Telecommunications analyst Scott Cleland, whose work is bankrolled by companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, also signed on as a hired gun for Microsoft earlier this year, according to a summary of testimony he plans to deliver Thursday at a joint hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. The focus of the session is Internet privacy and behavioral advertising. Cleland, a frequent critic of Google, runs Precursor, an industry research and consulting firm, and chairs NetCompetition.org, which he describes as a "a pro-competition e-forum funded by broadband companies."
While Cleland asserts that his testimony reflects his personal views and not the views of his clients, Google sympathizers wonder if his new affiliation with Microsoft might further fuel what they believe is an already staunchly anti-Google agenda. Last December, Precursor issued a report alleging that Google "is by far the largest user of Internet bandwidth," the company's share of bandwidth usage is rising rapidly, and it's bandwidth use "is orders of magnitude greater than its payment for its cost." Google's telecom counsel Richard Whitt responded to the attack, calling the report "payola punditry." Google Associate General Counsel Nicole Wong will testify Thursday, presumably in defense of her firm's practices.
Regardless of who signs Cleland's checks, his testimony concludes that if Congress decides to legislate on Internet privacy, a competition/technology-neutral framework is the way to go. According to Cleland, such a proposal would: emphasize protecting people not technologies; empower consumers with the control/freedom to choose to either protect or exploit their own privacy; prevent competitive arbitrage of asymmetric technology-driven privacy policies with a level playing field; stay current with ever-evolving technological innovation; and accommodate both privacy and public interests by empowering real consumer privacy choice.
Update: Cleland told Tech Daily Dose his work with Microsoft has been focused on Internet security and safety.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
emerialfutirl
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Securitron
@Wol
Excellent response and analogy.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Wol
Who gives a monkeys how much bandwidth Google uses? That's not Google's responsibility!
Let's put it another way. A lot of customers visit Walmart's stores. Does that make it Walmarts responsibility to maintain the roads? NO.
I as a *consumer* pay for my access to the net. If hundreds of us choose to visit Google, that's OUR choice, for which WE should pay. Google is simply making the service available. Think about it - if Google has to pay (and as a result disappears), then the customers will disappear and all these telcos howling about how much bandwidth Google is using, will suddenly find that this bandwidth isn't being used. In a fair world (where people pay for bandwidth used) that'll result in them being WORSE off, not better. Is that what they *really* want?
(Actually, what I suspect is that they want to double dip us, charging us for access to Google, charging Google for responding to us, and then making the transaction so expensive that most of us won't bother so they can charge us for providing the Information Superhighway access ramps but they don't have to provide the Superhighway itself because none of us can see anything on it worth using!)
Cheers, Wol