Alright I admit it. I’m kicking off tonight’s Tech at Night with this article from NationalJournal.com because it mentions me. I like feedback.
But seriously it’s an important overview of Net Neutrality with respect to the conservative grassroots and the TEA party. Our side has been resistant to any action (Because as Digital Society points out, we don’t support action for its own sake), but the Obama FCC just might not give us any choice on that.
In fact, the FCC’s express words for months have been telling us that we won’t have a choice on that. The runaway FCC must be slapped down before they claim broad powers with Title II reclassification, and Congressional leaders have to take the lead on that.
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It’s no wonder that the Chamber of Commerce, feared by Barack Obama, is ready to spend another $1.25 million educating Americans about the dismal failure that Babs Boxer’s 28 years in DC have been. Since Carly Fiorina started her ad offensive and kept piling on, the polls have been moving.
The television barrage has come just at the right time. While a month ago it looked like Boxer was threatening to take a double digit lead and make the race far less competitive, the newest poll has it a virtual tie.
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If I can get this all the time, then I don’t ever need Throwback anymore.
Upon hearing of the Huffington Post’s impassioned defense of Alex Knepper, the 20 year old gay writer recently fired by David Horowitz’s site NewsRealBlog for a series of strange articles related to sex crimes, and now fired by David Frum’s site FrumForum, I got to thinking a bit about just how twisted Knepper’s situation was. And the more I thought, the more troubling I found it.
And deep down I suspect HuffPo agrees, because for all the defense the site gives, I see no job offer given to the allegedly unfairly fired Knepper.
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Tech at night will be brief tonight. It was my mother’s birthday last month, but I couldn’t buy her what I intended because I had several bills coming due at once. So, she got her iPad tonight. I’m taking suggestions for an iPad Sudoku game that’s as good as working on paper with a pencil. She’s adamant that nothing on the iPad will beat that, but if something’s good out there I want to show her.
But moving on to issues of national instead of familial importance, Seton Motley (yes, that’s two in a row I’m linking to him) has a story at Big Government that is headlined November 30th could be the day the government seizes control of the internet. Hyperbolic? Maybe a little, but make sure you read his piece to understand just how strong a power grab Title II Reclassification of the Internet would be, if the FCC were to try it.
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One goal’s already been hit, but they’re raising the bar. Retire Boxer.
My latest projection has this a competitive race, right on the second tier roughly. She’s running ads on television statewide and she’s fighting hard. This is an expensive state and she could use the help. The NRSC is also putting money in, so we’re not alone in helping out.
Remember: national Democrats were so worried about this state that Barack Obama flew out here twice for two separate fundraisers for Boxer. This is a rare and special chance, and I’m excited.
The Chris Bowers pagerank scam using a linking scheme driven by recruited websites is still in the works, but Google has not delisted Daily Kos. Interesting bit of bias there, huh?
And all I need say about Net Neutrality this week, and the urgent need for legislation to stop the runaway FCC, was said by Seton Motley at the Washington Examiner.
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If there’s one thing Google guards closely, it’s the secrets of its search service. Despite praising the virtues for the customer of transparency online, Google’s anything but transparent. Take a look at their webmaster guidelines, which in part explain how to avoid the Google Death Penalty.
But one thing that is clear is that linking schemes, particularly those using shadow websites, are forbidden.
So the question is: Is Google watching the Chris Bowers pagerank scam? Will they delist him and the entire Daily Kos.com domain if they find that he’s breaking the rules? It’s clear they’re recruiting people to spam links to pre-selected pages across volunteer website owners’ sites based on their use of a SEO Blogger checkbox option on their signup page. This is precisely the kind of illegal cross-link scheme Google warns about being an unethical SEO practice.
So the ball’s in your court, Google. If you do not delist Daily Kos for this behavior you call unethical, then you have a partisan political bias.
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Catch future episodes of The Needle for a special discussion of Tech at Night and my other project, UnlikelyVoter.com. Be warned, though, The Needle is a bit rowdier than RedState.
I’ve said it in this space before, and I’ll keep saying because the Lame Duck session is coming: Republicans need to get out in front on Net Neutrality and we need to do it quickly. We cannot hinder the Internet by forcing ISPs to go to court over Title II reclassification.
Imagine if every video you play online, every download you make, every OS upgrade you run, every podcast you play, all got slower, skipped more, and just became a greater drain on your time. That’s just the beginning of we face if Title II reclassification happens, and investor dollars are scared away from building private Internet infrastructure in America.
But that’s the situation. Henry Waxman is using Republican inaction to argue for radical FCC action. It shouldn’t be the case as Seton Motley points out, but that’s what he’s saying. So let’s judo this and fight back by using his own bill against him.
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Apologies for missing the last two Tech at Nights. But unlike the paid staff of the well-funded Free Press, every word I’ve ever written here on technical issues has been on my own time, for free, because I care about the issues. And when work overwhelms me, as it did last week as a huge deadline approached, something had to give. And what gave was what I had to do at night when I just wanted to sleep.
So we start tonight with an update on the Waxman Net Neutrality bill. I wrote of it before in support of it, and proved prophetic as Henry Waxman used Republican opposition to justify radical, illegal FCC action on the issue.
It’s not too late, though. We can still build momentum to stop the FCC’s end run around the Congress, the Courts, and the Constitution. We need to talk up the Waxman bill because it is more limited than any other major proposal we’ve dealt with during this debate, because it would strictly, expressly forbid the FCC from doing the disastrous Title II reclassification which would give the FCC broad powers, and it’s just possible that the Congress taking the baton on this would encourage the FCC to back down until the process runs its course.
Politics matters, and there’s going to be a lame duck session. We can judo the Democrats on this, and use their bill in a bipartisan way to get the Congress behind a clear majority of the nation against massive Internet regulation. But we have to step up to the plate, ignore the Waxman name, and use the decent language of his proposal to make it happen. It’s time to put country first.
Especially when it gives even Barack Obama an out from a divisive issue, even as it gives American an out from regulation potentially more devastating to our economy than Obamacare, if it chokes off the Internet, one of our high growth, high potential areas.
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