Gotta love how Rand Paul grandstands, accomplishes nothing, but then claims credit for everything.
How you can tell when it’s time for the Congress just to sit down and do nothing. When Democrats and Republicans are making uncharacteristic arguments. Isn’t it strange that Rick Perry, who famously put out a book in praise of federalism, is against federalism on gambling? I’m just going to assume there’s some fluky thing at work here and ignore this aberration from him.
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Here at RedState this week, Fred Campbell compared Retransmission Consent with Net Neutrality. Some may think the Steve Scalise bill (on an idea backed by Jim DeMint when he was in the Senate) doesn’t go far enough, but it’s a step, and it’s a lot better than the heavy headed, high-regulatory approach promoted by Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, Democrats both.
The Obama administration may be terrible on phone unlocking, but they managed to get something done with industry after all.
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Why on Earth would we need Do Not Track legislation when many forms of tracking would be hard to define, but also when Tracker #1 is as popular as ever? This is yet another example where privacy is being treated as a morality issue, where legislators are scolding the public.
I mean look. Microsoft talked about making Do Not Track the default setting, but the public didn’t care. Only advertisers did.
It’s kind of hard to have a rational debate about Net Neutrality when the radical left keeps lying, and lying, and lying. They have to demonize Verizon because they don’t have the facts or the law on their side.
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Oh man, I forgot to finish this Friday night. Oops.
Funny how Google says they can’t fix Googlebombs when the fact is, Google is constantly improving its search algorithms. After all, the Bush-era Googlebombs of WhiteHouse.gov disappeared pretty quick after Obama was elected.
Stuff like this is why I don’t expect Google’s regulatory problems to go away in the event of a Romney win. Google has left its systems open (Blogger, Search, Youtube) for the left to abuse the right, and has been slow to react. It’s going to be very easy for the left wing of the GOP to get talked into expanding government to come after them, unfortunately.
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Yup, CISPA is still the top story. It will improve our security, which matters in an age of Chinese and Anarchist Internet attacks. And unlike Lieberman-Collins, Which is the bill being pushed in the Senate, no government power grab is involved.
So the House is right to challenge the President’s push for Lieberman-Collins. Lungren’s PRECISE Act is another bill that would create no new regulations. That’s the kind of approach we need. Remove impediments to greater security. No micromanagement.
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Sorry if you missed Tech at Night on Friday. I was under the weather. But I’m back, and with so much to review.
How about legislation, good and bad? Well, mostly bad.
- Senate Democrats continue to push for senseless regulation of 4G Internet speeds, hindering vital new technology to increase high-speed Internet competition in America. Worse, Democrat Anna Eshoo is piling on in the House.
- Mary Bono Mack continues her push on privacy and security even though I don’t really see a government role in that, at least when it comes to private sector data. High profile cases do not good models make.
- Joe Barton wants to harass Amazon now, once again proving we did the right thing in not letting him head up Energy and Commerce. Seriously: If you’re allying with a Massachusetts Democrat, reconsider.
- When government comes preaching fairness, watch out: the push for a nationally-enforced Internet sales tax continues, which of course is just the first step to a joint state-national sales tax akin to the Canadian Harmonized Sales Tax. It’ll start at just one percent, I’m telling you. “One penny, for the children,” or “for seniors,” or even “for the Global War on Terror.” And then it will grow.
- We’re deeply in debt and running a massive deficit, but it’s time for a new program on “distracted driving”!
- OK, one piece of good news: Kay Bailey Hutchison is pressing the issue in the budget supercommittee of all places. encouraging voluntary incentive auctions of spectrum is great news no matter what the context, as we need all we can get. Giving the D block, previously proven to be unwanted at auction, over to civil defense is also good news, I believe. We learned that on 9/11. Look, I’d be all for auctioning it… if we hadn’t already tried and failed.
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Can we just start shooting the hackers? It seems like it’s war on the Internet these days, and the more there is for me to cover, the more work it is churning out Tech at Night!
Lulzsec denies the allies are in Baghdad the leader is arrested despite an earlier claim on Twitter that it was true.
Anyway, Shame on the Daily Mail for trying to turn a Lulzsec hacker into a sob story. He’s a criminal gangster who couldn’t hold a real job. Let him rot.
How bad is Lulzsec? Even other hacker gangs hate them. I assume it’s because others realize that Lulzsec’s insane overreach is going to bring the hammer of justice down on the entire field. Especially when they’re targeting security experts, besides. It’s true, too: The FBI is on the march here, on the heels of arrests already made in Spain, Turkey, and the UK.
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I’m back. CPAC week came and went. Then another week came and went after the horrible cold I got at CPAC. But now I’m healthy again and it’s time to start catching up. Though there’s no way I’m going to post on every tidbit I’ve run across in the last two weeks, I can try to hit the highlights.
And let’s start with the fact that the Internet Kill Switch is back under a new name. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman have reintroduced the bill under a new name. They think if they put freedom in the name that we’ll ignore the problems inherent in giving the President emergency powers to wage economic war on America. The Internet Kill Switch is a broken idea. We don’t let the President close supermarkets nationwide if one butcher in one city has an e. coli outbreak. We can’t apply the same overreaction online.
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The big story as we close out this week is Verizon appealing the FCC’s Net Neutrality order. Verizon is choosing to go back to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the site of the last Net Neutrality legal fight. That was the Comcast v FCC case, lost by the FCC because the FCC simply doesn’t have the legal authority to do it. Some say it could set up the FCC for another loss for Net Neutrality II to be fought out there.
In fact, Verizon is doing all it can to get this decided the right way. Verizon is arguing the DC Circuit is the only place this should be resolved, on the grounds that the FCC is essentially modifying Verizon’s wireless spectrum licenses. Clever. Also interesting is the request that the Comcast v. FCC panel be assigned to this appeal, on the grounds that the judges involved won’t have to waste time getting up to speed on the issues. A friend told me Verizon had some clever lawyering going on with this. Not being especially familiar with regulatory litigation, or even a lawyer at all, my ability to judge that is limited, but what I’m reading suggests it’s true.
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Good evening. Yes, indeed, the right is waking up to the dangers of over-regulation of the Internet. Right here at RedState the pressure is on the Gun Owners of America as diarist ladyimpactohio is asking them about their endorsement of the neo-Marxist front group Save the Internet, an endorsement of the radical group Free Press and its extremist co-founder Robert McChesney.
With activists like this, and sites like MediaFreedom.org, keeping watch online, we can only make more progress against the radicals.
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