Comcast wants you to trust them -- to really, really trust them.
That's why the company's top lobbyist, David Cohen, convened what could best be described as a Kumbaya sing-along in Washington on Monday, to declare Net Neutrality an issue over which Washington needn't concern itself any longer.
"It's time to put this [Net Neutrality] debate behind us," he told an audience of D.C. insiders at the Brookings Institution. "Check the box and move on."
Now, don't think this means Comcast has changed its tune on the importance of the open Internet. It's still trying to kill Net Neutrality. It's just making a softer sell to convince Washington to forget about protecting the rights of Internet users.
"The courts, the FCC, and the Congress -- all valuable institutions filled with capable, conscientious people ... but few of them with the background to work out consensus on what are essentially complicated technical issues," Cohen said.
To whom, then, should we turn to look out for the public interest? Why, the industry itself. According to Cohen, "real self-regulation" with the assistance of an industry-formed advisory group is the answer.
Minding the Hen House
The advisory group Cohen has in mind, known as BITAG, was quickly cobbled together by Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Microsoft, Intel and other major industry players in June 2010 -- just as the Federal Communications Commission was starting to craft rules to safeguard Internet users from an industry push to exert more control over Web content and applications.
Never mind that BITAG's list of charter members includes the biggest violators of Net Neutrality -- not least of all, Comcast.
To that end, Cohen skimmed over Comcast's covert campaign to block peer-to-peer users on its network -- for which it was sanctioned by the FCC.
Cohen would like us to forget that it was Comcast that was caught red-handed blocking lawful Internet traffic in 2007, and that then lied about what it was doing. It was Comcast that tried to evade scrutiny by obstructing public participation in an FCC hearing investigating its Internet blocking. And when the FCC forced the company to stop discriminating against its customers, without even levying a fine, it was Comcast that sued on a technicality to avoid any accountability.
But in an effort to whitewash its record of underhanded activity, Cohen claimed that the public reaction to this debacle taught the company a lesson about being better self-regulators.
"In retrospect," he said, "we made the wrong decision for the right reasons." Though those who were blocked from sharing barbershop quartet music and the King James Bible might remember things differently.
Bygones, said Cohen, who now claims Comcast was vindicated and can be trusted with the fate of your Internet -- and of NBC Universal, which it hopes to acquire.
Fear and Self-Loathing in Washington
"Unfortunately, the national debate around Net Neutrality and an 'open Internet' has been almost exclusively driven by lawyers," declared Cohen (who is a lawyer). In fact, Comcast hates lawyers so much that the company employs at least 100 of them from 30 different D.C. firms to lobby Washington to get its way.
All of Cohen's lip service about consensus would be more palatable if his company hadn't poured so much money into astroturf front groups and lobbyists determined to undermine all efforts to encourage fair competition and a level playing field online.
The only thing you can trust about Comcast is that it seeks to boost its bottom line and serve shareholders by any means possible. That's the nature of corporations. And naturally, the public shouldn't expect corporations like Comcast to look out for its best interests.
Public policy is designed for that role -- to make it profitable for corporations to behave in ways that don't harm the rest of us. The only thing that will keep Comcast honest is clear rules of the road and a real watchdog such as the FCC to enforce them.
Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr
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I write much more about people powered policy making here: http://stearns.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/people-powered-policy-making/
Yes, because the free market will always regulate itself responsibly! Remember in 1997 when Wyleth pulled Fen-Phen off the market of their own volition? Oh wait, that's not quite right...the FDA had the drug pulled after studies had found it to be dangerous. Well hmm...what about in 2004 when the financial services industry decided to stop bundling "liar's loans" into derivatives packages, and thus averted a financial catastrophe? Oh wait, that never happened. Well, what about in the early 20th century when child labor was deemed unsafe and unethical, and all companies stopped using it? Oh yeah, that didn't happen either, it took adults willing to work for children's wages to practically end child labor in this nation.
Profits over people, 100% of the time.
This is not a complicated situation. The only thing making it complicated is that Obama / administration / Congress et. all. want to keep corporations involved in the Internet happy. And those corporations want to be able to control what content is delivered to their end users - because then they can extract money, content item by content item.
Basically, COMCAST etc. want to be able to charge either Google / and or/ the end user in order to allow Googling. And so on, for everything.
Its going to be pay to play, all the way. The FCC can fix this, tomorrow. Which means Obama can fix this tomorrow. And he should do so forcefully, BEFORE the next Congress waltzes in.
Same can be said for corporations regulating themselves. They will eat your chickens and then sting you when you complain. Because it is just their nature. Profit is good. Everything else does not matter.
The overriding concern of business is money and money has no conscience, cannot care about anything or anyone, and has no morality. If the primary factor in every decision is money, than concerns about the social good will not weigh heavily enough to make any difference. It used to be recognized that government was responsible for regulating industries so that the social good would have an equal footing in the decisions and actions of these industries, or at least would not be utterly dismissed.
Now congress has been reduced to nothing more than yes men to the corporations, the more money the corporations have the louder congress shouts “Yes!” They cosign the industries efforts to ignore all social responsibility and even pass laws (or repeal older ones) to help them do it.
But so effective have been the propaganda of the banks and businesses, that even suggesting that social responsibility on the part of industry will only result from regulation would brand me a socialist. A term which ironically has taken on the flavor of the term nazi.
We are about to start reaping the fruits of our votes. http://ohaneze.blogspot.com/
Good one.
Not the last time I checked the White House, Senate and majority at the FCC. Did I miss something Boodieugwumba, or are these some of those "facts" that exist only on a parallel but opposite planet?
The Madison River issue was resolved through consent decree without having to use any net neutrality rules. Not really an example for why we need new rules on net neutrality as there has been no blocking of voip since.