So it’s official: FCC is completely detached from reality and declaring that if you don’t have 25 MBit/s download speeds, you might as well have dial up because you don’t have “broadband Internet.”
Remember, this is a speed Netflix says is only required for ‘Super HD video’, so even speeds sufficient for ordinary HD Netflix streaming are no longer deemed ‘broadband’ by FCC. This means FCC’s definition of broadband is meaningless. and all stats involving broadband access and competition are tainted. If they say “X% of Americans have only 1 broadband provider,” it’s based on this meaningless definition.
If dial-up and 20Mbit Internet are both sub-broadband per FCC, then the definition of broadband really doesn’t mean anything. It covers such a, heh, broad spectrum of experiences that the grouping does not enlighten us.
Emboldened by Obama’s regulatory efforts, China wants to regulate the Internet via software, and destroy copyrights in the process.
The Republican Net Neutrality bill addresses every issue the activists claim is important, and in fact bans fast lines in a way that Title II does not. Democrat opposition to the bill proves Net Neutrality was a lie all along, and its proponents were all liars or dupes.
FCC is still looking to give preferred private companies a leg up under the guise of Net Neutrality. That’s why they want to regulate peering agreements, and that’s why Netflix has been pushing for this all along. Picking winners and losers. That’s all Net Neutrality is.
FCC wants to track your every movement. They’re just using 911 as an excuse.
Cybersecurity efforts are important. But we don’t want to grow government to get it, so voluntary information sharing is the best bet. Find out about threats to deal with them.
So, patents. I called it. The IEEE, which has been regulating WiFi standards, made agreements with patent holders. If you agree to license your patents to asks for them under terms that are both reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND, that is they have to be realistic royalties, and you can’t stick it to your competitors), then your patents can be used in the international WiFi standards.
Now allegedly under pressure from Barack Obama, IEEE is trying to force a change from RAND licensing to Royalty Free – that is, socialize the patents. That’s not fair to the patent holders who went into this expecting reimbursement. They have every right to pull out of this if they don’t agree, I believe.