Long week on my end, but thankfully it’s over as soon as I’m done writing this. But the top story is danger at the FCC. The regulator is still threatening to overstep its bounds and circumvent the Telecommunications Act, which strictly limits the amount of power the FCC has over Information Services. So now they want to redefine high-speed Internet access as something new and different they’re calling BIAS, and then regulate the daylights out of it. This is bad stuff and must be watched. Read the whole article if you’d like to know more.
I am so glad DC Republicans are so strong on the problem’s surrounding Obama administration’s regulatory excesses and the talk is moving to full-on regulatory reform.
How about some hypocrisy fun? Barbara Boxer wants wireless phone companies to front the money on customer donations to Japan, but she forgot to mention how much she’s personally willing to chip in to help them do that, which is apparently zero. It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money.
Also, The New York Times continues to close down its work online even as it promotes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, asking others to pay for free news, and further complains of ISPs offering special paid services.
I’m sorry but the only name more laughable than Julius Genachowski for Commerce Secretary is Eric Schmidt. This man has laughed at the concept of privacy, and calls upon people to move and change their names in order to try to gain privacy from his own firm, Google. He’s unfit for service.
By the way, I know there’s going to be lots of wild speculation about AT&T going after unpaid tethering. From here, I can hear the complaining: “I’m paying for unlimited! How can they tell? I could be just doing Netflix from my iPhone!” Except, it’d be rather easy to watch for telltale things like desktop User-Agents, connections to Steam, and MS Windows OS updates going over a connection. Don’t expect to get more than you pay for in this brave, new, Net Neutral world, people.
So to close the night, Al Franken wants ordinary citizens to subsidize successful corporations like Netflix, by shifting all Internet usage costs to individuals, instead of letting ISPs charge service providers for costs surrounding heavy use. That’s a terribly unfair thing to do to casual users. And what’s worse is that you know he’ll change his tune when the Universal Access fight starts.
Al Franken: The beauty of him being in the Senate is that we all get to see the magic trick he does, where talking points go from the cue cards written up by radical left-wing lobbyists right through his ear and out his mouth, all without being molested by thought.