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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 3rd at 02:30 AM  | 

Hey La-Mulanites! I’m Neil, and let’s play Tech at Night.

Anyway. Yeah, I took a break, as you may have noticed. It turns out between Christmas, New Year’s and the Fiscal Cliff, not much happened for me to cover, anyway! So let’s get started.

Two legislative notes: the outmoded video privacy law passed, while the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act is dead in the water. I always said its best chance was President Romney and a Republican Senate, but now that’s not happening. Poor Amazon, bargaining with states on the assumption this would happen.

And in case you forgot, a Cybersecurity executive order would be a bad thing, per Marsha Blackburn and Steve Scalise.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 20th at 02:30 AM  | 

It’s amazing to me that at this point we’re still pretending there’s a phone monopoly. Competition exists. Yes, it’s obvious that nobody has a monopoly on phone service anymore. The assumption that there’s a monopoly is detached from the reality of the modern market. People routinely go without landlines these days, and there’s even competition for those!

FCC is at least pretending to investigate the need to deregulate and prepare for the IP Revolution in phone service. We’ll see if they rig it to get what they want out of it, though. No, I’m not very optimistic about second term Obama regulators.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 18th at 01:30 AM  | 

Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!

We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.

The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 1st at 02:30 AM  | 

Who’s anti-science? We set up a bill to bring in more foreign scientist and engineers through the STEM Act, then pass the bill with virtually no Democrat support, and then get called ‘racist.’ Apparently science degrees are racist now, according to (frankly delusional) Democrats.

And more by the ever-busy Darrell Issa: his Reddit outreach continues as he promotes his two-year legislative and regulatory moratorium in the IAMA act (even the name is a nod to that community). But, based on the linked article, they’re looking for reasons to oppose. Left-’libertarians’ are too much reflexive fanbois of unchecked state power, when Democrats get to have that power. But, we’ll see.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 20th at 01:30 AM  | 

So you may have heard that the Republican Study Committee pulled the copyright piece I spoke highly of over the weekend. I don’t have anything to say about this just yet. I’m going to reexamine the piece, to see if it had issues I didn’t notice in my quick read over the weekend. I’m also going to try to figure out just what’s happened. Then I’ll have more to say.

Copyright is ramping up, though. Darrell Issa is getting frisky against DMCA, and is going to push legislation. I don’t know if I support such a bill. The DMCA has issues, but for the most part it was a solid compromise that has served us well. It must not be changed lightly.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 15th at 03:30 AM  | 

Good news, everyone! Kay Bailey Hutchison and Senate Republicans were able to help defeat the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act once again.

Bad news, everyone! We lost the Presidential election, so President Obama is almost sure to try to defy the Congress, which won’t even pass the idea through one house, let alone both to make it a law. He’s going to try to implement this through executive order!

Meanwhile it falls to the Congress to investigate actual foreign threats in the digital theater.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 11th at 03:24 AM  | 

Long week, so long I forgot to post this Friday night. Oops. Well, better late than never.

The race for the IP revolution is on. The benefits of a modern phone system are still getting explored, even as we see AT&T go first in this direction, but of course naturally the forces of regulation oppose innovation.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 6th at 02:00 AM  | 

It’s technically Tuesday morning on the east coast, not Monday night, as I write this. So, happy Election Day. Remember to Vote. Vote, and get five friends and family members to vote.

So, let’s remember that the Obama administration is still pushing its scheme to solve cybersecurity by expanding government. Now, experts in the field are scoffing at the word ‘solve’ there, but think about it: They’re telling us that we’ll have a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor” if we don’t pass their bill/accept their Executive Order. That implies that with the bill, the danger is gone. So they’re entirely unrealistic about this.

Meanwhile, what are they actually doing with their current tools? The Russians are on the move, Anonymous still has functioning elements. At least Canada may be seeing a way forward.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 3rd at 04:35 AM  | 

Surprise:Obama’s cybersecurity plans don’t actually fix anything, they just expand government. And yet the administration shamelessly attempts to use the crisis of storm Sandy to try to achieve this end.

At this point the administration’s cybersecurity efforts are as delusional and straw-grasping as its global warming efforts. Though what’s sad is that unlike global warming, there actually is a kernel of truth there that we as a nation could be acting on, but Obama is distracting us with his attempts to expand government.