The New Third Rail

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal today wrote a much-discussed article theorizing that Google has changed their position on net neutrality and is now approaching cable and Internet providers to get their content a faster lane on the Internet. They also quote a bunch of technology leaders in the article who they claim are edging away from the principles of a free and open Internet.

Most of the stakeholders are calling the article a load of crap. Lawrence Lessig says he was misquoted and that the WSJ mistakes "delivery" for "access." There is a lot of confusion there. Right now consumers can pay more for a faster connection to the Internet. That's not the issue. The issue is if content providers are made to pay to serve their content quicker. That's what would set up a two-tiered Internet and ghetto-ize any company who would be unwilling or unable to pay. I generally believe everyone should have quality and affordable access, but delivery is clearly more important for a network-neutral Internet.

Google's Public Policy blog says that what it's doing is "edge caching," basically setting up their content physically closer to end users so that less bandwidth is needed to access them, optimizing the experience for the user. Frequently the same content has to be loaded and reloaded several times to get from the provider to the user. Reducing that duplication is beneficial to virtually everyone. Atrios rightly brings up the concern that these arrangements, if done exclusively with particular content providers, would have the effect of privileging one set of content over another, but Google claims that the arrangement is non-exclusive:

All of Google's colocation agreements with ISPs -- which we've done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache -- are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers' connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

The consensus seems to be that the WSJ story is bogus. David Isenberg, Tim Karr and Reuters are worth reading on this. Matt Stoller is still being somewhat cautious and trying to gather all the data. I think what's most notable is how everyone exploded at the very suggestion of whether or not the principle of net neutrality was being eroded. The differences on what regulation is needed among allies in the movement for a free and open Internet may indeed by real, but nobody wants to be on the side of restricting access or innovation. So that fear, the new third rail of American politics, if you will, is going to be something powerful to harness by advocates to make sure that the core principles are maintained.

The California Report

There actually are some things going on outside the primaries, here's what's piqued my interest the past few days:

• Matt Stoller has more on the Barbara Boxer/climate change bill debacle. What hurts the most is that she shut down any debate on the left flank, called progressive groups like Friends of the Earth "defeatists," and pressed forward with a muddled bill that rewards polluting industries without doing the work necessary to provide pushback from the inevitable corporate-funded conservative narratives. I wish she'd just pull it before she causes lasting damage; we'd be in a much better position next year to get something legitimate passed.

• Here's a very good profile in The Nation of almost-a-Congressional candidate Lawrence Lessig and his "Change Congress" movement. I'm kind of waiting for the innovative steps to get this done, but Lessig is a sharp guy. He's giving the keynote address at Netroots Nation next month.

• There's an LA Times exploration of the various health care-related bills moving through the legislature. They're all fairly small-bore but I think they will improve the situation out here, by eliminating rescission, mandating that insurers spend 85% of premium revenue on treatment, and including more procedures in baseline coverage, like maternity. As long as we have the insurance system, we need to do what we can to make sure it's not as thieving as possible.

• There's a new Field Poll on Arnold and the legislature out today that is a cavalcade of bad news - the right track/wrong track numbers are 22/68, the Governor's approval rating is down to 41%, and the legislature is at 30%. Californians don't like their government right now. Some leadership might solve the problem.

• The salmon are dying in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta because of ammonia runoff from sewage treatment plants, and purifying the Delta could cost up to $1 billion.

• Here's another personal story of how the foreclosure crisis is hurting individuals, this one in the Central Valley town of Merced. It's impacting practically the entire economy of the town. Just another example of the mess we're in from over-speculation and lax oversight of the financial industry.

Why We Should Be Better Than This

I want to amplify clammyc's remarks from yesterday about the tension and over-the-top rhetoric that has characterized the online version of this primary race. It hasn't characterized the offline version of this race, by the way; in the election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson was called an "atheist," "rapist," and "infidel," and I don't think any Federalist was denounced, rejected or repudiated. But I want to take a look at why this race has become so hotly contested, practically to the exclusion of all else, and not just in the traditional media where that's expected, but pretty much everywhere. I have a somewhat novel interpretation.

This is George Bush's fault.

Under 7-plus years of Bush, we've seen Congress cowed and the courts made irrelevant. We've seen a President ignore the popular will on a whole host of issues, break the law with total impunity, protect his cronies from prosecution or harm, and run roughshod over international law and our Constitution at home. Since 2001 we've come to believe that electing a President is akin to electing a 4-year dictator, because that's been the practical effect of Bush policies.

So why wouldn't it get heated, even among friends, over this decision about which dictator to install for the next four years? That's why these petty concerns and personal features have been magnified as the struggle between candidates with similar platforms becomes literally a battle of life and death.

There's of course a lot of evidence to support the dictator theory of American politics, but in actuality this is fiction. We have a broken Constitution, a shattered Constitution, but not one that is beyond repair. And if we neglect that repair, it won't matter who is President, because the fundamentals of the system will inevitably lead to more Bushes and more Cheneys and more Condis and more Rumsfelds. Until we get under control the restoration of the balance of power among the three branches of government, this energy and anger over the Presidential race is little more than a distraction, and we'll sink further and further away from the government the Framers envisioned.

Today Lawrence Lessig is presenting his "Change Congress" initiative in Washington. Here are some of his thoughts from an editorial in the Huffington Post.

Though "change" is the dominant rhetoric of this presidential campaign, everyone realizes that fundamental reform can't come from a president alone. If there are problems in the way Congress now works, for example, no president can fix those problems alone. Any fix would require the cooperation of the very institution that needs changing -- Congress.

Not surprisingly, however, not everyone in Congress is eager for change. Whatever they say, and however strongly they may deny it, there are many who have grown used to a system they understand well. And many of those are not about to support radically reforming that system, at least until pushed.

But the 111th Congress will be the freshest that Washington has seen in more than a decade. There are more than 67 "open seats" in this years' election; the last time we were anywhere close to that number was 1996 (62). This fact has led some to think about strategies for getting Congress to take seriously the idea of remaking itself.

Lessig organizes his movement to change Congress around issues like public financing for elections, transparency in Congress and earmark reform. He aims to use a wiki to track reform-minded candidates all over the country and track them from the outside.

This is exactly the kind of initiative the progressive online community should be embracing. Rather than relentlessly focusing on the top dog, and reinforcing a theory that the President is a dictator who wields full control of the government, we should use the other institutions of power to build a reform movement from the bottom up. And we should also empower that movement with a mandate to repair the broken institutions that have failed us in the Bush era and would normally rein in executive power and overreach. And that means supporting initiatives like the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. At this point 22 Congressional challengers have signed on to the plan, which seeks not only to end the war, but to ensure we never make such a historic foreign policy mistake again, and really change the conversation around national security. The candidates come from places like Idaho and Maryland, Ohio and Maine, Montana and New Jersey, Florida and Colorado and Washington and Virginia. We have far more leverage and power to impact this debate and these candidates than we ever will in the Presidential race. And it actually is far more important at this stage.

We don't elect dictators. We elect Presidents, and we have a host of structures in place to hold them accountable. Unfortunately, the last seven years have seen a total breakdown of those structures. The reaction to that ought to be to repair those structures and build this movement, not bicker back and forth about who has what delegate in what state. I'm not saying the Presidency is irrelevant - that's obviously not true - but I'm saying that we shouldn't be lulled into thinking that the President equals the government. That's only true in the rampantly illegal era of Bush - and we need to roll that back if we want to keep some semblance of a democracy.

CA-12: Lessig Out

I was preparing to write a piece about how Lawrence Lessig was waiting far too long to make a decision about whether or not to run for Congress, but apparently he got the same message.

With lots of mixed feelings, I have decided a run for Congress would not help the Change Congress movement. I explain the thinking in this 5 minute video (a new record for me!). First question: What happens to the contributions to Lessig08? As explained on the ActBlue page, all will go to (the yet to be established) Change Congress organization.

You can see his video at the link.

I will miss what would have been a very interesting debate in the 12th District, but I'm confident that Jackie Speier is going to be an excellent addition to our Congressional delegation. In the end, Lessig just didn't have enough time to make the sale.

In case you're interested in how this race could have gone,