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November 12, 2008
The Cato Institute has published Tim Lee’s paper arguing for a neutral Net but against Net neutrality regulation. Stephen Schultze, of the Berkman Center, has posted a careful and thoughtful rebuttal.
November 6, 2008
Obama has posted his tech policy.
It’s like someone who understands and values technology and the Internet was elected president.
By the way, the Change.gov site welcomes our comments.
October 16, 2008
For months now, with perfect consistency, after four or five songs, Pandora goes dead when I listen at home using my RCN broadband connection. The music stops and the play button, which says the music is playing, does nothing. Other streaming media sources work fine — I can watch entire debates live on CNN. I’m getting the same Pandora behavior even after a complete reinstall of OS X.
How suspicious should I be? And is there any way to tell, other than asking other RCN customers if they’re having the same problem? Am I now officially a tin-hat-wearing, paranoid Net neutrality person?
October 13, 2008
To tell you the truth, after listening to this, I don’t know where he stands on Net neutrality. He does say he supports it, but I don’t get a warm feeling that he understands what he means.
For purposes of comparison:
I don’t know when either of these snippets were recorded.
September 9, 2008
Tim Wu brings his customary clarity and vision to the McCain and Obama’s tech policies. Rather than sticking with the “McCain’s never used Google, oh, and he’s old, too,” Tim tries to get at the differences guiding them. Chief among them: McCain sees the Internet as just another bit of the telecom panoply, while Obama thinks it’s special. But read the whole thing to get past my over-simplification…
August 24, 2008
Declan McCullagh has the goods (apparently) on Biden’s tech and Net policy record. It totally sucks and is completely out of step with Obama’s. Thankfully, Obama’s not appointing Biden as head of the FCC.
I like Biden as a VP pick. He’s prepared in case the unthinkable happens. He’s got some real values as a person. And I think he brings not only foreign policy experience but also some bluntness to the campaign. But, have I mentioned that his Net policy sucks? (Apparently?)
August 15, 2008
Craig Newmark weighs in on McCain’s scary Net agenda. (Craig says something very nice about me, but I’m linking to him anyway.) Craig’s written about this before. For example: Why a president needs to know tech.
And the cuticle on Harold Feld’s pinky knows more about the Net than all of McCain’s personal IM list does (because McCain doesn’t have one). Harold is, um, not impressed with McCain’s policy statement. To put it mildly. [Later: Part 2 of Harold’s post is more substantive but not as funny.]
And that ol’ AT&T veteran and certified visionary — he was right and AT&T was wrong — David Isenberg is equally aghast.
Matt Stoller runs just the subheads of McCain’s policy statement. Hilarious. As Matt says, “Seriously, this is approaching Chuck Norris-level aggrandizement.”
[Later] Susan Crawford, professor of law and ICANN rep, and one of the most clear-headed policy people arounds thinks McCain’s policy is “wistful.”
It’s not just that McCain’s policy is ludicrously wrong about the source and nature of the Internet’s value. It’s that McCain might win, in which case, the Internet is going to get a whole lot worse for us in the US … and, given that high on McCain’s agenda is exporting US copyright totalitarianism, it’s bad news for the rest of the world, too.
(My take, along with some more links, is here It’s also up at HuffingtonPost.)
More links at Sascha Meinroth’s place, including his own analysis.
August 14, 2008
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THE MCCAIN NEGATIVE WORDCLOUD |
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McCain has delivered his tech policy. And it’s clear: This election will determine whether America willfully becomes a third-world participant in the online economy and culture.
Much of the McCain policy is the expected stuff about public-private partnerships, educating the workforce, and providing incentives to reach under-served populations, etc. But he shows his hand on three issues:
1. He’s flat against Net neutrality.
2. He wants to see copyright extended and enforced more vigorously.
3. He thinks the current infrastructure only needs a couple of tweaks.
In sum, our Internet policy should be the same as our energy policy: Hand a key resource off to big corporations whose interests are fundamentally out of alignment with ours as citizens.
Let’s assume that this is not because McCain is a tool. Let’s assume he has the best intentions and that his policy accurately reflects how he thinks about the Internet.
To McCain, the Internet is all about business. It’s about people working and buying stuff. There is nothing — nothing — in his policy statement that acknowledges that maybe the Net is also a new way we citizens are connecting with one another. The phrase “free speech” does not show up in it. The term “democracy” does not show up in it. What’s the opposite of visionary?
Further, the Internet to McCain is a set of tubes for delivering content to an awaiting public. Jeez, does he not have anyone on staff under the age of 25 who could have clued him in on what the Net is about?
It gets worse. Even if we ignore the cultural, social, and democratic aspects of the Net, even if we consider the Net to be nothing but a way to move content to “consumers” (his word), McCain still gets it wrong. There’s nothing in his policy about encouraging the free flow of ideas. Instead, when McCain thinks about ideas, he thinks about how to increase the walls around them by cracking down on “pirates” and ensuring ” fair rewards to intellectual property” (which, technically speaking, I think isn’t even English). Ideas and culture are, to John McCain, business commodities. He totally misses the dramatic and startling success of the Web in generating new value via open access to ideas and cultural products.
The two candidates’ visions of the Internet could not be clearer. We can have a national LAN designed first and foremost to benefit business, and delivered to passive consumers for whom the Net is a type of cable TV. Or, we can have an Internet that is of the people, by the people, for the people.
Is it going to be our Internet or theirs?
Go Obama!
Obama’s campaign’s response:
“Senator McCain’s technology plan doesn’t put Americans first—it is a rehash of tax breaks and giveaways to the big corporations and their lobbyists who advise the McCain campaign. This plan won’t do enough for hardworking Americans who are still waiting for competitive and affordable broadband service at their homes and businesses. It won’t do enough to ensure a free and open Internet that guarantees freedom of speech. It won’t do anything to ensure that we use technology to bring transparency to government and free Washington from the grip of lobbyists and special interests. Senator McCain’s plan would continue George Bush’s neglect of this critical sector and relegate America’s communications infrastructure to second-class status. That’s not acceptable,” said William Kennard, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission.
Someone just pointed me to the back and forth between Kevin Werbach and Michael Powell. Powell (former FCC head) drafted McCain’s tech policy, and Kevin (former FCC person) is an Obama supporter: 1 2
Harry Lewis at BlownToBits points to some of the flat-out contradictions in the McCain policy statement.
July 30, 2008
Matt Stoller reports that every major Democratic candidate for Senate supports Net neutrality. Need I add that Obama’s tech policy is way closer to what we need to save the Internet than what we’ve gotten so far from McCain?
And Tim Wu (the coiner of the phrase “Net neutrality”) has another frame-bender in a NY Times op-ed. He says Americans spend about as much on broadband as on energy, and calls for liberation from the Soviet-style control of spectrum (which he also compares to OPEC) to encourage entrepreneuristic advances.
And now the WSJ has attacked FCC chairman Kevin Martin for supporting Net neutrality. It remains to be seen, however, whether Martin’s ruling against Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent has any teeth. Poor Kevin! Incoming from all sides.
July 24, 2008
A group of folks, led by Wendy Seltzer, Geoff Goodell and Steve Schultze, has filed a comment on the FCC’s proposal that it give away some public spectrum to be used for national Internet access, with the requirement that the provider censor it down to what’s safe for a five year old. Wendy and her friends produced what I think is an outstanding, thorough, and legally-based criticism of this plan. (I’m proud to be one of the many signatories.)
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