CISPA is still a harmless bill devoid of new mandates of power grabs, but I’m actually short of new things to say about it this week. Lieberman-Collins is the real threat. Watch the other hand.
Let’s start with some spectrum instead. Verizon is under fire for trying to buy spectrum from Comcast and other cable companies, even as it tries to sell other spectrum. Note though that observers are saying T-Mobile, recently held up as a competitor who must be propped up by government action, stands to benefit in the marketplace by Verizon’s actions. Sprint, however, is put under pressure to to continued mismanagement and lack of funds to invest in its network.
Why would Verizon buy and sell its spectrum is all over the place, and consolidation allows for less demanding hardware requirements for its phones, which benefits Verizon’s customers. That’s good thinking, and that kind of market innovation should be rewarded, not regulated out of existence.
Look: it’s well and good to try to find a treasure trove of unused spectrum as Mark Warner wants, but hope is not a substitute for making more efficient use of what we already know about.
Though while Warner is optimistic, the NAB is insane. I mean, seriously? Did they miss where Verizon is also buying spectrum, so that it’ll have a net gain? Or that Verizon needs to look to the future, unlike various American broadcasters, who are doing the same old thing, and gradually losing out to new technologies? Jealous much of the Internet, NAB?
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Good evening. I’m considering shifting Tech at Night to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But I might not. I’ll have to think about it.
So, more CISPA. The comparison with SOPA is absurd. I put out a challenge for anyone to refute the claim first by the Republicans and now by Facebook that there are no new mandates in CISPA. No takers so far. That’s because CISPA is not SOPA.
In fact I’m disappointed that CISPA backed down on copyright infringement, as that was the real reason for the CISPA objections. Anti-copyright radicals were angry about property rights.
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FCC reform advances in the House. Greg Walden’s FCC Process Reform Act is a needed bill, so I’m glad that it went from committee to the floor, and took minimal modification in passing. I like that it got an extra poke at FCC being more closed on FOIA requests than even CIA.
Locking in the reforms is important, and CTIA is right in saying we need a “more transparent, predictable regulatory process.”
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Ah, the FCC. If The FCC wanted to do incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless Internet, they could just do it. They wouldn’t need to set up a task force to talk about the National Broad band Plan to consider it, while instead getting involved in unrelated things like making its own security rules. We need FCC reform. Just say yes to Coase.
Remember when they said that an AT&T/T-Mobile merger would cost us jobs, as only after the merger would there be layoffs? Oops, the FCC and Holder DOJ cost us jobs, instead.
Of course, we also need Senate reform, better known as electing Republicans.
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FCC overreach doesn’t seem like it should be a new topic, but it actually is. Consider that the FCC is threatening to get into cybersecurity which is interesting since the Congress is working on it. FCC wants to get into campaign finance regulation. And it’s unclear whether the FCC would enforce White House calls for new privacy regulations.
The runaway FCC to me is the biggest reason to fear UN regulation of the Internet. A treaty would give the Barack Obama FCC an excuse.
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Top story tonight is of course the major win by the triple alliance of George Soros and his front groups like Public Knowledge, Sprint Nextel, and the Obama administration’s dual agency of the FCC and the DoJ. Yes, AT&T has given up on acquiring T-Mobile. I believe they will now have to pay a sizable fee to T-Mobile as compensation.
This is bad news for those who respect property rights and for those who favor competition in the market, as Mike Wendy notes at Media Freedom. AT&T will be short of spectrum, as TechFreedom notes, a key reason competition will be reduced. It’s not just AT&T users hurt; anyone who now would not be interested in switching to AT&T due to inferior 4G LTE rollout now suffers from less leverage in the marketplace. That can only result in sustained high prices for 4G Internet service.
When this news broke I was so mad I could burst. But hours have passed and now I’m just disappointed.
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It’s Monday, so it’s time for that weekly self promotion of mine. This week at the Daily Caller I discussed NISO, an information sharing proposal by Dan Lungren that would get government in a role of improving our security online without compromising liberty and innovation.
And now back to SOPA. Now Eric Schmidt realizes we don’t want government to have a huge role online, complaining that SOPA would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself.” Yeah, I’d say DNS is part of the fundamental structure of the Internet, and that’s why I support Darrell Issa’s and Ron Wyden’s OPEN Act alternative. They would have us go after infringers abroad rather than attacking the Internet at home.
Jennifer Rubin pointed out that SOPA is overkill, which it is. Effectively undermining the fundamental structures of the Internet just to go after counterfeit handbags and Bittorrent streams of Scary Movie 3? Come on.
Notice how no matter how many people complain about SOPA, it’s always the MPAA with a response? Isn’t that a clue that this bill is being pushed to benefit one specific industry, just a little bit?
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There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up?
It turns out that the Obama FCC under Julius Genachowski is looking to change the rules of the game. Genachowski wants to make it harder to for firms to pick up the spectrum they need to serve an ever-growing demand for wireless Internet. He and the FCC are calling it a change to the “spectrum screen.”
Why the timing? Well, it turns out that Democrat commissioner Michael Copps, despite being an ardent supporter of the radical George Soros-driven Media Reform agenda, has spoken out against changing the rules midstream. but it may not matter, as he’s quitting, and his replacement is going through the confirmation process right now in the Senate. Though that replacement may be delayed as Chuck Grassley fights for transparency in the FCC, there are no other obstacles to confirmation foreseen.
So while Copps has made a due process argument against what Genachowski is doing, Genachowski may be counting on Copps’s departure to prevent that from being an issue. With him gone, the Chairman will apparently be free to do what he wants, declaring what the rules will be anytime he wants, picking one set of rules for one company, and another set of rules for another, with nothing to stop him.
Chuck Grassley is fighting for transparency with respect to the FCC and LightSquared. The House Energy and Commerce committee is looking into FCC’s Spectrum Screen treatment. Even FCC Democrats are having to speak up. The FCC is completely out of control, and it’s taking all we’ve got in the Congress just to try to keep up, and to force the Obama administration to submit to oversight and respect the rule of law.
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The FCC’s excuse for delaying the AT&T/Qualcomm spectrum deal was to work on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. The latter has been withdrawn, so what’s the excuse now?
AT&T and Sprint both get bad reviews. Sprint’s Nextel deal went through. AT&T’s T-Mobile deal is getting blocked. Hmm. Looks shady, which is why I support Chuck Grassley’s push for FCC transparency involving LightSquared, even though so far their claims on spectrum make sense to me and John Deere and the GPS industry are getting rural pushback against their LightSquared opposition.
Yeah, I never thought I’d mention John Deere in Tech at Night, either.
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Remember: One of the victims of the joint Sprint/Justice/FCC Triple Alliance against AT&T is T-Mobile itself. T-Mobile has no 4G, no iPhone, and no clear plan for what to do if their right to sell off to AT&T is taken away by the big government wonder team.
Nobody benefits when big government tramples the little guy. Even if FCC is clearly wrong, and it is, the committee’s meddling is a problem at this point. I do hope alternatives can be found that government’s boot can’t crush. The Government in going after these firms is simply trapping the public in the middle. We’re the ones who lose out with lesser competition thanks to this deal potentially being blocked.
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