Tech at Night

Are there people who use search services like Google’s to find illegal distributions of works? For some crazy reason, MPAA thinks not. The evidence seems to disagree.

When it comes to arguments about Net Neutrality, attitude is not a substitute for facts and reason. Then again do the Net Neutrality zealots like Susan Crawford even have any?

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Tech at Night: The Grand Return

On August 20, 2013, in General, by Neil Stevens
Tech at Night

So I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that. After Summer Games Done Quick and the Redstate Gathering, I was supposed to be back in action. But a case of the shingles took me down fast. I was a sleepless zombie in pain for a week. No fun. Was actually alright on Friday, but I had so much reading to do I couldn’t catch up in time to post on Friday, so here we are. Hang on.

So let’s start with Time-Warner and CBS. The two had their negotiations fall through with respect to carrying CBS on Cable, and so a blackout began. The left wants this as the pretext to more government, but let’s be clear about this. Government created this pickle. The way out of it was proposed way back when, and backed in Tech at Night, when Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise proposed legislation. It’s still the right answer.

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Tech at Night

Hey Mark Cuban: We both know that when Obama signed the American Invents Act, crushing small businesses was a feature, since it meant a) more work for lawyers who backed the bill and b) easier competition for the big businesses who backed the bill.

I see the vultures using Aaron Swartz’s dead body for political purposes are now going full Weekend at Bernie’s on this. It’s amazing.

And yet nobody reconciles the Democrat outrage at this, with Democrat plans to ignore the Constitution and use Executive Orders on cybersecurity. If we allow stuff like what Swartz did, we’re letting cybersecurity threats go unpunished, sorry.

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Tech at Night

Justice is impeding the Sprint/Softbank merger. Gee, whoever could have predicted that if Sprint funded the left-wing effort to embolden Obama administration action, then Sprint itself could suffer bad consequences? I wonder. It wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t point out that Sprint Nextel itself had a history of mergers, such as the Sprint-Nextel merger, did I? Hmm.

Hey Chuck Grassley: The first amendment is not a suggestion any more than the second amendment is. There is no Video Game exception that I saw. You’d have to be as special as the Vice President to think think citing the words of a crazed murderer as an authority helps you make a point, anyway.

Besides, it is not your job to dictate ‘artistic value’ to others, nor does your own job have ‘artistic value.’ So if you would silence others who do not have ‘artistic value,’ then that do we conclude about your right to speech? Everybody knows you never go full Biden, Senator.

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Tech at Night

Good news, everyone! Kay Bailey Hutchison and Senate Republicans were able to help defeat the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act once again.

Bad news, everyone! We lost the Presidential election, so President Obama is almost sure to try to defy the Congress, which won’t even pass the idea through one house, let alone both to make it a law. He’s going to try to implement this through executive order!

Meanwhile it falls to the Congress to investigate actual foreign threats in the digital theater.

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Tech at Night

Long week, so long I forgot to post this Friday night. Oops. Well, better late than never.

The race for the IP revolution is on. The benefits of a modern phone system are still getting explored, even as we see AT&T go first in this direction, but of course naturally the forces of regulation oppose innovation.

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Tech at Night

Rough week, huh? Me too. I’ll make this quick, since the overriding story here is we’re going to have a rough four years fighting Obama regulators.

Though we’re lucky out of touch Susan Crawford isn’t on FCC.

We begin to see the full scope of the corrupt deal going on in New Zealand: Seems that the (German) Kim Dotcom bought escape from the authorities by promising free Intertubes for New Zealanders, even as he plans a new copyright infringement service.

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Tech at Night

Senate Republicans have decided to take Harry Reid at his word that Republicans will have the opportunity to amend the Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill. So, many Republicans voted for advancing the bill, which passed 84-11.

And oh boy it needs amending. Who are you going to believe? For it is Barack Obama. Against have been Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Heritage, and IBM.

Privacy is a red herring. The problems are in the mandates and power grabs. So if this bill isn’t effectively amended into SECURE IT, they must vote no on passage.

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Tech at Night: Google, Microsoft, Net Neutrality

On April 12, 2011, in General, by Neil Stevens
Tech at Night

In case you missed the great news Friday, Net Neutrality was repealed in the House. The resolution now must go to the Senate, where under the Congressional Review Act it cannot be filibustered, so it only needs 51 votes.

And while I do hope that the House will follow up by attempting to repeal the redistributionist data roaming regulations passed last week, other work must be done. On Tuesday, Greg Walden’s subcommittee will hold a hearing on spectrum allocation. I hope they will support allocating the D block to public safety.

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Continuing from Part I, we are reading the emails of White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin to see if he’s been acting inappropriately as an agent of Google from his job working for the people.

Despite close cooperation with Google “evangelist” Vint Cerf, McLaughlin laughably claims on September 4 that “I keep a very strict line between myself and Google (and Googlers).” Clearly he only does so in public, where people can see.

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Nima Jooyandeh facts.