Corporate Welfare

Please don’t miss my Daily Caller  op-ed: “How America Protects National Champion Google in the EU”

• It spotlights the facts of how exceptionally integrated Google has become with the U.S. Government on most all of the commercial matters most critical to Google’s business success.

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Google Unaccountability Series

Part 0: Google's Poor & Defiant Settlement Record [5-1-12]

Part 1: Why Google Thinks It Is Above the Law [4-17-12]

The top ten most descriptive adjectives for the President’s claim that Title II utility regulation authority is needed to implement net neutrality are:

1. UNTRUE

2. UNWARRANTED

3. UNNECESSARY

4. UNFAIR  

5. UNPOPULAR

Please don’t miss my Daily Caller op-ed here: “Net Neutrality Has Become an Industrial Policy.”

It explains how net neutrality is being exposed to be less about protecting consumers and more about “Trojan horse” political messaging to protect and subsidize Silicon Valley economic interests.

This is Part 70 of my FCC Open Internet Order Series.

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FCC Open Internet Order Series

Part 1: The Many Vulnerabilities of an Open Internet [9-24-09]

Via their Congresswoman, Silicon Valley is trying to redefine net neutrality for their benefit under the benign guise of “rebranding.”

Their desired re-definition is that net neutrality now should be the principle that “all bits are created equal.”

This is an unreasonable utopian escalation of the net neutrality debate. An “all bits are created equal” or “bit equality” principle would be a radical departure from the current decade-old “network neutrality” principle that the American Internet has long operated under.

Everyone knows that “neutrality” and “equality” are not synonyms and are not honestly used as interchangeable concepts in conversation, policy discourse, branding, or the law.

If Netflix’ position on net neutrality was justified on the merits, why does Netflix need to say so many deceptive things that are demonstrably untrue, in order to justify its case for its version of net neutrality?

Unregulated Google is increasingly pushing for maximal FCC net neutrality and price regulation of its direct broadband competitors, potentially via FCC reclassification of broadband as a Title II telephone utility service.

Dear Executives of Internet Association Companies,

Have you thought through the global implications of your businesses’ public lobbying for regulating broadband like a public telephone utility? 

Possibly you are unaware that “The French government said it would push for a new European law later this year to classify Google and other Web giants like public utilities, forcing them to guarantee access to all services like phone operators. … We don’t want to become a digital colony of global Internet giants” said the French Economy Minister, per Wall Street Journal reporting.

As members of the global Internet giant association, and as global companies with large majorities of your current or future revenues coming from overseas, it could be beneficial to better think through the global implications of your high-profile policy support for new broadband utility regulation in the U.S.

The Net Neutrality movement has lost its way. It’s now perversely focused on advancing Internet companies’ economic interests at the expense of Internet user interests.

The Net neutrality movement’s main priority used to be about ensuring that Internet users have the freedom to access the legal content of their choice.

Now they have become singularly-focused on securing permanent economic subsidies for edge companies by demanding the FCC set a zero-price for all downstream Internet traffic via reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier service.

Essentially, what their latest net neutrality scheme would mean is that Internet users would be forced to shoulder the entire cost burden of maintaining and upgrading America’s expensive Internet infrastructure without a fair-share contribution from the top Internet companies for the infrastructure costs they cause as a result of their dominant consumption of the nation’s daily downstream bandwidth.  

Simply, net neutrality has transmogrified from preserving users’ Internet freedoms to forcing all Internet users to fully subsidize all Internet companies’ bandwidth usage bill no matter if they use a particular edge companies’ services or not.

Billionaire Netflix CEO Reed Hastings objects to Netflix having to pay anything at all for Netflix’ gorging on 30% of the Internet’s North American bandwidth. In a Netflix corporate blogpost billionaire Reed Hastings rails against the perceived injustice of Netflix paying Internet usage-based pricing like consumers do.

At core, Mr. Hastings now derides traditional consumer-defined net neutrality, which ensures consumers the freedom to access the legal content of their choice – as “weak” net neutrality.

Meanwhile, he is attempting to rebrand his new self-serving, corporate-defined net neutrality, which ensures the largest corporate users of the Internet pay nothing for their largest usage of interconnection bandwidth -- as “strong” net neutrality.

Mr. Hastings’ position clearly prioritizes corporate welfare above consumer welfare.