Authored By:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- August 21, 2012
Contact: Scott Cleland 703-217-2407
The FCC's Obsolete Section 706 Report
Obsolete law and technological assumptions yield nonsensical reporting requirements
WASHINGTON D.C. – Concerning the FCC's release of its Section 706 report on "Advanced Telecommunications Incentives," the following quotes may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition.org:
"We set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users," Google said in response to the FTC fining Google $22.5 million: for hacking a competitor's system in order to short-circuit a competitor's privacy protection of its users; and for violating the FTC-Google-Buzz enforcement Order without any admission of liability whatsoever. In addition, Google characterized the problem as a minor unintentional technical mistake (like it originally characterized its Street View WiSpy privacy violations), and then patted itself on the back that no personal information was collected by its actions.
Google's public reaction mocks the FTC's mission statement -- "to prevent business practices that are anti-competitive, deceptive, or unfair to consumers" -- which ironically is featured in the FTC's announcement of the Google privacy fine. Google acceded to a small misrepresentation fine for Google, as simply the cost of doing business the Google way.
To learn more about the status of Google Books litigation and Google's IP problems, see my interview with Managing IP Magazine here, entitled: "Opinion: Google is waging war on IP law."
In writing "Internet Pirates Will Always Win," Nick Bilton, The New York Times's technology columnist whom I read and respect, has unwisely adopted the political logic and public narrative of the piracy lobby that "information wants to be free." Unfortunately, I don't think Mr. Bilton has fully thought through the serious negative implications of his flawed logic and misplaced political support.
Mr. Bilton is not the first, and won't be the last, columnist to buy into the piracy lobby's deceptive political narrative that fighting piracy is akin to a futile game of Whac-a-mole, so content creators should just unilaterally surrender the concept of market pricing of their content going forward and offer it free to the public on the Internet or at a minimal price that Internet pirates judge is "fair." Mr. Bilton concluded: "Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game."
The unspoken "different game" here is that the Internet should be more of a public information commons where everything is free of cost to access, and no permission or contract is required to do most anything on the Internet, in stark contrast to being more of an Internet marketplace where property owners of all kinds can charge for and contractually control the use of their property and individuals can assert control over how their private information is used.
Evidence abounds that the industry business model of online advertising, minus Google, is shockingly weak competitively, given how many people assume advertising is supposed to be the viable competitive monetization engine that will sustain the "free and open Internet" long term.
Anyone open to connecting-the-dots of recent public evidence will see an obvious dichotomy: Google is thriving, while much of the rest of the online advertising industry is struggling despite unprecedented: opportunity to reach users, technological efficiencies, and access to troves of private data to target ads to produce more revenue growth.
Examine the accumulating troubling evidence of how weak online advertising competition has become.
The Internet Advertising Bureau's latest reporting of 15% online advertising growth for the industry in 1Q12 masks the large Google vs. competitor revenue growth dichotomy. Given that Google grew 24% 1Q12 and comprises almost half of all U.S. online advertising per eMarketer, I calculate that the rest of the online advertising industry is growing only about 8%. That means Google is growing three times faster than its online competitors and continues to take market share at an accelerating rate.
We learn about Google's culture-of-unaccountability from Google itself. Google's leaders have repeatedly indicated their hostility to accountability of most any type.
Listen to Google's own words to learn about their unique and unabashed corporate culture-of-unaccountability.
"New investors will fully share in Google's long-term economic future but will have little ability to influence its strategic decisions through their voting rights." Google's 2004 IPO letter to prospective shareholders from co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "FCC's Over-Reliance on Obsolete Law" here. It spotlights the FCC's clear pattern of relying on obsolete law and non-existing statutory authority.
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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:
Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"
Below are questions for both the EU and Google, given the expected announcement soon of a proposed settlement of Google's alleged antitrust violations.
Questions for the EU:
Remedies Implications: Since the EU's formal demand for Google to propose acceptable remedies for the abuses and harms that Google has caused would only be appropriate and legal if Google was indeed a monopoly, and in fact abused its monopoly, does the EU effectively consider Google a monopoly which has abused its market power?
Non-compliance penalty? Does the EU reserve the right to issue a formal Statement of Objections in the future if Google proves seriously non-compliant with the proposed monopoly abuse enforcement settlement?
Complainant review? What assurances will complainants have to ensure that Google's concessions are meaningful and real, and will not be easily gamed by Google because of the dearth of technical expertise on the EU enforcement staff?
Effect on other EU-Google Antitrust investigations? Will this monopoly abuse enforcement settlement have any effect on the conduct or outcome of the EU's investigation into Google's alleged anti-competitive behavior with Android and/or Google-Motorola's alleged abuse of standards essential patents?
Pay attention when FreePress is quiet about something it was ear-splitting loud about before. Without fanfare, FreePress apparently has mothballed its old SaveTheInternet.com agitprop campaign apparatus by redirecting www.SaveTheInternet.com to a refreshed FreePress.net site that reboots under a variety of "Internet freedom" agitprop sub-campaigns. Mandated net neutrality government regulation has now transmogrified into an "Internet freedom."
And FreePress/Public Knowledge have cloned a SaveTheInternet twin, the comic-book-inspired, "Internet Defense League," which apparently will be the new front group responsible for much of the online community organizing and stunt-staging that FreePress/SaveTheInternet became infamous for. Think of the FreePress 1.0 email list of ~500,000 activists pinging around in a social media 2.0 echo chamber, in order to defend the Internet from capitalism, profit and private property.
FreePress' "Internet freedom" reboot apparently is in the process of getting the people and organizations which signed the original oath of allegiance to SaveTheInternet, to sign the new FreePress 2.0's Declaration of Internet freedom.