[Mb-civic] A Democratic Internet--at risk!

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/25/a_democratic_internet.p
hp
    
A Democratic Internet
Art Brodsky
April 25, 2006
Art Brodsky is communications director for Public Knowledge , a public 
interest group working at the intersection of information and technology 
policy. 

Right now, you’re reading TomPaine.com because you want to, and 
because you can. Those two principles have been the reason the 
Internet as we know it has been so successful for almost 20 years. 
The Internet as we know it provides infinite choice to those who use it, 
and easy access to customers and consumers for those who have a 
service to provide. No printing presses are needed, no buying of paper, 
no distribution. Those major expenses, which for years had to be 
borne by publications, have all disappeared with the World Wide Web. 
All TomPaine.com —or any website—needs (technically speaking, of 
course) are computers, servers and access to the Internet.

The result has been the most unique explosion of creativity in history. 
This was all made possible because the Internet was open to anyone 
who wanted to go looking for interesting material or who wanted to 
create interesting material, and because anyone with a good idea 
could put it out there and see what happens. Google happens. Yahoo 
happens. YouTube happens.

At the heart of what the Internet used to be was a law, the 
Communications Act, which had in it the basic principle of what is 
called “common carriage.” This means that telephone companies had 
no control over which traffic flowed through their networks. The 
network was merely the carrier between the two ends. The ability of 
people creating text or music or video as either consumer or company 
was enhanced because the network in the middle had no say about 
how the material would be handled.

Now, that could all be lost, destroyed by a coalition of the entire 
telecom industry. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and all the 
assorted smaller telecom companies want to insert themselves 
between you and where you go on the Web, and between service 
providers and what they put online. The Bell Behemoths and their 
Cable Companions can do this because the Federal Communications 
Commission (FCC) decided last year that high-speed broadband 
services like the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provided by telephone 
companies or cable modem services from the telephone companies 
aren’t subject to any regulations.

The FCC decision eliminated the rules that allowed users in the dial-up 
era to go online without any interference or influence from telephone 
companies about where users go on the Web or how well services 
would work. Under the new non-regulatory regime, anything is 
possible. Before, it was up to the consumer to determine how much to 
spend on Internet access, a little for dial-up, more for broadband. It 
was never a choice between a service that worked better or worse at 
the discretion of the telephone company. As we enter the high-speed 
Internet age, it will be a game without rules, with both consumers and 
service providers at the mercy of the telecom giants.
The Big Boys want to keep it that way, and are working the 
congressional game with their usual combination of expertise and 
brute force to make sure it happens. On the other side is a coalition of 
public interest groups and non-profits bolstered by a coalition of large, 
but very inexperienced, online companies. Yahoo, Google and 
Amazon may be the darlings of the e-commerce world, but they are 
rookies when it comes to playing the Hill. The venue for this contest 
will be the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on 
Wednesday, April 26, when the competing visions of the Internet will 
collide.

On one hand, there is the industry view of the Internet, which would 
create what telephone and cable industry representatives have called 
the “public Internet” and the “private Internet.” The “public Internet” is 
what we have now. The “private Internet” would consist of proprietary 
connections into the home. These connections would be reserved for 
the telephone company or cable company, or for other content or 
services owned by those companies, or content or services in which 
they have a financial interest. In other words, industry would like to 
build the toll-road superhighway of Internet access. It would also be 
more expensive for service providers if telephone companies loaded 
on extra costs on top of regular communications lines, as AT&T CEO 
Ed Whitacre proposed last fall. Shortly after Whitacre’s statements, 
other telecom officials started talking about offering preferred classes 
of service to some customers over others. So, if you are a service 
provider that wants to get to your audience, which do you choose—the 
superhighway or the dirt road? Do you pay the protection money or 
not? Choose your metaphor. Without rules, both apply.

Of course, companies like Google and Yahoo could afford any extra 
charges that telecom suppliers demand. But that’s not the point. 
Google and Yahoo! got big precisely because they had the freedom to 
develop without being either held hostage by telecom companies or 
relegated to the dirt road. They did it on the Internet that serves 
everyone equally. And they want to keep it that way. The big Internet 
companies recognize they wouldn’t exist if the scheme the telephone 
and cable companies want to put in place now had existed in the days 
when those companies were just getting started. The successful 
Internet companies of today know that a healthy, vibrant Internet 
benefits everyone.

That's the other view of the world, the one to which I and others 
subscribe. Supporters of equal access to the Internet appreciate the 
technical improvements in the Internet, and realize that telecom 
companies should be able to recoup their investments in the 
architecture of the Internet. But we want these achieved without 
discrimination against users. This is the “Net Neutrality” argument. It’s 
very simple. Companies that own the network should not discriminate 
against services and products in which they do not have a financial 
interest. If one company is able to have access to a telephone 
company or cable service with certain technical advantages, such as 
having its content stored (or cached) close to the consumer by a 
telephone or cable company, then other companies should be able to 
buy the same service.

The legislation to be considered Wednesday in the Commerce 
Committee will give the telecom companies what they want—the 
appearance of Net Neutrality only. The legislation has provisions on 
net neutrality that are weak at best. The legislation only requires that 
the FCC enforce some generally vague and unenforceable principles 
originally conceived as philosophy and not as law. Those principles 
have a significant omission. They say nothing about discrimination by 
service providers. In addition, the legislation restricts the Commission 
to examining net neutrality to a case-by-case complaint basis. 
Normally, when faced with an industry-wide issue like net neutrality, 
the Commission conducts a wide-ranging proceeding called a 
rulemaking, and comes up with an overarching policy. That 
comprehensive approach is prohibited by the legislation.

A band of members of Congress who want to protect the Internet have 
a different vision and proposed strong anti-discrimination methods. 
Reps. Ed Markey, Rick Boucher, Anna Eshoo, and Jay Inslee tried at 
an earlier subcommittee markup to have strong anti-discrimination 
language inserted into the bill. Their effort was not successful. All the 
Republicans but one voted against their amendment, as did six 
Democrats. We hope it will turn out differently this time. We hope 
members of Congress decide the Internet belongs to everyone, not 
just to those who happen to own a network.
 

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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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