What is Net Nuetrality?

President Obama has called on the FCC to reclassify broadband internet as a telecommunications service, possibly ending a 9 year long information service classification, and allowing the FCC to enforce a wide variety of possible Net Nuetrality rules.

So what does this mean?  I was recently asked, and having closely followed this issue for years, here is my short answer (the long answer includes a history of the telegraph, US monopoly law, telecommunications line sharing agreements, Common Accommodations rules in Historic Britain, and other topics):

Sir Tim Berners Lee created the World Wide Web, and put it best: "If I pay to connect to the Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality and quantity of service". (from wikipedia )

Common Carriers are a set of service providers which transport goods or people on behalf of the public at large, and include everyone from AT&T to Fedex to Southwest Airlines to Conrail. In exchange for being allowed to provide that sort of service to the public at large for money, they are required to not do certain things, like looking in your package, not delivering it if they dislike it, or discriminating against certain people or destinations. Fedex can't burn your package because it contains UPS advertisements, for example. They don't own the content being transported, and are generally liable if it is damaged en route.

In the US, Internet access providers were considered common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act until 2005, when Comcast petitioned the FCC to reclassify them as unregulated information services. With this new freedom, Comcast and other ISPs began "traffic shaping" based on the kind of traffic or the destination - the FCC actually fined Comcast for throttling bittorrent. Though they were also caught throttling Vonage which competed with Comcast's own voice over IP product, they weren't fined for that behavior specifically.

The problem was that the FCC had already given up regulatory oversight in 2005. So a judge overturned the fine, and we've been fighting over what Net Neutrality rules should be in place ever since. ISPs would like to use traffic shaping to fit more services onto existing pipes to maximize profit in the short term without having to build out more infrastructure - however in order to do so, they want to prioritize their own traffic over that of their competition, which is a huge barrier to entry for new businesses.

In theory, Net Neutrality would prevent an ISP from throttling or blocking traffic that competed with its own products, or that it didn't like (example: Telus in Canada blocked the website of union it was in dispute negotiations with). The devil is in the details of course, and Tom Wheeler, the current chairman of the FCC, wants a Title II light: Title II/Common Carrier that allowed "managed services" - AKA throttling competing traffic. That version of Net Neutrality would be worse than nothing, codifying anti-competitive preferential treatment for ISP's products over their competitors and likely preventing new businesses from competing at all.

TL;DR: ISPs are carrying data for third parties and delivering it to you - they are acting as common carriers, they just aren't regulated like common carriers, which is historically dangerous.

Patience

Lots of action going on in the government at the moment. Lots of projects, lots of experiments. I'm not educated enough on the items at hand to really have a serious opinion about the details of these plans, so I won't jump at a guess.

Doing nothing will likely result in the markets correcting themselves, likely at a great cost to many who had nothing to do with this situation. Possibly, if things were actually as bad as some thought 6 months ago, at the cost of the modern economy itself. Some form of Keynesian government spending seems to be a good idea - investment which will pay for itself down the line is 100% a good idea.

However, many people, Germany in particular, are very concerned about hyper inflation from the Fed printing money to pay for this work; and given Germany's experience between the world wars, they have every right to be concerned. They know the dangers of trying to simply print your way out of debt.

The US Dollar may be entrenched enough to survive a massive increase in available notes through sheer inertia, but if too much money is printed, the US dollar can plummet in value just like any other currency.

So, while I still support demand-side stimulus, I am going to be patient to see how this all plays out. Hopefully, there will be caution along with the action.

The McCain Delta

When matched up against McCain, both Obama and Clinton would win at this time. However, Clinton would hold a small margin, which Obama would win by a solid amount.


http://politicalinquirer.com/2008/03/07/clinton-vs-mccain-obama-vs-mccain/

Obama Substance

This post is just to refer you to three items which discuss the Obama/Clinton "substance" debate:

1)
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/obama-actually.html

Excerpt:
"There he was, working for nuclear non-proliferation and securing loose stockpiles of conventional weapons, like shoulder-fired missiles. There he was again, passing what the Washington Post called "the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet" -- though not as strong as Obama would have liked. Look -- he's over there, passing a bill that created a searchable database of recipients of federal contracts and grants, proposing legislation on avian flu back when most people hadn't even heard of it, working to make sure that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened for traumatic brain injury and to prevent homelessness among veterans, successfully fighting a proposal by the VA to reexamine all PTSD cases in which full benefits had been awarded, working to ban no-bid contracts in Katrina reconstruction, and introducing legislation to criminalize deceptive political tactics and voter intimidation. And there he was again, introducing a tech plan of which Lawrence Lessig wrote:

• "Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works. The small part of that is simple efficiency -- the appointment with broad power of a CTO for the government, making the insanely backwards technology systems of government actually work."

"

2)
This second post is even more interesting. A woman known as "Grassroots Mom" actually went in and read the bills sponsored and written by both candidates in order to compare them. "I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype (Now a Supporter)"
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/458633

Excerpt:
"Obviously, Hillary Clinton really knows her stuff on the issues of health care....

Now let's look more closely at Obama.

I was blown away as I started going through his record. I've already mentioned his bills on health care and energy. In addition he had introduced bills on Iran, voting, veterans, global warming, campaign finance and lobbyists, Blackwater, global poverty, nuclear proliferation, and education.

On Iran: S.J.RES.23 : A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.

On votingPassed out of Committee and now on the Senate Calendar for Feb. 22, 2008
S.453 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections Please check this out! This is a great bill. We need this. I can't believe that this time voter intimidation is not already illegal.

On veterans and military personnel: S.1084 : A bill to provide housing assistance for very low-income veterans;

On global warmingS.1324 : A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuel sold in the United States;S.1389 : A bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to establish a Climate Change Education Program; S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy. (This last one passed both the House and the Senate as part of the budget bill.)

On campaign finance and lobbyists S.2030 : A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists; and S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

On Blackwater S.2044 : A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes, and S.2147 : A bill to require accountability for contractors and contract personnel under Federal contracts, and for other purposes.

On global poverty S.2433 : A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.

On global nuclear proliferation S.1977 : A bill to provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology."

3) Finally, a graph from the New York Times covering Obama's State record:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

Newsweek Fails to Find Salvation

One Robert J. Samuelson explains why he feels that Obama is lacking as a presidential candidate, in an interesting way. He seemingly claims that Obama's ability to impress in person means that his inability to provide policies that are similarly audacious makes him somehow worse than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain. Some good points are made in the process, and the article is worth reading.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/113672/page/1

Of particular issue is what he sees as a lack of detail behind Obama's rhetoric, and despite the occasional valid point, I’d pose his own argument against himself. He lists vagaries without providing backing rational – “If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.” What areas of his agenda qualify under these descriptors? I’d very possibly agree if I knew what items he was talking about.

The Obama hype certainly does provide detractors with a target for their criticism. There isn’t enough pressure from the media for Obama to address his plan details more publicly. If you don’t go to Obama’s website and read his Blueprint for Change, most of the details of the plans this author lists would be completely unavailable.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Blueprint_Obama.htm

I did find one particular item in the article odd, however, and somewhat explanatory of the weakness of the overall argument:
"Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees—shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling."

He first claims that Obama’s plan is not change, but pandering; suggesting that there is no possible way for the promise to be met. But then he goes on to detail some of Obama’s plans to actually make the pledge possible, and yet fails to take the opportunity to point out any flaws in them; his argument here does not appear to be that details are lacking, as he claims, but that he disagrees with the details given. He seems to think that cutting benefits and raising the retirement age are the only methods that could work to save SS, and thus any different ideas (the things he claims are missing) are then not true details.

Where is the math to show that raising the SS cap isn’t going to provide enough money to fulfill the listed changes? If he thinks Obama should say that cutting benefits is the only hope, then why not provide a rational for that stance, instead of just making a claim of what the candidate should have said?

Lastly, most of the article is about Obama’s lack of both details and of “independent ideas”, without considering the alternatives. If McCain and Hillary are not held to a higher standard because they lack in the effective rhetoric that seems to have caused this reporter’s initial excitement with Obama, then why are their similarly lacking plans somehow better? Given his stated concerns with these other two candidates, is the author's contention really that when confronted with two similar options, picking the one with a known list of shortcomings is better, simply because we know what they are?

Obama's Experience: Quality vs. Quantity

Since most of the anti-Obama claims I hear are about his lack of national office experience, I think it’s worth taking a critical look at what experience he does have:

“People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements….”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

I’d also point people interested to a page about one bill he co-authored as a senator: to re-direct funding to the NATO destruction of conventional weapons caches actually being used against our military forces while everyone else was frantically screaming about WMDs. Ahh, the fresh scent of reality and sense:

http://fas.org/asmp/campaigns/MANPADS/2005/LugarObama.htm