John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

McCain Gets Mavericky on Net Neutrality

mccainThey don’t call Sen. John McCain a maverick for nothing. Just hours after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski officially unveiled Net neutrality rules, the Arizona Republican introduced a bill that would prohibit the Commission from enacting them. Called the Internet Freedom Act, the legislation says the FCC “shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services.”

Evidently, McCain views such rules, which would require Internet service providers to treat all Web traffic equally, as “onerous federal regulation” at best and, at worst, another one of those “government takeovers.”

“The [Obama] administration can’t resist imposing regulations on the Internet–particularly since Google Inc. and other Internet content providers were promised the imposition of such regulations as these companies seek to control what consumers see and don’t see on the Internet–despite the fact that these regulations will only serve to hurt consumers,” McCain wrote in an op ed in the Washington Times.

“The wireless industry exploded over the past 20 years, in part due to limited government regulation. Wireless carriers invested $100 billion in infrastructure and development over the past three years, which has led to faster networks, more competitors in the marketplace and lower prices in the United States compared to any other country….Regulation kills innovation. Let’s not kill the Internet.”

McCain, it should be noted, received some $894,379 in contributions from AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Comcast (CMCSA) and other telecom industry interests over his career–all of them opposed to the Net neutrality regulations the FCC hopes to implement.

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik