Campaigns

Moveon.org and Google appear to be to back-pedaling from their conspiracy of last week to block the political free speech of a U.S. Senator up for reelection. 

Art Brodsky's of Public Knowledge recently posted his long defense of Moveon.org and Google for their blocking the free speech of U.S. Senator Susan Collins.

• Brodsky claims that Moveon.org has called off its trademark protection dogs and is now allowing Google to place anti-Moveon.org ads now that they blocked last week at Moveon.org's urging.
  • How skulkingly magnanimous of them!

What appears to be missing from this sleight-of-hand mea culpa, is Google/Moveon.org or both of them:

• admitting they made an egregious mistake in conspiring to block the free speech of a U.S. Senate candidate;
• taking full responsibility for the Internet free speech censorship;
• pledging it won't happen again; and
• explaining that they have taken sufficient actions (policy changes) so it won't reoccur.

I doubt a congressional panel, the press or the blogosphere will drop this issue just because one of Google's Poodles organizations, Public Knowledge, posted a preemptive defense on the Huffington Post to try and frame this issue before their "progressive" base got a whif of their week-old anti-free speech droppings.

Mr. Brodsky also claims that Google and Moveon.org have never limited free speech before.

While I doubt I'll ever be accused of being a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, I must commend her and her campaign for sound political judgement when it's due.

How timely for the Google-backed Open Internet Coalition to be writing Congress asking for Congressional hearings on allegations of censorship of free speech on the Internet.

Robert Cox, the Founder and President of the Media Bloggers Association, a non-partisan professional standards group, reports that Google has blocked the running of U.S. Senator Susan Collins' anti-Moveon.org ads on Google.

•  "Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its “General Betray Us” message."
• "The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term."

  Google has a particularly tortured concept of "free speech" if it is willing to editorially ban Republican speech that opposes its most important and high-profile lobbying ally in the net neutrality fight.

  • It is painfully ironic that Google CEO Eric Schmidt just gave a major policy speech in August on Google's main public policy priorities and stated that:

    • "We need to defend freedom of speech as more speech comes on line."

    • By banning opposing political views, is Google defending free speech or practicing "Internet censorship" as the "Ultimate Internet Gatekeeper?

Someone needs to call the SaveTheInternet/FreePress/net neutrality crowd on their outrageous hypocrisy in politically claiming that being for "net neutrality" is being for more "free speech" protections.

When the SaveTheInternet organization and their net neutrality allies were offered very specific legislative language that would explicitly protect "free speech'' on the Internet -- they actively blocked it from passage in the Senate Commerce Committee in August of 2006 and from it passing into law last Congress. 

The legislative text below was in the HR5252 Amendment proposed by then Chairman Stevens in the telecom reform bill in June of 2006.

• SaveTheInternet and the net neutrality movement opposed that protection of free speech language (Sec. 904. Application of the First Amendment) because what they really wanted was to make broadband subject to common carrier regulation.

 "SEC. 904. APPLICATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

Open Left, a close ally of Moveon.org, is unabashedly bragging about how it has successfully manipulated Google search results, with the intent to manipulate the Presidential general election, with its "Google-bombing" campaign of Republican Rudy Guliani.

• See "GoogleBomb Rudy Guliani Update."

This is far from the first time Google has enabled "Google-bombing".

Some folks have no shame.

CNET's respected Declan McCullagh produced a sound and fair analysis of what ails net neutrality, which I recommend as a good read on the state of play on the issue. Below is the comment I posted on his piece.

• "Well done Declan. You've produced a sound and fair analysis of why net neutrality has failed to gain traction.
• My only significant quibble is that I would have made more of a point that clearly the issue is not grass roots, but a well orchestrated campaign by Moveon.org and its functional affilliates Free Press, Public Knowledge and the New America foundation -- and its lead corporate sponsor/ally -- Google.
• They have obviously made a political campaign decision to go "dormant" on net neutrality as Mr. Brodsky suggested.
  
• When the Moveon.org crowd decides to re-unleash their dogs on the issue it will burst back onto the scenes again.
  
• My most important takeaway on all this is that this net neutrality "dormancy" exposes this issue for what it is: a manufactured bogus policy issue pushed into the forefront by very sophisticated political/policy operatives -- there is zero grass roots groundswell for net neutrality here -- only millions of Moveon.org email-list puppets on a string... and an apparently insatiable appetite for corporate welfare by Google..."

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.