Special Tuesday edition! Having been very busy hitting a launch window for a client, I had to skip Friday and Monday. So to make up for it, this week I start on Tuesday.
Riddle me this: FCC refuses to be transparent about its dealings with LightSquared (who by the way just changed CEOs, as the firm continues to flail desperately in response to the FCC’s LTE refusal), but FCC wants broadcasters to put files online. I’m with Richard Burr: Let’s look closer at that plan before we let FCC go ahead with it.
And speaking of the un-transparent FCC, Democrats are trying to talk down Chuck Grassley over his insistence on transparency, but have no fear: the House is now on the case.
The insistence by both the FCC and by LightSquared that no information be turned over to Chuck Grassley is itself suspicious. More investigation is essential.
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FCC overreach doesn’t seem like it should be a new topic, but it actually is. Consider that the FCC is threatening to get into cybersecurity which is interesting since the Congress is working on it. FCC wants to get into campaign finance regulation. And it’s unclear whether the FCC would enforce White House calls for new privacy regulations.
The runaway FCC to me is the biggest reason to fear UN regulation of the Internet. A treaty would give the Barack Obama FCC an excuse.
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Happy Monday. Wait, Monday, good? Well, it was for me. I hadn’t been properly rested in two weeks thanks to CPAC, weekend travel, and catch up work after.
You want to know how desperate the Obama/Reid Democrats are to pass that cybersecurity bill? Janet Napolitano is lying about the ACLU to try to gin up support.
Speaking of lies, Soros-funded radical PIG Free Press apparently lied to Marsha Blackburn. Under oath before the House committee. Oops.
And Google wasn’t exactly ethical when it apparently circumvented people’s privacy settings on Apple iOS as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
So much dishonesty, so little time. Fortunately we observed Washington’s Birthday today, so the only other story I’ve got is that China continues to persecute Apple while the “We can’t wait” adminstration… waits.
The big stories this week continue to be LightSquared and cybersecurity. Even as House Democrats complain about government doing too much, incredibly, we see that Senate Democrats are so inflexible that John McCain is in a gang of Republicans to fight the Democrats on the cybersecurity bill. Consider that. That’s how extreme Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, Jay Rockefeller, and Susan Collins are on this. John McCain is putting together a team to make a Republican bill with Kay Bailey Hutchison and others, rather than sign on with a Democrat on a bill. Danger, Will Robinson! Harry Reid is that much of an extremist!
Reid is rushing to pass it, but details come out anyway, such as an attack on FOIA. Transparency! Not.
Speaking of transparency, the firm that the Barack Obama FCC has remained oddly silent on, and that insists the FCC should remain silent on, is ready to go on the offensive. It almost seems like LightSquared bet the company on this, and will go down swinging. They may end up making a spectrum trade though, which if workable would be interesting.
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I meant to talk about the cybersecurity bill on Monday as it’s a big story. But, it’s gotten even bigger since. You see, a broad spectrum of Republicans is coming out against it. Names like Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Mike Enzi, Saxby Chambliss, Jeff Sessions, and even Lisa Murkowski are against the crazy Rush Harry Reid and the Democrats are putting on the bill pushed by Joe Lieberman, Jay Rockefeller, and Susan Collins.
And they’re right to oppose it. The case is overblown, and even if they claim the Internet Kill Switch is gone, it’s still a power grab. We’re at the point where Dianne Feinstein is a voice of reason, as she promotes voluntary data sharing, a plan Tech at Night has previously supported when also proposed by Dan Lungren in the House. Yeah, seriously. If you know California political history you know how funny it is that Republican Lungren and Democrat Feinstein now have another thing in common. But I think they’re both right on this. The way we’ll get more secure is to share more data and to prosecute the offenders.
In other major news, the FCC has rejected LightSquared’s proposal to build a terrestrial wireless LTE network.
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Yup, I’m back. And I have roughly a week’s worth of stuff to cover, so let’s go.
Top story seems to be that The Obama/Holder Justice Department has no problem with Google’s vertical integration takeover of Motorola Mobility. Interesting. I also await word on whether Google will drop all aggressive patent lawsuits, as they claim to use patents only defensively.
Some people never learn. Google and Microsoft support the runaway FCC against Republican attempts to constrain the regulators to using clear, consistent, fair rules for spectrum policy. Sure, I understand that some such as Darrell Issa are unhappy about the unlicensed spectrum restrictions, but my view on this bill is mend it, don’t end it. What we do need to end is the ability of the FCC to micromanage industry by managing the FCC in a reasonable and responsible way. Greg Walden’s bill should pass in some form.
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Sometimes, the anarchists lose. Even in leftist Sweden, The Pirate Bay’s founders lost their last appeal. It’s guys like these, who deliberately put up a system for infringing on US copyrights while playing word games to justify it, that motivated SOPA and that drive the desire for a treaty like ACTA.
Google considers its privacy changes a public policy issue as the firm is getting plenty of criticism. This suggests to me they believe the critics won’t actually stop using Google services like Gmail, but will rather try for government regulation.
Considering Google is implementing a censorship plan much like that Twitter recently announced, and yet you don’t really see the same angry protestors saying they’ll quit using Google services in protest, that did a “Twitter blackout,” I think Google’s right that nobody will quit them over any of this. Hey, people: If you don’t like Google, use somebody else. It’s not that hard.
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There’s a lot of fear going around about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a plurilateral agreement under the WTO between the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Morocco. Some of the fears look real, some don’t. For example, even though it was negotiated in secret, the text is easily available.
Another false complaint is that it’s another SOPA, when in fact such a claim misses the point. SOPA was a bad bill, as it turned out to be a censorship bill that defied due process, but the intent was to fight the problem of free riding on copyright and trademark. Crossing international boundaries has been a cheap and easy way to cash in on another country’s copyright and trademark laws without having to abide by them. SOPA tried to fix that in a crude, rude, and ineffective way. ACTA has more options, and doesn’t have to resort to censorship, necessarily.
I’ve just read the treaty. I don’t really see a problem. Even if infringement isn’t ruining the movies and music, trademark and copyright are Constitutional concepts worthy of protection. That’s why some of the anti-SOPA leaders are promoting their own bill.
The pro-liberty position is not one of anarchy. It’s time to get reasonable protections in place. Maybe I missed something, and ACTA is a problem. But the best argument I see against ACTA is that it only includes a few countries, and not those best known for infringement (such as China, either China in fact). ACTA may yet be harmless but ineffective, as opposed to SOPA being harmful and ineffective.
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So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for many Google services.
Note that the new policy changes nothing about what Google already knew about you. It just changes what certain Google sites will use about you. As Marsha Blackburn and other members of Congress begin to look into it though, Google isn’t helping its case by pleading that it’s alright because certain users are excluded, which just furthers the premise that there’s something wrong with it.
But ultimately, you’re in control of what you do online. Personal responsibility: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
I feel vindicated though in having about a dozen Google accounts for the limited times I had use for their services, usual in the course of helping somebody else. Different accounts for different uses and different sites. It was never hard. You just had to do it. Oh, and not use their email.
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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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