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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I meant to post over the weekend, but with RedState so active for Easter, I decided just to cancel the Friday Tech.
Hey folks, here’s more evidence: Population density matters for Internet speeds. Wealth also matters. Those who don’t adjust for these factors, and tell you US Internet speeds are slow or bad, are selling something. Usually government.
And yes, it’s still a problem that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to oppose global Internet regulation through the ITU. Some say the administration was duped, but I think they just don’t oppose global regulation and governance. Obama wants to bow to foreign countries by letting global tyrants hijack the Internet from the free peoples of the world.
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The evidence mounts that we need to respond to Chinese attacks on American industry. But what do we do about it when we have few tools short of military attack? Hit them back in kind, I would think.
Of course, Seton Motley says Barack Obama is attacking our Internet access with his illegal, overreaching regulations. Remember: the courts have already pointed out his NLRB efforts have been flat out illegal, and the FCC’s Net Neutrality efforts have also been overturned once before.
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So, the President and other Democrats seem to think more government is the answer to our cybersecurity problems. the Chinese are attacking us, and will continue to do so going forward. Hard to see how more regulation on our wend will help that. Fighting back might make more sense, so long as we don’t make the Internet unusable in the process.
Of course, some threats are domestic. Gangs like Anonymous need to be found and jailed. Again, regulation isn’t the answer there. Police work is. Especially since this Anontard attack was on… the Federal Reserve. Oops.
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An activist is dead, by his own choice. He also chose to commit crimes to push his agenda. Nobody denies he did it. They only deny that he should have been prosecuted.
I can understand the man’s family and friends feeling grief, and lashing out. But for anyone else to attempt to use this event to push an agenda, discredits his agenda. If you need to use the suicide of a criminal in order to advance your policy goals like a vulture, your policy goals probably don’t have much going for them.
And that’s all I have to say about that for now.
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Message to The New Republic: The left-right antiSOPA coalition isn’t getting back together because the right half still opposes Internet regulation, while y’all keep pushing stuff like privacy regulation and Net Neutrality.
Also, in case you missed it, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai returned to RedState, this time to talk about government’s oversized spectrum holdings.
Here’s a brief conversation with Marsha Blackburn about tech policy.
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Hey La-Mulanites! I’m Neil, and let’s play Tech at Night.
Anyway. Yeah, I took a break, as you may have noticed. It turns out between Christmas, New Year’s and the Fiscal Cliff, not much happened for me to cover, anyway! So let’s get started.
Two legislative notes: the outmoded video privacy law passed, while the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act is dead in the water. I always said its best chance was President Romney and a Republican Senate, but now that’s not happening. Poor Amazon, bargaining with states on the assumption this would happen.
And in case you forgot, a Cybersecurity executive order would be a bad thing, per Marsha Blackburn and Steve Scalise.
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Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!
We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.
The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.
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They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, that corporations with ties to the President would offshore billions of dollars to avoid paying taxes! Did Obama and Schmidt even feel guilty as Obama said one thing, while working with Google who was doing the opposite?
Because remember: as I’ve been saying all along, The global Internet regulations the ITU is threatening are in the spirit of the Obama- and Schmidt-backed Internet regulations we’ve seen the last four years!
And let’s be clear: the Obama administration isn’t done regulating now that the second term is coming.
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Jim Cicconi doesn’t think the ITU treaty will be that bad for business, but the more I think about it, the worse this could be for liberty. This could be the time that big government worldwide gets together to clamp down on the free exchange of information online. That’s why there is strong and growing opposition to what is brewing there.
And yet the administration is quiet.
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