Let's start with politics. Is it surprising to you that net neutrality has become a political issue in the last few years, even playing a role in the technology platform put out by candidates? Has this ever happened before?
Yes - issues just like net neutrality have become major political issues at other crucial times in U.S. history. It happens when private power has reached intolerable levels, and particularly when private entities control new technologies that are of growing importance to the whole country. Perhaps the best single example comes from the turn of the century, when Theodore Roosevelt made railroad discrimination a major political issue. Like the internet today, the railroad was new technology and the (literal) engine of commerce - and the problems of discriminatory carriage were too serious to ignore.
It's worth looking at Roosevelt said, for he put the issue in ways that have direct bearing on the Net Neutrality debate. The problem was discriminatory carriage: side-payments, or rebates, coerced by giant firms like Standard Oil out of the railroads and designed to destroy any competition.
Roosevelt regard discriminatory carriage and rebates as an evil. "Above all else," said Roosevelt "we must strive to keep the highways of commerce open to all on equal terms; and to do this it is necessary to put a complete stop to all rebates" As he put it, "neither this people nor any free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth ... without lodging a still higher power somewhere in the Government of seeing that this power ... is used for the interests of the people as a whole."
This example shows that issues like net neutrality have always been around. The courage of Roosevelt to fight discrimination on the (rail) networks should be an example for politicians today.
Both Clinton and Obama say they support net neutrality. Is there a difference between the Democrats on telecom issues?
Both candidates have good people involved in their tech and internet policies, and the basic outlines of their policies are similar. The difference is in the degree of emphasis and engagement, and Obama to my mind has a much stronger vision of what he would do. It isn't that Hillary Clinton has bad policies; rather, it's the sense that, so far at least, neither tech nor telecom issues are of great importance to her campaign. It is also the fact that many of the strongest voices in telecom reform, like former Chairs Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard, entrepreneurs like Mitch Kapor and Craig Newmark, and scholar Lawrence Lessig, have lined up behind the Obama campaign.
I have been impressed with the willingness of Obama, as a candidate, to speak on normally arcane issues like the 700 MHz auction, computer privacy, and patent policy. These positions, and other reasons, have led to things like the TechCrunch endorsement and my own support. For these issues don't exactly make talk radio, but have a much larger impact on our country then, say, endless debates over whether Bill Clinton is a black man.
Right now Hilary Clinton's "innovation agenda" is a good start but comparatively thin. I think, however, that's this is just the product of a benign neglect-after all, the campaign is intensely busy. Right now, her main proposal, according to the agenda, is to try to increase broadband deployment through a private-public program called "Connect America," modeled on something called "Connect Kentucky." There's nothing wrong with that goal, of course, but implementation is the key. At least one writer has raised questions about Connect Kentucky, though I confess I don't know enough about the operation to have an opinion. But more broadly she must make sure that any public-private partnership does not simply become a program of private benefits at public cost. There must always be a quid-pro-quo that demands actual results and rules of behavior in exchange for giving away the public's money in the form of tax cuts and subsidies.
Overall I am optimistic that the Clinton campaign has its heart in the right place. Obama has become a leader on tech policy in the way Edwards was on poverty policy, but that doesn't mean these ideas aren't transferable. In the event that Clinton does win, my hope is that she ends up adopting Obama's tech policies for the general election.
What is your dream FCC going into 2009? What would that body do?
The FCC has become something akin to the chief technology office of the United States. For that reason I hope that the next President starts thinking more broadly about how to staff the place.
The FCC is an expert agency, but for some reason "technological expertise" has come to mean having being a hill staffer or a telecom lawyer at a DC law firm. There are some very fine staffers and telecom lawyers out there, but surely they aren't the only ones with technological policy vision in this country.
I hope that the next President thinks more broadly about the talent available to him in the high tech centers around the country. While it may sound, crazy, there might actually be people who know a lot about technology policy who don't happen to be current residents of Washington D.C.
As for what the dream FCC would do. There are, I'd say, three giant challenges that the FCC will face over the next several years, and the prosperity and cultural health of the country may depend on it.
1. Fix wireless. There are strange things going on in American wireless markets; things that are holding back the U.S. from leadership in this market. The FCC needs to see what it can do to open these markets and see what happens. There will be immense resistance, but it isn't the job of government to do easy things.
2. Fix Broadband. Everyone, expect the kind of people who don't believe that cigarettes cause cancer, realizes that the U.S. could do more to make sure the country leads the world in fiber deployment to American homes and businesses. It would take vision to get everyone together and say, we need to be the leading fiber nation in the world, so how do we get there?
3. Protect the internet. The FCC needs to maintain a vigilance to prevent gross violations of net neutrality to maintain the vibrancy on this and other networks. I think over the last few years there's been agreement that the country is better off with a free and open network; net neutrality infringements are becoming more and more a third-rail treated like a violation of free speech. But in the end it is the FCC that needs to make sure that things stay that way - whether or not Congress passes new legislation.
What is your worst case scenario under a Republican or Democrat?
The absolute worst case scenario is a Democrat who is no better on tech issues than Bush was, and thereby takes politics out of telecom policy altogether. You see this pattern in copyright policy, where both Democrats and Republicans are allied with content owners, leaving only a few lonely consumer groups and librarians to contest over-expansion of copyright. If that kind of thing happens in telecom policy it is time to be afraid.
The possibility is real, because politicians sometimes see tech and telecom as hidden place where they can sin with impunity. Today it is harder for a Democrat to quietly, say, side with industry on global warming. But telecom and tech are so complex and geeky that it can feel "safe" to quietly give lobbyists exactly what they want, because no one cares or can explain what is happening.
Public exposure of these issues can make a difference. But some of these issues truly are obscure. At a certain level the only solution to this problem is old Roman one - a demand for virtue and integrity in government officials. You need politicians who do the right thing even when it's not going to make the front page of the New York Times or the Huffington Post.
