John McCain. Lisa Murkowski. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Saxby Chambliss. Richard Burr. Dan Coats.
No, I’m not listing the centrist wing of the Senate Republicans. I’m listing some of the co-sponsors of SECURE IT, the bill that Senate Republicans have been forced to bring forth because the extremist Cybersecurity bill by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins just couldn’t be bargained with. That’s right, John McCain of McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and McCain-Lieberman couldn’t find a way to negotiate a compromise on this.
It’s the right bill to pass. It’s since gotten oversight champion Chuck Grassley and TEA Party favorite Ron Johnson on board, among others. It addresses the key security problems we face without giving the proven-incompetent feds any new powers over the Internet. Here’s KBH on the bill.
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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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Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the Obama got the concept right when he said “It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated.” Foreign countries should not be allowed to be free riders on American copyright.
So I’m glad to hear that Patrick Leahy is open to SOPA alternatives such as the Ron Wyden/Darrell Issa OPEN Act. Follow the money. If money can’t be made from Americans by selling infringing materials back to Americans, then property rights win the day. And we can achieve that goal without censorship.
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Today, the House of Representatives voted to repeal Net Neutrality. H.J. Res 37, a resolution invoking the Congressional Review Act to reverse the FCC’s Net Neutrality order, passed the House under H.Res 200 by a 241-178 vote. Republicans voted 236-0 for repeal, while Democrats voted 178-5 against repeal. The five Democrats? Boren of OK, Conyers of MI, Costa of CA, Peterson of MN, and Shuler of NC. So of the Democrats you called, two went our way. We’ll have to remember the ones who chose to side with the San Francisco Democrat agenda instead of the (slightly) bipartisan position.
I feel good about this big win in the House today. I’ll let Fred Upton tell you why this vote was important:
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The final House vote is coming to repeal Net Neutrality via the Congressional Review Act. I’m pretty interested to see how many Democrats we can get in the House, because it may give a clue of how many Democrats we can get in the Senate. Remember: under the CRA we only need 51, not 60.
I hope we don’t have to fire up the CRA next over socialist wireless data roaming regulation. As I pointed out earlier this week, Sprint stopped investing in its network, while AT&T and Verizon spent even more. So now Sprint customers end up having to roam more when off of Sprint’s network. Should Sprint be allowed to make up for that by getting the government to force a special deal? I don’t think so. Regulation should reward investors and punish free riders. Only then do we truly look out for the public, the people who need more investment made.
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I’m late. No excuses. Let’s go.
So the courts threw out Verizon’s challenge of Net Neutrality, rejecting the very clever argument made by Verizon that it wasn’t premature. So now we wait for the actual publication of Net Neutrality to take place.
Well, to a point. The Republicans aren’t waiting and will vote this week in the full House to repeal Net Neutrality under the Congressional Review Act. Remember: this cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and so when it passes the House we only need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60. Seton Motley has some phone numbers to call if you’re represented by a key Democrat.
Tell ’em that even FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, as part of the 2/5 of the FCC that voted against Net Neutrality, still thinks it was a bad idea. Ask them his question: “Nothing is broken on the Internet, so what are we trying to fix?”
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