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If Silicon Valley folks are indeed the smartest of the smart, how could they be so easily fooled on net neutrality?

Normally smarts distinguish between what’s testable and real versus what is the pixie-dust of dreams.  

So where’s the real data and sound scientific thinking behind Silicon Valley’s grandiose net neutrality presumptions?

Why isn’t Silicon Valley adhering to its own data-driven, scientific decision-making principles?

Summary of Silicon Valley’s 6 Biggest Net Neutrality Fantasies:

Some things are way too important to let slip by uncontested.

The FCC has asserted a foundational regulatory premise that warrants rebuttal and disproving, given that the FCC is considering if Internet access, and Internet backbone peering, should be regulated like a utility under Title II telephone common carrier regulation.

In an important speech on Internet interconnection last month to the Progressive Policy Institute, the very able and experienced Ruth Milkman, Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Chief of Staff, asserted that “communications networks are no different” than railroad and electricity networks when it comes to interconnection. “… At bottom… the fact is that a network without connections and interconnections is one that simply doesn’t work. Disconnected networks do not serve the public interest.”

Thanks and Kudos to Mike Wendy of Media Freedom for this <3 minute commentary (video here) about how naïve Silicon Valley is in pushing for broadband regulation that could easily boomerang and apply to core parts of Silicon Valley’s distribution and cloud  businesses.

They are living proof of the old adage: be careful of what you ask for, you may just get it.

They also could find themselves getting acquainted with a new adage: live by three FCC votes, die by three FCC votes.

Dear Executives of Internet Association Companies,

Have you thought through the global implications of your businesses’ public lobbying for regulating broadband like a public telephone utility? 

Possibly you are unaware that “The French government said it would push for a new European law later this year to classify Google and other Web giants like public utilities, forcing them to guarantee access to all services like phone operators. … We don’t want to become a digital colony of global Internet giants” said the French Economy Minister, per Wall Street Journal reporting.

As members of the global Internet giant association, and as global companies with large majorities of your current or future revenues coming from overseas, it could be beneficial to better think through the global implications of your high-profile policy support for new broadband utility regulation in the U.S.

With due credit to "Ripley's Believe it or Not!^®," so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the "name" of “net neutrality” that the topic calls for its own collection of: "Believe it or Not!^®" oddities.

INTERNET FAST LANES:

Net Neutrality activists who have long condemned the FCC for not making the Internet fast enough now condemn the FCC for proposing to make the Internet faster!

Google and Amazon oppose the FCC enabling them to pay for fast-lane delivery of their online services when they both are launching very-costly, same-day, home delivery services!

The Net Neutrality movement has lost its way. It’s now perversely focused on advancing Internet companies’ economic interests at the expense of Internet user interests.

The Net neutrality movement’s main priority used to be about ensuring that Internet users have the freedom to access the legal content of their choice.

Now they have become singularly-focused on securing permanent economic subsidies for edge companies by demanding the FCC set a zero-price for all downstream Internet traffic via reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier service.

Essentially, what their latest net neutrality scheme would mean is that Internet users would be forced to shoulder the entire cost burden of maintaining and upgrading America’s expensive Internet infrastructure without a fair-share contribution from the top Internet companies for the infrastructure costs they cause as a result of their dominant consumption of the nation’s daily downstream bandwidth.  

Simply, net neutrality has transmogrified from preserving users’ Internet freedoms to forcing all Internet users to fully subsidize all Internet companies’ bandwidth usage bill no matter if they use a particular edge companies’ services or not.

The Internet has long had multiple speeds. And it constantly gets faster speeds via technological and commercial innovation, competition, and investment.

The Internet also has long met people’s diverse needs, wants and means for speed, with different technologies, pricing, and content delivery methods, and it will continue to do so.

Net neutrality activists’ latest rhetoric that opposes the FCC’s court-required update of its Open Internet rules, by implying that there haven’t been “slow and fast lanes” on the Internet before, is obviously factually wrong and misleading, both for consumers receiving content and for entities sending content.

Many in the media have fallen for this mass “fast lane” deception without thinking or questioning it.

First, isn’t it odd that those who routinely complain that the Internet is not fast enough oppose genuine FCC efforts to make the Internet faster?

Moreover, isn’t it ironic that the net neutrality activists -- who have long criticized the FCC for the U.S. falling behind in the world in broadband speeds, and long advocated for municipalities to create giga-bit fast lanes for some communities -- vehemently oppose FCC efforts to create “faster lane” Internet for those entities that need it and are willing to pay for it?

Please don’t miss my new Daily Caller op-ed: “Online Video Competition’s Tipping Point Has Tipped.”

It pulls together how regulatory developments, much faster wireless networks, and several new entrants with deep pockets are converging to create a tipping point for over-the-top, online video competition.

It is Part 25 of my Broadband Internet Pricing Freedom series. 

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Broadband Internet Pricing Freedom Series

Part 1: Netflix' Glass House Temper Tantrum Over Broadband Usage Fees [7-26-11]

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “Diverging US-EU Internet Trade Visions.”

It spotlights that starkly diverging US-EU net neutrality and data protection policies complicate negotiations for the nascent and pending Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) trade agreement.

This is Part 6 of my “World Changing the Internet” research series.

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World Changing Internet Series

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “Accelerating the De-Americanization of the Internet.”

It explains the broad implications for the Internet of:

• America handing over the master key of the Internet to ICANN; and
• the European Parliament updating privacy law for the first time since 1995 nearly unanimously. 

This is Part 5 of my “World Changing the Internet” research series.

World Changing the Internet.

Part 1: Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet [1-11-12]