Commerce. “The business of America is business.” Innovation online is growing business, and the most important takeaway you could ever get from Tech at Night is that we need to stay out of its way. BfA seems to agree.
And some honest government action on spectrum could be a great start, but we probably won’t start down that road until after January 20, 2013 at the earliest.
Instead, we get stagnation from the Obama FCC. Stagnation and attempts to stifle free speech.
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Privacy? You want privacy in the digital age? Start by repealing campaign finance laws before you wag your socialist finger at the private sector.
Al Qaeda also denied 9/11 involvement at first, but we knew the truth. Also, how can Anonymous deny involvement in an attack when they claim to be unorganized? It’s these slipups that let us know the truth about them: they’re an organized online terror and crime group.
To paraphraze the fictionalized Wyatt Earp: “I see a Guy Fawkes mask, I kill the man wearing it.”
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It’s funny how certain names come up again and again in this space. There are just certain Republicans who are becoming solid Tech leaders. Marsha Blackburn is one of them, pushing to force Barack Obama to take a stand against the Chinese online.
Again, a Republican governor comes out for the sales tax compact, this time Governor Christie. The Marketplace Fairness Act I still say needs firm, explicit protections against a national sales tax added onto the state harmonized sales taxes, but the principle is reasonable.
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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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Imagine if we’d banned automobiles because all the old business models that were destroyed by them got government protection. Imagine a government that unfairly killed innovation in order to give well-connected businessmen a leg up on upstart competition. That’s what big media outlets are asking for when they come after Dish Network’s innovative DVR service. And of course, given the Obama administration’s track record of unfairly picking winners and losers, they might get what they want.
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Quick hits night. Enjoy!
Google beats Oracle on the matter of patent infringement in the big Java/Android case. So the only question left is how the copyright matters will be resolved.
New York legislators want to censor the Internet? Come on guys, come on.
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The FCC and the radicals are at war with the secondary spectrum market. Gigi Sohn even tried to make the point at the Less Government debate that license holders don’t own spectrum. That’s true. They own the licenses. That’s where property rights come in.
So it’s disappointing to see Democrats still piling on against Verizon even as the push begins to go after Dish. As an aside, to Koch-funded groups ever get called “public interest groups” the way Soros-funded groups do?
Marco Rubio does not want the UN regulating the Internet. Good on him.
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In case you missed it, Friday’s Tech at night featured Q&A with Rep. Steve Scalise. Don’t miss is now.
Team Soros, assemble! Remember when it was “wrong” for AT&T to get spectrum by buying T-Mobile? Remember when I said it should be allowed because the Obama administration and the radicals were making it too hard to get spectrum any other way? Vindication, baby: The left unites to fight Verizon buying spectrum another way. Before the excuse was to prevent industry consolidation. Well, Verizon is buying from cable companies, not wireless phone providers.
Note that Verizon has strongly refuted their claims, including the dangerous, crypto-socialist idea that the FCC should be allowed to dictate to Verizon and Comcast an alternate transaction. Such as one to benefit T-Mobile.
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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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So, LightSquared. It’s a funny turn this whole thing has taken. Way back at the start, when I was excited for LightSquared’s potential as a 4G competitor, I was told that they were the next Solyndra. Then, when the Obama administration and LightSquared both reacted badly to requests for oversight, I was convinced. Now, though, defenders on the right are cropping up again for LightSquared. I’ll say this: transparency in the FCC is worth fighting for, but a solution that leads LightSquared build a terrestrial 4G network is also worth finding.
See if you can spot the problem: As AT&T warns that FCC meddling is raising prices, the FCC is off expanding wireless subsidies.
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