The Obama Plan To Preserve a Free And Open Internet

It's fair to say that Barack Obama would not have become President without the Internet. Not without the blogosphere or the larger netroots, but the Internet. It became this incredible organizing tool for his campaign, yielding millions of volunteer actions and coordinating it all with the most efficiency and lowest cost. There is no way a volunteer architecture like that could have existed without the Internet. So this President, more than anyone, understands the power of online activity, and the need to keep it open and free.

Which is why this pleasant news doesn't surprise me:

The Federal Communications Commission's proposal of new rules to prevent companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deliberately blocking or slowing certain Web traffic is expected to receive a passing three votes out of the five-member agency, according to sources.

The proposal, to be announced Monday by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, will include an additional guideline for carriers that they make public the way they manage traffic on their network, according to sources at the agency. The additional guideline would be a "sixth principle" to four existing guidelines adopted in 2005 on Internet network operations. A fifth principle is expected to be announced by Genachowski on Monday during a speech at the Brookings Institute that would prohibit the discrimination of applications and services on telecommunications, cable and wireless Internet networks.

That speech is right here and it's a good one. Genachowski explains that the Internet derives its power completely from its openness, its freedom from bias toward any particular content that allows for expansion and innovation. If you want the short version of Genachowski's argument, it's here. Read it.

Genachowski's FCC team has created a website at OpenInternet.gov. If the Obama Administration does nothing else, by preserving a free and open Internet and keeping the telecoms at bay he will have made a great contribution to America's future.



...Joe Sestak's campaign just emailed me this:

"This is the right thing for consumers," Congressman Sestak said. "At the end of the day, maintaining equal access to the Internet is what matters. Consumers should decide what content they view and their Representatives in Congress should not surrender that right to special interest pressure in favor of a system where corporations selectively control our access to the internet."

Good for him coming out in support.

How A Better Democrat Rolls

Time Warner Cable took a tentative step in New York toward billing Internet customers based on consumption rates, a Trojan horse to two-tiered pricing on the Internet. And the usage limits were designed to gouge consumers and, since they have a monopoly, offer them essentially no other viable options.

Eric Massa took on the issue and won.

I live just about on the border of New York’s 28th and 29th Congressional districts. The 28th is represented by Louise Slaughter, the powerful chair of the Rules Committee, the 29th by freshman Congressman Eric Massa. I emailed both Massa and Slaughter about the cap. I heard nothing back from Slaughter. Massa’s office told me that they thought it was a serious issue, that they were getting complaints from a lot of constituents…and then sprung into action. The opening line of the video below (via) is “I plan on putting the entire full force of my incumbency and all the risk associated with that behind stopping this very, very ill-thought out decision by Time-Warner.”



Shortly after this, Time-Warner shelved their cap plan. Apparently, it was all a “big misunderstanding.”

More on this here. Eric Massa won election as a better Democrat with significant help from the netroots. And then he turns around and stands up on the significant issue of net neutrality. This is how progressive movement power turns into policy muscle.

DiFi Tries To Hand Corporations A Giveaway In The Stimulus

The final numbers on the stimulus package are trickling out. Some of the baseline investments are here:

* Investments in Infrastructure and Science - $120 billion
* Investments in Health - $14.2 billion
* Investments in Education and Training - $105.9 billion
* Investments in Energy, including over $30 billion in infrastructure - $37.5 billion
* Helping Americans Hit Hardest by the Economic Crisis - $24.3 billion
* Law Enforcement, Oversight, Other Programs - $7.8 billion

It's unquestionable that the conference report is worse than the House bill but better than the Senate. It costs less than the Senate bill while providing more stimulus. Some bad spending like the clean coal "FutureGen" project is out, along with some of the worst corporate tax breaks. Mass transit spending is up, the child tax credit was partially restored to House levels (now kicking in after $3,000 in income), and the state fiscal stabilization fund gets around $54 million (but that includes funding for school construction). You can find the full summary here.

There are some very solid elements to the bill. White House economists estimate that the package will create or save 396,000 jobs in California and 3.5 million nationwide. This is a down payment on a new generation of investment in America.

However, like with most Congressional sausage-making, there may be some rough patches. The worst is the allegation that Dianne Feinstein is trying to include filtering into the stimulus as part of the program to expand broadband capacity across the country.

The Open Internet Coalition - which includes groups like Public Knowledge, Free Press and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) - is applauding the more than $2 billion expected to be in the stimulus bill for broadband build-out in rural or underserved areas. They say not only will building out high-speed Internet instantly create jobs, but giving people in those areas more access to the Internet will spur small-business creation and other growth [...]

These groups are also over-the-moon about the fact that the Senate bill has a non-discrimination, interconnection requirement that essentially says any provider receiving stimulus funding has to make sure they provide equal access to everyone over their network (part of the so-called "net neutrality" debate). The House version requires the FCC to define "open access," which essentially calls for carriers to share their networks with competitors.

But they're worried Hollywood is still trying to insert a content filtering provision via Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., at the last minute. Feinstein has been trying to add language specifying that Internet service provider (ISPs) may engage in "reasonable network management" ... "such as" efforts to combat illegal activity like "child pornography and copyright infringement." In essence, some argue, ISPs would be able to monitor any content coming to and from your computer, just in case there was some copyrighted material violating fair use, or kiddie porn in there.

But groups like the Motion Picture Association of America stress the "network management" angle of the bill ("filtering" is a nasty word around these parts). After all, it's hard to argue against stopping kiddie porn from being sent over one's pipes. I've left a message with Feinstein's press office to see what the status of her amendment is. It doesn't appear to be in there, but I'll let you know if she plans on trying to stick it in at some point.

"Of course we see huge privacy invasions from this sort of thing," said Cathy Sloan of CCIA.

Now, some caveats. There was a hyperventilating story in the UK Register claiming that this would kill net neutrality. As stated earlier, there are open access provisions in the stimulus, and it doesn't appear that this amendment even made it into the final version. This looks to me to be more of a privacy and anti-competition issue.

In another part of that story, Henry Waxman was implicated. His office has assured multiple constituents, including yours truly, that he has had nothing to do with any filtering amendment.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be concerned. DiFi is allegedly trying to pay back a corporate constituent with a highly invasive amendment that would certainly violate the spirit if not the letter of privacy laws. And of course this kind of monitoring is a slippery slope, as are most IP issues. At the root I agree with John Cole:

As baseball season is getting close, I would like to propose a trade. We give the Republicans Dianne Feinstein and a PTBNL and they give us Olympia Snowe. This is a solid trade for us. With Judd Gregg at commerce, we would almost complete the New England rout, and Feinstein, as a newly minted Republican, will go down to certain defeat in California. Additionally, there is nothing in this agreement that says the PTBNL can’t be Nelson or Lieberman.

Nice Pick

Obama's telecom policy has always been praised by progressives, and now the man who helped develop it will be his next FCC chair:

Julius Genachowski, a venture capitalist who served as a technology advisor to President-elect Barack Obama's presidential campaign, has been tapped to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), according to several reports.

In its Tuesday (Jan. 13) edition, the Washington Post reported that congressional sources confirmed that Genachowski, 46, was the President-elect's choice to head the FCC.

Free Press lauds Genachowski's leadership on net neutrality and universal broadband issues. There are some real opportunities to use the recovery plan to improve broadband access nationwide and lay down the equivalent of electricity lines in rural areas in the 1930s, only for high-speed Internet. Hopefully the FCC will take the lead in facilitating this.

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.

Building A National Broadband Policy

I'm going to step aside from the Blagojevich chronicles for a minute to address a crucially needed investment for our future - a national broadband strategy. The United States is 15th in the world in broadband penetration, and offers download speeds at 10 times slower rates than in Japan, for example. This is despite the costliness of broadband usage in this country (we are 18th in cost per megabyte).

Over the weekend I was able to take part in a first-of-its-kind town hall meeting put together by Internet for Everyone and its parent company Free Press. The program featured speakers and short videos stressing the need for universal broadband access and a network-neutral Web, but the main thrust of the meeting was to start a conversation. Internet for Everyone introduced four topics:

Access: Every home, business and civic institution in America must have access to high-speed Internet.

Choice: Consumers must enjoy real competition among Internet providers to achieve lower prices and higher speeds.

Innovation: The Internet should continue to create good jobs, spread new ideas be an engine of economic growth.

Openness: Internet users should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce without gatekeepers or discrimination.

Attendees strategized around these topics, came up with possible solutions that could be taken by municipalities, federal government, business, and citizen groups, and worked toward consensus on a national broadband strategy. Free Press' Tim Karr described it to me as "an experiment in deliberative democracy." While the perspectives of those involved in the meeting were not quite as diverse as needed for the conversation, there were nonetheless a variety of good ideas discussed. One thing that is key is debunking the idea put forward by telecoms that bandwidth is finite and those who use more of it must be sanctioned through greater fees. In reality, the companies are creating scarcity where it doesn't have to exist, and perhaps with incentives to fatten the pipe and increase access, these so-called scarcity issues would melt away, exposed as just an attempt to create a new revenue stream. Not to mention the fact that this artificial scarcity has caused the United States to fall far behind the rest of the world, reduce competitiveness, and become marginalized on the Internet for the first time since its inception. This has major impacts on job creation and countless other issues. For instance, a wired country is a country that can handle expansions in telecommuting, can cut down greenhouse gas emissions through driving and the wasteful use of paper, reduce unproductive time spent waiting for downloads, etc., etc.

The digital divide (only 35% of households making under $50,000 a year have a high-speed Internet connection) is a large impediment to equal participation in society today. Lower-income communities have substantially lower access to the Internet, which impacts education, economic output and political engagement, among other things. As society increasingly ports a fair degree of the tools for civics online, in an effort to be more efficient and inclusive, they are simultaneously shutting out needed voices among communities of color and the poor. Mandating universal broadband would be an update of President Roosevelt's rural electrification policies in the 1930s. It is just as important to economic and social growth to provide access to a free and open Internet for everyone.

Fortunately, we now have a President-elect who understands the broadband issue as an infrastructure issue. In his most recent weekly address, Barack Obama highlighted the need to bring broadband access to every corner of the country.

"It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption," President-elect Obama said in the address. "Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they'll get that chance when I’m President -- because that’s how we'll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world....[and] the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system -- and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives."

Technology leaders have been cheered, not just by the commitment but by the understanding of the issue as one that effects jobs, upward mobility and economic growth. As Sara Robinson notes in a larger piece about investing in America:

Yes, making these investments will create more debt, which in turn will cast a shadow on the health of the American dollar for the next few decades. But if we choose our projects wisely and well, they will create more -- much more -- than enough wealth to enable us to pay those bills. After all, the infrastructure and education investments of the 30s and 40s were the foundation of the tremendous prosperity we saw in the 50s and 60s, which more than enabled us to discharge the debt.

Free-market fundamentalism was wrong in the 1880s, wrong in the 1920s, and wrong in the 1990s, too. Anybody who's still hanging onto that 30-year-old conventional wisdom -- or who thinks balanced budgets are so important that we should sacrifice our entire economy on that altar -- is not only admitting that they're incapable of rational, objective thought; they're also demonstrating that they're too ideologically addled to understand the clear lessons of history, let alone understand what's going on around them now.

It was Keynes's theories that got us out of the last depression; and if we're betting our futures on this (which we are), we'd be wise to follow that course again. Our choice here is clear: Invest in America and get our people back to work; or shrivel up and allow ourselves to become a third world country.

The free speech of the 21st century increasingly depends on a broadband connection. I think we need Internet in the same way we need an electrical outlet in every home. Access is essential to keep this country as an economic leader.

Presidency 2.0

While Barack Obama is likely to have to give up his Blackberry after being sworn in as President (owing mainly to a lack of email security, as well as record keeping under the Presidential Records Act), he will have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office, a first. And he just finished up the first-ever Presidential YouTube address, which will become a regular feature.



It already has 630,000 views, probably 620,000 more than those weekly radio addresses which air at 4am. The even more interesting development is Valerie Jarrett's address at change.gov, a completely transparent update on who will be leading key agencies, which has NINETY-EIGHT THOUSAND VIEWS. This is a wonky and fairly dull address about ethics requirements and lobbyists, but because it's being made widely available and people are hungering for knowledge about the incoming Administration, it's getting widespread attention.

I find this to be very significant. Obama enters office with 3.1 million donors and an email list of 10 million. How these lists are put to use and allowed to engage with the Administration will signal how much the President-elect will live up to his expression that change begins from the bottom up. By using these Web tools, Obama can bypass traditional filters and deliver action items to his audience on issues can have relevance and immediacy.

"He can do a half-hour YouTube address every Saturday, addressing millions," Trippi said. "The networks would never give the president that much television time each week, but the press is still going to have to cover what he says on YouTube."

Aides say the Obama team will staff a robust "new media" operation out of the White House and plans a complete overhaul of the White House Web site to make it more interactive and user-friendly. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to use the Internet to make his administration more open, such as offering a detailed look at what's going on in the White House on a given day or asking people to post comments on his legislative proposals.

The Internet outreach team includes some really great people, and I'm sure they will push the technology (White House Twitter feed, anyone?) in the years to come. As for this nonsense that Obama has to be careful reaching his supporters in a partisan way, I think that's a deep misreading of his Internet fan base. My personal view is that an overwhelmingly substantial portion of his Web supporters are not just Democrats, but more progressive than he is. And not only that, they are not passive creatures who have to be told what to think and what to support. They were TRAINED in the campaign to be self-starters. It's going to be a bit less about how Obama wants to use these supporters and more how these supporters want to use the technology, whether to support policy or push Obama from the left.

The other very good outcome of a President who gets technology and its promise is that it makes him more likely to sign a net neutrality bill into law. Keeping the Internet open and free helped Obama win the White House - now he can return the favor by ensuring that freedom well into the future. Sen. Byron Dorgan plans to introduce a net neutrality bill in January - I'm hoping the Congress acts swiftly on it.

News Of The Good

After the week we had, I think I need a dose of the good. And actually, the Congress has provided some of it. Not only have Pelosi and Reid held the line on offshore drilling (for now; after Obama's hedge I expect something including some offshore elements before the year is out), they worked together to pass a consumer product safety bill that actually includes some good and stringent standards, and if we get a legitimate President, we might enforce them:

The measure, approved by the Senate in an 89 to 3 vote last night and now awaiting President Bush's signature, represents the most significant expansion of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) since it was created in 1973. It also marks a fundamental shift in the federal government's approach to protecting consumers from dangerous products: transforming a reactive stance to a preventive one by dealing with hazards before goods reach the marketplace, including products manufactured overseas [...]

Lead, the toxic metal that last year turned up in cherished playthings such as Elmo and Dora the Explorer, effectively would be banned from toys and children's products. So will some phthalates, a class of chemicals in soft plastic used in teethers, pacifiers and other items that infants and toddlers put in their mouths. The phthalate most commonly used in children's products, diisononyl phthalate (DINP) will be banned for two years, pending a study.

Toymakers would be required to have independent labs test products before they are sold -- a practice many consumers assumed was already happening until last year's wave of toy recalls. And voluntary safety standards would become mandatory, including a requirement that powerful rare earth magnets in toys not fall out or come loose. From 2003 to 2006, one child died and 19 others required surgery after swallowing magnets.

Consumers could eventually see labels certifying toys have been tested before being sold. When they buy a toy online or through a catalog, they would be able to see the same warning label that appears on packaging to warn parents of small parts or other potential hazards.

This includes a doubling of the Consumer Product Safety Commission budget (yes, a regulatory agency is being strengthened under Bush), and violators will see their penalty caps moved up to $15 million from $1.8 million. That's good.

The House got the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act through the House, which would go as far as the federal government has yet to close the persistent wage gap between men and women. Every single Democrat in the House voted for the bill, and there's some momentum to get this through the Senate.

Meanwhile, the FCC struck a major blow for net neutrality and Internet freedom this week.

A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.

In a precedent-setting move, the FCC by a 3-2 vote on Friday enforced a policy that guarantees customers open access to the Internet.

The commission did not assess a fine, but ordered the company to stop cutting off transfers of large data files among customers who use a special type of ''file-sharing'' software. Associated Press reports on Comcast's activities led to the complaints filed with the FCC.

This is a real victory. The precedent is set and it allows the Congress to move forward with its own legislation codifying the principle. Comcast and the telecoms who want to open up another revenue stream and stifle innovation online have been delivered a mortal blow.

And it was Bush's handpicked FCC Commissioner who gave the deciding vote. Believe it or not, this news of the good includes an Administration initiative on homelessness that appears to have worked quite well, based on the principle of getting the chronically homeless who eat up almost all of the resources and services off the streets first.

DG: What is Housing First? How is it different from more traditional programs to alleviate homelessness?

DM: For a long time the way that government and the social service world worked to help homeless people was through a range of services and interventions that tried to help people on the street, tried to get them into shelters, tried to provide them with substance abuse or job counseling. This whole idea became known as the "continuum of care" -- a continuum of services.

Housing First is a really different idea. The idea is that you want to get people into housing as quickly as possible, especially people who would be considered chronically homeless. You have a small population of people who are persistently homeless and may not be able to get out of homelessness without serious, ongoing help. These people use an enormous amount of resources. They take up an enormous number of shelter beds. The idea is that you find a permanent solution for these people, it immediately reduces the number of homeless people on the street, it helps the people who are most in need, and then in theory, it frees up the resources that might be wasted on them for people for whom sort of a quick bit of intervention, a little bit of counseling, a leg up, might get them back on their feet and independent.

Malcolm Gladwell did a New Yorker profile on this idea a few years ago and it made a lot of sense. Amazingly, the Bush Administration decided to actually put it into practice. To get a substantive decline in homeless during a economic downturn and foreclosure crisis is pretty incredible.

OK, I'll go back to being depressed now...

We Win One

This is a significant victory for those of us who desire a free and open Internet:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that he would recommend that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint that Comcast had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of file-sharing software that allowed them to exchange large amounts of data.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” the commission chairman, Kevin J. Martin, told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

That's George Bush's FCC Commissioner, just so you remember.

At the Save the Internet blog Tim Karr calls this a win for organized people over organized money. Clearly Comcast tried everything they could to prevent accountability on this, including stacking open FCC meetings with sleeping seat warmers. Ultimately, common sense and the principle of net neutrality prevailed.

But it needs to go beyond principle or even precedent and become codified into law. Virtually every Democratic Senate challenger supports the concept of net neutrality and legislation like the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, so we'll have more votes in the Senate for this after November. For now, let's leverage this victory.

Old Man McCain

Hey, I'm not the one making the slur (the RNC tells me that calling someone "old" is a slur, now), take your beef to the American electorate.

The top 10 answers people volunteered when asked to describe presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Monday. Included is the percentage of people who gave each answer. More than one response was allowed.

John McCain:
1, Old, 19 percent
2. Military service, 9 percent
3, Record, qualifications, 8 percent
4, Bush, 7 percent
5. Strength, 7 percent
6. Insider, politician, 7 percent
7. Iraq, terrorism, 6 percent
8. Honest, 5 percent
9. Republican, 5 percent
10. (tie) Moral/good and dishonest, 4 percent

When the guy admits that he can't use a computer, it tends to typecast him as from a different generation. But many people of advanced age, in fact the majority, happily use technology in their lives and have kept up with the times. I wouldn't call McCain old, I would call him retrograde. And such thinking is actually dangerous for the country.

And where is McCain on tech policy? Not so shockingly, the computer-free senator's campaign is not as plugged in as his rival's. In fact, his campaign website fails to address America's lagging performance on broadband access or affordability, the technological capabilities of the federal bureaucracy, or the Internet's ability to increase government transparency. "There are red flags," says Brian Reich, author of the book Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience and the former editor of Campaign Web Review, a blog that tracked the use of the Internet by candidates, campaigns, and activists.

Barack Obama has embraced the Internet, with his thunderous online fundraising and sophisticated MyBO website. (Plus, he's comfortable talking about what's on his iPod.) Unsurprisingly, high-tech leaders hail his comprehensive tech policies.

It's a major problem. America has fallen behind in broadband capacity, has failed to use the promise of technology in areas like health care and government transparency, is in danger of deleting the concept of network neutrality that would stunt innovation, and has generally seen its advantage on technology and the Internet wither. A tech policy is not just about tax breaks for the industry, it's about implementing and utilizing technology. And McCain opposes net neutrality on the advice of CEOs looking for another revenue stream:

I asked her about McCain's opposition to so-called network neutrality, proposed government rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from charging websites for faster delivery of their content. McCain is on the side of the cable and phone companies, which argue that the rules would squelch investment in new broadband networks. Obama has been a big supporter of net neutrality, a huge issue among online activists that adds to his Internet buzz factor, leading some (OK, it was us) to ask if Obama is a Mac and McCain a PC.

Fiorina said McCain understands the importance of the Internet and sees government-mandated net neutrality as a hindrance.

"There's no question that it is to our economy's benefit to have more Internet access, more broadband capability, to have this country more wired, so to speak, as we move forward.... I think John McCain understands the way to get that done effectively is by principally allowing business to get it done as opposed to a big government-mandated program. And business won't get it done unless they see sufficient return on their investment."

That's just a huge lie, which isn't surprising for Fiorina, a failed executive and professional liar who wants us to think that 23 million businesses make over $250,000 in sales when in actuality it's about 5% of that number. Net neutrality has brought untold wealth to this country and almost single-handedly created the tech boom of the mid-1990s. The incentive for telecoms to increase broadband capacity is opening up its customer base, which will make them plenty rich. Discriminating on content will make the Internet less popular, more stratified, and would funnel money to Fiorina and her pals.

McCain probably doesn't have a coherent answer on this at all. He's too busy finding the "ON" switch.

It's A Big Internet And Everybody Wants A Piece

If the Associated Press thinks that restricting their content is going to result in a successful business model online, they might want to give The New York Times a call. They discontinued their protected content because they knew they were losing money in the long run. Information on the Web wants to be free, and you end up making more money for yourself and your member publishers by allowing the excessive linking of the blogosphere to raise your traffic. If you restrict that in any way you're just going to end up having bloggers like me stop linking to you entirely. And while I'm small potatoes, others aren't, and having the whole political Internet avoid the AP isn't going to do a lot for their bottom line.

Now this story is somewhat different. Time Warner, Comcast and AT&T are toying with charging customers through "Internet metering," making their highest-bandwidth users pay the freight, just as electricity customers pay for usage. That's not necessarily out of bounds, as long as some content (like that brandished by the service provider) isn't prioritized over others. But it is an old model of how ISPs have dealt with content, most similar to AOL's pay for service in the 1990s. That stagnated competition then and is sure to do so now.

The real importance of net neutrality is not so much to protect people from discrimination, but to create rational incentives for a better, more efficient Internet in the face of capacity constraints.

To back up, one benefit of capacity constraints (for now) is that they create demand for a solution. Indeed, the way we “solve” this problem will determine the future of the Internet.

For instance, in a world of access tiering, companies have less of an incentive to increase capacity – that’s because scarcity will have been built into the business model. For that reason, a world of access tiering will depress innovation and be less receptive to new, data-intensive applications/services. Thus, in this world, companies would solve the capacity problem by assuming more control and increasingly relying on bandwidth scarcity for revenue.

If, however, companies had to be content/application neutral, different solutions would necessarily emerge. Companies would be forced to build more capacity or to find better ways to compress data. There would also be greater demand for solutions from “the edge” – i.e., individual companies and entrepreneurs (e.g., BitTorrent) would have more incentives to create new data-compression techniques. And, frankly, I have more faith in the collective mind to develop these new services than say Comcast and AT&T.

Adding to this, I'd say that those companies who don't have the money to innovate would see less traffic because their service would be necessary costlier. And it would lead to the service provider delivering a lot of the video and high-bandwidth content in house. Furthermore, allowing charging for bandwidth is a slippery slope, and I simply don't trust the telecoms to take only one bite of the apple.

The sick thing is that there's plenty of money to be made off the Internet, by the AP or Time Warner or whoever, but it's greed that's driving these decisions.

NYT Or Daily Kos Circa 2005?

I don't read many dead-tree newspapers cover to cover anymore; I prefer to filter them online and read selected stories. But I got a New York Times at my hotel this morning and decided to give it a whirl. It's pretty amazing, the degree to which stories that bubbled up through online media sources take so long to get covered in the dead-tree media.

In the news section there was a story on Purity Balls, this deeply creepy ritual of evangelical fathers and their daughters going to a prom together and the girls renewing their vow of celibacy until marriage in front of their dads. It's worth covering, but to me it was a two year-old story, because bloggers like Echidne of the Snakes had been posting about it since then.

Then, on the editorial page, there was an op-ed about net neutrality, praising the value of a network-neutral Internet and the need for legislation to codify it. Which is great, and I for one am glad to have the Times on board, but this is an issue that has been pounded home by the netroots and online organizations like Save the Internet for years.

It's just weird to me, the whole lag time thing. The netroots is often just an expression of what informed citizens are talking about and finding interesting. Catch up, journalists!

UPDATE: Not to mention that Bill Kristol's column today has a huge factual error in it that it took blogs all of a couple minutes to uncover, despite the fact that newspapers have, you know, editors and stuff.

To support his argument, Kristol pointed to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary:

"On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin."

Apparently Kristol didn’t look hard enough. Writing at Room Eight, New York political consultant Jerry Skurnik says it took him “all of 2 minutes to find what Kristol couldn’t find.” On Feb. 5, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 85 points in the Utah primary... In fact, on the same day, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee beat McCain by the same margin Kristol touted as unprecedented — 41 points — in the Arkansas primary. As did Mitt Romney in the Colorado caucus.

AK-Sen: Toobz Tied (Actually, Not Even, He's Behind)

Ted Stevens is in for the fight of his life in Alaska against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. A new poll commissioned by Daily Kos shows Begich with a 5-point lead on Stevens, up 48-43.

Begich is a good guy who is on the right side of a lot of issues, including net neutrality, and it's interesting that he rightly understands a neutral Internet as an economic engine.

"Net Neutrality has allowed the Internet to drive economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. I will protect and preserve net neutrality's level playing field, so that all Alaskans -- and all Americans -- can experience the vast social and economic benefits of an open Internet connection."

"Discriminatory pricing would turn the open internet into a toll road that serves only those companies that can afford the price. Access to the internet is no longer a luxury; it's a lifeline for many Alaskans."

"I will work to see that Congress adopts public policies that will protect net neutrality, preserve an open Internet and spur the growth of Alaska's economy."

In Alaska's House seat, incidentally, Ethan Berkowitz is up by 10 points over Don "Road To Nowhere" Young.

These are a couple of my favorite races this cycle.

A New Age Of Communication In An Obama Administration

Barack Obama put out some good government and internet freedom proposals yesterday that were so transformative that longtime critic Matt Stoller all but endorsed him. Obama does seem to value transparency and the importance of broadband development in capturing civic engagement and bridging the digital divide. The FCC needs a radical restructuring. The current chief is trying to practically eliminate media ownership rules. An Obama Administration would encourage community and citizen-based media development by ensuring net neutrality and expanding toward universal access, in addition to goo-goo things like putting bills on the White House website (with comments enabled!) for five days before signage.

In the plan, Obama also calls for more aggressive government support of broadband access. Specifically, he says subsidies for phone carriers should be given only to those offering both regular phone service and Internet broadband to rural areas. To date, carriers offering merely phone service have been able to claim subsidies from the so-called Universal Service Fund, giving them little incentive to roll out out broadband.

Obama also calls for reviewing the decision by the Federal Communications Commission to open the wireless spectrum for competition. He thinks the FCC may not have gone far enough with its recent ruling, according to campaign managers who asked not to be named. He wants to conduct a multiyear review but is leaning toward pushing for the opening of some spectrum on the 700 MHz band so third parties can lease it on a wholesale basis.

This is to ensure that the winners of a pending auction for the spectrum - expected to be large phone carriers like Verizon - don't just sit on the spectrum and not use it. Some fear they may do that to block others from competing with them.

Obama's proposals are supported by Google, which is expected to bid on the wireless spectrum.

The candidate also is in favor of network neutrality, a policy that would prevent Internet service providers from charging companies like Google extra to ensure the speedy transfer of data over the Internet.

This really points to how an Obama Administration would be committed to change on these kinds of issues, which are at the root of our democracy. It should be noted that Edwards has been at the forefront of spectrum and media ownership issues as well.

We Are So Screwed

Comcast is already violating net neutrality, because it's a "tradition" and not a full law currently, and anyway telecommunications companies don't have to comply with the law anymore according to the US Senate.

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

Right now they're just trying to block bandwidth hogs to relieve pressure on their system. But that's the whole point. Telecoms have every incentive to make that pipe as narrow as possible. That way, they can monetize it that much easier. It's a hop, skip and a jump from stopping file-sharing to restricting content. Here's essentially what they're doing.

Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

This is access that you pay for, incidentally. And plenty of legitimate content producers use BitTorrent and other outlets to share files legally.

As I referenced earlier, telecoms have an enormous about of money that they're using to buy off politicians and force open a new revenue stream. (UPDATE: they're trying real hard to buy off Democrats now at the expense of meaningful progressive legislation. The corporations see which way the wind is blowing.) They're also jumping into the broadcast media, and the threat of consolidation will only allow their slice of the pie to grow even bigger. I still feel that the vast majority of the marketplace won't stand for this, but the institutional structures are so big and so powerful, sometimes it feels like a crushing weight.

The OTHER Proposed Massive Giveaway To Giant Corporations Today

Overshadowed by the Senate markup of the FISA bill including retroactive immunity for telecoms, Chris Dodd's noble hold on the bill, etc., is an item in today's New York Times that has just as damaging consequences for the future of American democracy. Apparently FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin is quietly planning to relax media ownership restrictions even MORE than they are now, an action that would prompt even more consolidation in the industry and control of the news and information media in even less hands. As it would increase the power of media conglomerates, the implications for all sorts of pernicious legislation, up to and including the destruction of net neutrality, are enormous.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next two months — a plan that, if successful, would be a big victory for some executives of media conglomerates.

Among them are Samuel Zell, the Chicago investor who is seeking to complete a buyout of the Tribune Company, and Rupert Murdoch, who has lobbied against the rule for years so that he can continue controlling both The New York Post and a Fox television station in New York.

There's a 3-2 partisan split on the FCC, and the majority Republicans are down with repealing ownership restrictions. The Democrats are questioning it for now, Michael Copps is totally against it and Jonathan Adelstein is making less forceful statements, also to his credit, he called the proposal "awfully aggressive." The plan for Martin, clearly, is to woo Adelstein and call it a bipartisan approach.

Martin's predecessor, Michael Powell, tried the same thing three years ago, was taken to court over it, and lost:

Three years ago, the commission lost a major court challenge to its last effort, led by Michael K. Powell, its chairman at the time, to relax the media ownership rules. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, concluded that the commission had failed to adequately justify the new rules. Mr. Martin’s proposal would presumably include new evidence aimed at fending off similar legal challenges.

Mr. Powell’s effort, which had been supported by lobbyists for broadcasters, newspapers and major media conglomerates, provoked a wave of criticism from a broad coalition of opponents. Among them were the National Organization for Women, the National Rifle Association, the Parents Television Council and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The agency was flooded with nearly three million comments against changing the rules, the most it has ever received in a rule-making process.

What's forcing Martin's hand are some new major acquisitions by some of the biggest names in media. Sam Zell is trying to buy out the Tribune Company, and receive by proxy the "temporary waivers" that allowed Tribune to own a newspaper and a TV station in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Hartford. In addition, there's Rupert Murdoch's recent purchase of the Wall Street Journal, and his attempt to further consolidate the information market.

It can be argued that the media consolidation that we have already seen, dating from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, are in many ways directly responsible for the cheapening of information and the trivialization of American democracy that we witness today. We know that radio has become almost a two-owner game between Viacom and Clear Channel, and as a result talk radio in particular is grossly imbalanced and not reflective of the market. The lack of local participation in media management in particular has led to mass syndication and a depressing sameness around the radio dial, as well as an elimination of any local content. Consolidation has also led to a reliance on profit and meeting Wall Street expectations rather than reporting the news. Massive cuts in newsroom budgets and foreign affairs bureaus are a direct result of control from a corporation rather than anyone acting in the local interest. So newspapers rely more on AP wire stories, shared content with other papers in the conglomerate, syndicated content, and articles that are really press releases, while local broadcast "news" has cratered almost completely. People are turning to the Internet for their news and that has spurned something of an information revolution, but the vast majority of the public still gets their information from old-media sources, and that public is not being served.

A bipartisan coalition of Senators is trying to stop this in its tracks.

Chairman Martin’s secret plans were uncovered during a Commerce Committee hearing yesterday by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), one of the most vocal critics of media consolidation. Sen. Dorgan has co-authored a letter with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to the FCC calling for a more transparent and open public review of the media ownership rules.

“We do not believe the Commission has adequately studied the impact of media consolidation,” wrote Sens. Dorgan and Lott. “The FCC should not rush forward and repeat mistakes of the past. The Commission is under considerable scrutiny with this proceeding. We strongly encourage you to slow down and proceed with caution.”

Later, Dorgan said, “If the chairman intends to do something by the end of the year, then there will be a firestorm of protest and I’m going to be carrying the wood.”

Chairman Martin has preferred to operate in secret and broker deals that benefit major media conglomerates at the expense of the public interest. It's not likely that you'll hear much about this in newspapers or TV stations owned by those same conglomerates (Kudos to the New York Times for printing this, even if it came out in a public Congressional session).

Free Press has more. This is a big deal, and with telecom companies increasingly trying to insert themselves into media distribution as well, all of these bills are interrelated. A telecom industry immunized from lawbreaking could soon be owning the media that you watch - and they could be charging Web content producers in exchange for speedier access. The drive to beat back media ownership, net neutrality, and all of these deprivations is a classic case of people versus the powerful who have no intention of working in the public interest.

The FCC has a contact page. They should hear from you about this.

Now Will I Stop Getting Those Activation Disks?

Remember when AOL essentially owned the Internet? Remember how that Time Warner deal was going to make them one of the last media conglomerates left standing?

Randy Falco, the chief executive of AOL, announced in an internal memo on Monday that the company would eliminate 2,000 of its 10,000 jobs over the next few months. Word of the layoffs has been kicking around for months. Mr. Falco, a former top NBC executive, is trying to streamline AOL’s executive ranks. AOL has had a series of layoffs over the last few years, although these mainly have centered on customer service and operational employees.

“Painful” is how one AOL exec described the mood in an instant message to me today.

AOL has been struggling to find a new business to replace its rapidly declining Internet access service. It has tried to build AOL.com into a portal to take on Yahoo. That has allowed it to keep a hold on some defecting AOL members who want to continue to use AOL for e-mail and perhaps other services.

If Fucked Company were still around this would be on the front page.

AOL tried to set up gates around the Internet, and control all the content, so that users had to stay within their assigned spaces. It didn't work for the information revolution to have a gatekeeper. And it won't work with the other telecom companes attempting to subvert net neutrality. To borrow a conservative phrase, the market has spoken.

I feel bad for AOL's employees, but their employer was operating with a failed business model.

The Power Of Many

Verizon made a little test of how life would be without net neutrality, and they were smacked down immediately.

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.

“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

“It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” Mr. Nelson said. “That policy, developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages, was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.”

Make no mistake; Verizon really wanted to do this. But the outcry was widespread and genuine. And more than controlling content, Verizon wants to have a viable business.

I'm more confident than ever that net neutrality, whether codified into law or not, will be the guiding principle of telecommunications in the 21st century. The public won't stand for anything else. The only possible pitfall is if they aren't mobilized to action. So we must continue fighting to Save The Internet.

You're All On Pins And Needles Waiting To Hear About My New Ipod

So I left my iPod on a plane about a month ago, and I was about to replace it when I got wind that a new product line would be coming out today. As you may know, they released what amounts to an iPhone without the phone part, with a touchscreen, wi-fi, 16 gigs of storage for audio, video and photos, etc., for about $200 less than what they were selling the iPhone for. Thinking this is a great deal, I jumped on it, only to find out minutes later that they also cut the iPhone price by $200, which is just beyond bizarre. Apparently, people at the product launch thought so too:

The decision to cut the price of its most expensive iPhone to $399 from $599 - and phase out an entry-level iPhone that had sold for $499 - was clearly a shocker. Barron's tech writer Eric Savitz, who was in SF for Apple's product announcement, said "this was a move that no one in the room expected; people were truly stunned; and I mean jaw-dropping, mouths agape, stopped in their tracks stunned. The news almost erased all the good feeling in the room from the day’s various product announcements, and replaced it with a sense of shock. You’d think a dementor had flown into the room." Why all the fuss? Well, how would you feel if you had spent hours, even days, waiting in line for a $599 iPhone just two months ago - and now find that it's being priced at $399?

Apparently the stock dropped on this news too. If I had an iPhone I'd be pissed. From what I heard, the phone was the worst thing about the iPhone; the plan is locked in to AT&T, the service is scattershot at best, and the plans are costly. Getting all of the features I wanted without having to deal with the phone is like the best of all possible worlds, and I kicked in for the extra memory to get 16 gigs (I only used about 10-12 gigs of my old 20Gb iPod; seriously, does anyone even KNOW 40,000 songs for the 160Gb model they released today?).

Maybe if they opened up the device to competition from other cellular networks, it wouldn't be seen as too expensive considering it doesn't work well. Making the device open would allow more people to keep their service and transfer it over, and would make the phone more attractive to those who like their plans. But Apple was stubborn, fell in line with the typical way things are done in the cell phone industry when they had the juice to be bold, and now they're paying the price in a big way.

Technology is like information; it wants to be free.

UPDATE: This is not the publicity any company desires:

Steve Jobs' casual announcement today that Apple (AAPL) was cutting the price of the 8GB iPhone by $200 is not going over well among customers who paid $599 for theirs. In fact, it has sparked an outright rebellion in the Apple support forums, where discussion threads filled with hate mail are piling up faster than Apple can delete them.

"The more the day goes by, the more furious I become," writes VSiskos in "1 Million People Slapped In The Face Today," one of the forums still standing.

"I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!" adds graphicalliber425. " Somewhere in my heart I'm hoping, Apple's going to offer all of us an extended return policy, or a brand new iPod nano right?"

Under's Apple's standard return policy, customers who bought a product within 14 days of a price reduction can ask to be reimbursed the difference, and some Apple stores have reportedly done the same for iPhones purchased earlier than that. But those random acts of flexibility seem only to have further inflamed the wounded feelings of those who weren't extended the same courtesy.

"They told me to shove it," wrote tulanejosjh. "14 days or nothing."

"Same here," added jmolina1313. "The guy treated me like I was on drugs!"

Apple had to know that people would be furious about this. They obviously calculated that they would rather take that hit (and the loss of perhaps fifty million dollars in revenue, if a just a quarter of iPhone purchasers turn theirs in) than try to sell a lame product. They must be cursing AT&T something fierce right now.

Why We Need Net Neutrality

While I was in Chicago for Yearly Kos, Pearl Jam was playing Lollapalooza just down the street in Grant Park. Some lucky convention-goers could see and hear the concert from their hotel windows. AT&T webcast the event, and they decided to save our virgin ears from some of Eddie Vedder's political statements.

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines — “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” were somehow lost in the mix.

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band,” Pearl Jam band members stated in a release following the incident.

AT&T claimed it was an oversight and a mistake, but now a whistleblower has come forward and claimed it was official policy to censor speech on the webcast. (h/t Open Left)

A crew member who worked on a show webcast by AT&T confirmed that there was a policy in place to remove artists' political comments from shows before they were webcast.

"I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn't say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but 'getting political' was mentioned."

The head of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, is on the record saying that "We're going to control the video on our network." And that's exactly what they've done in this webcast. The implication being that, if AT&T has control of the pipeline, they're going to monitor and meddle with content. That's why we need a free and open Internet where big telecom companies like this cannot throw their weight around and fundamentally change the uniqueness of the Web.

(hopefully you'll see this message at all!)