Today Google and Verizon changed the landscape of the Net Neutrality debate in America, by putting out a joint proposal* for FCC Internet regulation. This is a proposal that ideally should be implemented by the Congress, which has the proper authority, and as described I support it. The fact that I’m fine with it of course means, as I predicted, the fringe radicals at Free Press are even more isolated from the mainstream now as they must turn on Google, their former ally.
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We’re very late “tonight” for Tech at Night on “Friday,” but that’s because the time I normally spend on these posts I instead spent setting up my new iPad, which I will need for next month’s RedState Gathering. So apologies all around, and here we go.
Net Neutrality news is picking up steam. While the official story is that the FCC has cowed before Free Press‘s complaints and has ended its meetings with industry leaders to plan its Net Neutrality action, that’s not the center of the action anymore, necessarily.
Not when industry, both for and against Free Press’s Net Neutrality, is going its own way.
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Tonight, we start with a longer note that requires some setup, so bear with me as I break from the usual format for a moment.
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The FCC’s attempt to reclassify broadband as if it were a telephone service had already encountered opposition from a strong, bipartisan majority of Congress – not to mention usually Democratic allies like the AFL-CIO, CWA, IBEW, LULAC, MMTC, NAACP, Urban League and Sierra Club.
It is increasingly becoming a question of whether the FCC really wants to pick a Title II fight in the Courts, another with Democratic coalition members and yet another with Congress. That kind of path has the potential to be lose-lose-lose for the FCC and for Democrats.
But another story that emerged last week may be the most interesting fight of all.
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I hide nothing from you: I kicked back this Friday night. I slacked off. Now it’s Saturday at 2am and I’m finally getting to this. But, you all read this in the morning anyway so it really doesn’t matter much, right? (If I’m wrong I’ll surely hear in the comments)
Let’s start with a widely reported but badly reported story: DNSSEC. This is a framework for the Domain Name System (the framework for translating from hostnames such as www.redstate.com to IP addresses, which are the actual addresses used on the Internet). The system is akin to SSL for domains. Verisign will manage it for the Commerce Department and create a single “Root Key” which is then used to create certificates for domains, which will then be used to make sure your a domain’s DNS records are legitimate.
In my estimation, it’s just a big boondoggle for [Verisign] to get more customers. The vast majority of domains won’t be able to be secured by it, because Verisign is going to have a monopoly and will charge accordingly. This will only affect big businesses transacting large amounts of money, and they’re already secured against DNS-based attacks. If they’re smart they are, anyway.
What DNSSEC does that is bad, however, is create a new point of failure for the Internet, because there are 7 key holders which control escrowed access to the root key. If 3 of them lose the keys, the entire system will have to be re-keyed at expense and inconvenience to all, as pointed out by George Ou.
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A key story from today centers on John Dingell and his criticism of Chairman Julius Genachowski and the Obama FCC. Hillicon Valley reports that Dingell is criticizing the Commission harshly for failing to justify its Title II Reclassification plans to Deem and Pass Net Neutrality regulation of the Internet, and is telling them to stop and let the Congress do its job. Seriously, this is strong language from Democrat to Democrat:
“Unfortunately, the paucity of substantive responses to my [questions] has served only to substantiate my fear that the commission’s proposed path with respect to the regulation of broadband is based on unsound reasoning and an incomplete record, and is thus fraught with legal risk,” Dingell said.
He said the commission should instead look to Congress to grant it more power.
“In this way, the Congress and the commission may ensure the establishment of a steadfast legal foundation for an open Internet,” Dingell wrote.”
The fact is that the Free Press/Google “third way” to Net Neutrality is an illegal power grab online. Support for it is the radical extremist position.
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It’s Friday evening, and mentally I’ve almost checked out for the weekend, but I still have a lot to get through here, so let’s get going before I zone out with some Horatio Hornblower (a series I’ll start on this weekend thanks to a neat site called Age of Sail).
One big story is that Amazon may be trying to broker a Net Neutrality compromise. Amazon is, like Google, an Internet firm that stands to benefit greatly if ISPs are pounded into the ground by the FCC. But, as Amazon’s Paul Misener points out, “there have been almost no Net neutrality violations.” So Misener suggests, to cram his full piece into a few words as best as I can, that Internet routing be allowed to be more flexible and yes, payment enhanced, as long as everyone gets a shot at it. Fairness does not demand a socialist leveling of everyone onto the lowest common denominator of service.
It’s good to see at least some Net Neutrality proponents understand the way the Internet works both as a business as well as a technology, and can cut through the socialist ideology to start proposing reasonable compromise. I hope to see more talk of this nature.
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Good evening. Once again we see shoddy thinking from the FCC as they continue the push for the National Broadband Plan. Not all Americans have equal access to high speed Internet connections they complain, ignoring the fact that some Americans choose to live out in the middle of nowhere, and that choice comes with costs.
Chairman Julius Genachowski and the rest of his socialist team on the FCC don’t care, and just want to pass those costs onto the rest of us, it sounds like. Watch out as they try to declare a right to a good Internet connection, even if you’re off in the hills.
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Good evening. I’ll get started on tonight’s overview right away by taking a look at Free Press, and some new information pertaining to that neo-Marxist organization dug up by Big Government. Specifically, when co-founder Robert McChesney isn’t dreaming of a total government takeover of all the media in America, creating a “media reform” of single-payer, state-controlled news nationwide, he’s defending Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Why? Because Chavez has implemented “media reform,” of course.
That’s right, what Free Press wants for America is what Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela. Ponder that the next time they tell you Net Neutrality is a harmless technical matter. And make sure to read the whole thing over there. Big Government really does do good work.
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Welcome to Tech at Night. For a while now my second writing job at RedState* has been covering tech issues at night. Mostly it’s Internet issues these days, because that’s where the grabbing hands of the government have been grabbing all they can lately. But now I’m making it official, with a logo and a schedule. From now on I expect to be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays late, but don’t hold it against me if occasionally I leak past midnight**, okay?
The basic goal of Tech at Night is to expose all the ways that the radical left wants to use government to bring us into the same kind of tech darkness that North Korea (pictured in the logo) suffers in a literal sense.
And now, on to business: Tonight we check back in with Sunlight Foundation and Free Press.
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I keep harping endlessly on the fact that Free Press wants centralized, nationalized media in America, and one logical consequence of their Internet plans is to have single payer Internet. Well, this isn’t a theoretical problem. Finland just implemented it. Quoth Boy Genius Report:
Thanks to a new law that comes into effect today, every single citizen of Finland now has a legal right to a wired broadband connection with a minimum speed of 1Mbps.
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