Net Neutrality’s Weird Week
By Tim Karr, May 7, 2010
On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski blinked. He balked. He backed away from phone and cable companies and moved toward broadband policies that will preserve the open Internet and promote universal access.
For a moment, the chairman had a lot of people worried. A Washington Post story from earlier in the week indicated that Genachowski was going to cave to pressure from AT&T and Comcast lobbyists and abandon his pledge to protect Net Neutrality.
Several sources within the agency painted a picture of a chairman with no appetite to do battle with entrenched special interests. And these companies would have kept their stranglehold on policymaking at the FCC were it not for the massive public response in the wake of the Post’s story.
Thousands of SavetheInternet.com supporters called the White House to complain about Genachowski’s reported inaction; others kept phones ringing off the hook in the chairman's office for days; and nearly 250,000 signed their names to a letter demanding that the FCC reclaim its authority under the law and keep corporate gatekeepers from dictating what information we can access online.
The outcry came from all corners and it pierced through the usual clamor of lobbyists. On Thursday Genachowski responded, proposing a “Title II” option that would give teeth to Net Neutrality protections, and allow the agency to regain stronger legal footing in its efforts to connect people to a fast, affordable and open Internet, as envisioned in the national broadband plan.
The chairman described his proposal as a “third way” – balancing the interests of consumers against the needs of industry. Such political kabuki didn’t staunch the tide of complaints from Comcast, AT&T and their functionaries on Capitol Hill.
The incumbents “will be ferocious in their opposition to proposals that impose even minimal government oversight,” writes Free Press Policy Counsel Aparna Sridhar. “Ensuring that this regulatory shift sets the groundwork for good policymaking will require courage in the coming weeks.”
While this stormy week has come to an end, the regulatory debate will continue to raise dust inside the Beltway. The discussion can get arcane and and technical. From the perspective of most Americans though, it's simply about getting fast, cheap and free-flowing Internet access in a marketplace where we have real choices among carriers.
Phone and cable companies dominated communications policy throughout the first decade of this century. They pushed a Bush FCC to re-regulate the Internet access in their favor -- saying it would prompt greater competition and better services. But they followed the Bush-era rule changes with a wave of mergers that reduced market choices, pushed prices skyward and delivered slower speeds than what's now available in other developed countries. Now they're talking up plans to be gatekeepers to the information that flows across these pipes.
And that's why we need to stay on alert. As this issue comes to a head at the FCC over the next few months, we'll need to keep up public pressure on the FCC, lobby members of Congress and continue to debunk the industry lies about Net Neutrality. And we'll need to step up again if Chairman Genachowski starts to waffle on protecting the open Internet.
In an age when corporations can spend limitless sums to influence policy, strong arm bureaucrats and sway election outcomes, the public must stand together in defense of the only open communications platform we have left.
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Free Press does not support or oppose any candidate for public office. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media and universal access to communications.
Tim Karr
Timothy Karr oversees all Free Press and Free Press Action Fund campaigns and online outreach efforts, including SavetheInternet.com and Free Press' work on public broadcasting, propaganda and journalism.
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Comments
As I commented in another
As I commented in another blog on this site, this author and his pals on this site are just left wing radicals. That said, for whatever personal and private reasons, these guys are willing to run with the flag of Google, and be its henchmen. May be Google is the good guy and the cable MSOs and the telcos are the bad guys in these people's views, nevermind that GOOG is a $20Bn behemoth, which throws its weight around just a badly as MSFT did in its hayday.
The author Tim Karr also made the absurd claim in another blog that cable companies have 80% profit margins on their broadband products, but when challenged to show proof, he promptly went AWOL.
It would be useful when you pour all this vitriol on the cable/telcos whatever your interest is. I can disclose that I am an investor that invests in both cable/telcos as well as tech stocks like GOOG. Can you make a full disclosure if you are getting funded by GOOG and its henchmen or not?
Just the facts intcamD1
This is getting old but if it makes a difference to you (which it probably won't), I'll state the facts once more:
Free Press receives no money from industry, political parties or government groups. We are funded 100% through the support of dozens of foundations and thousands of individual donors who believe like us that there needs to be stronger advocacy for the public interest in crucial media policy debates.
We don't receive a penny -- not one red cent -- from Google. There are plenty of lies circulating to suggest otherwise but they are simply that -- lies.
The 80% profit margin comes from cable industry analyst Craig Moffett of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. (not one of your imaginary cabal of left wing radicals). Moffet says that Comcast "has a profit margin of 55% in video but 70% in phone and 80% for broadband," according to this story from Razor's Edge:
http://blog.ockhamresearch.com/index.php/2008/08/when-is-the-cable-buy-s...
So when are you going to retract your statement that this is "an absurd claim" and that I have gone AWOL on proving it?
That's why we need to stay on
That's why we need to stay on alert.
DSL
Since I joined the support for net neutrality, whenever I visit a site that streams video, such as You Tube or NetFlix, my DSL will play for a few minutes, then it will suddenly disconnect or become so slow dial-up would be faster. AT&T is my provider.
I've experienced stuff like that too.
I've experienced situations with AT&T recently where I would try to access reviews of national broadband systems and then see the browser try to load it almost sucessfully once and then fail and the fail much quicker on successive attempts. I did a connection diagnostic and it was ok. Tried another brand of browser and witnessed the same pattern, it looks like they are actively trying to engage in censorship. There may be a heightend tendency to assum such things now but they have repeatedly stated and done things that suggest this is more than appearance.
I've seen a similar issue with Google. A search for "OnLive" in their news rankings without quotes used to bring up countless hits. Even separating the term into "On Live" would bring up many references to it. Now one must actually put quotes on it or nothing comes up. This down grading may have been threatened market incumbents trying to block access to a new comer really trying to deny it mindshare- engaging in a similar censorship.
Dianne Feinstein still doesn't take Neurality Seriously
Feinstein or her office is still framing Neutrality in terms of questiong if its just a simple question of access and questioning if its a real issue aside from assuring that any threat it poses to the needs or ambitions of industry are mitigated.
This is the response from her office to a letter urging support for Neutrality:
" Thank you for writing to me about open access to the Internet and network neutrality. I appreciate hearing from you.
I agree with the general principles of network neutrality that owners of the networks that provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network and should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.
As Congress debates changes to our telecommunications laws this year, many different proposals have been offered regarding network neutrality. The question arises whether or not action is needed to ensure unfettered access to the Internet. I believe any workable solution must balance the needs of the network, service and information providers. Please know that when legislation regarding network neutrality comes before the Senate I will be sure to keep your specific views in mind. "
I emailed another letter back objecting to the framing of the issue in this way and stated I thought it was a grave matter of political speech and the need to block a destabilizing power grab:
"With all due respect I absolutely disagree with framing this issue as a matter of access or one of balance where the financial concerns of an industry needs to be protected.
This is about a power grab which if allowed to occur may well irreparably harm our nation.
With great self righteousness and entitlement telco/cable is attempting to directly profit from censorship. In recent legal proceedings they argued that as private corporations they have a right to disrupt public discourse through censorship and made clear their obvious intention to destroy the internet by turning the Internet into broadcast because: the internet "pipes" are their "microphone…megaphone." We already have a captured non functioning press and these firms are arguing to capture and make non functional the one remaining medium for communication and free expression.
Telco/cable is attempting to justify theft of public property on the basis of a right to oppress. We’ve had to put up with the undermining of our system of law through: ‘corporate rights;’ debt/money as speech; unlimited corporate campaign spending; the raising of the bar on evidence; the weakening of habeas corpus… regardless of their contributions to your campaigns any support by your office of anti neutrality positions would have to be interpreted by me as support for corruption.
A system based on puffing, sponsorship and lobbying is not a society but tyranny. There is no room for equivocation Telco/cable is attempting to sink democracy, there is no defensible interest to compromise with. There can be no appeal to fear mongering, the public neither needs nor wants the filtering and propaganda these parasitic middlemen already provide and incite in other rightfully dying mediums. Its intolerable that a firm like Comcast can threaten regulatory war against the American people as it campaigns to curb speech and reduce choice through acquisition- it should be facing breakup up.
These firms have constantly gouged the public and used their power over and over again in ways that damage the status of the nation and now are apparently putting it at risk as they attack our political speech and suffrage. They have tried to argue that the Constitution guarantees them a right to a return, as if they were creditors that could never be paid off. The only guarantee they have is competition- they have no right to collude and their capital must make a net contribution and not just result in lost opportunity. The public owns markets outright and does not share that ownership with corporations, so there is no balance question. The public is not a risk and loss sump for non contributing/constructive capital. There can be no appeal to circular wealth and might make right style justifications.
Instead lets have internet policies even over the short term that limit the risk and increase the utility of the Internet.
1. Unlimited use of all and everything that uses a screen and a connection for one low flat monthly or annual amount paid by an end user or the state.
2. 15mb connections to a 100 million in the US. Assuming low latency, good connection quality and neutrality, this may be the lower range of what is needed to unlock cloud computing.
3. An ad free in internet, proper search, the net itself and neutrality naturally disintermediate ads/sponsorship/lobbying/broadcast.
4. Strong privacy, neutrality and support for anonymous speech. "
Sincerely
Concerned Constituent
Early Kagan can't be twisted into Anti-Neutrality
If the idea that government cannot enhance one groups speech (public's) at the expense of another (corporations) holds than every law dedicated to supporting or allowing for puffing, sponsorship or lobbying needs to be thrown because these all act to elevate the voices of those behind corporatism at the expense of the public’s voice and generally at the expense of the average individual’s voice.
This is a trick that turns on language. The corporations are composed of the 'public' and the public is more basic and prior to. Corporations are an arbitrary construction much shunned by the framers. Society is for the sake of society and parasitic commercial speech is not even secondary relative to political speech and earlier SC rulings recognized this and newer rulings have no power to change this basic relationship. Society is not for the sake of commerce and commerce, even when cast in terms of livelihood, is not special especially where there is an adequate 'safety net.'
Throw out the notion of corporate rights. Legal convenience or not, such a construction is redundant in practice because those who benefit most directly from controlling the corporate voice also retain their private voice and this notion of ‘rights’ is the basis for that speech inequity. Also, those who exercise more direct control over a corporation are even able to use the resources of other vested parties (not just stock holders) to generate speech that would act against the interests of those parties. Every corporation is a fiefdom, a totalitarian instrument for the concentration of power and speech and like a whole built out of fractals the whole resemble its component parts.
Throw out debt as speech or money as speech. This is really just slavery to those who got there first it’s a lottery winner take all set up.
Also, get rid of the corporate veil or anything that allows the aggregate entity to act irresponsibly to unilaterally shift the burden and the risk to others. Even as we want to get things done we can’t build a sustainable democratic society out of rigid hierarchical militaristic secretive components.
Really one can’t have speech without privacy and anonymous speech, but one can have neither with rampant corporate secrecy. Corporate secrecy and its related suppression of speech are the true sources of errant corporate power- no corporation needs either. IP laws need to be changed to reflect an emphasis on over all standard of living vice production, the only gain from IP should be just enough, and never more than is required to prime the pump. Biotech and Pharma are horrible arguments to the contrary, in reality biotech has been a commercial failure because the understanding is still very weak as are the theories- and the same goes for Pharma. How many drugs actually work? According to a study commissioned by a major EU state about 1% and the rest is just puffed up speech or placebo. Under the current system, Pharma as an approach suppresses more promising approaches like stem cell.
While we are at it, what has been the opportunity cost in jobs of allowing the speech of the phone and cable company to drown us out for a decade? Well we are a decade behind where we should be and on a plan to take a decade to get there. The missing jobs must run into the millions.