On important issues for the online community, there are some substantial differences between the Democratic and Republican parties, particularly regarding Net Neutrality.

A review of the yas and nays in both party platforms (and past history in Congress) shows your vote can make a difference when Washington ultimately deals with privacy, network traffic, piracy, cybersecurity, and broadband expansion.

Net Neutrality – “Preserving the free and open Internet”: Prohibits providers from discriminating against different types of network traffic for profit or control

• Democrats: Yas
• Republicans: Nay

While the Democratic platform specifically states, “President Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet,” one “that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice, and free speech,” Republicans have treated Net Neutrality as anathema to the free market. Although virtually every Republican member of Congress has voted against Net Neutrality or publicly opposed the concept, some Democrats have as well, particularly those who have received significant financial contributions from the largest phone and cable companies lobbying against the policy.

Net Neutrality has not proved to be a major issue in Congress this year, with most of the recent battles taking place at the Federal Communications Commission. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski applauded a ‘third way’ for Net Neutrality, staking out a middle-of-the-road policy that pleased few outside of the FCC. It largely leaves the concept a “suggestion” for wireless carriers. Replete with loopholes and enforcement issues, even wired providers like Comcast have run around the policy for their own benefit.

Network Privacy – Full disclosure when websites track your browsing habits, and how online companies protect your private information

• Democrats: Yas, provisionally
• Republicans: Yas, provisionally

Net privacy is a topic many consumers hear about the most when a website gets hacked and private customer information is stolen in the process. But a growing number of consumers are also concerned about what websites are doing with their information and how their web visits are being tracked for advertising purposes. Large online companies like Facebook and Google have a vested interest in keeping this space as unregulated as possible to maintain lucrative revenue earned selling demographic information to advertisers. But consumers may not want advertisers to know the websites they visit, and members of both political parties have expressed growing interest in taming who gets their hands on your private stuff. Republicans are primarily concerned about tracking by government agencies, Democrats are more concerned with for-profit use of customer data.

The Republican platform abhors government intrusion into private liberty — primarily a reference to certain forms of surveillance. But the GOP platform is silent on enhancing privacy rights of consumers. The Obama Administration has been calling for a “Privacy Bill of Rights” that permits consumers to opt out of web tracking cookies and other tracking technology. Democrats separately want companies to do a better job disclosing and explaining how private information is being used. But Congress, under heavy lobbying to avoid the issue, never acted on the administration’s request.

Expanding Broadband: Finding New Wireless Spectrum and Improved Rural Access

• Democrats: Yas on both
• Republicans: Yas on one, vacillating  on the other

While neither party fully embraces their respective platforms while governing, their stated positions often reflect political positioning when new laws are contemplated.

The Democrats tout both their National Broadband Plan and the Obama Administration’s commitment to find Internet access for 98 percent of the country and expand spectrum available to meet the growing demands for wireless data. The Democratic platform touted President Obama’s proposal to promote wireless broadband as a possible rural Internet solution.

Corporations like AT&T may not be visible on television during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, but they are throwing lavish parties and shaking hands behind the scenes. They’ll get their money’s worth later.

Behind the scenes at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, AT&T is throwing secretive parties, handing out “schwag bags,” and engaging in a legal form of influence peddling to buy themselves goodwill with the eventual election winners.

The Republican National Convention held a week ago in Tampa, Fla. featured lavish, invitation-only parties for politicians attending the convention, sponsored quietly by AT&T.

AT&T went over the top at the Republican event, handing out goodie bags with stuffed elephants emblazoned with the company’s logo, convention pins, and other handouts designed to keep their name front and center with GOP movers and shakers. Tampa Bay Online found the phone company rented out one upscale, popular Tampa restaurant for the entire week, throwing expensive private parties for various state delegations.

The restaurant: Jackson’s Bistro, which locked the doors and turned its back on local regulars for the benefit of GOP high-rollers.

The sponsor: After digging, it turns out the money to rent the upscale eatery came from AT&T, but you wouldn’t know it from the restaurant owner and staff, which have been told to keep their mouths shut about who was paying for supper.

The sneaky: AT&T discovered it could easily navigate around loophole-ridden campaign finance laws which limit corporate-sponsored dinners, but have nothing much to say about “cocktail events.” So as long as diners are standing up while they munch, shake hands, and chat, it’s a-okay.

The mission: To get face time and establish goodwill with political movers and shakers. Feed them, toss them some AT&T flair, and let them know you will be calling on them soon. But no need to overdo it: AT&T can do more talking later… after the politicians get elected and the time is right to get the company’s agenda into the law books.

Keenan Steiner from the non-profit Sunlight Foundation says “this is where the seeds are planted for laws to be written in Washington and in state capitols all over the country.” He notes how important it is for both political parties to have the overwhelming corporate presence that most Americans never understand exists at both conventions:

The significance is, they wouldn’t be here, able to have a good time the whole time, without these corporations. It’s a sort of starting process to become dependent on these corporations. And in Washington, lawmakers require the about 100 lobbyists, over 20 lobbying firms that AT&T hires—they require the work of these folks to get their work done. They’re a sort of legislative subsidy. And they also require these corporations to get re-elected. They want to stay in office, and you better be friends with the Chamber of Commerce, with the NRA, with the big nonprofit groups, the shadowy nonprofit groups, that you really better be friends with them, because, if not, they could drop a lot of money in your district, and they could make you lose an election.

The Sunlight Foundation is tracking corporate money used to break bread and hand out cocktails to your lawmakers.

The Sunlight Foundation reports AT&T has been tilting toward the GOP: The contributions from AT&T’s PAC, employees and their family members to federal candidates total about $3 million for the 2012 cycle, with about two-thirds of the money going to Republican federal officeholders and candidates. Sunlight’s Political Party Time website helps break down where AT&T spends even more money wining and dining legislators.

The Michigan Republican delegation threw its kickoff party there Saturday night, which featured top state lawmakers. Guests at the event went home with a stuffed elephant with an AT&T logo, the Detroit News reported. AT&T also sponsored an Illinois delegation event there on Tuesday afternoon. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the telecom giant is sponsoring the event, and events lists showed that the Illinois delegates was at Jackson’s that afternoon.

At this week’s Democratic National Convention at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C., AT&T’s Death Star logo isn’t hard to spot either.

Amidst the goodie bags and handouts from Indian tribes trying to secure lucrative casino laws, big pharmaceutical companies asking for special favors, and giant energy companies was once again: AT&T.

AT&T’s stuffed GOP elephant. (Democracy Now)

On Tuesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Democratic national chairwoman, lectured the Republicans about the influence of special interest cash at the Republican National Convention. She referred to the GOP affair as “last week’s special-interest funded, corporate-infused, backroom-deals, smoke-filled room, invitation-only affair that was held in my home state.”

Only the breakfast event where she made the remarks was bought and paid for by AT&T.

AT&T does not splurge on upscale dining for Democrats though. The party that largely opposed AT&T’s merger deal with T-Mobile and often supports Net Neutrality is making due with a far-smaller AT&T hospitality suite serving scrambled eggs and bagels at the inelegant Airport DoubleTree Inn, quite a step down from the Caramelized Diver Scallops and Red Snapper on the menu for the corporate-friendly GOP.

AT&T’s pervasive presence at the Charlotte convention is also upsetting union workers, who turned out in large numbers at the convention. Unionized employees are still fighting with AT&T for a new contract. Already uncomfortable in a state where union workers are virtually an endangered species (to add insult, unions were booked in non-unionized hotels), many were unprepared to feast at AT&T’s breakfast buffet.

“This is one breakfast I won’t be eating,” William Henderson, the president of Local 1298 of the Communications Workers of America told the CT Mirror. “I won’t eat their stuff.”

Only he didn’t say “stuff.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/William Henderson Boycotts ATT Breakfast.flv[/flv]

William Henderson, president of a Connecticut chapter of the Communications Workers of America, stands outside leafleting an AT&T-sponsored breakfast in Charlotte, N.C., displaying a bumper sticker: “AT&T=Greed.”  (1 minute)

What should a good union worker with a gripe against AT&T do instead?  Leaflet the event, to the great potential embarrassment of AT&T officials and Connecticut Democratic lawmakers holding a union grievance brochure in one hand and an AT&T coffee cup in the other.

The room eventually quieted down to listen to former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd make remarks… on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America, who he now represents.

Despite the Snapper-Gap between the two political parties, you cannot miss AT&T in Charlotte. Although convention spokespeople officially refer to corporate sponsors as “providers,” AT&T’s corporate logo is “provided” on every last lanyard handed to delegates and journalists, right next to Barack Obama’s campaign logo.

In case you forgot to charge your cell phone, two AT&T officials are permanently on hand at a table near the entrance to the event offering free battery boosters. But don’t worry, they’ll get paid back for that goodwill later.

[flv width=”448″ height=”276″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Party Time RNC Cash.flv[/flv]

Democracy Now talks with Sunlight Foundation’s Keenan Steiner who shares the secrets of corporate cash at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.  (18 minutes)

The Republican party platform on technology gives little credit to the Obama Administration’s handling of all-things-high-tech and demands a wholesale deregulation effort to free the hands of service providers, get rid of Net Neutrality, and sell off wireless spectrum to boost wireless communications.

The platform authors are particularly incensed about Net Neutrality, a policy that requires providers to treat Internet content equally on their networks. Some Republicans have previously called that “a government takeover of the Internet,” telling providers what they can and cannot provide customers. Vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) fiercely opposes Net Neutrality. In 2011, he supported a resolution disapproving of the policy and in 2006 he voted against an amendment to a bill that would have codified it into federal law.

“The most vibrant sector of the American economy, indeed, one-sixth of it, is regulated by the federal government on precedents from the Nineteenth Century. Today’s technology and telecommunications industries are overseen by the FCC, established in 1934 and given the jurisdiction over telecommunications formerly assigned to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which had been created in 1887 to regulate the railroads. This is not a good fit,” the Republican platform states. “Indeed, the development of telecommunications advances so rapidly that even the Telecom Act of 1996 is woefully out of date.”

Mitt Romney is an ardent deregulator. Under a plan favored by the Republican presidential candidate, agencies like the Federal Communications Commission would be required to offset the cost of any new regulations by eliminating existing regulations. Additionally, Romney plans to issue an executive order as president telling all agencies they must notify Congress about any forthcoming regulations and wait for the House and Senate to approve them before they could take effect. With the current level of Congressional gridlock, a consensus to approve any new regulatory policy is unlikely. The end effect would likely be a near-moratorium on government regulation.

The Republican platform also attacked the Obama Administration for failing to expand broadband to rural areas, but offered nothing beyond generalities about “public-private partnerships” on how to expand broadband to the unserved.

Romney

“That hurts rural America, where farmers, ranchers, and small business manufacturers need connectivity to expand their customer base and operate in real time with the world’s producers,” the platform said. “We encourage public-private partnerships to provide predictable support for connecting rural areas so that every American can fully participate in the global economy.”

One can infer from the language in the document Republicans are opposed to public broadband initiatives.

The Republicans also promise to accelerate public spectrum sell-offs to private companies through auctions to expand the number of frequencies available for wireless communications.

The Obama Administration defends its telecommunications policies, noting the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s broadband stimulus program have identified unserved areas, despite provider obfuscation, and targeted funding to open up new broadband opportunities. The administration also says it has effectively reformed the Universal Service Fund into a new Connect America Fund that will underwrite prohibitively expensive rural broadband expansion projects.

The White House also defends its spectrum policies noting existing spectrum still has licensed users that face lengthy and often costly transitions to other frequencies to clear space for cell phone companies. Still, President Obama ordered the FCC to find 500MHz of spectrum to reallocate to wireless communications and the FCC plans the first ever incentive auction that will let TV stations voluntarily surrender their frequencies in return for financial incentives.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns oppose efforts to internationalize Internet regulatory policy through organizations like the United Nations or the International Telecommunications Union. Some governments have stepped up their efforts to lobby for a transition away from Internet policies they see dominated by the United States.

Democrats are also considering Internet language in their party platform for the party’s upcoming convention next month.

Phillip “At Least They Are Transparent About Robbing You” Dampier

The unassailable truth is that if there is a right way for a company to treat its customers and a wrong way, AT&T will always choose the wrong way. It’s the primary reason I refuse to do business with them.

The company’s recent decision to block Apple FaceTime for customers who refuse to be herded to one of AT&T’s new Mobile Share plans is another shot across the bow of Net Neutrality, which declares customers should be able to use the applications and services of their choosing — particularly on networks where they pay for those choices.

Principal #1 of Net Neutrality: Companies should not be playing favorites with applications or services by blocking or restricting those a provider does not favor.

AT&T’s response: ‘Whatever.’

The predictable outrage of customers should have come as no surprise to AT&T, but somehow it did.

The company picked testy senior vice president for regulatory affairs Bob Quinn to mount a rapid defense against the pitchfork-and-torch-yielding throngs on AT&T’s Public Policy Blog. That was their second mistake.

Quinn, who spent last December valiantly defending AT&T against its too-precious CupcakeGate mini-scandal, conjured up this pretzel-twisted logic tap dance to explain away its latest boorish behavior:

Providers of mobile broadband Internet access service are subject to two net neutrality requirements: (1) a transparency requirement pursuant to which they must disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of their broadband Internet access services; and (2) a no-blocking requirement under which they are prohibited, subject to reasonable network management, from blocking applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services.

AT&T’s plans for FaceTime will not violate either requirement.  Our policies regarding FaceTime will be fully transparent to all consumers, and no one has argued to the contrary.  There is no transparency issue here.

Nor is there a blocking issue.  The FCC’s net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability to customers of applications that are preloaded on phones.  Indeed, the rules do not require that providers make available any preloaded apps.  Rather, they address whether customers are able to download apps that compete with our voice or video telephony services.   AT&T does not restrict customers from downloading any such lawful applications, and there are several video chat apps available in the various app stores serving particular operating systems. (I won’t name any of them for fear that I will be accused by these same groups of discriminating in favor of those apps.  But just go to your app store on your device and type “video chat.”)  Therefore, there is no net neutrality violation.

A company lecturing its customers for daring to question its decisions is always a good way to enhance those warm and fuzzy feelings people have about America’s least-liked wireless phone company. Quinn first scolds customers and consumer groups about their “knee jerk reaction,” for being upset about the issue. Then he declares they have “rushed to judgment,” using a turn of phrase not heard since O.J. Simpson’s defense team pounded it to death, and look where that ultimately got us.

The crux of AT&T’s argument is they get a free pass to “block and herd” because Apple FaceTime was pre-installed on customer phones. Therefore, since AT&T didn’t block you from downloading an app you already had, it cannot possibly be a Net Neutrality violation. Because as we all know, Net Neutrality is only about download blocking.

At least AT&T is keeping their promise to be transparent. They have, indeed, fully informed you they are mugging you while in the process of mugging you. Full disclosure… matters.

Somehow, I missed the “preinstalled does not count” section in the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2010 order to providers telling them to preserve the free and open Internet. So I spent last night with this legalese page-turner (194 pages to be exact) to refresh my memory.

Nope, it isn’t in there. You can read it for yourself from the link above.

So it isn’t me. It is them, making up the rules as they go, again.

Quinn graciously offers customers one concession: AT&T will allow you to use Apple FaceTime over your own home Wi-Fi network. Gosh thanks!

For customers addicted to FaceTime, AT&T’s solution is an expensive plan change. An average customer currently paying $70 for 450-barely used voice minutes and 3GB of data will find FaceTime off-limits on AT&T’s network unless they “upgrade” to AT&T’s $95 Mobile Share plan, which gets you only 1GB of data, but endless voice minutes you don’t want and unlimited texting you don’t need.

Result: Pay $25 more a month and get your data allowance slashed by 2/3rds. That’s a deal — AT&T-style.

But it is one some customers are through taking. Nalin Kuachusri:

The new FaceTime restrictions will usher in the end of my 12+ year relationship with AT&T. I’m tired of the consistent manipulation of plans and features to extract more and more money for services I don’t need. For example: there used to be several text-message options (200, 1000, 1500, unlimited) so I could choose and pay for the one that fit my usage best. Then there was the option to move from unlimited data to 2GB/month to save $5. That was great for me and fit my usage. Then I was forced to move back to $30/month if I wanted to add tethering where I’ll get an extra GB that I’ll never use. Finally, after 12 years as a customer with an account in good standing, I was not allowed to unlock my phone for my 10-day trip to Europe so I could get a local SIM. I couldn’t be happier to give you one final $200 payment as an early-termination fee so I can move to Verizon.

Unfortunately for Kuachusri, the bosses at Verizon Wireless are likely slapping themselves silly because they did not come up with the idea first.