It’s not just Robert McDowell that’s moving on from FCC. Julius Genachowski is, too, and while Genachowski hasn’t been very good at all, we could have done worse. Just look at NLRB. Let’s hope we don’t do worse after all with his successor.
Another big story is the Senate’s passage of the budget amendment incorporating the interstate sales tax compact. Some are bothered by this, but I still say it’s the right thing to do unless you’re going to rewrite the sales tax laws in every state. And that isn’t happening because the prisoner’s dilemma is keeping any one state from going from a buyer-owes to a seller-owes sales tax model.
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More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.
The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.
Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.
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Aaron Swartz committed a modern crime: he unlawfully used the MIT computer network, automated the download of many, many copyrighted works from JSTOR, and then infringed on the copyrights of those works by engaging in mass redistribution.
Swartz then, to the great sadness of those who knew him, killed himself rather than face possibly decades in federal prison. That act has infused the entire situation with great emotion, driving left-libertarians out to campaign against copyright. It’s also encouraged some on the right to make the best argument there was against the Swartz prosecution: that it was a case of an overzealous government official seeking to destroy a person, as an example or a feather in a cap.
It turns out that wasn’t the case at all, though. It turns out Aaron Swartz was the only one looking to make an example out of Aaron Swartz.
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So even as Eric Holder is pushing back against the Weekend at Bernies-ification of Aaron Swartz, the man who committed premeditated crimes (as the puppet on the strings of the callous Larry Lessig, perhaps?), was caught, and was getting prosecuted for his high-profile sabotage of one of America’s leading academic institutions. It’s rare that you’ll see writers at RedState agree with that guy, but Moe is pushing back against the excesses of the Swartz defenders as well, and I pretty much agree with Moe.
Guys, if you want to push an anarchic anti-copyright agenda, do so on its own merits, as Joe Karaganis does. Don’t use the corpse of a suicide to do so.
There is room for IP reform in America, with excesses like the Sonny Bono act in the picture, and odd situations where Frito Lay can use patent and trade dress, two distinct concepts, to attack the same competitor. But the Swartz fan club is as auto-discrediting as the Sacco and Vanzetti crowd ended up being.
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So Republicans checked up on the Broadband Stimulus, yet another pork barrel spending project by the President, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid: Surprise! It was a wasteful failure, like the rest of the jobless stimulus.
IP reform: I’m not optimistic of copyright reform soon, though it is a populist thing the TEA party could do against Hollywood and the joint efforts of big government and big business. But implementing loser pays against only patent trolls would be nice. But don’t forget that trademarks are completely out of hand, too.
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I’m constantly pointing out how New Zealand is making it itself into a bit of an anti-American legal haven, but they’re not the only ones who have a history of that. Thailand has had issues, so many that the government had to declare a Year of IP Protection, with renewed enforcement to go with it. And as it turns out, they have a long way to go, but even US industry groups recognize the progress. That’s good to see.
I imagine they don’t harbor fugitives like Kim Dotcom, either. Who may or may not drink 10 liters of Coke every day, then blame the eeevil Americans for the consequences.
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Been a while since we started with some Google. Taking fire from two directions right now: I’ve pointed out that we need to watch them to see if they end up as politically even handed as they now claim to be. Microsoft is also after them by attempting to discredit their privacy policies.
Here’s the problem though. Microsoft’s ad campaign assumes people actually care about privacy. They don’t. Their actions in the marketplace indicate otherwise. That’s the real reason people don’t care about long privacy policies. Which is also why the only net effect of a California simplified privacy policy rule, would be to drive job creators out of the state.
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The anti-copyright crusaders are going to try to use this latest DMCA horror story as a reason to eliminate DMCA. I disagree. Of all the DMCA uses that go on in this country, most of them fly under the radar. How many are correct? Probably most. Will mistakes happen? Yup. Are copyright holders overzealous? Yup. Is this reason not to strengthen the system? Yup. But it’s not reason to repeal it. It’s a tradeoff and a compromise.
Of course, the real motive of the typical Slashdot left-anarchist DMCA critics is to open the Internet to mass copyright infringement on free services like WordPress.com, Youtube, and others. These are the same people who think abusers should be able to go onto MIT’s network and abuse MIT’s JSTOR access to commit mass, premeditated copyright infringement, and then blame MIT, JSTOR, and the government for the crime.
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Sorry for the lack of Tech on Friday. I was sick and doing my best to sleep it off. I’m at about 95% now, so let’s catch up.
How do I know privacy regulation and legislation are bad ideas? Nobody actually cares. Sure, they talk like they care, but until people start taking proactive steps and act like they’re taking it seriously, I know it’s just talk. Just like how everyone says they hate Congress, but love their own representation.
So yeah, if you’re moaning about Google on your Blogger site, and emailing to your friends about it from your Gmail account, and using Google Maps to get directions to your privacy rally… I don’t take you seriously.
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