More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.
The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.
Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.
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New Zealand continues to let fugitive Kim Dotcom waddle free as his successor to Megaupload has launched. The US shut down his previous service, hosting files for law breakers, and now New Zealand is letting him start over with a new service. I look forward to people using it to infringe on New Zealand copyrights, and to distribute tools for stealing from New Zealanders.
It’s amazing how detached from reality left-wing tech policy gets. Connectivity is better and faster than ever thanks to the 4G wireless revolution, as Media Freedom points out. I guess that’s why when firms like Comcast try to expand access even further, they have to try to talk it down.
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Gotta love it: I go to take a nap before Tech at Night but… oops, somebody forgot to press the Start button on that 2 hour timer. So, suddenly it’s Tech at Saturday Morning!
So yeah, we’ll start with a story that actually got me mad: the ongoing story of that now-famous RSC paper on copyright. There are conflicting reports out there, but most I’m seeing suggest there’s a real change going on at RSC, the same way there’s been a purge of a certain wing of the party elsewhere in the House.
I’m disappointed by all of this. If the RSC is going to oppose copyright reform the same way most of us oppose anarchic anti-copyright views, then the RSC is aligning itself with the most extreme perpetual-copyright views held by groups like MPAA. If there is to be no compromise, then I cannot work with them either, since my views have been declared to be in opposition to RSC.
Purges have consequences. It’s time we stopped pretending RSC is anything but an organ of the RSC establishment now. They’re clearly not speaking for the conservative reform wing of the GOP, as they once did long ago.
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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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Hello all. I was without power for 25 hours after Sandy, and so I’m a bit behind. So tonight’s edition of Tech at Night is going to be put together a bit quickly. Sorry about that. By the way, while obviously a hurricane can take out wireless towers, wireless was vital for keeping me in touch with the world when I was without power at home. It was great. I’m not sure exactly what good FCC monitoring could do though, except to use a crisis to expand the role of the state.
Watch as the administration plays games: on one hand it tries to use Iranian attacks on banks as an excuse to legislate cybersecurity mandates, instead of attacking Iran back, while on the other hand it opposes cybersecurity mandates at the ITU! How about we oppose all cybersecurity mandates, guys?
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Top story: the FCC is moving forward with spectrum auctions, providing incentives for television stations to auction off their spectrum for wireless Internet use. We could see the auctions completed by the end of 2014.
Everyone admits there’s a spectrum crunch, and on the right and left of the FCC they say it’s a difficult question of how to transfer spectrum to alleviate it. Greg Walden is right though that this is good “if implemented well.” Bruce Mehlman of iia calls it “a terrific start” and that’s also true.
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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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Some have said that the Obama administration is saving up disastrous regulation for the second term, but the FCC is wasting no time. Not content to obstruct wireless innovation with painfully limiting spectrum policy, FCC is now duplicating FTC efforts and playing speed advertising nanny.
Duplicative regulation protects nobody. It’s adversarial. Mitt Romney must make it a priority to appoint reformist regulators to pare back regulation, allowing more marginal business growth opportunities to pan out, creating more jobs, creating more demand, and so growing the whole economy out of the Obama valley.
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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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We had no Tech at Night on Friday becuase I was at the Gathering in Jacksonville. Hope those who went enjoyed it, and that those who weren’t able to attend can make it next year!
So, Harry Reid offered to let Republicans fix Lieberman-Collins. Republicans took him up on that, and he was unhappy. So he tried to ram it through after all. Republicans objected, and the cloture vote failed. I’d say my support for this tactic by Republicans has been vindicated.
Harry Reid, the embattled Senate majority leader under a cloud of serious allegations about his behavior lately, has continued to try to politicize the Cybersecurity Act. Republicans tried to be good legislators. That was embarrassing to Reid, so he had to cut it off.
Proof Democrats have been bargaining in bad faith the whole time comes from Barack Obama’s consideration of rule by decree on this. This of course is a bad idea.
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