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Tech at Night: Kill the bad bills and regs: SOPA, Net Neutrality, “Anti-trust” favoritism

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 5th, 2011 at 03:00 AM  | 

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Tech at Night

There’s been a push lately to attack punitive, unfair taxes on wireless service, one that Erick Erickson signed onto, and was advertised at RedState. Ironically I only found out about it because I saw the ads while working on the code side of the site, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Anyway, that movement seems to have gotten a win, as the House passed the Wireless Tax Fairness Act, a 5 year freeze on new wireless taxes. Sounds good to me.

SOPA, the House answer to the Senate’s PROTECT IP, isn’t dead yet, unfortunately. This attempt to have the US government censor the Internet, and in fact forcibly steal domains from people, and cut off Americans from the rest of the world online, incredibly is being considered by House Republicans. Copyright apparently is sufficient justification for government of unlimited size. Kill the bill.

And what’s worse is that Republicans are being dragged along as dupes to help Democrats continue to justify huge Hollywood fundraisers by smacking the Internet around to favor the movie industry. Which is probably why the MPAA is trying to stifle criticism of the bill. Kill the bill.

Kill Net Neutrality too, no matter what John Forbes Kerry thinks. I want a market where people can pay for what level of service they want for wired Internet, not just wireless.

Kill the efforts to have government dictate to T-Mobile shareholders which US firms they can and can’t sell to, while we’re at it. AT&T is still trying, banging its head against the wall of the coordinated efforts of Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Sprint Nextel, and George Soros-funded groups like Public Knowledge.

Oh yes, and kill 4G overload problems by getting us more spectrum.

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COMMENTS

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  • fpete13527

    Neil, thanks for staying with NN and IP fights. These are critical beyond compare.

    I would have hoped the GOP House/Senate would have flattened and removed the Marxist Net Neutrality law by now. I am wondering what exactly the GOP is getting done right now besides caving and getting ready to raise tax “revenue.”

    I guess the GOP, Congress, minus a few, are saying that the only way to get us to take a stand on any NN issue is to remove us…..because we are committed to empowering Dem Progressivism/Marxism.

    If that is what they are saying, I will be happy to let them know that things are very far along the way to do just that.

    The GOP needs to get moving on this and stop the Dem/Marxist tactic of censoring and controlling the internet through NN and Copyright extremes.

    Great work Neil.

  • dcacklam

    Has never been about censorship or marxisim.

    It’s not about telling you what you can and can’t say online… Were it not for libs crying about talk-radio & advocating forced-fairness, this would be obvious…

    But due to the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ scare (nevermind that SCOTUS would never let that fly), people have the two confused.

    ‘Net Neutrality’ is about preventing regulated-monopoly service-providers from censoring content and/or forcing users into a proprietary ‘sandbox’ sold falsely as ‘the internet’.

    It’s about telling Time-Warner that they can’t sell ‘browsing our approved sites, e-mail, and IM – but no downloading large files, P2P, or Netflix’ as ‘unlimited internet’.

    And before you say ‘but competition can handle this’ – in most of the US – outside of large metro areas – there IS NO competition for broadband internet access. There are one or two companies (the phone company and the cable company) with a government-granted monopoly on the market. Unless you’re fortunate enough to live where there is 3G-or-better cell service, you’re stuck with that monopoly.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    First off, it was the Soros/Free Press “Save the Internet” PRO-NetNeut group that spread the story that Net Neut was about preventing content controls. It’s incredibly deceptive of you to come here and suggest it’s the opponents of regulation of floated that.

    How dare you come here and try to pull that.

    Get educated, son. Stop spreading malicious talking points, and maybe when you grow up and learn the issues involved, the adults will let you join the serious conversation.

    Until then, beat it, kid.

  • davejordan

    Neil,

    The origination of NN was about not allowing Cable (specifically TWCable) from squeezing access by their own subscribers to online services – such as RealNetwork’s Rhapsody, Pandora and other online music services.

    While Soros and the Left rapidly absorbed the talking points, and twisted them into something more to their own liking, the origins have been lost beneath the trash of a decade of clever marketing and PR.

    The issue with ProtectIP (and the need for us to kill this bill) is in line with what you have stated above. This bill IS just a protection racket for the Hollywood studios, the tottering record labels and the couture manufacturers.

  • davejordan

    The question is if not ProtecftIP, then what?

    There’s been more than a decade of this “He said, She said” stuff going no where. The positive of it is the incredible innovation that has occurred within the Tech industry. (Yes, iTunes rules), but the online locker services (cloud based storage) will push that to the next level.

    The problem is that pulling out the latest shiny toy and waving it in front of policymakers saying, “Look at this cool toy!” doesn’t address the underlying issue. They still need to be resolved. How do we protect no only the mass pirating of copyrighted music, movies and software but also the pirating of more “ordinary” items such as Flintstones vitamins, Viagra, LLBean boots and yes, Gucci handbags?

    Merely slapping back at the bill only plays into the hands of Google and the others of the Far Left who believe in silly things like “Creative Commons” (uh… that’s friggin communism folks,. Sorry. It is by definition.) and “Information just wants to be Free”. (Not if I create it. I’m getting paid!)
    What do you propose as a positive solution to allow ready transmission and approprate compensation?

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Cool story, bro.

  • dcacklam

    Started with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and similar groups…

    And it’s always been about technical and anti-trust type issues, not trying to censor content.

    This was going around in IT/internet circles long before anyone was talking about Soros.

    The concerns were as follows:

    1) Wired broadband internet service, by it’s nature, precludes the sort of competition that existed among dial-up ISPs.

    Whereas during the dial-up era, anyone could run an ISP and the phone companies made their ‘part’ selling everyone phone lines, in the broadband era ONLY a cable or phone company can run a wired ISP.

    2) Wireless technology was not (and in many areas still is not) sufficiently reliable, available, and capable to make up the competition-deficit caused by the change in technology.

    Satellite is too slow and expensive, and terrestrial wireless (3G/4G phones, WiMax, etc) lacks the coverage to be a reliable alternative. Hence, the majority of America gets their internet connection from the local cable or phone monopoly.

    3) Wired ISPs have already shown tendencies toward forcing customers into ‘sandboxed’ online experiences and censoring/sand-bagging ‘un approved’ content outside the ISP’s ‘parnter network’, kind of like the old days of ‘roaming charges’ on cell phones.

    4) While the phone and cable monopolies are created/protected by state/local government, there is strong economic evidence to suggest that even without the government protection, barriers to entry (the cost of running wire & building the associated infrastructure) would keep the phone and cable markets monopolized.

    The purpose of net-neturality, is to keep the internet an open medium where ‘all bits are equal’, rather than allowing a small group of monopolists to wall it off into proprietary fiefdoms.

    It has nothing to do with censoring content – never has, never will.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    The technical point you’re trying to talk about here is unrelated to the political issue. Get informed.

  • davejordan

    uh… No. Not a shill for the Clueless One. Just not signing on to Google’s agenda either. I’m rather educated on BOTH the political and the policy issues. Get off the political rail and read about the policy. Google (Obama’s Trust fund and his brain trust all in one) has teamed with Soros on more projects than I can contemplate.

    I agree with what you think NN is NOW. It has become a Soros funded anti-Talk Radio campaign. The FCC action NEEDS to be stopped.

    But that has almost nothing do with the original reasons why NN was first discussed and the phrase originally created. Sorry. I was there. You weren’t.

    And yes, I had worked for conservative MCs before that- both on the campaign trail and on the Hill.

    But to the actual point… Can you an swer that? If not ProtectIP, then WHAT?? Any suggestions? Because to do nothing merely plays into Soros/Google’s desire to not have any property rights (even though the current IP structure is tilted too far toward protection right now).

    The answer isn’t a full on “Kill IP” or the Copyright Commons crap that G is tossing around.