By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 18th at 11:30 PM  | 

Seen on RedState Friday: Geoffrey Manne talks about FCC rigging the spectrum game, which is such a shame since spectrum auctions are one of the greatest regulatory innovations we’ve seen.

I bet you heard all there was to hear about Ted Cruz after the shutdown ended? Nope. He’s taking on the President’s nominee for FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler. He wants answers, and he’s entitled to get them.

Bitcoin and crime just seem to go hand-in-hand.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 16th at 11:30 AM  | 

Next time you wonder why there is such a push to pick winners and losers with regulation, remember that industries like broadcast TV don’t like to become buggy whip makers, so they have to go after firms like Aereo who innovate and threaten traditional revenue streams.

Which is why, as much as I do agree that there are a number of piecemeal copyright reforms we should make, I disagree that fixing radio regulation isn’t a good idea. We have a system in place now called ‘compulsory licensing’ which is designed to rig the marketplace. Getting to a free market is a valuable thing. Copyright is probably too strong, but this isn’t where we need to trim it back, at all.

Let’s walk and chew gum at the same time. Let’s take on targeted copyright reform as Derek Khanna suggests, while also deregulating radio/music licensing.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 15th at 01:30 AM  | 

Here we go again, a group of organized criminals seeks to attack innocents. “First sentence, then trial.” I’m looking forward to when prison sentences are given out to these people of Anonymous. Hacktivist is apparently a code word for ‘anarchist terror cell.’ I mean, just like Tor users (who are getting traced as well as they’re getting arrested), we just keep on arresting Anonymous cells.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 13th at 01:00 PM  | 

I know, it’s two weeks in a row the Friday tech got pushed the the weekend. Sorry.

The war on Tor crime continues as the Silk Road arrests go on and on and on. Next up, find the killers for hire?

Oh look, Edward Snowden and the Glenns Greenwald are in cahoots again. Even as the new push is on to claim he gave no data to the Chinese and Russians. I guess he needs that cover to try to get asylum?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 9th at 10:00 PM  | 

How desperate do you have to be? The radicals at Public Knowledge are trying to take credit for Republican initiatives. To claim a lefty was the ‘thought leader’ behind phone unlocking is ridiculous. That was Derek Khanna. Even Washington Post says so.

AT&T is wishing for a modern FCC so that they can innovate with the IP revolution. Instead FCC is threatening the economy by stalling, and for the basest of reasons: to try a power grab.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 8th at 03:30 AM  | 

Still not a lot going on thanks to the shutdown, but there is the theory being floated that the Obama administration’s punitive shutdown policies are violating Net Neutrality rules. I don’t know that I agree, but it’s worth at least thinking about, as little as Net Neutrality even makes sense.

For all the people are claiming Silk Road wasn’t a significant part of the Bitcoin value, it could be that the feds are seizing 5% of all Bitcoins in circulation. But it is going to be interesting to see how seizing assets works when the assets are encrypted.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 6th at 09:00 AM  | 

This is a really late Friday tech. Enjoy anyway.

There’s not a lot of government policy stuff going on right now in DC, thanks to the shutdown, but at least we’re spending money keeping the lights on all night at the FCC.

A cell of Anonymous anarchists tried to “pay back’ Hollywood for getting The Pirate Bay, but it is they who are paying the price. Ruining your life because you want to download free stuff on the Internet. Heh.

The fact is, it would be to our benefit to be able to listen in on Tor. Privacy is good, but anonymity is a tool of evil and of our enemies. Just ask yourself why there’s a push by traitor Ed Snowden and the Glenns Greenwald spy team to discredit Tor attacks. A good reason for them to do this is that they’re afraid and want us to get the government to stop trying.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 3rd at 04:30 PM  | 

Again, I’m sympathetic to the idea behind the new California ban in ‘revenge porn’, but ultimately this isn’t going to work, and it’s just going to give a false sense of security to the recklessly promiscuous. Just like the ‘eraser button’ for minors California passed, it’s a dangerously ineffective idea.

Big news: even as some people try to build a new distributed secure chat network, the old distributed secure communications network is continuing to fall apart. Tor has not protected Silk Road, whose creator is going to jail. It will be interesting to see if Bitcoin’s price falls as a result of the end of a major Bitcoin hub of illegal activity.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 1st at 03:00 AM  | 

I have to say, my initial reaction to accusing Google of wiretapping is absurd. Think about it: the whole concept of wiretapping is that you’re intercepting communications from person A to person B. If Google ads are wiretapping, them spam filtering would be wiretapping, since you’re also scanning an email to do that.

We’ve discussed in the past how Pandora was trying to get government to change the rules in its favor against copyright holders, because the government had previously tilted the scales in favor of broadcast radio against copyright holders, in the form of a proposed law known as IRFA. Pandora’s clearly wrong about that, as we should have a level playing field and not be picking winners and losers at all. But one good consequence could be a bill that would go the other way, an anti-IRFA: repealing the laws that favor broadcast radio to begin with. Just ditch the whole compulsory licensing system.

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

Good news! California Democrats think you can erase stuff from the global Internet just because you really really want to. This is magical thinking in law form. Telling kids they should run amok online because they can just erase it later, is insane. The Internet is dangerous and not for kids.

Again, the core problem with patent troll litigation isn’t with the court system, it’s with too many patents being issued. So the patent-holding tech industry may have a conflict in what it recommends to fix this. But seriously, the only reason patent trolling works is that so many bad patents get issued to begin with.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 26th at 01:30 AM  | 

There’s not a whole lot going on right now. Right now I’m seeing a few efforts here and there to push different policies, some good, some bad, but we do need to keep an eye on them in case any one of them takes off.

Let’s start with a bit of a laugh from California. Democrats there are desperately trying to regulate the Internet, but at the same time it’s clear that party in California, now totally hijacked by extremists, has no clue how the Internet actually works. How else would the pass a bill creating a right to delete information from the Internet? Imagine the jokes if Republicans passed such a bill.

The Google effort to push for reasonable FISA transparency continues to gain allies, this time Dropbox, as that firm is now getting criticisms in that area.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 23rd at 11:00 PM  | 

Tech at Night on a Monday is always an odd thing. Weekends tend to be pretty slow, since much of what I cover is happening in government and industry, but Monday’s also when all that pent-up weekend stuff comes out. Monday’s also when things get announced, that people didn’t want to bury on a Friday.

So Mondays are capable of being very busy posting days. But they’re also capable of being very slow. This is one of the latter Monday editions. Which is good for me since I’m very tired.

The new lie being told is that deregulation amounts to help from the government. Talk about turning the truth on its head. Regulation these days picks winners and losers. Deregulation lets things alone!

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 21st at 03:00 AM  | 

Are there people who use search services like Google’s to find illegal distributions of works? For some crazy reason, MPAA thinks not. The evidence seems to disagree.

When it comes to arguments about Net Neutrality, attitude is not a substitute for facts and reason. Then again do the Net Neutrality zealots like Susan Crawford even have any?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 19th at 02:30 AM  | 

Why on Earth would we need Do Not Track legislation when many forms of tracking would be hard to define, but also when Tracker #1 is as popular as ever? This is yet another example where privacy is being treated as a morality issue, where legislators are scolding the public.

I mean look. Microsoft talked about making Do Not Track the default setting, but the public didn’t care. Only advertisers did.

It’s kind of hard to have a rational debate about Net Neutrality when the radical left keeps lying, and lying, and lying. They have to demonize Verizon because they don’t have the facts or the law on their side.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 16th at 11:00 PM  | 

It’s funny how Democrats talked back in 2008 about openness and transparency, but they
“>continue to obstruct Greg Walden’s FCC reform on those two principles. Doubly funny that now they oppose lawsuits, when they generally favor lawsuits when it’s NGOs suing EPA to push a greater left-wing agenda.

Remember, the same government that wants to regulate the Internet and in fact all innovation can’t even handle faxes properly.

So beware when the unreformed FCC is stalling on auctioning spectrum, despite Congressional orders to do it. I suspect the plan is to rig the auctions to favor some firms over others.