Good morning. Last night Tech at Night didn’t quite come because I was not feeling well at all. But there’s stuff I want to highlight so this morning I’m going to make it happen. Here we go!
Want to be more like Europe? Well, in one way, we do: The EU has rejected Net Neutrality regulation as unnecessary. The EU’s equivalent of an FCC Chairman says “We should allow network operators and services and content providers to explore innovative business models.”
Can we actually stand to be more regulated than Europe, and drive innovation across the Atlantic? I don’t think so. We absolutely cannot tolerate proposals like this to force AT&T, Verizon, and others to open their wireless networks to each other, essentially partially nationalizing and socializing a major part of our telecommunications infrastructure going forward.
I can think of no better way to kill the wonderful wireless revolution we have going on, and end investment in it, than to turn everyone into free riders off of each other. This would devastate rural Internet access by creating a tragedy of the commons out there. We cannot let this happen.
And there’s still more planned government control online planned by the Obama administration. No, really. They keep coming up with more and more to do. Pass the popcorn, though, because the Obama team wants to fire a privacy shot right at Google, naturally by expanding the FTC’s power beyond what it already has. Fortunately Rep. Joe Barton, likely incoming Republican chairman on these issues, is opposed to that.
I just hope Barton also gets proactive to pass a bill curtailing the FCC’s powers on Net Neutrality, because again, We just don’t need it.