Remember: One of the victims of the joint Sprint/Justice/FCC Triple Alliance against AT&T is T-Mobile itself. T-Mobile has no 4G, no iPhone, and no clear plan for what to do if their right to sell off to AT&T is taken away by the big government wonder team.
Nobody benefits when big government tramples the little guy. Even if FCC is clearly wrong, and it is, the committee’s meddling is a problem at this point. I do hope alternatives can be found that government’s boot can’t crush. The Government in going after these firms is simply trapping the public in the middle. We’re the ones who lose out with lesser competition thanks to this deal potentially being blocked.
Good news though: SOPA is in trouble. The bill has been rightfully compared unfavorably with Net Neutrality by Google. Net Neutrality, Google now seems to admit, is a costly power grab. SOPA is worse, so much so that an alternative is now circulating. This alternative isn’t the pure Federal Reserve-based approach I hoped for, copying the UIGEA, but it does importantly focus on funding-based attacks, rather than try to have the US government censor the DNS system. If we can target illegal activity without censorship, let’s do it.
Al Franken and Ed Markey are having hissy fits about some software called Carrier IQ. However one thing missing from the shouting is a clear list of what’s being done, by whom, where. It reads to me like speculative, overblown excuse making to create new regulations while demonizing businesses. That is, it’s business as usual for the pro-regulation Democrats in DC.
House Republicans are moving forward with online security efforts that sounds good. If the bill truly does focus on voluntary information gathering and sharing, enabling the private sector to get key information and assistance from government in a voluntary way, as well as share information that can then be used to help others, I see no harm in that whatsoever. Voluntary cooperation, not controlling and regulating the Internet, is the key to shoring up our security without threatening liberty or innovation. This is half of the online security model I want followed in fact: voluntary information sharing plus harsh criminal enforcement against attackers. Once this passes, then we look at the criminal penalties side, eh?