I’m seeing some real panicked shouting online about CISPA, a new bill that some are calling “the new SOPA.” It’s absurd. The bill may not be perfect. It could have flaws. But the argument being hammered against CISPA again and again is that it may be used against copyright infringers who abuse networks. So? The only reason to oppose that is if you wish to destroy copyright property rights entirely, as the radicals do.

I warned about this way back during the SOPA debate. I predicted that the left side of the anti-SOPA coalition would try to hijack the movement into a general one against copyright, as the anarchists over there tend to do, and the shrieking over CISPA is proving me right. CISPA is not a bundle of mandates. It is an avenue to information sharing. Note that everything in CISPA is “totally voluntary,” per The Hill.

If someone and disprove that, and point to one or more mandates in CISPA, I’d like to know. Until then, the burden of proof is on the radicals to prove they’re not really out to protect Anontards and copyright infringers.

For now, it’s looking like CISPA is a solid response to The plans by the President and Democrats to expand government online, by regulating the Internet. Double regulating in fact, as every ‘critical’ industry is already regulated. So this whole “critical infrastructure” thing is more pretext than anything

Speaking of copyright, Adam Theirer suggests a parallel between copyright over-regulation and privacy over-regulation. I can see what he’s getting at, but there is one key difference between the two: copyright is a Constitutionally-enshrined principle. The nebulous concept of privacy, which in practice often amounts to buyer’s remorse of people who give away their information in exchange for free services, but then regret it, is not.

That said, when Obama talks about a huge new Privacy regulatory scheme, I worry. FCC is already grabbing power online through Net Neutrality. The administration and Lieberman-Collins are trying to bring DHS online. Now Obama wants FTC online, too?

Remember that “retransmission consent” scuffle between Jim DeMint and the ACU? DeMint is supporting a bill that would deregulate the process by which cable companies negotiate to retransmit over the air broadcasts. Here’s a defense of ACU’s position. I would suggest that we remember the fundamental reason for retransmission consent rules: a desire to have government protect over the air broadcasters from being stepped around by cable companies. All local broadcasters have to do in order to keep their feeds from being swiped entirely, is to include copyrighted content that would be illegal to be rebroadcast.

So that’s not the fear. The fear is that cable companies will negotiate directly copyright holders to rebroadcast the specific works, without keeping the Local News at 11, shutting out the local broadcaster entirely. The fear is an open market and free wheeling competition. So I support the DeMint plan. Defang the FCC.

So let’s have some more FCC: Bloomberg apparently wants Cable Neturality against Comcast, demanding government regulation of channel lineups. Give me a break. I don’t want Nanny FCC dictating channel numbers.

FCC seems to be doing the job of GSA by trying to facilitate potential government contractors. Now why would they do that? Oh right, the Obama GSA is corrupt.

Attention Brian Bilbray, Joe Pitts, and Lindsey Graham: You are allying with John Kerry. Pull up now before it’s too late. Defense came out against the LightSquared plan. FCC ruled against it. The combination of the two seems pretty conclusive, particularly when FCC is obstructing Chuck Grassley on the matter of favoritism in favor of LightSquared.

Trademark Wars: Rosetta Stone goes after Google. I don’t know, if your name is Rosetta Stone, that’s a pretty generic name for translations. There may or not be a legitimate case for calling AdWords shenanigans trademark dilution, but a generic name like Rosetta Stone, based on an actual historical object, seems like a bad case for me.

Jim DeMint sounds skeptical on the matter of a sales tax interstate compact. DeMint suggests that the compact is a way for high tax states to avoid having to compete for jobs, and that the net effect is a tax hike. I think that’s a reasonable position, but I disagree. I think if we reform sales tax in this way, and add careful safeguards to avoid a true national sales tax, this could broaden tax bases and allow states to have simpler tax regimes. Tax simplification has benefits as well, as Ronald Reagan saw in 1986.

It’s on: The Holder DoJ is suing Apple for working with book publishers to try to rig the online book market against Amazon and book purchasers, as buyer and seller tried to rig the market for the agency pricing model to prop prices up higher.

There may be facts that haven’t come out, and the law against this may or may not be good, but as it stands, they sound pretty guilty to me. It doesn’t help that the key information about this seems to have come out in a post-mortem Steve Jobs biography.

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.

More on copyright: Copyright troll Righthaven is being put completely out of business, as the courts are stripping it of its copyrights in order to pay off its bills. Game over.

Funny note: While Sprint’s given up on Lightsquared (though the firm itself has little choice but to fight on) and Chuck Grassley is demanding transparently about the relationship between Lightsquared and the FCC, Alan Nunnelee is sticking up for them. Look, in concept I agree with him. But I think we need to know more about what Grassley is investigating before we defend them. Too much smoke not to check for a fire.

PATENT WARS: A previous Apple win in Germany is rolled back.

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.

Does Google’s envelope-pushing innovation, and the risks that innovation entails, run the further risk drawing justified government action? I sure hope not, and I disagree with those who would say that they deserve it. If you find them ‘creepy,’ then use somebody else.

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.

More on copyright: Copyright troll Righthaven is being put completely out of business, as the courts are stripping it of its copyrights in order to pay off its bills. Game over.

Funny note: While Sprint’s given up on Lightsquared (though the firm itself has little choice but to fight on) and Chuck Grassley is demanding transparently about the relationship between Lightsquared and the FCC, Alan Nunnelee is sticking up for them. Look, in concept I agree with him. But I think we need to know more about what Grassley is investigating before we defend them. Too much smoke not to check for a fire.

PATENT WARS: A previous Apple win in Germany is rolled back.

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.

Does Google’s envelope-pushing innovation, and the risks that innovation entails, run the further risk drawing justified government action? I sure hope not, and I disagree with those who would say that they deserve it. If you find them ‘creepy,’ then use somebody else.

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.

Good news? I had a great Pastrami Burger tonight from a place called The Hat. Seriously: the pastrami itself is great, and I’ll probably go for the Pastrami Dip next time. Bad news? It was a busy evening and now I’m tired. The good news that wins out? Not much to cover tonight, so let’s go.

In France it’s illegal to give away free maps. Yes, Google is reportedly having to pay €500,000 because a French cartographer didn’t like the competition. Insane.

Reminds me of one of the times Rick Santorum made a point to stand up for big government: when he tried to get government out of the business of providing “free” taxpayer-funded competition to private weather services.

Of course, Google’s free services are under fire in the US, too, so we can’t get too smug yet.

The push for a sales tax compact marches on. I still say it needs more safeguards against ever-higher taxes, double taxes, a national sales tax, and other forms of expansion.

And yes, Republican FCC reform plans are pro-growth by checking the runaway FCC.

Good news? I had a great Pastrami Burger tonight from a place called The Hat. Seriously: the pastrami itself is great, and I’ll probably go for the Pastrami Dip next time. Bad news? It was a busy evening and now I’m tired. The good news that wins out? Not much to cover tonight, so let’s go.

In France it’s illegal to give away free maps. Yes, Google is reportedly having to pay €500,000 because a French cartographer didn’t like the competition. Insane.

Reminds me of one of the times Rick Santorum made a point to stand up for big government: when he tried to get government out of the business of providing “free” taxpayer-funded competition to private weather services.

Of course, Google’s free services are under fire in the US, too, so we can’t get too smug yet.

The push for a sales tax compact marches on. I still say it needs more safeguards against ever-higher taxes, double taxes, a national sales tax, and other forms of expansion.

And yes, Republican FCC reform plans are pro-growth by checking the runaway FCC.

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 Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.

On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.

The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.

Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.

Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?

And remember: being against the SOPA/PROTECT IP plan is not the same as being pro-infringement. There are better, more workable ideas.

I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation. So I’m staying ahead of the game and will continue to beat the drum about the next fight: national and Internet sales taxation. There’s a plan gaining steam called the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we all know what it means when people talk about “tax fairness:” Grab your wallet.

Governors love the plan, no, really, as it’s a way of raising taxes while claiming you’re not raising taxes. That saves them a political fight to cut spending.

They then resort to personal attacks on the opposition, by claiming they’re “evaders” or “cheats” or other such nonsense. Those shameful attacks change the subject from the undeniable fact that the Constitution reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the Congress. Without an interstate compact, state attempts at interstate taxation defy the Constitution and are illegal.

Beware the compact plans currently coming about though. Demand that they contain safeguards, such as the compact being dissolved immediately, or state accession documents requiring the states to withdraw immediately, in the event of a national sales tax plan, in the style of the Canadian HST. Demand that tax rates be limited. Tell these sponsors that you oppose back-door national sales taxes with the full brunt of income tax left in place.

News flash: it’s not illegal for Google to do something just because you don’t like it. It annoys me that there are people who want to bring government into this. Bunch of whiners. Use something else if you don’t like it. Grow up!

Bad spectrum regulations harm access to the Internet. Yes, yes they do. I’m not going to adopt the language of these groups and say it’s a “civil rights issue,” but I agree that we need more competition. And that means less regulation and smaller government, not a runaway Justice and FCC. We need to let firms large and small get the spectrum they need.

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 Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.

On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.

The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.

Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.

Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?

And remember: being against the SOPA/PROTECT IP plan is not the same as being pro-infringement. There are better, more workable ideas.

I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation. So I’m staying ahead of the game and will continue to beat the drum about the next fight: national and Internet sales taxation. There’s a plan gaining steam called the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we all know what it means when people talk about “tax fairness:” Grab your wallet.

Governors love the plan, no, really, as it’s a way of raising taxes while claiming you’re not raising taxes. That saves them a political fight to cut spending.

They then resort to personal attacks on the opposition, by claiming they’re “evaders” or “cheats” or other such nonsense. Those shameful attacks change the subject from the undeniable fact that the Constitution reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the Congress. Without an interstate compact, state attempts at interstate taxation defy the Constitution and are illegal.

Beware the compact plans currently coming about though. Demand that they contain safeguards, such as the compact being dissolved immediately, or state accession documents requiring the states to withdraw immediately, in the event of a national sales tax plan, in the style of the Canadian HST. Demand that tax rates be limited. Tell these sponsors that you oppose back-door national sales taxes with the full brunt of income tax left in place.

News flash: it’s not illegal for Google to do something just because you don’t like it. It annoys me that there are people who want to bring government into this. Bunch of whiners. Use something else if you don’t like it. Grow up!

Bad spectrum regulations harm access to the Internet. Yes, yes they do. I’m not going to adopt the language of these groups and say it’s a “civil rights issue,” but I agree that we need more competition. And that means less regulation and smaller government, not a runaway Justice and FCC. We need to let firms large and small get the spectrum they need.

Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is using his committee to further his bill, SOPA. SOPA is very bad. It threatens due process and prior restraint of speech as it censors the Internet, and risks putting Internet-based business out of business.

Darrell Issa is leading House efforts to oppose SOPA. He’s on the Judiciary Committee, but he’s not in charge. However he does head the Oversight Committee. So guess what? Oversight is looking into the effects of DNS filtering, which is one of the more egregious provisions of SOPA. Nice play, Mr. Issa.

I love it when a conservative gets clever, because I hate that Republicans are looking to give more tools to the already out of control Obama regulators.

Here we go again with national Internet sales taxation. Nikki Haley has joined Haley Barbour in voicing support for a Congressionally approved interstate compact to apply sales taxes to interstate purchases. “Fairness” is the word that keeps being used, but it has nothing to do with fairness. Advertised prices by local retailers don’t include sales tax, so if online retailers are beating them, sales tax has nothing to do with it. Further, pushy sales pitches, ignorant salespeople, inferior selection, and a proliferation of used merchanidise have nothing to do with sales taxes, either.

No, these tax pushes are all about raising taxes without appearing to raise taxes. Especially for conservative governors like Haley and Barbour, that’s an attractive proposition. In the budget it looks like new revenue for free, which saves a state from having to make political decisions on what spending to cut.

Once we get a compact going on sales taxes, we’re one short step away from a true national sales tax. Even just half of a percent. Half a penny, For The Children™. Or To Combat Terrorism™. Or for whatever other reason. And once it’s there, it’ll be hard to get rid of, and run the risk of growth.

Leave interstate commerce untouched, I say. It’s a clear and defensible line in the sand against a Canada-style HST.

Some of us just don’t put information into Facebook if we don’t like how Facebook operates. Others use it to try to expand government. I guess personal responsibility is just too much to ask of some people.

Free markets frighten and confuse Senators. I don’t think Maine should be in the top three priorities for any given primary year, but whining like this makes it hard to say Olympia Snowe shouldn’t be on the list somewhere when her time comes.

Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is using his committee to further his bill, SOPA. SOPA is very bad. It threatens due process and prior restraint of speech as it censors the Internet, and risks putting Internet-based business out of business.

Darrell Issa is leading House efforts to oppose SOPA. He’s on the Judiciary Committee, but he’s not in charge. However he does head the Oversight Committee. So guess what? Oversight is looking into the effects of DNS filtering, which is one of the more egregious provisions of SOPA. Nice play, Mr. Issa.

I love it when a conservative gets clever, because I hate that Republicans are looking to give more tools to the already out of control Obama regulators.

Here we go again with national Internet sales taxation. Nikki Haley has joined Haley Barbour in voicing support for a Congressionally approved interstate compact to apply sales taxes to interstate purchases. “Fairness” is the word that keeps being used, but it has nothing to do with fairness. Advertised prices by local retailers don’t include sales tax, so if online retailers are beating them, sales tax has nothing to do with it. Further, pushy sales pitches, ignorant salespeople, inferior selection, and a proliferation of used merchanidise have nothing to do with sales taxes, either.

No, these tax pushes are all about raising taxes without appearing to raise taxes. Especially for conservative governors like Haley and Barbour, that’s an attractive proposition. In the budget it looks like new revenue for free, which saves a state from having to make political decisions on what spending to cut.

Once we get a compact going on sales taxes, we’re one short step away from a true national sales tax. Even just half of a percent. Half a penny, For The Children™. Or To Combat Terrorism™. Or for whatever other reason. And once it’s there, it’ll be hard to get rid of, and run the risk of growth.

Leave interstate commerce untouched, I say. It’s a clear and defensible line in the sand against a Canada-style HST.

Some of us just don’t put information into Facebook if we don’t like how Facebook operates. Others use it to try to expand government. I guess personal responsibility is just too much to ask of some people.

Free markets frighten and confuse Senators. I don’t think Maine should be in the top three priorities for any given primary year, but whining like this makes it hard to say Olympia Snowe shouldn’t be on the list somewhere when her time comes.

Internet access is not a human right. It’s not me saying that, either. It’s Vint Cerf, Google’s Internet Evangelist.

ESA May be backing SOPA, but we’re seeing developers themselves such as Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios come out against it. But support for the OPEN Act is growing, as it protects American rights without trying to censor the Internet or impose destructive burdens on Americans online.

Defeat SOPA. Pass OPEN. Everyone wins. Even if the RIAA and MPAA think they’d benefit from government picking winners and losers.

I respect Haley Barbour for being Constitutional in his support for an Internet sales tax compact, but I still say it’s a bad policy. Not only does it run the risk of America ending up with a Canadian-style Harmonized Sales Tax, complete with a true national sales tax, but there’s a more basic issue than that. Sales taxes aren’t what are helping firms like Amazon win. Firms like Best Buys simply deserve to lose.

And we must not let envy from failing retailers drive policy designed to punish the superior online competitors.

One of the quiet stories of the Obama administration is the way he’s been letting Internet governance get out of hand. We used to be in charge, and we were great stewards of the Internet. Now we run the risk of UN-style control. The same UN that would vote to wipe out Israel if it could.

Shocker: Lower Power FM is not the economic end of the world that big media firms would have had us believe.