Campaigns

Sometimes an analysis is so outstanding, all you can say is "Read it!"

Anyone who considers themselves religious should read Red State's illuminating and shocking post, which documents an anti-Christian discriminatory bias by Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig and his extremely close ally -- Google.

• "Obama and Google's mutual advisor: Jesus is gay; wears a diaper and gets run over."

WARNING: Christians will find the one-minute-fifty-second video that Mr. Lessig shows to a laughing Google audience, sacrilegious, offensive, and disturbing.  

I am attending David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect Conference today as a very very small minority of broadband industry folks.

In listening to a panel on politics and the web, my ears perked up when Donna Edwards, who defeated Rep. Al Wynn (MD) in a democratic primary, admitted that only one citizen of the thousands she met going door to door during the campaign -- actually asked her about net neutrality.  Very interesting.

All the bragging by Matt Stoller of Open Left and other net roots suggested that Edwards win was a win for net neutrality at the net roots.

The reality is now shared from the candidate that net neutrality was not at all on the minds of voters in Maryland.

• Once again, the net roots have overstated their power and impact to look more powerful than they really are.  

Professor Tim Wu, who coined the term "net neutrality" is reportedly now advocating "law breaking" to advance the "information commons" agenda, which believes Internet infrastrructure, spectrum and content should be publicly owned and not privately owned.  

• Communications Daily quoted Professor Wu on March 11, 2008:
  • "To move things along, unlicensed users should start occupying unused spectrum for wireless broadband, Wu said: "You gotta start somewhere, and it always starts with law-breaking.""
• My experience is that Comm Daily is careful to accurately quote people and if Professor Wu did not to clarify his remarks, we can assume them to be accurate. I also have not seen a clarification of this after two more publications. 
• I would also like to extend the courtesy to Professor Wu to be able to qualify his remarks that they were meant to be flippant, or a joke, or that he really didn't mean to call to publicly encourage people to break the law.
  • He could resolve this issue with a simple blog post.  

That said, it is very troubling to any public civility minded person who believes in the rule of law and respect for property, that such a prominent person as Professor Wu (who coined the term net neutrality, and who proposed Caterfone open access rules for the 700 MHz auction) would advocate "law-breaking" to advance his political agenda.

Politicizing the Internet

Fabricating a Free Speech Threat to Justify Regulating the Internet and An“Information Commons”     American ISPs are facilitating an unprecedented explosion of free speech.

Moveon.org, through its FreePress/SaveTheInternet puppets, loves to extol the virtues of grass roots democracy and claim to the press that there is a spontaneous groundswell for their net neutrality views in the "netroots." BALONEY! Moveon.org is a glorified top-down email list of activists, albeit a huge 3 million activist email list -- just like direct mail political organizers before them.

To support this point, I had to share this juicy dead-on insight shared at the Politics Online conference this week, by Personal Democracy Forum founder Andrew Rasiej -- per Washington Internet Daily:

• "If any group was positioned to challenge the two major parties in Internet history, it was MoveOn.org, but strangely the group "didn't want to introduce its members to each other" as a social network, instead simply handing down marching orders, Rasiej said. MoveOn "at least symbolically" checks with its 3.5 million members on what issues to pursue, but it's still run by a handful of people who typically don't query the troops unless they already know the answer, Johnson said."

Remember it was Moveon.org that attacked Facebook, the hot social networking site, when Facebook spurned Google for Microsoft. See my previous post:  "Google's poodle -- Moveon.org is leading the privacy protest against Facebook -- which spurned Google..."

The uber-communications-advisor of the left, Reed Hundt, gave an eyebrow-raising exclusive interview with Telephony-Online yesterday where he shared his views "on how to change broadband policy."  

The frantic spin-fest by supporters of House Telecom Chairman Ed Markey's new net neutrality bill was truly comical to watch. Let me share some of the more precious "spin" moments from last week.

Gigi Sohn, Founder of Public Knowledge, said in Comm Daily: "The new net neutrality bill has a better chance of passing than previous ones. What's different this year is the momentum leading up to it."

• Hmmmm. The new Markey bill, HR5353, which has been in the works for 13 months of this session has two co-sponsors, lets count them again, one...two..., and one of these two is retiring from Congress this year.
• In the Senate, the Dorgan-Snowe bill, an exact replica of the failed 2006 version, was introduced 13 months ago and has had near zero Senate consideration or attention, not even a hearing.
• Meanwhile back at the ranch... net neutrality regulation has been opposed by the FCC, FTC, the DOJ Antitrust Divsion and the three states that examined it: Michigan, Maryland, and Maine.
• Gigi may be technically correct that the issue indeed has "momentum," however, Gigi remains mum on the DIRECTION of that "momentum" -- as that would be unnecessary buzz-kill to share with people.

Ben Scott, the policy director of Moveon.org's FreePress arm, and Gigi Sohn were obviously speaking from the exact same approved talking points:

If you want to test the validity, appropriateness or reasonableness of a so-called inviolate "principle" like net neutrality, it can be instructive to apply that principle in a different context to see if it makes sense.

What if we passed a law that all health care had to be neutral?

• That all patient treatment always had to be just the same?  
• That any prioritization of patient treatment would be deemed illegal discrimination?

What would be the nonsensical result of such a broad imposition of a "neutral" medical treatment mandate?

The British paper, The Guardian, reported recently that: "Google Earth used to target Israel."

• "Palestinian militants are using Google Earth to help plan their attacks on the Israeli military and other targets, the Guardian has learned. Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes."  

• "It is not the first time that Google has been accused of unwittingly abetting the activities of militant groups or terrorist organisations. In January, British officials claimed that insurgents sympathetic to al-Qaida were using aerial photography in Google Earth to locate potential targets inside British bases around the southern Iraqi city of Basra."

What is really scary about this coverage is the chillingly "open" video by the Guardian next to the written story that shows (about two-thirds of the way through the 4 minute video) how the "Palestinian militant" actually targets rocket attacks on Israel using Google Earth -- ostensibly to try and terrorize, kill and maim Israelis within Israel.  

In another similar high profile problem, Google Earth was also careless in releasing restricted photos of the White House roof on Google Earth.