Again, I’m sympathetic to the idea behind the new California ban in ‘revenge porn’, but ultimately this isn’t going to work, and it’s just going to give a false sense of security to the recklessly promiscuous. Just like the ‘eraser button’ for minors California passed, it’s a dangerously ineffective idea.
Big news: even as some people try to build a new distributed secure chat network, the old distributed secure communications network is continuing to fall apart. Tor has not protected Silk Road, whose creator is going to jail. It will be interesting to see if Bitcoin’s price falls as a result of the end of a major Bitcoin hub of illegal activity.
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I have to say, my initial reaction to accusing Google of wiretapping is absurd. Think about it: the whole concept of wiretapping is that you’re intercepting communications from person A to person B. If Google ads are wiretapping, them spam filtering would be wiretapping, since you’re also scanning an email to do that.
We’ve discussed in the past how Pandora was trying to get government to change the rules in its favor against copyright holders, because the government had previously tilted the scales in favor of broadcast radio against copyright holders, in the form of a proposed law known as IRFA. Pandora’s clearly wrong about that, as we should have a level playing field and not be picking winners and losers at all. But one good consequence could be a bill that would go the other way, an anti-IRFA: repealing the laws that favor broadcast radio to begin with. Just ditch the whole compulsory licensing system.
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Good news! California Democrats think you can erase stuff from the global Internet just because you really really want to. This is magical thinking in law form. Telling kids they should run amok online because they can just erase it later, is insane. The Internet is dangerous and not for kids.
Again, the core problem with patent troll litigation isn’t with the court system, it’s with too many patents being issued. So the patent-holding tech industry may have a conflict in what it recommends to fix this. But seriously, the only reason patent trolling works is that so many bad patents get issued to begin with.
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There’s not a whole lot going on right now. Right now I’m seeing a few efforts here and there to push different policies, some good, some bad, but we do need to keep an eye on them in case any one of them takes off.
Let’s start with a bit of a laugh from California. Democrats there are desperately trying to regulate the Internet, but at the same time it’s clear that party in California, now totally hijacked by extremists, has no clue how the Internet actually works. How else would the pass a bill creating a right to delete information from the Internet? Imagine the jokes if Republicans passed such a bill.
The Google effort to push for reasonable FISA transparency continues to gain allies, this time Dropbox, as that firm is now getting criticisms in that area.
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Tech at Night on a Monday is always an odd thing. Weekends tend to be pretty slow, since much of what I cover is happening in government and industry, but Monday’s also when all that pent-up weekend stuff comes out. Monday’s also when things get announced, that people didn’t want to bury on a Friday.
So Mondays are capable of being very busy posting days. But they’re also capable of being very slow. This is one of the latter Monday editions. Which is good for me since I’m very tired.
The new lie being told is that deregulation amounts to help from the government. Talk about turning the truth on its head. Regulation these days picks winners and losers. Deregulation lets things alone!
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Are there people who use search services like Google’s to find illegal distributions of works? For some crazy reason, MPAA thinks not. The evidence seems to disagree.
When it comes to arguments about Net Neutrality, attitude is not a substitute for facts and reason. Then again do the Net Neutrality zealots like Susan Crawford even have any?
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Why on Earth would we need Do Not Track legislation when many forms of tracking would be hard to define, but also when Tracker #1 is as popular as ever? This is yet another example where privacy is being treated as a morality issue, where legislators are scolding the public.
I mean look. Microsoft talked about making Do Not Track the default setting, but the public didn’t care. Only advertisers did.
It’s kind of hard to have a rational debate about Net Neutrality when the radical left keeps lying, and lying, and lying. They have to demonize Verizon because they don’t have the facts or the law on their side.
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It’s funny how Democrats talked back in 2008 about openness and transparency, but they continue to obstruct Greg Walden’s FCC reform on those two principles. Doubly funny that now they oppose lawsuits, when they generally favor lawsuits when it’s NGOs suing EPA to push a greater left-wing agenda.
Remember, the same government that wants to regulate the Internet and in fact all innovation can’t even handle faxes properly.
So beware when the unreformed FCC is stalling on auctioning spectrum, despite Congressional orders to do it. I suspect the plan is to rig the auctions to favor some firms over others.
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If you’re really that worried about Dropbox “opening your files” as these guys on a wild goose chase were, then why exactly are you uploading them unencrypted to Dropbox to begin with? This is what I’m talking about when I say people don’t actually act like they care about privacy. If people did care, they’d act differently.
Once again, the FCC is looking to reduce competition by picking winners and losers int he marketplace, this time in attacking owners of UHF stations. The guy who owns channel 56 doesn’t even have the same market power as the guy who owns channel 4, so why try to make UHF owners divest? That just reduces competition.
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More Net Neutrality! With the oral arguments having happened, people are chewing on what happened. Some are confident the FCC will lose, which is unsurprising since they’ve lost on this before. Hence this title, Net Neutrality Returns – As Farce.
We need an FCC that will stop just trying to take power and instead will adapt to rapidly-changing technology in a smart and humble way. From what I’m hearing, Michael O’Rielly is a good choice for that, though of course I have no high hopes for Tom Wheeler.
Though apparently it’s not just FCC that’s terrible about this stuff. SEC writes regulations it can’t even follow itself, Darrell Issa points out.
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