Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!
We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.
The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.
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I said earlier this week that I wouldn’t comment on the RSC’s pulling of the copyright paper until I studied it. Well, I studied it, and they were wrong to pull it. Of course, for saying that, I’m being called some radical opposing the free market.
Meanwhile I’m getting called an ignorant tool of the big media companies because I oppose further market meddling in the form of IRFA.
It’s rare that a bill rises in awareness quickly but then dies hard. But by the time I’d even heard about the new Patrick Leahy power grab, this time spying on emails allegedly, he’s already given up on it. Score one for small government, at least.
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Hey everyone. Sorry for not doing this Friday night. I was a bit out of it. So, we’re doing this Saturday night.
Some people just don’t learn, though. Google is still defending Net Neutrality incredibly enough. So are Facebook and Netflix, by the way (shameless plug for Amazon Prime streaming alternative).
Of course, there’s a problem here: Google’s PAC splits evenly D/R in donations, but The people of Google lean so far left they gave $737k to Obama, versus $31k to Romney. Think about that. Mo wonder they’re still trying to feed a beast of regulation that may try to break it up.
If anything does in Bay area innovators, it’ll be their slavish devotion to big-government Democrats.
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Surprise:Obama’s cybersecurity plans don’t actually fix anything, they just expand government. And yet the administration shamelessly attempts to use the crisis of storm Sandy to try to achieve this end.
At this point the administration’s cybersecurity efforts are as delusional and straw-grasping as its global warming efforts. Though what’s sad is that unlike global warming, there actually is a kernel of truth there that we as a nation could be acting on, but Obama is distracting us with his attempts to expand government.
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Remember when AT&T tried to get T-Mobile’s spectrum in order to give Verizon some more competition? And how Sprint opposed that because it would heighten competition? Well now it’s turnabout. SoftBank is attempting to buy a majority of Sprint, which will in turn take a majority of Clearwire. That will give Softbank control of a large amount of US Spectrum. So AT&T wants regulatory review. Heh.
To be clear, I think it’s a good thing that firms are doing what they can to get spectrum and compete, even if I laugh at the revenge attempt going on here. In fact I think it would have been very interesting to see Softbank/Sprint/Clearwire vs AT&T/T-Mobile vs Verizon. But we’ll see what shakes out in the end.
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Out of control. It seems like only defeating Barack Obama in an election will truly stop this administration. Sure, for now they’ve been scared off of the Internet Tax, but with Net Neutrality and the Cybersecurity Executive Order still brewing, the Obama administration has more power grabs up its sleeves than we should ever have allowed.
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Governors Robert Bentley, Mitch Daniels, Dennis Daugaard, Bill Haslam, Paul LePage, Rick Snyder, and Tom Corbett are part of push for the Marketplace Fairness act. I’ve come across a July letter to John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi. I find it odd they’d do so now, unless they think they have no chance under a potential Republican Congress. Could that be the case? I wonder.
And yes, those are all Republican governors, some of whom were part of the 2010 landslide. It’s only Republicans I’m seeing back MFA, not Democrats. Democrats are fine with just passing new taxes or raising old ones. They aren’t as hard up to maximize collections of old taxes as Republicans are.
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Another quick one tonight. Ah, the joys of there being no Internet crushing legislation or regulation under consideration right now.
Cue the dramatic music: While it’s true that both Oracle and Google were paying people online to write for their side (not that I was even offered a penny; I’m thinking it’s more because I’m unimportant than that I have some reputation of some sort), Google made the mistake of not complying with a judge’s order to reveal who. Uh oh.
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So with Cliff Stearns having lost his primary race for re-election, it’s time we started thinking about who to elevate on Energy and Commerce. I think Marsha Blackburn deserves a lot more prominence. She’s doing a good job there.
Ecuador: haven for serial rapists and spies. Julian Assange has fled from authorities in two countries now, taking asylum in the Ecuador embassy from the UK police. But remember: this isn’t about the Wikileaks. This is about him being a rapist according to Swedish law. Say what you want about contraception but it’s pretty unbalanced I think to manipulate women into getting pregnant against their wills.
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I’ve been agonizing over whether to stay with AT&T or hop to Verizon when the new iPhone comes out. With AT&T I have a grandfathered-in unlimited plan, though AT&T is actively seeking to gut that, contract or no. So there’s genuine value in hopping to Verizon to take a subsidized iPhone.
I’m letting coverage make the decision. It turns out it’s an easy call. Verizon wins.
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