As Labor Day winds up out here, we have a brief Tech at Night tonight. Something to watch: Eric Schmidt is downplaying talk of Google wanting Motorola’s phone patents after Larry Page pretty much said the opposite. Who’s in charge here?
HP sues its own partner over its own idea. Who’s in charge there?
A Dutch court only found Samsung phones, not tablets, to infringe on Apple’s IP. A German court still disagrees, and is blocking two Galaxy Tab models. Who’s in charge of the EU?
New speculation is out that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are suing AT&T as an attempt to strongarm the company into a weaker negotiating position with the government. We need to show this administration the people are in charge, not the state.
This is one of those weeks when all the important stuff happens at once, and there’s much to cover. I’ll start with the big national story. As I previously covered, The Eric Holder/Barack Obama Justice Department is coming after AT&T, using its own odd brand of economics to claim that the merger with T-Mobile would make the wireless market less competitive. When in fact, as history has shown with deals like Sprint/Nextel, prices are only going to come down as the market gets more competitive.
But, nonsensical as it is, the Obama administration is pressing on with the same tired thinking that gave us zero net job creation last month, and downward revisions in prior months. So let’s sweep around and look at what’s going on, what others are saying both about the news and about the prognosis, beyond the Culture of Corruption aspect I already covered.
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So much going on suddenly this week. Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s DoJ has decided to come after AT&T for its plans to merge with T-Mobile, possibly doing the bidding of donors while hindering jobs growth in America as well as nationwide 4G wireless Internet competition. Sprint’s not doing much to keep Verizon in check; we need AT&T to have the spectrum needed to do that.
So Holder wants to drive Gibson manufacturing out of the US, and to keep T-Mobile in German hands, and prevent AT&T from bringing jobs back to America. Do I have that right? It’s no wonder people rate the Internet and Telephone industries much higher than they rate the government.
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Hello! There’s no one clear theme of things to discuss tonight. It’s a diverse list of topics, so let’s just muddle on through and see what’s going on.
We’ve got some good news from what the Republicans in Washington are going. On the Senate side, the side we haven’t heard nearly as much about thanks to the Obama-Reid majority there, conservative Republicans are taking key roles. Senators Toomey, Rubio, and Ayotte will join the Senate subcommittee responsible for FCC oversight. Get to it, gentlemen and lady.
Meanwhile, in the House, Speaker Boehner has come out strong against Net Neutrality, calling it a threat, and warning about follow-on regulation like the Fairness Doctrine. Committee members are active too, judging by H. J. Res. 37 by Greg Walden, Fred Upton, and the gang. This simple, readable, eight-line resolution disapproves the Net Neutrality power grab.
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On Monday I did the first half of my catchup work. Now we’ll do the second half. And one of the big issues coming up is copyright. Over the last thirty years, copyright in America has been radically reformed. While traditionally it worked as patents still do work, as a temporary grant of monopoly enforceable in civil courts, we’ve gradually moved them into the realm of criminal law enforced indefinitely. And I believe we’re gone too far in that direction.
So when I hear about the COICA, a new copyright and counterfeiting law promoted by the Obama administration, I’m concerned. At a fundamental level, the COICA would give too much power to government to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. No, copyright is not at serious risk in America today. It is simply certain business models that are failing, and it is not the place of government to try to prop them up.
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