Scott Cleland, President of Precursor LLC, talks about what Google’s Wi-Spy scandal means to Americans’ privacy, as well as what it may portend for broader Internet industry regulation.

If the shoe fits wear it, even if it’s the other shoe.  Here’re some kooky activist hypocrisies from this week:

#1. Free Press railing on about a Senate proposal to reduce CPB public media funding, miraculously seeing in the 1%-er subsidy an all important jobs multiplier.  Of course, they weren’t so nearly observant or generous with their calculations when it came to AT&T / T-Mobile’s jobs multiplier, which the companies said would likely occur through their proposed $39 billion merger.

#2. A Google-commissioned study that claims Search is protected by the 1^st Amendment, thus allowing it to control access or discriminate against third parties.  Yet, when it was pushing Net Neutrality, Google stood steadfast against those same rights for incumbent network providers.

And #3. Celebration of “monoculture” with announcement of Susan Crawford to the Berkman Center’s board. Though the so-called “access-to-knowledge” community, from which Crawford hails, lionizes her for chewing the same “digital activist cud” as a host of others who have gone to the same schools, worked in the same administrations, and sit on many of the same boards (like EFF, CDT, Public Knowledge, etc.), that community has not been so forgiving in the past of other supposed “monocultures” – such as Microsoft’s computing platform, which, according to the digital activists, purportedly once put our computer security dangerously at risk.

These self-appointed blowhards can walk a mile in another man’s shoes and still feel superior, better than us, and right.  As with any hypocrite, they do not care whose shoes they wear so long as they can successfully locomote on to the next venue.

It’s time we stopped them in their tracks.  When asked, gladly give them your other shoe, helping them Nikita Khrushchev themselves into the dustbin of history.

I don’t really have anything to add to this excerpt from Holman Jenkins’ column today, “How We’re Holding Back Broadband,” regarding the spectrum crunch, caused by politics, and how it threatens broadband ubiquity in America:

…Like food rotting on a dock, only politics and policy prevents spectrum from getting where it’s needed.

However, the industry’s big boys, Verizon and AT&T, may have miscalculated in how they’ve politicked the spectrum challenge. All their warnings about an impending shortfall have only handed a club to their politicized smaller rivals as well as to Beltway outfits like Free Press and Public Knowledge, lineal descendents of those Mau Mau groups that hogtied the incipient DSL powers. These groups live to make sure anything of value is allocated by politics rather than economics.

Washington telecom lawyer Jonathan Lee aptly pointed out the perverse effects of letting their idealized schemes be the enemy of the good. Combining AT&T and T-Mobile would have reduced pressure to cannibalize their older-style 2G/3G networks, which are disproportionately relied on by poorer and elderly users.

As AT&T itself pointed out, their combination would also have improved the economics for bringing 4G wireless to rural areas, where wired broadband’s reach is limited or nonexistent.

Oh well. The Federal Communications Commission and the lobby groups it takes its cues from know better…

Well, the FCC and their special interest lobbyist friends know at least this much: Scarcity, which politicians and special interests live for, is created by them primarily to beget control.  By design it runs inimically to the spontaneous order of the free market (or its closest variant).

As we painfully know here in Washington, there’s no market in the free market for the hidden Marxist or political entrepreneur.   Hence, it – the free market; abundance – must be thwarted and necessary inputs politically constrained.

Sad that the corrupt political marketplace doesn’t go out of business.  Americans – and their broadband options – deserve better.

Just read Paragraph 53 (below), outlining the FCC’s main findings from its (controversial) Google Wi-Spy order:

"Inability" - FCC's apparent willful blindness

To paraphrase this FCC conclusion:

“Apart from the massive disrespect shown by Google to the Commission – sort of as if they own us – the FCC determines that no law has been broken.  All that said, we can’t we really determine no law was broken because the star witness has refused to testify for fear of criminally incriminating himself.”

To continue:

“So, for disrespect, and not the broken law – which we can’t really determine anyway – we’re fining Google some totally inconsequential amount to its corporate bottom line (essentially equal to its lunch latte bill), and then pulling an Emily Litella on whether Americans’ privacy was in fact invaded because…”

Because?

“…Clearly, when you look at how we deal with Google, and then look at how we continually kneecap AT&T and other large network communications providers (except Sprint, of course), it’s clear two versions of protecting the ‘public interest’ emerge: One which rewards Google as it gun-slings Americans’ privacy rights away with impunity; and one which punishes network incumbents, presuming their ‘guilt’.”

To conclude:

“So, never mind, Google (pssst, we’ve got your back, Larry and Sergei).  The big telecomm companies only want to provide jobs and new broadband connectivity to Americans.  Big deal.  But you want to expropriate Americans’ penumbras and emanations - their privacy rights – to fuel your important business model.  So, we’re here to help.”

Many of my colleagues and industry experts talk a big game about about two key planks in helping our industry remain (largely) unregulated –  that is, reputation management, and the use of present enforcement tools as a consumer protection backstop.  Their silence to condemn this Emily Litella report is deafening.

Clearly, reputation management as a method of self-regulation greatly challenges recidivist Google (as Scott Cleland reveals).  And, as to enforcement tools, the FCC (as well as the FTC and DoJ) seem to have “forgotten” to bring their Kryptonite to the fight.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t wish there’d be more enforcement actions. Rather, if they are going to be employed, they should be used in a meaningful, even-handed and transparent manner.

Allowing an enforcement action to fail because the star witness refused to testify seems wrong and weak (just imagine if MCI’s Bernie Ebbers were as successful in blocking his testimony as Google’s “Enginer Doe”?).  Moreover, it makes a mockery of the process which helps all players play fair and serve the public.

“Never mind” is no way to run an agency.  It is no way to help our economy.  It is no way to protect the “public interest.”

Came across this WSJ LTE today (excerpted below) from Fred Smith, President of the market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, in response to progressive, “access to knowledge” crowd efforts to shut the American Legislative Exchange Councils (ALEC) for espousing market-based ideas.

Fred Smith: Bullying tactics reduce ideas and harm democratic debate

Seems the only thing progressives really want to do is progressively shut down voices they don’t agree with instead of openly competing on the battlefield of ideas.

What a sham.  What a shame.

The other day a Federal Appeals Court struck down an FCC ban on political ads on PBS.  Reuters reports that:

By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the Federal Communications Commission violated the First Amendment’s free speech clause by blocking public broadcasters from running political and public issue ads.

The court said the ban was too broad, and that lifting it would not threaten to undermine the educational nature of public broadcast stations. It upheld a ban on ads for goods and services on behalf of for-profit companies.

“Public issue and political speech in particular is at the very core of the First Amendment’s protection,” Judge Carlos Bea wrote in the main opinion.

Not surprisingly, an outcry emerged from the radical group Free Press, which vehemently opposes any money in politics (others’, conservatives’, that is) and the sky-is-falling implications of the ruling.  In their view, the progressive idyll that PBS represents will suddenly end if its (beggar) stations begin taking political ads from evil PACs. They caterwaul that the ruling means “your local PBS or NPR station could start running nasty attack ads right away,” which just ain’t right because everyone knows that “[m]any Americans turn to public TV or radio to escape the offensive political ads that have flooded commercial stations.”

Free Press / access to knowledge crowd wants to limit access to knowledge (graphic: Free Press)

Awww, the unfiltered world comes crashing down on the do-gooder 1%-ers who feel entitled to have their subsidized airwaves free from despoilment by overt political entreaties.  PAC ads – Yuck.  How declasse.

(Weird, though.  Free Press is part of the progressive phalanx of so-called “access to knowledge” groups, ostensibly working to increase, well, access to knowledge.  I guess political discourse via PAC ads – however untidy – does not qualify as knowledge when aired on PBS?)

But, really, let’s be more specific here.  What they’re really concerned about is conservative viewpoint leaking into to their otherwise hermetically-sealed world.   Go to any PBS station’s webpage and check out their programming schedule.  What you won’t notice is a superfluity of conservative viewpoints.

That’s by design.  Unelected officials can be funny that way.

Like processed foods, the 1%-er viewers are shielded from the brutishness that makes their sausage. Truth be told, however, the whole process is fraught with money in politics.  How do you think Federal dollars end up paying for the stuff?  It’s on-budget, in the appropriations cycle, with “public interest” groups like Free Press (as well as private interests and corporations) lobbying hard to keep the nearly half-billion dollars in yearly appropriations flowing to CPB / PBS.  These tax-free groups are supported in turn by tax-free progressive foundations, which not only fund their lobbying efforts with millions of dollars, but also help pay for and shape the liberal programming that lards CPB / PBS.

Political ads?  Who needs ‘em when all the liberal, dog-whistle programs trafficking progressive policies engorge each programming day?

Basically, PBS is one continuously-running progressive PAC ad.

Bill Moyers – a high priest of the moat-encircled PBS community – seems especially bent out of shape by the 9^th Circuit’s ruling (apart from the fact that it came out of the most liberal Court in the Country).  As he sees it:

With our stations always in a financial pickle, frantically hanging on by their fingertips, it won’t be easy to turn down those quick bucks from super PACs and others. But if I may, hang in there my brothers and sisters in the local trenches: if ever there was a time for solidarity and spunk, this is it. Stations KPBS in San Diego and KSFR, public radio in Santa Fe, have already said they won’t take these ads. If enough of you say no, this invasion might be repelled. And viewers, our stations need to know you’re behind them. (Emphasis added)

Break out the pitchforks you 1%-er, PBS-ers!  No one can tell you how to think, force opinions on you or your penumbras and emanations, or bruise your thin skin with divergent, non-progressive viewpoints.  Such affronts should not be tolerated.  Repel, oh special enlightened ones, all knowledge with which you do not agree!  If it does not repeat the Tao that is progressivism, then it is naught.

Thankfully, the rest of us are not so “fortunate.”  We recognize that PAC ads boost knowledge (yes, even “negative” ones), which are important to our self-governance.   Sure, the First Amendment can be a messy place.  But more information – not less – makes us better.  Stated differently, one may or may not agree with any given PAC ad, but they are valid on their own; they do convey important information and ideas and must be allowed on PBS.

_______________

Free Press, Bill Moyers and the like may think they can choose all the “right” information for us, but the First Amendment gave Americans a ready mechanism to defeat such centralized, elitist conceit.  More to the point – if PBS is the way progressives want America to look like and be run, then our Democracy is in grave danger.  Employing discrimination to “cure” perceived discrimination, and pushing an agenda which remains intolerant to any other system of “fairness” other than its own vision of “tolerance” cannot be sustained or help Americans thrive.

40% of us self-identify as “conservative” – where is that on PBS?  If progressives fail with even this little challenge, how can they be trusted with real Change?

The answer is they can’t.

A recent federal court case has opened up the door to PBS properties airing political ads.  This, of course, has the authoritarian group, Free Press, all upset.

Notes this Hill piece:

[A Free Press spokesperson] said viewers rightly consider public stations a refuge from political debate, and are not interested in seeing the firewall breached.

C’mon.  A refuge from political debate?  I mean, PBS is practically a mouthpiece for progressive foundations and other liberal / political causes.  Their programming day is larded with the stuff.  By design.

PBS audiences are notoriously high-brow.  I guess, however, Free Press believes the 1%-ers who watch aren’t able to make informed choices when confronted with mind-bending political ads.

Don’t look, they’re magic. Oooooh.

Free Press’ answer is to ban the stuff altogether.

Hooey.

This is yet another example of the so-called “access-to-knowledge” crowd working to limit access to knowledge they believe is “bad” for Americans.

Quite frankly, more information, not less, is better for Democracy (even though it may be information which Free Press finds unseemly or conservative in view point).

Let the audience decide for itself, you hypocrites.

Money is not speech when it comes to politics and elections – so the liberal rant goes.

As media reform activists, Free Press, like to put it:

Indeed, the more money one has to give, the more power and influence one can exert over elections and public policy.

Of course, if you’re a liberal / progressive, using money to get the policy or laws you think are “right” and “fair,” then the progressive-oriented, campaign-finance-reform admonitions do not apply to you.

A case in point.  It was announced this week that Media Access Project (MAP) will go out of business on May 1 after nearly 40 years of media reform advocacy. Why?  Well, according to the Hill, MAP’s leader, Andy Schwartzman, said:

…MAP was forced to close because it simply ran out of money. (Emphasis added)

The printing press stopped spinning, because, as this story reports:

Many foundations that fund organizations including MAP were hit hard in the recent recession. In addition one funder, the JEHT Foundation, folded in 2009 after losing much of its endowment to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

MAP’s closure statement further elucidates the need for funding, noting:

…The Board reached its decision after evaluating the difficult funding environment facing MAP and other progressive public interest groups. The MAP Board expressed its deep appreciation and gratitude to all current and former foundation and Forum funders, individual donors, and staff for their support and dedication to the cause of MAP. (Emphasis added)

Quite simply, MAP can’t speak to influence public policy anymore because it lacks the dinero, greenbacks, Benjamins, bucks, hard-cold-cash, coin, etc., to do so. 

Interestingly, the MAP statement also alludes to the fact that other progressive public interest groups face the same funding environment.  In other words, they have the same need for money…

…To speak.  To affect public policy.  To change laws.  To participate in political fora.

It takes millions in corporate and foundation funding to do this.  Groups like MAP, and Free Press, and Public Knowledge have been on the receiving-end of this teat for years.  They have engorged their operations as a result.  That said, as much as it pains me to admit this, they are a force to be reckoned with in the politics that shape public policy and laws.

Now, I don’t have a problem with these groups using money to speak in the political arena.  I think on the whole it’s good that the First Amendment allows us to do this, ensuring one doesn’t get tossed in the pokey for using money to express oneself.  What I do have a problem with, however, is the fact that groups like MAP – which have used over a $100 million of funding over this past decade alone to affect, shape and change public policy – seemingly get a free pass on the issue of money in politics.  I mean, that’s their gig.

Yep, hardcore, capitalist lobbyists, those guys.

While I’m all for them being able to speak as much as they want, they are not so forgiving when it comes to my market-based interests.  You see, they want the market (a.k.a. corporations) to stop using its money to speak because it’s speech MAP and the others don’t agree with.  Thus, when corporations like AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft or Apple use money for speech activities, it can never be in the public interest.  All the “crummy” things they do – like build nationwide networks, boost productivity and create jobs, develop new IT and software, and produce gadgets like iPhones – and how they express their concerns about the public policy environment which affects those offerings, well, that kind of money = speech is somehow immoral.

So, when a market-based organization like mine takes foundation money to speak, I’m the devil.  When “public interest” groups like MAP, or Free Press or Public Knowledge do it, they’re on the side of angels.

Bulldookey!

The public interest groups are thick as thieves with their corporate overlords.  Their message is virtually indistinguishable from the corporations / foundations who fund them.   Quite frankly, the “public interest” they claim to prosecute is more likely to serve private, profit-oriented interests than those of the public.

Does that make their truths any less truthful.  No.   It just makes them hypocrites.

Bottom line here: MAP went out of business.  It didn’t have the money to speak anymore.  Lacking this, MAP decided it could no longer work to affect public policy or laws.

Stated more plainly: Money equals speech in the political arena.

Thanks, Andy, for that decidedly unorthodox (from a progressive’s point of view) statement against interest.  Unlike so much of your public policy advocacy, not only does it serve the First Amendment, it makes our self-governance better, too.

The leadership for a voluntary industry plan to reduce online piracy was announced yesterday. The plan – known as the 6-Strikes graduated response plan and / or copyright alert system (CAS) – will be headed by techpol insider, Jill Lesser.

The CAS – which first seeks to educate, scold, and then “punish” file-sharing scofflaws – was developed with help by the White House, working with the Hollywood content community and ISPs.  Not surprisingly, it has received much criticism from the copyLeft / anti-property crowd as further legitimizing present international copyright protections, which many in that crowd believe to be immoral.

Yep. Immoral.

An interesting side announcement came from Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn.  She was appointed to sit on the CAS advisory board with other “consumer rights” advocates. It looks like a reluctant assignment, however, with Sohn noting:

It was not an easy decision for me to join this Advisory Board. I did so because I saw the need to be an advocate for the rights of Internet users and to provide transparency.

Really?

Here’s some transparency for ya’. It is well known that Public Knowledge despises copyrights. Not surprisingly, its financial supporters (like Google) seem hostile to the notion, too (it inteferes with how they make money). This same feeling appears to extend to PK’s board members also. In fact, one infamous PK board member – ex-Googler, former White House official and now Tumblr VP, Andrew McLaughlin – has admitted in at least one Tweet to have “argued against” the White House / Industry 6-strike plan while he was in the administration working on the initial blueprint for the CAS.

Working against a voluntary, industry-wide solution to online property theft – I mean, gimme a break.  I guess those Google habits die hard.

Anti SOPA, anti PIPA, anti ACTA, anti DRM, anti proprietary software code, anti incumbent communications networks, anti walled gardens, anti etc., etc., etc. It seems no policy which protects property is appropriate for Sohn and crew.

Content creators don’t need the proverbial East German judge, handicapping the performance of Olympic contestants. They’re looking for working solutions that prevent bread being ripped from their mouths by virtue of rampant, unabated Internet thieves. The edge community – which Sohn represents – must realize that if voluntary efforts such as the CAS fail, legislative and / or regulatory retribution is in the offing.  It cannot be avoided.

The CAS deserves a fighting chance to succeed.  IMHO – the East German judge should stay home if she’s there only to “Tonya Harding” the competition.  No one wins – not even the laurel-adorned edge community – if that happens.