Clarifying Obama's Position on Net Neutrality

Posted by Matt Stoller, Open Left at 3:05 PM on May 23, 2008.

In telecom circles, there's been a little dust-up about Obama's position on net neutrality, sparked by Carlyle Group telecom expert and former FCC Commissioner Bill Kennard's statements.

"Where that has typically led us is to supporting tier pricing systems as long as they're not discriminatory," said Kennard, an outside communications policy adviser to Obama.

Susan Ness, the likely FCC Chair under a Clinton administration, echoed Kennard's comments, going slightly further to the right and suggesting that Clinton is quite wary of regulation even though she supports network neutrality.  

Now, 'tiered access' is a loaded term.  It could mean charging consumers different amounts for different types of service, like DSL, Cable modems, T1 lines, dial-up, and broadband cards.  That's fine.  Or it could mean charging youtube and Google and bloggers more money depending on what type of content they put on the web and what their content says.  That's not fine.  In other words, Kennard either means that ISPs can charge different amounts to consumers who use different amounts of bandwidth, or he means that ISPs can charge content providers different amounts based on the type of content they serve.  We already know that without proactive action from the next administration, cable and telecom companies will inspect, block and censor content, as Cox and Comcast are already doing.  


The political pressure for an open internet is increasing; the Senate just held a hearing on equipment makers that help the Chinese government censor content.  The Senate Judiciary Human Rights Subcommittee raked Cisco Systems over the coals for "having a role in the Chinese government's construction of a system for monitoring, censoring and prosecuting online dissidents who speak in favor of democratic values."  The basic system architecture of packet sniffing and monitoring in China is no different than the one American companies will use to tier access to different types of content.  And even McCain is having to concede that an open internet is important.

Kennard is probably a poor spokesperson for Obama, considering his role with the Carlyle Group.  Still, I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Obama, as other surrogates of his are making it clear that his prioritization of an open internet is real.  Obama advisor and MIT denizen Daniel J. Weitzner debated a Time Warner patent attorney representing the McCain campaign and made this political point.

The fate of the Net is important to Obama; his campaign's success has been built on using it for organizing and fundraising, allowing him to vault from an underdog last year into the lead for the Democratic nomination, Weitzner said.

"There's an appreciation for the Internet, a recognition of the transformative value of the Internet that I think will go a long way toward shaping the approaches that Sen. Obama would take as president," Weitzner said.

Obama sees himself as a transformative figure, and every indication is that he is strongly supportive of Silicon Valley priorities and open architectures, and more importantly, that such an open architecture is supportive of his campaign and candidacy.  I know there are people digging into his campaign to find a clarification of what Kennard laid out, and I'm waiting to hear from them.  But I'm not worried about Obama's position on net neutrality.  McCain, of course, is a different matter - a patent attorney for Time Warner is the worst of all worlds.

Tagged as: obama, net neutrality