Alright I admit it. I’m kicking off tonight’s Tech at Night with this article from NationalJournal.com because it mentions me. I like feedback.
But seriously it’s an important overview of Net Neutrality with respect to the conservative grassroots and the TEA party. Our side has been resistant to any action (Because as Digital Society points out, we don’t support action for its own sake), but the Obama FCC just might not give us any choice on that.
In fact, the FCC’s express words for months have been telling us that we won’t have a choice on that. The runaway FCC must be slapped down before they claim broad powers with Title II reclassification, and Congressional leaders have to take the lead on that.
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Tech at night will be brief tonight. It was my mother’s birthday last month, but I couldn’t buy her what I intended because I had several bills coming due at once. So, she got her iPad tonight. I’m taking suggestions for an iPad Sudoku game that’s as good as working on paper with a pencil. She’s adamant that nothing on the iPad will beat that, but if something’s good out there I want to show her.
But moving on to issues of national instead of familial importance, Seton Motley (yes, that’s two in a row I’m linking to him) has a story at Big Government that is headlined November 30th could be the day the government seizes control of the internet. Hyperbolic? Maybe a little, but make sure you read his piece to understand just how strong a power grab Title II Reclassification of the Internet would be, if the FCC were to try it.
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The Chris Bowers pagerank scam using a linking scheme driven by recruited websites is still in the works, but Google has not delisted Daily Kos. Interesting bit of bias there, huh?
And all I need say about Net Neutrality this week, and the urgent need for legislation to stop the runaway FCC, was said by Seton Motley at the Washington Examiner.
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If there’s one thing Google guards closely, it’s the secrets of its search service. Despite praising the virtues for the customer of transparency online, Google’s anything but transparent. Take a look at their webmaster guidelines, which in part explain how to avoid the Google Death Penalty.
But one thing that is clear is that linking schemes, particularly those using shadow websites, are forbidden.
So the question is: Is Google watching the Chris Bowers pagerank scam? Will they delist him and the entire Daily Kos.com domain if they find that he’s breaking the rules? It’s clear they’re recruiting people to spam links to pre-selected pages across volunteer website owners’ sites based on their use of a SEO Blogger checkbox option on their signup page. This is precisely the kind of illegal cross-link scheme Google warns about being an unethical SEO practice.
So the ball’s in your court, Google. If you do not delist Daily Kos for this behavior you call unethical, then you have a partisan political bias.
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Catch future episodes of The Needle for a special discussion of Tech at Night and my other project, UnlikelyVoter.com. Be warned, though, The Needle is a bit rowdier than RedState.
I’ve said it in this space before, and I’ll keep saying because the Lame Duck session is coming: Republicans need to get out in front on Net Neutrality and we need to do it quickly. We cannot hinder the Internet by forcing ISPs to go to court over Title II reclassification.
Imagine if every video you play online, every download you make, every OS upgrade you run, every podcast you play, all got slower, skipped more, and just became a greater drain on your time. That’s just the beginning of we face if Title II reclassification happens, and investor dollars are scared away from building private Internet infrastructure in America.
But that’s the situation. Henry Waxman is using Republican inaction to argue for radical FCC action. It shouldn’t be the case as Seton Motley points out, but that’s what he’s saying. So let’s judo this and fight back by using his own bill against him.
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Hello. The longer the Democrats are in Washington, the more the mask slips with respect to their true beliefs regarding freedom online. They claim they don’t want a government takeover, they claim they don’t want to regulate content, they claim they don’t want a kill switch, they claim they want to respect privacy, but time and again all of these issues just keep coming up.
Witness the new disaster coming out of the White House which would force private firms like Facebook, Skype, and RIM to assist the government with spying on you. They are to cripple, deliberately, any safeguards they have on your privacy to make it easier for government snoops.
Remember: already nothing prevents them from listening in on the Internet. What they are demanding now is a huge expansion of power to require encryption in America to be crippled for the benefit of domestic Internet spies. Or at least, that’s the phrasing the left used throughout the Bush administration, so I’m going to throw it back in their disingenuous faces every single chance I get.
Remember when fining Janet Jackson’s breast was the worst thing going on in Washington with respect to this stuff, and how horrible that was? As the sign goes, “Miss me yet?”
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Good evening. Welcome to the special, totally planned, and not at all a fallback because I wore out after a week of catching up after the RS Gathering, Saturday edition of Tech at Night. I did want to make sure we all read about this poll by Hart Research Associates which shows over 75% of likely voters (MoE should be about 3.4 for a sample of 800) saying that the Internet works.
Further, support for regulating the Internet is trailing badly at 51 against to 37 for, which means per my handy analysis tool I wrote myself for Unlikely Voter, there’s only a 1% chance per this poll that likely voters actually favor regulating the Internet. This poll is a clear and convincing rejection of the entire FCC/Free Press agenda.
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Hello! As it crosses midnight here in California, I apologize for the lateness but do return with yet another installment of Tech at Night.
Still don’t believe the socialist pushes at the FCC are driven in part by a desire to get free stuff? Take a look at the ITU Broadband Plan for the whole world, what with its insistence that governments must build Internet infrastructure, which of course would result in greater state ownership of the Internet.
Ars Technica points out also that the ITU claims that state Internet development will end poverty and hunger. Talk about socialist utopian thought! And we’re supposed to let these types get more power over the Internet with magical thinking like this?
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I skipped Tech at Night on Friday because I was in Austin for the Red State Gathering 2010, but I’m back now, so here we go.
We start off with what would have been the lead story on Friday, too: Net Neutrality hero and all around socialist gasbag Al Franken is now under a cloud of suspicion for ethics violations, violating Senate rules to spend money inappropriately on Net Neutrality advocacy, as well as using his role as Senator to raise money for private groups.
He’s crooked enough, he’s dishonest enough, and doggone it, people pay him.
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I’ve worn myself out tonight making last minute preparations for my trip out to Austin for the RedState Gathering this weekend, so this will be brief. Additionally, Tech at Night will not appear on Friday because I will be in Austin and away from Safari, whose great RSS reader is the most important tool I use to complete my Tech at Night research.
First off, the Google backlash is well underway. The firm seems to operate under the assumption that there will be no serious objections from the technical community to whatever they do, because of that “Don’t be evil” mumbo jumbo. But when articles like this at IT World show up with no purpose but to question the attitude displayed by Google and CEO Eric Schmidt, it’s time for a new plan.
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