In the previous post (#4 of this series), we critiqued the European Central Bank’s arguments against Bitcoin, emphasizing that a simple dismissal of digital currencies is a lazy approach. While healthy skepticism about Bitcoin and other digital assets is warranted, completely dismissing a rapidly evolving technological and financial innovation merely...
Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy Is De-Dollarization fueled by the rise of Digital Currencies? Nations, particularly within the BRICS alliance, are increasingly exploring alternatives to the US dollar. The rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) is playing a pivotal role in shaping the conversation around De-dollarization. The...
The Internet Governance Project has signed on to a Joint statement of scientists and NGOs in opposition to Article 45 of the European Union’s eIDAS (Electronic IDentification And trust Services) regulation. Security researchers, digital rights groups and industry all oppose the regulation, as it shifts decision-making authority over whom to...
Reports on the evolving digital political economy Human Authorship and AI Images A lot of bad policy about AI is being made because people are overstating its risks. These overstatements usually derive from overestimating the autonomous nature of the AI. Now we are getting some bad law for the same...
“Censorship” and Social Media A U.S. District Court has issued a landmark ruling that would block the federal government from encouraging or influencing the suppression of content by social media companies. Citing the First Amendment, the court issued a sweeping injunction that would stop agencies such as the White House,...
The 118th Congress is set on addressing the regulatory vacuum around digital assets. Its April 19 inaugural session on “payment stablecoins” was covered in part 1 of this series, which also explained what stablecoins are and their implications for the larger macroeconomic system. With the debt ceiling controversy behind us...
15 May, 2023 More Wrong Thinking on Generative AI Risks Civil society is in trouble if the musings of an anonymous philosopher on the LESSWRONG website, most likely by a national security official with access to a closed CISA meeting, reflects the current zeitgeist inside governments concerning generative AI. The...
1 May, 2023 Who’s a VLOP and who’s a VLOSER? Alibaba, Amazon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Wikipedia are among the entities that have been designated "Very Large Online Platforms'' (VLOPs) by the European Commission. Google search and Bing have been designated Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSErs). All will...
March 31, 2023 The Tiktok hearing backfires As expected, Congress tried to turn its cross-examination of Tiktok CEO Shou Chew into a public stoning. Committee members (helped along by Meta lobbying) came in with their minds made up, refused to listen to anything he said, and repeatedly interrupted him. The...
February 2, 2023 DoJ’s pointless swing at Google adtech On Jan 24, the Justice Department, along with the Attorneys General of eight states, filed a civil antitrust suit against Google for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products, including its ad publisher, exchange, and advertiser network platforms. The complaint is the...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
