If Virrilli is his pick for Solicitor General, so be it. He gets a lot of credit for a high profile file sharing entity, but he put nothing concrete in place to stop the intellectual property carnage that continues "under the radar". When Hillary Rosen headed the RIAA at the dawn of the internet, she was so inept that she ceded the entire system over to a new generation of "free" seekers and systemic theft became the norm for the first time in our nation's history. You can't steal a loaf of bread without risk of prosecution, but you can steal an artist's song, a studio movie (YouTube is crowded with unauthorized 4-10 part postings of entire movies), etc. Intellectual property is treated like bathroom tissue these days. Lower prices are good, "free" (aka theft) is bad and this brings harm to all, little by little, day by day.
For all the good and bad the net has generated and those lingering debates notwithstanding, we don't need to address problems with the net via "Franken Sense". He is an anti-capital nightmare (unless we're talking about his own personal financial benefits). The net allows for capital expansion and new opportunity (even for the like-minded "Franken Steins" out there). Net neutrality is a formula for lost opportunities (individual and corporate), lost earnings and fewer people employed. He can dress it up any way he wants, but that underbelly is dark and scary.
Slashdot Mirror
If Virrilli is his pick for Solicitor General, so be it. He gets a lot of credit for a high profile file sharing entity, but he put nothing concrete in place to stop the intellectual property carnage that continues "under the radar". When Hillary Rosen headed the RIAA at the dawn of the internet, she was so inept that she ceded the entire system over to a new generation of "free" seekers and systemic theft became the norm for the first time in our nation's history. You can't steal a loaf of bread without risk of prosecution, but you can steal an artist's song, a studio movie (YouTube is crowded with unauthorized 4-10 part postings of entire movies), etc. Intellectual property is treated like bathroom tissue these days. Lower prices are good, "free" (aka theft) is bad and this brings harm to all, little by little, day by day.
For all the good and bad the net has generated and those lingering debates notwithstanding, we don't need to address problems with the net via "Franken Sense". He is an anti-capital nightmare (unless we're talking about his own personal financial benefits). The net allows for capital expansion and new opportunity (even for the like-minded "Franken Steins" out there). Net neutrality is a formula for lost opportunities (individual and corporate), lost earnings and fewer people employed. He can dress it up any way he wants, but that underbelly is dark and scary.