Look, 11,000 pages of regulations have been added under Barack Obama. Consider that the Federal Register only needed 71,000 pages total in 1975. These regulations are being added without transparency, as well.
This is too much, and he wants to grow government further with an executive order on Cybersecurity, which is rightly opposed by a group of Senators in the Wall Street Journal. Enough is enough.
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I know, it’s terrible, but after missing Friday due to the RedState upgrade, I feel behind tonight and so am just going to have to speed through some of this tonight.
Ah, the ARRA, aka the Porkulus. Picking Internet winners and losers in Colorado, and probably nationwide in many “little” stories the national media chooses not to pick up.
That, combined with the final, eventual word that the FCC is looking at a national Internet tax, is why we must all be aware, and make the country aware, that a vote for Barack Obama, and only a vote for the President, is a vote for greater government and less liberty online.
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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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Yup, CISPA is still the top story. It will improve our security, which matters in an age of Chinese and Anarchist Internet attacks. And unlike Lieberman-Collins, Which is the bill being pushed in the Senate, no government power grab is involved.
So the House is right to challenge the President’s push for Lieberman-Collins. Lungren’s PRECISE Act is another bill that would create no new regulations. That’s the kind of approach we need. Remove impediments to greater security. No micromanagement.
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Yes, we beat SOPA, but the problem of foreign infringers is still around. And we’re not just talking about online copyright infringement, either. Copies of clothing, purses, gadgets, you name it: foreign free riders are a problem. It’s an important tradeoff to find, so an open process for the Darrell Issa OPEN Act is a good one. A slow, consensus-based approach is also smart, so I’m glad consensus is what Eric Cantor and John Boehner are demanding from a bill on this topic.
The alternative is picking winners and losers. That’s not good for government to do, even if it’s been a problem for a long time, to the annoyance of Frédéric Bastiat.
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Sometimes, the anarchists lose. Even in leftist Sweden, The Pirate Bay’s founders lost their last appeal. It’s guys like these, who deliberately put up a system for infringing on US copyrights while playing word games to justify it, that motivated SOPA and that drive the desire for a treaty like ACTA.
Google considers its privacy changes a public policy issue as the firm is getting plenty of criticism. This suggests to me they believe the critics won’t actually stop using Google services like Gmail, but will rather try for government regulation.
Considering Google is implementing a censorship plan much like that Twitter recently announced, and yet you don’t really see the same angry protestors saying they’ll quit using Google services in protest, that did a “Twitter blackout,” I think Google’s right that nobody will quit them over any of this. Hey, people: If you don’t like Google, use somebody else. It’s not that hard.
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There’s a lot of fear going around about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a plurilateral agreement under the WTO between the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Morocco. Some of the fears look real, some don’t. For example, even though it was negotiated in secret, the text is easily available.
Another false complaint is that it’s another SOPA, when in fact such a claim misses the point. SOPA was a bad bill, as it turned out to be a censorship bill that defied due process, but the intent was to fight the problem of free riding on copyright and trademark. Crossing international boundaries has been a cheap and easy way to cash in on another country’s copyright and trademark laws without having to abide by them. SOPA tried to fix that in a crude, rude, and ineffective way. ACTA has more options, and doesn’t have to resort to censorship, necessarily.
I’ve just read the treaty. I don’t really see a problem. Even if infringement isn’t ruining the movies and music, trademark and copyright are Constitutional concepts worthy of protection. That’s why some of the anti-SOPA leaders are promoting their own bill.
The pro-liberty position is not one of anarchy. It’s time to get reasonable protections in place. Maybe I missed something, and ACTA is a problem. But the best argument I see against ACTA is that it only includes a few countries, and not those best known for infringement (such as China, either China in fact). ACTA may yet be harmless but ineffective, as opposed to SOPA being harmful and ineffective.
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So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for many Google services.
Note that the new policy changes nothing about what Google already knew about you. It just changes what certain Google sites will use about you. As Marsha Blackburn and other members of Congress begin to look into it though, Google isn’t helping its case by pleading that it’s alright because certain users are excluded, which just furthers the premise that there’s something wrong with it.
But ultimately, you’re in control of what you do online. Personal responsibility: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
I feel vindicated though in having about a dozen Google accounts for the limited times I had use for their services, usual in the course of helping somebody else. Different accounts for different uses and different sites. It was never hard. You just had to do it. Oh, and not use their email.
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Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the Obama got the concept right when he said “It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated.” Foreign countries should not be allowed to be free riders on American copyright.
So I’m glad to hear that Patrick Leahy is open to SOPA alternatives such as the Ron Wyden/Darrell Issa OPEN Act. Follow the money. If money can’t be made from Americans by selling infringing materials back to Americans, then property rights win the day. And we can achieve that goal without censorship.
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Filesonic stops infringing. I guess the site’s leadership didn’t want to go to jail like Ninjavideo, or get hit like Megaupload did. People put up with ad-laden, obnoxious ‘file sharing’ sites when they want to download something that can’t be distributed legally, by less annoying sites. Everyone knows this.
It’s a good thing that Megaupload was taken down. That was a blow for property rights. But not all in the anti-SOPA coalition support property rights. They don’t want prudent copyright protection laws to fix the problem of foreign free riders, and want us to wink and nod at infringers. Look, even if we repealed the Sonny Bono act, or even the copyright act before that, we’d still have copyrights that needed protection.
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