I’ve been grinding out Tech at Night here at RedState for four years as of this week. But I think it may be time for a change of format. It’s always been a link-centered post, where I accumulate links to interesting news and commentary, and then try to string it together with a narrative. It turns out that’s a lot of work for the amount of traffic I get.
So we’re going to try a new format. Instead of covering all the links equally, I’m going to pick one topic to write about more in depth, just trying to cover what the issue is, why it matters, and what I think is the right position. Then I’ll just throw in a bunch of interesting links at the end with little to no commentary at all.
Please, submit in the comments ideas for future topics. Doesn’t even have to be tech policy, it can be electronics news, video games, whatever you want. Please, ask me about Zelda 2 speedrunning if you like.
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Is he still going on about Net Neutrality? Yup, the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) was just the beginning of this dance. They don’t seem to understand that it’s a bad idea that’s run its course. I mean, even the radicals as they stretch to come up with excuses to do it, can’t even get their stories straight. They whine about fast lanes, they whine about Comcast giving “free” bandwidth to Comcast video users, but they also call for Internet to be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act, which would allow the fast lanes they claim to hate.
We need to deregulate, as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Newt Gingrich intended with the Telecommunications Act. Tom Wheeler and the FCC need to be told this, and we ought to pass legislation to enforce it. Every time we pass one new regulation picking a winner and a loser, we create two paid lobbyists in DC: one from the winner to protect what he got, and one from the loser to get something else to make up for it. That’s why Netflix is screaming, because they want to be a winner and that’s also why Marsha Blackburn is calling them free riders. No more winners and losers. Deregulate now.
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So the European Union has invented a “right to be forgotten”, that is forcing Google to censor its results. Given the history of Nazi war criminals trying desperately to be forgotten, this is an odd thing for the EU to be doing.
While they are opt-out, a rare thing when it comes to government, UK government censorship of the Internet exists, and nobody’s doing a thing about it at this point.
but the big story this week was the FCC meeting. It was pretty terrible, over all. A lot more on that after the jump.
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FCC lost in court. Net Neutrality goes down again as the Open Internet order gets gutted. Some are worried about the future possibilities of the decision giving FCC too much flexibility in interpreting its own scope, particularly with respect to Title II Reclassification (see my post for an explanation of that term).
I expect that they’d want to try Title II Reclassification no matter how the court tossed Net Neutrality though. Which is why we need to start talking the idea down and tell them to stop and rethink things.
All you need to know about why Net Neutrality is bad though, is the Ronald Reagan line: Net Neutrality supporters are from the government, and hey are here to help.
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As many of us predicted all along, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the FCC’s Open Internet order, which attempted to force “Net Neutrality” on the nation. The Open Internet order was part of a plan claimed to oppose “discrimination” but in practice would hinder ISPs from charging people for what bandwidth they use.
The FCC had previously attempted to enforce such rules illegally, but lost in the Comcast v FCC case. This time Verizon took them on, and the FCC lost again.
If we don’t win the next Presidential election, I expect an even more radical attempt next time, though a move called Title II Reclassification.
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US attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom have been delayed until 2013. It is unconfirmed whether the delay is related to the need to send a reinforced tanker to New Zealand in order to have a vehicle strong enough carry his weight back to the United States. In the meantime, the hubris (and food) filled man is trying to dictate terms to the US. That won’t go over well with prosecutors, I don’t think.
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Happy Thanksgiving. I’ll be very brief, because it’s Thanksgiving.
The FCC is going to vote on the Internet takeover next month. Defying the law and the courts, the FCC will make a power grab, or at least will try to. There’s still time to get loud, get people informed, and get enough popular opposition to this thing going that the FCC might back off. I’m not counting on it, so plan B becomes aggressive legislative action in January. So talk to your members of Congress as well.
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Good night/morning. Yes, the world now waits on the FCC to see whether it will act to claim broad, unprecedented regulatory powers over the Internet, the pricing of services on it, as well as the content on it. Free Press is happy, of course, because that organization’s long-term goal is the total state control of all mass media.
They recognize the FCC’s so-called Net Neutrality plans for what they are. The rest of us must recognize the same, and get loud against the FCC to make others see, as well. And then we must get Republicans in the House fired up to make refudiating the FCC’s plans a top priority come January.
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I know it’s a big day for Net Neutrality when I wake up and my Email Inbox is jammed full with links, so many basically saying the same thing: The FCC is on the move. I’m told it all goes back to a November 15 speech by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in which he expresses an urgency for the FCC to pass a bunch of new rules quickly. It’s a crisis, he says.
He then called out Google and Verizon, saying that their temerity to contribute to the debate “slowed down some other processes.” You see: the whole process of talking to industry is apparently a sham, and the only speech that counts is speech that leads the FCC closer to the Obama administration’s predetermined outcome.
And it’s that Net Neturality outcome we may be nearing after all. That’s the Red Alert.
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Sorry for missing Tech at Night on Monday, but I had to rest up for Election Day. And of course, as you may have heard, Republicans ended up having a good night. What you may not have heard though, was that the forces of radical Internet regulation had a very bad night. Democrats went for broke on Net Neutrality but as covered by Moe Lane and RS Insider, support for unilateral regulation of the Internet killed Congressional jobs. Every single member who signed the PCCC pledge to support the FCC on Title II reclassification, lost. Every one of them!
It’s time the FCC owned up to the rejection the American people dealt their plans, and pledged to wait for Congress to act.
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