I’m back, having gotten myself and my worldly possessions from southern California to northern Virginia. I also have a backlog of items that I’m never going to cover completely tonight, so some issues are going to wait until Monday. So please, check back Monday. There are things I’d love to cover tonight, but I simply lack the time. Let’s start with Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and | Read More »
The House is doing anything but shirking its responsibility to apply oversight to the Obama administration. The FCC in particular is getting the attention it needs. “Regulatory hubris” in picking winners and losers is part of the problem, says Commissioner Robert McDowell. He should know, as he’s on the inside. Darrell Issa and Chuck Grassley disagree on the FCC’s transparency though. Issa gives them a | Read More »
Great news! Tech at Night’s favorite Representative Marsha Blackburn, along with TaN’s own home representative Mary Bono Mack are bringing a version of Secure IT to the House. The bill has been introduced in the Senate as an alternative to the power grab known as Lieberman-Collins. The great thing about the bill? It toughens criminal penalties for online lawbreaking even as it makes it easier | Read More »
Special Tuesday edition! Having been very busy hitting a launch window for a client, I had to skip Friday and Monday. So to make up for it, this week I start on Tuesday. Riddle me this: FCC refuses to be transparent about its dealings with LightSquared (who by the way just changed CEOs, as the firm continues to flail desperately in response to the FCC’s | Read More »
Yes, we beat SOPA, but the problem of foreign infringers is still around. And we’re not just talking about online copyright infringement, either. Copies of clothing, purses, gadgets, you name it: foreign free riders are a problem. It’s an important tradeoff to find, so an open process for the Darrell Issa OPEN Act is a good one. A slow, consensus-based approach is also smart, so | Read More »
Sometimes, the anarchists lose. Even in leftist Sweden, The Pirate Bay’s founders lost their last appeal. It’s guys like these, who deliberately put up a system for infringing on US copyrights while playing word games to justify it, that motivated SOPA and that drive the desire for a treaty like ACTA. Google considers its privacy changes a public policy issue as the firm is getting | Read More »
There’s a lot of fear going around about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a plurilateral agreement under the WTO between the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Morocco. Some of the fears look real, some don’t. For example, even though it was negotiated in secret, the text is easily available. Another false complaint is that it’s another SOPA, when | Read More »
So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for | Read More »
Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the
Filesonic stops infringing. I guess the site’s leadership didn’t want to go to jail like Ninjavideo, or get hit like Megaupload did. People put up with ad-laden, obnoxious ‘file sharing’ sites when they want to download something that can’t be distributed legally, by less annoying sites. Everyone knows this. It’s a good thing that Megaupload was taken down. That was a blow for property rights. | Read More »
It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead. Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially | Read More »
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 »
So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today. We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell | Read More »
Today many websites around the world are shutting down to protest the potential effects of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate companion, Protect IP. At RedState, we are temporarily suspending publication of new content today to oppose SOPA and PROTECT IP. Both pieces of legislation are overly broad and give too much power to the Attorney General to shut down websites that | Read More »
The following are sponsors of Protect IP in the Senate originally introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Both Republicans and Democrats should pledge to unite and primary these members of the Senate, however much we may love them, for pushing such harmful legislation. If they don’t want to be primaried, they should stop sponsoring this crap. At the same time, I’m not going to | Read More »
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