Broadband companies can have great success offering access to the unfettered Internet.
— Marvin Ammori
Without network neutrality, cable and phone companies could stifle innovation.
The user, not the ISP, should be the kingmaker of apps.
The FCC banned throttling for good reason, namely that Internet service providers should not bias their networks toward some applications or classes of applications. Biasing the network interferes with user choice, innovation, decisions of application makers, and the competitive marketplace.
Net neutrality is the right thing for our democracy, economy, and global competitiveness. And Americans support an open Internet.
Evidence and economic theory suggests that control of the Internet by the phone and cable companies would lead to blocking of competing technologies.
President Obama's FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has a reputation in D.C. of being a 'tepid' regulator. From reports of his net neutrality proposal, he's living up to that reputation.
Today, in 2011, I'm giving Secretary Hillary Clinton the nod as the Obama Administration's improbable MVP in the technology realm.
I discover real-time news far more often on Facebook than on Google News or a regular Google search.
I find personalized search convenient - I read stories on my Facebook feed, my Twitter feed, daily email services, and my iPhone's Flipboard app, and would love to be able to focus my searches on just those particular services.
To me, freedom of speech and debate are necessary inputs in solving any of our nation's problems, from homelessness and economic inequality to banking, the environment, and national security. Freedom of speech is what Larry Lessig would call a 'root' issue; working on free speech is striking at a root issue.
Google pays advertisers based not just on payment per click but also by number of clicks. The interplay between the two sets the prices, so a government-regulated price for 'equal access' might be difficult to set.
Competitors argue that Google rigs its search algorithms to demote listings for competing search engines. Many of the allegations of demotion come generally from sites of pretty questionable quality, such as Nextag and Foundem. Some of Google's primary competitors in 'specialized search' clearly place well in search results - Amazon and Yelp.
I'm all in favor of the FTC investigating companies when it believes there is proper cause to do so. An investigation, however, can lead to political pressure to bring a case, even if such a case is unwarranted.
The iPhone will forever be associated with the inventive genius of Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley. But the roots of innovation can be traced back - from one genius to another, at least - back to the genius who put the phone in iPhone: Alexander Graham Bell.
Net neutrality sounds wonky and technical but is actually quite simple. It would keep the Internet as it has always been - cable and phone companies would remain mere gateways to all sites, rather than gatekeepers determining where users can go and what innovators can offer them.
Charter's merger sales pitch is pretty straightforward: it argues that it has always been too small to bully Internet companies, TV makers, and its own customers, so it has'un-cable' practices they hope to extend.
'Network neutrality' is sometimes called 'Internet freedom' or 'Internet openness' and is a legal principle that would forbid cable and phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from blocking some websites or providing special priority to others.
There is just one exception to the FCC's no-throttling rule - if a company can prove that throttling is 'reasonable network management.'
One goal of law - as we learn in law school from the first day of contracts - is to deter bad behavior.
President Obama is a big supporter of keeping the Internet open. During his presidential campaign, he pledged his support to net neutrality repeatedly.
Any 'network neutrality' rule should be designed to forbid phone or cable companies from controlling the Internet.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.
'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
News seems to travel far more quickly on Twitter and Facebook than through search.
I have tried to help build a framework that recaptures the First Amendment as a principle to empower all Americans, politically and personally, through access to plentiful, diverse communications spaces.
Much of my work strikes me as pretty unified: as a lawyer, working in several areas, I have thought about how to promote freedom of speech broadly for everyone.
Anyone unhappy with Google can use other search engines - including DuckDuckGo and Blekko, along with Bing or Yahoo.
Google's competitors fail to demonstrate that Google's actions stifle competition rather than reflect pro-consumer innovations.
Google (and Bing and Yahoo!) don't 'owe' any company traffic. If a company has to spend more on advertising on Google, in addition to investing in search-engine-optimization, that is not a violation of any law.
Almost 85 percent of the Latin American market is subject to net neutrality rules, and the European Parliament already favors strong ones.
Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all traffic that goes through their networks the same, not offering preferential treatment to some websites over others or charging some companies arbitrary fees to reach users.
The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, is highly regarded, but some distrust him because he is the former head lobbyist of both the cable and wireless phone industries. He's also made some statements suggesting he doesn't understand or opposes network neutrality.
Even though the Internet touches every part of our lives, one person is to blame for potentially destroying its potential for innovation and freedom of expression: former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
Default choices often remain unchanged for no reason other than being the default, either because of this lack of information or humans' status quo bias.
Liability limit has become a symbol of corporate greed in passing the risk of disaster to the U.S. government and U.S. citizens.
A network neutrality rule could result in mere 'slaps on the wrist' or involve such expensive and difficult litigation procedures that no small company or consumer could ever bring a case.
A ban on paid priority is central to any real net neutrality proposal, beginning with the Snowe-Dorgan Bill of 2006. Indeed, the notion of 'payment for priority' is what started the net neutrality fight.
I have worked on open Internet, speech, and entrepreneurship issues for years.
By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore's Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi's Code.
Facebook refuses to let Google index or display content from its site. Facebook has partnered with Bing to make its results more social. Is Facebook acting to leverage its dominance in social towards a dominance in search?
Thinking about free speech brought me to media regulation, as Americans access so much of their political and cultural speech through mass media. That led me to work on the FCC's media ownership rules beginning in 2005 to fight media consolidation, working with those at Georgetown's IPR, Media Access Project, Free Press, and others.
Companies like Pinterest and Twitter did not become sensations because of Google search but because of the many ways users find out about great sites.
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
If a company is not a monopoly, then the law assumes market competition can restrain the company's actions. No problem. If a monopoly exists, but the monopoly does not engage in acts designed to destroy competition, then we can assume that it earned and is keeping its monopoly the pro-consumer way: by out-innovating its competitors.
The first devices to record and play back music were the phonograph and the gramophone. The gramophone's inventor: Alexander Graham Bell.
On the Internet, speed matters. According to research by Microsoft, Google, and others, if a website is even 250 milliseconds slower than a rival, people will visit it less often.
