Wash Post says net neutrality legislation could save Google billions -- "corporate welfare?"

The recent front page Washington Post article: "Japan's warp-speed ride to Internet's future" made one interesting point:

  • "As a champion of Japanese-style competition through regulation, {Google's}Cerf supports "net neutrality" legislation now pending in Congress. It would mandate that phone and cable companies treat all online traffic equally, without imposing higher tolls for certain content. The proposed laws would probably save billions for companies such as Google..." [bold added]

WSJ editorial "A Wireless Bounty" debunks call for wireless net neutrality

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal editorial page for the editorial "A Wireless Bounty" highlighting that US wireless competition is robust, better than the rest of the world, and does not need government intervention to fix non-existent problems.

It is essential for the truth to be trumpeted in the mainstream media, because those who favor more government regulation of communications markets will fabricate all sorts of false notions to justify the creation of a "bureaucrat-net."

Those advocating wireless net neutrality have systematically misrepresented the state of US wireless competition and the benefits US consumers enjoy from that world leading competitive market.

How Google systematically misrepresents its services as "free"

Google openly represents its value in the marketplace as supplying users with "free" services: free search, free email, free docs/spreadsheet/other applications, free content, etc.  

Wash Post Japan Broadband article a thinly-disguised advocacy piece for net neutrality

The Washington Post's editors should have been more forthright and put a "news analysis" label on their front page story today "Japan's warp-speed ride to Internet future." If the Post had put the "news analysis label on the story, I would not be writing this critical analysis on why the story was not news but a thinly-disguised advocacy piece for net neutrality masquerading as news or straightforward unbiased reporting.

Laurence Tribe sees net neutrality violating US Constitution's free speech protection

The Progress and Freedom Foundation wisely hosted an outstanding and noteworthy presentation by Harvard Constitutional Law expert and scholar about how net neutrality violates the U.S. Constitution's first amendment protection of free speech.

I recommend a of blog post on this from PFF by Adam Theirer on Professor Tribe's presentation and the tour de force video is available as well.

The supreme relevance of this presentation is to debunk that net neutrality is "Internet freedom."

  • Professor Tribe is a well-known and respected liberal thought leader; so it is highly noteworthy that he has not "drunk the liberal blogosphere's kool aid" that net neutrality is about "freedom."
  • Professor Tribe clearly understands that corporations are afforded the constitutional right to free speech just like individuals are.
    • Professor Tribe also sees net neutrality for what it is -- the opposite of "Internet freedom" -- the infringment of network owners clear freedom of speech protected by the US constitution.

Not only is net neutrality trying to address a bogus non-existent "problem," it is a bogus policy concept, because in part it fundamentally misrepresents itself as "Internet freedom" when it is exactly the opposite.

 

Read "Copps airbrushes role in FCC dereg binge" by MultiChannel's Hearn

Ted Hearn of Multichannel News has a dead on post 'Copps airbrushes role in FCC dereg binge" that I suggest anyone interested in the FCC's real bipartisan role in dealing with the "net neutrality" should read.

Ted's post exposes some serious political revisionism that is going on by the senior Democrat at the FCC in pandering to one of the most liberal. take-no-prisoners bloggers, Mr. Stoller of OpenLeft.

Is Google politically neutral? or is Google trying to skew elections?

Given how extremely politically activist Google-YouTube has become, I thought it might be instructive to revisit my earlier blogpost from January where I asked: "is Google-Youtube a politically neutral gateway to Internet content and videos?"

Lets review how extremely politically active Google has become in just the last few months?

I'll be speaking at Conservative Leadership Conference on new media in Oct.

I am very excited to be attending, and to be one of the speakers, at the Conservative Leadership Conference on "Conservatives and New Media" in Reno Nevada, October 11-13.

  • This will be "the first national conference of its kind in the western United States to fully utilize the power of blogging and the internet to promote a conservative/libertarian, limited-government agenda."

The left is massively more organized and involved in new media than conservatives, so I am thrilled to help the CLC, Chuck Muth et al -- build a formidable conservative counterweight to the liberal-dominated blogosphere and new media.

I heartily encourage like-minded folks to attend, learn, and get better at promoting free-market, limited government principles over the Internet.

 

Why conservatives care about antitrust enforcement

As a conservative, I embrace antitrust law as both a necessary law and as a time-tested, light-touch, free-market arbiter mechanism to prevent potential monopolization in the marketplace.

I also embrace antitrust enforcement as a conservative, because it is an outstanding mechanism to preserve free market competition and protect it from the natural inclination of Big Government to over-reach with its heavy hand of regulation.

Greg Sidak of Georgetown University and Hal Singer of Criterion Economics have produced an outstanding editorial in the Washington Times on this subject concerning the proposed XM-Sirius merger. I recommend that every conservative who cares about limited government should read it.

  • In one sentence, Greg and Hal bring tremendous clarity of thought to this important marketplace distinction:
    • "...conservatives should also reject the idea of taking two unregulated competitors and creating in their place a brand-new regulated monopoly through the merger approval process."
      • In other words, soft antitrust enforcement is raw meat bait for the ravenous regulatory appetite of those who favor Big Government.

This explains why as a conservative, I have been so focused philosophically on highlighting the anti-competitive effects of the Google-DoubleClick merger and why I believe the FTC will ultimately block that transaction.

Powerful evidence US wireless market is world's most competitive

Kudos to Steve Pociask of the American Consumer Institute for another outstanding piece of analysis that debunks the notion that the US wireless market is not competitive and requires net neutrality/open access regulation.

The powerfully straightforward conclusions are:

  • The US has more choice and less concentration in wireless than Europe;
  • Americans use their wireless almost four times as much as Europe;
  • US wireless prices are the lowest in the world save for Hong Kong.

What's wrong with that picture?

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