We had a good long stretch where tech policy was the most important thing going on in Washington. Now though, it’s gone on the back burner. The Obama administration has made its big power grabs, passed its bad bills, damaged American credibility abroad, but an ineffective Republican Senate is going to have trouble making a stand against it all.
But tonight, despite being sick as a dog, I’m going to try to catch up with the back burner stuff.
Ken Blackwell joins the chorus against comprehensive patent reform. I’m against comprehensive anything at this point.
For years, it’s been the case that in many cases, open source software is the best on the market. It was stupid that the House banned its use in house, and good that the rules have changed.
We’ve put it off for years and years (American ingenuity is quite a thing), but we’ve actually run out of new IP addresses in the IPv4 space. That means all the old, legacy networking software and hardware we’ve been dragging along, trying to keep working, is at some point going to have to be replaced now. We’ve seen this coming for years, but we’ve been trying to peel the band aid off as slowly as possible. But we’ve run out of time before big changes have to happen.
The federal court agreed to expedite the Net Neutrality case while denying a stay, so the “expedited case will be decided sometime next year. And then the appeals happen.
Bitcoin’s price has continued to decline since the death of Silk Road, along with the arrest of Ross “Dread Pirate Roberts” Ulbricht, but the Bitcoin criminals are still out there.
File under “never let a crisis go to waste”: FCC will approve the AT&T/DirecTV deal because it can bully the firms into accepting a power grab via consent decree. Rule by power, not by law.