approach to the problem of market power that adds new regulations. There is an alternative that would go the route of removing existing laws which I want to discuss today. What prevents someone today from creating their own programmatic control over services? Why can’t I simply write code that interfaces on my behalf with say Facebook? After all, Facebook’s own ap...

I have written and talked about the need for a “right to be represented by a bot.” By a bot here I mean software that runs on my behalf as an enduser and mediates my interactions with online services. In the web world, the browser is such as bot. For instance, I can run an ad blocker which I instruct on which parts of a site to show to me. I can also run something like 1Password that manages my security. I could use a custom bot to say keep an automatic personal copy of all the images and tex...

I have written previously about cyber security and cyber defense topics that have become more acute in the wake of several large scale attacks on banks and other companies. Unfortunately, law makers in DC are reacting the only way they seem to know how: by further broadening laws that are already overreaching and yet ineffective at the same time. In particular the House Judiciary committee is proposing changes to make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) even more draconian. As a quick rem...