Good evening RedStaters. I spent all weekend battling a monster cold, so I’m still a bit thrown off, and so didn’t even try to get tonight’s installment of Tech at Night in before midnight Eastern. In fact it’ll be a reach to get this done before midnight Pacific, but such is life. RedState diarist ladyimpactohio (follow her on Twitter at @ladyimpactohio ) already scored one big win by peeling the Gun Owners of America from the Free Press radical Net Neutrality coalition, but the right is already at work on the next target: the Christian Coalition . Dick Armey and FreedomWorks are leading this fight, and I’m glad of it. Way back when I started covering this issue, I said there were three names on the Save the Internet (Free Press front group) list that bugged me: Gun Owners of America, Christian Coalition, and Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds. If we can peel off at least two of three, I’ll be happy. Meanwhile, Verizon is trying to sell the White House on the joint Google-Verizon Net Neutrality proposal, saying that their compromise would fulfill the letter of Obama’s campaign promise. I like that tactic, and it has to make some people tense over at Free Press. The radicals already lost allies in most Democrats in Congress, Google, and Gun owners of America. If they lose the White House, then the pressure on the FCC to back down might be unbearable. And if we didn’t have enough reason to watch Free Press’s Net Neutrality push closely: ACORN’s relationship with Free Press is now being questioned widely , again thanks in part to RedState community members. Of course with Google switching sides, we needed a new villain, and it looks like we’ve got one: the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to piggyback on Net Neutrality to get new subsidies. They’re going to shroud themselves in the mantle of property rights and copyright, and paint their opponents as child molesters (literally), but they’re going to ask for government regulations and requirements that benefit them at everyone else’s expense, and that’s just wrong. That’s just socialist central planning of the economy. Let them figure out how to sell more CDs or iTunes tracks on their own dime. Besides, last I checked, they don’t need us to worry for them ’cause they’re all right (yeah, I used one of their own songs against them in open parodic fair use, take that). Go ahead with your own business, RIAA, leave us alone. And one more point for tonight, that isn’t even Net Neutrality related. Bayshore Networks has an analysis of Intel’s acquisition of McAfee . This is, as Bayshore points out, an odd thing because McAfee is purely a software company, selling end point security, while Intel primarily sells hardware. But it is clearly a “vote of confidence” in the industry as they say, and could lead to more acquisitions. What I think Bayshore is missing though is one big reason to make such acquisitions: this all comes in the context of a drumbeat from the Democrats on the need for new laws to deal with “cybersecurity” nationally. Given the rewards that have fallen on GM and Tesla as members of a favored industry, I think it makes sense to pick up a cybersecurity company in the hopes that massive government subsidies will be pushed out to them before Republicans can clamp down on spending next year. I’m told many in business prefer to ignore politics, but this is one case where the political environment has to matter, I believe.
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Tech at Night: Net Neutrality, FreedomWorks, Christian Coalition, RIAA, Copyright, Cybersecurity, Intel, McAfee
Today on the Main Site: A Losing Proposition by W. James Antle, III: Contrary to the decision overturning Proposition 8, all Americans have standing in the marriage debate. Obama Cripples Ford’s Funding, Then Subsidizes It by John Berlau & Andrew Kwiatkowski: Ronald Reagan had Obama figured out years ago. A Coup for the FCC by The Prowler: Unfortunately, it’s of the leftist Obamaite, regulate the Internet by fiat persuasion. Mysteries of Economics by Ben Stein: There’s gold in them thar hills. Starving ObamaCare by Philip Klein: Could a new GOP majority win a government shutdown battle over defunding the national health care law? From our July-August issue. The Taliban’s BFF by George H. Wittman: The U.S. well knows that the Taliban and elements in Pakistan will remain best friends forever. Cherokee Nation by James P. Gannon: How can a Jeep TV commercial make more sense than America’s economic policy? A-Rod’s 600th (Yawn) by Andrew Cline: Why the fans don’t really care. What to Watch for: Lockerbie release flawed (WSJ)
The leftist group Free Press, which has been pressing the Obama Administration and the Federal Communications Commission to impose stiff regulations on the Internet, celebrated the announcement Thursday that the FCC had ended its weeks-long negotiations with a group of companies like AT&T, Google and the cable TV association. The negotiations ended with no agreement, and it appears now that the FCC will attempt to impose Internet regulations on its own, despite warnings from Congress that it does not have the authority to do so. The meetings were an attempt by the FCC to get broad agreement from many of the players they regulate on a set of so-called “net neutrality” policies. Such an agreement, which most likely would have had to be put in place via Congressional action, would have given the FCC the authority to regulate broadband and wireless networks that connect to the Internet, but under a far narrower set of regulatory rules that would have been agreeable to those companies that operate broadband networks or Internet sites. In a statement, Free Press said: “We welcome the FCC’s decision to end its backroom meetings. Phones have been ringing off the hook and e-mail inboxes overflowing at the FCC, as an outraged public learned about the closed-door deal-making and saw the biggest players trying to carve up the Internet for themselves. We’re relieved to see that the FCC now apparently finds dangerous side deals from companies like Verizon and Google to be distasteful and unproductive.” The only problem with that statement, it turns out, is that Free Press was part of those “backroom meetings” and at the time the FCC negotiations were canceled, Free Press officials were actually holding a
Tonight, we start with a longer note that requires some setup, so bear with me as I break from the usual format for a moment. ––– The FCC’s attempt to reclassify broadband as if it were a telephone service had already encountered opposition from a strong, bipartisan majority of Congress – not to mention usually Democratic allies like the AFL-CIO, CWA, IBEW, LULAC, MMTC, NAACP, Urban League and Sierra Club. It is increasingly becoming a question of whether the FCC really wants to pick a Title II fight in the Courts, another with Democratic coalition members and yet another with Congress. That kind of path has the potential to be lose-lose-lose for the FCC and for Democrats. But another story that emerged last week may be the most interesting fight of all. Last week, Ben Chandler (D-KY) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) announced their opposition to the FCC’s Title II reclassification. Grayson’s opposition is interesting. Consider… Grayson is a “ darling of the online left “, which has fetishized net neutrality In fact, he is so aggressively left wing that he hired progressive blogger-bombthrower Matt Stoller as his Senior Policy Advisor Matt Stoller was formerly a consultant for the main net neutrality advocacy group, Free Press, and a leader in organizing the online left to support net neutrality In fact, as Seton Motley pointed out at Big Government , Matt Stoller was such a vocal, aggressive net neutrality activist that he was once “ physically removed from a meeting at the AFL-CIO for making a scene over the refusal of the Communication Workers of America to support net neutrality.” Now, the man who hired Matt Stoller to advise him on policy has decided that Title II reclassification is bad policy. One of two things is happening here. Either this is a signal that the progressives have finally realized they went too far and alienated a lot of their coalition that realizes how radical their net neutrality regulation is. Or the progressives don’t realize this and, as Seton pondered at Big Government, Matt Stoller is now trying to decide whether he wants to be physically removed from Grayson’s office, too. Either way is good for America. ––– Oh, and just another reminder: despite what Free Press does say in its neo-Marxists missives, we truly don’t need Net Neutrality regulation. LTE is coming nearer to Verizon customers and combined with WiMAX from Sprint and others, the two technologies from a number of wireless providers will provide tremendous competition in the world of high-speed Internet access, and give unprecedented freedom for Internet users from the world of highly regulated wired Internet access. Adding the same stifling regulation to the new technologies can only hinder that. Especially regulation from an FCC that has a loose grasp on the concept of ethics. Daily Caller reports on Kevin Werbach who works by day for a group called Supernova, funded by industry groups, and moonlights as an advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Werbach’s efforts are funded in part by the firms the FCC regulates or plans to regulate. He claims that because he gets money from both sides of certain issues, such as Net Neutrality, that there’s no problem. Yeah, he would think that. Of course, there are regulators other than the FCC that are problematic as well. In California , the the Fair Political Practices Commission may be gunning for the Internet and attempt to regulate sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Free speech just threatens those with power. So does privacy, which is why per a Forbes Magazine report I was emailed and thus have no link for, Indonesia is joining the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in attempting to shut down the use of RIM ’s encrypted Blackberry services, because RIM will not play favorites and give select governments special treatment. Privacy aids free speech, and the two are a threat to anyone who seeks to gather and maintain power over people. The State Department has expressed “disappointment” about the Blackberry announcements (which the UAE in turn called disappointing), which surprises me as RIM is a Canadian firm, plus it’s not as though the US hasn’t passed laws requiring firms to aid in government wiretaps of telecommunications. That law is called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Is the administration disappointed with the US, too? If so, what action is being taken to rectify that? Nothing, of course. It’s all talk. The Justice Department is pretty worthless, too, claiming that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits colleges from shifting to digital textbooks from their paper equivalents. They claim that the requirement to use Amazon ’s Kindle hurts the blind… except that the blind can’t read a non-braille textbook anyway. Your taxes at work, folks. I couldn’t make this up. And to cap off the night, here’s something to think about on a dark, quiet night: data gathering and database searching firm Google is developing a relationship with the CIA . Chew on that.
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Tech at Night: Free Press, FCC, Google, LTE, RIM, Amazon, California
I hide nothing from you: I kicked back this Friday night. I slacked off. Now it’s Saturday at 2am and I’m finally getting to this. But, you all read this in the morning anyway so it really doesn’t matter much, right? (If I’m wrong I’ll surely hear in the comments) Let’s start with a widely reported but badly reported story: DNSSEC . This is a framework for the Domain Name System (the framework for translating from hostnames such as www.redstate.com to IP addresses, which are the actual addresses used on the Internet). The system is akin to SSL for domains. Verisign will manage it for the Commerce Department and create a single “Root Key” which is then used to create certificates for domains, which will then be used to make sure your a domain’s DNS records are legitimate. In my estimation, it’s just a big boondoggle for [Verisign] to get more customers. The vast majority of domains won’t be able to be secured by it, because Verisign is going to have a monopoly and will charge accordingly. This will only affect big businesses transacting large amounts of money, and they’re already secured against DNS-based attacks. If they’re smart they are, anyway. What DNSSEC does that is bad, however, is create a new point of failure for the Internet, because there are 7 key holders which control escrowed access to the root key. If 3 of them lose the keys, the entire system will have to be re-keyed at expense and inconvenience to all, as pointed out by George Ou . Oh, Net Neutrality is still a crock. You know that big, evil, corporate bias on line? It’s a myth . George Ou (again, he’s on a roll) tested and found out that FoxNews.com takes twice as long to load as Daily Kos. Are the ISPs biased in favor of Kos? Is that really the theory? Nobody believes this. Nobody except maybe the radical neo-Marxist extremists at Free Press, who (as Ou points out) have demanded that “all Web sites and applications download and upload at the same speeds.” This is ludicrous because page load times are determined by a number of factors including site server speed, site software performance, the site’s Internet connection, your Internet connection, and anything going on in between you and the site. This is magical thinking born of a radical ideology. Free Press’s view of the Internet is best compared with Lysenkoism, a Soviet scientific ideology that demanded the world confirm to Marxist-Leninist thought, and ignored all evidence to the contrary (and put those who dissented in the gulag). Which is why two more Democrats have announced opposition to the FCC ’s plans to Deem and Pass Net Neutrality via Title II Reclassification. Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Alan Grayson of Florida, come on down. Yeah, when Alan Grayson is against you, you’re just just to the left. You’re so far left that Karl Marx would bow. And lastly, India isn’t banning Blackberries , despite rumors they would due to RIM doing a very good job in making Blackberry communications secure to prying eyes. Encryption done well is a great equalizer and giver of privacy.
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Tech at Night: DNSSEC, RIM, FCC, Net Neutrality
