Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits

VENICE BEACH-In response a shareholder suit claiming that Google management was failing to maximize profits by such policies as making Android open source and supporting some form of net neutrality, in a widely anticipated decision, the court is expected to rule that Google's "Don't Be Evil" policy is contrary to best corporate practices and must be abandoned. The court is expected to cite the famous 1919 Dodge Bros. vs Ford case, in which the courts ruled that Ford could not pay more to his workers and charge less for his cars if it wasn't making the Dodge brothers richer faster...

Now that I have got your attention with an alarmist headline, much like the NYT did on 8/4 with "Google and Verizon Near Deal on Web Pay Tiers" [There is no 'deal' and no 'web pay tiers.'], please allow me to give you a little more background on this subject.

Vint Cref on Net Neutrality

Vinton Cerf is generally regarded as the father of the Internet. This is what he said about Network Neutrality in April 2005.

The occasion was David Isenberg's Freedom To Connect (F2C) Conference in Washington, DC and he was the keynote speaker. At the time he was speaking for Google as VP and Chief Internet Evangelist:

Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do on-line would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success. For the foreseeable future, most Americans will face little choice among broadband carriers. Enshrining a rule that permits carriers to discriminate in favor of certain kinds or sources of services would place those carriers in control of on-line activity. Allowing broadband carriers to reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need. Promoting an open and accessible Internet is critical for consumers.

Google believes that consumers should be able to use the Internet connections that they pay for in the way that they want. This principle—that users pick winners and losers in the Internet marketplace, not carriers—is an architectural and policy choice critical to innovation on-line. Google itself is a product of the Internet. We care passionately about the future of the Net, not just for ourselves, but because of all the other potential Googles out there. Indeed, we are not alone. Our concerns are shared by Internet companies, small businesses, end users and consumer groups across the country. The vibrant ecosystem of innovation that lies at the heart of the Internet creates wealth and opportunity for millions of Americans. That ecosystem—based upon a neutral open network—should be nourished and promoted.

If you still think that Al Gore is the "father of the Internet", then I would ask you to do a Bing search on that phrase and see what you come up with. Normally I would suggest you do a Google search but in this case some might question the results.

The point is that Google has been fighting for net neutrality and Internet freedom for a long time, and they have been doing so with some very creditable partners. Most of that history is unknown to people here but they do know that Google has grown into a huge corporation, so when they hear that Google has sold out net neutrality to Verizon for the money, they don't even wait to read the actual proposal. They don't even wait till it is released. By the Friday before it was released, Daily Kos, Democracy Now and Huffington Post had thrown Google under the bus quicker than the White house did Shirley Sherrod. Okay, maybe not that quick, but you get my point.

And why? Because they are in such a rush to put the FCC in control of the Internet? Since the FCC has done such a bang up job of stopping the NSA from reading our email and otherwise violating our freedoms on the Internet, I'm sure there will be no problem.

The Internet is international, it should be run by international bodies under international law, as it is now. The only thing our FCC and our Congress should be doing is making sure our country's Internet companies do not violate well established Internet practices, and we should demand that every country do the same and there will be the freedom of the Internet. There is no need for an FCC takeover.

....more history...

The MoveOn.org/FreePress.net petition is not the first time Google has been told "Don't Be Evil" and it must be admitted that by adopting that as a corporate slogan, they invite having it thrown back in their face. I want to recommend to the reader this article from Linux Journal of Oct 2009 Don't Be Evil Means Don't Be Evil! which recounts the story of how July a year ago Google was caught holding out on some Android developers, failing to practice what could be called 'developer neutrality', how those developers organized, petitioned "Don't be Evil" and even created a independent project to compete with Android. And how Google responded. The article ends by warning Google:

If you're going to claim a commitment to openness, try to learn how it works, and think a little before sending a street gang to beat down people who, if anything, are a bit too enthusiastic about being open.

Above all, get a clue. That's not how this team plays.

While many articles in Linux Journal are rather technical, this one is not, and I think the reader will find it an interesting story about how things work in the open source community.

Here is a recap of my other DKos diaries on this subject:
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal

and on another subject...

Keith Olbermann's Deception

Keith Olbermann wants to convince us that we need to put the Internet under the control of the FCC. He knows that the Tea Party is a popular target for the left so on Friday's Countdown, Keith Olbermann used a discussion of Tea Party opposition to the FCC takeover of the Internet to equate opposition to FCC control of the Internet with opposition to network neutrality.

Keith Olbermann knows that many people on the left will be for Net Neutrality just because they believe the Tea Party is against it, so he tells us at the beginning of the show

"Guess who‘s against net neutrality? The Tea Party, naturally."

Then before a commercial break he tells us again:

If you didn‘t have net neutrality, you might have to pay extra to see mindless anti-mosque protests on the Internet. So naturally the Tea Party would defend net neutrality to the death, right. Nuh-uh. Turns out they‘re in the pocket of the corporations too.

When he finally does get to the segment, he tells us a third time that the Tea Party is opposed to net neutrality:

Net neutrality is so vital to a free and open Internet, it is, in practical applications, so popular to anyone who uses the Internet, that it would be hard to see why it would be opposed by anyone other than corporations or their minions. But in our third story, it‘s happened. Corporate minions, Tea Party, reservation for 35.

Most of this segment is spent in a discussion with Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress.com about just how stupid the Tea Party is to oppose net neutrality. And his proof that the Tea Party is opposed to net neutrality:

A coalition that includes 35 Tea Party groups writing a letter to the FCC. Quoting, “we the undersigned, representing millions of American citizens, write in strong opposition to the Federal Communications Commission‘s effort to regulate the Internet.”

Might as well pause right there, because if ever there were an instance in which so-called government regulation maximized access to information, net neutrality is it.

Yes let's pause right there, because I want to point out to you that Keith Olbermann has just equated "opposition to the Federal Communications Commission‘s effort to regulate the Internet" with opposition to net neutrality. That one sentence he quoted from the letter can't be his whole basis, thrice repeated, for his claim that the Tea Party is against net neutrality can it? That would be a real leap in logic wouldn't it?

So let's look at this Tea Party letter in a little more detail. Keith Olbermann has already given you the substance of the first and most important sentence, they are expressing strong opposition to FCC efforts to regulate the Internet. They specifically mention net neutrality only twice, so let's look at those references:

Earlier this year, a U.S. Court of Appeals found that the Commission was attempting to “shatter” the bounds of its legal authority by trying to enact Net Neutrality regulations without Congressional authority. We view this renewed effort by the FCC to reclassify the Internet under Title II as even more unfounded and onerous.

In the first sentence, I see a fair statement of what happened. In the second sentence I see strong opposition to the FCC reclassifying the Internet under Title II. How is that opposition to net neutrality unless you equate support for net neutrality with support for the regulation of the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934? 1934!. The other place where they mention net neutrality is when they say:

The Internet has never been a regulated utility and we urge you to keep it that way by rejecting so-called “Net Neutrality” regulations on the Internet and the proposed Title II reclassification.

Now here I think it is fair to say that they are equating 'so-called "Net Neutrality" regulations with FCC Title II reclassification and opposing both, but in my experience, when one uses the adjective 'so-called' and puts the thing in quotes, what one is really saying is that the thing is not real, that you think it is a fraud.

Some may opportunistically draw the conclusion from this letter that the Tea Party is opposed to real net neutrality but I think that is wrong. I think a fair reading of the letter is that they are opposed to an FCC takeover of the Internet and they think Net Neutrality is a bogus excuse for it.

MSNBC wants you laughing and joking about the Tea Party being stupid again, while they sow more confusion about the topic at hand. Terkel floats the notion that net neutrality will mean unlimited bandwidth for little or nothing:

Without net neutrality, what can happen is that a Tea Party—a small Tea Party group in some state in the country will decide to start a website, but it may be slower because they don‘t have the money to pay the Internet Service Providers to make their site go faster. So you won‘t be able to go to their site as quickly, and you‘ll probably get frustrated and won‘t go. And you will go to one of the large corporations that are able to pay to make their site go quicker.

{{We have net neutrality NOW! You get the bandwidth you pay for NOW! Get the Net! }}

Countdown would have me believe that if we get their Net Neutrality my own little VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com will run as fast as the Fox News website. Not so.

Keith Olbermann goes further than saying the Tea Party is opposed to new FCC Net Neutrality regulations. He accuses them of wanting "to eliminate net neutrality" and the lesson he wants us to take way from his show is that we need the government to step in:

TERKEL: But, honestly, government has always had to step in to protect Americans‘ rights.

You notice how no one selling this Net Neutrality Sausage talks about net privacy and how the government is going to protect us in that area. DHS is forcing ISPs to put in extra hard drives so the government can copy everything but we won't talk about that now.

TERKEL: I think this is very clear-cut that we need the government to step in and make sure that these corporations who want to line their pockets can‘t just step in and mess with what the Internet has been like for Americans so far.

End of Segment.

Keith Olbermann is tripping over himself so badly trying to convince us that we need an FCC takeover of the Internet to save Net Neutrality that he starts doing what he had so often teased George Bush for doing. He starts talking about the Internets! At the beginning of the segment Keith Olbermann recalls:

Net neutrality has become a major issue, you will recall, because Google and Verizon have proposed a framework whereby the FCC would not regulate the wireless Internet, which would allow big companies like Google and Verizon to play favorites as to who and what gets the fastest, easiest pipeline.

So now, according to Keith, we have two Internets, a wired Internet and a wireless Internet!

But the FCC could, under at least one reading of its authority, ensure that net neutrality extends to the wireless Internet, as well as to the wired Internet.

And what reading of FCC authority is that Keith? Might it be one that also gives the FCC the authority to regulated anything it damn well pleases on the Internet? I mean, they already let the NSA read our email.

Then there was that gratuitous comment that Marx was a lousy thinker. That was about as accurate as anything else in this segment but it did show that even Keith Olbermann has his points of agreement with the Tea Party. Or since that comment seemed to come out of nowhere, maybe it was an unconscious clue as which side he was on in this debate.

But back to this tale of two Internets. Why has Keith Olbermann stooped to a Bush level understanding of the technology? Keith Olbermann and others have created this fiction of the "wireless Internet" because they want to belittle the significant of the Google/Verizon proposal.

Google has good reasons for wanting matters settled around net neutrality and good reason for wanting to limit the FCC's power in that regard. Last September, AT&T protested to the FCC that Google was violating net neutrality. Google had released a software package, Google Voice, that AT&T feared was cutting into it's revenues. Because Google Voice couldn't connect to all the rural numbers the telecom are required to contact, AT&T asked the FCC to declare Google a common carrier and find them in violation of network neutrality. Net Neutrality, loosely defined, can be very useful to the corporations. This is the way at least one telecom wants to use FCC control of the Internet. It is also another reason why Google partnered with Verizon and not AT&T.

Before Google and Verizon came out with their proposal for legislation on net neutrality, Monday a week ago, the sky was falling. The NYT warned that the 'deal' for 'tiered web pricing' could "overthrow" net neutrality. After it came out and we saw that there was no deal, only a proposal, the pro-FCC forces had to belittle it. One narrative went like this:

"Okay, it's not bad on net neutrality for the traditional 'wired' Internet, but it doesn't impose net neutrality on wireless connections, and the wireless Internet is the future." They don't want to acknowledge the reality that wired verses wireless is only an issue of the 'last mile' connection to the user's device so the Google Verizon proposal on net neutrality on landlines, limited though it may be, protects data for most of it's journey even to wireless devices. Rather than acknowledge that, they have created this tale of two Internets! Thoughout this whole debate, there has been a skillful substitution of the end users perception of the technology for the reality of the technology to win points with the public.

In almost every area, the Tea Party's views do not need to be distorted to be dis-proven and ridiculed. Who does it serve to misrepresent their views on net neutrality? It drives wedges between people when there are enough already, and it gives the Tea Party something they can point to and say that the left lies and distorts. The anti-government impulses of the Tea Party have led them to oppose what they see as an attempt to panic the nation into putting the World Wide Web under the control of the FCC in the name of protecting net neutrality. That is not the same as opposing net neutrality. I can quote one Tea Party website approvingly. On May 1st they wrote:

The organization Free Press has placed a haunting clock on their blog claiming that for the past 23 or so days the Internet has been left unregulated Oh, the humanity! The problem is the clock is off by a little over 25 years. That’s when the first dot-com address was purchased and the Internet began its basically unregulated tenure. And I think it’s fair to say the Web has done quite well for itself since that time.

Free Press is referring to the day this month that a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the Federal Communication Commission has absolutely no authority under current law to regulate the Internet with seemingly benign “Net Neutrality” rules. But since this was the first time the FCC tried to lay down its heavy regulatory hand, it’s not like the Commission had any authority to do it before the court ruling. There is no change of precedent here. For the past 23 days, the law of the land is as it’s been for the past 25 years.

Nevertheless, Neutrality proponents continue to paint this as a sudden crisis.

I liked Keith Olbermann's stand on every other question addressed in Friday's Countdown, and I especially liked his Special Comment yesterday about the so-called Gnd Zero mosque, which is why I felt it was important to write this critique. In the past several weeks. there has been a concerted media campaign to panic people into supporting very broad powers for the FCC on the Internet in the name of protecting something we already have, network neutrality.

Keith Olbermann called the Tea Party people who wrote the letter 'corporate minions.' Since we know who's 'corporate minion' he is, perhaps he would be so kind as to assure us that there is no relationship between his support for the FCC position on regulating the Internet, and GE's hope for quick FCC approval of the proposed NBC-Comcast merger.

I don't trust the FCC or think the U.S. government should be more involved in running the Internet than they are now. Yes, each national government should be making sure that neither they nor the companies over which they have jurisdiction, break any well established Internet practices, like network neutrality, but that is all.

Here is a recap of my other DKos diaries on this subject:
Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal

Free Press: Country Codes for the Internet?

Once upon a time VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), an American company that is responsible for a lot of Internet infrastructure, including two of the thirteen root nameservers, got the idea that it could make a little extra money if it used its position to tilt the table in its favor a little. Unilaterally, without any public discussion and without winning consensus in any of the Internet regulatory bodies, it started the VeriSign Site Finder system which redirected all not-found .net and .com domain name searches to a VeriSign page. In otherwords, if you misspelled a domain name and tried to go to let's say, DailyCos.com, instead of the HTTP 404 "page not found" error message mandated by IANA and W3C protocols, you would be taken to a VeriSign advertisement. They were trying to make unfair use of their position as a steward of Internet resources to monetize our spelling errors!

Immediately, strong protests came from the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF] and other technical bodies, and this caused VeriSign to somewhat modify their Site Finder system, but they didn't quit it until the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN] threated to revoke it's contract to administer the root name servers. This is typical of how transgressions are dealt with by the international community that has made the Internet what it is today. This seemingly seamless interconnection of networks that allows you to send a video from Houston to Hanoi didn't just happen. Rules are made and rules are enforced.

IETF is a very large international body composed largely of techies and organizations, including corporations, heavily involved in Internet technology. Anyone can join. It does a lot of the standard setting and and regulation setting on technical matters like net neutrality. IANA is a service coordinated with IETF, they maintain the Internet Protocol Registries. Net neutrality as we know it today is enshrined and protected by those protocols. ICANN is the non-profit that administers the names and numbers for the Internet. For the Internet to work, there can only be one DailyKos.com, one Google.com, one LinuxBeach.net. These are domain names. .com, .net and .org are what are called Top Level Domains [TLDs]. There used to be only one place to get a .com or .net domain name in the U.S. and that company was bought by VeriSign. Now there are many registries, but ICANN manages the whole structure, and domain names are assigned on a first come, first serve basis, without fear or favor. I even got YouFuckedWithTheWrongNigger.com but I don't like my chances of keeping it once the FCC decency police are put in charge.

Any country's courts may award you the rights to a domain name, but they can't enforce it. If you think you have the right, because of copyright or trademark or whatever, to a domain name that is registered to someone else, and you want an enforceable judgment, then you are going to have to follow ICANN's uniform dispute resolution policy. As it stands now, no government in the world can enforce a domain name decision because they don't run the domain name system that translates domain names like the DailyKos.com into IP addresses, and any attempt by a national government to seize control of the domain root server system would end the Internet as we know it.

There are no country codes on the Internet. There are no long distance fees. There are no borders except where national governments try to impose their will. For the past 25 years the Internet has been regulated by a group in international non-government organizations. I have already mentioned ICANN and IETF, now I would also like to add to the list the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C] "an international community that develops standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web," InterNIC oversees the domain name registration system. The Internet Society is the home of groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards and provides leadership in chartering the future of the Internet. The Internet Architecture Board is responsible for oversight and some Internet standards.There is also People for Internet Responsibility [PFIR] a group concerned about many present and future aspects of the Internet, including regulation. So don't you dare claim, as many associated with the DailyKos, Huntington Post, and Democracy Now have, that the Internet is unregulated.

The Internet has been regulated, and network neutrality and Internet freedom in general has been effectively defended by these international non-government bodies that have been creating the future of the Internet and IMHO, a great model of international cooperation and administration. But there is a lot of concern about what is seen as U.S. and western domination of the world wide Internet. For example, only now are Internet standards being put into place that allow 'foreign' alphabets to be used in domain names and in part because an .xxx TLD that was approved by ICANN five years ago still hasn't been implemented, there is talk in Internet circles of rebuilding the domain name system independent of U.S. political influence

Now comes a move by the U.S. to take control of the Internet by having the U.S. FCC reclassify the Internet and put it under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934! This move is being widely supported in the U.S. by many who are clueless about the inter-workings of the Internet, in the name of defending Net Neutrality.

Free Press is an FCC lobbying organization that is one of the main forces behind the "Google is Evil" campaign and a major proponent of protecting Net Neutrality by giving more power to the FCC. Up until now they have ignored the international Internet regulatory bodies named above. They have pretended that they don't exist and since nobody else was speaking of them, that has worked well for them.

Yesterday, finally, they broached the subject of how they view the relationship between the powers they would like to see the FCC have and these international bodies. They complain that the Google Verizon proposal

would even go so far as to bar the Federal Communications Commission from having any authority to make and enforce Net Neutrality rules, instead requiring it to defer to a third-party industry group.

I want to thank Free Press for this clear presentation of the issue. Finally we get to the nob of the matter. We are all for for Internet freedom and equality. The question is how is it to be enforced? Who should exercise power over the Internet?

IMHO the only power the FCC, or any national government, should have with regards to the Internet is to see that none of the entities under its control violate the Internet standards and policies established by the responsible international third party industry groups that are going this today and have done so far in the life of the Internet. This is also pretty much the position taken in the Google Verizon proposal:

The FCC would enforce the consumer protection and nondiscrimination requirements through case-by-case adjudication, but would have no rule making authority with respect to those provisions. Parties would be encouraged to use non-governmental dispute resolution processes established by independent, widely-recognized Internet community governance initiatives, and the FCC would be directed to give appropriate deference to decisions or advisory opinions of such groups.

Free Press opposes this. Free Press clearly wants to give the FCC powers that are independent of and that supersede the existing Internet regulatory bodies. What Free Press is lobbying for here is nothing less that a U.S. takeover of the World Wide Web, but that's not what will happen. If the U.S. isn't going to 'defer to a third-party industry group', then why should any other country? They can all attempt to enforce their view of net neutrality and Internet policy. The Free Press policy will lead to the Balkanization of the Internet and that truly will be the end of the Internet as we know it.

Here is a recap of my other DKos dairies on this subject:
The Mountain comes to Mohammad
Keith Olbermann's Deception
Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal

The Mountain comes to Mohammad

There was this series of events that happened in Open Source community history that I have always personally given the title "The Mountain comes to Mohammad." The time was around 1999-2000, I don't know. It is late and I will do this from memory and without my usual links to sources. Google wasn't more than a year or two old then. It was still a Linux specific search engine in those days. Now I understand it is powered by something like a million Linux servers. Anyway, it was at a time went Linux was just starting to break out into the larger computing world and that meant dealing with corporations. Linux and Suits was the term we used. Intel was one of the first ones to come courting. Intel's problem was that it's hardware was advancing but the product of it's main software partner, Microsoft, wasn't. Intel was starting to build 64-bit CPU's but Microsoft was still struggling to build a 64-bit OS that worked. And over here was 64 bit Linux, already humming along on the DEC Alpha. So Intel came around with free developer systems and money, maybe for the first time, a lot of serious money for the Linux community. And as you can imagine, there were a lot of debates in the Linux community.

Some wanted to have nothing to do with the corporations. Some wanted to keep Linux pure. Some wanted to keep Linux a small user held OS. Some thought we were creating the best software in the world, free software, and demanded, in the words of Linus Torvalds "Total world domination." I was in that camp.

Anyway there came a time when the I2C commission or panel or whatever was forming up to determine the next new industry standard high speed interfaces for computers. Intel wanted Linux to have a seat at the table. All the usual players had a seat at the table: Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, AMD, Compaq, HP, etc. Problem was that this commission was to operate in the usual proprietary way: NDA's, closed meetings etc., and the Open Source community don't play that. At first there was a stand-off, and a lot of discussion, what should we do? In the end the Linux community held firm to our principles and the commission changed how it operated. Intel, IBM, Microsoft, all of them. The Mountain had come to Mohammad.

We don't normally think of giant computer corporations like Intel, IBM, HP and Dell as being among the oppressed, but in their relationship to Microsoft, they were. For example there was the time that Dell started timidly selling Linux laptops and Microsoft made them stop. So as Linux started to reveal itself as a viable alternative to Microsoft, they were all on board in a hurry. They sold hardware so free software that works was the cat's meow. Getting in tune with the open source way of doing things took some struggle.

There have been a lot of such struggles and changes in the now almost 20 year journey of Linux. The name itself came about because Linus Torvalds, a Finnish grad student had developed the seeds of a kernel to work with the free GNU software that Richard M. Stallman and others, mainly around MIT, had developed. He posted the source code on the Internet for comment. He asked a friend to post it on his ftp server in a folder named FreeX, his friend didn't like that name and changed it to Linux. Anyway Linux was off and running. The year was 1991.

Open Source was a term created by Eric Raymond. That was in the heady period after he had written the free software manifesto The Cathedral and the Bazaar and some Microsoft engineer had leaked the Halloween Documents [ I'll try to come back and add links later]. The Linux community had pretty much adopted the Gandi quote:

First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

Linux Hardware Solutions even put it on a popular T-shirt. The Halloween Documents formally marked the transition to the "Then they fight you" phase.

The idea was that the term we had used up until then "free software" was beyond the understanding business. Some of us wanted to grow free software beyond its cult following and present a direct challenge to Microsoft for world domination and that meant dealing with business. Open Source was conceived of as a business friendly way to refer to free software. Free as in beer, and Free as in speech, as we are fond of saying.

There were a lot of debates and struggles in that period, in fighting and back biting. As one who had come out of the political left, I couldn't help but notice the similarities. Linux Expo 1998. Google made it's debut to the Linux community. At the time it was still a couple of guys in a dorm room with some Linux computers. The big news was that Red Hat Software had just released the first multi-language Linux distribution and the mystery eighth language turned out to be 'Redneck.' Those good old boys from North Carolina knew how to make a joke.

The biggest ethical and technical problem Linux faced in those days was how to deal with all these computer hardware companies and their closed source drivers. The biggest barrier to growth Linux faced was that it was very limited in the hardware it supported. While Linux developers became very good at figuring out how things worked and writing open source drivers for them, that took time and reverse engineering didn't alway produce the best results. As Linux grew in importance, more and more of the hardware companies were willing to make software available to use their stuff with Linux. Problem was, they often weren't willing to give up their secrets. They weren't willing to write open source drivers for their products.

The debate raged in the free software community. Were we willing to compromise with these hardware vendors? Could we find away that they could keep their secrets and still work with Linux? In the end it was decided that we could allow some proprietary code to work with Linux, to 'taint' the the kernel, as it is referred to technically, so that we could play with Nvidia, ATI, Logictech and all the rest.

I am giving you this little slice of history in the hopes that it will help you see the Google Verizon deal from my perspective, Most people see two large companies getting together to screw the rest of us. With my knowledge of open source history, I see Google doing what we have always done, joining with a willing partner from corporate America and making a compromise that moved the ball a little further in our direction. I haven't aways agreed with the compromise but that doesn't make it evil.

I think Google operated in good faith in securing Verizon's support for net neutrality. I think some very sophisticated people have used Google's political and PR naivety to make it seem otherwise. They knew that in the current, and justified, anti-corporate atmosphere, that it would be readily believed if they announced that Google and Verizon were up to no good. Well, we know that Verizon is up to no good. After that the DailyKos, Huffington Post, Democracy Now and Countdown were off and running. That was before the duet even issued a press release. By then it really didn't matter what the proposal was. Nobody was listening.

The end result is that the one corporate player that has fought for network neutrality consistently and for a long time, has been neutralized.

YOU'VE BEEN PLAYED!!!

Here is a recap of my other DKos dairies on this subject:
Keith Olbermann's Deception
Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal

Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?

Today Free Press has organized a demonstration in front of Google's headquarters. As American bombs kill in Afghanistan, Arizona prepares for mass imprisonment, and banks are turning thousands out of their homes. Free Press is organizing a mass movement to demand that Google "Don't Be Evil!"

The hallmark of the Free Press push for network neutrality has been their opposition to industry players conducting secret meetings with the FCC.

This comment by Josh Silver is typical:

“Despite public outrage and repeated promises of transparency, the FCC continues to meet behind closed doors with the largest companies to negotiate a secret deal."

Now it comes out that Free Press has had it's own private meetings with the FCC, and while the Free Press meetings have been no more secret than those of the other industry players that they critique, everybody has to report lobbying activity, they have also been very quiet about their private meetings with the FCC

In yesterday's diary and elsewhere I have definitively critiqued their flawed understanding of net neutrality. I also pointed out that the thrust of their campaign has been to put the FCC in charge of the Internet, which so far has been run by a group of international NGOs. Now I want to shine a little light on the lobbying organization itself because I really have to wonder what its agenda is.

According to the the FCC's vistors log, Free Press staffers had at least 29 separate meetings with the FCC in 2009 and according to ex parte filings, Free Press people have had at least 6 private meetings with the FCC in 2010, including a meeting on January 22, 2010 between Free Press rep Ben Scott and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and four of the Chairman's advisors.

That's pretty high level contact for a protest group, not the usual situation. It would be really nice to know what went on at that meeting. One would think that such a high level meeting would make a big splash on their website. But I couldn't find a thing. Since Free Press has been so vocal in demanding transparency in the dealing of others with the FCC, it is a real shame that we have to find out the meeting even took place from the right wing Daily Caller.

Free Press is a lobbying group. They have at least one registered lobbyist with the FCC and some people think they should have more and have accused them of violating the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The above meeting took place just 3 days after Free Press received a $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Free Press does say that they are not like the others. Chris Riley made this clear yesterday, after the story about Free Press lobbying broke, saying it was:

the difference between lobbyists whose job is to advance the parochial commercial goals of a business, and those few advocates employed by nonprofit organizations who try to do their best to put the public’s interest first.

I'm sure that's true, and if we knew about the meeting and if Free Press had told us what went on at the meeting, there would be no doubt.

Not all the meeting have been in FCC offices. In December 2009 Free Press rep Ben Scott planned a meeting with Tom Powers of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration [NTIA] at a Starbucks.

Requesting the meeting in an email on December 10, 2009, Ben Scott wrote:

“I wanted to reconnect sometime soon. I hear you’re cooking up the next course in the Net Neutrality debate, and I wanted to offer my culinary advice. I’ve been in the Net Neutrality sausage making business for some years now, and I’m hopeful that I can be useful to you. I had a good meeting with Danny Weitzner a week or two ago – but I wanted to talk about the politics with you. Your intervention will carry enormous weight.”

So since the beginning of this year Free Press has gotten some fat newspaper foundation money, had a series of, shall we say "undisclosed" meetings with the FCC, and now they have come out with a full court media campaign targeting the one industry player that has a long history of fighting for net neutrality, Google.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I might call that an embarrassing chain of events, but I'm sure there is nothing to that, so I suggest you all run down to the Free Press Google protest in Mountain View. There's still time, it doesn't start till noon. Free Press is making sausage and they need some filler.