Tech at Night: It is urgent that we stop SOPA; Google wising up?
Censorship’s the big word right now. The FCC’s under pressure to ban pro sports blackouts, and the Supreme Court may end national profanity rules. However I consider those things small. Few people have access to television broadcasts. Most of us aren’t actually censored by these regulations.
We all have access to the Internet though; that’s how a nobody like me is able to shape the debate against well-funded leftist groups. So I’ll freely admit it: It’s a self-serving thing for me to oppose Internet censorship. I don’t want the Obama administration to have the power to collaborate with private leftist groups to steal people’s domains, and force all ISPs to cooperate with that effective creation of a national censorship blacklist.
They want to call the little guys “E-PARASITES,” using copyright as cover to censor whatever the heck they want. Because once you let the government start blanking out parts of the Internet, then what’s to stop them from blanking out oversight of that censorship? Nothing. Just ask Australia, which censored the internet “for the children,” but then started banning oversight of the censorship, as well as unrelated content like American anti-abortion websites.
The committee vote on SOPA / E-PARASITES is coming, and I’m hearing that the witness list for the bill is stacked 5-1 in favor of the bill. In the Republican House, we’re rigging the hearings in favor of giving the President more regulatory power over the Internet. It boggles the mind. Please consider contacting the Judiciary Committee and asking them to oppose this censorship power grab.
If the US Government starts monkeying around with DNS, the world will ignore it, the same way we ignore Chinese attempts to censor the Internet. We will lose our position as world leader of the Internet overnight.
The forces of regulation never give up. They constantly press for more government intervention in the media, more control and less freedom. This is the face of media reform, and I hope Republicans defeat SOPA as one aspect of it in the House.
The Democrats in the Senate beat us on Net Neutrality, and we now rely on the courts to act to protect private industry against that power grab. I hope we don’t have to do the same for SOPA. We truly can’t wait.
I’m especially interested to see whether House Democrats like Maxine Waters dance for their Hollywood (MPAA), Music (RIAA), Banking (MasterCard), Union (AFL-CIO), and Pharmaceutical (Pfizer) corporate masters and back SOPA, as much as I’d like to see Republicans stand up to these guys.
Credit to Google: they seem to be learning. Opposing SOPA, making good on its promise and re-opening the sources to Android, and of course Obama fan Eric Schmidt’s novocaine-fueled rant against big government are all great signs that the company really may be once burned, twice shy since the FTC came against them. Was Search Neutrality all it took to get Google to realize regulation hurts it more than it helps, or was Schmidt taking a lesser role with the firm also a factor?
I called it, I called it, I called it. Sprint got the iPhone and now Sprint’s phasing out unlimited data, just like the “evil” Verizon and AT&T. Clearly Sprint is benefiting greatly in the marketplace from the iPhone, and that popularity has an impact on its network. Just imagine how much it’s hurting T-Mobile that they can’t offer the phone.
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