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Maine's Governor signed Maine's non-binding resolution on net neutrality today calling for a "study" of the issue due next year and also stated that net neutrality is a Federal issue, not a state issue, due to the interstate nature of the Internet.

Nevertheless, I am sure the net neutrality movement will try and make a proverbial silk purse out of this sow's ear.

If they continue spinning the media like they have this past couple of weeks, they will continue to badly misrepresent what Maine actually did.

• Misrepresentation and bogus claims is the standard MO of the net neutrality movement.
• They manufactured an issue in net neutrality, basically by fabricating a problem that does not exist, and then hammering bogus allegations.
• Like "chicken little" they scream that the Internet is in grave danger and will fall out of the sky, but they can provide no evidence of a real problem. And the sky clearly has not fallen.
• When confronted with this evidence, they trump up another bogus claim, saying that if they were not making it an issue there would be a net neutrality problem.

Net neutrality is a bogus issue. I fully expect the net neutrality movement to make the bogus claim that they won in Maine when truth be told the Snowe-Dorgan-like bill they asked for went nowhere.

• Folks that will manufacture a bogus issue have no problem claiming a bogus victory.

I have been watching with some amusement all of the SaveTheInternet-launched blogilantes ranting about the prospect of Internet backbone networks like AT&T or others, becoming a filtering technology solution to Hollywood's problem of rampant content piracy on the Internet.

Why am I amused?

• Because net neutrality proponents are so predictably knee jerk in their reaction to anything that they see as a threat to their datatopian ideal of a net free of any broadband competition, differentiation or diversity of choice.
• Net neutrality proponents have such a bad case of "myneutralopia" that they can't see the proverbial forest for the trees.
• Over the last year, net neutrality proponents have had to make an increasing number of big concessions about what "bit discrimination" is acceptable in order to remain credible on Capitol Hill.
• They have had to concede and support network management "discrimination" of bits:
• To filter out viruses, filtering which is essential to protect the Internet and users from Net blackouts or shutdowns;
• To filter out illegal spam, so the Internet and email remains unclogged and useful; and
• To allow for law enforcement under CALEA, the ability to surveil criminal and terrorist activity on the Internet.
• If all that network managment "discrimination of bits" is OK,
• Then why isn't it OK for these same network managers to filter traffic for pirated content, i.e. trafficking in stolen goods?
• In other words, if it is OK to filter the Internet for the misdemeanors and felonies of spreading viruses and spam, and it is longstanding law for the Goverment to be able to surveil the Internet to detect criminal behavior, how is new network filtering for illegal pirated content any different or any less necessary?

Once again, the net neutrality crowd's kneejerk reaction is to side with lawbreakers rather than with every day citizens and users of the Internet who are all ultimately harmed by allowing Internet-enabled crimes to go undetected and unnpunished.

I was surprised in yesterday's news splashes on the potential swap of MySpace to Yahoo for roughly a quarter of Yahoo.

I am blogging on this because the news follow-up does not appear to have connected the dots about how bizarre this combination sounds economically and competitively.

While on the surface it seems logical because Yahoo was reportedly in talks to buy MySpace before NewsCorp did.

What makes this bizarre is what has transpired since.

• NewsCorp took the no revenue MySpace exploding growth audience and did a deal with Google which guaranteed MySpace a minimum of $900m in ad revenue over four years.

Anyone concerned about their privacy should read the GREAT article in PC World on Google and privacy, and in particular should look at the call out box to see the risk about all that Google knows about you.  

• The article does a great job of explaining all the ways that others and the government could easily access tons of private information on you via Google's huge cache of private information on you.
• Google is quickly becoming the enabler of George Orwell's feared "Big Brother" in "1984."

Let's see if the mainstream press picks up on this obvious and interesting populist story... it has legs.

Anyone interested in privacy issues, should be on a heightened sense of alert, because Google has just won a big victory in getting its "pryware" deeper into the average American's private life.

The media focused only on the antitrust angle in covering Google's antitrust complaint against Microsoft, for not making it easy enough in its new Vista operating system for users to select Google as its search engine of computers' INTERNAL hard drive.

Reuters did a decent article on Google and growing privacy concerns about Google practices.

• My beef is with the editor's choice of words in the title.
• Either the editor does not know the real definition of "paranoia" or the editor was trying to cut the knees out from under the reporter's story and soften the article.
• I've included the definitions of "paranoia" and "fear" from www.dictionary.com at the bottom of this post.

"Paranoia" is either a mental disorder or a baseless suspicion.

• I don't think Reuters meant to imply that an American is mentally ill if he/she fears that their privacy is being invaded by Google recording and storing all of their searches and click paths, electronically reading all their g-mails, and surveilling many people's lives through Street View cameras.
• As you remember, anybody that stood up to the proverbial "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, was also accused of being ill.

Let's keep an eye on Google's spinmeisters to see if this was just one editor who chose the wrong word, or if it is part of Google's talking points to defend itself against privacy concerns.

• My suspicion, is that the word came from Google.
• Oops! Does that candor make me paranoid?

par·a·noi·a –noun

Can you believe it?

Google launches its new public policy blog today and the NetCompetition/Precursorblog is not one of the blog links under "What We Are Reading!" Horrors!

First of all, it is not very "authentic" of the Google bloggers to not admit that they regularly read Precursorblog -- we know they do!

• Of course they do.
• It's just one of those guilty pleasures that they do behind closed doors because it is not politically correct at Google to expose one's mind to conservative or free market thoughts.  

Second, don't you believe for a minute that Google does not want to know what their latest public policy or PR vulnerability is.

The following is the comment I posted to Google's first "authentic" blog post on net neutrality in Google's new public policy blog:

Welcome to the blogosphere! We congratulate Google for joining the NN debate more openly using your own "authentic" voice and not those of your surrogates. It is also about time for Google to be more specific on the issue of net neutrality.

The New York Times reported a very telling statistic today on one of the prominent Webopolies in the Open Internet Coalition -- eBay.

• "EBay is still far and away the biggest auction site on the market, commanding 95% of auction listings, according to Jupiter Research, an Internet consultancy." (New York Times 6-18-07  "EBay moves to Recharge its Auctions." )

95% market share! If that's not a Webopoly, what is?

You gotta love how the free market works when left alone by the Government!

Just as Frontline and others are demanding that the government has to intervene in the 700 MHz auction to "create" a third broadband pipe, the free market finds another way to solve these market problems without the Government.

One of the most significant developments in the spectrum world today was not the hot air at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, but what happened in the free market -- DirecTV and Echostar signing agreements with Clearwire to sell their WiMax broadband service.