March, 2008

Why the Markey Net Neutrality Bill Would Regulate the Internet

H.R.5353 would alter the FCC’s priorities to put Internet regulation ahead of competition   

Where the Markey Bill explicitly would regulate the Internet: 

Enough of Net neutrality activists' hypocritical sanctimony over freedom, free speech and democracy! It is sickening.

Net neutrality activists claim to support freedom, free speech, and democracy, but they really don't in practice.

First, let's look at the recent activist whining from FreePress/SaveTheInternet about how the FCC network management forum at Harvard was somehow hijacked by Comcast sympathetic attendees or who these activists have derisively called "seat fillers."

CNET highlights new Comscore research that shows that mobile broadband is the fastest growing type of broadband.

• One would think this hot consumer demand for "mobility" would universally be viewed as a good thing, but it isn't viewed that way by pro-regulation/net neutrality proponents.  
• They fear rapidly increasing consumer demand for mobile broadband will undermine political support and the rationale for their pro-regulation proposals to regulate and subsidize one primary stationary broadband provider.

Proponents of a new National Broadband Strategy have two huge vulnerabilities:

Save the Internet campaign director Tim Karr in Huffington Post and columnist John Dvorak in PC Magazine are making a strategic blunder in their latest posts in responding to Andy Kessler's Wall Street Journal op ed "Internet Wrecking Ball" in bringing the net neutrality discussion back to a political philosophy discussion about whether the Internet should continue be a free market or whether Government should effectively "socialize" the Internet with net neutrality economic regulation and a implementation of an "information commons" agenda. 

Moveon.org, through its FreePress/SaveTheInternet puppets, loves to extol the virtues of grass roots democracy and claim to the press that there is a spontaneous groundswell for their net neutrality views in the "netroots." BALONEY! Moveon.org is a glorified top-down email list of activists, albeit a huge 3 million activist email list -- just like direct mail political organizers before them.

To support this point, I had to share this juicy dead-on insight shared at the Politics Online conference this week, by Personal Democracy Forum founder Andrew Rasiej -- per Washington Internet Daily:

Garret Rogers of Googling Google on ZDnet has an illuminating post: "Google gives developers access to your contacts."

• While Google extols the benefits of its "open" system it is irresponsibly silent on how it allows third parties "open access" to one of users most intimate and private treasures of information -- ones private contacts.
  • Doesn't law enforcement have to get a court authorized subpoena to see this type of private information?
  • Didn't Facebook just get whacked by users and privacy advocates for sharing access to contact lists without a users explicit permission?  

This is another big evidence point of a long and continued cavalier attitude to users privacy by Google (read on if you doubt this is a pattern -- these posts have most all the relevant links to all the mainstream articles on Google's cavalier attitude to Privacy):

Politicizing the Internet

Kudos to Warner Todd Huston for picking up on the outrageous free-speech double standard: "Google-YouTube Yanks Pro-Life Video, Allows Planned Parenthood Vids" that cpicked up on the Catholic News Agency's story that "American Life League video yanked by YouTube."

EU clearance of the Google-DoubleClick merger is a much bigger deal for Google than the economy-obsessed marketplace appreciates.

The House Judiciary hearing on "Free Speech and the Internet" this afternoon was perilously close to being a non-event.

• While Net neutrality activists will claim and spin victory and momentum in getting a congressional hearing on the subject, anyone who listened to the hearing would have been surprised by how little actual support net neutrality got out of this hearing. 

What I found most interesting and telling at the hearing is that Michelle Combs of the Christian Coalition, who testified in support of net neutrality, was completely unable to answer simple softball questions by Ranking Member Sensenbrenner. Like a proverbial "doe in headlights" she could not answer the simplest of questions for a witness; she had to ask for help from her fellow panelists, which made it obvious that she was only a symbolic figurehead on the subject and did not understand even the most basic parts of the net neutrality issue. These were the two questions and answers paraphrased: