Obama picks Net neutrality backer as FCC chief

President Obama on Tuesday nominated Julius Genachowski as the nation's top telecommunications regulator, picking a campaign advisor who has divided his career between Washington, D.C., political jobs and working as an Internet executive.

Genachowski had been mentioned as a likely candidate for the Federal Communications Commission post, in part because he participated in the Obama campaign's Internet efforts and previously worked as chief counsel to Democratic FCC Chairman Reed Hundt.

Julius Genachowski

(Credit: LaunchBox Digital)

"He will bring to the job diverse and unparalleled experience in communications and technology, with two decades of accomplishment in the private sector and public service," Obama said in a statement.

Genachowski is likely to continue the Democratic push for more Net neutrality regulations, which are opposed by some conservatives and telecommunications providers. He was a top Obama technology advisor and aided in crafting a technology platform that supported Net neutrality rules.

The FCC's first official Net neutrality ruling--an earlier one resulted in a settlement--came last summer when the agency narrowly voted by a 3-2 margin that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent was unlawful. That case is now before a federal appeals court.

Genachowski was a Harvard classmate of Obama's and previously worked for Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. He's currently a co-founder of LaunchBox Digital and Rock Creek Ventures, and held executive posts including general counsel at IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns a list of Web properties including Ask.com, Match.com, Gifts.com, Reference.com, Evite, Citysearch, and Excite.

IAC is a member of a coalition that supports more Net neutrality regulations and which also includes Amazon, eBay, and Google.

Genachowski doesn't take over the post officially until his nomination is confirmed, as expected, by the Senate.

[Randomletters1]

+1 to the Obama camp for this move. Keep the throttle wide open on my torrents, and I'll vote you a second term, even though I didn't vote for you the first time.

[LastLion]

Ugh. The phrase "net neutrality" conveys a positive message, but it is a complete misnomer. The reason the internet has been so amazing so far is because it has been widely unregulated. You think your torrents are going to better protected when the government controls the web?

The best (simple) explanation I've seen of the farce that is "net neutrality" can be found here:
http://www.dontregulate.org/

[atici]

Totally agree. The reason net works so well is because it's mostly unregulated. In fact how well it works demonstrates how great things would be if there were no politicians doing nothing but cr8p and people don't interfere with what individuduals can do. I believe such a country could be possible with a constitution with strongest protections on individual and economic freedoms.

[ogvor]

Yes, it would be much better if Comcast/Verison/Cox/SBC controls the web.

[Dalkorian]

Interesting. Not regulating the net has worked wonderfully so far due to actual competition and the fact that there wasn't all that much going on. High definition video sites didn't exist a few years ago, most if not all web pages were simple static HTML and we were all on local dial up connections. Since those days everything has changed - the internet has more data on it than ever before and most of the content is now dynamic (think of Youtube). Add to that the collusion of the cable and telco companies, who took our money to expand their infrastructure but gave themselves huge cash bonuses instead and are now crying about "Bittorrent pirates" while they start capping the usage we've paid for, and it's plain to see. We have a problem that we can't continue to ignore.

That's what is interesting. To maintain a hands off approach to the internet, we need to create some laws keeping the cable and telcos hands off the internet too. The unregulated internet worked great while it was unregulated by anyone, but once conjob decided to forge packets to illegally terminate a lawful application and instill caps on our usage in order to expand their profits a little more the internet no longer was unregulated. It's just regulated by the cable companies and telcos now.

Do you like the idea of being forced to use the search engine that conjob wants you to use? What if you tried to do a Google search, but found that the site was so slow it wouldn't load because your ISP didn't like them ("they didn't upgrade to the higher bandwidth tier that guaranteed fast packet delivery, like Ask did"). THAT is what you're advocating here.

[Randroid1138]

The post by "LastLion" below points to a website called http://www.dontregulate.org/

This is what is called "astroturfing", or fake activism by corporations, to fool the general public.

Hands Off The Internet (HOTI), the creators of the website, purports to be a campaign for internet users' rights, in fact the site is owned by big telecom companies and various right-wing groups. It is actually a front to push the telecom industry's objections to internet neutrality. Such "members" of HOTI are:

# Alcatel
# The America Channel
# American Conservative Union
# AT&T
# BellSouth
# Center for Individual Freedom
# Cinergy Communications
# Cingular
And more...

Check it out yourself:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hands_Off_the_Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing