Tech at Night: Apple negotiates while Pandora lobbies. Chinese attacks continues.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 20th at 10:30 PM  | 

You know what happens when you use other people’s email services, such as Yahoo or Google? You become especially vulnerable to attacks on your privacy, including the ability of the government to search your email provider’s computers. The ECPA is a red herring, really. Sure, we an tweak it, but when you use somebody else’s computer, I’m not sure you should have much of an expectation of privacy.

Hey, look: While Pandora spends money lobbying to try to change the law to rig the system, Apple is negotiating to get what it wants for Internet radio like a free market participant should.

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Tech at Night: We need a pro-innovation FCC. We need fewer pro-regulation Republican Senators, too.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 14th at 12:00 AM  | 

Sorry for missing Tech at Night on Friday. After that near-miss with a cold, I decided to start the weekend a little early that night. But we’re back. So with five days of news to catch up on, let’s see what we have here.

Here’s a reminder of why Net Neutrality was a terrible idea. Making people pay for what they use creates opportunities for innovation. If ESPN wants to negotiate bulk rates for wireless data, let them!

And yet that John McCain would add more regulations. We need less micromanagement of cable, not more.

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Tech at Night: Pass CISPA. Don’t pass a big, messy copyright bill.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 24th at 10:30 PM  | 

Forgive me for being a bit brief tonight. I’ve had caffeine-related sleep issues the last two nights, getting up at 2am wide awake. So… yeah I’m tired!

I was productive this morning at least though, which is why I was able to bang out finally this post on CISPA and why we need to pass it.

CISPA should pass, but it looks like Michael McCaul is ready to move on regardless, talking about his own cybersecurity bill.

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Tech at Night: CISPA moves on. Ayotte takes on the Sales Tax. Google defeats Viacom.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 20th at 04:30 AM  | 

So yes, CISPA passed the House. Unsurprisingly, Anonymous isn’t happy, what when as things stand Lulzsec already is getting hammered. Greater information sharing is a threat to online anarchists, as well as foreign private and state actors.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Jay Rockefeller may stall on an ego-driven separate bill. I think the bill’s a good idea. It’s not perfect, but not all of the criticisms floating around are correct. In particular, SOPA is a red herring, and totally unrelated. CISPA is about information sharing, not regulation.

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Tech at Night: Catching up after Easter with Aereo, Google, and Obama

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 2nd at 02:00 AM  | 

I meant to post over the weekend, but with RedState so active for Easter, I decided just to cancel the Friday Tech.

Hey folks, here’s more evidence: Population density matters for Internet speeds. Wealth also matters. Those who don’t adjust for these factors, and tell you US Internet speeds are slow or bad, are selling something. Usually government.

And yes, it’s still a problem that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to oppose global Internet regulation through the ITU. Some say the administration was duped, but I think they just don’t oppose global regulation and governance. Obama wants to bow to foreign countries by letting global tyrants hijack the Internet from the free peoples of the world.

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Tech at Night: FCC threatening rural broadband competition.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 28th at 04:00 AM  | 

Leave it to the Obama administration to botch everything. Trying to shortchange rural TV stations will only discourage them from participating in incentive auctions, therefore harming universal access and competition in the rural broadband market.

More wireless means more competition, folks. Allowing TV stations to reap the full rewards of selling off their spectrum is win-win.

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Tech at Night: Julius Genachowski out at FCC. Senate passes Sales Tax amendment. Ron Johnson on Cybersecurity.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 23rd at 04:40 AM  | 

It’s not just Robert McDowell that’s moving on from FCC. Julius Genachowski is, too, and while Genachowski hasn’t been very good at all, we could have done worse. Just look at NLRB. Let’s hope we don’t do worse after all with his successor.

Another big story is the Senate’s passage of the budget amendment incorporating the interstate sales tax compact. Some are bothered by this, but I still say it’s the right thing to do unless you’re going to rewrite the sales tax laws in every state. And that isn’t happening because the prisoner’s dilemma is keeping any one state from going from a buyer-owes to a seller-owes sales tax model.

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Tech at Night: ECPA may yet be worth a look. Robert McDowell to leave FCC. Resist comprehensive copyright reform.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 21st at 03:30 AM  | 

Well, just last time I mentioned I had so little to talk about. I guess everything was lying in wait for tonight.

Top story appears to be the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. I’ve been skeptical since Leaky Leahy has been pushing it, and he’s pushed many a bad tech idea in the Senate. But Mike Lee is also backing it, as is apparently Jim Sensenbrenner. So it’s worth considering. It may actually be that Leahy isn’t trying to expand the state or weaken the nation here.

Also, Robert McDowell is leaving the FCC. It’s up to Ajit Pai to get stuff done, now.

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Tech at Night: Google Reader popularity again proves nobody cares about privacy. Catch my latest on Aaron Swartz.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 16th at 12:00 AM  | 

More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.

The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.

Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.

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Aaron Swartz was offered less than a year in prison

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 14th at 02:00 PM  | 

Aaron Swartz committed a modern crime: he unlawfully used the MIT computer network, automated the download of many, many copyrighted works from JSTOR, and then infringed on the copyrights of those works by engaging in mass redistribution.

Swartz then, to the great sadness of those who knew him, killed himself rather than face possibly decades in federal prison. That act has infused the entire situation with great emotion, driving left-libertarians out to campaign against copyright. It’s also encouraged some on the right to make the best argument there was against the Swartz prosecution: that it was a case of an overzealous government official seeking to destroy a person, as an example or a feather in a cap.

It turns out that wasn’t the case at all, though. It turns out Aaron Swartz was the only one looking to make an example out of Aaron Swartz.

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Tech at Night: Sacco, Vanzetti, and Aaron Swartz were all guilty. It’s time to break up the Bitcoin ring.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 6th at 11:30 PM  | 

So even as Eric Holder is pushing back against the Weekend at Bernies-ification of Aaron Swartz, the man who committed premeditated crimes (as the puppet on the strings of the callous Larry Lessig, perhaps?), was caught, and was getting prosecuted for his high-profile sabotage of one of America’s leading academic institutions. It’s rare that you’ll see writers at RedState agree with that guy, but Moe is pushing back against the excesses of the Swartz defenders as well, and I pretty much agree with Moe.

Guys, if you want to push an anarchic anti-copyright agenda, do so on its own merits, as Joe Karaganis does. Don’t use the corpse of a suicide to do so.

There is room for IP reform in America, with excesses like the Sonny Bono act in the picture, and odd situations where Frito Lay can use patent and trade dress, two distinct concepts, to attack the same competitor. But the Swartz fan club is as auto-discrediting as the Sacco and Vanzetti crowd ended up being.

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A very contrarian view of Aaron Swartz that will do me no favors.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 6th at 06:00 PM  | 

Sorry for that. But I read this New Yorker piece about Aaron Swartz (short version: was being prosecuted by the government for illegally downloading JSTOR archives; recently committed suicide), and this is the narrative that I take from it: Once upon a time there was a very bright, but easily bored boy who spent his entire life not having to do anything that he didn’t | Read More »

Tech at Night: Light regulation brings fierce telecom innovation. Make Pandora pay their own way. Reform all IP.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 28th at 01:00 AM  | 

So Republicans checked up on the Broadband Stimulus, yet another pork barrel spending project by the President, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid: Surprise! It was a wasteful failure, like the rest of the jobless stimulus.

IP reform: I’m not optimistic of copyright reform soon, though it is a populist thing the TEA party could do against Hollywood and the joint efforts of big government and big business. But implementing loser pays against only patent trolls would be nice. But don’t forget that trademarks are completely out of hand, too.

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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: 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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