Entropy Economic’s Bret Swanson has another great, clear-thinking op-ed that I recommend you read, this time in RealClearMarkets.com entitled: “Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Internet.“
Bret incisively captures the amazing and dynamic nature of innovation in the currently unregulated Internet ecosystem, and cautions against Washington imagining that the Federal Government can do better than free market competition can with top-down innovation micro-management from slow-moving bureaucracies.
His piece also helps spotlight the huge disconnect over where innovation comes from.
- FreePress, Public Knowledge and other net neutrality proponents imagine that Government regulations, restrictions and limitations on the freedoms of property owners somehow magically will foster more net innovation by those who don’t believe in private property.
- Google, eBay and Amazon imagine that they can increase overall Internet innovation, if the FCC would only require broadband providers and potential competitors to seek permission from the FCC, (and by proxy — permission from Google, eBay and Amazon) before they implement any network innovations in the marketplace.
It is naive to think that FCC regulation can surgically micromanage what innovation is good and allowed and what innovation is “bad” and discriminatory — before the fact.
- Policing innovation in the name of non-discrimination is a slippery slope that will lead to ever increasing government regulation of the Internet.
Read Downes’ CNET Column on Title II reclassification: a great overview why its such a bad idea
March 11, 2010
Kudos to Larry Downes for his excellent guest column on CNET: “What’s in a Title? For broadband its Oz vs. Kansas.” I recommend reading it.
It is a very readable, informative overview of the great folly it would be for the FCC to reclassify broadband services from unregulated information services to regulated common carrier telecommunications services.
Must-see Australian clip: joining the dots on Google
March 10, 2010
Thanks to John Simpson’s post at the ConsumerWatchdog.org, which flagged this succinct and illuminating 2 min 46 sec video “produced by Hungry Beast, a weekly news show on Australian television puts Internet giant Google’s huge ambitions and gargantuan reach into dramatic perspective.”
THE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE from Hungry Beast on Vimeo.
It is one of the best and most accessible pieces I have seen for the average person to get a better perspective on all things Google.
- It is clever, well-produced, well worth the <3 minutes it will take to watch it, and it has a point.
- Don’t miss it!Big thanks to the Hungry Beast for so eloquently making the implicit case why Google needs more transparency and accountability — the mission of Precursor’s sister website: www.GoogleMonitor.com.
Big Brother 2.0: Google-NSA through foreigners’ eyes
March 9, 2010
Today’s New York Times front page story “Google’s computing power betters translation tool” by Miguel Helft spotlights that Google arguably owns and operates “the world’s largest computer.” The article quotes a Google engineering VP explaining that Google’s unparalleled computing power enables Google to “take approaches others can’t even dream of.”
Combine the world’s largest computer, with the best automated translation capability for most all of the world’s top languages, with reports from the front page of the Washington Post that Google proactively sought help from America’s top spy agency, the NSA, for its cyber-security vulnerabilities, and it is not surprising that foreigners would be growing increasingly wary of Google and the extraordinary potential power that Google holds over them.
So what do foreigners increasingly see Google doing?
First, they increasingly see “The United States of Google,” a term Jeff Jarvis coined in his book on Google. Shortly after Google publicly accused the Chinese Government of being behind or complicit in the cyber-attacks on Google:
- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a landmark foreign policy address on Internet freedom that singularly praised Google for making “the issue of Internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions;” and
- Google is publicly pushing U.S. trade officials to bring a World Trade Organization (WTO) complaint against China’s Internet censorship as a barrier to trade.
Second, they see Google increasingly monopolizing the global search business, among other key market segments.
- The EU declared that Google “generally enjoys market shares above 90%,” in recently approving the Microsoft-Yahoo search alliance.
Third, they see all the private information Google is aggressively and less-than-openly collecting on employees of foreign governments and citizens of other countries:
- Private intentions, vices, interests, weaknesses, etc. via search, Google Toolbar, Analytics, and Chrome;
- What one reads via Chrome, Toolbar, Analytics, DoubleClick, Google News, Blogger, Feedburner,Knol, Books, etc.;
- What one views via YouTube, Picassa, ToolBar, and Analytics;
- What one is saying via Gmail, Google Voice, Google Voice to email transcription, Google translation, Orkut, Google Buzz and Google Wave;
- What locations one is interested in or where one goes via Chrome, ToolBar, Google Earth, Streetview, Google Maps, Analytics and Latitude;
- What one’s unique digital identifying characteristics are via Chrome, Google’s 411 voiceprint collection, and Google Goggles collection of objects and potentially faces for facial recognition, Google Earth, and StreetView; and
- Who one associates with, and when and where, via gmail, ToolBar, Google Voice contact list, Orkut, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Latitude and Android.
Even with all that private information that Google collects, Google’s self-described “omnivorous” search engine wants more. Google VP Marissa Mayer explains Google’s information ambitions to the Telegraph:
- “The ultimate prize for Mayer is intuitive search. She wants Google to be capable of presenting information to users before they even know what they’re looking for. Amazingly she doesn’t think her team are that far away from achieving what she calls the ‘omnivorous’ search engine –i.e. one which is able to take a user’s total context – where they are, what they were just reading, which direction their mobile phone is pointed and so on.”
Foreigners increasingly are aware that Google cumulatively knows more about more of them than any other entity in the world — by far.
In sum, if Google has all this private information on so many people around the world, and Google is seeking NSA’s help to protect it, it is no stretch to be concerned that either the U.S. Government, other governments, and/or bad actors/hackers could ultimately manage to get access to some of this unprecedented trove of highly-sensitive private information.
- However well-intentioned Google may claim to be, the disturbing reality is that Google has already created an Orwellian Nineteen Eighty-Four “Big Brother 2.0″ capability and private information collection trajectory, that free people the world over should be deeply concerned about.
FCC’s non-technology-neutral proposals perversely promote discrimination — per Phoenix Center report
March 5, 2010
George Ford of the Phoenix Center has penned another incisive analysis about the real world impact of net neutrality and the FCC’s Proposed Open Internet regulations.
- “Sabotaging Content Competition: Do Proposed Net Neutrality Regulations Promote Exclusion?” is an important read for anyone seeking a substantitve understanding of the impact of the FCC’s proposed rules.
- George Ford and Michael Stern’s core conclusion: “…the proposed net neutrality rules of both the FCC and Congress… can actually promote such exclusionary behavior. That is, the incentive to monopolize is greater under net neutrality.”
The Phoenix Center’s profound insight here got me thinking, (which is always my highest compliment) so let me share my takeaways building on their conclusion; takeaways that show why net neutrality is such an intellectually and economically bankrupt concept.
- First, not only is net neutrality “a solution in search of a problem,” but the FCC’s proposed “solution” would make the net neutrality “problem” they allege worse than the status quo!
- That’s because when one “fixes” a potential problem prophylactically, one naturally creates unintended consequences and distortions — i.e. new problems.
- Second, why the perverse outcome that the Phoenix Center spotlights will occur is that net neutrality is a slogan-driven policy completely propelled by the politically pejorative meaning of the word “discrimination” — a classic wedge and negative campaigning political tactic — not by principle, the truth, evidence of a real problem, or fair representation.
- The old adage here is true: garbage in garbage out.
- Third, If a non-discrimination rule is purposefully applied discriminatorily in a non-technology-neutral way, it is inherently a pro-discrimination rule.
- The disinterest by this FCC in applying net neutrality principles technology-neutrally, like the current unanimous FCC broadband policy statement does, exposes the real purpose of net neutrality proponents.
- The issue is a stalking horse for asserting public utility-like control over the broadband private sector, via Title II re-classification and price regulation of competitive broadband providers.
In sum, the bankrupt intellectual and economic foundation underlying proposed net neutrality/Open Internet regulations, means their political application by the FCC will naturally trigger a cascade of unintended, counter-productive, and destructive consequences and new problems that are dramatically worse than the status quo ante.
