With that business out of the way, back to Tech at Night. I for one am glad that Jon Kyl and Sheldon Whitehouse are having trouble coming up with a compromise. The Lieberman-Collins bill favored by Harry Reid and Barack Obama is terrible and just an awful, huge power grab. We’re better off waiting to see if we get a Republican Senate next time to pass something along the lines of CISPA or SECURE IT, than passing bad bill in compromise.
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When Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise first started talking about reforming the regulated relationship between broadcasters and cable companies, oh the fits that were thrown. Even a certain conservative group jumped out in front complaining. But look: these regulations are worth big bucks to the side they favor, and the negotiation deadlocks they produce don’t help the public, they only force everyone to deal with blackouts.
The comprehensive reform package commonly referred to as Retransmission Consent reform should pass. I wonder if FCC thinks it will, as it has begun by tweaking Must Carry rules itself, possibly as pre-emption?
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I know many RedState readers are big fans of Jim DeMint, so in my coverage of the Retransmission Consent debate, I’ve focused on him. However he’s not the whole story. This Congress, due to the TEA party-driven Republican majority, it’s been the House where our major regulatory reform successes have happened. And it’s Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and Bobby Jindal’s successor in the House, who is the champion of the Next Generation TV Marketplace Act there.
However I know that there have been skeptics on this reform, so I was fortunately able to snag some of the Congressman’s time, and ask him a few questions about the proposed reforms. Catch his answers below the fold.
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So, LightSquared. It’s a funny turn this whole thing has taken. Way back at the start, when I was excited for LightSquared’s potential as a 4G competitor, I was told that they were the next Solyndra. Then, when the Obama administration and LightSquared both reacted badly to requests for oversight, I was convinced. Now, though, defenders on the right are cropping up again for LightSquared. I’ll say this: transparency in the FCC is worth fighting for, but a solution that leads LightSquared build a terrestrial 4G network is also worth finding.
See if you can spot the problem: As AT&T warns that FCC meddling is raising prices, the FCC is off expanding wireless subsidies.
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So, the Internet died this week or something. CISPA was amended much, as I gather mostly tightening up some alleged privacy concerns. Then it passed the House. I don’t know if it’ll become law, but it’s a good idea. The comparisons with SOPA are deceptive.
Speaker Boehner cut to the heart of the matter, pointing out that President Obama’s CISPA veto threat was rooted in his desire to control the Internet. The White House was stung enough to reply, but it’s true: CISPA opposition is a ruse to fool feeble minded leftys into thinking Republicans are the threat, rather than the Democrat Cybersecurity bill in the Senate, pushed by Joe Lieberman. It’s Lieberman-Collins that’s the threat to liberty online.
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In an example of lucky timing, the GSA scandal proved why Darrell Issa’s DATA act was needed. Transparency in government allows for oversight. So the bill passed the House by voice vote.
I first floated a while back the idea that this sudden, strident CISPA opposition was roote d in a desire to distract the public from the much stronger and more dangerous Lieberman-Collins bill in the Senate. It’ll work with the libertarian left because hey, they’ll believe whatever the left says about eeevil Bushitlerian Rethuglicans. But it disappoints me when the right, including FreedomWorks, is tricked and puts effort into CISPA instead of Lieberman-Collins. Did we learn nothing from Net Neutrality?
But yeah, when the usual whiny groups along with Barack Obama and the administration are joining together to talk exclusively about CISPA but not at all about Lieberman-Collins, I’m right.
House Republicans may in fact limit the bill in response to the veto threat, but the fact is we need a flexible legal framework to empower the good guys to have information which is critical when countering bad guys who share information all the time.
International attacks are real though. In fact, everyone may want to check into this account by the FBI about a thwarted attack that may still infect your computer.
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What’s the ideal situation for the cable television marketplace? A free market. Cable providers should be able to negotiate, or not, with broadcasters and copyright holders to purchase streams to resell to their customers. Jim DeMint is trying to bring us closer to that by ending special leverage in the marketplace given to broadcasters.
You see, the rules in place now are not designed to create a free market. Just as the Net Neutrality regulations are designed to restrict customer choice, out of fear that those customers would favor paying for superior service, so too did regulators fear that cable companies would win in the marketplace. So regulations were put into place to favor local broadcasters.
There’s a lot of inside baseball here in the retransmission consent debate. It’s tricky to unwind a complex regulatory system. But DeMint’s plan is a step forward.
So is CISPA. Some say the bill is risky and may get too much information out into the open, with too little oversight. That might be right. The bill might stand tweaking. But the concept is good. I find it interesting that Google isn’t taking a position on it, possibly out of fear of a left-wing backlash.
You see, there’s more to CISPA opposition than just CISPA. There’s also the Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill at stake.
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I’m seeing some real panicked shouting online about CISPA, a new bill that some are calling “the new SOPA.” It’s absurd. The bill may not be perfect. It could have flaws. But the argument being hammered against CISPA again and again is that it may be used against copyright infringers who abuse networks. So? The only reason to oppose that is if you wish to destroy copyright property rights entirely, as the radicals do.
I warned about this way back during the SOPA debate. I predicted that the left side of the anti-SOPA coalition would try to hijack the movement into a general one against copyright, as the anarchists over there tend to do, and the shrieking over CISPA is proving me right. CISPA is not a bundle of mandates. It is an avenue to information sharing. Note that everything in CISPA is “totally voluntary,” per The Hill.
If someone and disprove that, and point to one or more mandates in CISPA, I’d like to know. Until then, the burden of proof is on the radicals to prove they’re not really out to protect Anontards and copyright infringers.
For now, it’s looking like CISPA is a solid response to The plans by the President and Democrats to expand government online, by regulating the Internet. Double regulating in fact, as every ‘critical’ industry is already regulated. So this whole “critical infrastructure” thing is more pretext than anything
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Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first.
Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. This is the one where ACU has come out against Jim DeMint, and that caught my attention. I have to side with the bill DeMint is sponsoring. I think ACU simply misunderstood what’s at stake here and had good intentions, but the excessive complexity of the regulations defeated them here.
The bill does not let cable providers become free riders, retransmitting others’ streams for free. It just stops the law from trying to dictate the parameters of the negotiations on retransmissions. I see no harm in that, and potentially much good.
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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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