Net neutrality

From Obama's May 2nd Michigan Graduation Speech:

Today's twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. ...we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.

This development can be both good and bad for democracy. .. if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.

The White House's "I Love you back!/(Laughter)/(Applause)" version of this speech is also available. H/T to the hubby.

Happy 4th of July.

President Obama has taken complete control of the First Amendment in an around the Gulf of Mexico region; the physical breadth of the BP oil spill will now work as a map, where 65 feet beyond the borders of this oily map, America's freedom as we know it has ceased to exist.

Not even the President's media lapdogs can tell the Truth if they want to.

With this latest development, the Obama Administration has effectively given us a clue of what's in store for America: we don't need a free press when the government can supply all the information we need, via whatever medium is available. As you read this, realize that this is a pre-cursor to Obama's plans to equalize the internet -- where complete government control of the internet will guarantee that content will be regulated and restricted, and we can anticipate he will pipe unfettered, "unbiased" government information into homes across America. Something like what Neil says has been enacted in Finland.

He's fulfilling his campaign promises to "connect and empower all Americans through technology and innovation" .. and "to help unprecedented numbers of citizens take back the political process" like he did with his use of the internet "to transform presidential politics."

What we are seeing is Obama's "Journalism Re-invention" in action -- his piping a speech to kids without parental permission during classtime is pigeon compared to what he's trying to pull now.

We already know the White House controls the media. Now the Obama Administration is using the BP oil spill to restrict access and information to completely control the message that is broadcast to the public.

This is NOT THE FIRST TIME he has shut out the media's access to a news event.. First he excludes and evades -- repeatedly, then he shuts out media access, and now he's passed enforceable law.

Under threat of being charged with a Class D Felony and a $40,000 fine, journalists, bloggers, and photographers cannot come within 65 feet of response vessels working the BP spill or booms floating in the Gulf or laying on beaches.

This 65 foot "exclusion zone" had been reduced from 300 feet and is yet another restriction placed on photographers and reporters. At the end of May, the FAA and Coast Guard would not allow private charter planes carrying media to fly below 3,000 feet to better document the BP disaster.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Thursday that ["the [65 foot "exclusion zone"] order was a Coast Guard-wide directive from the top."

CNN's Anderson Cooper reports on the impact this will have on holding the federal government accountable -- by documenting and ensuring timely responses to boom removal, animal rescue and just getting the local's version of the BP story out:

*See the VID at Redstate

Locals in the Times-Picayunne also reported that the 65-foot restriction could "block photographers and reporters from accessing some waterways altogether."

So, absolutely no one would have access to anywhere the federal government deemed it necessary to lay a boom. Too many snoopy photographers? Lay a boom. Too many journalists accessing a waterway? Lay another boom.

What an effective "corralling" of the BP narrative without public oversight.

The Obama Administration will be whitewashing bad PR-damaging images like this that read "Look, a poor bird near the boom those government crews haven't cleaned up yet! They are so damn slow and inefficient!" --

with sanitized pics like this that scream "Not a moment to lose! Your Taxdollars hard at work!!" directly from their "Been There Since Day 1" Official Deepwater Horizon Joint Command Site:

The Obama Administration is well-aware of the power of the internet. Without reporters and bloggers providing clear pictures and descriptions of the events as they happen, where they happen, when they happen, readers and the rest of the media will flock to the information that is readily accessible.

The Obama Administration is ready.

Taking the lead from the Obama's massive BarackObama.com site that still stands at the ready, the DNC's populist-persuasion website and other propagandist sites the left has used to swindle the American people, Federal Deepwater, Inc. has some very cool apps that will help conceal, cover up and camouflage the federal government's lackadaisical response to the nation's worst environmental disaster that hit the Gulf on Obama's watch. It includes:

• A Flickr link
• a YouTube Channel
• a Twitter feed
• a Facebook page
• SMS alerts
• live webcam feeds
• an RSS feed, complete with email subscripts that will pipe photos and media blips directly to your browser and mailbox

• oh -- and a cool widget for your blog, website or page so you can be linked to THE primary source of news and information coming out of the area via a permanent Twitter, News and Links update (complete with ShareThis plugin).

Remember, this 65-foot restriction under pain of felony charges and $40K in fines, will black out media giants CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, CBS -- everyone. Where will America get our our news about BP now? How long before America becomes bored of hearing regurgitated press releases and sanitized photos taken by a federal employee?

I'd rather have the candids of the Free Press than staged pics ("Wait! Go back and do that again!") that would rival the boredom generated from watching Obama's useless flickr photostream.

Obama knows that we will tire with whatever comes from the official federal government newsfeed, because he'll be using the same drone-inducing spell progressives have used for generations: it's fake. Fraudulent. People can only take so much lying to before they turn away and tune out in disgust.

And now, it's a federal crime to tell the Truth.

Sometime in the future, the only "truth" America may "officially" know will be what the government tells the public through the internet; nationalizing parts of the media will not be the only way for the federal government to indoctrinate, spread propaganda, and garner votes.

What the Obama Administration proves with this 65-foot restriction is that "transparency" is a gimmick, a buzzword as useless as Obama's "hope" -- but as lethal to America as his radical, socialist sort of "change," because he's used the word "transparency" to create a false sense of security and reframe the public's image of the quintessential corrupt, calculating politician.

Transparent.

This fraud is killing Free Speech and Freedom of the Press.

How long will you and I have a right to say that?

"Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control." ~Calvin Coolidge

The internet is a monopoly and needs to be regulated as such.  While individual users might see several available ISPs, the backbone is shared by all.  Therefore, government regulators have a legitimate interest in how it functions. 

Net Neutrality is the requirement that all internet traffic get the same priority.  Free speech advocates say that without net neutrality, large telecoms could slow or block traffic from left wing blogs, for example.  On the other side, telecoms argue that they need the ability to give important and low bandwidth internet functions like email and blog surfing priority over bandwidth hogs like peer to peer file sharing and high resolution video. 

This should be a solvable problem.  Free speech advocates and telecom engineers should be able to design a multi tiered  system that gives large files lower priority without regard to content.  Unfortunately, politicians on both sides are blocking a purely technical solution.  Democrats do not trust telecoms to remain content neutral.  Indeed, without vigilant regulation, that is a serious worry.

Conservatives argue against government involvement of any kind.  This ignores the fact that the internet began as and remains a government program.  It demonstrates that government sometimes can, in the words of President Reagan, “be here to help”.  By opposing all regulation, they force free speech advocates to fight any packet priority system at all. 

Republican rigidity on net neutrality harmful to a technological solution to the bandwidth issue.  It also gives the impression that Republicans are more concerned about large telecoms than freedom of speech.  How different things would look if Republicans championed an innovative technological solution with content guarantees.  No longer would the word “intertubes” be a universal code word for old Republican technological ignorance (Senator Stevens described the internet as being like a network of tubes.). 

The Wikipedia article on net neutrality is surprisingly balanced, with links to all sides of the issue.

   The debate over Net Neutrality is taking place below the radar because of the shear volume of words being dedicated to health care, but it is an important one that needs some more attention.  The Republican stance can be summed up in five words "no government regulation of the Internet".  I understand that this fits one of the core conservative principles, small government, and I don't disagree with it in general.  The problem is I think this issue is far too complex to be boiled down to a five word answer.  As I've considered it more, and I'll freely admit that I'm not an expert, there appear to be a few other issues involved that speak to the future of conservatism.

- The Republican argument is that the government should not be able to tell ISPs how they can do business.  The free market should be allowed to work and these businesses should be left alone to make the decisions they feel are necessary.  Again, I have no argument with the basic principle, but is the ISP market truly a free market?  How many Americans actually have alternatives when it comes to choosing an ISP?  Even for those Americans who have a choice, are the alternatives really apples to apples?  I'm one of the lucky few who can choose between a cable provider and FIOS.  This empowers me to switch providers if I feel one of them is making business decisions that I don't like.  Most people don't have this luxury.

- In our quest to keep the ISP market "free" are we potentially restricting the market for content on the Internet?  One need only look at the cable/satellite television market to see what happens when the people who control the delivery mechanism begin developing their own content.  Time Warner, COMCAST, and the rest have clearly taken actions intended to promote their own content and stifle competition.  Since they are doing this in a market that is similar to that of the ISPs (i.e. not as free as an economist would like it to be due to the restrictive options available to many consumers) they are able to warp the content market in ways that limit the choice of consumers.  Thus the issue of Net Neutrality appears to force conservatives to make a choice...we can have either a free market for the ISPs or we can have a free market for the content providers.  It's hard for me to think of a way we can have both, and the current approach appears to put conservatives in the difficult position of choosing one market over another.

- One of the prime conservative complaints about the recent bailout of the car companies was that business is not risk free.  Companies make decisions.  If they work out they make money, if they don't then they fail.  Are we in danger of having this get thrown in our face on the issue of Net Neutrality?  The ISPs and wireless carriers had a business plan.  Spend money to provide the highest speed internet service we can so people can actually do things like download music, watch tv, play games, etc.  When people see what can be done they will want to pay for this service.  The problem now is that the plan worked too well.  More people want to take advantage of the power of the internet than the system can accommodate.  Are we allowing them to pull a "bait and switch"?  Certainly we're not bailing them out with government dollars, but could we not look at the McCain bill as an effort to protect them from the consequences of their business decisions?

  Again, in an effort to stave off some vitriol, let me say that I agree with the basic approach the Republicans are taking.  I agree that government regulation should be limited to that which is absolutely necessary.  The issue I have is with taking a complicated problem and reducing it to one that is simple.  There is danger in that approach because it ignores the consequences of the decisions made.  I'm interested in the thoughts of fellow conservatives on the issue of Net Neutrality that go beyond the five word answer.  I hope I've come to the right place.

(cross-posted at Red State)

The Politico today has a column penned by David All, a young GOP internet consultant, and Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP. The column looks at the premise that the GOP is behind its Democratic counterparts online, and suggests one possible reason why - we don't support the idea of big government intervention in regulating the Internet.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue.The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists.They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Given the attacks on cable and telephone companies in this diatribe, it would be easy enough to discount any response from me as shilling on behalf of cable. Look at my bio, however, and you'll see that I may be the one person uniquely qualified to address every inaccuracy and outrageous claim in his post. Prior to coming to work in the cable industry, I was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney '04, and the Republican National Committee. I've been involved in Republican politics - and online politics - since I launched one of the first state party websites (EVER) at the New Mexico GOP in 1995. At that time, there were only about 5 state parties online.

Since I have been active in GOP politics, and specifically online politics, since Andreesson released the browser in 1994, I have a bit to say about the reasons the GOP is behind (which virtually nobody argues). As an employee of the cable industry, I have a bit to say about what , if anything, that has to do with net neutrality.

Lately, it seems certain narratives about the youth vote and digital media have been coming up time and time again, without much analysis of how useful these things actually are, so I thought I would hit on a few issues with the youth vote and new media as a college conservative.
 

Facebook doesn’t work. This kills me. Facebook constantly comes up in discussions about the digital age and it’s still pretty useless. While the importance of social networking cannot be overlooked in terms of keeping in contact with those you might not otherwise and cementing ties from introductions and the like, Facebook still isn’t a platform for political discussion or information retrieval (unless it’s photos from last weekend). The candidates’ pages are largely like comment-enabled static web pages—sort of useless, unless you’re looking for a fight. A candidate who actually made a Facebook page, replete with favorite movies, their former college networks, and a candid photo album or two might be an interesting experiment, though.

Where Facebook does hold a lot of potential is in its corporate and outside applications. Facebook's privacy policy is a nightmare; information never leaves its servers, even if you deactivate, it remains there. In terms of micro-targeting and data collection on voters, Facebook may be extremely useful if it can be utilized properly, but I don't get the sense that it's being used to its fullest on either the data side or the interactive approach to actually contact and motivate people.

One of my favorite non-political blogs is The Future of News. Steve Boriss wrote a fantastic piece titled The Fight for Free Speech: Will We Be the Greatest Generation? about the idea of net neutrality. Referring to a NYT editorial, he says:

The Times ignores the fact that the First Amendment is designed to protect us against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector, which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

This mistake that Boriss points out is, I think, the liberaltarian fallacy. It assumes that government action is going to protect you from business, rather than get coopted by business. Libertarians intituitively understand that this is absurd, but conservatives and, recently, Republicans, have been unable to make that argument. I suspect that we will not be able to achieve a majority until we have both an intellectually and politically serious critique of both government and big business. Read on.