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Sean Parker: New Technology Can Diminish The Dominance Of Money In Politics

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, March 13 2012

Sean Parker's string of investments in the political technology space in recent years are rooted in the belief that lowering the cost of electioneering is the key to diminishing the corrupting influence of money in ... Read More

Quote of the Day: Claiming No 'Particular Expertise on Games,' Al Gore Predicts the Gamification of Politics

BY Nick Judd | Monday, June 20 2011

It's inevitable that the ubiquity of games will produce among political leaders an awareness that this is a very important part of our culture and civilization. There always comes a moment where they get it and try to ... Read More

Quote of the Day: Al Gore Defended the Internet

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, January 20 2011

Photo credit: Campus Party Brasil Read More

Al Gore on the Internet's transformative effects

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, December 15 2009

Huffington Post tech editor Jose Antonio Vargas got a chance to sit down with Al Gore recently, and the conversation covered several topics of particular interest to us here. Read More

Daily Digest: The Evolutionary Tracks of the Left and Right

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, July 21 2008

In today's Daily Digest, we rather exhaustively recap Netroots Nation and RightOnline, the blogger conferences held this past week and weekend in Austin, Texas. Read More

Al Gore’s RealSimple “We” Campaign

BY Allison Fine | Monday, March 31 2008

Al Gore just announced a new campaign to $300 million climate change campaign. It’s a very slick website called We Can Solve the Climate Crisis, or We for Short. At the risk of being totally un-PC for We, I have some ... Read More

Daily Digest: The First Twitter Interview?

BY Joshua Levy | Monday, March 31 2008

Data from Compete shows that while Obama's site gets more hits, Clinton's gets more attention; a mayoral candidate in London submits to possibly the first political interview on Twitter; look out for the Wall Tweet ... Read More

Obama, the Internet and the Decline of Big Money and Big Media

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, February 6 2008

If it were not for the internet, and all the campaign- and voter-generated activism that it has enabled, Hillary Clinton would already be the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, and Barack Obama or another ... Read More

My Favorite Tech-Politics Books of 2007

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, December 18 2007

On any given day, I've got about four or five books that I'm currently reading--or trying to finish--and I can understand why some people try to take a "reading week" (or month) where they do nothing but catch up with ... Read More

Democracy for America Poll Results

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, November 6 2007

Democracy for America, the organizing network that grew out of the ashes of the Dean campaign, has announced the results of its "Pulse Poll" on the Democratic presidential race. With more than 150,000 votes cast, the ... Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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