Net Neutrality! Verizon has taken the FCC to court over the FCC’s illegal Open Internet order of course. Oral arguments were today at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The court should reject the rule of course, as the court already rejected Net Neutrality previously in the Comcast case. The ALA, like a lot of reflexive leftist organizations, is wrong.
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Apparently Kim Dotcom is already tired of living as a fugitive in New Zealand. Tired of laying about, risking capsizing an island, he’s quitting the new Mega to focus on his defense.
Meanwhile, it’s unfortunate that this anarchist was allowed in the country. Let’s just bar him from the United States, please?
The latest problem with Net Neutrality? It tramples over the Bill of Rights. Opposing the FCC’s power grab is the position in favor of civil liberties.
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Christopher Poole’s gang is at it again, as 4chan is attacking the family of another dead teenager. I guess ‘moot’ is amoral and doesn’t care where his money comes from. If he cared he’d have kicked these sorts of people off of his site by now, instead of giving them their own sandboxes to play with.
Time Warner and CBS come to an agreement. Remember: it’s government regulations that already existed that put Time Warner in a spot here, where they had to push hard to resist a sudden doubling of price by CBS. More regulations are not the answer here.
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I enjoy that in America, we refuse to give official sanction of the radical appropriation of May Day, and instead have a Labor Day on a completely different day, separating ourselves from anti-liberty radicals.
You can tell the anti-NSA people are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in their attempts to attack the agency. It’s kind of ridiculous. Even if we take traitor Edward Snowden at his word, despite how he could easily have modified or even fabricated parts of or entire documents to push an agenda, it’s actually the NSA’s job to spy on foreign agents like the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera.
Of course, this is really interesting timing for DEA to be seeking massive amounts of call metadata. That’s not going to go over well with the libertarians. Then again, I don’t know if it’ll sway anyone who didn’t already favor free dope and sodomy. Sorry, but it’s true. You can talk a lot of people into part-way legalizations of cannabis, but it takes a hardcore radical to go all the way and legalize opiates and cocaine.
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Never waste a good crisis. Some Eurocrats are looking to use the NSA fearmongering as an excuse to lock down the Internet, and the Obama administration is fighting back because closing off that form of free trade in ideas would hurt everyone, not just themselves. Of course it’s still suspect to believe just anything Edward Snowden has alleged, given reports that he’s a liar.
So even as Microsoft and Google reasonably sue to be able to release non-specific, aggregated data on secret court requests for data, NSA may release its own stats on its programs. This should not be seen as good enough, since FISA covers more than just the NSA.
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Are the Europeans looking to censor the Internet with the NSA as pretext? Cameron Kerry seems to think so. I don’t know how serious or likely any proposals were, but it bears looking at if you’re a European.
Meanwhile here in the US, the Internet control pretext is Net Neutrality, which ought to be struck down. The Communications Act never gave them that power, and the Telecommunications Act was pretty clear on an open Internet. The FCC has acted illegally.
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Keep in mind that in the Time Warner/CBS dispute, CBS has a built-in negotiation advantage due to federal laws. So I don’t buy it when CBS claims that Time Warner is the unreasonable side. CBS’s complaints about what other cable companies do reminds me of the cartel-like “negotiations” done by UAW.
I do appreciate the cleverness of giving out free antennas though. If only Aereo were huge right now. That’d be great for Time Warner to work with.
Psst: Net Neutrality was always a power grab, and not a fact- and law-based endeavor. I love though how the left-leaning Daily Dot is outraged that Net Neutrality isn’t being used to push for more free stuff.
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Enough about Manning for right now. Back to Snowden. Edward Snowden and the Glenns Greenwald say Snowden wasn’t their source. Of course they’re saying that. Why wouldn’t they say it, whether it’s true or not? If Snowden was the source Greenwald and the Guardian gain nothing by admitting it. He especially has nothing to gain when his boy toy is getting stopped at airports.
And let’s be clear about the ongoing Time Warner/CBS dispute: the problem was created by government, specifically antiquated regulations designed to hinder cable television and aid the lucky network affiliates. That is, regulation hinders innovation and picks winners and losers.
Deregulate, or at the very least loosen the regulations as Steve Scalise and Jim DeMint tried a while back.
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Upon being sentenced to 35 years in prison and losing his rank, Private Manning chose this moment to announce “I am female.” Manning claims that the name Bradley is no longer to be used. Chelsea Manning is the name we are to use. Manning’s lawyer are all over this, too, claiming that it is now a right to begin hormone therapy on the taxpayer dime.
Everything about this stinks, though. There’s no evidence of a medical diagnosis. The timing is all too perfect. The political effects are undeniable, in that Manning will get a new group of people who will reflexively give defense because of this newly claimed status.
I’m convinced this announced self-diagnosis by Manning is an attempt to win over new supporters on the Internet, the land of the politically polarized, and the home of the self-diagnosed. It may also be a last-ditch attempt to avoid prison.
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So, the top story is of course that anti-American anarchist hero Bradley Manning got 35 years. The bad news is with parole he could apparently be out in 10.
The hacker of “Palestine” who broke into Facebook is now getting money raised for him. One wonders if any laws are being broken sending money to someone like that, in a place like that.
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