BuzzMachine

Al Gore gives a rousing defense of network neutrality as nothing less than the key to protecting democracy. In an excerpt from his new book in Time, he begins with Iraq:

It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America’s public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

He then argues that we wasted too much time watching celebrity news, from J.J. to Paris. The result:

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.

That’s a logical leap not unlike the one that got us there: O.J. has done many bad things. But I hardly think we can blame him for getting us into Iraq, too.

Ah, but no, he’s really saying it’s television’s fault as it is exploited by a “new generation of media Machiavellis.” It’s a circuitous route, but I agree with where he lands: the value of an open internet. How we assure that, though, is still a matter of debate.

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It’s a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It’s a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

So here’s the idea: We post video questions for the candidates on YouTube — tagged PREZCONFERENCE — and see which ones they answer and don’t. I’ll put up the interesting ones on PrezVid (soon new blog, PrezConference). Yesterday at the VON conference, I asked folks for their questions. Here are a few. More at PrezVid and more on YouTube.

Jeff Pulver and Liz Stephans have questions about net neutrality and internet policy for all the candidates.

(Crossposted at PrezVid)

The Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T offered concessions to the FCC to get its merger approved, including a promise to follow the principles of net neutrality.

Susan Crawford does a masterful job explaining net neutrality.

The Wall Street Journal pits McCurry against Craig Newmark over net neutrality and Craig wipes the floor with that company-line spewing spin machine. Says Craig:

I realize you’re cleverly using Colbertian “truthiness,” and I just can’t compete with that. Nerds are notoriously literal.

What we’re looking for is just fairness, a level playing field, no regulation or stuff like that. In America we believe that if you play fair and work hard, you get ahead. We don’t want the government to give special privileges to the big guys, particularly not at the expense of small business and consumers. We don’t want more regulation and we don’t need lawyers involved where the free market functions well. I guess we’re for capitalism.

Current net neutrality (as currently conceived) functions well, allowing innovators to create wealth and help us all out. Why should the FCC or Congress fool with that? We’ve seen that the telecoms don’t need more privileges, they need to get serious about using their existing resources….

Even Mike’s clients have confessed that they intend to discriminate. They consistently forget who owns the airwaves and public rights of way on which they’ve built their fortunes. They frequently break their commitments…

Net neutrality is the embodiment of American values of democracy and fairness. Let’s keep it that way. I joined the SavetheInternet.com coalition and signed a petition to Congress. Mike, you talk about preserving competition; when can we expect you to sign up?

When I started reading this story about an effort to use radio bandwidth to provide ubiquitous, cheap or free (ad-supported), broadband internet access across the country, I started to get happy. But then I saw the dolts who were proposing this and the dangerous things they doing and I want to make sure they don’t get anywhere near our internet. At the end of the story, The Times reports:

M2Z plans to include a filter with the free service that would block access to “indecent” material, a definition Mr. Sachs said could be made by the government, just as it controls standards for broadcast television.

“Give us the spectrum and we’ll provide free service and we’ll live with the decency guidelines,” Mr. Sachs said.

If this post were a podcast, you’d hear an anguished and angry scream right now. Evil fools. They invite government censorship of our internet, a Trojan horse that would only lead to more censorship (insert idiotic level-playing-field argument here).

Just as idiotic, they want the government to give them that spectrum for free. Ha! Yes, let’s get ubiquitous, free, broadband internet access across America as a strategic imperative. But let’s auction that business off to the best players. And let’s require net neutrality.

So who are these fools? The Times says:

Milo Medin, chairman and chief technology officer of M2Z, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., declined to discuss the company’s plans. Mr. Medin, a founder of the @Home Network, a high-speed Internet company that became Excite@Home and went bankrupt in 2001, started the company with John Muleta, a former head of the wireless division at the F.C.C.

@Home: The Enron of the Internet. These bozos lost billions and botched an easy opportunity to bring internet access to almost every home in the country once and now we’re supposed to give them bandwidth?

It’s worse than that. @Home tried to strongarm content providers a decade ago, telling them that if they did not make proprietary and premium deals with @Home and allow the service to cache and serve their content — and pay for the privilege — then @Home would not give them full-speed access. They were the first enemies of net neutrality. And who was the architect of this dastardly scheme? Guess.

Keep these dangerous dolts away from our Internet.

Save the Internet is a campaign to protect net neutrality, “the internet’s First Amendment,” which means, in David Weinberger’s words, “that the people who provide connections to the Internet don’t get to favor some bits over others.” To do otherwise is just bad business.

The age of business models built on scarcity and on keeping your customers from doing what they want to do is over. Now we just have to make sure that Congress doesn’t try to keep it on artificial life support.

: Steve Baker asks for some context, please.