IRFA is a bill seemingly written by Pandora to stick it to copyright holders and pad their bottom line.
Other Internet radio firms are doing fine. Spotify’s growing. Apple is reportedly in negotiations with copyright holders to create their own service. Pandora is probably feeling the competitive pinch since Spotify came over from Europe, and instead of competing and innovating, wants the government to pull a Net Neutrality and shift some rents their way.
Why do we want to impose price controls? Look, if you came to me and said here’s a bill to deregulate the whole thing, I’d be all for that. But IRFA doesn’t deregulate. It tightens regulations. It picks winners and losers.
This is the same old stuff we’ve been seeing from Washington since January 20, 2009. Washington has been tilting the playing field for all those hipster-filled online firms that love Obama, and worked to re-elect Obama, and now they’re trying to wrap a free market flag around it and get us to sign on.
Didn’t we settle the price controls debate decades ago? Reject IRFA, Republicans. Thanks.
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Even as I’ve said the bill is a good idea, Senate conservatives overwhelmingly voted against the Internet Sales Tax. The whole Tea Party era gang is there in the NAY column. It’s easy to see why too: guys like Mike Enzi are coming out and saying their purpose for the bill is to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. I can’t see this passing the House with the cloud of toxic rhetoric around it.
As Team Obama wavers between a bureaucrat and an actual expert for its DHS Cybersecurity head, insecure accounts are getting hammered by foreign attackers. Use good passwords. Never give the actual answers to ‘security questions.’ Keep software updated. And don’t approve random “Who unfollowed me/How much time am I wasting/Which President am I” Twitter apps!
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I have a charity event I’m participating in tomorrow (I’m the one doing The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II), and I’d like to have slept for it, so this may be briefer than usual.
Looks like a push for real patent reform is brewing. After the lawyer- but not innovation-friendly America Invents Act was signed by Barack Obama, we’ve been left with a need to fix the actual problems with the US patent system. the i2Coalition and Google are backing anti-Patent Trolling ideas. There’s got to be a way to continue to reward small-time inventors without allowing the fakes to abuse the system.
Do Americans have a duty to diminish the security of their communications to ease government spying? Some seem to think so, as we’re reminded of in the flap over Apple’s iMessage being more secure in its encryption than government would like. Let me remind you though that any back door that government can exploit, China and Anonymous can, too.
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