What is Net Neutrality?

Net neutrality is a debate over the future direction of the Internet. NetCompetition advocates continuing a free market Internet and opposes a government-run Internet. Net neutrality advocates activist regulation of broadband prices, terms, and conditions.

Google The Totalitarian?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:46:20 +0000 Connecting the dots of several recent important developments, Google increasingly is acting autocratically like it has unlimited power and is answerable to no one. More and more it appears to operate like a centralized, sovereign, virtual-State exercising control over the world’s information, info-commerce and Internet users. Consider these several Google public actions over just the [...]

Google’s Bots: Judge, Jury & Executioner?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:21:53 +0000 Per Advertising Age, Google has now deputized its crawler-bots to be judge, jury, and executioner when it finds a suspected ad scammer; “It’s now guilty until proven innocent, a fundamental shift for ‘Don’t be evil’ Google.” “Google now has a harsh new penalty for advertisers placing scam and malware ads: a lifetime ban.” I have [...]

Debunking the Rewrite of Internet Privatization History

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:04:19 +0000 To help the neutralism movement de-privatize the Internet and transform broadband providers into quasi-public-utilities, some attempt to rewrite the long and very bipartisan history of Internet privatization as a partisan history, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. One example of some rewriting of the Internet’s bi-partisan privatization history was in today’s Wall Street Journal article: [...]

Is FCC Declaring ‘Open Season’ on Internet Freedom?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:06:21 +0000 The piece below ran on BigGovernment.com today. (One-page version here.) Is FCC Declaring ‘Open Season’ on Internet Freedom?     The FCC, in proposing to change the definition of an “open Internet” from competition-driven to government-driven is setting a very dangerous precedent, that it is acceptable for countries to preemptively regulate the Internet for what might happen in the [...]

Any FCC Reliance on Harvard Study Would Damage the National Broadband Plan’s Credibility

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:42:47 +0000 The FCC’s non-competitive-bid, sole source contract with the Harvard Berkman Center to “conduct an independent review of broadband studies to assist the FCC” with the National Broadband Plan — appears to have been a near complete bust. The quality of the Berkman study is so poor, so riddled with key factual errors, so devoid of [...]

Why Has Google Stopped Investing in Broadband?

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:01:42 +0000 Google, flush with a $22 billion cash horde and generating a whopping ~$10 billion in annual free cash flow, was the only original funder of Clearwire not to provide new investment capital for Clearwire’s broadband deployment expansion, in a $1.5b fund raise announced this week. Clearwire’s CEO Bill Morrow, said: “Today’s news is also further [...]

Phoenix’ Ford Skewers Harvard Berkman Competence

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:17:25 +0000 Anyone who cares about the competence of the studies the FCC has commissioned/outsourced to produce the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, needs to read George Ford’s devastating critique of the economic literacy of Harvard Professor Benkler’s broadband survey for the FCC. In a nutshell, the econometric analysis Professor Benkler relied on would have earned a failing [...]

FCC Unintended Consequences Could Lobotomize the Internet

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:45:11 +0000 George Ou has a great new post — “FCC NPRM ban on paid peering harms new innovators” — that should be humbling and give some serious pause to the FCC and those pushing its proposed Open Internet regulations. The Internet’s complex ganglia of technologies, networks, agreements, standards, incentives, collaborations, contracts, innovations, relationships, safeguards, protections, economics, [...]

Google/eBay Operating Non-Neutral Broadband ISPs

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:26:55 +0000 Google and eBay are planning to operate non-neutral broadband ISPs, Google at 47 airports, and eBay on airplanes, that will discriminate against some content for the benefit of their preferred content — per a story on CNNMoney.com. This puts the FCC in a pickle concerning its proposed open Internet regulations. First, it shows the ease for Google [...]

Google’s Search Engine Discriminates in Favor of New York Times — per Ken Auletta, “Googled” author

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:07:09 +0000 Google’s secret algorithm discriminates in favor of The New York Times per a Politico video interview with Ken Auletta, author of the new book: “Googled, the End of the World as We Know It.” Mr. Auletta explains what he learned about Google’s secret search algorithm. It favors sites/results based on “wisdom of the crowds” (i.e. most [...]