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The Battle for Net Neutrality: Corporate Takeover or Opportunity?
On Tuesday, April 6th a federal court decision put the Internet, and your ability to use it, in jeopardy. It's a major setback for free speech online and for the prospects of connecting the entire country to broadband.
The Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks the current authority to enforce rules that keep Internet service providers from blocking and controlling Internet traffic - a principle called Net Neutrality.
The court ruled in favor of the Internet service provider Comcast, which was caught blocking the file sharing service BitTorrent in 2007 and contested the FCC's attempts to stop the company. The decision makes it nearly impossible for the FCC to follow through with plans to create strong Net Neutrality protections that keep the Internet out of the hands of corporations. Additionally, without authority over broadband, the FCC could be unable to implement portions of its just released National Broadband Plan designed to bridge the digital divide.
Millions of Internet users don't realize that a battle over the future of the Internet is being played out right now in Washington D.C. On one side are public interest and consumer groups, small businesses, Internet entrepreneurs, librarians, civil libertarians and civil rights groups. They want to preserve the Internet as it is - the last remaining open communications platform where anyone with access and a computer can create and consume online content. The principle of "Network Neutrality" is what makes this open communications possible. Net Neutrality is what allows us to go wherever we want online.
In a message to members of the organization ColorofChange.org, Director James Rucker stressed the importance of Net Neutrality for voices, perspectives, and communities traditionally marginalized and ignored. "For Black folks, [Net Neutrality] is crucial," he writes. "For the first time in history we can communicate with a global audience - for entertainment, education, or political organizing - without prohibitive costs, or mediation by gatekeepers in government or industry."
On the other side of this battle are the Internet service providers who want to dismantle Net Neutrality. Not only do they want to provide Internet service, but they want to be able to charge users to prioritize their content, effectively giving the Internet service providers the ability to choose which content on the Web loads fast, slow, or not at all.
The foundation for the Net Neutrality battle began in 2002 with the Bush FCC reclassifying broadband as an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service." This was a huge blow to Internet protections like Net Neutrality because the FCC doesn't have the same regulatory oversight over information services that it has over telecommunications services.
It is this classification loophole, coupled with the D.C. Circuit's decision, that let Comcast wiggle out from under the FCC's thumb and convince the courts that the FCC has no business clamping down on their Net Neutrality violations. And it is this loophole that will make the FCC powerless when it comes to achieving many of the objectives set out in the Obama administration's national broadband plan to provide high speed Internet access to rural America.
The FCC can resurrect its power by changing broadband back to a "telecommunications service." Reclassifying broadband will make these questions about FCC authority obsolete, allowing the agency to get back to the important work of protecting free speech online and bridging the digital divide.
While this fix may seem simple, it will take political courage from the FCC and Chairman Julius Genachowski to do the right thing. The telecom industry will be hammering the FCC with pressure to keep broadband a lawless land in order to deepen their control and enormous profits. At the same time, concerned Americans are encouraging the FCC to protect Net Neutrality and the national broadband plan.
Free Press Director Josh Silver reminded the public what's at stake during an interview Wednesday on Democracy Now! "People have to remember, all media-television, radio, phone service-every type of media other than the printed page, will soon be delivered by a broadband or Internet connection."
Like me, you love the Internet. It takes you where you want to go. Frustrated with mainstream media you have found alternative news and information online, like this very site. You turn on your computer and you're connected to the world. Our relationship with the phone and cable companies should stop when we pay for our Internet service. These companies should not be able to block, control, or interfere with what we search for or create online. Nor should they be able to prioritize some content over others.
Let's hope the court just handed the FCC the best opportunity to make a systemic change to how they oversee our nation's primary communications platform, and their ability to stop the corporate takeover of the Internet once and for all.
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20 Comments so far
Show AllDrop Comcast like a hot rock. The customer, i.e. the consumer is always right. If you subscribe to Comcast change to another server. Simple.
I agree; but it aint quite that simple: in many areas of the country, Comcast has a Monopoly on high-speed service. De-regulaion has made it possible for monopolies like this to emerge and gouge people as much as they can. Now Comcast is becoming a cross-sectoral monopoly, which has dire implications for the flow of information. The term Orwellian has become such a cliche, it is no longer useful to describe this situation.
In the US people pay a lot more for slower speeds than anyone else in the developed world. Most EU countries, Japan, South Korea and parts of Taiwan pay less and get much faster speeds, for example.
www.speedtest.net
That's right. My only other choice would be Verizon. Some choice. At least with Comcast, I know what I've got--and I don't have Verizon ripping up my lawn to install their "service".
Yeah, but at least Verizon still must still allow bit-torrent file sharing, because it's DSL service uses you ordinary phone line, for which common carrier regulations apply. don't know if common carrier rules apply to FIOS. If FOIS carries ordinary phone service, common carrier rules should apply to it too.
It would appear as there is now another bit of Bush error mess, the reclassification of broadband as an "information service" instead of "telecommunications service," to clean up after. What remains to be seen is if the Obama administration is willing to the necessary clean up.
"Information service" is the loophole in "telecommunication service" that allows Bigusness to drive ten ton trucks over our lawns at 3am on Sunday morning.
Bush's loopholes will plague us far deeper and longer than his Supreme Court picks.
Why our courts and legislatures have become aids to grossism will be a cautionary tale for future generations.
I'd like to hear Obama make a public pitch for de-oligarchizing the media, especially one so inherently democratic as the internet.
Bigness is badness.
There should be a built-in bias in legislation that favours the smaller party.
Instead, the complexity of loopholese always works out to justify the rights of Goliaths, in spite of the obvious wrongs to Davids.
No matter how much tax an individual, or a corporation pays on the first million or billion, they should always pay MORE for the SECOND million or billion.
The Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals has just delivered another gift to the rich and powerful, at the expense of the rest of us.
Corporate control of the Internet will not be tolerated.
I just visited the Comcast site and read their corporate info.
They DESCRIBE THEMSELVES as a communications service.
IMO - their own words should reverse the court decision.
Essentially, if they have the ability to monitor and react to different type of traffic, and chose to do so, then they are no longer a common carrier.
I'd suggest making them responsible for the traffic they allow on their networks. For example, since they are looking at the data, they have then made a choice to allow/aid people to pirate movies, software, etc. Since they look at the packets, they have made a choice to allow kiddie porn on their networks.
They are no longer a neutral party. They have looked inside the package, and are no longer innocent bystanders in illegal activity taking place on their networks.
Kiss the Internet good-bye. The Corporatist beast on our neck knows this is the only free speech zone left and it will crush it and so will end any minor semblence to freedom in this country. The Corporatist elite wants a Chinese style Internet where they control what we see and what we hear and who we can read. Remember the opening words of the Outer Limits? DON'T TRY AND CHANGE THE CHANNEL! WE CONTROL THE PICTURE , WE CONTROL THE HORZ. AND THE VERTICAL AND WE CONTROL THE SOUND. SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE WONDER OF TOTAL CORP. MIND CONTROL...YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!!
Corporations are like dragons. Unopposed, they will predictably commodify and gobble up everything in sight. Win one battle and they will come at you from another angle. You bet they want the Internet, and unless we behead the corporate beast itself they will eventually get it. If easy communication has given common people any political power I'd say we'd better get to using it while we can. Otherwise at least enjoy the fact that we are living in a kind of golden age, a cyber-Camelot, something too good to last. Our grandchildren will hardly believe it.
While this fix may seem simple, it will take political courage from the FCC and Chairman Julius Genachowski to do the right thing.
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The fix IS simple...but the "fix" is in.
It only takes three of the five FCC members to reclassify broadband as an "information service".
Allegedly, we have those three votes.
If this was something Obama wanted accomplished Genachowski would've been told get it done moments after the D.C. court decision. After all, why wait?
Everything you hear from the administration from this point on will be theater designed to convince you that they're fighting to reclaim net neutrality. Don't believe any of it.
The internet is the only remaining threat to the elite. They will make sure they control it.
In ten years people will hardly believe that you used to be able to access any website without restriction. We are living in the golden days of the internet right now.
Like public libraries, like Internet. The slow road to privatization continues. Yesterday, on this site, some obnoxious "Chris Mani" went about badmouthing socialism. It's not always though that some of the people that don't like socialism would badmouth it like he does. Instead, they'll take a subtle approach. Yesterday, in the mail, I got a flyer from my public library that said "Libraries exist with public funds, but PRIVATE contributions allow libraries to flourish!" On the rest of that flyer, there were these "critically needed" private funding beggings that they said would be need or else the library was in peril. I wouldn't be surprised to my public library turned into another privatized video store. First some big company gets to take over public services, then they privatize them, and before you know it everything is expensive, good stuff is censored and/or removed, and membership has fees and late fees are higher than they were when libraries were a public service to the community.
I look at these internet corporations and I wonder just how far they go to compete for pretending to be better than what a socialized government would offer us for Internet. Working for one of the telephone companies, I can never forget the better days in the past when I worked for smaller phone companies and I would never see management working so desperately on their PR war stunts compared to the big bosses who are ruthlessly anti-union, anti-civil rights, and very desperate to pump their company's image similar to Tom Delay's "I am the federal government" crap. I'm still trying to find a good small telephone or cable company in my area to work for. There are so few of them left and the nearest one is 35 miles away from where I live compared to the current one which is only 10 miles away. That small company is about to file for bankruptcy while the current one still flourishes.
I think that what is needed are public respect for small internet companies and their local governments to provide some basic service to those in need but unable to afford it. Both plans require that we put a long term moratorium on capitalism and allow socialism in its place.
Yes, I remember! I think Amy Goodman even talked about it on Democracy Now!
take a look around...have any of you been banned from "Facebook"? Did you espouse political rather than "social" views? Coulda just been me and rampant neurosis??
Plunder is groundless. Saving our planet just got a little harder.
The internet, publicly developed with taxpayer money by the govt., is going by way of all innovations: space-age & other new materials, drugs, etc. They are all developed with tax money and then turned over to the private sector to gouge the public who paid for it in the first place.
So, let us flood the White House & FCC websites with our demands. Don't stand for it this time.
Take a look around, have any of you been banned from FACEBOOK for expressing Political rather than social views--as in Roman Circus?
Here are the links for the WH, FCC Chairman and FCC page with Board members names and contact info:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/genachowski/mail.ht
http://www.fcc.gov/
Write them. Pass them along to your contacts and urge them to write, etc. Let the big wave be felt by the Obama FCC.