The Wall Street Journal warns that, judging from its anti-China rhetoric, Congress still hasn’t learned the lessons from the Smoot-Hawley tariff.  The WSJ writes: “Unfortunately, Congress is suffering from a bad case of amnesia. Over the past several months, protectionism has reached a fever pitch with lawmakers in both Houses clamoring to attach their names to as many as 50 anti-trade bills. 

[…]  Protectionists attempt to disrupt the market’s natural tendency to seek efficiency by imposing tariffs in order to artificially increase the price of foreign goods relative to domestic competition. Thus, tariffs are simply a tax on American consumers, and it would be Americans, more than the Chinese, who pay the price."

The Weekly Standard reports that “[a]n ambitious private initiative to help American Internet service providers (ISPs) identify jihadist websites they are unwittingly hosting was unveiled the other day in Washington.  […]  The goal is to significantly disrupt the jihadists’ use of the Internet to spread their ideology, their explosives know-how, and their recruitment propaganda worldwide.”

According to PCWorld.com, “Microsoft Corp. is seeking to settle its long-running patent suit with Eolas Technologies Inc. through negotiations rather than heading back to the courtroom.  The company confirmed Tuesday that it is in ‘active discussions’ with Eolas to settle a patent suit over Internet Explorer that was first filed in 1999.  ‘We are hopeful that we can resolve our dispute amicably,’” Microsoft said on Tuesday.

PC Magazine has an interesting article on “the trouble with Web apps.”  PC Mag writes that “Google and Apple recently made big bets that we’re all going online for our applications. But we aren’t, we won’t, and we shouldn’t.  ‘Web-based applications’ are at best kludges; more often the term is just a gussied-up way of describing the way Web pages should work in the first place—but too often don’t.  […]  No Web app will ever be as stable and broadly compatible as a well-written native app.”

Internetnews.com points out that “[d]igital rights management (DRM) software, the code tucked into the ones and zeros of your digital music and movies that to prevent piracy, isn’t going away anytime soon.  […]  In a report called ‘Digital Rights Management Update,’ In-Stat analyst Mike Paxton writes that DRM is likely to proliferate due to the amount of digital content flowing over telecommunications networks, as well as the rate at which it’s growing. And this despite recent announcements to the contrary from Amazon and Apple.”