Wednesday night I put off all Tech at Night topics except for SOPA because the critical mark up votes in Committee were coming up. We weren’t supposed to be able to stop SOPA, but we could at least raise awareness, put up a fight, and prepare for the floor votes. And sure enough, the vote to keep the Internet censorship provisions went in favor of censorship 22-11.
Well, it turns out, we managed to slow the process down. After we made our threats to start working on primary challenges over that 22-11 vote, Lamar Smith put off SOPA, halting the current process until next week at the earliest. Stay sharp, but feel good about this delay. The longer we delay, the more we can gain support for the OPEN Act instead of SOPA.
SOPA opponents Darrell Issa, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Polis, and Jason Chaffetz also deserve credit. Why yes, that list does include a Democrat. Just shows how wrong Lamar Smith is to side with disgraced former Senator Chris Dodd and the MPAA on this. Two men who between them have no clue how the Internet works.
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There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up?
It turns out that the Obama FCC under Julius Genachowski is looking to change the rules of the game. Genachowski wants to make it harder to for firms to pick up the spectrum they need to serve an ever-growing demand for wireless Internet. He and the FCC are calling it a change to the “spectrum screen.”
Why the timing? Well, it turns out that Democrat commissioner Michael Copps, despite being an ardent supporter of the radical George Soros-driven Media Reform agenda, has spoken out against changing the rules midstream. but it may not matter, as he’s quitting, and his replacement is going through the confirmation process right now in the Senate. Though that replacement may be delayed as Chuck Grassley fights for transparency in the FCC, there are no other obstacles to confirmation foreseen.
So while Copps has made a due process argument against what Genachowski is doing, Genachowski may be counting on Copps’s departure to prevent that from being an issue. With him gone, the Chairman will apparently be free to do what he wants, declaring what the rules will be anytime he wants, picking one set of rules for one company, and another set of rules for another, with nothing to stop him.
Chuck Grassley is fighting for transparency with respect to the FCC and LightSquared. The House Energy and Commerce committee is looking into FCC’s Spectrum Screen treatment. Even FCC Democrats are having to speak up. The FCC is completely out of control, and it’s taking all we’ve got in the Congress just to try to keep up, and to force the Obama administration to submit to oversight and respect the rule of law.
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The FCC’s excuse for delaying the AT&T/Qualcomm spectrum deal was to work on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. The latter has been withdrawn, so what’s the excuse now?
AT&T and Sprint both get bad reviews. Sprint’s Nextel deal went through. AT&T’s T-Mobile deal is getting blocked. Hmm. Looks shady, which is why I support Chuck Grassley’s push for FCC transparency involving LightSquared, even though so far their claims on spectrum make sense to me and John Deere and the GPS industry are getting rural pushback against their LightSquared opposition.
Yeah, I never thought I’d mention John Deere in Tech at Night, either.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if we had Government Neutrality? Imagine if the government didn’t take sides: not favoring one industry over another as with SOPA, or favoring one firm over another as with AT&T.
Because AT&T really is getting an unfair deal. The FCC could have just let the firm drop its application like it intended to do but no, it also gratuitously put out a report against AT&T. It’s a show trial: the verdict was decided in advance.
Oddly enough, Facebook is getting ignored by the radicals but is still getting targeted for abuse by the FTC even though it’s already been shown that laws don’t fix stupid. I guess the Obama administration is already too well trained in meddling.
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Some government mistakes slip by with only a few of us shouting about them. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is not one of those. People across the Internet are getting loud against the House bill and its Senate counterpart PROTECT IP, the one I’ve been yelling about for months, but many businesses are supporting.
Yes, I’m going to be that guy, saying I was into the band before you ever heard of him. But, instead of being disappointed that the band’s gone mainstream, I’m glad we’re now at the point where Darrell Issa is changing his Twitter avatar in protest of the bill.
The bill has serious problems. As I previously warned it tampers with the delicate balance of interests present in the DMCA, but on top of that Title I is nothing but a framework for censorship in America that can and is designed to be triggered not through judicial trials, but through mere injunctions. And further, if an ISP or other targeted company cannot technically or economically manage to comply with the government’s orders to censor, the burden of proof is on the ISP to show that as an “affirmative defense.”
This bill goes too far. Kill it. Issa says he will introduce his alternative. I hope it follows the model of the UIGEA: cut off funding to lawbreakers. Censorship is not needed.
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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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I’ve been meaning to write about Sprint and the alliance it’s making with the shady, fringe left. Well, since that alliance is against AT&T, and trying to bring government down on AT&T, they’ve started to do the work for me with their myth busting posts. Part 1 takes down fringe left group Public Knowledge and its testimony to the Senate. AT&T illustrates how absurd it is to criticize the firm for planning to run three networks in parallel: “2G” GSM, “3G” UTMS/HSPA, and “4G” LTE. Guys, this is why we need more spectrum: innovation and growth. But, the radical left would rather we all suffer just to lash out for socialism.
Tech transitions take time. AT&T points out that when the FCC-mandated end of life came for “1G” analog cellular service, there were a million of their customers still using it. Just imagine how many people would be disrupted if the radical left imposed an arbitrary end of life for GSM!
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House pressure on the FCC continues, with Friday’s hearings on FCC process reform, including testimony from all four active FCC Commissioners (Republican Commissioner Meredith Baker has quit the FCC). I associate myself with the remarks of Seton Motley on the preferred outcome of FCC Process Reform: “FCC ‘Process Reform’ Should Be About Reducing FCC Power. Oh, and making them obey the law.”
Meanwhile, as much as we talk about what’s wrong with the FCC and other issues, it’s good when I get to report on people getting ready to fight back. Jim DeMint is questioning the plans for the new National Emergency Alert System, while Verizon’s fighting back on the ridiculous FCC price controls on data roaming designed to help Sprint compete without actually investing in a better network.
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