So I spent my Tech time tonight writing about Net Neutrality. I suggest reading that. It’s still a bad idea, because it’s founded on premises that aren’t true, and doesn’t address the real issues.
Meanwhile industry’s fighting it out over Net Neutrality 3.0: the return of the revenge. Who are Obama’s picked winners and losers, and are they winning or losing enough? Do they think they can bet more?
Speaking of picking winners and losers, we’ll have to see what comes out of Senate patent negotiations. Last time the Senate worked on this there was a good Republican bill and a bad Democrat bill.
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So a continuing look at the NetMundial meeting to argue why American stewardship of the Internet is bad. It got hijacked by the Net Neutrality folks and the anti-American folks (with NSA as the word the Orwellian sheep are bleating), which tells you all about the orientation of this movement. Fortunately our adversaries have all the efficiency of the UN: “There were so many welcome speeches, and they went so much over time, that we did not even begin the substantive work of the conference until 5:30pm.”
Even as Putin calls the Internet a CIA project, Obama wants to hand over the Internet to these guys? Insane. Of course, it’s insane that he’s trying again on Net Neturality, though amusingly some Democrats are complaining this third attempt compromises too much.
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While Bitcoin is traceable, that process can be made very difficult by a determined attacker, because of the existence of sophisticated money laundering operations in the Bitcoin community, operations designed specifically to aid criminals. So I think it makes sense for the FEC to place cash-like restrictions on Bitcoin. As long as we’re stuck with these laws, it doesn’t make sense to give Bitcoin a special exception.
The quest to deliver the Internet from American-guaranteed liberty and into Russo-Sino-tyranny is on, down in Brazil. They call it NetMundial, but’s really a one country thing. It’s just an anti-American hate fest.
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Edward Snowden is in full propaganda mode for Vladimir Putin, basically becoming Putin’s puppet. I’m sure he’s enjoying his award nominations while his patron state terrorizes women.
Barack Obama showed weakness when he even floated the possibility that America would turn our control of ICANN over to other countries. Down in Brazil they’re all over that idea (the anarchists are claiming they want a non-governmental control, but look, in a world with Russia and China, and even the EU countries like Germany having ‘national champions’, that’s not happening). India’s game, too. Republicans, and heck it’d help if Democrats did it to, must signal that the next President will not let this happen.
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As the rest of the world attacks us every day, people just keep looking to demonize NSA. And it’s foreign threats we need to worry about, and that link doesn’t even talk about the state-sponsored threats out there.
Troubling news, as Democrats want to apply speech codes online, using a shooting to push for online censorship. Never let a crisis go to waste, so say the progressives.
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If you want an explanation of the ‘Heartbleed’ bug in the news, Francis Cianfrocca gives a good explanation in Coffee and Markets. But more important is his point about NSA. He always speaks carefully about that organization, but in his roundabout way he made an excellent point: NSA has a dual mandate. NSA’s job is both to break into enemy communications, and to protect our communications. The Heartbleed bug is so devastating that if they knew about it, they’d have to work to protect us from it, before someone else could use it against us. That’s how bad it is. There’s no way they knew about it a year.
If you don’t like that businesses hire lobbyists, shrink government and quit picking winners and losers so they don’t have to.
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The Obama administration’s argument for handing the Internet over to the UN is bonkers. Literally they’re saying that the answer to them complaining that we’re in control, is to hand the Internet over, and hope they behave. Republicans are right to try to prevent this.
Protip: running programs to check somebody else’s computers for critical security holes, without asking permission first, is most definitely a crime. By the way, anyone trying to tell you that NSA has been using the known OpenSSL “Heartbleed” bug for a long time had better be careful, since the bug has only existed for so long. Of course, who seriously trusts ‘anonymous sources’ in this day and age? Those are what they use to hit Republicans, so why should we trust them now?
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Mike Lee, we’re your friends here at RedState. We backed you in the primary, and we’re sure to back you going forward. But please, lay off on his Comcast/Time Warner deal. The arguments you’re making, at least as portrayed by The Hill, are the same arguments that were used falsely to fool conservatives into backing the Net Neutrality power grab. Now they’re being used to trick us into backing an antitrust power grab.
First off, even if Net Neutrality wasn’t fixing an imaginary threat, the kind of discrimination you’re talking about is already banned by consent decree from the Comcast – NBC Universal deal. So your fears are doubly unfounded. But don’t take my word for it. Let the market work. Markets are how all of us speak, and we know better than government.
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I talk about anarchists often in this space, but I mean it. These people are a threat. Here’s one cell making threats and demanding $3 billion from Google in blackmail.
And that’s why it’s so incredibly insane that the US Government keeps playing blame the victim with these guys, as in the Wyndham case. It’s going to be up to the Congress to reel in the FTC on this.
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Funny how Bitcoin ATM installations get all that hype, but their later flops and removals get much less attention.
They’ve got to be so desperate for good news in the Bitcoin community. Imagine being one of those suckers who bought in at $1000 or even $800, only to get hit with the steady drumbeat of Bitcoin criminality and government attacks.
And don’t forget: Bitcoin mining is getting harder all the time. As time goes on, mining is going to get so hard that the pool will thin, making it easier for a well-off team to take over 51% of the network and hijack the whole thing. If that hasn’t already happened yet. Because if you had 51% of Bitcoin, wouldn’t you… hide some of your resources under an alias so as not to scare people off?
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