Good evening. I’m not seeing anything huge as we pass the middle of the week. But, you never know what will become important, so let’s take a look at what caught my eye so far this week.
Even as Mary Bono Mack seeks to legislate on the news, or at least introduces a bill to make people feel better, Apple explains that the “location tracking” story was a non-story all along, just as I predicted. It was all about making GPS faster, and there was no real privacy issue.
Oh, yes. ICE is from the government, and it’s here to help. That is, if you’re a big copyright holder, but not if you’re a small patent holder.
Not that I think the government ought to be going out and helping patent holders any more than I think the government ought to be helping copyright holders. I wish we’d just let people sue each other over infringements. After all, if software patent trolls can milk millions from Google, then the courts do work for these matters.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says he inherited a mess when it comes to Net Neutrality. I don’t see how that can reasonably be supported by fact. The Internet was doing great before he came along. The Internet does great under a government that governs least.
“Bill Shock,” as worked on by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps’s new chief of staff, is a movement to try to eliminate personal responsibility, and force ISPs to coddle you and track your own Internet use for you. It’s senseless regulation if it comes about. Free State Foundation makes the argument that “Bill Shock” even violates the First Amendment, which is a clever argument. I don’t know how true it is, but it’s interesting.
And to close the night, Seton Motley takes on the common portrayal of the left as working in the “public interest.” Their special interest groups certainly do not act in the public’s interest. They typically seek just to grow government and take control of more of the public’s business.