Google Sees Downside as Well as Up to Administration Web Policy
STANFORD, Calif. -- There’s a downside to the Obama administration’s approach to the Internet, said Alan Davidson, Google’s policy and government affairs director: “They will not be timid about regulating the Internet.” This reflects that the administration is “much more comfortable with regulation that its predecessors,” as a general matter, by ideology and because of the economy, he said Friday at a seminar on Legal Affairs in Digital Media. It was organized by Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, the Media Law Resource Center and Stanford Publishing Courses.
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But the administration’s embrace of Web 2.0 technologies is “changing the way that people relate to government,” Davidson said. “It’s actually a radical change. It’s just the beginning. … What you really want is a conversation with people” online, specifically to help rally supporters to get policies enacted. In the administration, “there’s a cultural affinity for the medium that we haven’t seen” previously, he said. This “will color their approach to policy,” such as by leading officials to “embrace the open Internet,” Davidson said.
Steven Teplitz, Time Warner Cable’s senior vice president for government relations, predicted “a full-out brawl” this year over net neutrality if the FCC’s ruling against Comcast for blocking BitTorrent is overturned on appeal. That would raise the pressure for federal neutrality legislation, he said. It could also lead to a commission proceeding to expressly make its Internet principles enforceable, Teplitz said.
The neutrality discussion opens an even more profound discussion of whether operators of broadband networks are common carriers with unbundling obligations, said Sandy Wilson, Cox’s vice president of public policy and regulatory affairs. Free Press last week asked the FCC to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service (CD May 12 p16). The neutrality discussion also raises the question of whether nondiscrimination duties concern the treatment of customers or of content owners, Wilson said. The debate creates a “growing need” for policymakers to have technically expert advice, she said.
Any congressional legislation covering behavioral advertising probably will apply to wireless and cable and will cover data collection in all contexts, Wilson said. Davidson said he expects Capitol Hill efforts on data security and breaches and government access to information, as well as on behavioral ads.
Web censorship will spread this year, Davidson predicted. Nineteen countries have blocked a Google service for a time during the past three years, and 38 countries have sought Web content filtering, he said. It’s “amazing” how little progress has been made against censorship in the decade since the landmark French case against Yahoo, Davidson said. “It’s coming from a broader set of countries.” - Louis Trager