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The press release story was carried by the Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Engaget, CNET and Wired among others. Many outlets noted that the group will focus on “piracy, copyright, privacy, and cybersecurity.”
TechCrunch also printed an editorial by Michael Beckerman, President and CEO of the new Internet Association, supporting passage of the STEM jobs Act — which has nothing to do with “piracy, copyright, privacy, and cybersecurity.” The editorial does, however, suck up to Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the author of the bill.
Some reporters rightly noted that with the formation of the new group, it looks like Google is getting the SOPA band back together. Others looked a little deeper, and saw that many in this particular constellation of companies had “repeatedly run afoul of consumer and privacy advocates as well as various governments for breaching consumer privacy,” and probably wouldn’t be lobbying for stricter privacy laws any time soon.
But nobody asked the rather obvious question: why an industry that spent $129 million on lobbying in 2011 needs yet another lobbing shop, especially when the Net Coalition already exists.
Ahem. Allow Bytegeist to read the tea leaves.
There are two committees currently writing most of the House legislation dealing with tech policy: Energy and Commerce, chaired by Fred Upton (uncle of Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton, who tells TMZ he is “proud of his supermodel niece”), and Judiciary, chaired by the aforementioned Lamar Smith. Because the Republicans are in the majority, both of these chairs are Republicans, as are the majority of the committee members.
If you’re unfamiliar with the committee process, that’s where all the evil and horse-trading happens. The committee markup hearings on the health care bill were held with all the decorum and propriety appropriate to a commodities trading floor, with lobbyists paying up to $4000 to firms that hired homeless people to sleep overnight on the sidewalk and guarantee them a seat.
By the time a bill gets to the floor of the House the deal is long done, and the votes are already bought and paid for. Foolishly, this is when most groups begin their activism efforts.
Google is no fool. So when SOPA was being written by the RIAA deliberated in committee, Google unleashed a shitstorm of PR flaks and “activist” groups that came down like a ton of bricks on SOPA supporters. And as Dave Dayen, Markos Moulitsas and others noted at the time, activists moved more Republican votes than Democratic ones.
That pissed off a lot of Republicans, who felt like their hands were forced. It also pissed off the bill’s author, the aforementioned Lamar Smith, who felt like his committee’s authority was usurped. And when the chairman no likey you, all the lobbing money in the world won’t keep your interests from getting reamed.
Thus the Internet Association was formed. Who is Michael Beckerman you might ask? Well, a Republican operative who worked for the aforementioned Fred Upton as Deputy Staff Director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee until June of this year. As The Hill wrote in July:
When Beckerman announced his departure from Capitol Hill last month, Upton released a statement describing him as one of his “closest friends.”
“Michael Beckerman is a trusted adviser and confidant who helped set the tone and legislative agenda at the Energy and Commerce Committee when Republicans regained the majority,” Upton said.
The Hill and Roll Call actually wrote that Beckerman would be leaving the Hill to head the Internet Association two months ago. It apparently just wasn’t news to in the tech world until HDMK, the GOP PR shop recently hired by former NAVY Seals to criticize President Obama’s handing of Osama bin Laden’s death, told everyone that it was. (The Internet Association has HDMK “on retainer.”)
There is a one-year ban that prevents senior House staffers from lobbing the committees where they worked, so Beckerman will not be able to officially lobby Upton or anyone on Energy and Commerce until next year. (Hello, Lamar Smith!)
Fortunately, Google recently hired Stewart Jeffries, who served as antitrust counsel for Lamar Smith and the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee since 2007. So it looks like the revolving door is working well and they’ll still be able to cover their bases.
In short: the Internet Association is a group formed by Google and other like-minded companies to soothe the hurt feelings of key House Republicans who had their feathers singed on SOPA.
Hope that clears up any mystery behind an otherwise boring, anodyne press release. We’re always happy to explain the opaque ways of Washington here at Bytegeist.
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15 Comments
That’s a slur on a commodities trading floor.
You may be right about that. Lemme dash off a quick apology to Rick Santelli.
Tweeted.
More great work Jane. Nice to have you back around and writing regularly!
The content here makes me sick. Our freedoms and privacy are being horse-traded away to the only bidders.
I love you Jane!
They probably figure there’s never too much lobbying for more cheap, foreign labor.
And of course this thing becomes a conduit back into Google for more right-wing garbage.
Good work.
Yeah, was just chatting with a Judiciary Committee staffer who was telling me how Boehner got his ass handed to him by NumbersUSA on the STEMS job act. He is so not in control of his caucus (thankfully).
I’m going to create an LLC that starts acting as the middle man for Internet Driver’s License. Now we can use that in all sorts of draconian ways like if you get caught smoking a joint by Johnny Law Dog, you are no longer allowed to use the Internet. Which means basically go shoot yourself in the face, but oh, wait, you can’t do that because you can’t by a gun because you might be one of the people who would like to storm the gated castles. So just lie in the street and starve to death, well out of sight of such gated castles. I love it. I’m going to make a fortune!
This also helps give them an inside track when enough people get tired of the patent portfolio wars and call on Congress to finally stop the ongoing fiasco.
In other tech meets politics news, apparently folks attending the next Super Bowl in New Orleans wil not have to worry about the planned circling drones falling out of the sky and hitting them while they are watching the game. Someone decided to cancel that particluar permit to let the drones fly during the game.
first i’ve heard of STEM jobs act. it makes it sound like there are not enough u.s. citizen grads from the same schools that the foreign students graduate from??? nor are there any u.s. tech grads from past year or so??? so the tech corps in this new group need u.s. educated foreign grads to fill positions that require 3-6 year visas.
very peculiar in light of the fact that the u.s. is #30 in world internet speed at triple the price. it would make more sense to me if we could get foreign grads that are waaaay ahead of us in delivering high tech.
This is a great addition to the lineup. Just reminding folks about where in the process the sausage is made is good. If you have your people chairing the committee (which involves not a little incumbency plus party control of the house of Congress), you can get things you want done and prevent things that you don’t want done.
Not so fast — will the gentleman yield?
Before he became chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 2007, John Conyers as the ranking minority member had previously laid out innumerable grounds for impeaching Bush and Cheney, publishing them in his dissenting minority report of the committee.
After the 2006 Democratic victories in November (thanks, Pagefuckergate!), it meant he would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Late in the year, the FBI visited him and interviewed him, presenting him with clear evidence that he had used his staff members for personal errands and such, a criminal offense and misuse of taxpayer funds.
He was informally disciplined, no ethics violations were brought, and that was that, although I doubt the potential charges were officially dismissed.
Earlier in 2006, Allegheny County Coroner and longtime area Democratic Party leader, Dr. Cyril Wecht, had been indicted by a federal grand jury, and was being tried for the federal offense of using his staff for personal errands.
Also, former Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman was serving jail time, possibly for behavior that wasn’t criminal.
I wouldn’t say that Conyers was sufficiently chilled and silenced, but I’d bet he thinks he was.
Gonzales, gone. Monica Goodling, gone. Rove, not gone.
Conyers did not have the support of his party. Smith has a hundred million in tech lobbying money whipping votes for him.
They get people to write press releases to make it sound progressive, but really all they want is to pay people less.