TechBytes

Congressional inaction, municipal tax action, and administration bad action make progress difficult for the U.S. cloud computing industry.

James Madison, and George Mason before him, were clear in the language in the Fourth Amendment, that the people and anything they own must be protected from unreasonable and warrantless government searches and seizures. So why aren't we?

The new normal for the technology industry interacting with Washington, DC seems to be to argue for niche pieces of the broad ecosystem which has left the industry open to being easily attacked, even by wholly false stories, by those who oppose a free market.

If the FCC would reallocate more of its time and resources to releasing spectrum and less of it to micromanaging the broadband industry, that would be a win-win for the U.S. economy.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Thanks to the inaction of Congress, taxes are multiple, discriminatory, and certain in the digital world.

We should not be forced to keep our doors unlocked and leave our data and families with no protection, so that government may stroll in at will, yet that is what the government wants.

Updating ECPA for the Internet Age would allow Congress to show that it is sensitive to Americans’ privacy concerns and to reaffirm our Fourth Amendment protections. 

Regulating before we even understand if regulations are needed, what ends regulations might serve, what the challenges might be, or even a useful definition of what would be regulated would be foolish at best, and likely to impede innovation.

Now the Obama administration is turning its attention to solving the puzzle of why the Internet has been such a massive disappointment.

We all benefit when artists and creators invent, write, film and imagine. It’s also true that we all lose when piracy, whether via hacking or other means, is left to run rampant.