for backers of net neutrality and I hope a sign Obama won't be in the pocket of big business completely.


Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC
By Sarah Lai Stirland EmailNovember 14, 2008 | 5:35:25 PMCategories: Network Neutrality

The Obama-Biden transition team on Friday named two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up its Federal Communications Commission Review team. Werbach_kevin Crawford_4

Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC.

Both are highly-regarded outside-the-Beltway experts in telecom policy, and they've both been pretty harsh critics of the Bush administration's telecom policies in the past year.

Their jobs will be to review the agency and arm the president, vice president and prospective agency leader with all the information needed to make key decisions as they prepare to take over.

The choice of the duo strongly signals an entirely different approach to the incumbent-friendly telecom policymaking that's characterized most of the past eight-years at the FCC.

This March at a telecom policy conference in Hollywood, for example, Crawford bluntly told Ambassador Richard Russell, the White House' associate director on science and technology policy, that he lived in a fantasyland when he asserted that the United States' roll-out of broadband is going well.

"I think it's magical thinking to imagine that we're somehow doing fine here, and I just want to make sure that we recognize that even the [International Telecommunications Union] says that between 1999 and 2006 we skipped form third to 20th place in penetration," she noted acidly at the annual Tech Policy Summit, a gathering of top officials in the world of tech policy (of which Wired.com was a participant and sponsor.)

"We're not doing at all well for reasons that mostly have to do with the fact that we failed to have a US industrial policy pushing forward high-speed internet access penetration, and there's been completely inadequate competition in this country for high speed internet access," she said.

And in a final introductory statement during her talk (that's likely to send shivers down the spines of telecom company executives) she said that she believes internet access is a "utility."

"This is like water, electricity, sewage systems: Something that each and all Americans need to succeed in the modern era. We're doing very badly, and we're in a dismal state," she said at the time.

You can listen to Crawford discuss telecom policy here, and read Werbach's columns on tech policy at internet-infrastructure journal Circle-ID.

Here are some other notable names from the world of tech. These individuals have been named as leaders of the Obama-Biden's transition team review teams (from Change.gov:)
Office of Science and Technology Policy

* Thomas Kalil is Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of “Big Ideas @ Berkeley.” He also serves as the Chair of the Global Health Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative and is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress. Previously, Kalil served as the Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Technology and Economic Policy, and the Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council. (Kalil also spoke at the Tech Policy Summit earlier this year, partly sponsored by Wired.com, and his views at the conference can be heard here.)

* Mario Molina is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and was formerly an Institute Professor at MIT. He served on the President's Committee of Advisors in Science and Technology (1994-2000), and on many other advisory boards. Molina has received more than 20 honorary degrees and numerous awards for his scientific work including the Tyler Prize in 1983, the UNEP-Sasakawa Award in 1999, and the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth's ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases.

National Science Foundation

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Jim Kohlenberger spent eight years in the Clinton White House as Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to Vice President Al Gore, where he helped promote policies to harness science and technology as engines for economic growth and opportunity. Since leaving the White House, he has run his own consulting business and served as executive director of the Voice on the Net Coalition, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Benton Foundation. He has also advised U.S. Senators, Governors, CEOs, start-ups, non-profits, and associations on innovation issues.
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Henry M. Rivera is a partner with the law firm of Wiley Rein LLP where he represents telecommunications and media companies. Previously, Rivera served as a Commissioner of the FCC, as a chair and member of FCC and State Department Advisory Committees, and as a member of several U.S. delegations to international telecommunications conferences. He is also a past president of the Federal Communications Bar Association.

Justice and Civil Rights

* Tom Perelli is Managing Partner of the D.C. office of Jenner & Block and a member of the Firm's Management Committee. Prior to returning to Jenner in 2001, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division from 1999-2001 with responsibility over the Federal Programs Branch and partial responsibility for the Tobacco Litigation Team; from 1997-99, he served as Counsel to the Attorney General.

Jenner & Block are the Recording Industry Association of America's lawyers, and Perelli is listed on the law firm's web site as co-chair of the firm's entertainment and new media practice.

It's possible, then, that Perelli may have a hand in influencing who the nation's first "copyright czar" will be.

Federal Trade Commission

* Susan Ness is a communications policy consultant. From 1994 to 2001, she served as a Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), focusing on new technologies, the E-Rate, and international matters. She was founding President/CEO of GreenStone Media, which produced female-targeted talk programming for radio, internet, and other platforms. She was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Annenberg School (University of Pennsylvania), Vice President of a national bank financing communications companies, and Assistant Counsel of the House Banking Committee.

* Phil Weiser is a professor of law at the University of Colorado where he writes and teaches in the areas of antitrust policy, innovation policy, and internet policy. Weiser previously served as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justices Byron R. White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and as a law clerk to United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Judge David Ebel.

Election Assistance Commission

* Spencer Overton is a Professor of Law at The George Washington University, and he specializes in the law of democracy. Professor Overton's academic articles have appeared in several leading law journals, and his book "Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression" was published by W.W. Norton in 2006. He has also served as a member of the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling, and the Election Assistance Commission's Board of Advisors. Prior to entering the academy, he practiced law at Debevoise and Plimpton, and clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

I listened to Sean Hannity today (why?)

He ranted about Obama, how he should state he won't raise taxes and lamented about what that will mean for capitalism.