Anonymous and its associated online criminal organizations continue to face losses. A top Lulzsec leader was arrested in Scotland. Remember, this guy is no “activist.” He stole from people who happened to have Visas or MasterCards. Vigilante action against Anonymous and its online criminal wings continues, as well.

Anonymous is in such trouble, they’re now desperate for allies, begging unions to join their cause. Note that by targeting Paypal, Anonymous threatens the livelihoods of many who depend on income via Paypal simply to stay in business and pay bills.

I’m unhappy with the US patent system since the passage of the America Invents Act, which changed our patent system to appease Europe and make work for the ABA. The price? We no longer even try to award patents to the person who invents things first. Seriously, that’s not me making that up. That’s what the AIA did: it changed us from first-to-invent to first-to-file.

Pejman Yousefzadeh is unhappy, too. But it’s not getting better. There were only a few of us even speaking up about AIA and its worsening of the patent situation. I was speaking up, and so was Dana Rohrabacher. Conservatives mostly stayed silent, and Republicans voted for it in droves. We’re stuck with broken patents, which is why I’m ready to give up on patents in America.

House Republicans continue to talk security when, as we’re seeing with Anonymous, what we really need is enforcement of existing criminal law. Put the bad guys in jail. Just do it. If a foreign country acts, treat acts of war as acts of war. This isn’t hard, guys.

Net Neutrality may have passed the FCC, but it’s still on shaky ground. Senate Republicans are questioning it now. And as it turns out, the FCC is still expressing doubts that Net Neutrality is legal. Spoiler: it’s not legal, and it must be destroyed.

People often call it the Amazon Tax because it’s designed to punish Amazon and the millions of Americans who choose to shop there, but California’s unconstitutional Internet Sales Tax affects many, and not just the Amazon Associates who have been terminated thanks to the new California tax. These taxes, when passed in California or other states, aren’t just unconstitutional. They’re net losers of revenue. Businesses are killed, which lowers tax bills, but the new revenue is not realized. It’s just bad policy.

Apple put a scare into HTC by coming after HTC for patent infringement, but as it turns out, Apple is infringing on newly-acquired patents that HTC has. Oops. HTC now hopes to make a deal with Apple. So, we’ll see what Apple’s response is. It wouldn’t be surprising though if HTC and Apple simply cross-licensed the patents, which is the typical cartel creation that the American patent system allows.

Any “GMail interventions” I get from Google will be filed as spam to train my spam filter, and deleted.

Is Mozilla calling the Linux-based Android a proprietary technology? If so, it looks like we have Open Source Software purity wars ahead. Pass the popcorn.

We’ll close with some AT&T/T-Mobile. Al Franken has reflexively come out for big government, but T-Mobile dignified him with a response despite the fact that he lacks any ability to express clear, consistent policies for anything. But as they said, “While we respect Senator Franken, his analysis of our pending transaction is just wrong.”

Eleven states have had their Attorneys General come out against government intervention against AT&T and T-Mobile. May their opinions carry more weight than Stuart Smalley’s.