The Politico today has a column penned by David All, a young GOP internet consultant, and Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP. The column looks at the premise that the GOP is behind its Democratic counterparts online, and suggests one possible reason why – we don’t support the idea of big government intervention in regulating the Internet.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue.The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists.They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Given the attacks on cable and telephone companies in this diatribe, it would be easy enough to discount any response from me as shilling on behalf of cable. Look at my bio, however, and you’ll see that I may be the one person uniquely qualified to address every inaccuracy and outrageous claim in his post. Prior to coming to work in the cable industry, I was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ’04, and the Republican National Committee. I’ve been involved in Republican politics – and online politics – since I launched one of the first state party websites (EVER) at the New Mexico GOP in 1995. At that time, there were only about 5 state parties online.

Since I have been active in GOP politics, and specifically online politics, since Andreesson released the browser in 1994, I have a bit to say about the reasons the GOP is behind (which virtually nobody argues). As an employee of the cable industry, I have a bit to say about what , if anything, that has to do with net neutrality.

The Cyclical Nature of Politics

To begin with, I, and many others, believe the GOP is behind online for the simple reason that it has never had to be ahead. When the GOP was previously in the minority it turned to talk radio to communicate and organize. In the early 1990s, talk radio was the most interactive medium and the party out of power generally gravitates to the best available method of message disbursement and organization.

In 2000, when the Democrats were out of power, they did the same and gravitated toward the Internet. The Republican Party still dominates talk radio, though the Democrats have been making inroads. Unfortunately, you can‚Äôt give money through your radio, so the media focused on the Internet and long ago stopped writing the “Why aren’t Democrats on talk radio?” stories.

Just as there is nothing preventing Democrats from building an audience on talk radio, there is nothing preventing Republicans from achieving online. Now that we are in the minority in Congress and, if Obama wins, may be completely out of power, Republicans will look to rebuild using the tools that offer the most capability to interact and spread a message. They will eventually catch up to and surpass what the Democrats are doing. That’s the cyclical nature of politics.

But What Does Net Neutrality Have to Do With This?

The short answer is absolutely nothing. But David is part of a group called Internet For Everyone whose founders have suggested nationalization of the Internet. The list of his coalition partners reads like a who’s who of the left. ACLU, ACORN, Care2, NOW and SEIU are just a few of the far left groups signed on to the project. David and his two web properties – SlateCard and Techrepublican – appear to be the only GOP organizations onboard with the project.

To his specific claim, it is simply absurd to make the suggestion that Republicans are behind because there is no national broadband solution. David might as well argue that the GOP is behind because the government hasn’t bought everyone a car. The two are just as closely related.

David, like most people arguing for Net Neutrality likes to throw out numbers that seem to support his point.

America’s rural voters are largely Republican. Yet they face major challenges in gaining access to a broadband Internet connection. The latest U.S. Census data show that only 39 percent of rural households subscribe to broadband — and nearly 10 million rural households are in areas not served by any broadband provider.

These figures come from an Internet for Everyone document, which cites a 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Census Bureau. There is a document available on the NTIA website that provides statistics from the CPS. According to the CPS, 39% of rural households did respond that they have broadband service, but 19% also said they have dial-up, and another 10% responded that they access the Internet outside of their home. Thus 68% of rural households access the Internet according to the CPS survey. The figures for urban households, the only other category, were 54% broadband, 9% dial-up, and 9% outside of the home, for a total of 72%. The spread between rural and urban households is only 4%, hardly qualifying as a great divide, or leaving the poor rural folks behind.

Neither the NTIA site nor the CPS study address the 10 million households claim. The 10 million figure may be arrived at by referring to the number of housing units not passed by cable broadband service, according to estimates provided by SNL Kagan – a media research firm. Kagan found that 10 million households, not rural households, don’t have access to cable broadband – not broadband at all, which is what David claims . Simply put, not all of these people live in rural areas. For instance, some areas in Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington DC, are unserved by cable, but that is hardly a “rural” area. Moreover, some of those are served by telephone company broadband service – as in Montgomery County. There are suburban or exurban communities that cable doesn’t serve, for one reason or another.

David also fails to note that the cable broadband he denigrates was a) built with $130 billion in private capital, not government subsidies, and b) was built without the burden of government regulation that hampered development of DSL. It was the lack of regulation and the investment of private funds that created the platform we rely on for high bandwidth applications. The cable system that serves 92% of Americans with broadband was built under a system identical to the current regulatory regime, not under the ‘good old days’ of common carrier and forced access.

It’s worth noting, by comparison, that the telephone companies sat on DSL technology for more than a decade while under the exact regulatory regime the IFE folks are now promoting. There was simply no incentive to invest in a network technology they could not monetize and see returns on the initial outlay. Now that they have been freed of such regulations, the telephone companies are aggressively building a $100+ billion Fiber to the Home networkto compete with cable.

Since David’s whole argument hinges on getting rural, Republican voters connected, it’s important to note that he got his central supporting facts wrong with regard to the current status of rural broadband. David made the same arguments in a Washington Times video interview posted yesterday (in which he conveniently rounds the number of Americans without a broadband connection down to 50%, despite many current estimates which place the figure at between 42% and 45% and likely to drop to 40% when numbers are compiled for the second quarter of 2008).

Since he has a habit of misstating facts and figures, one must ask if he is uninformed or intentionally misquoting numbers to justify his thesis. My belief is the former, but I still have some suspicion it may be the latter.

Further Pandering

Part of the reason I believe David may simply be desperate to make his case and willing to clutch at straws is the way he characterized the AP “research” into the Comcast/BitTorrent issue.

For example, Comcast was caught red-handed by The Associated Press blocking the distribution of the King James Bible. Martin launched an investigation and convened public hearings that put Comcast in the hot seat.

That is an absolutely false characterization of what happened. The Comcast/BitTorrent flap was a matter of Comcast trying to guarantee the best possible experience for the vast majority of its users, and trying to restrict the impact that heavy users of P2P applications have on broadband networks.

David implies that a) Comcast was aware the content the AP used in its test was the King James Bible and b) specifically targeted that traffic. Why would he make such outrageous claims to make his case? Because David is trying to convince Republicans to support his cause, and Republicans identify strongly with issues of faith. By claiming “the big bad cable company tried to stop you from seeing the bible” he’s pandering in the worst possible way.

As a Republican

As a Republican, I would be skeptical of Internet regulation on the best day, and downright hostile on any other. I do not believe the imposition of a new regulatroy regime is the cure to the perceived ills of either the state of broadband or the state of my party. As someone who has been thinking of ways for Republicans to use the Internet for almost fifteen years, I disagree completely with David’s ridiculous claim that the only way to save the party is to create a new bureaucracy to regulate the Internet.

While I respect David’s opinion and right to speak out on whatever topic he chooses, I firmly believe he could not be further off track on this issue. I also hope he will take the time to address my deconstruction of his argument and answer my challenge to the factual basis of his column. He may perhaps become informed about the subject matter rather than irresponsibly disseminating mistruths.

I’m actually working on a lengthy deconstruction of the parts he gets completely wrong and his outright fabrication of facts to make his point. I’ll be posting that soon via one or more of the outlets for which I write.

On a personal level, however, one thing jumped out at me. David makes the following claim about Republicans who oppose Internet regulation:

[I]f Republicans hide behind goals such as protecting the free market and refuse to engage in protecting the open Internet, we will cede ground to the left…

Honestly, I don’t know a single free market Republican who believes they’re “hiding behind goals” when they advocate for free market solutions and keeping the government from creating ever more bureaucracy. David’s commitment to the ideals of the party seems to be so superficial that he sees remaining true to those ideals as nothing but a beard to be worn for convenience.

I am a loud and proud free market Republican. I don’t believe that giving the government regulatory authority over technology they barely comprehend, let alone understand, is a bad idea. Hopefully, I’m not alone in that.

Word out of Twitter yesterday was their more “popular” users were fuqing it up for everybody else. Anytime someone with 25,000 plus followers and 21,000 followees sends a message, it craps out their database. This has led to more than a few helpful suggestions for them to redesign their backend to better manage the load.

Ironically, this is the perfect illustration for the problem with Net Neutrality. Here you have a service with no management at all, and a very few large scale users are screwing it up for everybody else. They’re sucking up all the available capacity and the guy with a small handful of followers is unable to reach them.

An unmanaged service becomes a free for all where a small minority can consume the available capacity. A managed service creates a situation where the consumption of some users is restricted for the benefit of the wider audience. In this case, the Twitter community is clamoring for management of the backend to produce a better front-end experience.

It very clearly demonstrates the net neutrality problem – how do you balance a system to provide the best possible experience for the broadest possible audience? With Twitter users the demand is for better load management. With net neutrality proponents the demand is for no management (or worse, a government defined management plan).

I think it’s funny that many of the Twitter users are likely the same people calling for net neut, yet they don’t see the irony in their conflicting positions.

If this thing gets enough circulation it could singlehandedly derail Net Neut by scaring away all the straight, normal people in the US.

Aslo, please note the titular reference to unattractive geeks is not meant to be an attack on either the unattractive or the geeky. Being a proud member of both camps, I would never slam my homely, technologically inclined brothers and sisters that way. I’m simply stating the theme of this particular effort. I also have to give kudos to the guy in glasses – the Tron outfit rocks.

The DOCSIS 3.0 standard gets its juice from “channel bonding” technology. The modem bonds the equivalent of 4 channels of television (which would each be the equivalent of 40mbps), allowing speeds in the range of 160 mbps downstream. The upstream rate would increase as well. While the demo didn’t address upstream speeds, I was able to confirm with DOCSIS modem vendors that the upstream speed would likely increase to the 10-20 mbps range.

That may still seem small compared to the downstream, but is a dramatic increase over the 1mpbs we currently receive.

The vendors also told me that the downstream speed isn’t capped at 160, but actually scales up dramatically. The DOCSIS 3.0 standard allows for up to 32 bound channels – meaning the maximum downstream speed for the standard is 1280 mbps, or just over 1gbps.

At 160 mbps, the new standard puts cable modems far ahead of the current fiber optic offerings (which top out in the 30mbps range). The new standard is expected to reach consumers by this time next year. The interesting effect of all this, I believe, will be the creation of a bandwidth arms race between cable and the telcos. For those who have been concerned with the relative low speeds of US broadband compared to other countries, this should ease that pain.

An arms race between access providers will also limit the possibility of “net neutrality” violations. If customers are continually seeing improvements in throughput and have one significant reason to switch providers, it’s unlikely the ISP would give them another reason by limiting content.

What emerged from the sessions is that ‘Neutrality’ is one of those incomprehensible American phenomenons, from which we’ve mercifully escaped. Your reporter was one of those invited to give a briefing – having reported on the issue from both sides of the pond – and said as much. But in the expectation that this would be the heretic view, rather than the near unanimous consensus opinion.

Summing up, [former UK trade minister Alun] Michael described the clamour for pre-emptive technical legislation as “extreme… unattractive and impractical”.

It was, he said, “an answer to problems we don’t have, using a philosophy we don’t share”.

That’s pretty much the same problem a growing number of people in the US have with it. There is no evidence that this is an issue. The one instance of anything in the US approaching a violation – also known as Madison River – was dealt with. Madison River paid a fine, agreed not to block VoIP traffic, and moved on.

That hasn’t stopped proponents from advocating for legislation in anticipation of there someday being a reason for it. It is not a sound basis for policy. The UK appears to recognize that. The truly interesting point in The Register article is buried.

[T]he UK doesn’t have such as ancient cruft as the US distinction between an information provider and a telephony provider.

They see this distinction as one of the principle problems. Since the Brand X decision and subsequent deregulation of DSL, NN proponents have pointed to that distinction as particularly problematic, while ignoring one of the specific contradictions in their argument – that distinction is the unintended consequence of applying a regulatory framework based upon a specific technology and then trying to adapt it to different technologies.

Net Neutrality attempts to do just that. Net Neutrality assumes that the technology and business models underlying the Net will not fundamentally change – therefore it’s ok to establish a regulatory regime based on what we know today, and what we assume we’ll still know tomorrow. In the absence of a specific problem, legislating a static solution for continually shifting technologies is a bad idea.

If you’d like to see the larger version, check it out on YouTube here

Well, they didn’t. So somebody put up a parody website to mock the SaveTheInternet guys. The parody features an amusing (if not altogether too long) video of a guy named Dwight making fun of the ‘the-whole-world-should-be-free-to-me’ crowd.

Despite having been on the receiving end of a staggering number of sites parodying the Bush campaign, I’m actually pleased to see this. It’s a creative way to chip away at the Net Neutrality guys and their fallacious arguments.

Owning state legislatures has been a secret strategy for corporate elites for years, and our focus on a Federal level and the courts has crippled us in understanding what is really possible when progressives step up on a state level. But that’s where change really happens.

The trouble with this is it ignores two simple facts – 1) Democrats – of which Matt is one – have traditionally believed in a strong central government with weaker subservient state governments and 2) Republicans (and by extension businesses) have usually operated at the state level on issues that make sense to legislate locally.

This becomes important when you start to talk about issues like Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is like interstate commerce. If you legislate interstate commerce, you have to do it at the federal level. That was one of the lessons the US earned early on. Before there was a New Deal, and before there was a Great Society, there was the Interstate Commerce Commission and recognition that goods traveling between states needed something better than state level oversight.

Net Neutrality is an interstate issue. Introducing net neutrality legislation at the state level is a terrible idea that ignores the fact most issues regulated at the state level are regulated there because it doesn’t fundamentally matter whether there is a patchwork of laws governing them.

For instance, violent crime can be regulated at the state level because it doesn’t matter if there is a difference in sentencing from one state to another. If an armed robber gets a mandatory sentence of eight years in one state and ten years in another, that’s not going to change the way the world works.

Introducing Net Neutrality legislation on a state-by-state basis, on the other hand, would be catastrophic if he laws were upheld in the courts (which is unlikely), but more likely will serve only to clog the courts and force a Washington solution.

Since the basis of the Internet is a series of interconnected networks that move data around the country or around the world in a millisecond, having to build networks capable of keeping track of the various legal requirements would be the worst government idea since the tax code.

I don’t believe Matt has had a political awakening and has become such a radical Republican that he feels there is no place for the federal government in anything. I suspect his advancement of state level NN regs is intended to junk up the works. If every state had a different law for regulating Net Neutrality, the federal government would be forced into the equation and would have to regulate the Internet.

That’s what happened with Interstate Commerce to force the creation of the ICC. States had passed myriad laws that the Supreme Court struck down and Congress was forced to act.

I suspect the proponents of NN are pushing laws around the country to force federal action – that and to obfuscate the real issue. The real issue is Net Neutrality is a solution in search of a problem, since no example of the illicit deeds alleged by content providers has actually occurred.

In the Net Neutrality debate, the content providers allege that the cable and telephone companies will block access to their sites unless they pay the access providers. That theory is what drives the mania around the issue. People fret that, “I won’t be able to access Amazon.com if my ISP has a deal with Barnes & Noble.”

What it indicates, however, is a shortsightedness on the part of content providers to assume that there is only one business model for making money. For Google, that model is ‘give things away to customers, and charge anyone wanting to reach those customers for advertising’.

What would happen if Google, with its incredible market share, went to the ISPs and said, “If you want your customers to have access to Google, YouTube, etc, then you have to pay us. Otherwise, we’ll block incoming requests from your customers.” It’s the exact opposite of what proponents of NN are alleging will happen.

Well, guess what. It’s happening.

ESPN360 is a content service provided by ESPN networks via the Net. ESPN has told major ISPs that they have to pay to give customers access. Verizon has agreed and is paying the fee. Comcast is not.

The ESPN360 effort should raise new doubts about heaping new rules on access providers and assuming they have all the power. There is clear evidence that content providers have power as well.

If you question that, look at the other big debate taking place in telecommunications. There have been a series of recent skirmishes over retransmission consent (or retrans, for short). For those unfamiliar with the term, retrans refers to the agreements that allow cable and satellite systems to retransmit the signals of programmers and broadcasters. The systems pay a price for that right.

The trouble, at least in some recent cases, is the conflict that creates with a government mandate known as must-carry. Congress forced cable systems to carry the primary signals of the broadcasters (ABC, NBC, CBC) under the theory that the free, over-the-air programming serves a vital public interest. Under the terms of must-carry, there were no mandated cash payments between systems and the broadcasters.

Recently, some broadcasters have decided there is a value to their programming and have begun to demand payment for their programing. This puts the government in an odd position. Given the shrinking viewership of broadcast television, it is entirely possible that they would eventually have no audience. Due to the government intrusion into the process, however, cable operators face a mandate to carry these stations, and now are forced to pay for them, too.

Under a net neutrality regime, ISPs could face a similar situation. The government may create a mandate to allow access to all content, and leave open a business model for content providers to demand payment. If Google, Amazon and eBay begin to charge ISPs for access, and the cable companies have no recourse to experiment with other business models, we could, in ten years, be looking at the same situation with the Internet that we’re currently seeing with retrans.