SOPA: Delayed But Not Defeated

Good news – somewhat. The extremely dangerous SOPA bill has been delayed. The Judiciary Committee began hearings on the bill on Thursday, but the outnumbered opponents of the bill prolonged the process as much as possible, forcing the entire text to be read out loud and bringing up amendment after amendment. The hearing continued on Friday where it was abruptly ended. Initial reports suggested that the bill had been delayed until at least January, but apparently they are going to try to have another meeting this coming Wednesday – apparently the issue of piracy is so important that it cannot wait until after Christmas. (Word on the Internet is that the lobbyists just want to sneak the bill through while no one’s paying attention, just like they did with the Federal Reserve act back in 1913 or something.)

So the fight will continue but at least it’s dragging out longer than expected, giving the entire Internet more time to mobilize defense against it. Also, Lamar Smith – the bill’s uncompromising leader – apparently seems open to letting actual technology experts talk about the potential consequences of the bill.

Continue reading SOPA: Delayed But Not Defeated

The Right To A Lightbulb Has Been Extended

(Update below)

It seems that in the wheeling and dealing to pass a government budget this week, the ban on incandescent lightbulbs has been delayed. The 100W bulbs were supposed to be the first to be illegalized starting next month, but Congress apparently prohibited the administration from “spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards… That means the regs will likely go into effect next fiscal year, which starts in October 2012.”

Well, in the simplest sense, any delay to statism is good news. Of course, there are liberals on the Internet complaining that those dumb conservatives just hate regulation even when it would save them money on electric bills, but I’ve written before about how I’ve struggled to find any available lightbulbs that match the quality of existing incandescents – besides the fact that it’s arguable that the “green” savings from CFLs are offset by their manufacturing processes or the fact that they contain mercury. So a delay is good news. If things get delayed almost to the next presidential election, maybe it will get delayed again.

But it’s a rather hollow victory.

Continue reading The Right To A Lightbulb Has Been Extended

SOPA: Opposed By The Entire Internet

The entertainment industry is lobbying for a dangerous “anti-piracy” bill that essentially gives the government the power to make websites accused of file-sharing vanish from the Internet – even if the accusation is unfounded or was caused by a random user. It’s a terrible, corrupt, and poorly written bill that will do nothing to solve the piracy problem but has a lot of potential to ruin the Internet. But don’t take my word for it. The founders of Google, Twitter, eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, PayPal and more have sent a joint letter to Congress in opposition. So did 83 Internet engineers who helped create the original protocols that made the Internet work. Tumblr mobilized its users into making over 87,000 calls to Congress, and thousands of other websites are working with American Censorship to do the same thing. Techcrunch hates it. Gizmodo hates it. The primary editors of Wikipedia, the fifth-most popular website in the world, are considering blacking out the entire site for a day in protest (I really hope they do; it looks like about 89% of them support the idea).

Continue reading SOPA: Opposed By The Entire Internet

The Hullabaloo About Muslims and Hardware Stores

When the Florida Family Association called on advertisers to boycott a new TLC show about American Muslim families, they probably didn’t expect to start a big controversy that would end up with more people learning about the show than ever would have otherwise. But Lowe’s pulled its ads from All-American Muslim, and now everybody’s upset that they caved to a social conservative group. Apparently thousands of people want Lowe’s to reinstate the ads (no doubt many of them liberals who otherwise act disgusted by advertising). Personally I think it’s a big hullabaloo about almost nothing.

First, to the conservatives Republicans: You need to get over your obsession with “real Muslims vs. fake Muslims.” You know that some people think Islam is a peaceful religion and some people think it has to do with killing all the infidels. You’ve learned about al-Qeada and the history of Mohammed and seen some verses from the Koran and you’ve been convinced that the “real Muslims” are the killers and the ones that think it’s a peaceful religion are just fooling themselves. The Florida Family Association president, David Caton, declares that “a follower of Islam believes in the radicalization, use of Sharia Law, which provides for honor killings, mutilation of women, and numerous other atrocities to women.” So whenever part of our culture engages in an attempt to present “peaceful Muslims” in a good light, you get riled up because you think they’re trying to deceptively encourage sympathy and support for dangerous murderers.

Continue reading The Hullabaloo About Muslims and Hardware Stores

The Right To A Domain

There’s a lot of hoopla going around on the Internet, opposing the proposed SOPA and PIPA acts meandering through Congress. As far as I can tell this is completely warranted, as the bills have something to do with giving the government power to blackout websites that are merely accused of facilitating illegal activities, including anything happening to come from its user-generated content. Really, however, the bills seem to just be lobbying from the entertainment industry in another flailing attempt to crack down on online file-sharing.

Now I don’t know how much of the hysteria would really happen if these bills went through, but the government already thinks it has the power to seize domains suspected of illegally sharing files, because they did just that to dozens of sites in November 2010. (It seems like most of the sites just moved out of jurisdiction.) So if the government is already using scary powers to seize websites, I really don’t want to explicitly give them permission to use more.

But wait – it gets worse! One of the biggest problems with expanding the government’s power to do things is that it increases the potential for abuse. And yesterday I read an infuriating article about one of the domains that was seized last year. Apparently ICE seized a popular hip-hop blog that supposedly only shares files purposefully sent by artists and labels for promotion purposes. But the government put up its “warning graphic on the site, suggesting its operators were criminals, and then refused to comment at all about the case.”

Continue reading The Right To A Domain

Guide to the 2012 GOP Presidential Candidates: A Reasonable Attempt At An Intelligent Summary

(NOTE: This is intended to be a living document. If you spot an error or just want to quibble about something I said or left out, let me know in the comments.)

One of my friends asked me for “an intelligent rundown” on the Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential election. Here is my attempt with a blog post for the public, including the candidates’ experience, links to their wiki and campaign sites, the age they would be as President, their fact-checked score on campaign statements by the [mostly] non-partisan Politifact, and my opinions of their pros and cons and a summary of their campaign thus far.

Here are the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates, in roughly reverse order of their current poll standings. This guide isn’t perfect, but neither are any of these candidates… (UPDATED 1/21/12) (Bias disclaimer: This guide may be too mean to Gingrich, not nice enough to Santorum, and too nice to Paul and Roemer)

Continue reading Guide to the 2012 GOP Presidential Candidates: A Reasonable Attempt At An Intelligent Summary

The Right to a Happy Meal Toy

I can’t believe I never blogged about San Francisco voting to ban toys in Happy Meals that did not meet certain health requirements. I guess it’s because it happened last November which was before the latest incarnation of my blog. At the time I thought it was a hilarious and classic example of the progressive mindset that the state is more authorized to make decisions for children than the parents, and also a hilarious and classic example of fruitless, arbitrary regulation that restaurants would find an easy way around.

Well, the ban is back in the news, because it finally goes into effect today, and the New York Times is reporting that McDonald’s is just going to charge 10 extra cents to slip the toy into the bag. And the regulator response:

“We are going to learn from how the industry responds,” Dr. Bhatia said, “and do what’s necessary to improve regulation.

Continue reading The Right to a Happy Meal Toy

So wait is the euro collapsing or not?

Those pesky markets are confusing even the really smart economists these days. For the last couple months, all eyes have been on Europe and whatever is the latest country to be having major debt problems. Sonic Charmer has been blogging for awhile about the roller coaster that has ensued as headlines spit out good news or bad news about “plans” to “save” the “euro.” I haven’t bothered to keep up the details, which mostly seem to be concerned with either accounting tricks to hide the large amounts of debt that European countries have, or public relations tricks to try to convince the less indebted nations to sacrifice for the more indebted ones.

Continue reading So wait is the euro collapsing or not?

Layman’s Terms: What does The Debt Supercommittee Failure Mean?

What is the Supercommittee?
The Supercommittee was created by Congress to try to find a way to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years. Congress could not agree on a way to do this, so they appointed 12 of their members – 6 Democrat and 6 Republican – to try to come up with such a way, and if seven of them agreed on a plan, that plan would go straight to the House and the Senate to be voted on. However, these 12 members could not agree on a plan any more than the rest of Congress could earlier.

What was the Supercommittee’s deadline?
The official deadline for coming up with a plan was Wednesday, November 23, but the Congressional Budget Office needed 48 hours to analyze the plan and verify that it would produce $1.2 trillion in savings, so the failure of the committee to come up with a plan by Monday night means that they have failed completely.

Continue reading Layman’s Terms: What does The Debt Supercommittee Failure Mean?

The Changing Politics of the Defense Budget

It seems that the Debt Supercommittee is doomed to fail, which doesn’t actually surprise a lot of people. (If you don’t understand what the Supercommittee is, see “Layman’s Terms: What Does The Debt Supercommittee Failure Mean?“) The United States government is still showing an extreme unwillingness to make hard choices about its debt. The Supercommittee only needed to come up with cuts of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, or an average of $120 billion a year from a deficit of over $1 trillion of a budget in the neighborhood of $3.5 trillion. The members of the Supercommittee couldn’t even agree on a way to trim roughly 5% of our overall budget – cuing lots of political posturing about whether we should blame the Republicans for not accepting enough tax increases or the Democrats for not accepting enough cuts.

But at least we have the “automatic” cuts that kick in since the committee didn’t find a better way to come up with those numbers, right? It’s still a tiny amount in the scheme of the overall budget. It still amounts to a slowed manner of growth rather than legitimate cuts. It still leaves us with an enormous deficit and growing debt. But at least the government has tricked itself into finding a way to save $1.2 trillion, right?

Continue reading The Changing Politics of the Defense Budget