GOP senators to feds: Leave the Internet alone

It’s this sort of thing that really pisses me off. The intention is exactly right. The Internet should be free of interference. It should continue to be accessible by anyone, empower content and service creators, and foster innovation. Yet excluding all government regulation of the Internet is exactly contrary to achieving that goal.

In fairness, the issue of Net Neutrality is a bit complicated. Most people don’t know how the Internet works. And this leaves open the opportunity to exploit that lack of understanding through politi-speak gems like this

“There are exceptions of course, but far too often, when you hear someone say, ‘We need regulations to protect the Internet,’ what they’re actually saying is they don’t really trust the entrepreneurs and Internet technologists to create the economic growth and to increase public welfare.”

Net Neutrality regulations don’t stifle entrepreneurs and technologists. Rather, they keep the network available for them. Net Neutrality reigns in big ISPs from exploiting their effective monopolies for increased profit and offering preferential treatment for other large companies who can afford to pay to play. It protects the consumer and the entrepreneur from big business.

In a very real way, keeping the government from regulating the Internet is simply paving the way for a few large private business to regulate it. There’s no way that ends well for small businesses and consumers.

All regulations are restricting someone else’s freedom. That doesn’t make them all bad. Net Neutrality regulations are all about preserving the freedom of the Internet. If you would rather trust AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon, and Comcast to keep your network a free and open egalitarian network… you’re more than a little naive.

SOPA on a Rope

The current bill in Congress known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or as it’s known in the Senate, PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) is just beginning to get coverage in the non-technical press. In draft, this was called the E-PARASITE Act (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act). Seriously, who names these things?

From the names, it all sounds like goodness right? Theft, exploitation, piracy, who wants that? If only it were that simple.

The intent of the bill is to crack down on illegal online file sharing. There’s ample room for debate about how damaging online piracy truly is, and whether or not it makes business sense for content providers to aggressively attack their customers, but that’s a topic for another day. Even if we accept that online piracy threatens to destroy the music and movie industry (just like VHS tapes and writable CDs did), the proposed bill is absolutely not the way to go about preventing it.

There are lots of articles out there on why this is so. You can read the bill yourself, or read others’ analyses here, here, or here. However, let me try and boil down the basics for you.

The Great Firewall of the USA: Enforcement of SOPA will require the creation of a Internet filters by all domestic ISPs to control what sites you are allowed to visit. This may be well intentioned censorship, but it’s still censorship, and it puts the mechanisms in place for less benign intentions. Do we really want to head down that slippery slope?

Online Security: Let’s face it, once the firewall goes up, many of us will find ways around it. This will involve a combination of foreign or rogue DNS servers, proxies, or VPN services. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to believe that once you start getting your Internet delivered through black market servers that your online security will be at greater risk.

No More Safe Harbors: The current law allows web site owners some protection under the “safe harbor” clause. That means that if you were to post a comment on this article containing some illegal content, the owner of the content could demand I take it down, and I would be obliged to do so. But if the owner wanted to sue for damages, he couldn’t sue me as the website owner. Rather, he’d have to come after you as the one who posted it. Under SOPA, that protection is gone. If you upload a funny Big Bang Theory clip to Facebook, CBS can sue Mark Zuckerberg for damages. SOPA will undoubtedly result in far fewer sites taking on the risk of letting you post things on them. The web will become a lot less participatory.

Loss of Due Process: This is perhaps the most egregious implication. Under SOPA, website owners are guilty until proven innocent. Based only on an accusation of having illegal content on your site, anyone can demand that the ISPs block access to your site, and may further demand that all banks stop doing business with you. Sure, you can appeal to the court, but that could take months or years to settle. In the meantime, you’re out of business.

As the major backer of SOPA, the entertainment industry is making lots of assurances that the provisions of SOPA would never be used for anything but the most noble of causes. They are full of it. These same people have already collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stretch the In Rem Forfeiture clause (allowing for the immediate seizure of property used in the commission of a crime) to include domain name seizures of websites with no warning or due process. They are wielding this with a broad brush and have repeatedly seized domains eventually found legal by the courts, but by then put out of business. Oops.

This whole SOPA mess has also created some strange bedfellows. The tech community and most high tech companies have come out against it. Along side them are Michele Bachmann and her Tea Party Coalition. Ironically, the Tea Party and the Techies were on staunchly opposite sides of the Net Neutrality debate, so this is a somewhat uneasy alliance.

On the other side we find the Hollywood studios, music companies, and the organizations like RIAA and the MPAA that lobby for them. We also find VP Joe Biden and several key Democratic legislators who have historically been supportive of anything Hollywood wants. To her credit, Hillary Clinton has expressed some concerns about SOPA, and Obama claims to be on the fence.

To that end, Obama is currently taking input on the issue. If you want to oppose the bill, go to the White House website and sign the online petition. As of this writing, we are still a few thousand signatures short of the “pay attention to me” threshold. Yes, you have to create a White House account to sign the thing, but it only takes a minute.

On the other hand, if you think SOPA sounds like a great idea and want to know how to support it, please write a long letter and mail it to your local animal shelter. They are always looking for material to line the bird cages with.

Former Senator Chris Dodd breaks promise not to become a lobbyist

Chris Dodd Bobblehead — Chris Dodd's ethics bobble with the breeze (Photo by DonkeyHotey on Flickr)

Recently retired Senator from Connecticut Christopher Dodd said upon leaving office he would not seek to become a corporate lobbyist. But that was two months ago, and times change. The former five-term Democratic senator announced yesterday he accepted a job as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Technically, Dodd is legally barred from becoming a lobbyist for two years after leaving the Senate. However, like so many retired legislators before him, he skirts that rule by not officially being hired as a lobbyist. Still, as the head of one of the most high profile lobbying groups in the country, it’s a distinction without a difference.

Interim MPAA CEO and president Bob Pisano told Hillicon Valley last month that his organization’s unwavering focus was on increasing the federal government’s efforts to stop online film piracy. Pisano also talks up the importance of COICA and how happy he is that Homeland Security has been seizing domains in violation of the First Amendment and basic due process, even taking down tens of thousands of perfectly innocent sites.

It remains to be seen how or if Dodd’s new million dollar job will change his previously professed positions on related issues. He was on record as a big supporter of Net Neutrality. However, the MPAA has come out against net neutrality, claiming it would hamper its efforts to “fight piracy.” He was also against ISP data retention, which the MPAA has supported (again as a way to fight piracy). On copyright he was somewhat non-committal, but did talk about how fair use rights are important. A position likely to disappear once he takes the role formerly filled by Jack Valenti—the man who once declared that fair use doesn’t exist.

Dodd co-authored the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation was targeted at improving the accountability and ethics of the banking system. Too bad Dodd’s own ethics now seem to be bobbling in the breeze.

Boehner says Net Neutrality is reinstating the Fairness Doctrine

Speaker John Boehner — Boehner ties Net Neutrality to a political agenda

Speaker Boehner addressed several tech points in his speech to the National Association of Religious Broadcasters on Sunday. He railed against Net Neutrality and new FCC regulations that he characterized as a government takeover of the Internet. He went on to say:

“Now, you know the old saying: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ Well in Washington, it’s more like, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, tax ’em and regulate ’em,” Boehner said in his speech. “So, some members of Congress and the federal bureaucracy are still trying to reinstate – and even expand – the Fairness Doctrine. To them, it’s fair to silence ideas and voices they don’t agree with, and use the tools of government to do it. “

Opposing Net Neutrality has been pretty standard Republican boilerplate. Much like with the healthcare debate, the GOP prefers that corporations make decisions for consumers rather than the government. The new twist here is the conflation of Net Neutrality with the Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 and required that broadcasters present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable and balanced. Reagan overturned the policy by executive order in 1987.

Republicans are apparently afraid the Internet might become a place of fair and balanced treatment of controversial issues. This is a confounding stance, not to mention that the distributed nature of content creators on the Internet would make such a rule impossible to enforce. Yet the larger issue is that Net Neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with editorial content.

Net Neutrality simply guarantees that the ISPs who provide the backbone for and access to the Internet cannot preferentially treat one content type over another. This assures that you have equally speedy access to Fox Nation and the Huffington Post. It means your access to Netflix won’t be throttled by Time Warner, or that Comcast will cut a deal with Microsoft to make Bing twice as fast as Google.

There is nothing about any proposed or existing Net Neutrality rules that in any way attempts to legislate editorial content on the web. Nothing. Tying Net Neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine is either an act of colossal ignorance or a blatant attempt to mislead and confuse voters.

We report, you decide.

Net neutrality proponent Tim Wu named senior advisor to the FTC

Columbia Law School professor Wu is credited with having coined the term “Net Neutrality.” He is an outspoken advocate for an Internet free from corporate or government censorship or content restrictions. He starts his position on February 14th where FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says that he will be “working on issues at the nexus of consumer protection, competition, law, and technology.”

Clearly, Wu will not be focused on net neutrality per se, but as knowledgeable tech savvy advocates for consumers go, this guy is the real deal. All of which makes his appointment as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission a little surprising given the Obama administration’s tendency to opt instead for industry insiders who advocate for the agenda of big business.

The FCC continues to waffle on issues like Net Neutrality. Meanwhile. Victoria A. Espinel, as Obama’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (a position informally known as the copyright czar) is working with Homeland Security to seize domain names of websites without due process. The government appears repeatedly to treat the Internet more as a threat to corporate America rather than as an asset to its citizens.

However, the FTC is flying a decidedly different flag. In addition to Wu, the agency also appointed Ed Felton as it’s chief technologist a few months ago. He’s probably best known for his efforts to expose problems with electronic voting machines, and for his vocal advocacy against DRM (Digital Rights Management) as a way to lock music, movies, and TV shows.

It’s not clear what’s in the water over at the FTC, but let’s hope it finds its way into drinking fountains across Washington D.C.