I know, it’s not Monday, but Monday was Labor day so we’re doing it Tuesday. Besides, I’ve only done one a week lately anyway, so does it really matter?
Time and again we see people going on the Internet and dealing with shady folks, seeking to profit, only to find out those shady folks operated in shady ways, and hurt them instead! Ha.
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BitTorrent is a technology that distributes data faster by enlisting the bandwidth of downloaders in order to serve more downloads. That’s well and good for legitimate users, however the technology has been used heavily by copyright infringement rings.
The latest scheme, “Popcorn Time”, is under heavy attack as copyright holders and the law strike back.
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Yeah, terrorism is terrible, and we need to run Islamic State folks into prison, but the idea that a retweet is criminal, given the nature of how Twitter works, is kind of silly. It’s clear to me the Obama administration is just out of touch, as much as its FBI under James Comey is ridiculously power hungry.
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So the Red State Gathering is this week, and it’s going to be fun. Hopefully you’re coming.
Since Wednesday night I’ll be packing to go, and Friday I’ll be in Atlanta, so this is probably the one shot I have this week to look over Tech nuews, so let’s go.
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So the Local Radio Fairness Act is purely an act of picking winners and losers, a corrupt means of trying to curry favor with local media stations, come re-election time. I normally hate arguments like that but look, what legitimate reason is there to hand out copyright exemptions?
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Since the founding of the Internet, the US Government has had ultimate oversight over its critical institutions. There was a conference in Brazil pushing to end that, and replace the US with the UN or some ‘multilateral’ system, creating a power vacuum that could be filled by China and/or Russia.
Ted Cruz is saying ‘not so fast’ to that. Good on him.
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Two colds in two weeks thanks to tourists rushing into DC. Let’s catch up with the stories of the week and hope that next week I’m doing better.
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As I sit here at nearly 1am, I fear I may be getting my second cold, 7 days from the previous one. I blame tourists.
Clarence Thomas once wrote something very true about regulation, and the ever-growing power of unaccountable regulators: “We seem to be straying further and further from the Constitution without so much as pausing to ask why.”
FCC, in what it’s been up to under Obama, shows he’s right.
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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.
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It’s not surprising that the Obama FCC, after making a massive power grab with the pretext of solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist, that now the FCC is moving on to an entirely new scam. Ajit “The Man” Pai says they’re engaged in a ‘regulatory bait and switch’ with respect to AT&T.
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