The Precursor Blog by Scott Cleland

Kudos to ACI for its new book on "The Consequences of Net Neutrality Regulations"

Scott Cleland — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:01:32 -0400

I commend The American Consumer Institute for their excellent new book of scholar essays, “The Consequences of Net Neutrality Regulations on Broadband Investment and Consumer Welfare.”

Google The Totalitarian?

Scott Cleland — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:36:13 -0400

Connecting the dots of several recent important developments, Google increasingly is acting autocratically like it has unlimited power and is answerable to no one.

More and more it appears to operate like a centralized, sovereign, virtual-State exercising control over the world's information, info-commerce and Internet users.

Consider these several Google public actions over just the last month or so:

Search:

Google's Bots: Judge, Jury & Executioner?

Scott Cleland — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:11:31 -0400

Per Advertising Age, Google has now deputized its crawler-bots to be judge, jury, and executioner when it finds a suspected ad scammer; "It's now guilty until proven innocent, a fundamental shift for 'Don't be evil' Google." "Google now has a harsh new penalty for advertisers placing scam and malware ads: a lifetime ban."

I have some questions about Google's new found seriousness to standing up to bad actors on the Net.

If Google's all-in-one crawler-bots are fully automated to detect, decide, and do in for life a suspected ad scammer, would that make the Googler that the accused can appeal to -- Google's new Supreme Court?

Debunking the Rewrite of Internet Privatization History

Scott Cleland — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:54:07 -0400

To help the neutralism movement de-privatize the Internet and transform broadband providers into quasi-public-utilities, some attempt to rewrite the long and very bipartisan history of Internet privatization as a partisan history, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Is FCC Declaring 'Open Season' on Internet Freedom?

Scott Cleland — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:56:50 -0400

The piece below ran on BigGovernment.com today. (One-page version here.)

Is FCC Declaring 'Open Season' on Internet Freedom?

Any FCC Reliance on Harvard Study Would Damage the National Broadband Plan's Credibility

Scott Cleland — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:32:33 -0400

The FCC's non-competitive-bid, sole source contract with the Harvard Berkman Center to "conduct an independent review of broadband studies to assist the FCC" with the National Broadband Plan -- appears to have been a near complete bust.

The quality of the Berkman study is so poor, so riddled with key factual errors, so devoid of balance or objectivity, and so dependent on fatally-flawed economic analysis, that the FCC should not risk dragging down the credibility of the entire National Broadband Plan by relying on it in any way.
The National Broadband Plan is too important a purpose, process, and effort to get right for the Nation to cut corners like the Berkman study routinely did.

A summary of some of the critical flaws/errors of the Harvard Berkman study follow:

Why Has Google Stopped Investing in Broadband?

Scott Cleland — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:51:42 -0400

Google, flush with a $22 billion cash horde and generating a whopping ~$10 billion in annual free cash flow, was the only original funder of Clearwire not to provide new investment capital for Clearwire's broadband deployment expansion, in a $1.5b fund raise announced this week.

Phoenix' Ford Skewers Harvard Berkman Competence

Scott Cleland — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:07:42 -0400

Anyone who cares about the competence of the studies the FCC has commissioned/outsourced to produce the FCC's National Broadband Plan, needs to read George Ford's devastating critique of the economic literacy of Harvard Professor Benkler's broadband survey for the FCC.

In a nutshell, the econometric analysis Professor Benkler relied on would have earned a failing grade in any Harvard economics class, because the supply curve slopes in the wrong direction. Oops!

To be fair, Professor Benkler is a law Professor not an economist, but even an undergrad economics 101 student could have caught the fatal flaw in the analysis Professor Benkler relies upon.

The FCC should insist that Harvard employ competent reviewers to ensure that the basic information and analysis provided to the FCC is at least minimally competent in the disciplines covered by the survey.

FCC Unintended Consequences Could Lobotomize the Internet

Scott Cleland — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:35:19 -0400

George Ou has a great new post -- "FCC NPRM ban on paid peering harms new innovators" -- that should be humbling and give some serious pause to the FCC and those pushing its proposed Open Internet regulations.

The Internet's complex ganglia of technologies, networks, agreements, standards, incentives, collaborations, contracts, innovations, relationships, safeguards, protections, economics, etc. -- approaches the complexity of a brain.

Google/eBay Operating Non-Neutral Broadband ISPs

Scott Cleland — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:16:45 -0400

Google and eBay are planning to operate non-neutral broadband ISPs, Google at 47 airports, and eBay on airplanes, that will discriminate against some content for the benefit of their preferred content -- per a story on CNNMoney.com.

This puts the FCC in a pickle concerning its proposed open Internet regulations.

First, it shows the ease for Google and eBay to enter and compete in the broadband market; where's the supposed market failure?
Second, two of the biggest complainers seeking mandatory net neutrality regulations of broadband providers (including wireless for the first time) because of the potential for discrimination, are actually planning to engage in the very non-neutral broadband behavior that they want banned.

The open question is will the FCC be fair and technologically neutral in preserving the open Internet?