"Hello World! It's Me, the Internet!"

Big news today for the Internet -- and for the lobbying world. A group of organizations from the "Internet infrastructure industry" announced a new policy advocacy organization, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.  i2, as they are calling themselves, claim to "support[] those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet". They don't define exactly what those "nuts and bolts" are, but their members list includes software-as-service, remote hosting, and spectrum organizations.

An informal browsing of their members seems to indicate that most are related to cloud computing or other remote services. I question whether this is really representative of the "Internet infrastructure" without network owners and ISPs. Regardless of what they call themselves, though, i2 has stated that they believe in a robust and growing Internet environment to encourage innovation.

The most interesting part of i2's site is the explanation of their policy positions. Most of their positions are not particularly surprising for businesses relying on the Internet for their business models. I'd like to highlight a few interesting implications of their positions, though.