Guess Who's Afraid of an Open Internet?

Open Internet advocates just received a parting gift from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

In a Thursday filing to the Federal Communications Commission, Gonzales' Department of Justice urged the agency to oppose Net Neutrality -- the principle that all Internet sites should be treated equally.

Last-minute favors for friends in Texas

The DOJ stated that broadband companies like AT&T should be able to erect toll booths and filter traffic -- upending the even playing field that has made the Web an unrivaled engine of democratic discourse and new ideas.

The DOJ ruling once again proves the point -- argued here at Huffington Post and elsewhere -- that powerful corporate and government gatekeepers are working together to dismantle Internet freedoms and impose their will upon the Web.

While Gonzales' feckless reign at Justice is near an end, his department's legacy is becoming clear: The DOJ has established itself as a friend to the powerful and enemy to the basic freedoms that Americans once took for granted.

As Gonzales slinks back to Texas, he is pulling last-minute favors for friends in high places. This week's filing reeks of the same sort of cronyism that has left a slime trail wherever the Attorney General has gone.

Going AWOL on Internet Freedom

In October 2006, the DOJ went AWOL on its duty to protect consumers and competition when it rubber-stamped AT&T's bid to gobble up BellSouth. It was left to the FCC to step in and restore Net Neutrality safeguards to the massive merger.

When AT&T was accused of illegally tapping its customers' lines, it was DOJ lawyers that moved in under the cover of night with an attempt to dismiss the suit.

It was late last month that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell admitted the extent to which the government and AT&T had conspired in far-reaching efforts to spy on Americans without legal warrant. The Bush administration is now pushing for immunity from prosecution for telecom firms that eavesdrop on customers.

AT&T has long sought to use "deep packet inspection" tools to sift Internet user content. The company has already 'demoed' this technology to the RIAA and MPA as part of a plan to scour the Web for file sharing that doesn't conform to the industry's draconian interpretation of copyright.

Without Net Neutrality protections, it was only a matter of time before phone companies and government used this same technology to spy on the everyday activities of Net users.

Parroting Ma Bell

Thursday's filing by a lame duck Attorney General is instructive in this context. According to public interest lawyer Harold Feld of Media Access Project, the DOJ document reads like the "Cliffsnotes version" of AT&T's own anti-Net Neutrality filing.

"The filing parrots the industry arguments that adopting a rule that would prevent telephone and cable companies from monitoring and filtering internet traffic would harm investment and innovation," Feld writes, "despite mounting evidence from Europe and Asia that the opposite is true."

Indeed, the DOJ filing uses hollow industry rhetoric about market forces to provide cover for more nefarious aims. According to the filing:

Other proposals would require interconnection, open access and structural separation of companies offering both Internet access services or transmission and content or applications deliverable over the Internet.

The Department submits, however, that free market competition, unfettered by unnecessary government regulatory restraints is the best way to foster innovation and development of the Internet.

This is utter nonsense. The DOJ knows, as does anyone paying attention to American broadband, that there is no "free market competition" or consumer choice when high speed Internet services are controlled by so few.

Open Internet = Free Market

Free market competition is exactly what we need. To get it, we must move beyond the broadband duopoly that has left America far behind the rest of the world in services and connectivity.

Moreover, we need to safeguard Internet traffic from the types of surveillance and "content shaping" now being deployed by these same companies.

Net Neutrality should be the cornerstone of any nation broadband plan. It frees the types of economic innovation and competition that have been a hallmark of the Internet's development until very recently.

Net Neutrality guarantees that each of us gets an equal voice and equal choice without meddling from the likes of Gonzales and his friends at Ma Bell.

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

It all amounts to bank-shot censorship, a broad threat against the public that if they don't make nice to corporate-land, they'll try and pull the plug. I have a different view, I think broadband should be an extension of Citizens' Band, the CB radio of yesteryear that still works pretty good and doesn't cost you a penny in terms of cell-phone airtime. I think it's fair to ask people to pay a service fee, if it's mechanical or electronic, it needs regular maintenance and care, and upgrades and whatnot,
so paying for the service should be understood to be a fair business practice. But, when you get to movies-on-demand, you start entering this ugly realm where big fish eat little fish,
I think you should still get your DVD movies from the video store, instead of trying to have aT1 pipe in your home etc. But, some people are lazy, and have money, and end up influencing all else that goes on, as a result...

[zjr909]

I'm just a little ticked with Savetheinternet.com. Last year, when Senator Ted Stevens' huge teleco give-away was going strong (by the way, whatever happened to Stevens?), I learned of savetheinternet through an op-ed in Washington Post. I sent a letter to my Congress people through the site (even though my Rep had already voted for the House version of the teleco bill). So far so good - right? But since then I've tried to send more letters through savetheinternet - and, every time, I'd get the same response: that I've already sent a letter. So I guess it's one per customer. Do the guys running that site know that one letter is just a begining, not a sum total of a person's potential input? Or is it some FCC thing about limiting each person responding to one response? I realize I could send all the letters I want on my own - but I figure they'll have more clout coming via a kind of clearing house of responses. Oh well, at least I got off one letter.

[fact finder]

Free and open dissemination of information is the worst nightmare of a dictator. That is why all dictators in history controlled and censored information of all types.

[Jazzylady26]

I saw nothing in his piece telling us what we could do. Can we call our senators and reps? Should we flood congress with emails telling them what we want? What? I know one thing, since we are the ones fueling the nets surely we can shut the bitch down? Paper and pencil anyone? Phones? I love computers, I am so in love with the nets, as they have turned out to be what I envisioned them to be, tho not as fast as I wanted. Nevertheless, the nets are here and so are we, but who says we have to be? Just as we fuel this sucker, we can starve it to death if we want. Being without the nets would be a hardship on me because I depend on so many merchants because I can't get around, but you bet I wouldn't find a way if I had to give up the nets? Where there's a will there's a way.

[Timothy Karr - Huffpost Blogger]

See Timothy Karr's Profile

You can go to SavetheInternet.com and follow the "ACT NOW" link off the front page.

Tim

[Jimmyboyo]

Can you say "sour grapes"? The net played a huge role in pushing congressional critters to pressure him and persue the investigation against him. He is pissed that he is leaving the halls of usurped power and this is a parting shot at the peasants.

[AmericaIsATerroist]

If the internet goes corporate, hackers will bring it to it's knees. If we can't have it, neither can they. Funny how the only media not under control is the one that scares the shit out of them. Wonder why?

[Herm]

Hacking is a business. Hackers get paid. They sell their services to the highest bidder. Just because billion dollar companies pay 1/4 of one penny per 'hit', it doesn't garner the attention of anyone. Multiply that by several billion hits per day - and pretty soon, you are talking about some real money. Could be 30 billion dollars a year, and they are just getting started. Chump change to those who think in terms of trillions of dollars, but, hey, you have to start somewhere.

[Timothy Karr - Huffpost Blogger]

See Timothy Karr's Profile

The history of mass media (Print, Broadcasting and now the Web) is one where we see the introduction of a "disruptive technology." This technology -- because it's easy and cheap for regular people to use -- sparks an explosion of democratic participation. But this explosion threatens the status quo. And those threatened react. Their reaction is to take a culture that has been unlocked by technological change and to re-lock it. That's what AT&T and their partners in Washington are trying to do.

[Novista]

Well, surprise, kids ... there was online life before the Internet.

Fidonet dates back to 1984 and had international connectivity. Off the top of my head, I believe the first community bulletin board was around 1975.

I've been out of that scene for ten years, maybe time to haul out the dialup modem and resurrect old technology. There's more than one way to thwart The Man.

[mommadona]

Oh, boy! Do I remember THAT jungle!
BBs!

[Spookcatcher]

Ler everyone in America stop using At & T, Immediately, any questions? Let's "publish" our distaste and disgust of these Fascists by name all their top stockholders and Board members and Corporate Management members so we everyone knows who we are dealing with. Let's share our information on all companies that are attacking Our civil Liberties and acting in concert with our Government to destroy and enslave us.

[Timothy Karr - Huffpost Blogger]

See Timothy Karr's Profile

Would be a lot easier to protest like this if the phone and cable duopoly wasn't the only game in town for high-speed Internet. At the moment they are -- more than 96 percent of all residential broadband lines in America are through a single phone or cable provider. In most markets you have no other options for access. So if you cancel your subscription to a service that is abusing your rights, you have no where else to turn. Some free market.

[Collielady]

Every freedom, every opportunity to voice opinion and share ideas, our government wants to shut down, because they are afraid of us. Knowledge equals power and they aren't about to let us have much of either. The internet has made it difficult to keep us in the dark. Something's got to be done about that!

This is another Orwellian strategy to control the masses, not unlike the banning of the internet from our troops in Iraq ("Don't let them know the hell they're living in isn't working and there is no plan to get them out of there.").

The internet is the last hope that "We The People" have for any semblance of a Democracy. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the knuckle crawling, bottom feeding Gonzo is instrumental in this assault on our freedom.

But, if a Democrat wins the presidency in '08, don't be surprised if they follow the same corporate nanny state agenda. Freedom and democracy isn't about us, my friends. It's an illusion.

[Rule Of Law]

Tim--great post.

But as I read the paucity of responses to this issue, it reinforces my belief that we're just not interested in the nuts and bolts of freedom--and that's what this issue is really about.

Just as a free press was important enough to warrant constitutional protection, so should a free internet.

Maybe, we have grown too soft and complacent about our freedoms. Wasting our time watching diversions like "reality" tv while the real world players aren't wasting a minute stealing our past and our future from us.

Maybe we are hypnotized by the spin machine in D.C.

Or, maybe we are just too scared and dis-empowered to feel that we still have any control over our own destiny. We know the CIA and ATT are listening, but we worry about terrorists, gangs, and the creepy guy down the street to the point that we are imprisoned by our own inertia.

Your main point--"only a matter of time before phone companies and government used this same technology to spy on the everyday activities of Net users." should have the entire country marching, but today is sunday and the NFL is on...

One only needs to look as far as the Pearl Jam concert that was censored by ATT to see what the future holds if this is allowed to stand.

There is no "free market competition."
The market, our pubic airwaves, utilities and now, even infrastructure,are sold by Bushco to the highest bidder with the sleaziest lobbyists. That's MONEY IN!

Supports, subsidies and tax breaks that the Republicons would label Socialist, and worse,if offered to working class Americans, are the other hand in this equation of you scratch mine and I'll scratch yours. And I don't mean backs! And that's MONEY OUT!

Out of our pockets, out of our taxes, our of our social support programs. Do you think we get what we pay for?

They fear the internet more than any other single thing in this country and will do everything they can to control it. Don't let them.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Alberto 'let my people in' Gonzales is against net neutrality because, well, yes, you guessed it, he's biased. Bias has been the hallmark of this administration as well as their appointees and hangers-on, naked ambition fueled by a neverending stream of money, and their motives are pretty plain to see, but this by itself is nothing new or novel. And, the race is on to see whose biased group will rise to prominence in the next Congress or under the next administration, to see who will be able to siphon off the most government donuts to the group or individuals or foreign nations that they deem to be Most Worthy, and thus the taxpayer continues to foot the bill for dysfunctional representation and a self-perpetuating lack of effective fiduciary oversight. 9 trillion in the red, do I hear 10?
11, thank you, now 12...13, 13.5, do I hear 14?
Mmm, mmm, government donuts...

[zjr909]

The internet just didn't turn out how the big telecos hoped it would - just didn't meet its real potential: homemakers downloading recipes and cliping coupons; grandmas trading pics of the kiddies; dancing cats and singing dogs; pudgy kids making faces on YouTube (disclosure: I was once a pudgy kid, though I never made faces on YouTube): you know, real Family Values stuff, the kind the telecos could be proud of. Instead, they got a net filled with progressive politics; Loose Change; actual news; even a great site totally dedicated to a losing cause (Daily Kos, that is, heroically bailing water aboard the rapidly sinking SS Democrat Party) - all decidedly NOT Family Values fare. For every dip-shit mindless site there are hundreds of blogs, giving out information way beyond the scope of what the Establishment considers appropriate for public consumption. The net leaves the Establishment no choice but to begin the delicate process of censorship. And I guarantee you, it'll be the Dems who finally gut net neutrality. Otherwise, God knows, they'll appear soft on terror.

[milo9]

I'm afraid you're right, especially the last two sentences.

[milo9]

Keeping the internet open is the last stand. We lose this venue to communicate with like minded people then there's nothing left but violence in street. I'm not rabble rousing just telling like it is.

[JayWilliams]

Who is afraid of an open internet? Why binBush would certainly be. bushLaden would certainly be. Evangelists would certainly be. Wahabi Moslems would certainly be. Are we seeing a pattern here? What is the difference between Bush & bin Laden? Not as much as you think. Not much.

[mommadona]

*Bingo!

[research]

The GOP neocons have been conflating capitalism and "free market" for decades. All of us liberty justice and democracy loving people think "free market" sounds like a good idea. Instead we get unfettered capitalism which favors big companies and leads to robber barons and worse fascism. Fascist states want just a few companies they can then easily control or work with.