By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 23rd at 03:30 AM  | 

FCC overreach doesn’t seem like it should be a new topic, but it actually is. Consider that the FCC is threatening to get into cybersecurity which is interesting since the Congress is working on it. FCC wants to get into campaign finance regulation. And it’s unclear whether the FCC would enforce White House calls for new privacy regulations. The runaway FCC to me is the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 21st at 02:30 AM  | 

Happy Monday. Wait, Monday, good? Well, it was for me. I hadn’t been properly rested in two weeks thanks to CPAC, weekend travel, and catch up work after. You want to know how desperate the Obama/Reid Democrats are to pass that cybersecurity bill? Janet Napolitano is lying about the ACLU to try to gin up support. Speaking of lies, Soros-funded radical PIG Free Press apparently | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 18th at 04:00 AM  | 

The big stories this week continue to be LightSquared and cybersecurity. Even as House Democrats complain about government doing too much, incredibly, we see that Senate Democrats are so inflexible that John McCain is in a gang of Republicans to fight the Democrats on the cybersecurity bill. Consider that. That’s how extreme Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, Jay Rockefeller, and Susan Collins are on this. John | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 16th at 03:00 AM  | 

I meant to talk about the cybersecurity bill on Monday as it’s a big story. But, it’s gotten even bigger since. You see, a broad spectrum of Republicans is coming out against it. Names like Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Mike Enzi, Saxby Chambliss, Jeff Sessions, and even Lisa Murkowski are against the crazy Rush Harry Reid and the Democrats are putting on the bill | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 14th at 03:00 AM  | 

Yup, I’m back. And I have roughly a week’s worth of stuff to cover, so let’s go. Top story seems to be that The Obama/Holder Justice Department has no problem with Google’s vertical integration takeover of Motorola Mobility. Interesting. I also await word on whether Google will drop all aggressive patent lawsuits, as they claim to use patents only defensively. Some people never learn. Google | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 7th at 02:00 AM  | 

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 4th at 01:00 AM  | 

Good news? I had a great Pastrami Burger tonight from a place called The Hat. Seriously: the pastrami itself is great, and I’ll probably go for the Pastrami Dip next time. Bad news? It was a busy evening and now I’m tired. The good news that wins out? Not much to cover tonight, so let’s go. In France it’s illegal to give away free maps. | Read More »

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

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 31st at 02:07 AM  | 

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 28th at 03:00 AM  | 

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 25th at 11:30 PM  | 

Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 23rd at 11:30 PM  | 

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. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 21st at 02:30 AM  | 

It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead. Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 19th at 12:00 AM  | 

So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today. We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 16th at 11:45 PM  | 

SOPA is dead in the House, says Majority Leader Eric Cantor, until there is consensus. Since there’s never going to be consensus on Internet censorship, Cantor seems to be saying the issue’s dead in this Congress. The President went mushy on SOPA, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats decided to push forward, but Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa, and House Republicans want to kill the bill. That’s | Read More »