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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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.
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It is done! Privacy is saved in America? The huge looming threat of Myspace has been defeated by FTC! Don’t you feel so much safer now that the dynamic, active regulators of the Obama administration have clamped down on a competitor of Facebook?
Shame on me. Remember when I went with the claim that Anonymous took down GoDaddy? Well, It may have been an opportunistic claim.
Read More »Privacy? You want privacy in the digital age? Start by repealing campaign finance laws before you wag your socialist finger at the private sector. Al Qaeda also denied 9/11 involvement at first, but we knew the truth. Also, how can Anonymous deny involvement in an attack when they claim to be unorganized? It’s these slipups that let us know the truth about them: they’re an | Read More »
So, Cybersecurity. I’ve spent so much time talking about why the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity bill in the Senate is terrible, and anti-PROTECT IP champion Ron Wyden has taken up the opposition as well, but there is need for some enhanced ability of government to coordinate against and to attack Internet security threats. Here’s a Reddit post that should scare people about the kinds of ongoing criminal | Read More »
Earlier we covered Microsoft’s new Pirate Pay, which I said sounded like a DoS attack against copyright infringers. Others agree and say it may be illegal, which is true. Sure enough, Pirate Bay is under DDoS attack. Has Pirate Pay gone rogue? Cybersecurity and copyright, all in one issue.
Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the
According to Darrell Issa, SOPA is officially postponed by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith. Issa broke the news on Twitter, which only underscores how important it is that we protect the Internet from capricious censorship, as was the risk under a SOPA-like regime. On the Senate side, Harry Reid has canceled the vote on PROTECT IP, killing momentum for the proposal in both houses of | Read More »
We celebrated Monday when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor effectively signaled the death of SOPA, the Stopping Online Piracy Act. Cantor said the Internet censorship bill would not see a vote until there was consensus on the matter. As long as Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz are on the case there will be no consensus on sweeping Internet censorship, so Cantor’s position basically | Read More »
I’m back. I ended up taking an extended Christmas break because well, I liked having a break, plus there wasn’t a whole lot going on anyway. But, back to work! Lamar Smith and Chris Dodd still want to censor the Internet, by pushing the SOPA bill that we need to defeat. Why is it bad? Victims get no due process, ISPs have the burden of | Read More »
Top story tonight is of course the major win by the triple alliance of George Soros and his front groups like Public Knowledge, Sprint Nextel, and the Obama administration’s dual agency of the FCC and the DoJ. Yes, AT&T has given up on acquiring T-Mobile. I believe they will now have to pay a sizable fee to T-Mobile as compensation. This is bad news for | Read More »
Ordinarily I use Tech at Night to cover a variety of topics that come my way, and I have them in my queue for tonight. But with over 30 items to consider and integrate, most of them on SOPA, I’m shelving the rest for Friday, and discussing just one topic tonight: We must defeat SOPA in the House. It is entirely unacceptable, and I believe | Read More »
It’s Monday, so it’s time for that weekly self promotion of mine. This week at the Daily Caller I discussed NISO, an information sharing proposal by Dan Lungren that would get government in a role of improving our security online without compromising liberty and innovation. And now back to SOPA. Now Eric Schmidt realizes we don’t want government to have a huge role online, complaining | Read More »
There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up? It turns out that the | Read More »
Had enough SOPA yet? Too bad. Ignore my Piracy/Privacy typo and read my overview of the issue over at the Daily Caller. In theory I will be there weekly now, writing about tech issues. Don’t worry though; I’ve scheduled it with them so I write for them and for Tech at Night on different nights, so I won’t burn out or anything. And if yu | Read More »
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