Make sure to send me ideas on topics to take apart, folks. I’ve hit a number of important topics, but I don’t always know what needs explaining. I’d like to think I’m a little better than this than the anti-Israel bigots at Vox, so feel free to leave comment suggesting topics to go over.
But tonight I’ll post a simple reminder: Government is bad at Internet, and should leave well enough alone.
We saw it with Edward Snowden. Even the almighty NSA couldn’t keep a person from getting access to more data than he should, getting out with it, and taking it to other countries hostile to the United States.
We saw it with Healthcare.gov and many state exchanges. They couldn’t build a website, with months of time to prepare, to hold up to fully expected levels of traffic. After all, they ran on that.
And now we’re seeing it with the FCC’s own website. This is the regulator that claims both the authority and the expertise to regulate the Internet, and they can’t even build a functioning web scale site.
This is terrible. Government, as we’ve seen over and over again just during the Obama administration, is not competent to regulate these days. They don’t understand the technology, they don’t know what they’re doing, and the adults need to take away their regulatory pointy sticks before they hurt someone.
For months, ECPA reform backers have been complaining that we need to change the law to require a warrant when searching emails on a third party server. Well, now they’re getting what they wished for, as judges are proving willing to give broad access to that email. Oops.
They don’t have free speech in Europe. Remember that the next time the leftys say we need to be more like them.
How long until they try to ban layoffs?
After all, they’re already banning innovation in the form of Aereo and Uber. I hope these pd.id guys aren’t next.
Etsy’s own example undermines the case for Net Neutrality.
Meanwhile, Netflix continues to lie about ISPs.
When both the Senate Democrats and the lobbyists are out in force to oppose meaningful video reform in the STELA satellite video reauthorization, I guess we should expect a “clean” bill to eventually pass with no meaningful reforms and deregulation. Unfortunately.