By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 13th at 11:00 PM  | 

Time to defend Google: It’s unfair to attack them for excluding Youtube from its “anti-piracy” penalties, when they’re also excluding every other popular site driven by user-generated content. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Youtube are four sites that, whether Google-owned or not, need to be indexed and valued to a degree. The point of the penalty is to punish illegitimate sites, not legitimate sites with some | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 9th at 01:30 AM  | 

With the Cybersecurity Act on hold for now, it seems like a slow news week, so a quick one tonight. We’re in a spectrum crunch, and as long as the Obama administration is restricting spectrum allocation, including the critical secondary spectrum market that firms like Verizon and AT&T are trying to operate in, it’s not going to get better. The Obama FCC claims to get | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 28th at 12:30 AM  | 

Senate Republicans have decided to take Harry Reid at his word that Republicans will have the opportunity to amend the Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill. So, many Republicans voted for advancing the bill, which passed 84-11. And oh boy it needs amending. Who are you going to believe? For it is Barack Obama. Against have been Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Heritage, and | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 24th at 02:30 AM  | 

It’s easy to see why there’s sudden, strong opposition to the Marketplace Fairness Act, as yet another Republican governor, Terry Branstad, backs the bill. I again state my opposition to the lousy language backing the bill, including “fairness” and “loophole”. Yes, that language is being driven by marketplace losers, but both sides of this debate are ponying up cash. I favor the bill on its | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 12th at 02:30 AM  | 

US attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom have been delayed until 2013. It is unconfirmed whether the delay is related to the need to send a reinforced tanker to New Zealand in order to have a vehicle strong enough carry his weight back to the United States. In the meantime, the hubris (and food) filled man is trying to dictate terms to the US. That won’t | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 10th at 12:30 AM  | 

Darrell Issa’s House Energy and Commerce is going to have a special hearing with all five members of the FCC, including newly confirmed members Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai. The FCC is expected to be questioned about issues ranging from wired phone competition to spectrum. I hope Mitt Romney’s people are listening, because the hearing should also highlight regulatory reforms needed across the executive branch | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 5th at 12:00 AM  | 

It’s Independence Day, which was very nice for me since I kept on resting and feel just about healthy now. No Tech on Monday thanks to my cold that wiped me out since Sunday. Unfortunately Google decided today was the day to celebrate a song that, while American, was specifically designed to carry political meaning as well as to reply to the Christian and patriotic | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 2nd at 03:00 AM  | 

Harry Reid may be on a mad dash to bring the radical Liebmerman/Collins/Rockefeller cybersecurity bill, but a broad spectrum of Republicans continue to fight. Democrats may have toned down its Internet Kill Switch provisions, but still is a massive power grab online, and the new SECURE IT act is a much better idea. What I absolutely love about SECURE it is that it hits all | Read More »