America's net neutrality rage hits academia

Funder

The new IJOC paper that has caused the current wave of furious denunciations implicitly acknowledges as much and is largely focused on what it sees as the pernicious influence of Big Cable: in this case through CALinnovates.

Winseck and his co-author Jefferson Pooley describe CALinnovates as an "advocacy group with deep ties to the telecommunications industry." And they note that a reference to the fact that the paper was funded by CALinnovates was removed before publication (why and how that happened remains unresolved).

CALinnovates describes itself as a "non-partisan coalition of tech companies, founders, funders and non-profits determined to make the new economy a reality." But among its members – almost all of whom you will never have heard of, like Drumbi, Famingo, Speek – sits an unusual giant: AT&T.

CALinnovates has refused to say how much of its revenue comes from just AT&T but its appearance in a member list of small non-profits for an organization that then commissions a paper that attacks the FCC's Open Internet Order certainly looks unusual.

The fact that this relatively obscure paper is then repeatedly cited by the chair of a federal regulator and even used to justify the creation of a new FCC Office of Economics and Data (OED) makes it looks all the more suspicious.

Winseck and Pooley decide to call it: "This, we contend, is a case of information laundering."

And the truth is that there is good reason to suspect the cable industry is behind this for the simple reason that it does it repeatedly. The most recent blatant example came in May when the metadata of a "toolkit" provided to House Republicans by Republican Party headquarters to defend the FCC's decision to tear up net neutrality revealed that it has actually been written by the cable lobby.

The new IJOC paper is effectively an investigative dig into CALinnovates, looking at how deep its connections to AT&T go, trying to prove beyond reasonable doubt that something unusual is going on.

Hmmm

And in that respect, the paper is successful: it highlights personnel crossovers, position papers and meetings that closely tie CALinnovates and AT&T, particularly when it comes to the issue of net neutrality.

It also points out that CALinnovates' budget nearly tripled in a single year – 2014 – and that others observed how what was a Silicon Valley advocacy group had suddenly started taking a strong line against Title II classification – something that the valley is largely in favor of.

In its response to the paper attacking it, CALinnovates takes what has become the cable industry's new mantra – that it supports net neutrality but not Title II classification. "CALinnovates has long advocated for a Third Way approach to solving this decade long battle royale," it says. "From the beginning, CALinnovates has supported the principles of net neutrality."

But that is also a reasonable position. As is its point that it's not in anyone's interests to have "the ongoing uncertainty of the regulation based on the whims of who is the FCC chairman at the time."

Of course the big reason why the cable industry is sounding much more reasonable in recent months is because it can afford to be. FCC chair Pai has made it 100 per cent clear that he intends to scrap the Open Internet Order - regardless of what the FCC's own public process says – and even roll back further. So Big Cable can look as generous as it likes knowing that what it wants will likely happen anyway.

CALinnovates does not come out smelling neutral however. It inserts an odd series of innuendos at the end of its formal response. "Perhaps we’ll never know what motivated Winseck and Pooley to form such an odd-couple team to attempt to topple, or at least sideline, a California-based technology advocacy coalition from the high stakes net neutrality debate through personal and professional attacks," it reads. "Our research and work stands up because we back it with data, instead of personal attacks - something perhaps Winseck and Pooley should learn to mimic."

In the letters it sent to the IJOC editor claiming factual inaccuracies, CALinnovates made claims that its executive director had never met with FCC representatives and that it did not support anti-net neutrality positions.

But, Winseck and Pooley went to the trouble of digging out their research that showed in the first case that CALinnovates itself had reported how its lobbyists met with FCC officials, and in the second how its formal responses to the FCC showed precisely what they claimed: that it kept supporting positions that went against net neutrality.