Rep. Barton Demands The FCC Filter ISIS From The Internet

from the act-first-think-later dept

There's been a universe of responses to the recent tragedy in Paris, and unfortunately the lion's share of them are incomprehensibly stupid, adding a compounded feeling of inevitable dread to the already heart-breaking ordeal. From punishing all Syrian refugees for the attacks to blaming Edward Snowden and encryption, there's once again far more knee-jerk inanity being generated than reasoned commentary. Joining the fray this week was Rep. Joe Barton, who simply can't seem to understand why we can't start filtering this whole "terrorism" part of the Internet.

Barton was speaking this week at yet another House hearing designed primarily to shame the FCC for standing up to ISPs on net neutrality. These show pony hearings have been going on for much of the year now, and their overarching end goal is to strip the agency's authority and funding under the auspices of reform. Ironic then, that Barton took some time out to urge the FCC to start regulating Internet speech:

"They are really trying to use the Internet and all the social media to intimidate and beat us psychologically," Barton said during a House committee hearing Tuesday. "Isn't there something we can do to shut those Internet sites down?"

Well one, we're beating ourselves psychologically by responding to tragedy by being aggressively stupid. Two, as we've noted time and time and time again, Internet filters just don't work. They're easily bypassed by even the most mentally-stunted toddler, and they open the door to atrocious savaging of free speech rights. When they do "work," they generally result in the filtering of legitimate content. Barton seems to realize this in his statements, but plows forward undeterred:

"Barton conceded that censoring the Web sites might be difficult -- "I know they pop up like weeds" -- but plowed ahead with his proposal, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission attempt to shut down the sites. "They're using the Internet in an extremely offensive and inappropriate way against us," he continued.

But the real problem isn't the fact that when you censor content it pops right back up it's the censoring of content in the first place. You'd think that an elected official would be at least marginally familiar with the First Amendment that says, you know, that the government can't censor speech. And yet here he is directly advocating outright internet censorship.

Again it's important to understand that Barton, who creatively dubs net neutrality "net nonsense," was attending a hearing with the unspoken intent of gutting FCC authority. And, ironically, it was the FCC that had to remind Barton that regulating website and social media is too far outside of its wheelhouse. Still, it's amusing that Barton believes imposing consumer protections to defend free speech is a horrible, unchecked abuse of the FCC's authority, but dramatically expanding FCC power to restrict free speech somehow makes perfect sense.

Filed Under: censorship, fcc, isis, joe barton, net neutrality

Biologic Drugs Likely To Get Separate 12-Year Monopoly Protection Beyond Patents

from the and-for-that,-we-all-suffer dept

A few weeks ago, we noted that some biotech firms were pushing hard to get a separate monopoly on biologic drugs, that went beyond patent protection, as if that wasn't enough. While we had some thoughtful comments from some industry insiders, claiming that the issue could be more about liability. If that's the case, then deal with the liability question, not the monopoly protections. Either way, Robert McClelland alerts us to the unfortunate news that our elected officials have caved in to what the big pharma companies wanted and agreed to a new plan that would give a twelve-year monopoly on these sorts of "biosimilars." It's still not clear why this is needed at all, other than to wipe out competition and make drugs much more expensive. The two congressional reps who pushed this through were Representatives Anna Eshoo and Joe Barton. This is no surprise from Barton, but Eshoo, who represents part of Silicon Valley should know better than to be increasing monopoly protections.

Oh wait... a quick look over at OpenSecrets.org shows that (take a guess...) the single largest contributor to Eshoo's election campaigns has been (yup) pharmaceutical companies. Oh, and they've already been the largest contributors to her 2010 re-election campaign. And people wonder why Larry Lessig's Change Congress movement is getting attention. Even if she's being totally sincere in her position, how else can you look on this without saying it smacks of corruption with bought-and-paid-for legislation that gives pharma companies an extra monopoly to gain significant monopoly rents at the expense of the public?

Filed Under: anna eshoo, biologics, biosimilars, corruption, drugs, joe barton, monopoly rights, patents, politics

Congressmen Not Happy About Charter's Plan To Sell Out Users To Advertisers

from the might-want-to-think-twice dept

While Charter Communications is out defending its efforts to inject ads into your surfing activities by collecting data on where you surf, it appears that some powerful Congressional Representatives are suggesting that Charter might want to think twice about implementing this. Reps. Ed Markey and Joe Barton (who both have a fair amount of power in Congress) have sent Charter a letter warning the company that doing this without letting people affirmatively opt-in may violate the Communications Act, which limits what cable companies can do with customer records. What's really surprising is that, after so much anger over similar efforts in the UK (including similar questions about legality) that Charter forged right ahead with a nearly identical plan in the US, positioning it as an "enhancement." Update And on top of this, reports are now coming out that opt-ing out of this system isn't so easy after all.

Filed Under: advertising, clickstream tracking, congress, ed markey, joe barton, opt-in, opt-out
Companies: charter communications