Deregulation

It is very interesting and ironic that when Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt was at the FCC he strongly advocated that "Spectrum Flexibility will Promote Competition and the Public Interest" in an article in IEEE magazine with Greg Rosston in the December 1995 issue.

• "...we must stop over-regulating commercial uses of licenses for spectrum use."
• "...in the digital age, innovation is far to rapid for anyone to predict accurately what the best use of the spectrum will be five years from now."
• "The Commission should require that market failures be clearly shown and any restrictions on flexibility narrowly targeted to deal explicitly with the failure."

While I often disagreed with then FCC Chairman Hundt when he diverted from promoting market-based competition by picking winners and losers through hyper-regulation, I must commend Mr. Hundt's logic and policy explained in detail in his IEEE monograph in 1995.  

• Its too bad that he no longer appears to support that pro-competition and pro-taxpayer stance anymore.

Ironically now, Mr. Hundt would financially benefit greatly, if the FCC rigs the 700 MHz auction to lower the value spectrum by requiring a license holder agree to net neutrality.

• The taxpayer would be the biggest loser if the FCC decides to restrict and heavily regulate some of the 700 MHz spectrum up for auction with net neutrality.

The primary impetus behind the 1993 Democratic Congress that passed the law requiring spectrum auctions is that the taxpayer was routinely being fleeced by the FCC granting spectrum by other processes than auctions.

After almost a year of opposing quotes in articles on net neutrality, the NAM weekly radio show/podcast on business, finally afforded me the opportunity to debate Craig Newmark, the famous founder of Craig's List, one-on-one live.While

• While I was looking forward to hearing his best arguments for net neutrality, it became clear from the outset that he did not want to debate the issue, but wanted to try and discredit me and my personal views from as far back as 1999.
• It turned out to be a decent strategy for him because his knowledge of the issue was surprisingly thin and he obviously did not want to engage on the merits or facts of the issue

I said I was happy to discuss my current and past views with him because it was a tacit concession by him that the net neutrality side of the debate cannot win this debate on the merits and that their best chance is attacks on me as a leading spokesperson for the broadband sector on why the Internet should not be regulated.

The people who still argue that the Internet is "neutral" have some explaining to do.

• They certainly don't want you to read the super Forbes cover story on Akamai: "Video Prophet: How Akamai survived the dot-com bust to thrive on speed."
• Check out these quotes from the article that drive home the point that the Internet has never been "neutral:"
• ..."Akamai's big idea is that by rewriting the Internet's basic rules--making some computers smarter and more equal than others--it can let the Net grow infinitely large without breaking down."...
• Horrors! Akamai is not treating bits equally! Someone call the Government!
• ..."a basic idea: Connect computers to the far reaches of the Net, then program them to communicate with one another to spot better routes for getting e-mails, Web pages and other packets to where they needed to go."...
• But the Internet is supposed to be a DUMB network! A "smarter" network would not be innovative...that can't be right...
• ..."Eventually they refined a business idea: a service that essentially would be the FedEx (nyse: FDX - news - people ) of the Internet. People could always trust the public Net to deliver their information cheaply. But others might be willing to pay Akamai a premium to deliver their content faster and more reliably..."
• Horrors again! Someone had the gall to think the perfectly "equal" Internet could be made better with a market concept of a tiered Internet... oh tell me its not true!
• ..."Every few months the algorithm writers in Cambridge inject better software into the global network to make it shrewder at picking routes for Internet traffic."...
• Egads! There are dark forces out there making the Internet less equal every few months!

I feel kinda bad that all those well-intentioned people that fell for the original slogan of "net neutrality" were suckered into assuming the Internet was "neutral" and needed to stay that way.

MultiChannel News has a great write up of a tough speech on net neutrality by David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast.

• “When you cut through the rhetoric, what they [Google, Yahoo] want from the federal government is new regulations that would guarantee them below cost-access to the broadband networks that carry most of the Internet content in this country,â€? Cohen said in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

Kudos to Mr. Cohen for taking the gloves off and saying what needs to be said.

As we recently modified and updated the Netcompetition website to make it even easier to use and work with, we decided to take the little ant fable flash on net neutrality we produced, and that has been exclusively on our site for awhile, and post it to YouTube in order to broaden the audience.

Enjoy!

It's only a 1 minute 40 second flash.

There is a new updated net neutrality scareticker link to check out.

The bottom line here is that net neutrality is all about unsubstantiated allegations of problems.

• If net neutrality was in fact a real problem, wouldn't we have seen at least some evidence somewhere in the U.S. after 4 years and 2 months and counting?
• The FCC and the FTC have also both said they are vigilantly watching for any potential problems, but have not heard of any.
• What's there to be afraid of?
  

Moveon.org's SaveTheInternet blog is touting Democratic Presidential Candidate John Edwards' recent comments supporting net neutrality.

• So why am I bringing attention to this win by the other side?
• Well first I think its always important to genuflect to Moveon.org's prowess when they get people to lip synch their talking points "song."

We all know politics is often driven by fear and by creating boogeymen where none really exist -- and at that, Moveon.org is a master.  

In one of my recent Internet searches I came accross a very interesting historical article that appears to predate Moveon.org's creation of SaveTheInternet to promote  so called "net neutrality."

The article in the NYT from fourteen months ago in February of 2006 called "Plan for fees on some emails spurs protest" show that Moveon.org is no different than any other special interest in looking out for themselves.

• The article explains that Yahoo and AOL were looking to charge bulk emailers a quarter of a cent to a cent per email to deliver their emails.
• That could have been a big new bill for Moveon.org, which has a three million person email list according to the article. 

When you connect the dots of when all this was occurring -- it is pretty clear that while Moveon.org and consumer groups claimed to be saving the Internet -- they were really asking for self-serving special interest legislation, which would protect them from paying a more market-based-rate for their emailings -- which have to be among the largest bulk emails in the country.

How Moveon.org was able to mobilize so many groups is that they played to their fears that they all might have to pay more in the future because in a market-based system they might have to pay for what they use.

• So they have helped construct this elaborate net neutrality policy movement to simply protect themselves from having to pay a market-based rate.

What annoys me is that they call broadband companies self-serving, but they are no different.

• This obvious hypocrisy is off the charts.   

It seems that more folks have Google's "number."

• National Journal's Tech Daily reports that the State of Utah has passed legislation to protect trademark owners in Utah from a new kind of identity theft, i.e. search engines (Google) abusing trademark ownership by selling trademarked keyword advertising to competitors.
• Good for Utah!
• Glad somebody is standing up to companies that systematically profit from theft of others' property under the lame guise of "Internet freedom."

It seems Google is learning the lesson the hard way -- that those in glass houses should not throw stones.

Seems Google CEO Eric Scmidt is having his own "Nixonian" moment in a very informative interview in Business Week which accompanied the recent Business Week cover story: "Is Google too Powerful?" 

• Just as former President Nixon protested to loudly in saying "I am not a crook!", Google CEO Eric Schmidt appears overly defensive in questions about Google's dominance:
• In response to the question: "Some people feel Google is now or potentially could become too powerful in that it has such a sway over where people go online. People worry that Google could become the gateway... "
• Schmidt responded defensively: "I disagree with essentially every half sentence here..."
• Schmidt's "Nixonian" problem is that Google's behavior and reality are spawning this perception.
• "People" aren't picking on Google, they are hitting on a chord that resonates with everyone.
• "People" know Google is too powerful because it routinely behaves as the "divine king" or "emperor" of the Internet in how they treat people.
• When they trample on and profit from other people's property, they never say they were wrong, or offer an apology, -- they only bribe people to be quiet and go away. Google euphemistically calls these bribes -- "partnerships."
• Google is another example of the old adage: "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
• Google's real problem is not that people "percieve" that Google is too powerful, but that it "is actually" too powerful and it routinely behaves in the marketplace in such a way that everyone knows it. 

Let me expose as bogus, Mr Schmidt's core defense of why Google is not too dominant.