-nick

FCC & Net Neutrality: Part 2

As with Part 1, my comments in bold.

At a Crossroads

Notwithstanding its unparalleled record of success, today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges. We?ve already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet?s historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks) and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. We have even seen at least one service provider deny users access to political content. And as many members of the Internet community and key Congressional leaders have noted, there are compelling reasons to be concerned about the future of openness.

Without a doubt the FCC Chairman is correct on these points.? There have occurred violations to Net Neutrality over the years.? I can count them on my hand.? Some of these violations have been mistakes and rectified.? Others were corrected when public voices and other market forces corrected the problems within days or weeks.? Still other violations to neutrality occurred because of violations to the network administrators policy or because an end user was hijacking the network.? Traditionally, these few cases have been individuals using torrenting services that were receiving and distributing high amounts of data round the clock and causing other users at the node to experience low quality service.? In these cases, the private network makes a policy decision to either allow one individual to continue dominating the last-mile, or to violate Net Neutrality for the benefit of other paying customers.

One reason has to do with limited competition among service providers. As American consumers make the shift from dial-up to broadband, their choice of providers has narrowed substantially. I don?t intend that remark as a policy conclusion or criticism — it is simply a fact about today?s marketplace that we must acknowledge and incorporate into our policymaking.

This is an argument that has been used for the better part of a decade and was most likely true up until the last 18 months.? It is probably still true in many areas around the country.? The reason for this is simple.? With the switch to broadband in the early years of the new millennium telecoms were the most suited to make adjustments to their existing networks to corner the market.? One may not like this, but it’s simply capitalism.? And while the monopoly held fast for many years, the free market has allowed new technologies to give consumers more choice.? In my home town of Atlanta, several years ago one may only have 1-2 choices for broadband.? Now they have roughly 7 depending on the exact area of town they live in.? From fiber, to multiple cable and dsl choices, to the emergence of Sprint, AT&T, and Clear 4G wireless.? This progress will continue throughout the nation as these companies move into other cities and push into the suburbs.? Rome wasn’t built over night.? Neither is America the equivalent in size to Seoul, South Korea.? It will take some time.

A second reason involves the economic incentives of broadband providers. The great majority of companies that operate our nation?s broadband pipes rely upon revenue from selling phone service, cable TV subscriptions, or both. These services increasingly compete with voice and video products provided over the Internet. The net result is that broadband providers? rational bottom-line interests may diverge from the broad interests of consumers in competition and choice.

This line of argument must fall into line with a situation resultant from the previous paragraph. i.e. If Comcast provides OnDemand video services, they would be encouraged to block Hulu and Netflix because access to those sites keeps consumers from using the Comcast service.? The argument goes on to say that this can’t be prevented because the consumer couldn’t not choose a different ISP for it’s Internet services and would be forced to be cut off from certain Internet sites.? The reality is that this is bunk logic for multiple reasons.? First we have already established that there is market choice for a growing number of consumers.? Second, the market backlash to this sort of thing would jeopardize the companies reputation.? Thirdly, companies that offer multiple services have greatly benefited financially from “Triple Play” style packages that offer the consumer items like phone, Internet, and television in one bill.? Blocking specific Internet sites in an attempt to bring more revenue in from a competing service is not a successful business model.? For one reason, even in areas where there are limited Internet provider choices, there are always multiple phone and video solutions.? Losing revenue from combined service packages would would be worse than projected revenue lost from a competing service like OnDemand.

The third reason involves the explosion of traffic on the Internet. With the growing popularity of high-bandwidth applications, Internet traffic is roughly doubling every two years. Technologies for managing broadband networks have become more sophisticated and widely deployed. But these technologies are just tools. They cannot by themselves determine the right answers to difficult policy questions — and they raise their own set of new questions.

i.e. “We the government should also have a hand in determining how broadband networks handle their traffic.”? No, the government should not be doing this.? These guys are bureaucrats, not engineers.? Bureaucrats should have the authority to determine how money should be spent or how policy should be enforced when authority to do so is given to them.? Giving bureaucrats the authority to determine how network engineers manage their networks is the equivalent of telling NASA how to design a component on a space ship.? Does that sound like a good idea?

In acknowledging the existence of challenging competitive, economic, and technological realities for today?s Internet, I want to underscore that this debate, as I see it, isn?t about white hats or black hats among companies in and around the network. Rather, there are inevitable tensions built into our system; important and difficult questions that we have an obligation to ask and to answer correctly for our country.

The reality is that a company that has spent billion of dollars designing a private network should not have to answer any questions the government has about taking over regulatory control of something that is not owned by the government.? The FCC has no obligation.? The FCC wants control of the Internet in the same way they have control over radio and television.

When I worked in the private sector I was fortunate to work with some of the greatest innovators of our time. That taught me some lessons about the importance of innovation and investment. It also taught me the importance of developing clear goals and then being focused and practical in achieving them, making sure to have the best input and ideas from the broadest group possible.

Genachowski, look I’m sorry, but “working in the private sector” for IAC, a company that goes around buying up other people’s websites and web technology innovations, and working for Expedia, TicketMaster, and Hotels.com does not qualify you to understand the things that a network engineer understands.? You have a business degree from Harvard.? Fantastic! You understand the business aspect of the technology space.? The guys you are claiming to be on the same ground with have telecommunications engineering degrees from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgia Tech.? They aren’t trying to run the business side of the companies they work for, and you do not need to be running the engineering side of their businesses.

I am convinced that there are few goals more essential in the communications landscape than preserving and maintaining an open and robust Internet. I also know that achieving this goal will take an approach that is smart about technology, smart about markets, smart about law and policy, and smart about the lessons of history.

If this is a legit claim, then you can use 20 some odd years of history of the Internet as an indicator that what you are claiming to be a problem is not a problem.

We Must Choose to Preserve the Open Internet

The rise of serious challenges to the free and open Internet puts us at a crossroads. We could see the Internet?s doors shut to entrepreneurs, the spirit of innovation stifled, a full and free flow of information compromised. Or we could take steps to preserve Internet openness, helping ensure a future of opportunity, innovation, and a vibrant marketplace of ideas.

In all seriousness how does this make any sense?? Neutralians argue that ISP’s may violate some Net Neutrality code that will stifle innovation and information.? But how is this different from giving that control over to the government?? If – and the word “if” should come with great stress in its tone – any of this banter is true, then American consumers of broadband really have two choices.
1) They can continue under the status quo, with the risk that there would be an occasional violation to Net Neutrality by an ISP that would then be under the pressure of market forces to act swiftly in rectifying the problem; or,
2) Americans can cede control of Internet regulation to the FCC and whatever administration happens to be at the helm, for the “understanding” of network management to change with every change of the administration, and the ability of these regulatory forces to over see the content we send and received and determine if it is legal and if the network is operating under their “guidelines”.? Additionally, consider that regulation would occur under the guidance of individuals like Mark Lloyd and Cas Sunstein who wish to control media and information content from every angle, television, radio, and the Internet.
I’ll take the cautious approach for $500, Alex.

I understand the Internet is a dynamic network and that technology continues to grow and evolve. I recognize that if we were to create unduly detailed rules that attempted to address every possible assault on openness, such rules would become outdated quickly. But the fact that the Internet is evolving rapidly does not mean we can, or should, abandon the underlying values fostered by an open network, or the important goal of setting rules of the road to protect the free and open Internet.

Sure, you would just expect every new technology for network management to pass your “reasonable network management” smell test.? Whatever that means…

Saying nothing — and doing nothing — would impose its own form of unacceptable cost. It would deprive innovators and investors of confidence that the free and open Internet we depend upon today will still be here tomorrow. It would deny the benefits of predictable rules of the road to all players in the Internet ecosystem. And it would be a dangerous retreat from the core principle of openness — the freedom to innovate without permission — that has been a hallmark of the Internet since its inception, and has made it so stunningly successful as a platform for innovation, opportunity, and prosperity.

If openness whas established and respected this far along in the Internet’s history without the government, why in the world would natural openness need policy for openness?

In view of these challenges and opportunities, and because it is vital that the Internet continue to be an engine of innovation, economic growth, competition and democratic engagement, I believe the FCC must be a smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet.

Anyone else see Minority Report?

What We Can Do

This is how I propose we move forward: To date, the Federal Communications Commission has addressed these issues by announcing four Internet principles that guide our case-by-case enforcement of the communications laws. These principles can be summarized as: Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network.

The principles were initially articulated by Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 as the ?Four Freedoms,? and later endorsed in a unanimous 2005 policy statement issued by the Commission under Chairman Kevin Martin and with the forceful support of Commissioner Michael Copps, who of course remains on the Commission today. In the years since 2005, the Internet has continued to evolve and the FCC has issued a number of important bipartisan decisions involving openness. Today, I propose that the FCC adopt the existing principles as Commission rules, along with two additional principles that reflect the evolution of the Internet and that are essential to ensuring its continued openness.

I think the problem here is that no one really understands is that the FCC can adopt this, but it still doesn’t give it governance over ISP’s without Congress passing a law providing regulatory governance over private corporations.? Which has me considering if all of this FCC nonsense is actually a smoke screen.? Most individuals don’t understand government, and don’t understand bureaucratic oversight and authority.? There is a slim chance the FCC is trying to pass these rules to appease the Neutralians who don’t understand that the FCC wouldn’t have any real power to enforce them without passage of a Congressional bill.

To be continued…

Part 1

-nick

FCC & Net Neutrality: Part 1

The Net Neutrality issue has been hot the last few months, and it probably won’t be cooling with the Fall weather.? There is already one bill sitting in committee, and another from Byron Dorgan and Olympia Snowe on the way.? In addition to this, the big news toward the end of September was the FCC’s policy statement on Net Neutrality.? This was accompanied by the launching of the FCC’s new site OpenInternet.gov to go along with it’s sister site, Broadband.gov.

After reading over FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s speech and considering my comments, I felt that a lot of the nuances of what he talked about may get lost in a simple response.? So I decided that I would just break the whole thing down.? I’ll be splitting his speech up over several parts and providing responses to what he had to say.

If you’d care to listen to the speech in full first, then here you go:

You can also find the text of the speech unmolested by my comments here.

So here comes our break down, paragraph by paragraph.? My comments in bold.

Prepared Remarks of
Chairman Julius Genachowski
The Brookings Institution, Washington DC
September 21, 2009

I?d like to thank Brookings for hosting me and this discussion about the future of broadband and the Internet.

We?ve just finished a summer of big-ticket commemorations, celebrating the 40th anniversaries of the Apollo landing and of Woodstock; 1969 was also a good year to be a kid in New York, with Joe Namath calling the Super Bowl, and the Knicks? season that ended with the legendary Willis Reed in Game 7. I grew up a long fly ball from Shea Stadium and soaked up every minute of the Miracle Mets? season. Maybe that?s why I tend to believe in miracles.

But perhaps the most momentous birthday from that famous summer of 1969 went by just a couple of weeks ago with little mention. Just over forty years ago, a handful of engineers in a UCLA lab connected two computers with a 15-foot gray cable and transferred little pieces of data back and forth. It was the first successful test of the ARPANET, the U.S.-government-funded project that became the Internet — the most transformational communications breakthrough since the printing press.

Today, we can?t imagine what our lives would be like without the Internet — any more than we can imagine life without running water or the light bulb. Millions of us depend upon it every day: at home, at work, in school — and everywhere in between. The Internet has unleashed the creative genius of countless entrepreneurs and has enabled the creation of jobs — and the launch of small businesses and the expansion of large ones — all across America.

Yes, the Internet has unleashed creativity and created jobs, and has done so without the help of the government or having any of its facets regulated.

That?s why Congress and the President have charged the FCC with developing a National Broadband Plan to ensure that every American has access to open and robust broadband.

There are several assumptions here.? First off, Congress has not charged the FCC with a National Broadband Plan, nor have they charged the FCC with regulating the Internet or determining that the Internet must exist under regulated, binding by law Net Neutrality rules.? The only thing Congress has done in regards to this issue was pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which had two things in relation to these issues. 1) There existed monies in the stimulus package for the expansion of broadband into unserved and underserved areas.? The funding is limited, and less than half of what Verizon alone has spent on developing their entire fiber network.? It is the FCC who labeled and determined this to be a “National Broadband Plan.”? Congress simply provided money for the development of limited networks.? That is significantly different than being “charged” with accomplishing some mission that Genachowski apparently considers is his destiny as Chairman.? 2) Congress did not charge the FCC to ensure an open Internet.? Within the stimulus the language insinuates that grantees of stimulus funds must build networks under the guidelines of FCC policy statements.? It is therefore the FCC that determines what those policy statement conditions are, not Congress.

Additionally, this statement carries with it the assumption that access to the Internet is both desired by everyone and a right.

The fact is that we face great challenges as a nation right now, including health care, education, energy, and public safety. While the Internet alone will not provide a complete solution to any of them, it can and must play a critical role in solving each one.

These statements are a bit of a reach.? I understand that part of the job of the Chairman is to act as a pitchman for the Obama Administration’s platform and policy agenda, but these claims are weak at best.? I guess I can see where the Internet is a useful tool in research for health care and education, as far as ones ability to search out the best insurance policy or the ability to take an online class.? But as far as health care goes, one could just as easily open the YellowPages and make phone calls and write some stuff down.? But I certainly don’t understand how increasing Internet access will improve public safety and solve our energy issues in this context.? Is there by chance some Einstein-esque man with a secret energy solution that just cannot get his message out at the moment, and if only he had Twitter all our energy problems would be solved?? Something about beach front property in Colorado goes here.

Openness is the Key

Why has the Internet proved to be such a powerful engine for creativity, innovation, and economic growth? A big part of the answer traces back to one key decision by the Internet?s original architects: to make the Internet an open system.

Historian John Naughton describes the Internet as an attempt to answer the following question: How do you design a network that is ?future proof? — that can support the applications that today?s inventors have not yet dreamed of? The solution was to devise a network of networks that would not be biased in favor of any particular application. The Internet?s creators didn?t want the network architecture — or any single entity — to pick winners and losers. Because it might pick the wrong ones. Instead, the Internet?s open architecture pushes decision-making and intelligence to the edge of the network — to end users, to the cloud, to businesses of every size and in every sector of the economy, to creators and speakers across the country and around the globe. In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the Internet is a ?blank canvas? — allowing anyone to contribute and to innovate without permission.

This is a fantastic paragraph.? Genachowski hits the nail on the head here.? Unfortunately he is too blind to see that government intervention is ubiquitous for not being hands off.? Regulated Net Neutrality is the exact polar opposite approach to what Genachowski has written here.? Government now has the power to pick winners and losers.? They have the power to know what data is being transferred by having the power to conduct deep packet inspection to determine the contents of data traveling across networks.? They will have the power to tell network operators how to manage their networks and how to manage the flow of data, slowing or speeding up the delivery of certain types of applications.? That is the essence of picking winners and losers right there.? Period.? Genachowski wants the Internet to be a “blank canvas” with a little FCC logo down at the bottom right hand corner.

It is easy to look at today?s Internet giants — and the tremendous benefits they have supplied to our economy and our culture — and forget that many were small businesses just a few years ago, founded on little more than a good idea and a no-frills connection to the Internet. Marc Andreessen was a graduate student when he created Mosaic, which led to Netscape, the first commercially successful Web browser. Mark Zuckerberg was a college student in 2004 when he started Facebook, which just announced that it added its 300 millionth member. Pierre Omidyar originally launched eBay on his own personal website. Today more than 600,000 Americans earn part of their living by operating small businesses on eBay?s auction platform, bringing jobs and opportunity to Danvers, Massachusetts, Durham, North Carolina and Lincoln, Nebraska, and many other communities in both rural and urban America. This is the power of the Internet: distributed innovation and ubiquitous entrepreneurship, the potential for jobs and opportunity everywhere there is broadband.

Yes, you too can create the next Amazon in your garage!? With all the grandeur of these statements, the fact remains that all of these massive Internet companies were established under current conditions.? Evidence of the success of the Internet without regulated Net Neutrality is evidence in support of the absence of regulation, not a promotion for regulation.? This paragraph is an argument for keeping the established norm, not for change.? The problem with Genachowski and Neutralians is that they are banking on some ridiculous cosmic notion that the Internet is currently neutral and that they must enact laws to keep it that way.? It is this notion of, “There isn’t a problem, but maybe, possibly, there might be in the future, so we have to do something about that at the risk of destroying the innovation inherent in the Internet and proper network management.”

And let us not forget that the open Internet enables much more than commerce. It is also an unprecedented platform for speech, democratic engagement, and a culture that prizes creative new ways of approaching old problems.

Then why mess with that system based on what essentially boils down to your bet that something bad may happen that the market itself could not correct, when actual case study shows that any violation to Net Neutrality principles has been met with swift action by market forces and immediately corrected within weeks or even days?

In 2000, Jimmy Wales started a project to create a free online encyclopedia. He originally commissioned experts to write the entries, but the project only succeeded after moving to volunteers to write them collaboratively. The result is Wikipedia, one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world and one of the most comprehensive aggregations of human knowledge in our history. The potential of collaboration and social media continues to grow. It is changing and accelerating innovation. And we?ve seen new media tools like Twitter and YouTube used by democratic movements around the globe.

Again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Even now, the Internet is beginning to transform health care, education, and energy usage for the better. Health-related applications, distributed over a widely connected Internet, can help bring down health care costs and improve medical service. Four out of five Americans who are online have accessed medical information over the Internet, and most say this information affected their decision-making. Nearly four million college students took at least one online course in 2007, and the Internet can potentially connect kids anywhere to the best information and teachers everywhere. And the Internet is helping enable smart grid technologies, which promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by hundreds of millions of metric tons.

This is obvious marketing speak for the promotion of Obamacare and administration policy objectives that has nothing to do with anything we are supposed to be hearing about in this speech, which is supposed to be an FCC position statement on Net Neutrality.

At the same time, we have also seen great strides in the center of the network. Most Americans? early exposure to the Internet was through analog modems, which allowed a trickle of data through the phone lines to support early electronic bulletin boards and basic email. Over the last two decades, thanks to substantial investment and technological ingenuity, companies devised ways to retrofit networks initially designed for phones and one-way video to support two-way broadband data streams connecting homes and businesses across the country. And a revolution in wireless technologies — using licensed and unlicensed spectrum — and the creation of path-breaking devices like the Blackberry and iPhone have enabled millions of us to carry the Internet in our pockets and purses.

Yes, Genachowski, and this is what makes the Internet the most wonderful creation man has ever made.? It is a world without you, the government.? It is the last remaining frontier of the Wild West.? And I don’t mean that in a way to reflect the “red light districts” of the net.? I mean that from the perspective that the Internet is a world of self regulation.? Even the regulation on certain websites is determined by the members or owners that inhabit those sites.? It is because of this unbridled nature of the medium that such creativity has flowed.? It is kin to the Age of Enlightenment.? Discovery blossomed when one mans quest for power over another man was finally somewhat extinguished.

It is said that early America buoyed The Enlightenment via the American Revolutionary War.? America thrust off the chains of its oppressor, those that wished to control it, and it blossomed forth.? This is why the Internet has proved successful.? The barriers to entry that exist in many brick and mortar and “meatspace” opportunities are much higher than those of small business and upstarts on the Internet.? Especially in the Internet’s earliest days.? To regulate that now, and possibly restrict innovation and economic development based on a whim is just dumbfounding to me.

The lesson of each of these stories, and innumerable others like them, is that we cannot know what tomorrow holds on the Internet, except that it will be unexpected; that the genius of American innovators is unlimited; and that the fewer obstacles these innovators face in bringing their work to the world, the greater our opportunity as citizens and as a nation.

Does this seem like backwards logic to anyone else?? Genachowski praises the lessons we can learn of success under an unregulated Internet, and then goes on to promote the idea that fewer obstacles improve innovator output and end user opportunity, but he wants to regulate the Internet.? You know that noise Scoopy-Doo used to make when he was confused?? I just made that noise.? How do you limit obstacles by introducing regulation that increases obstacles?? Baffling…

To be continued…Part 2

-nick

Genachowski Extending Net Neutrality to Cell Networks

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the FCC Chairman Genachowski is going to establish Net Neutrality rules for cellular networks.? The rules which he plans to produce on Monday will outline how cellular companies should manage their networks.? Similar to the recent Net Neutrality bill introduced to Congress, the FCC guidelines would allow for “reasonable” network management of Internet networks for cellular carriers.

This will be sure to rub carriers the wrong way, as many companies exclude certain applications on cell phones existing on their networks that would compete with those carriers ability to offer their own services.? For example, you have the recent Google Voice application being denied by AT&T/Apple from the iPhone because it bypasses AT&T’s ability to provide cell phone service.

There will also exist a concern by network managers on what exactly “reasonable network management” is.? As this implies that the government will be able to step in and examine and then determine whether a company is managing their own network up to government standards.? Whatever those standards may be.

We will be eagerly anticipating Genachowski’s comments on Monday.

-nick

AT&T: Time Sensitive Services Not Priority in Broadband Expansion

AT&T’s FCC comments from the Broadband Expansion Comment period are up. You can read them here.

In short, they believe that expansion into underserved and unserved communities should be about core Internet services.? The toys of the Internet, like gaming and streaming media, will have to take a back burner for the foreseeable future.

You can find our full post on the issue at gamelobbyist.net.

-nick

More Gateway Neutrality

News outlets are reporting today that recipients of grant monies from the Broadband Expansion portion of the Stimulus Act will be forced to implement Net Neutrality regulation into networks built on these grants as ruled today by the Obama Administration.

I first divulged this in an article on OpenMarket.org back in January. And to quote myself, I had stated that,

The issue here is that it doesn?t matter if the FCC or the Fed can regulate net neutrality on the grand scale right now, the recipient of these grant funds will be legally bound to adhere to the FCC policy statement implementing net neutrality and establishing open networks. After that, the fix is in. One or more publicly funded networks would exist running under regulated and enforced net neutrality principles. A few years later, legislation will be introduced again to mandate net neutrality in all U.S. networks. Backers of the legislation will refer to the networks built under the stimulus plan pointing out how flawlessly they are running, and how neutrality principles have provided for that condition because the FCC can watch dog the network.

Furthermore, I reported in March that companies like Verizon and AT&T were potentially not going to apply for grants for this very reason,

This reluctance to accept government funding shows that major ISPs realize that acceptance of stimulus funds puts them squarely under the FCC Network Neutrality principles. These principles could bleed into the other networks?such as Verizon?s FiOS TV or AT&T?s U-Verse?that these large Internet players own. Meaning this policy would be the camel?s nose under the tent.

Adding that,

Molly Peterson of Bloomberg News confirms that big ISPs realize the danger associated with accepting recovery funds:

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable provider, say the rules are unwarranted and would hinder their ability to manage congestion on networks they have spent billions to build.

So while this was bound to happen, I guess one could say that it’s a sure thing now. With only $7.2 Billion available for broadband expansion and those monies being distributed in amounts that will be paltry in comparison to what telecoms generally spend in network expansion, there is a real possibility here that avoiding government funding will actually benefit their bottom line rather than helping improve them. These gateway stimulus fund drugs will inevitably find their way into regulating their own private networks if these companies are not weary.

-nick

The Personal Democracy Forum Doesn’t Help Conservatives

Monday was a very long day here in New York City. The Personal Democracy Forum Conference busted out of the gate bright and early and never seemed to slow. The conference and its attendees are a cornucopia of ideas and innovation. It certainly feels as if the applications built for and during the Obama campaign have spurred an entire new focus in the political realm. I feel like I’m a fly on the wall of the office that invented grassroots mailers. It certainly seems that we are witnessing the initial stages of a new era in politics.

Six month from now things will be very interesting. The first campaigns since the 2008 presidential race will begin cranking their engines. It will be the first big test as well. Letting all of us evaluate who “got it” after the last go round.

One has to understand that when they attend these sorts of events that there is certainly a goal of objectivity. The reason for attending is to discover the areas in which politics and technology are intersecting. How is technology, or possibly more specifically, the Internet changing politics? Are these changes creating the evaporation of results from the previous models? If so, how do we incorporate these new tools into our area of politics to create new successful models? That’s what we are hear to discover.

The reality though is that people that are passionate about anything can’t keep it from seeping out even when they are trying to hold back. There is nothing wrong with this. I take zero issue with individuals who wear their heart on their sleeve. At least it’s out there.

But at some point a balance issue develops. If panels are mostly chaired by a certain orientation of political enthusiast, the point of view is always the same. If the audience to which they are speaking is of the same enthusiasm, then they are preaching to the choir. The cheers and hardly applause comes because of political orientation and alignment and not because all political technology enthusiast share the same goals.

We don’t.

Case in point was the fine display of two sheep being led on stage for the final panel of the day. The sheep, in the form of two teleco representatives, had their achille’s slit so that they couldn’t escape and then were promptly ritually massacred by the Picadores Josh Silver. Silver, well known in tech policy circles for avoiding any concerns or facts outside of his own talking points was suburb in his beat down. I honestly couldn’t tell if the teleco reps were ill prepared or just trying to play the saint for the audience, the obvious antagonist.

But why was this happening? Silver has a particular motivation and a goal, and not one with which all parties in the tech policy community would agree. Why was no one with a differing point of view sitting on this panal? Not to defend the telecos, but to ask questions from a differing foundation, or to call Silver’s bluff. Where was Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or Adam Thierer who started Technology Liberation Front? Where was Timothy B. Lee, CATO fellow and Ars Technica contributor? (Who in my humble opinion has hands down written the best scholarly explanation of network neutrality available. Which is mighty humble of me, if I do say so, considering I’ve written on it myself.)

I did appreciate hearing the audience gleefully suck up every drop the FCC commissioner Blair Levin had to say; especially the part where he told us that they were creating a plan. Really? The plan he is referring to of course is the National Broadband Strategy which comes due in February of 2010. What hardly anyone knows though is that the US Department of Agriculture who has used the Rural Utilities Services (RUS) division to improve broadband distribution in the past has been awarded funds for distribution from the stimulus. RUS plans to distribute its roughly $2.5 billion by September 30th, 2009. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration?who received the bulk of the broadband stimulus funds?will hand out their dollars in three phases occurring Spring of 2009, Fall of 2009, and Spring of 2010.

Spend first, formulate your plan later, Mr. Levin? Sort of seems counterproductive to planning at all.

Conservatives are boned at PDF 2009. There is certainly not enough representation amongst panel members. Some of this is absolutely not the fault of Personal Democracy Forum. We are under a liberal Administration, and that administration appoints liberal bureaucrats. An invite to Robert McDowell or Meredith Attwell Baker would have been nice. Maybe they were invited, and turned it down. This too is a possibility. At least Cas Sunstein with his Fairness Doctrine-esque “electronic sidewalks” for the Internet isn’t present.

I’m not laying the wood to PDF. Yes, from initial indications it doesn’t appear that the ideological sides are well balanced, and possibly they don’t know where to look. The real trouble however is the attendees.

The Personal Democracy Forum doesn’t help conservatives. Because conservatives aren’t there to be helped.

The numbers are simply overwhelming. I’d guestimate that the attendance is somwhere close to one thousand. I’d also venture to say that there are roughly five conservatives there. And I’m incorporating the one libertarian I saw with a Ron Paul button.

I’m dismayed.

I know these folks are out there. I’ve written about them. So where are they? After this past Fall why aren’t ogles of people from the right side of the aisle on Capitol Hill all over this event? Did the speakers shy them away? I don’t really think so. I’m a strong conservative-libertarian, and have been for years. And while there are a few people in the speaker list that irk me on the average day, I wouldn’t let them keep me from attending when the majority of lectures and panels are simply focused on an examination of content in some form, a discussion of getting content to an audience, or about tools to help you be more efficient and productive.

This is subject matter that conservatives need to hear. Maybe PDF needs to market themselves more to conservative circles on the web? Possibly all conservatives on the web are poor and couldn’t afford to attend? It could be that conservatives don’t fit in with all the Apple fan boys present at the conference. If there were more Dell owners then it might have been more balanced.

All thought provoking questions.

These are just initial reactions. I’m sure I will be thinking more about it into the second day of the event as I look for reasons for the paltry representation.

Secretly though, I think the liberals in the crowd are ecstatic. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s like someone serving up a box of free gold to anyone who shows up at the box and takes the gold. And only liberals are showing up, so they get to take home all the gold.

You can’t teach a dead dog new tricks. And you certainly can’t expect to win a fight you don’t show up to.

Very much looking forward to Tuesday.

-nick

Broadband Stimulus Plan: Spend First, Ask Questions Later

Originally posted on OpenMarket.org:

There has been some noise in technology circles the last week over the FCC comment period or Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in regards to the broadband Internet portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act otherwise known as ?the stimulus.?

The NOI allows individuals, association groups, public policy organizations like CEI, and businesses to issue their comments, suggestions, advise?anything really?to the FCC. This allows ?the public? to describe how they feel like the funds should be spent and the best strategy to improve the state of broadband deployment in under-served an unserved areas.

The comment period is intended to help formulate the National Broadband Strategy which is required to be completed one year from the recovery act being signed in to law. This means that the strategy will come due around the 17th of February 2010.

There is a major problem with the process that is being used in this case. The majority of the funds will be distributed prior to the completion of this strategy that will decide how best to distribute and use them. Cart before the horse much?

The US Department of Agriculture who has used the Rural Utilities Services (RUS) division to improve broadband distribution in the past has been awarded funds for distribution from the stimulus. RUS plans to distribute its roughly $2.5 billion by September 30th, 2009. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration?who received the bulk of the broadband stimulus funds?will hand out their dollars in three phases occurring Spring of 2009, Fall of 2009, and Spring of 2010.

The bill writers recognized the need to give the issue a good deal of study to attempt to create a solid plan, but the process also seems to indicate that they felt to create new jobs fast, so the funds needed to be spent fairly quickly to provide stimulus to the economy. This creates a Catch-22 and certainly suggests that maybe these funds shouldn?t have been spent at all, or in the very least that they should not have been tied up in the stimulus.

A year-long strategy session is pointless if you hand out the money before the plan is even drafted, and there is a good chance that the strategy that comes out of the session won?t be implemented because the money will have been spent.

Most likely, the strategy will be proposed and written based on who has the funds, not who could best use them. So this broadband stimulus is almost certain to fall short of its goal of increasing broadband access for unserved and underserved areas.

But this is what we should expect from our new, ?smarter? government. The same old, dumb results.

-nick