Public Must Fight to Maintain Net Neutrality
The Internet is an engine of economic growth and innovation because of a simple principle: net neutrality, which assures innovators that their next great idea will be available to consumers, regardless of what the network owners think about it.
No previous mass media technology has been so remarkably open. Traditional media — newspapers, radio, TV — have gatekeepers standing between consumers and producers, with the power to control content. The Internet eliminates the gatekeeper.
Now, however, the Internet’s unprecedented openness is in jeopardy.
Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have been lobbying to kill net neutrality. They say they won’t build an information superhighway if they can’t build it as a closed system. No other industrialized country has made that devil’s bargain, and neither should we. Without net neutrality, online innovation is vulnerable to the whims of cable and phone companies, which control 99 percent of the household market for high-speed Internet access. And Silicon Valley venture capitalists are unlikely to bet the farm on a whim.
Network owners say the threat of abuse is hypothetical. But actions speak louder than words. Last fall, Comcast was caught secretly blocking popular technologies that can bring HDTV to your laptop — used by everyone from the Hollywood studios to NASA. It was no coincidence: Comcast is targeting a growing competitor to its cable TV service.
In response, the media reform group Free Press and a coalition of public interest organizations and legal scholars filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission calling for urgent action. This is a bellwether case — a signal of whether we’re headed toward an open or a closed Internet.
After the FCC started an investigation, Comcast admitted to blocking, but thumbed its noses at the government and the public — going so far as to hire seat-fillers at an FCC hearing at Harvard University to stifle the debate.
Public, government and media scrutiny ultimately forced Comcast to stop blocking one of the file-sharing companies. But we can’t expect everyone to negotiate a side deal for permission to innovate. This limits the online marketplace to ideas and commerce that don’t pose a threat to network owners — a chilling prospect.
This type of behavior shows why we can’t trust the future of the Internet to these companies. Just two years ago, telecom executives went before Congress vowing never to interfere with the open Internet. Their broken promises are exactly why we need net neutrality laws back on the books. Fortunately, members of Congress from both parties have introduced legislation that would do precisely that.
But net neutrality is just the first step. If this nation is to return to the economic growth of the 1990s, it takes a renewed commitment to Internet deployment and technology. The past eight years have seen America fall behind other industrial nations — a deficit that we will pay for in jobs, wealth and social opportunity.
Better policies in other countries have created a competitive high-speed broadband market. But these policies require political leadership — and public pressure to ensure that politicians aren’t distracted by the telecom industry’s cash and clout.
Today, the FCC is holding a hearing at Stanford University — the birthplace of our Internet economy — to give the public a chance to weigh in on this debate. It’s not often that federal regulators leave the Beltway to ask people what they think. It’s time to stand up and make your voice heard.
The threat posed by would-be gatekeepers is real and getting worse. The success of future innovation depends on an open Internet for everyone.
Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. Ben Scott is policy director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform organization ( www.freepress.net).
The Internet must not be allowed to become the province of big companies in the same way newspapers, radio, television, & cable have become. It is also not surprising that all of those mediums are losing eyeballs (especially younger ones) as the audience craves choices beyond what is presented by corporate media. Conversely, the big communications companies will fight tooth and nail to be toll keepers, as it will be the only way in the future to corral a public increasingly turned off by their insipid offerings. We, the public, must resist this insidious and sneaky attempt at corporate socialism / welfare.
This “net neutrality” issue is not going to reach a permanent safe harbor for citizens in the remainder of this year. Corporations are going to try to chip away at it from now on. And this is another reason you need a national Capitol building and a White House fully inhabited by Democrats. They are the best (probably the only) defense you have against corporation-creep on the internet and, for that matter, everywhere else.
Once again, we have an issue as important as this that is often divided between “left” and “right” when in fact, the entire public benefits from net neutrality.
We are in serious danger of losing the “open” nature of the internet and once again give control to those at the communications companies. Will the FCC listen this time to the public? Judging by the last round of public hearings…it doesn’t look too good.
Can anyone tell me what will happen? Will sites such as this one disappear, or, will they have to pay more to remain available? Who will decide what sites I can look at? Is the internet to become only a place to purchase items or will it remain a place for people to exchange ideas?
I don’t know exactly what to expect. I fear the worst.
How many times do we have have to be snookered by the communications industry before we understand what they want? Homogenized content that puts the public to sleep so that corporations can loot the country and back Right Wing politicians to send more money their way.
Daniel David -
It’s bad enough that so many of us have blind faith in religious doctrines. But to also have blind faith in a political party, especially at this point the Democrats, passes all understanding. Haven’t enough Democrats already shown that they’re not reliable as a party? Even when they have power?
Shouldn’t progressives, at minimum, demand reform of the Democrat Party from within, before we place such unqualified hope in it?
Blind faith generally doesn’t solve problems. It tends to make them worse.
Ruth K -
A likely scenario for the ruination of the internet would see a similar process as we’ve seen with the mainstream news media:
Manipulation of Internet regulations by a government that’s largely controlled by centralized private wealth, to favor still more centralized private ownership and thus further domination of access and content by established wealth and power. It’s not hard to figure out.
Make no mistake, this isn’t just about preferred, corporate content. This is about progressively censoring truth through such means. The internet is one of today’s greatest weapons against oligarchy and injustice. We must not let an apparently benign corporate preference system begin a method of the suppression of information.
RuthK Said on April 17th, 2008 1:41 pm: “Can anyone tell me what will happen? Will sites such as this one disappear, or, will they have to pay more to remain available? Who will decide what sites I can look at? Is the internet to become only a place to purchase items or will it remain a place for people to exchange ideas?
I don’t know exactly what to expect. I fear the worst.”
Think China… Or more specifically the “Great Firewall of China” how all internet traffic is monitored, blocked, redirected, censored, etc… That’s what will happen… Sites like Common Dreams will be blocked if the company doesn’t agree with them. Anything that would be negative to the corporate cause will be filtered out. The days of information sharing and free speech on the net will be over… it WILL be the end of the internet as we know it.
The only saving grace would be if the people got together and made their own network, which I can see happening on a more local scale as the geeks of the world unite, but it won’t be the same great and free internet that we all know and love.
The Cable/Communications companies would like to provide the net as a “service” similar to cable tv… where the company decides the content and pushes it to you… instead of you pulling the content that you want.
Sparks, MD,
It is easier for me to have “faith” in Democrats as a group than in any other political force in America. This is because Democrats have numbers of voters and politicians.
I am asked over and over here, for instance, to somehow have faith in Ralph Nader. He’s a good guy, I guess, but he has no numbers—hence no power to really influence much in Washington. Same with the Green Party and others.
As for “reform” of the Democratic Party, that is precisely what the Obama movement is about. Maybe it will succeed.
As for your comment that “it’s bad enough that so many of us have blind faith in religious doctrines”, you’re right.
Faith (for Christians anyway) works far better when it is vested in Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit than when concentrated in either “religion” or “doctrines”.
Daniel David April 18th, 2008 11:13 am
“I am asked over and over here, for instance, to somehow have faith in Ralph Nader. He’s a good guy, I guess, but he has no numbers—hence no power to really influence much in Washington. Same with the Green Party and others.”
I am glad you don’t have “faith” in Nader or the Green party. You drive people away with your constant droning.
Lobo Gris
and some others just won’t “go away” and write something other than a reaction to me
Daniel David said: “It is easier for me to have “faith” in Democrats as a group than in any other political force in America.”
I say: “Pfft.” How naive can ya be? It’s easy to blame all the problems facing the US on the republicans and the neo-cons… but really, the democrats have been JUST as complicit in everything. Go study some history and then think about what you have said. The whole political system is stacked against you. It’s designed for the moneyed class to maintain their power… they may throw little crumbs at the middle class which will make them think they have a voice, but really they don’t. Everyone got all bent out of shape at Cheney saying “So?” in an interview… but that’s EXACTLY what all the career pols think.
Lobo Gris - RE your ‘drive away’ claim against Daniel David’s posts:
Agreed that many of us don’t have truck with DD’s faith in Democrats. But for you to claim that DD is ‘droning’ any more than YOU or the rest of us here are ‘droning’, is solopistic, one-dimensional, proto-fascistic intolerance.
What the hell are you after? Mutually tolerant probing of good-willed truth? Or a discussional site on which only those who agree with your personal premises and conclusions are allowed to post?
DD has never said anything here that didn’t reflect a heartfelt sharing of most CDers visions. If we dissent from his sense of political logistics, then let the arguments be about that.
People who start questioning DD’s right - or even utility - of posting on this site, are of more concern to me than DD’s right or wrong opinions.
Get a grip on youself. Understand how easy it is to become a mass-thinker of the Left.