Regular readers know I’ve been hard on Google for wrongdoings, and think Google got off way too easy for the Safari spy hack, and for the WiSpy situation, but some of these attacks right now are silly. Youtube is a user-generated content service. As such, Google doesn’t produce what’s on there, and can only take things down if they’re breaking the law to be posted. The fact that some grandstanding Attorneys General are trying to bully Google into censoring the service, is the real troubling issue here.
This is completely different from the Adsense situation, where it was shown that people at Google were seeing sites for illegal drugs and approving them for ad revenue It’s not even comparable, and people are hoping you don’t realize that. Stop making me defend Google here!
Further, if it’s “coercive” for Google to put conditions on the inclusion of Youtube on a television, including a) correctly implementing Internet standards and b) giving it prominent placement, then trademark rights themselves are coercive, people. Again, quit making me defend these guys. Get better complaints.
Like advertising services. People are acting outraged that AT&T is going to sell aggregated, anonymized data, but this is the sort of thing Google has been doing for years, and look at all the people still using Gmail.
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Wow. Even as it comes out that Apple is going to pay more than Pandora for its coming radio service (which is probably going to be a windfall for small publishers), here’s a great set of answers from Marsha Blackburn on IRFA for conservative activists.
Good news: it only took $5,000 to get a Wikileaks person to… leak information. Ha. More of this, please.
Remember when I shook my head at all those digital libertarians stupid enough to vote for Obama? Well, heh. Now we find the Obama IRS is targeting open source software groups for tax repression. Heh. Told you so.
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Seen on RedState this week: 10 questions for Obama’s nominee to chair FCC. It doesn’t sound like his answers are all great, which is in keeping with this adminstration’s inability to follow through with good spectrum policy.
In video games, this Microsoft announcement means both more and less than it’s made out to be. Yes, they are backing off on some of the mandatory online stuff, and removing whole features (like trading digital games) in order to respond to Sony. But they’re not promising no DRM, and in fact they just promised no selling of digital copies. However what they did do is 1-up Sony, who has left used game restrictions to publishers.
No, no, no, do not pass the Lofgren bill. Using or hijacking other people’s computing resources without permission to use them for your purposes, that should be a crime. If I accidentally leave my car unlocked, and you come swipe it, we don’t say “Oh well, you should have been more careful,” and let you off without penalty.
Aaron Swartz wanted to be the martyr. He made himself one. He only faced years in prison because he chose it. Instead of pleading guilty, he wanted a big, showy trial. Changing the law because of that person is just ridiculous and anti-property rights.
IRFA is a bill seemingly written by Pandora to stick it to copyright holders and pad their bottom line.
Other Internet radio firms are doing fine. Spotify’s growing. Apple is reportedly in negotiations with copyright holders to create their own service. Pandora is probably feeling the competitive pinch since Spotify came over from Europe, and instead of competing and innovating, wants the government to pull a Net Neutrality and shift some rents their way.
Why do we want to impose price controls? Look, if you came to me and said here’s a bill to deregulate the whole thing, I’d be all for that. But IRFA doesn’t deregulate. It tightens regulations. It picks winners and losers.
This is the same old stuff we’ve been seeing from Washington since January 20, 2009. Washington has been tilting the playing field for all those hipster-filled online firms that love Obama, and worked to re-elect Obama, and now they’re trying to wrap a free market flag around it and get us to sign on.
Didn’t we settle the price controls debate decades ago? Reject IRFA, Republicans. Thanks.
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We’re still at war online, guys. The Chinese are scouting us and even criminal enterprise is under constant attack. And make no mistake DDoS attacks affect not just the target, but the networks surrounding the target, too, so even a criminal racket like Silk Road should have attacks on it stopped, for the health of American networks. And again, the anarchists SWATted a member of Congress, Mike Rogers, to fight for weaker security online.
Yet, The President and Democrats continue to obstruct CISPA, instead of getting the job done. This guy made illegal executive orders on the topic, but as soon as we take good, light-regulatory legislative action, he suddenly wants to slam on the brakes. Shameful.
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Justice is impeding the Sprint/Softbank merger. Gee, whoever could have predicted that if Sprint funded the left-wing effort to embolden Obama administration action, then Sprint itself could suffer bad consequences? I wonder. It wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t point out that Sprint Nextel itself had a history of mergers, such as the Sprint-Nextel merger, did I? Hmm.
Hey Chuck Grassley: The first amendment is not a suggestion any more than the second amendment is. There is no Video Game exception that I saw. You’d have to be as special as the Vice President to think think citing the words of a crazed murderer as an authority helps you make a point, anyway.
Besides, it is not your job to dictate ‘artistic value’ to others, nor does your own job have ‘artistic value.’ So if you would silence others who do not have ‘artistic value,’ then that do we conclude about your right to speech? Everybody knows you never go full Biden, Senator.
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Two points on cybersecurity tonight. The first is that Harry Reid and Barack Obama aren’t on the same page. The latter is still working toward a (probably illegal) executive order, while the former is talking about trying again to pass the rejected Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act. Meanwhile we backers of the Marlin Stutzman campaign have been vindicated, as Dan Coats is siding with Harry Reid on this, the Internet Kill Switch bill, with the IKS removed but everything else left intact.
With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?
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Oh man, I forgot to finish this Friday night. Oops.
Funny how Google says they can’t fix Googlebombs when the fact is, Google is constantly improving its search algorithms. After all, the Bush-era Googlebombs of WhiteHouse.gov disappeared pretty quick after Obama was elected.
Stuff like this is why I don’t expect Google’s regulatory problems to go away in the event of a Romney win. Google has left its systems open (Blogger, Search, Youtube) for the left to abuse the right, and has been slow to react. It’s going to be very easy for the left wing of the GOP to get talked into expanding government to come after them, unfortunately.
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