Obama "Softening" on Net Neutrality? Google, Lessig Slam WSJ Report

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 12/16/2008 1:13:00 PM

• "Confused" WSJ report an effort to "gin up" drama?
• Google affirms commitment to net neutrality
• WSJ standing by story

Will President-elect Barack Obama go soft on the issue of network neutrality? Unlikely, despite a Wall Street Journal report this week, citing comments by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig and Google’s head of public affairs Richard Whitt, suggesting that network neutrality—a principle strongly supported by the library community and public advocates—is “quietly losing powerful defenders in Washington.” In blog posts yesterday, however, both Lessig and Whitt assailed the report, with Lessig calling it “an indirect effort to gin up a drama about  an alleged shift in Obama’s policies.”

Network Neutrality is a key principle that would keep broadband providers from creating, exclusive, faster, tiered service for certain customers. Cable and phone companies have been lobbying hard in Washington for regulators to approve the practice, but supporters of a “neutral Internet,” including libraries, argue that allowing the practice would be tantamount to creating a “private Internet” with higher bandwidth levels offered to certain customers who can afford to pay. Broadband providers, net neutrality advocates like Public Knowledge argue, must offer “a minimum level” of broadband service to all broadband consumers.

What’s edge caching? 
In a blog post Monday, Google’s Whitt wrote that the Journal article appeared to turn on a fundamental misunderstanding of Google’s plan to use “edge servers” within the networks of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Edge caching, however, is a common practice used by ISPs to improve Internet performance. By allowing services like Google to “collocate caching servers,” which store things like YouTube videos, “within broadband providers’ own facilities,” the practice reduces congestion, Whitt explained, since the same video wouldn’t have to be retransmitted every time it is called. 

Most importantly, “all of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs,” Whitt blogged, “are non-exclusive.” That means any other entity could employ similar arrangements. “Also, none of them require, or encourage, that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic.” Whitt stressed that Google’s position remains the same: broadband providers should not be allowed to prioritize traffic. “Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday’s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality.”

Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn, a strong net neutrality advocate and a library community ally also defended the practice of caching as acceptable, and said Google remains a key ally. “Caching in no way is a part of the Net Neutrality issue of preventing discrimination by telephone and cable companies,” Sohn wrote in her blog. She also suggested that the “anonymous cable executives,” quoted in the report knew better than to conflate caching with network neutrality.

Misunderstanding?
In a scathing response on his blog Lessig suggested the Wall Street Journal had spun his remarks to help create the idea that Obama, a strong supporter of net neutrality, was changing his views on the subject on the advice of “Internet scholars,” who also had changed their views. Lessig advised the Obama team on technology during the primaries. The only problem, Lessig wrote, is that his stance on net neutrality hasn’t changed, and there is simply no evidence to suggest that his views had “softened,” as the Journal reported. 

“My view is the view I have always had,” he wrote, that broadband providers “should not be free to apply discriminatory surcharges to those who make content or applications available on the Internet.” Lessig, meanwhile, has always supported the ability of Internet providers to offer non-exclusive premium services, as he testified in 2006, in front of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Whitt, meanwhile, also took issue with the Journal for quoting him as characterizing Obama’s net neutrality policies as “much less specific” than they were before. “For what it’s worth, I don't recall making such a comment,” Whitt blogged, “and it seems especially odd given that President-elect Obama’s supportive stance on network neutrality hasn't changed at all.” 

Despite a strong response, the Journal this week was sticking by the story, which, Lessig wrote, was the “most depressing” development of all. “The charge that Obama was shifting policy was, and is, completely baseless. The charge that I had ‘shifted’ my position was, and is, completely unsupported and false,” he observed. “And the charge that Google was violating network neutrality principles…is just wrong.”   

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