My bullshit detector was triggered by paragraph five, which reads
One major cable operator in talks with Google says it has been reluctant so far to strike a deal because of concern it might violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality. "If we did this, Washington would be on fire," says one executive at the cable company who is familiar with the talks.
Yeah, right, the cable guys want to preserve Network Neutrality, while Google wants to violate it. That **would** be a boy-bites-dog story, if it were true.
Cable company lobbyists are among the most conservative and dishonest group of business lobbyists outside of the energy and defense sector, so Isenberg is right on with this. Still, I'm not sure this disagreement can be papered over as a pure media driven hit job. There really are disagreements here about regulation between different groups of advocates for net neutrality who found themselves on the same side from 2005-2008. I wouldn't be surprised to see the tech companies in Silicon Valley departing from the broad consensus view that fiddling around in a non-neutral playing field is dangerous. They might think, unwisely, that a non-neutral internet just has to be managed competently.
That said, I'm still making calls and trying to figure out how much of this was pure media nonsense and how much represents real disagreements.
Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.
I'm not sure what's going on. I know there's a lot of dangerous privacy problems surrounding Google, and I'm in the midst of reading Googling Security. Still, the company has always been good on net neutrality. This strikes me as odd, although perhaps billionaire techies and telecom interests do in fact have a lot in common.
It is true, as the Journal reports, that I have stated that network providers should be free to charge different rates for different service -- "so long," the Journal quotes, "as the faster service at a higher price is available to anyone willing to pay it."
While the reporters got some stuff wrong, the basic disagreement is real. Lessig wants networks to be able to charge content providers to use an internet fast lane, so long as that price is uniform for all content providers. This makes little sense to me. Off the top of my head, if that fast lane became really really fast (to carry, say, HDTV) and it was priced really really high, then sure, Google and iFilm and Comcast and random user Joe could all choose to pay that really high price, but in fact, this would be turning the internet into cable. Remember, if a network dedicates part of the pipe to a 'fast lane', then less of the pipe goes to the slow lane all regular internet users use. And the more profitable the fast lane, the less pipe is dedicated to the slow lane that all of us use.
I'll need to think about it and do some more research, but I don't think this is a defensible position. The internet should not be a playing field where the well-capitalized have access and everyone else has, well, whatever's left.
Perhaps the shock to banking would be too great just now. I'm willing to be persuaded that intervention is necessary there. But the more I read about the auto industry, the less I am convinced.
People speak about this as if not bailing out Detroit means automobile production in America ends. That's not what failing to bailout Detroit means. Not intervening now would be these automakers would enter bankruptcy. And bankruptcy means the assets of these dinosaurs get reorganized: Someone else buys these companies, at a price the market sets, and runs them profitably, because of the price the market set.
Obviously, that change would not be painless. And I'm all for minimizing the pain where the pain is doing no good -- with workers, or others depending upon these industries. But I'm against interventions designed to minimize the pain where the pain would do good -- by radically changing how that industry is managed. The whole justification for insanely high executive compensation is, in part, so they can weather such storms. I don't see why the government should be in the business of building safety nets for the (relatively) well off.
I just don't get this amazing lack of sympathy for working people, or perhaps, the naivete at how politics actually works. Why a $700B bailout for bankers, which produce no obvious product, and not a $14B bridge loan for people that actually make automobiles? No particular reason. Oh, and the market shall provide. It's really a really remarkable sentiment in this day and age, a sort of tenured 'let them eat cake'.
... I really respect Lessig, I gave him $25 when he thought about running for Congress, and I think he's engaging in good faith here. That doesn't change the fact that I'm just kind of flabbergasted at liberals who casually throw out ideas that have really awful consequences, like a depression, and use casual discredited free market mantras as justifications while glossing over terrible terrible pain these ideas cause. And no, assistance to minimize the pain associated with economic dislocation is not part of the deal.
When Living Liberally went to Netroots Nation this year, we had, admittedly a bit of an ulterior motive. Sure we were excited about our third NN in a row, but we had an additional goal in mind: in the process of launching our Liberal Card project, we wanted to see how many NN attendees we could get to declare themselves proud, card-carrying liberals.
We expected a few in the bag for sure - like Baratunde Thurston and Liberal Card-holder Markos Moulitsas - but we didn't expect figures like Larry Lessig, Howard Dean, and...well, just watch it for yourself. (Also note that Bob Barr was willing to call himself a liberal - kinda.)
A full list of proud, card-carrying liberals after the jump.
MapLight.org is reporting that House Democrats who changed their vote to support Telco immunity received much more, on average than their counterparts who did not change position. This is a group correlation, of course. Not all those who voted for immunity received more money than those who voted against. Indeed, 11 of those who voted for immunity received nothing at all from the three Telcos. But the group correlation is quite strong.
Note: Lawrence Lessig joined MapLight's board of directors earlier this year.
The top ten recipients of Telco money-from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, (Jan 2005-March 2008) were:
Contribution
House Member
District
1
29500
Clyburn, James
SC-6
2
29000
Hoyer, Steny
MD-5
3
28000
Emanuel, Rahm
IL-5
4
27500
Boucher, Frederick
VA-9
5
26000
Meeks, Gregory
NY-6
6
24500
Crowley, Joseph
NY-7
7
24500
Pelosi, Nancy
CA-8
8
24000
Bean, Melissa
IL-8
9
22500
Edwards, Thomas
TX-17
10
22100
Baca, Joe
CA-43
MapLight:
On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out the illegal wiretapping program without proper warrants. Ninety-four House Democrats voted in favor of this measure--rejecting immunity--on March 14, then 'changed' to vote in favor of the June 20 House bill--approving immunity.
"Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart?" asked Daniel Newman, executive director of MAPLight.org, "Their constituents deserve answers."
MAPLight.org's research department compiled PAC campaign contributions from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint and correlated them with the voting records of all House members who voted on last week's FISA bill. (The analysis used data from CRP; contributions were from January 2005 through March 2008). Here are the findings:
Continued on the flip with all 94 members and their totals reeived.
Lawrence Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic. He is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig founded Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
The reason this is so important and fantastic for the progressive movement is that is connects the electoral and legislative-focused progressive netroots with the cultural and technological underpinnings of the movement. It is an expansive moment where the netroots demonstrates a wider focus on more than just elections and party politics, but also on the broader social trends that make the netroots possible.
Cool stuff. A great moment for the movement. You can register for Netroots Nation today at a $50 discount by clicking here.
Tomorrow is a significant hearing on net neutrality. To demonstrate how weak the arguments are on the other side, Erick Erickson of Redstate issued a call to action against net neutrality based on Larry Lessig, one of the coiners or the term, showing a video at Google involving Jesus . You see, net neutrality advocates hate Jesus. Except, of course, the Christian Coalition, which has endorsed net neutrality.
Erickson also calls Lessig in favor of something called digital Communism. His piece is so slapdash and stupid that his commenters are tearing him apart. The 'action alert' is on the flip.
At yesterday's Change Congress event with Larry Lessig, Lessig presented the meme behind the campaign. Change Congress has four parts:
No PAC or lobbyist money
An End to Earmarks
Public financing of campaigns
Congressional Transparency
As with Creative Commons and copyright holders, Change Congress candidates and citizens can sign up for any and all of these pledges, matching their ideology with their pledge. It's a brilliant organizing structure. One suggestion I made was to bake national security into the dialogue upfront. Here's the question I asked Lessig, which Micah Sifry has kindly written up.
Q: From Matt Stoller, who discloses that he's done some consulting for the Sunlight Foundation. The hardest nut to crack is national security policy. Is it legitimate how secretive that is? What will you do when this movement bangs up into that wall? If everything else is transparent, then a lot of important decisions will be pushed into the national security arena.
I don't know. I do know that if earmarks were banned, that would remove some of the pressure for special deals, in the first place. I don't know how we'll deal with transparency in secret expenditures. I think there's a lot for me to learn, Lessig admits.
Several defense intelligence agencies will withhold unclassified information about their contracts from a new public database of government spending....
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) argued that online disclosure of their unclassified contracts could present an operational security vulnerability.
This is not classified information they are talking about. These departments are simply arguing that the public does not have a right to get unclassified public information. National security cannot be an absolute trump card against transparency, or else you'll get hugely ramped up spending on intelligence contractors where there is none. More fundamentally, every growing pot of money in the Federal government is basically in DHS or the Defense Department.
The Change Congress movement, and the progressive movement as a whole, needs to grapple with this question. When half of discretionary government income flows through the Pentagon, and black box budgets are growing on Capitol Hill, it's unavoidable.
Intellectual heavy Larry Lessig is launching his Change Congress initiative today at 1:30pm ET at the National Press Club. It will be webcast here. One thing Lessig has noted in discussing corruption is that, unlike most disciplines, there are no truly natural forums to discuss the problem because it is so abstract.
Lessig will further his mission by launching a new "Change Congress" project in a Sunshine Week lecture sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation and Omidyar Network.
In this lecture, Lessig will describe his decision to focus his academic interests on the issue of the systemic corruption of American democracy. He will explore the ways in which our democracy is threatened by corruption and ways we, as citizens, can respond.
Lessig's presentation is being sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation. I consult for the group, it is a newish organization dedicated to transparency in Congress. Lessig's focus on this area is a huge validation for the progressive movement, and hopefully he'll integrate civic engagement, lobbying, and transparency in an interesting and useful framework.
Larry Lessig has launched his exploratory committee and two sites. One of them is Lessig08.org, for his exploratory committee, and the other is Change-Congress. He has made three points the centerpiece of his campaign - no money from PACs or lobbyists, no earmarks, and support for public financing. I threw in $25 as I strongly support public financing of campaigns. Whether he decides to run is still an open question, he's only considering it.
Here's Lessig's announcement video. He's a remarkable communicator, and he is under no illusions that this race is a simple undertaking.
One of the most interesting special elections of all time could be shaping up in California's 12th Congressional district just below San Francisco to replace Tom Lantos. Jackie Speier has quickly locked up establishment support and cleared the field for the April 8th special election date.
California's 12th, which takes in western San Francisco, is a Democratic bastion that CQ Politics rates Safe Democrat. Voters there gave 2004 Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry 72 percent of the vote and President Bush 27 percent. Lantos took 76 percent of the vote in his 2006 election and never received less than two-thirds of the vote in any general election since 1984.
Lantos endorsed former state Sen. Jackie Speier as his successor after his January retirement announcement. Speier quickly cleared the field of at least one potentially competitive challenger, state Sen. Leland Yee, and has landed endorsements from the state's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer , as well as Rep. Anna Eshoo of the neighboring 14th District, Rep. Mike Thompson, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Speier, an attorney, ran for Congress nearly 30 years ago to succeed her late boss, Democratic Rep. Leo Ryan. Speier was one of several individuals who accompanied Ryan on a 1978 trip to Jonestown, Guyana, to investigate reported abuses at the People's Temple commune. Members of the group attacked Ryan and others at the airstrip as the group attempted to fly home. Ryan and five others were killed. Speier survived five gunshot wounds.
The district is heavily Asian-American, so clearing the field of Yee looked like a strong political move for Speier. That is, unless, another white challenger jumps into the race, someone like Larry Lessig who brings his own base of support. If Yee were in the race, my guess is that it would basically be impossible for Lessig to win, since he would not be able to consolidate the anti-establishment vote.
The themes in the race would be fascinating. Already we see a 'Change Congress' site set up and linked off of the Draft Lessig blog, and Lessig has focused of late on corruption as a root cause of poor decision-making. Speier is a very tough candidate, so beloved in the distrct that she has a bullet train named after her. She was willing to take on Lantos in a primary, mostly on local issues but with some critiques of his foreign policy stances, so she is quite a fierce and ambitious competitor with high name ID.
I like both of these individuals very much, and I would love to see Lessig jump in. The Silicon Valley area is seeing a surge in local Democratic activity and organizing, as it is a blue area that had let its grassroots atrophy. That's a network into which Lessig would probably have to tap to compete with all the establishment support from Boxer and Feinstein, both of whom are radically out of touch in their own unique ways.
A friend of mine, John Palfrey, just sent me a link to Draft Lessig, which is an attempt to convince Larry Lessig to run for the seat left empty by Tom Lantos. I blogged the Facebook group on Quick Hits when it hit 500 members. It's now at 1200 and growing quickly.
It would be fascinating were Lessig to jump into the race. There might be no better way to energize and overtly politicize the free culture world and combine their energy with the liberal blogs to create a movement for change.
I've been reading Lessig's books on technology and copyright reform since 2000, and he really is a visionary.
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