By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 24th at 03:30 AM  | 

Let’s be thankful the Internet isn’t yet censored by a bill like SOPA, as it is Thanksgiving on the east coast as I write this. How many unions must back this bill and its Senate counterpart, PROTECT IP, before Republicans wise up and kill it? Remember, once you give the government censorship power, uses will be found for it. For the children! It’s just another | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 19th at 03:30 AM  | 

Some government mistakes slip by with only a few of us shouting about them. The Stop Online [Piracy] Act, or SOPA, is not one of those. People across the Internet are getting loud against the House bill and its Senate counterpart PROTECT IP, the one I’ve been yelling about for months, but many businesses are supporting. Yes, I’m going to be that guy, saying I | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 8th at 03:10 AM  | 

Oops. It’s midnight as I type this out. I just remembered I’d better do Tech tonight, so here goes. Fortunately I already did my reading! Urgent in the Senate this week is the upcoming vote on Net Neutrality repeal, which was already passed by the House. We need 51 votes, not 60. Less Government has a list of Senators to contact with this urgent message: | Read More »

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

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 31st at 11:00 PM  | 

Last week I noted that the FCC is officially moving ahead with its new subsidy program. The administration will convert the Universal Service Fund – currently taxing the public and handing it out to rural telephone carriers – into a grab bag of Internet subsidies. The rural phone companies are unhappy, and everyone else is racing to get a cut. C Spire, apparently serving many rural southern customers, | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 27th at 01:00 AM  | 

Top story is easy to pick tonight. The legislation that’s been known in the Senate as PROTECT IP, the Internet censorship blacklist bill that promises to make a huge power grab online, Communist China-style, has come to the House. They’re calling it by two different names: E-PARASITES and Stopping Online Privacy Act, but by either name it’s just as bad. Even as the current laws | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 18th at 12:30 AM  | 

Sorry if you missed Tech at Night on Friday. I was under the weather. But I’m back, and with so much to review. How about legislation, good and bad? Well, mostly bad. Senate Democrats continue to push for senseless regulation of 4G Internet speeds, hindering vital new technology to increase high-speed Internet competition in America. Worse, Democrat Anna Eshoo is piling on in the House. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 13th at 03:00 AM  | 

Oh for crying out loud. For all that Washington talks tough about getting Americans access to high speed Internet, the “supercommittee” wants to tax new spectrum licensees. That’s just what we need: make it more expensive to build out America’s wireless infrastructure in order to pay for the President and his Cabinet to hand out money to their friends and political supporters. Isn’t that special? | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 11th at 03:00 AM  | 

Columbus Day winds to a close, a cold slows me down, but Tech at Night marches on somehow. You know what’s also marched on? The New York Stock Exchange’s website. The anarcho-terrorists of Anonymous promised to take that website down (note: just the website, not the actual trading computers). Well, they failed, unless you count a two minute outage as success. Heck, RedState pretty much | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 8th at 03:00 AM  | 

Net Neutrality goes to court. Great news, too: Verizon’s preferred venue won the lottery, and the Net Neutrality fight will happen in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This is, of course, the same circuit that slapped down Net Neutrality last time in Comcast v FCC. Oh, but here’s a big surprise. Despite the FCC claiming previously that “We look forward to defending our open | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 27th at 03:30 AM  | 

Up late tonight. Spent the better part of the last 8 hours setting up my new computer*. Lots of data to transfer around and all that. But fortunately there aren’t many new developments lately to talk about, so let’s go. I’m going to start with LightSquared. Out of the blue, it’s been repeatedly claimed that LightSquared is “the next Solyndra,” and that some nebulous form | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 15th at 02:00 AM  | 

The FCC continues to stall national 4G wireless competition in America, as LightSquared continues to be stalled even after having to give up half its spectrum! Meanwhile the Net Neutrality power grab creeps closer to being official, at which time MetroPCS and Verizon will sue. I expect them to win and get the regulations tossed out, too, because the last time the FCC tried this, | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 7th at 06:00 AM  | 

As I’ve previously covered, the Department of Justice is suing AT&T, claiming its planned merger with T-Mobile USA harms competition in America. My retort has been market reactions to the lawsuit suggest it is the lawsuit that is anti-competitive, benefiting the existing national 4G duopoly: Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless. That Sprint Nextel is jumping in with its own lawsuit now ends all doubt: the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 31st at 02:30 PM  | 

Updated below… Today it was announced that the Department of Justice will attempt to block AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. The deal is needed for technical and regulatory reasons to allow AT&T to compete in the 4G wireless market with Verizon, Sprint/Clearwire, and with the upcoming competitor LightSquared. So why is the Department of Justice calling it bad for competition? Enter R. Gerard Salemme. It’s not | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 25th at 02:30 AM  | 

Even as the FCC hems and haws about AT&T’s quest for spectrum via T-Mobile, new evidence has come out that we simply need more spectrum for wireless Internet. The overload of the wireless networks in the parts of the east coast the felt the Virginia earthquake says it all. And remember: new spectrum means new investment to use that spectrum, which means jobs and economic | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 19th at 09:30 PM  | 

Happy Friday. We’ll start off this edition with Marsha Blackburn’s own post at RedState. There’s a reason I would like to see her rise higher on Energy and Commerce: she knows her stuff and is a fierce proponent of conservative values. I agree with her: government is not the solution to the privacy problem. I don’t agree with Joe Barton, whose plans for heavy-handed regulation | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 18th at 03:00 AM  | 

No really, Governor Haslam, you do not want to bring California taxation to Tennessee. Have you seen our unemployment? That’s why we just might defeat it at referendum. PETA people are hijacking phones, sending malicious messages without consent, and running up text message bills. People need to be careful about what they install, but this sort of thing needs to send people to jail, as | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 26th at 12:00 AM  | 

It was mentioned in the previous Tech at Night’s comments, but here it is directly: the NAB has come out against incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless Internet. I say we should dismiss their concerns. Incentive auctions are voluntary and compensate the original spectrum holders. Rights are respected, as we get a superior spectrum allocation for American needs. For once, the FCC has | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 7th at 03:30 AM  | 

I remember when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed. It created a boatload of new rules and restrictions on Americans, in the name of tightening copyright online. One of the key provisions of the DMCA is the “safe harbor” rule, which effectively turns ISPs into agents of copyright, by making them honor so-called DMCA takedown notices in exchange for not being held responsible for what’s | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 2nd at 12:00 AM  | 

When it comes to the FTC beginning to persecute Google, I think conservatives have mixed feelings because the problem of overbearing government is one of Google’s making. So while we do need to keep government in its place here, the situation is understandable. The FTC going after Twitter, though? That just doesn’t make sense. It’s not even the largest “social media” software around, not at | Read More »