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TechnoratiNet Neutrality Is a Civil Rights Issue
You might not know it, but there's a crucial debate happening now in Washington about the future of the Internet. Decisions made by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in the next few years -- if not sooner -- will determine whether we protect free speech online, close the digital divide, and bring a greater diversity of voices to this transformative medium.
The world of technology is rapidly changing. Pretty soon, you'll get all your media -- TV, phone, radio and the Web -- from the same high-speed Internet connection. The potential democratic, economic, public safety and educational benefits of the Internet are almost limitless. Wiring our nation with a high-speed Internet connection is now a public necessity, just like water, gas or electricity.
Unfortunately, the powerful cable and telecom industry doesn't value the Internet for its public interest benefits. Instead, these companies too often believe that to safeguard their profits, they must control what content you see and how you get it. Their plans could have dire consequences for those whose voices are often marginalized by our nation's media system.
For communities of color, the Internet offers a critical opportunity to build a more equitable media system. It provides all Americans with the potential to speak for themselves without having to convince large media conglomerates that their voices are worthy of being heard.
Our Internet freedom is protected by a fundamental principle called "Network Neutrality," which allows the public to access any Web site or any Web application of their choice without discrimination. Net Neutrality has been the guiding principle of the Internet since its inception -- but now it's in danger.
Big phone and cable companies want to decide for you which Web sites and services go fast or slow. While the big corporate sites, especially the ones owned by these companies, get a spot in the fast lane on the information superhighway, everyone else -- small businesses, independent publications, community groups -- will be stuck on the slow road to irrelevance.
These companies spend a lot of money spreading misinformation about their plans. They've said there's no evidence that they're going to interfere with the Internet and that they can trusted to do the right thing. But actions speak louder than words.
In the most glaring example, last October the Associated Press found that cable giant Comcast was crippling a popular way of sharing large files called BitTorrent -- which allows people to quickly download large files such as videos, movies, and music without using a lot of bandwidth.
BitTorrent is perfectly legal. Hollywood studios and music companies use BitTorrent to distribute high quality films, TV shows and music. Even NASA has started using it to send high-resolution photos from outer space. Bit Torrent also provides Internet users with an online version of video-on-demand, allowing them to easily download content of their choosing. It is an ideal application for independent artists and individuals seeking an inexpensive distribution system.
Comcast claims BitTorrent users are hogging the network. But they don't just cut off high-volume users trying to download 20 movies at a time. They block everybody. AP reporters weren't even able to download a copy of the Bible.
Here's what Comcast really doesn't like about BitTorrent: It's competition for their own video business. If we can pick and choose what we want to see for ourselves, we might be less inclined to keep paying Comcast an arm and a leg for all the channels we don't watch.
Comcast is abusing its power. And their actions clearly violate FCC rules that say the Internet can be accessed by users without restrictions. After public interest groups led by Free Press filed a complaint -- and thousands of angry Internet users flooded their in-boxes -- the FCC launched an official investigation.
This investigation may well determine whether the Internet will remain open and free. After claiming they would never discriminate, Comcast is now trying to undermine the guiding principles of Network Neutrality by blocking whatever they want. The other big Internet providers -- like AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner -- filed in support of Comcast's right to discriminate because they want to do the same thing.
Communities of color and other under-represented groups have long fought for a more diverse and inclusive media system. Discrimination and segregation prevented people of color from obtaining radio or TV licenses when these mediums were first created. During the 1970s, cable promised to be a real alternative to TV for communities of color seeking diverse programming; it didn't happen. Yet, many of these very same companies now want to prevent Internet users, including people of color, from accessing diverse online content of their choice.
While our nation must overcome the digital divide so everyone will have high-speed broadband access, the principles of Network Neutrality are important to ensure the Internet provides a real opportunity for all Americans to speak with their own voices.
The FCC's investigation of Comcast -- and passage of the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" (HR 5353), bipartisan legislation now pending in Congress to protect Net Neutrality -- will go a long way toward determining whether the Internet will protect the First Amendment rights of all Internet users and whether people of color will finally have unfettered access to a equitable media system.
Make your voices heard. The stakes couldn't be any higher.
Mark Lloyd is author of Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America.
Joseph Torres is government relations manager of Free Press and former deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
17 Comments so far
Show AllSo, let me see if I have this straight. Free Press (I presume a media consumer advocate) lodged a complaint with the FCC, because COMCAST is breaking the current law restricting bandwidth, conducting a campaign of restraint of trade, to sell their OWN videos?
So, rather than fine the Monster, and order them to stop, the Republican dominated, pro-corporate FCC has little choice but to respond with an immediate investigation, to re-evaluate the prudence and efficacy of this law; to assess the merits of the complaint; THEN to RULE on this complaint?
In effect, this advocacy group, rather than read Sun Tzu or Machiavelli and make A decision that best serves the Public Interest... has inadvertantly FAST TRACKED a new, nuanced ruling regarding Net Neutrality from a hostile commission?
I realize I may be wrong here, and I need more information... but my first reaction is "WTF?"
How can the FCC over-ride the existing law and set some kind of new precedent with a single complaint?
Is this possible? If it is ya'all need to get a bigger bullhorn. I'll check out your links and see what you've got... but I need more please.
Excuse my ignorance, but is is possible to set up an alternative internet system say in Europe. I realise the main computers are in the USA and we are using our existing telephone lines. Or is it not the hardware but the access providing companies that are at issue??
I was planning to change over to Comcast as my ISP as well as for phone service this month. Plan cancelled.
This is the final frontier for censorship and the control of information. These guys and gals are seriously greedy and seriously authoritarian. This is a fight worth the same effort as opposing the WTO or anything else being pushed by those who would cage and subjugate us or our minds.
Fight the power!
Comcast, AT&T and Verzion have given us a glimpse of a world without Net Neutrality, and it's a chilling sight.
In recent months, these cable and phone companies have repeatedly been caught blocking, filtering and spying on your Internet activities. If we let them get away with this, these powerful companies will continue to roll back our freedoms whenever we go online.
Now the Federal Communications Commission is coming to Boston to investigate. Will you attend this important event?
WHAT: A Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet
WHEN: Monday, Feb 25, 2008
TIME: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
WHERE: Harvard Law School, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall
1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
Directions: http://www.law.harvard.edu/about/contact/directions.php/
More information: www.savetheinternet.com/=boston
The question before us is simple: Will we have a closed Internet controlled by a small handful of giant corporations, or an open Internet controlled by the people who use it?
With so much at stake, it's encouraging that the FCC's first move is to come to Boston for public feedback about the importance of a free-flowing Internet. Let's hope this important hearing in Massachusetts is just the beginning of a national conversation that spreads to every town and city across the country.
Tell Your Friends About the Boston Hearing
This hearing is a rare chance for the public to take a stand against companies that want to control the future of the Internet. Make your voice heard -- Join us next week!
See you there!
Josh Stearns
Campaign Coordinator
Free Press
www.freepress.net
www.savetheinternet.com
Hope this helps.
peace, planetary sister
We must not let the Internet become the corporate wasteland that television is now. It is no surprise that the Internet has become the alternate mass media of choice where the end users truly decide what they want to spend time with and when. The only determinate of whether or not a site gets eyeballs should be on its' own relative merits, not if they've paid off the likes of Comcast.
B Payne-Economist February 21st, 2008 2:14 pm
An excellent post laid out concisely and clearly
Lobo Gris
John McCain's Senate office manager was a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry. So was his girlfriend.
Thank you B Payne-Economist, very well stated and providing clear informative understanding against the propaganda storm that is soon to be swirling densely to cloud reality, and objective decision making.
I might add, that the desire for more extreme profiteering, has lead the cable and telecom strategy to NOT keep pace with technology, that is readily available in Europe and Asia (e.g. 3G). Of course the over-selling (booking) of airline seats eventually had to come into equilibrium with consumer rights, and so it must be in the case of the internet.
I can see the gears grinding to create an apparently unsolvable net congestion situation, as the Reichstag fire or 9/11 pretext events were staged, to galvanize the public to accept mismatched solutions which only guarantees higher profits and surrendering of real control.
Once these guarantees are in place, there will be the massive re-investments needed to stay competitive. I suspect that the big players are purposely ALL (a cartel) delaying their required upgrades to make this big point to the American people, knowing full well that the current old technology and understructure along with over-selling of capacity are actually a contrivance to manipulate the public.
Shame on you, the corporate greed takes a short term loss of profits to engender a massive triple wammy in the future -- this sounds just like the oil companies! No accident there.
Be aware, have the intention to dream your reality into being.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
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« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
I've always said that when the Internet is content-regulated, we'd better get the hell out of the country quickly, because it's the canary in the coal mine. Once free speech's last bastion of hope is curtailed, all we will be able to get is propoganda, and martial law and closed borders (outbound) is not far behind.
Be warned, if the Internet is taken over by the government we will no longer have any impartial mass media method left.
Comcast claims BitTorrent users are hogging the network. But they don't just cut off high-volume users trying to download 20 movies at a time. They block everybody. AP reporters weren't even able to download a copy of the Bible.
Here's what Comcast really doesn't like about BitTorrent: It's competition for their own video business. If we can pick and choose what we want to see for ourselves, we might be less inclined to keep paying Comcast an arm and a leg for all the channels we don't watch.
More importantly, BitTorrent users have already paid for the capacity they are using and are not "causing" congestion any more than any other users of the internet who have also paid for their respective capacity in terms of megabits per second at the level of individual connections.
The essential problem of congestion is separate from the incentive to block a competitor, but the two problems are being used to confuse the issue of net neutrality.
Specifically, "internet hogs" and an "exaflood" of "large users" or "large content" are being blamed for something they could not possibly cause in isolation from other users during peak periods.
Further, the congestion problem (separate from the blocking problem of competitors) is itself caused by oversold capacity from providers at the connection level which exceeds total capacity at the network level.
Many individual connections do not have the capacity sold and paid for by customers. When enough internet use of any size or source emerges during peak periods, congestion occurs because the provider's system is not large enough to service the total capacity it sold to its customers.
Contracts for internet service are intentionally based on vague and loose language that allow providers to oversell available total network capacity by not committing to specific, individual amounts of dedicated, non-transferable capacity to individual customers.
Then when congestion occurs, the providers exploit these conditions to blame falsely, particular users and content as the claimed "source" of congestion.
One solution is for providers to admit that the capacity has been oversold, then downgrade it in proportionate, neutral fashion by individual connection to match actual network capacity.
If each connection constitutes dedicated, non-transferable capacity as sold and purchased to each user, chronic congestion could not occur by definition regardless of user or content identity or size.
The longer term term solution is either to expand network capacity to match individual connection capacity or to admit that some service will be degraded in net neutral fashion intentionally due to congestion and offer it to customers at a discount from the "firm" service rate.
A false, misleading "solution" emerging for congestion is associated with metered pricing of volume use over time in terms of total megabytes used per month.
Metered pricing plans which do not recognize differences in peak versus off-peak use are instead designed to undermine net neutral internet use by opening the door to "fast lane" and "everything" high-priced packages along the lines of cable tv forced packaging and bundling plans.
Preventing blocking of competitor content is only part of a serious violation of net neutrality. Congestion caused by oversold capacity is the rest of the problem and requires net neutral solutions as well.
A Republican President and Congress will not behave the same as a Democratic one... Bill Clinton didn't have much of a Democratic congress to work with...
Yes, the Democrats have room to improve (the understatment of the year) but they are different.
Obama (or even God Forbid, Hillary) would be better than McCain.
Net Neutrality is CRITICAL to a functioning democracy. Lose it, and the peace movement dies.
for those who are pinning their hopes on a dem president/dem congress, don't forget that it was dem bill clinton, with a dem congress for most of his first term, that destroyed the half-century status quo in place since the founding of the FCC. thanks dems, heckuva job.
Fine and good if net neutrality gets passed, but what about designs by this Administration to take over "compete control" of all Internet activities. CIA Director McConnell is penning a bill at this moment that would allow the Government to control all internet content, in the effort to track terrorists.
We already have a president (Bush) and a Supreme Court tilted to corporate rights over individual rights.
Communication tools are KEY as to who ultimately wins on this. You want to help the individuals? Get Obama and the Dem Congress together this year while you can. Even WITH them, the FCC and internet issues are an uphill slog. Without them, corporations just win, and without much fight.