President Obama's FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has a reputation in DC of being a "tepid" regulator. From reports of his net neutrality proposal, he's living up to that reputation.
The proposal does not meet Obama's campaign promises, or Obama's other agencies' actions, on net neutrality. It is "make-believe net neutrality."
Here are why the proposal is a meaningless gesture:
- It exempts wireless. Like the Google-Verizon proposal, Julius's makes an artificial distinction between accessing the Internet through a wire and through a wireless connection. No nondiscrimination rule applies to wireless. The Chairman's fig leaf is to ban "blocking" on wireless, but not discrimination. And this ban on blocking applies only to voice and video technologies--not new and innovative technologies yet unimagined. That is, this proposal is weaker than the Republicans' 2005 policy principles, which would forbid all blocking; the proposal is nowhere near including a "fifth principle" of nondiscrimination on wireless that Democrats long called for. This wireless exemption comes despite predictions that, within the decade, most users will access the Internet wirelessly. It also comes despite the FCC's National Broadband Plan betting on wireless to expand Internet access--a bet that would require broadcasters and government agencies to abandon spectrum holdings. Under Genachowski's proposal, Sprint Wireless could discriminate against, say, Skype, degrading it to make it less reliable--so long as they don't block it. Outside voice or video, anything is fair game. AT&T Wireless could make its own social network load faster than Facebook, or could make Fox News or MSNBC load faster than CNN or BBC, based on payments. While Skype, Facebook, and Fox News could maybe fend for themselves, innovative start-ups will be unable to reach wireless users without permission from gatekeepers like AT&T.
- The proposal may not ban paid-priority. A ban on paid priority is central to any real net neutrality proposal, beginning with the Snowe-Dorgan bill of 2006. Indeed, the notion of "payment for priority" is what started the net neutrality fight; in late 2005, AT&T's CEO said that Vonage and Google had to stop using his pipes for free. The only way a carrier could charge for priority is if basic Internet access was not sufficient for a company to compete; if Yahoo! does need priority to compete effectively, why pay? Without a ban on paid priority, we can expect basic access to deteriorate so companies have to pay for priority. Â I am guessing the proposal does not ban paid priority clearly because of earlier reports, and because recent reports refer to "unreasonable discrimination." Â "Unreasonable discrimination" is a term from section 202 of the Communications Act, and has applied to phone companies' pricing. AT&T has long argued that phone companies could differentially price for access under section 202, so "unreasonable discrimination" would permit charging Google a price for priority, so long as that price were available to all other search engines. This could lead to exclusive deals. AT&T can simply set a high, monopoly-level price for search-engine priority that only Google can pay, one that no upstart (like StumbleUpon?) could afford.
- There may be no jurisdiction for any of this anyway. In April, the D.C. Circuit interpreted Title I of the Communications Act narrowly, severely curtailing the FCC's ability to adopt rules for Internet access. This was the Free Press-Comcast decision, which the FCC General Counsel argued for the FCC and I argued for consumer groups and tech companies. It was a shellacking. After a month of studying the question, the FCC General Counsel concluded the obvious: relying on Title I authority after that case was irresponsible and doomed to failure. The Chairman made a video explaining how the FCC should rely on authority under Title II, which is something that several Justices of the Supreme Court (including Scalia) thought the FCC should have done from the beginning. The Chairman described reclassifying to Title II as the principled center, but without principle, the center keeps shifting.In the proposal, the FCC will not reclassify. It will either build its house on the sand of Title I, citing multiple provisions as it did in the Free Press-Comcast case, expecting an obvious repeat-shellacking. Reports suggest a "new" theory, with "additional analysis."  Reading between the lines, this may be the theory that was discussed months ago, even before the FP-Comcast decision was issued. This theory, which I remember discussing as early as 2007, rests on section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (codified at 47 USC 1302). I am skeptical that provision can support net neutrality, even after the negative report described in that section, but I will wait to see the details. Certainly, this is an untested theory, and its scope and outer bounds are unclear.
- Enforcement is unclear. It's not clear if there are sufficient announced penalties or inexpensive, rapid procedures that start-ups and consumers could actually use.
Despite all these compromises, the Republicans have still come out guns blazing:
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Tuesday afternoon that she would work to topple any FCC-led net neutrality order.
"This is a hysterical reaction by the FCC to a hypothetical problem," she said, adding that Genachowski "has little if any congressional support" for the action. To overturn any order, Blackburn vowed to reintroduce her bill to prevent the FCC's policy making process.
It's like the famous (
Lessig) quote: "Sold my soul and nothing happened."
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You forgot to mention that a great part of the media is bought and paid for.
As a not-for -profit trying to promote personal privacy online, we are not only ignored by the supposed tech champions like TechCrunch, but now our voice is silenced by blocking us from commenting on their website.
Manufacturing consent for their capitalist friends whist posing as the good guys. So many 'open' project fully funded by the dismantlers of privacy.
You are so right, capitalism has absolutely no morals.
I present to you what you can look for in the end result :
1. Step One -
They will determine who's gonna get paid
2. Step Two -
The politicians (in both parties) will demand to get paid for the campaign contribution from the highest revenue streaming group
3. Step Three -
The politicians will then proceed to support whoever will continue to pay into their campaign chest.
4. Step Four - Republicans will demand that Net Neutrality is against national security and proceed to dictate a defense contractor as an independent "free market" Super-Intercedent to over see the proceedings.
Then Republicans will immediately name whoever wins as "this" defense contractor and squeeze them for more campaign money.
...........now continue your dialogue along those lines and you'll have a full picture of whats about to happen.
Net neutrality is about to be murdered in plain view without the slightest hint of running away from the scene of the crime.
And there will be my boy, there will be.... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
The truth is a kick in the crotch of democracy.
When author says "most will connect to Internet using wireless", he means they will use WIFI or such, in homes and businesses. This doesn't apply, those will all still be net neutral.
Will the average person even be able to recognize the abuse until it is entrenched? The average person, including me, is very low knowledge about the workings of the internet. That's why we need the government and the FCC to PROTECT us from the pirating big corps.
There will be none.
Break-up the giant media corporations.
The fact is the infrastucture is already paid for, and that's what your cable bill is for.
If Comcast is telling them to pay for something they've already paid for, that's nutty. Comcast should be smacked. If the consumer is paying Comcast $XX for YY MB/s & GB/mo, it really shouldn't matter WHAT they're accessing, they're entitled to access whatever they've paid for right up to the last Bit/s and the last Bit/mo. What does it matter whether they're downloading video from NetFlix or YouTube or Google or whoever? Does it matter whether it's 1/4 GB from here and 3/4 GB from some other place or 1 GB all from the same place? Heck no! Why should one provider have to pay extra to cram their packets down the same pipe everyone else gets access to without paying a premium.
Isn't the essence of Net Neutrality that all packets are created equal and should receive the same high QoS, with no packets relegated to the "slow lane"? (With some flexibility for exceptional cases like emergency services, telemedicine, etc., where there's effectively "zero margin for error.")
What *IS* to stop providers from "pricing others out of the market" by setting some arbitrary "QoS level" price so high that only the richest can afford it? A "rich get richer, poor get poorer" feedback loop where those with deeper pockets get better service thus more customers and everyone else gets less and less QoS due to their inability to afford the highest tier(s) of the market, costing them revenue, customers...
I have observed Republican legislative policies during the past 40 years and have never noted any proposal that stood to make life better for the middle class or poor but only the intent to make sure that rich are afforded more unfair advantages over those who are to be exploited.
I see no reason to believe that any Republican proposal has any intent to make anything more than more for the have's and less for the have not's.
I prepared to be shown the errors of my ways and thoughts. Surely someone out there can persuade me that the GOP is potentially intent on being beneficent toward those who are not already heavily enfranchised. Come on GOPers show me that you are going to do what is good the non-wealthy majority rather than ferociously protecting the already very rich.