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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Whose side is Google on? We’re going to find out this year.

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

A few years ago, Google was deeply in bed with the left wing activists like Moveon.org and Free Press pushing for Internet regulation. When Obama was elected, Google got even more deeply embedded with both the left and the government. At this point, Republicans began paying more attention to Google and Google realized it had a political problem.

So, after years of lining up with the left to demand more government regulation of the internet, Google changed course. (“Google cozies up to the GOP”) Google promoted their Republican lobbyists, hired Republican consultants, sucked up to conservative organizations and even hired a squishy Republican, Susan Molinari (R-MSNBC) to run their DC office.

But if they were playing footsie with Republicans, Google was still sleeping with the Democrats.

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The Tipping Point

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  February 7th at 04:30 AM  | 

There is no permanence in politics. Democrats patting themselves on the back at a job well done will at some point be drowning their sorrows in beer as Republicans again talk about their ridiculous fantasy of a permanent Republican majority (this time without steel tariffs). People shift over time. Pendulums swing. And in the age of instantly lame ducked Presidents upon their swearing in for | Read More »

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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NBC: here’s the Obama administration’s white paper legitimizing drone strikes!

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  February 5th at 12:30 PM  | 

NBC News has gotten its hands on a white paper that’s being used to legitimize the Obama administration’s drone policy, and it’s a… doozy. Short version: members of terrorist groups actively attacking the United States (or our interests) can expect to be shot on sight; and that includes the members of terrorist groups that happen to also be American citizens. And the administration does not | Read More »

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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Obama losing his gun control campaign

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  January 24th at 12:00 PM  | 

New polling from Washington Post-ABC News and Pew find that President Obama’s campaign to repress the Second Amendment right “keep and bear arms” is faltering.

On January 22, 2013, Pew released polling results that found the public followed news about Obama’s gun control proposals closely and the reaction is mixed. Only 39 percent think Obama’s proposals are about right, while 31 percent think the proposals go too far. Or, as Politico put it, “39 percent back Obama gun plan.”

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Arrogance and Overreach

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  January 23rd at 04:30 AM  | 

Barack Obama was able to get Obamacare passed largely because he had a group of Democrats in Congress who were not running for re-election and thus had no fear of the voters. They overreached and the Democrats were swept out to the minority in the House of Representatives. In fact, the voters in 2010 wrecked devastating losses on the Democrats nationwide. When politicians, regardless of | Read More »

A quick look back at Obama’s first term

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  January 22nd at 03:00 PM  | 

“Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.” — Barack Hussein Obama, Inaugural Address January 20, 2009

There were many things that were disappointing about President Obama’s first term.

The good folks at Reason TV take a look at some of the disappointments in a new video retrospective of Obama’s rhetoric versus reality.

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Phil Mickelson hints tax changes may spur career change.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 21st at 09:30 AM  | 

Let me use short words, here*: if you want less of something, tax it. Because if you tax it, you will get less of it: On the day President Obama was sworn in for his second term, [top professional golfer Phil] Mickelson sent shock waves through the Humana Challenge when he said the political landscape in the United States was causing him to seriously contemplate | Read More »

The Loyal Opposition

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  January 20th at 10:42 PM  | 

Congratulations Mr. President on your second inaugural. Saying that makes some of you really enraged. I said the same on twitter shortly after his official swearing in. Several of the replies were embarrassing and atrocious. Some accused the man elected by a majority of Americans of treason. Some accused him of willfully destroying the nation. I believe the President’s policies are destructive and will harm | Read More »

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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