Tech at Night: Thailand succeeding, Anonymous failing, Ben Howe asking a fair question about Google

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 14th at 03:30 AM  | 

I’m constantly pointing out how New Zealand is making it itself into a bit of an anti-American legal haven, but they’re not the only ones who have a history of that. Thailand has had issues, so many that the government had to declare a Year of IP Protection, with renewed enforcement to go with it. And as it turns out, they have a long way to go, but even US industry groups recognize the progress. That’s good to see.

I imagine they don’t harbor fugitives like Kim Dotcom, either. Who may or may not drink 10 liters of Coke every day, then blame the eeevil Americans for the consequences.

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Tech at Night: Ronulans and Bronys get wronged. No, really. Also, Dems wrong on Cybersecurity again.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 12th at 01:00 AM  | 

The UN’s WIPO is an established, but controversial, arbiter of Internet domain name/trademark disputes. So I find it absolutely hilarious that Ron Paul is using it to go after his own supporters. This is even sillier than Hasbro shutting down My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic, the game that raised thousands of dollars for cancer research.

Just because we have the right to do something, it doesn’t mean that it is right to do that thing. Sometimes exerting your rights to their fullest extent just isn’t the right thing to do, and some sort of solution should be found that’s win-win. Especially when we’re raising money for cancer, as in the case of MLP: Fighting is Magic in the Evo contest.

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Tech at Night: If people cared about privacy they already wouldn’t be using Gmail.

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

Been a while since we started with some Google. Taking fire from two directions right now: I’ve pointed out that we need to watch them to see if they end up as politically even handed as they now claim to be. Microsoft is also after them by attempting to discredit their privacy policies.

Here’s the problem though. Microsoft’s ad campaign assumes people actually care about privacy. They don’t. Their actions in the marketplace indicate otherwise. That’s the real reason people don’t care about long privacy policies. Which is also why the only net effect of a California simplified privacy policy rule, would be to drive job creators out of the state.

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Tech at Night: The DMCA balance is delicate. Deflating the Fed attack hype. No, Google’s ad service isn’t racist.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 7th at 03:00 AM  | 

The anti-copyright crusaders are going to try to use this latest DMCA horror story as a reason to eliminate DMCA. I disagree. Of all the DMCA uses that go on in this country, most of them fly under the radar. How many are correct? Probably most. Will mistakes happen? Yup. Are copyright holders overzealous? Yup. Is this reason not to strengthen the system? Yup. But it’s not reason to repeal it. It’s a tradeoff and a compromise.

Of course, the real motive of DMCA critics is to open the Internet to mass copyright infringement on free services like Wordpress.com, Youtube, and others. These are the same people who think abusers should be able to to onto MIT’s network and abuse MIT’s JSTOR access to commit mass, premeditated copyright infringement, and then blame MIT, JSTOR, and the government for the crime.

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Tech at Night: Right and Wrong answers on Cybersecurity

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 5th at 02:00 AM  | 

So, the President and other Democrats seem to think more government is the answer to our cybersecurity problems. the Chinese are attacking us, and will continue to do so going forward. Hard to see how more regulation on our wend will help that. Fighting back might make more sense, so long as we don’t make the Internet unusable in the process.

Of course, some threats are domestic. Gangs like Anonymous need to be found and jailed. Again, regulation isn’t the answer there. Police work is. Especially since this Anontard attack was on… the Federal Reserve. Oops.

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Tech at Night: Our Broken Patent System. Connecting the dots on pro-regulatory hypocrisy.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 2nd at 05:00 AM  | 

Hey Mark Cuban: We both know that when Obama signed the American Invents Act, crushing small businesses was a feature, since it meant a) more work for lawyers who backed the bill and b) easier competition for the big businesses who backed the bill.

I see the vultures using Aaron Swartz’s dead body for political purposes are now going full Weekend at Bernie’s on this. It’s amazing.

And yet nobody reconciles the Democrat outrage at this, with Democrat plans to ignore the Constitution and use Executive Orders on cybersecurity. If we allow stuff like what Swartz did, we’re letting cybersecurity threats go unpunished, sorry.

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Tech at Night: What goes around, comes around for Sprint. Hey Chuck Grassley: Everybody knows you never go full Biden.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 31st at 03:58 AM  | 

Justice is impeding the Sprint/Softbank merger. Gee, whoever could have predicted that if Sprint funded the left-wing effort to embolden Obama antitrust action, then Sprint itself could suffer bad consequences? I wonder. It wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t point out that Sprint Nextel itself had a history of mergers, such as the Sprint-Nextel merger, did I? Hmm.

Hey Chuck Grassley: The first amendment is not a suggestion any more than the second amendment is. There is no Video Game exception that I saw. You’d have to be as special as the Vice President to think think citing the words of a crazed murderer as an authority helps you make a point, anyway.

Besides, it is not your job to dictate ‘artistic value’ to others, nor does your own job have ‘artistic value.’ So if you would silence others who do not have ‘artistic value,’ then that do we conclude about your right to speech? Everybody knows you never go full Biden, Senator.

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Tech at Night: No, I don’t believe people care about privacy. Also, copyright roundup.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 29th at 03:00 AM  | 

Sorry for the lack of Tech on Friday. I was sick and doing my best to sleep it off. I’m at about 95% now, so let’s catch up.

How do I know privacy regulation and legislation are bad ideas? Nobody actually cares. Sure, they talk like they care, but until people start taking proactive steps and act like they’re taking it seriously, I know it’s just talk. Just like how everyone says they hate Congress, but love their own representation.

So yeah, if you’re moaning about Google on your Blogger site, and emailing to your friends about it from your Gmail account, and using Google Maps to get directions to your privacy rally… I don’t take you seriously.

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Tech at Night: Net Neutrality: The Return of the Revenge.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 23rd at 10:15 PM  | 

Quickly tonight, as I’m beat. Here’s more on the Netflix/Net Neutrality controversy, and how they’re making war on ISPs while regulations prevent ISPs from fighting back. A key point Fred Campbell makes: Net Neutrality does not protect and cannot even be invoked by consumers.

Just another reason we need to oppose Democrat plans to legislate Net Neutrality should the courts overturn it.

Yeah, their definitions of free and open are warped.

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Tech at Night: Fact versus fiction on broadband in America. Kim Dotcom weighs in with a new site.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 22nd at 01:00 AM  | 

New Zealand continues to let fugitive Kim Dotcom waddle free as his successor to Megaupload has launched. The US shut down his previous service, hosting files for law breakers, and now New Zealand is letting him start over with a new service. I look forward to people using it to infringe on New Zealand copyrights, and to distribute tools for stealing from New Zealanders.

It’s amazing how detached from reality left-wing tech policy gets. Connectivity is better and faster than ever thanks to the 4G wireless revolution, as Media Freedom points out. I guess that’s why when firms like Comcast try to expand access even further, they have to try to talk it down.

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Tech at Night: Netflix proves me right on Net Neutrality. DoJ on Swartz.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 19th at 02:30 AM  | 

Remember when they told you Net Neutrality was needed? Remember when we said it was really about favoring online firms over telecoms? Told you so, told you so, told you so. Netflix now blocking select ISPs, trying to use market power in order to bully their way to sweetheart bandwidth deals, knowing ISPs can’t fight back under Net Neut regs, aka the Open Internet order.

PS Told you so.

It remains ridiculous that the Aaron Swarz suicide continues be politicized to the point that we’re putting innocent prosecutors under pressure, pressure that defies cross-examination due to the death of the key witness.

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Tech at Night: The cozy Obama-Google Relationship continues

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 17th at 01:00 AM  | 

Google employees overwhelmingly preferred Democrats over Republicans in their political giving in 2012, and it shows. Yet another Google employee is hopping over to the Obama administration. This time it’s “evangelist” Vint Cerf who’s joining the National Science Board, appointed by the President

At some point doesn’t somebody become concerned about the appearance of impropriety? Especially when Democrat initiatives like a data cap ban would favor firms like Google over telecoms?

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Tech at Night: A word on the politicization of Aaron Swartz’s death.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 15th at 01:30 AM  | 

An activist is dead, by his own choice. He also chose to commit crimes to push his agenda. Nobody denies he did it. They only deny that he should have been prosecuted.

I can understand the man’s family and friends feeling grief, and lashing out. But for anyone else to attempt to use this event to push an agenda, discredits his agenda. If you need to use the suicide of a criminal in order to advance your policy goals like a vulture, your policy goals probably don’t have much going for them.

And that’s all I have to say about that for now.

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Tech at Night: WiFi relief for big conferences on the way. Tech lobbying arms race continues.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 12th at 02:00 AM  | 

For once I have some good news from FCC. The FCC is going to find some more spectrum to allocate for WiFi as unlicensed use. The idea is that everyone knows large events tend to have serious WiFi problems and this could help fix that.

Meanwhile, the tech lobbying arms race continues to grow. Facebook his growing its policy arm and Pandora is going to go all-out for the IRFA pro-Pandora regulation bill.

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Tech at Night: Google caving to Communists; Ron Wyden allying with Al Franken

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 10th at 01:00 AM  | 

And this is how that tech coalition begins to die: Ron Wyden working with Al Franken on large expansions of government online, a startling reversal from the anti-PROTECT IP Senator from Oregon.

Google caves to the Chinese Communists even as Google’s Eric Schmidt hands a propaganda victory to North Korean Communists. A pattern?

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