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April 2007

Net neutrality is embarassingly absent from Democrat's tech policy agenda

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-04-27 15:32

Declan McCullagh of CNET has a very insightful piece called: "Missing : Politicians who take a clear stand on tech" where he spotlights that net neutrality is not on either the Democrat or Republican tech policy agendas.

  • It is not at all surprising that the Congressional Republican agenda does not have Net neutrality on its agenda, since Republicans almost universally see net neutrality for what it is: an unnecessary and dangerous back door attempt to regulate the Internet for the first time.
  • However, it is suprising and downright embarassing that Moveon.org and Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, and IAC could not manage to get net neutrality on the Congressional Democratic tech policy agenda.
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Google-Doublclick and "intimacy theft"

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-04-27 18:18

I first wanted to share some very interesting quotes that are relevant to the GoogleDoubleclick merger and privacy in general -- before I delve into the issue of "intimacy theft" more specifically. 

In Comm Daily Thursday, a widely respected attorney in Washington, Christine Varney, who identified herself as a longtime attorney for DoubleClick said:

  • "A light government hand can't protect privacy. There's absolutely no marketplace for privacy. People will sell their mother's life history for 10 cents off a big Mac."

This is the marketplace context that the government will review the Google-DoubleClick merger.

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Google as "Big Brother" and the "dark side" of accessible info

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-04-30 17:49

The New York Times article today on Google highlights another reason all Americans should be worried about Google's anti-competitive arbitrage of U.S. privacy laws and consumer expectations.

  • "Google has been working with officials in Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia to make some of that information more broadly available." 
    • That "information'  is the data on state websites; and is part of Google's mission "to make all the world's information accessible and useful." 
  • "But the increased exposure of government records through web searches is likely to raise privacy concerns."
  • "It will be easier to collect disparate facts about a person, which bound together and aggregated, can present troubling problems..." 

I just heard someone joke:

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The "Open Net Coalition" -- "ItsOurNet" Part II -- They're back!

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-04-30 18:40

The ItsOurNet coalition is relaunching under a new name the "Open Internet Coalition" in May according to Todays' National Journal's Tech Daily .

  • The article intimates that the new incarnation of the online giant coalition may not include Microsoft.
    • Since ItsOurNet formed last year Google was much more radical and hyper-regulatory than Microsoft was comfortable with.
    • After coming out swinging the antitrust bat when Google outbid Microsoft, it will be very surprising if Microsoft rejoins Google's gang after parting ways with ItsOurNet last fall.

I must say I am sad to see the ItsOurNet name fall by the wayside, it was a glorious pinata of a concept.

  • I needled ItsOurNet when they announced their name that it was a tad bit greedy for the online giants to claim in their name that they "owned" the Internet.
  • I suggested it would have been a little wiser and fit with their "democratic" message to have called it "ItsEveryonesNet" or "ItsEverybodysNet".
  • But no, they apparently are calling it the "Open Net coalition" or "OpenNetCoalition.com."
  • Not bad but for grins, quickly checkout an Internet artifact before they pull it down: opennetcoalition.org.

It also will be interesting to see if they have retooled the substance of their message and if they will abandon Moveon.org and the Dorgan-Snowe bill to try and appear more reasonable and practical.

Reading between the lines of the article it seems Moveon is "on" the defensive so to speak.

lastly it will be interesting to see if:

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