The FCC may yet get what’s coming to it. It’s been going out of its way to get headlines as it tries to pick winners and losers in industry, but now the attention is coming from the House as the Appropriations Committee will discuss the FCC’s budget. Prepare for hysterical shouting on the order of the SimCity 2000 Transportation advisor if the Republicans threaten to cut funding.
Also, we’re back to discussing the Marketplace Fairness Act. As we’ve discussed before, this is a bill that would give Congressional approval to an interstate compact between the states to collect sales tax across state lines, requires member states to harmonize their tax rules to fit in with the interstate system. The bill is gaining Congressional support this time around. In theory I’m fine with this. It’s Constitutional and it’s reasonable. I disagree with Overstock.com’s complaints of complexity, because the compact imposes restrictions on the way the states can tax items, and also creates mechanisms to ease collection of the taxes.
All I would ask is that we get some safeguards in that make it impossible to include any sort of national sales tax in the system. We don’t want Canada-style taxation through the back door.
Also, Tech at Night is sending a raspberry to Rick Santorum for his Internet censorship plans. Are there legitimate social reasons to restrict pornography? Yes, just like there are legitimate social reasons to restrict alcohol. But regulating vice is not a Constitutional role of the national government. Keep it local, I say. If we can have dry counties then we can have clean counties. But the last thing we want is to empower the next Eric Holder to regulate Internet content, thank you very much.
The aftershocks of the end of the copyright infringement haven Megaupload continue to hit the Internet. The courts are pressing Rapidshare to take precautions, and a group of ISPs is preparing proactive steps to prevent abuse of their resources. Note that BGR refers to this as affecting ‘downloaders,’ but it’s likely that in truth his is going after copyright infringers, including BitTorrent users who are uploading and downloading.
You know how I keep saying Anonymous is not the mass, anonymous, nebulous movement it claims to be? They seem to have admitted it themselves by claiming that Anonymous OS is ‘fake’. It can only be fake if there’s a specific, defined group that makes up Anonymous.
Iran attacks the BBC online. Here, again, is a case where domestic regulation wouldn’t really help. We need aggressive action against the bad guys, though of course that’s hard to do when the attackers are abroad. But trying to regulate the victims at home is not a legitimate substitute just because it’s easier.
The FCC may yet get what’s coming to it. It’s been going out of its way to get headlines as it tries to pick winners and losers in industry, but now the attention is coming from the House as the Appropriations Committee will discuss the FCC’s budget. Prepare for hysterical shouting on the order of the SimCity 2000 Transportation advisor if the Republicans threaten to cut funding.
Also, we’re back to discussing the Marketplace Fairness Act. As we’ve discussed before, this is a bill that would give Congressional approval to an interstate compact between the states to collect sales tax across state lines, requires member states to harmonize their tax rules to fit in with the interstate system. The bill is gaining Congressional support this time around. In theory I’m fine with this. It’s Constitutional and it’s reasonable. I disagree with Overstock.com’s complaints of complexity, because the compact imposes restrictions on the way the states can tax items, and also creates mechanisms to ease collection of the taxes.
All I would ask is that we get some safeguards in that make it impossible to include any sort of national sales tax in the system. We don’t want Canada-style taxation through the back door.
Also, Tech at Night is sending a raspberry to Rick Santorum for his Internet censorship plans. Are there legitimate social reasons to restrict pornography? Yes, just like there are legitimate social reasons to restrict alcohol. But regulating vice is not a Constitutional role of the national government. Keep it local, I say. If we can have dry counties then we can have clean counties. But the last thing we want is to empower the next Eric Holder to regulate Internet content, thank you very much.
The aftershocks of the end of the copyright infringement haven Megaupload continue to hit the Internet. The courts are pressing Rapidshare to take precautions, and a group of ISPs is preparing proactive steps to prevent abuse of their resources. Note that BGR refers to this as affecting ‘downloaders,’ but it’s likely that in truth his is going after copyright infringers, including BitTorrent users who are uploading and downloading.
You know how I keep saying Anonymous is not the mass, anonymous, nebulous movement it claims to be? They seem to have admitted it themselves by claiming that Anonymous OS is ‘fake’. It can only be fake if there’s a specific, defined group that makes up Anonymous.
Iran attacks the BBC online. Here, again, is a case where domestic regulation wouldn’t really help. We need aggressive action against the bad guys, though of course that’s hard to do when the attackers are abroad. But trying to regulate the victims at home is not a legitimate substitute just because it’s easier.
The bad guys share information, and they think they won’t go to jail. If we let the good guys share information without getting sued for it, and if we throw the bad guys in jail, we win. And you can tell that the bad guys really hate it when we send them to jail; just witness how Anonymous has been hitting law enforcement more and more in the last year or so, most recently targeting Interpol’s website, and previously publishing names and addresses of police officers in the US. These online terrorists don’t like that they can be held accountable for their actions. It’s their weakness, the fact that they are named individuals who are finite in numbers, and we need to exploit it.
I know we had to push hard against some good members of Congress in order to send a message on SOPA, but it had to be done. The RIAA is not giving up on SOPA, so it was important that we let good members of Congress know what the problem was. And we did, so now it’s time to move on to passing good bills like SECURE IT.
Someone came up with a clever idea recently: lease television antennas to people so they can watch free broadcast television over those channels. The clever part? Aereo would let you watch over the Internet what your antenna picks up. Naturally, this threatens some cable television revenues, if people actually have free stuff, so the broadcasters are suing. I hope they lose. These are purely free, over the air broadcasts.
The bad guys share information, and they think they won’t go to jail. If we let the good guys share information without getting sued for it, and if we throw the bad guys in jail, we win. And you can tell that the bad guys really hate it when we send them to jail; just witness how Anonymous has been hitting law enforcement more and more in the last year or so, most recently targeting Interpol’s website, and previously publishing names and addresses of police officers in the US. These online terrorists don’t like that they can be held accountable for their actions. It’s their weakness, the fact that they are named individuals who are finite in numbers, and we need to exploit it.
I know we had to push hard against some good members of Congress in order to send a message on SOPA, but it had to be done. The RIAA is not giving up on SOPA, so it was important that we let good members of Congress know what the problem was. And we did, so now it’s time to move on to passing good bills like SECURE IT.
Someone came up with a clever idea recently: lease television antennas to people so they can watch free broadcast television over those channels. The clever part? Aereo would let you watch over the Internet what your antenna picks up. Naturally, this threatens some cable television revenues, if people actually have free stuff, so the broadcasters are suing. I hope they lose. These are purely free, over the air broadcasts.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the potential merger of Delta and American Airlines, the credit downgrades of nine countries in Europe and the continuing crisis in Greece.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Boeing’s victory over the NLRB, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s veto of a controversial EU treaty, and how it will impact relations with the European mainland.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Boeing’s victory over the NLRB, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s veto of a controversial EU treaty, and how it will impact relations with the European mainland.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Germany’s failed bond auction, calls for a more politically unified Europe, and the potential end of the Euro.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Germany’s failed bond auction, calls for a more politically unified Europe, and the potential end of the Euro.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss a new German push to politically unite Europe to save the Eurozone, Obama’s decision to kill 20,000 jobs, and we respond to a question from a listener.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
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