Censorship’s the big word right now. The FCC’s under pressure to ban pro sports blackouts, and the Supreme Court may end national profanity rules. However I consider those things small. Few people have access to television broadcasts. Most of us aren’t actually censored by these regulations.
We all have access to the Internet though; that’s how a nobody like me is able to shape the debate against well-funded leftist groups. So I’ll freely admit it: It’s a self-serving thing for me to oppose Internet censorship. I don’t want the Obama administration to have the power to collaborate with private leftist groups to steal people’s domains, and force all ISPs to cooperate with that effective creation of a national censorship blacklist.
They want to call the little guys “E-PARASITES,” using copyright as cover to censor whatever the heck they want. Because once you let the government start blanking out parts of the Internet, then what’s to stop them from blanking out oversight of that censorship? Nothing. Just ask Australia, which censored the internet “for the children,” but then started banning oversight of the censorship, as well as unrelated content like American anti-abortion websites.
The committee vote on SOPA / E-PARASITES is coming, and I’m hearing that the witness list for the bill is stacked 5-1 in favor of the bill. In the Republican House, we’re rigging the hearings in favor of giving the President more regulatory power over the Internet. It boggles the mind. Please consider contacting the Judiciary Committee and asking them to oppose this censorship power grab.
If the US Government starts monkeying around with DNS, the world will ignore it, the same way we ignore Chinese attempts to censor the Internet. We will lose our position as world leader of the Internet overnight.
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It turns out it’s not just a few of us on the right who know Tech at Night exists. Gigi Sohn says Tech at Night shapes the debate along with good old Less Government.
Of course, Sohn also told a lie about me and claimed AT&T pays me, but… that’s the head of a Soros-funded group for you. Media Marxists and all that.
Something I did not know: Millions of Americans are getting subsidized wireless. And gee, they’re using it to replace home phones rather than as a mere supplement, draining money from the government right to Sprint. But we’re supposed to think they’re the victims of unfair competition. Right.
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Gigi Sohn talked to Personal Democracy Forum about the work she does at her organization, Public Knowledge. She took time to call out RedState and Less Government. Here’s my hastily-created transcript of the key passage around the 28:00 mark:
[On AT&T/T-Mobile] We often get attacked by the right-wing press, folks like, you know, RedState and Less Government, so I’m constantly dealing with attacks fully funded by AT&T – it’s like not even a secret – calling us, you know, Soros-supported Marxists and Google shills and all these kind… So, I mean I don’t want to respond to those things, but they shape the debate. They’re out in the air.
She says RedState, but at RedState I’m the one who posts on these issues, and mostly in my Tech at Night series. In that series I do highlight repeatedly that Public Knowledge takes money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute. This is a documented fact on their own webpage.
However I don’t get paid a dime by AT&T. I don’t make a penny off of my tech policy writing. I don’t work for AT&T and never have. I don’t accept money from them and never have, not directly or indirectly. I’m one guy who devotes a few nights a week to studying and writing about these issues, and the fully-funded, paid professional Gigi Sohn feels the need to single me out.
I actually am looking for work in the DC or Austin areas to fund my escape from California. So if AT&T did want to hire me, well, serious offers would be listened to. Heck, if Sprint Nextel wanted to hire me, I’d listen. But the fact of the matter is, I’m a lone amateur. I’m not corporate funded and I’m not foundation funded. RedState doesn’t even pay its writers, let alone AT&T.
And that’s the whole story.
Why can’t the news come in even intervals, instead of batching up all at once?
So yes, the Senate Net Neutrality vote is coming up. Credit where it’s due: Kay Bailey Hutchison moved the ball forward on this, no doubt about it. Credit also to Marco Rubio making headlines with his strong support of the repeal.
And Rubio is right: the whole thing is ridiculous. This regulation closes; it does not open the Internet. Which is why Obama is threatening a veto: can’t have the Congress undoing a regulatory power grab, can we? The representatives of the people, what do they know?
Don’t forget to tell your Senators, especially if they’re Democrats or Scott Brown, to vote for the repeal!
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Oops. It’s midnight as I type this out. I just remembered I’d better do Tech tonight, so here goes. Fortunately I already did my reading!
Urgent in the Senate this week is the upcoming vote on Net Neutrality repeal, which was already passed by the House. We need 51 votes, not 60. Less Government has a list of Senators to contact with this urgent message: repeal Net Neutrality! Democrats are listed there, but Scott Brown needs to hear from us, too!
The bad Net Neutrality rules are a symptom of greater problems at the FCC and demonstrate a need for greater reform, but we have to start somewhere. Let’s start with repeal.
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There’s been a push lately to attack punitive, unfair taxes on wireless service, one that Erick Erickson signed onto, and was advertised at RedState. Ironically I only found out about it because I saw the ads while working on the code side of the site, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Anyway, that movement seems to have gotten a win, as the House passed the Wireless Tax Fairness Act, a 5 year freeze on new wireless taxes. Sounds good to me.
SOPA, the House answer to the Senate’s PROTECT IP, isn’t dead yet, unfortunately. This attempt to have the US government censor the Internet, and in fact forcibly steal domains from people, and cut off Americans from the rest of the world online, incredibly is being considered by House Republicans. Copyright apparently is sufficient justification for government of unlimited size. Kill the bill.
And what’s worse is that Republicans are being dragged along as dupes to help Democrats continue to justify huge Hollywood fundraisers by smacking the Internet around to favor the movie industry. Which is probably why the MPAA is trying to stifle criticism of the bill. Kill the bill.
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Wireless competition continues to grow, as Cricket edges closer to 4G LTE. I’m losing track of how many 4G providers we’re starting to rack up. So yes, the people who tell you smaller and regional carriers are not an acceptable substitute for national carriers? They’re selling you something.
That something is an attack on federalism via the Sprint/Soros/Obama/Holder attack on AT&T and the rights of T-Mobile shareholders.
Which is why it’s bad news that these coordinated lawsuits are continuing. It’s ridiculous: both C Spire and Sprint are in better shape than iPhone-less T-Mobile.
At least there’s good news in new and continuing Republican efforts against previous power grabs.
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Last week I noted that the FCC is officially moving ahead with its new subsidy program. The administration will convert the Universal Service Fund – currently taxing the public and handing it out to rural telephone carriers – into a grab bag of Internet subsidies. The rural phone companies are unhappy, and everyone else is racing to get a cut. C Spire, apparently serving many rural southern customers, says the order “runs counter to the administration’s goal of promoting broadband deployment.” The Tech/Users Coalition, a group that includes Obama allies Google and Sprint, calls the USF “antiquated” and cheers the reform effort, while pressing for as much subsidy of Internet connectivity as possible. IIA also supports the effort.
Look, I don’t blame any business for looking to get a cut here. The money’s there, it’s perfectly legal, and that’s the way it is. Nobody squawked at the rural carriers collecting checks all these years. But that said, I hope Republicans will look to repeal all of this in 2013.
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Not much to say tonight, which is good because I think I’m getting sick again, and if I had a lot to say I’d probably just skip tonight’s Tech.
It’s official: the race for FCC handouts is on, as the FCC voted to repurpose the old rural telephone subsidy, the Universal Service Fund (a fund that comes from your special tax dollars) into a grab bag of Internet subsidies.
In 2013 we should look at repealing the whole thing, just as Republicans continue to press for Net Neutrality repeal.
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Top story is easy to pick tonight. The legislation that’s been known in the Senate as PROTECT IP, the Internet censorship blacklist bill that promises to make a huge power grab online, Communist China-style, has come to the House. They’re calling it by two different names: E-PARASITES and Stopping Online Privacy Act, but by either name it’s just as bad.
Even as the current laws do work, this bill expands government, and puts the government’s thumb firmly on one side of the scales balanced by the DMCA. Current law attempts to provide a balance between the rights of all of us online, and the rights of copyright holders accusing others of infringement. PROTECT IP/E-PARASITES/SOPA would give copyright holders private nuclear options to knock sites offline, and government would enforce it.
No, really, how bad is it? It threatens, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, three critical tools used by conservatives and Republicans against this administration, and this House bill would arm this administration against them. It’s insane. It’s just so poorly thought out. PROTECT IP also removes safe harbor concepts critical to the DMCA that gave ISPs reason to be fair to the little guy when pounded on by the big guy. No more, should this pass.
PROTECT IP. SOFA. E-PARASITES. I don’t care what you call it, creating national censorship blacklists to be enforced by law by all ISPs is just a terrible idea. Censorship by its very nature hinders public oversight of that censorship. In fact, some of the first things they censored in Australia’s version were lists of things censored, which meant when the censorship expanded to other topics, any discussion of that was threatened with legal action.
Kill this bill.
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