Gotta love it when the left uncritically regurgitates Sprint’s misleading talking points when they’d be having a hysterical screaming fit in the event I did the same to support my views.
Sadly I was right in my predictions about Obama back when hef irst took office, and Marco Rubio was right. The Obama administration is handing over the Internet to the UN, a blow to liberty and a victory for dictators around the world. I’m sure Rand Paul’s on board, since he wouldn’t want to tweak any dictators or anything.
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ACU and other normally small-government types have bafflingly come out against the satellite TV bill STELA, and Steve Scalise’s efforts to enact Retransmission Consent reform, a cable idea first proposed jointly with Jim DeMint. This is wrong, and this is a strange supporting of laws that pick winners and losers.
You see, back in the 70s when Cable TV started to take off, broadcasters and socialists alike freaked out. Broadcasters because they were faced with competition for eyeballs where they previously had a monopoly, and socialists because it offended that someone might actually pay for TV. So they teamed up to rig the system, passing laws and regulations that prevented an open market for many broadcasts, instead creating territorial monopolies for broadcasters. These regulations have let the broadcasters get fat and happy (see also Aereo).
Pass retransmission consent reform. Supporters say without reform we “simulate” a free market, and to reform would harm “content producers.” This turns the truth on its head. Broadcasters are overpaid, underworked middlemen with government-manufactured monopolies. They produce nothing but just happen to hold a government license to spectrum. Make ’em compete. And certainly never make satellite providers buy from a propagandist like The Weather Channel.
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Remember during the height of the Edward Snowden media frenzy, how his defenders would dutifully parrot every word RT said about him? Here’s your great Snowden defender now. RT and Snowden are the enemies of liberty, peace, and the United States of America.
Bitcoin is the fantasy tool of ideologues, the 21st century version of Goldbuggery, but there turns out to be a group even more ridiculous than the Bitcoin zealots: TSA agents.
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Sometimes you just know somebody needs primaried. Wednesday I learned of a member of Congress who’s clearly only in the House because daddy was in the House before him, and he’s using the influence he has out a personal sense of entitlement. That’s clearly why Bill Shuster wants to ban phones on planes, despite both the OBama FCC and FAA thinking it’s a good idea to let the market decide this. Shuster was first elected in 2001. He needs a refresher on what happened in 2001, that would make us consider why passengers on planes may want that option, and why we should let Mister Market figure it out, instead of a blanket ban.
Look we get it, he’s big important man and he flies on planes often, and so he wants to order the airlines to do what he wants, because that’s what he thinks the perk of being the son of a Congressman is. But that’s why we need to defeat his bill, and defeat him in the primary.
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How about some FCC? Some bad Net Neutrality laws are being proposed, attempting to save the terrible idea. Meanwhile Dean Heller is trying some targeted FCC process reform in the Senate. That’s great.
So, Retransmission Consent. You know what happens when you rig the system to limit competition, as the Congress and the FCC did in the early days of Cable? Broadcasters raking in the bucks. Never would I say that copyright should be attacked, but that price to license these broadcasts should be dictated by the open market. Let broadcasters compete.
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Barack Obama admitted what we’ve been saying all along: Net Neutrality was an attempt to regulate the Internet. Told you so.
More FCC: Data use continues to go up, and it probably makes sense to remove barriers to investment on expanding our wireless capacity in this country. We still need spectrum, but the build out matters after that spectrum is acquired, as well.
Of course, instead of being sensible the radicals just want to spend more money stupidly.
All this is perfectly good reason to want to gut the FCC by reforming the Communications Act, but again, I just don’t trust the current legislative process to succeed at this in one big bill. When was the last time we had one big bill that worked well? Not in many years. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I’m not optimistic.
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Bitcoin is not really as widely used as its shills want you to think.
Ajit Pai is the man and understand what it means for the courts to be used to quash innovation. As the courts refused to crush the VCR, I want them to leave Aereo alone.
By the way, Healthcare.gov is still at risk. Good thing it’s a miserable failure, though that doesn’t help the poor souls already signed up and at risk in the vulnerable systems.
Democrats want to pass a new law mandating a private-public partnership to track where you and your phone are at all times, in the name of 911 calls. But remind me again how all the Snowden stuff is about privacy and not anti-Americanism and a rollback to 9/10/2001 thinking again. Sure, guys. Sure.
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Here at RedState this week, Fred Campbell compared Retransmission Consent with Net Neutrality. Some may think the Steve Scalise bill (on an idea backed by Jim DeMint when he was in the Senate) doesn’t go far enough, but it’s a step, and it’s a lot better than the heavy headed, high-regulatory approach promoted by Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, Democrats both.
The Obama administration may be terrible on phone unlocking, but they managed to get something done with industry after all.
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Seems like I’m always coming up with excuses not to post, but I knew nobody would read if I posted over Thanksgiving, so I just ate ham instead. I’m now at risk of turning into bacon, I’ve had so much.
Oops. The Department of Defense signed a deal with Apprticity to buy 500 user licenses and a number of server licenses of its software. But after the Army let slip during a presentation that “thousands” of users were in the system, the government’s large-scale copyright infringement exposed. Apptricity and the Obama administration settled for $50 million.
This is your periodic reminder that kids don’t belong on the Internet. The Internet is every sex predator on Earth, all hiding in your kid’s computer or phone. Be careful out there.
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