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.”
The SECURE IT cybersecurity alternative is also important. Ron Johnson is a key champion of the bill in the Senate, so you know it has conservative support. As it should, since the core of the bill is to enable important but voluntary information sharing. The bad guys online are already sharing data freely. The good guys must be able to share data and to be flexible on defense.
My own representative* Mary Bono Mack is backing a similar the bill in the House, so you know it has broad support across the spectrum of the GOP. Likewise John McCain’s driving the bill in the Senate instead of working with Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins tells you that the Democrats (plus Susan Collins) really aren’t interested in compromising on their attempts to empower government, including DHS. Naturally FCC loves the smell of expanding government in the morning, too. Smells like picking winners and losers.
George Soros-funded Public Knowledge is wrong on its push to impose Net Neutrality, er, Open Internet penalties on Comcast. Of course, as radical as PK is, it’s not surprising that Michael Copps is going directly from the FCC to that organization. I would have guessed Free Press, but Public Knowledge is just as out of the mainstream.
Good bill, bad bill: Good bill: outlaw UN regulation of the Internet. Bad bill: new American regulation of the Internet in the form of, get this, Facebook password regulation.
Spectrum: Getting government spectrum in use by the private sector is a great tool to add to our options in fixing the coming spectrum crunch. Blocking private spectrum transfers, as T-Mobile suddenly wants now that it’s Verizon and Comcast, not AT&T and T-Mobile, is not something we should be doing.
* Bono Mack has been my representative since Sonny died, and will be until Monday when I leave California for good, and move to Jim Moran’s district.