[governance] Obama platform: 'Open' internet, strong IP protection

[Riaz K Tayob]

    Obama platform: 'Open' internet, strong IP protection
    <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/democratic_convention_platform_neutrality/>

Democrats duck specific net neutrality pledge

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco 
<http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/09/04/democratic_convention_platform_neutrality/> 
. Get more from this author 
<http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Iain%20Thomson>

Posted in Government 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/public_sector/government/>, 4th September 
2012 20:54 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/>

The Democratic Party has published its platform for the coming election 
with a nod to net neutrality rules, support for tougher IP protection, 
and a commitment to get 98 per cent of the population onto wireless 
broadband.

The 40-page document 
<http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform> devotes just a 
single sentence to net neutrality: "President Obama is strongly 
committed to protecting an open Internet that fosters investment, 
innovation, creativity, consumer choice, and free speech, unfettered by 
censorship or undue violations of privacy."

Given the complexities of the issues involved, this covers a multitude 
of potential sins. Most telecommunications providers are very keen to 
sponsor new investment by slicing and pricing bandwidth to the bigger 
payers, for example, but that hardly constitutes "open" in the minds of 
many.

Supporting free speech and opposing censorship are noble principles, 
although hardly earth-shattering demonstrations of political courage -- 
but the devil is in the details. There's no clear support for the 
current FCC net-neutrality rules, Chairman Genachowski's vaunted "third 
way <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/07/genachowskis_third_way/>" 
that the Republican platform 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/republican_2012_election_platform/>, 
published last week, extensively trashed. In addition, the EFF will 
certainly be curious as to exactly what constitutes "undue violations of 
privacy."

In contrast to its brevity on internet freedoms, the platform document 
goes to comparatively great lengths to support the rights of 
intellectual property holders. While the administration wants to look at 
voluntary regulation that "supports the free flow of information," it's 
also promising an increasing crackdown on IP violations and the 
protection of America's trade secrets.

The platform says that seizures of fake critical technology are up 200 
per cent, and that the Department of Justice is aggressively going after 
those who seek to steal or counterfeit. Kim Dotcom and the New Zealand 
police would certainly agree.

To be fair, the current administration has taken some interesting 
decisions on this front. White House disapproval with SOPA and PIPA was 
helpful in stalling 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/16/sopa_no_dns_block/> those 
bills, and it has threatened a veto of CISPA 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/25/white_house_cispa_veto/> 
cybersecurity laws over privacy protections. Then again, the 
administration still hasn't totally given up on ACTA yet, and the Trans 
Pacific Partnership negotiations are worrying many 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/21/greens_against_tpp/>.

On the infrastructure side, the platform commits to getting 98 per cent 
of the US population on wireless broadband, but no specific timescale is 
mentioned. The auction of spare wireless spectrum 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/08/genachowski_at_ces/> will be 
accelerated by having existing holders trade their allowances, as 
opposed to the Republican platform of selling spectrum off to the 
highest bidder.

"Democrats know that the United States must preserve our leadership in 
the Internet economy," the platform states. "We will ensure that America 
has a 21st century digital infrastructure -- robust wired and wireless 
broadband capability, a smarter electrical grid, and upgraded 
information technology infrastructure in key sectors such as health care 
and education."

Meanwhile, on cybersecurity the platform points out that this 
administration has made positive steps, included creating the first 
military command dedicated to cybersecurity and auditing federal 
government vulnerabilities. The platform commits to setting up national 
and international security partnerships and doing more with private 
sector sources to lock down critical infrastructure.

Apart from that, there was very little mention of technology in the 
platform, which largely focused on ways to get the economy moving again. 
The next Mars mission, the static seismic InSight mission 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/nasa_insight_mission/> 
scheduled for 2016, will go ahead, and there'll be more support for 
science and technology teaching.

Based on the two party's platforms, neither has really made many firm 
commitments one way or the other -- which is exactly what you'd expect 
with political commitments. The Republicans are vocal on what's wrong 
with the current system (pretty much everything, they say), and offer a 
few solutions in the form of public/private partnership projects with 
industry and "reform 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/07/open_internet_debate_at_ces/>" 
of regulations -- with a legislative chainsaw.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic world there are a lot of high ideals but 
very little in practical terms of how to get there, other than the 
spectrum trading system currently stalled in Congress. The cybersecurity 
stuff looks good, but one major hack and that could well turn into a 
liability. ®

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