Calling for the separation of Google and State.
The news that President-elect Barack Obama will be using YouTube to distribute his weekly "radio" address has been met by general fanfare among the digerati.
This might seem like a bold move--and compared with the relatively boring podcast MP3s of Bush's weekly speech hosted at Whitehouse.gov, it is. However, putting President-elect Obama's video podcasts on YouTube is hardly Change We Can Believe In.
By exclusively hosting his videos at YouTube, the Google-owned dominant player in the user-generated video industry, the Obama campaign has effectively issued its first no-bid giveaway of the next administration.
If Obama really wants to demonstrate his Web 2.0 bona fide intent and prove that he's actually interested in shaking things up, he'll use BitTorrent, the disruptive file-sharing tool that arguably dwarfs YouTube in popularity.
Let's explore a few reasons why Obama should ditch his YouTube plans and switch to BitTorrent:
- As demonstrated by the recent flood of constituent complaints to the House and Senate during the banking bailout, the .gov network simply can't deal with lots of traffic.
- It's not the government's role to pick industry winners and losers. Sure, YouTube has millions of users, but I'm sure that the other Silicon Valley-based user-submitted video sites would love to draw the eyeballs of Obama's podcast subscribers. What about Veoh, Vuze, Hulu, Revver, and Blip.tv?
- While it's awfully nice of Google-YouTube to volunteer the hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth necessary to host Obama's video content, is it really appropriate to further expand the link between Google and the Obama Whitehouse?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt already has Obama's ear as a member of his economic advisory board; the Obama campaign has likely paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Google for AdWords advertising during the campaign; and Google.org's Sonal Shah has landed a key key role on Obama's transition committee. Simply put, things are already close enough between Change.gov and the Google Gang. - There are no copyright issues--since the videos will be made by the federal government, they are automatically in the public domain. Thus, it is perfectly OK for them to be shared via peer-to-peer technologies.
- It'd give Obama a reason to care about Net neutrality. Some on the left are already voicing fears that Obama will soften on his commitment to the Net neutrality cause. Once his weekly addresses are hosted via BitTorrent, he'll have a vested interest in keeping the pipes tamper free. In such a scenario, any antifile-sharing shenanigans by Comcast or other ISPs would directly impact Obama's ability to speak to the people.
- The Canadians already do it: CBC--Canada's version of PBS--has had highly successful trials of BitTorrent as a low cost, high-throughput method of distributing video content. Since we're hopefully going to copy the Canadian's obviously better health care system, why not similarly learn from their use of file sharing?
The time is right for the U.S. government to adopt BitTorrent. Mr. Obama, be bold, be brave, and upload to The Pirate Bay.
A tip of the hat to Aaron Shaw, who inspired this blog post in a conversation earlier today.
So much for change.
Telecom policy circles are a buzz with the news of Barack Obama's pick to head the Federal Communications Commission transition team. Obama is reported to have chosen lawyer and DC insider Henry Rivera, a former Democratic FCC commissioner, lobbyist, and currently a partner at communications law firm Wiley Rein.
Henry Rivera
(Credit: Wiley Rein LLP)Rivera is not currently registered as a lobbyist, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, he lobbied for the Catholic Television Network in 2001. In his capacity as a lawyer, he has represented major wireless carriers, a local exchange carrier, and a major airline in FCC-related matters.
Rivera's law firm is also the former home of Kevin Martin, the current FCC chairman, and is arguably one of the schmooziest lobbyist telecom legal firms in Washington. It employs several former FCC commissioners as well as a significant number of former FCC employees. Of course, Rivera and the other lawyers at Wiley Rein are not the only people at the FCC to leave government for high-paying lobbyist gigs--the practice is widespread.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, more than 100 former FCC employees have also worked in the private sector. At least 50 percent of them have lobbied on issues related to telecom, communications, and broadcast at some point in their careers. In fact, the FCC is the agency with the third-highest number of employees who have shuffled between the public and private interests focused on the federal government, behind only the White House and the House of Representatives.
This is not to say that Rivera is a bad guy. Art Brodsky, the communications director at public interest group Public Knowledge, described him as "one of the best FCC commissioners ever." However, the selection does seem to suggest that Obama's pick to replace Martin as current FCC chairman will likely be another Washington insider. For public interest groups and technology firms hoping for pro-consumer rules on spectrum and broadband policy, this choice of someone so chummy with the established telecom interests could be bad news.
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