Good morning. Last night Tech at Night didn’t quite come because I was not feeling well at all. But there’s stuff I want to highlight so this morning I’m going to make it happen. Here we go!
Want to be more like Europe? Well, in one way, we do: The EU has rejected Net Neutrality regulation as unnecessary. The EU’s equivalent of an FCC Chairman says “We should allow network operators and services and content providers to explore innovative business models.”
Can we actually stand to be more regulated than Europe, and drive innovation across the Atlantic? I don’t think so. We absolutely cannot tolerate proposals like this to force AT&T, Verizon, and others to open their wireless networks to each other, essentially partially nationalizing and socializing a major part of our telecommunications infrastructure going forward.
I can think of no better way to kill the wonderful wireless revolution we have going on, and end investment in it, than to turn everyone into free riders off of each other. This would devastate rural Internet access by creating a tragedy of the commons out there. We cannot let this happen.
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Good evening. Even as Google tonight wins some recognition from conservatives for its observing Veterans day on the search homepage, the firm is still under fire. As Machiavelli warned, become the big guy and everyone turns on you. Now it’s the big television networks going after Google. Specifically, they’re blocking Google TV from watching streams of their shows. Fox has since joined the blockade I believe.
This strikes me as a scared overreaction, and a poorly thought out one at that. As soon as Google TV’s User Agent is changed to match a desktop browser, the blockade is history and there’s nothing the networks can do about that.
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Good evening. Apologies again for missing two of three Tech at Night episodes last week. I can only plead an overabundance of desire for the weekend causing me to be forgetful on Friday. But that just means we have more to look at tonight, so let’s go.
Yes, the forces of Net Neutrality Internet regulation were beaten badly last week. How badly? We already knew that All 95 PCCC Net Neutrality Pledge signers lost, but on top of that, the PCCC itself raised only $300 on the cause. Even if every donor gave only one dollar, that’s the sign of a failing fringe movement, not a popular position with broad, bipartisan support.
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Sorry for missing Tech at Night on Monday, but I had to rest up for Election Day. And of course, as you may have heard, Republicans ended up having a good night. What you may not have heard though, was that the forces of radical Internet regulation had a very bad night. Democrats went for broke on Net Neutrality but as covered by Moe Lane and RS Insider, support for unilateral regulation of the Internet killed Congressional jobs. Every single member who signed the PCCC pledge to support the FCC on Title II reclassification, lost. Every one of them!
It’s time the FCC owned up to the rejection the American people dealt their plans, and pledged to wait for Congress to act.
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Good evening. Through the magic of Claritin, my favorite drug, I’m able to bring you tonight’s edition. On the Net Neutrality front, the progressive left is getting delusional. They’re pretending that it matters what their members of Congress think when their President has done not one thing to stop his FCC from going off on its own to break the law, defy the courts, and go ahead with Title II Reclassification. This is not Sparta. This is madness.
Of course, the online petition? Meaningless of course except as a trap to build mailing lists. And it’s not me who says that, it’s Clay Johnson who says that, founder of Blue State Digital and the New Media Director of Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s petition is nonsense upon stilts.
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Opinions differ on the Cato Institute, but they’re right on when it comes to the ACLU’s deceptive arguments on Net Neutrality. Case after case of alleged net neutrality “violations” are raised and demolished. And remember, this is the case being used to justify urgent action by the FCC in defiance of the law and the courts.
It’s all a bunch of garbage.
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Yes, we’re talking about Google again tonight. Of course they never did delist Daily Kos after the Chris Bowers manipulations, despite having gone after Kay Bailey Hutchison for breaking their rules. But we have more to ride them about:
They’re blocking pro-life ads again. These ads are running on local television in DC for Republican Missy Reilly Smith who is challenging Delegate Holmes Eleanor Norton, or Norton Eleanor Holmes, or whatever her name is. I mean really, she doesn’t even get a vote. Local television will run the ads, but Youtube will not. Interesting, eh?
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Good evening. I’ll level with you: I’m exhausted. All summer I got virtually no exercise because, as it turned out, I’ve developed asthma triggered by the air pollution that gets worse during the summer here in inland southern California. So I’m ramping back up my weight lifting, and as I adapt, it’s wearing me out. So tonight I’ll be brief.
The push continues for Republicans to listen to us and and join to pass legislation preventing the FCC from implementing devastating, systemic regulation of the Internet through the Title II reclassification power grab. Roll Call describes the troubles on this front with Congressional Republicans hesistant to touch Net Neutrality at all.
Honestly I’m glad we’ve pushed the debate to the point where Net Neutrality is so radioactive that no Republican wants to get anywhere near it, but we all must remember that the FCC remains under Barack Obama’s control, not ours, even if we win the election. Action must come sooner, not later, to ensure the FCC respects our need for an open Internet with free and active investment from private business.
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Good evening. I’m starting on tonight’s Tech at Night earlier than usual. That’s because I have much to cover. Sometimes a whole bunch of interesting stories just pop up all at once, and I don’t want to leave any out. So let’s hurry up and start.
For all the way the far left is flipping out over the Fox/Cablevision dispute – in which Cablevision refuses to pay for Fox’s content, and so Fox in turn threatens to take that content away – the FCC let the cat out of the bag by pointing out that Cablevision customers have four or even five alternatives, depending on where they live.
Competition protects the public better than government ever, ever could.
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Previously we covered Chris Bowers working over at Daily Kos on a linking scheme to manipulate Google’s search service. Now we come across a new attack on the company, a plan to manipulate click tracking the firm does to figure out what links are most interesting to its users. Of course, the Daily Kos folk want to smear Republicans using Google.
Again, we look to Google to see if they will penalize the firm for attacking it, or just wink, nod, and do nothing. They went after Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign for Governor over manipulative tactics. A failure to act against Daily Kos shows bias on Google’s part, no more, no less.
I’m actually mentioned, though not by name, in this Politico piece, and I stand by that position. Google needs to be fair and delist Daily Kos until these tactics are ceased.
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