About Scott Cleland
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You are hereAmazonMore on Google's friend or foe? schizophreniaSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2006-11-13 19:01The Sunday NYT had a great piece on Google by Richard Siklos "A Struggle Over Dominance and Definition." The crux of the analysis is Google: mate or menace? friend or foe? to media players and others? My favorite quote was Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer: "The truth is, what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google."
However, what I really love is how Google keeps self-redefining themselves in a way that makes net neutrality regulation more likely to apply to them in the future. Don't miss the big Internet tax precursor in the Republican Senate Leadership changesSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2006-11-13 10:19While everyone is understandably focused on the changes in Congressional leadership on the Democratic side, arguably one of the most significant potential changes that directly affects the bottom lines of all Internet-related companies and the future of the Internet could be the ascension of Republican Senator Lamar Alexander (TN) to be the Senate Minority Whip, because he is one of Congress' biggest proponents of ending the Internet Tax Moratorium when it expires in 2007. Why am I flagging this as potentially a very big deal for the Internet world? First, Senator Alexander, a former Governor of Tennessee, disagrees with the bipartisan and Republican consensus of the last decade that the Internet is inter-state commerce and as such should not be subject to state and local taxes. Sen. Alexander has worked harder than just about anyone in Congress to authorize States and localities to tax the Internet. Why this matters is that any Washington insider knows that tax issues are generally negotiated at the Congressional leadership level and the interests and knowledge of particular leaders can have a very big impact on the policy outcome -- that's why they are leaders. Second, adding a new Senate leader, whose pet issue is to end the Internet Tax Moratorium, with the already combusible mix for the Internet of the Democratic takeover of Congress and Democratic support of net neutrality, and one gets a potentially very volatile environment for future taxation and regulation of the Internet. Given the importance of the Internet and broadband to the U.S. economy, and that there is a wide open race for the White House in 2008, this is a potentially very big deal indeed. The Democratic Congress' "tough choice" on net neutralitySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2006-11-10 14:47With power comes responsibility and with responsibility comes tough choices. Both Speaker-elect Pelosi and Majority Leader-elect Reid have pledged to "govern from the center." The operative word here is "govern." While net neutrality may have been a good "political" issue for the Democrats, it is not a good "governing issue" for them. With control of Congress, the Democrats can now make policy and pass legislation, which means, very practically, that they have to live with the real world consequences of their legislative rhetoric and decisions -- because Wall Street, markets and voters are taking them very seriously. Political reality check for net neutrality in a Democratic CongressSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2006-11-09 14:03 Conventional wisdom among net neutrality proponents is that a new Democratic Congress is good for net neutrality. Proponents point to the fact that the Senate Commerce Committee vote was 11-11 and two of the Senators that voted “noâ€? (Allen VA and Burns MT) were defeated in the election. They also point to the fact that Ed Markey, a big net neutrality supporter, is now Chairman of the Telecom Subcommittee the subcommittee that defeated his net neutrality amendment last year. They also point to the fact that Speaker-elect Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader elect Reid are also big net neutrality supporters. Those are the positives and they are real and significant, but are they enough?  Election impact on Communications and the Democrats universal broadband industrial policySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2006-11-08 12:06FCC Democratic Commissioner Copps editorial in the Washington Post, America's Internet Disconnect" is a very good guide to how the debate over communications policy and net neutrality will shift with Democratic asendancy in Congress.  I have the utmost respect for Commissioner Copps personally even though I generally disagree with his conclusions when we look at the same set of facts or analysis. It probably results from his greater trust in government than markets and my greate trust in markets than government. SEC Chairman encouraging Companies to blog!Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2006-11-07 12:21Today is a big day in the history of blogging because the SEC Chairman Cox has gone on record effectivley encouraging companies to blog -- see the original AP story that highlights the SEC's Chairman's comment on Sun Microsystem's blog. Corporations to date have been reluctant to embrace blogging technology in part I believe out of the fear of the unknown. One of those unknowns was clearly what the SEC and markets would think. Google: Tech's discriminator in chief?Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2006-11-06 19:01When financial types describe Google's growth juggernaut they routinely say that 99% of Google's revenues come from search advertising. Remarkably they have turned search advertising from nothing 8 years ago to a roughly $10 billion a year business. Truly extraordinary. But how did they do it? Through economic discrimination, the highest bidder wins. Basic market forces. So what's my point? Google's entire business model is based on discriminating against websites -- what they say net neutrality is needed to prevent.Â
FCC rules no Net Neutrality for Broadband over PowerlinesSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2006-11-03 15:23
Please also make note of Chairman Martin's clever use of the word "neutrality" in his statement:
Check out this great new analogy for why net neutrality is so off-base -- "food-neutrality"Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2006-11-03 13:25Every now an then someone comes up with a new great analogy that really helps us get to the heart of a matter. Canadian Mark Goldberg's telecom trends blog really hit the nail on the head in this post. Let's go right to his analogy:
Before I worked at Videotron, I was in the food business – we were a 'content producer' in the parlance of today's communications business. To reach our customers, we dealt with a distribution channel, in our case, grocery stores.
Diller's IAC unabashedly showcases their Net Neutrality competition double standardSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2006-11-02 17:55Newsweek's article "Diller Weaves a Web" is a very clear example of the gross competition double standard that tech companies are pursuing in asking for a "non-discrimination" principle to only apply to competitive broadband companies but not to themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have any trouble with IAC pursuing this business model.  I am only needling IAC for its bald, self-serving hypocrisy of seeking to get the government to protect them from potentially "discriminatory" competition so they can freely "discriminate" against the little guy website that ItsOurNet claims to be supporting. Let's look at an interesting quote from the Newsweek article: Pages |