Some legislative action still ongoing: the Senate looking to fix the ECPA, an email search law that was written to the technology of the time, and now defies the expectations of its framers.
I was told Amazon and eBay would like the sales tax compact, but eBay is coming out against it, spamming its users. But the Senate continues to support it.
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So yes, CISPA passed the House. Unsurprisingly, Anonymous isn’t happy, what when as things stand Lulzsec already is getting hammered. Greater information sharing is a threat to online anarchists, as well as foreign private and state actors.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where Jay Rockefeller may stall on an ego-driven separate bill. I think the bill’s a good idea. It’s not perfect, but not all of the criticisms floating around are correct. In particular, SOPA is a red herring, and totally unrelated. CISPA is about information sharing, not regulation.
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So the House did not pass the amendment to CISPA that they probably should have passed, but the House did act to find a compromise that would ensure our needs are met, while addressing the privacy issues some have.
While the above-linked criticisms are legitimate, it is the case that not that all privacy criticisms of CISPA are legitimate. “Privacy” has become the vague catch-all for left-libertarian positions that “for the children” has become for progressives. All too often there’s no actual meat to the criticisms. Heck, half the people complaining about privacy would tell you that CISPA is the new SOPA, when the two bills are entirely unrelated. It’s baseless scaremongering designed to defeat Republican efforts and clear the field for Jay Rockefeller and Barack Obama to act.
I do plan to say more very soon on CISPA, explaining why we should pass the bill. Watch RedState.
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CISPA continues to remain the big story right now. It’s moving on, though some are concerned that it was effectively renegotiated in back room meetings. It needs scrutiny before passage, I’m thinking. It’s probably a decent but watered-down bill at this point, but let’s look before supporting at this point. We need a good cybersecurity bill, not just any old thing.
Which is exactly what Jay Rockefeller is up to: flailing about, expanding government willy-nilly, in the name of cybersecurity. The SEC? Doing Cybersecurity? Insane.
I like the idea of the Internet Freedom bill, though. The global trend is away from freedom online, and it’s up to us to try to do something about it. The idea that the bill would hurt Net Neutrality is just a bonus.
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I have a charity event I’m participating in tomorrow (I’m the one doing The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II), and I’d like to have slept for it, so this may be briefer than usual.
Looks like a push for real patent reform is brewing. After the lawyer- but not innovation-friendly America Invents Act was signed by Barack Obama, we’ve been left with a need to fix the actual problems with the US patent system. the i2Coalition and Google are backing anti-Patent Trolling ideas. There’s got to be a way to continue to reward small-time inventors without allowing the fakes to abuse the system.
Do Americans have a duty to diminish the security of their communications to ease government spying? Some seem to think so, as we’re reminded of in the flap over Apple’s iMessage being more secure in its encryption than government would like. Let me remind you though that any back door that government can exploit, China and Anonymous can, too.
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Here we go again. The Weekend-at-Bernies-ificatoin of Aaron Swartz continues. He made an example of himself to become an anti-copyright martyr, and now we’re supposed to degrade property rights online to give him his way anyway. Pass.
Computer Fraud and Abuse is a problem, but foreign threats are an issue, too. That’s why we also need to pass CISPA which started off as the low-regulatory, small-government alternative to the Democrat power grab, if you recall. Funny how the so-called libertarians only rally agains the GOP proposal, and stayed silent against Lieberman-Collins last time.
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Jeff Flake. Jeff Sessions. Ron Johnson. Tim Scott.
Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio. Mike Lee. Rand Paul.
I’m generally pleased with all eight of these guys being in the Senate. They were on opposite sides of the sales tax compact amendment vote, though. If you look at the way Governors split on the issues, you’ll see similar responses. Effective conservative Governors have fallen on both sides, including neighbors Haley Barbour and Bobby Jindal.
I’m fine with the compact. It’s Constitutional and merely lets states preserve existing revenue streams, without having to defy basic economic reality by unilaterally cooperating in the rewrite-the-sales-tax Prisoner’s Dilemma. That is, any one first state that shifts from buyer-owes to seller-owes in sales tax, creating the marketplace of sales taxes that compact opponents favor, automatically creates a disincentive for businesses to set up shop there.
So, we pass the compact as the best practical solution.
Recently at RedState: Ajit Pai on Robert McDowell is worth a read. Then there’s Seton Motley on Marco Rubio challenging Internet regulation.
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An interesting development in the President’s Cybersecurity order: his people are going hat in hand looking for industry buy-in. Perhaps they fear actual legislation?
Of course, when it comes to industry and the administration, their relationships can’t always be as cozy as Google’s with the President’s men, including the FTC Chairman. Google really is the caricature of Halliburton that existed in the minds of the radicals.
Microsoft is beginning to realize their ad campaign is failing because nobody cares about privacy, it appears.
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Ah, Free Press. One of my early favorite tech topics at RedState. One of the more visible George Soros-funded fronts, along with Public Knowledge. I have to say my early hits have been somewhat successful too, when Free Press completely gave up on Save the Internet as a fake left-right thing, instead fully integrating it with the Free Press extremist brand. Remember when they could fool solid groups like Gun Owners of America with their dishonest rhetoric?
I mean, they do still have language up that says “Organizations as diverse as the Christian Coalition for America, Moveon.org, the ACLU and the American Library Association have joined in support of Net Neutrality.” But, what? MoveOn, ACLU, and ALA are ‘diverse?’ Get real. Christian Coalition is the only right-wing fig leaf they have left, and Christian Coalition isn’t exactly known as a small-government group, nor a tech policy leader. Come on. I won, they lost. Net Neutrality was exposed as a single-party, left-wing effort, like so many others of the extremist Obama regulators. Time to… Move On.
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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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