Gotta love it when Tech at Night is declared because Comcast, despite telling me they’d auto-bill my card, choose not to do the auto-bill and instead just shuts off my Internet out of the blue. Lovely. So anyway, I’m unfortunately now low on time to create lengthy narratives, so we’ll do what we can.
So, Steve Scalise, a rising tech star in the House, is at it again. HR 3310 passed I believe through suspension, and now it’s up to the Senate to move on the bill. It’s a simple, but effective concept: Take 8 separate reports the FCC is currently making, and turn it into one report. Efficiency and transparency rolled into one.
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Memorial Day weekend brought little news, so Tech at Night will be quick tonight. Enjoy.
It’s an argument we’ve all made, but it apparently still needs to be made: Market pressure is better than government at protecting people’s ability to get what they want. We can see this from the actual behavior of actual companies, and that’s just one reason that Net Neutrality and countless other power-grabby regulations are wrong.
The FCC is America’s greatest impediment to universal access to high-speed Internet. Get it out of the way.
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So, Cybersecurity. I’ve spent so much time talking about why the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity bill in the Senate is terrible, and anti-PROTECT IP champion Ron Wyden has taken up the opposition as well, but there is need for some enhanced ability of government to coordinate against and to attack Internet security threats.
Here’s a Reddit post that should scare people about the kinds of ongoing criminal enterprises that are out there, online, worldwide. Here’s the kind of research that demonstrates the need of the good guys to be open and to collaborate. Think about what happens when (not if) the technology that goes into these cash cow botnets (some run by Anonymous) instead goes into spying (some done by Wikileaks) and into terrorism (some done by Anonymous).
Cybersecurity is, on some level, easy to understand as an issue. We know there are people online who break into computers. Retransmission Consent is a tricker issue, as it’s regulatory inside baseball between local broadcasters and local cable providers. Two heavily regulated industries battle it out over a fine point of policy. It’s hard for a conservative to grapple with it, sometimes.
But I’m going to disagree with with this post by Gordon Smith and call television broadcasters the new manufacturers of buggy whips. Right now they’re still important for some people, to be sure, in the same way that some people will use a land line phone instead of wireless Internet to stay connected.
But younger people are moving away from it. “Broadcast-only” is a misleading term. I’m in that category, but not because I watch broadcast television. I watch pay TV. It’s just called Hulu, not cable.
Further, I doubt that broadcasters really are the best source of information anymore most of the time. People are using the Internet more and more without having a cord in the home to bring it in. iPhones, Android phones, and yes even Windows phones, are collectively taking over the phone market. In so doing they also take over the information market at home.
This is why it’s wrong to maintain the current retransmission consent rules, and why it’s wrong to try to block spectrum incentive auctions to encourage the shifting of spectrum from broadcasters to wireless Internet providers. Even if we thought it was legitimate for government to try to prop up broadcasters instead of opening the market, it’s pointless to have government stand athwart what the people actually want to spend their money on, yelling stop. We’ll just get run over, and hinder innovation in the progress.
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The masks are slipping on Cybersecurity. The CISPA debate has died to a dull roar now that the House is done with it, while the Senate may or may not pass it, and the President has promised a veto. And yet, still not outrage against Lieberman-Collins, despite Jay Rockefeller (who introduced a version of the bill the previous two Congresses) admitting he’s anti-business and anti-profit, while demanding government dictatorial control over the private property online. Seriously, in justifying the bill he says “Corporations are unlikely to regulate themselves out of profits,” so the message is clear that like any socialist, he’s trying to eradicate private profit.
Meanwhile we again and again prove information, not regulation, is the key to improving security.
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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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Am I tired of expressing dissatisfaction with the Obama FCC and other government intrusions? Never!
Al Franken is setting up an unfalsifiable rationale for government action against Verizon and Comcast. Gotta love that, eh?
I’m sure he, the FCC, or both will try to overturn the courts who say bundling is not anticompetitive. I like bundling. It saves me money when I’m buying both things anyway. Then again, I like choices in the marketplace.
Why we want FCC subsidizing tablet makers though, I have no idea.
Chuck Grassley’s threat seems to be working at least, as FCC starts to break down on LightSquared transparency, a necessary step toward being able to confirm the President’s new appointees to the commission.
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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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Welcome to Tech at Night, the series the radical left says is shaping the debate. I sure hope I am. After losing on Net Neutrality and on the America Invents Act, I’d like to get a win.
The next chance for a win is in the House, which is debating SOPA, the bill that would create a national censorship blacklist online. Helping to lead the fight against SOPA is actually Google, who joins with other firms to oppose the bill. I know. Whodathunkit? But they’re right on this one, which is why we’re seeing weird things like Darrell Issa stick up for Google as the firm becomes a scapegoat for foreign infringers.
Tumblr has joined the fight, encouraging you to contact your member of Congress while the site draws attention to the issue.
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Why can’t the news come in even intervals, instead of batching up all at once?
So yes, the Senate Net Neutrality vote is coming up. Credit where it’s due: Kay Bailey Hutchison moved the ball forward on this, no doubt about it. Credit also to Marco Rubio making headlines with his strong support of the repeal.
And Rubio is right: the whole thing is ridiculous. This regulation closes; it does not open the Internet. Which is why Obama is threatening a veto: can’t have the Congress undoing a regulatory power grab, can we? The representatives of the people, what do they know?
Don’t forget to tell your Senators, especially if they’re Democrats or Scott Brown, to vote for the repeal!
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Mary Bono Mack, pay attention: Here’s the model for any privacy ventures you should attempt: voluntary action by private individuals, educated by simple government actions. If you really must get government involved, teach the people to fish, so that they can protect their own privacy for a lifetime.
Because if we insist on regulating the Internet problems of the moment, not only do we expand a government that’s already to big, we risk looking pretty stupid, too. Ah, Prodigy. I never did get their modem to work.
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