Campaigns

Both SavetheInternet.org and ItsOurNet.org are desperately trying to convince any reporter or media outlet they can -- that their perception of political "momentum" on net neutrality -- is in fact reality. Read below for evidence why they are delusional and believing their own spin. 

Let's review reality and the facts of the supposed "momentum."

Remember, Net neutrality proponents need Congress to pass a new law in order to win and achieve their purposes.  In May, the Markey NN bill failed badly in the House 269-152. In June the FCC rejected calls for NN to be required in approving the Adelphia purchase by Comcast and Time Warner. In July, NN failed again in the Senate Commerce Committtee 11-11 on a straight party line vote, however after that defeat, four of the Commerce Committee Democrats abandoned NN and voted to support the Stevens Bill 15-7 -- without the Snowe-Dorgan Bill. In August, the FTC Chairman gave a very detailed speech seeing no need for additional NN legislation and chided the NN proponents for not being able to define the problem or for not submitting any formal complaints to them or providing any real evidence of a problem.  

Mr. Markey (D-MA), one of THE BIGGEST net neutrality proponents, is the keynote speaker at the fall VON conference Tuesday September 12th.  He is also the author of the House "Net Neutrality Act of 2006" which was defeated in the House earlier in the year by a wide margin  about 270-150. 

Big on rhetoric, but thin on substance, I believe Mr. Markey has some explainng to do about the dark side of his HR.5273 that has not been sufficiently challenged.

I did an hour radio interview today on mytechnologylawyer.com today, to give all the best arguments against net neutrality. It was refreshing to have a forum where the clear purpose was to hear the unvarnished anti-net neutrality view becuase they will hear the other side's unvarnished next week when they will host Itsournet.org, Tuesday September 12 at 1PM EST with four pro-net neutrality guests.

It was a very liberating forum as I was given the full time and free reign to lay down the detailed arguments of why NN is such a horrible public policy idea. In particular I was able to debunk in detail how the Internet has never been "neutral" and give a detailed rebuttal of the gross misrepresentation that there is a broadband duopoly or insufficient competition. 

Gotta love Daily Kos' indignance that Cable is running a very effective anti-net neutrality ad on their beloved Comedy Central show (that by the way has shilled for the NN cause and mercilessly spoofed Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens.) 

How dare cable invade their hallowed neutral ground and horrors speak ill of their beloved net neutrality! It is blasphemy! There should be no cable industry free speech -- only politically-correct speech that agree with approved neutral-dogma! 

Common cause just listed me and netcompetition.org in their latest report: "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, Part 2: More Telecom Industry front groupss and Astroturf."

This is a not-so-veiled attempt at intimidating free speech that Common Cause doesn't like because it does not fit their Big-Government-knows-best policy view. 

I have fully disclosed who I work for on the site and in every one of the dozens of public forums in which I have debated net neutrality. Net competition is funded by broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies! It's no secret!

If the neutr-elites were truly honest and their real NN concern was market power and not reasserting government control over communications companies, they would have inserted a sunset trigger provision in either the Markey or Snowe-Dorgan NN bills, which then would have ended NN when “sufficient” competition emerged.  Unfortunately both bills have no sunset, obviously envisioning net neutrality as a permanent policy that would never change no matter how many competitive alternatives consumers eventually enjoy. I believe this is because the core neutr-elites of Moveon.org, the Democratic “netroots” are virulently anti-business, and pro BIG government command and control.

The WSJ editorial, "WiFi to the Max" was dead on today in connecting-the-dots that Sprint's $2.5b investment in a 4G WiMax wireless broadband market is loud repudiation of the "neutr-elites" allegation of a DSL-Cable "broadband duopoly." 

Sprint's $2.5b WiMax investment is on top of the 3G wireless broadband investment Sprint has already made that is allowing it to offer wireless broadband currently to much of the country. It is on top of Verizon's successful wireless broadband rollout that serves 10 million new wireless broadband enabled customers in the last year alone. It is on top of AT&T's investment in wireless broadband that will be ramping in short order. It is on top of Intel's $600m investment in Clearwire's WiMax network, billionaire Craig McCaw's latest venture. This is on top of dozens of cities around the country investing in WiFi networks. This is on top of the current FCC auction which has DirecTV/Echostar putting $1b down payment down to bid on new wireless broadband spectrum, cable players putting down $600m, T-Mobile $600m, Verizon $500m, and AT&T $400m. The evidence of a big ramp-up in broadband competition is overwhelming! 

Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Microsoft continue to try and hide how much the average American subsidizes their market-leading 80-90% gross profit margins. 

Net neutrality is a dressed up name for a regulated average-pricing sheme. Under NN, below-average bandwidth users, the vast majority of Americans, pay much higher broadband prices in order to subsidize the average price that bandwidth hogs pay -- and bandwidth hogs make up a relatively small percentage of Internet users.

What Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon don't want anyone to know or figure out is that they are among the largest consumers of bandwidth in the country, and they pay a relatively minscule amount for it. It's certainly easier to be so super profitable if they can sucker everyone into paying their bills for them.