October 2007

The charge that many supporters of net neutrality were economically illiterate by Washington Post's lead business columnist Steve Pearlstein in "Whiny Techies II" a few weeks ago which I posted on, prompted more whining from Tim Karr of FreePress/SaveTheInternet Coalition in a Letter to the Editor.

• Karr: "Supporters of net neutrality aren't asking that users pay one fee for all grades of access. We want a truly competitive marketplace where people can choose from numerous broadband companies offering access at different speeds and costs."

Let's have some fun un-packing Mr. Karr's disingenuousness.

I continue to be surprised and saddened that the mainline consumer groups, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America remain completely AWOL on arguably one of the most important privacy issues threatening consumers --the pending Google-DoubleClick merger.

I can't seem to square the following facts.

The Google blog continues to essentially argue: what's good for Google is good for America and consumers. We have all heard that self-serving hubris and bunk before...  

• Mr. Rick Whitt, in the latest post on the Google Public policy Blog  concluded:
  •  "We think the Internet offers the optimal model for what best serves the interests of all consumers. To that end, we hope the FCC sticks to its guns as it tries to introduce the open ethos of the 'Net to a small segment of the closed wireless world."

Let's unpack the hubris and deception behind these assertions.

• Google is implying that anything that occurred in wireless in the past (B.G. -- "Before Google" entered the wireless world) did not serve consumers well -- and that we should scrap the existing competitive wireless model and adopt the Internet model that... surprise... most benefits Google.

Given Google's assault on the supposed failures of the current system, it is important to review the facts of what the existing competitive model actually has produced for American consumers.

Google just can't seem to get on the right side of copyright law -- or the law in general for that matter.

• Google's MySpace partner, News Corp clearly doesn't believe Google is doing enough to protect copyrights. 
• Peter Chernin, President of News Corp., in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, chided Google that ""they could do a better job" at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site."
  • FT asks: "Do they have the technology to do it?"
  • Chernin: "It's pretty safe to say that they have the technology available, that if we [MySpace] have the technology available, a) it's publicly available, and b) I haven't yet heard a lot about Google being technologically constrained."

The point here is that Google clearly has the wherewithal to not violate copyright, but they are making a business decision that it is better or more profitable for Google to disrespect copyright law rather than to respect copyright law.