A Few Arguments Re- the FCC's Proposed "Net Neutrality" Rules

[snot]

After listening to a purportedly "informed" discussion broadcast this morning, I wrote the following. Please feel free to use any or all of it:

I’m afraid your panel is partly missing the mark with respect to Chairman Wheeler’s proposed “net neutrality” rules. We “activists” have no objection to making high-volume users pay on a per-bit basis, so that, to the extent they’re transmitting more bits, they’d pay more.

What we object to is selling them a “fast lane”; i.e., we want all “lanes” to remain the same speed. If Netflix or other large corporations with deep pockets are permitted to buy greater speed, access to smaller websites will be comparatively disadvantaged – and that would eviscerate net neutrality. As Napoleon said, “it {is}n't necessary to completely suppress the news; it {i}s sufficient to delay the news until it no longer matter{s}.” (attributed by PRWatch to Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991), p. xvii).

As you know, courts have acknowledged that the FCC has the power to classify the internet as a public utility rather than as an “information service,” as it did.

Internet service in the US is already substantially slower and more expensive than in other developed countries. The reasons boil down to the fact that we’ve failed to treat it as a public utility, as other countries have. Not only have we left this essential infrastructure to the vagaries of corporations, but we’ve under-regulated them, resulting in a lack of competition, among other problems.

Sir Frances Bacon said, “knowledge is power”; and the powerful know that well.

In Robin Bloor's brilliant 2010 post, "Wikileaks: This Is Just The Beginning” (unfortunately no longer online), he noted that the invention of new communications technologies can trigger a struggle between old and new power structures over who will control access to information. He compared our situation to the conflict between Pope Leo X and Martin Luther, and noted that Gutenberg's invention of the printing press led to Luther's and others' translations of the Bible, the break-up of the Vatican's monopoly over the information contained in books, and ultimately the Reformation and other developments of great benefit to most people.

Elites eventually managed to gain control over the new information access structure, however, to their benefit and to the detriment of the rest of us.

Since at least 2007, over 90% of all traditional media worldwide have been controlled by nine or fewer megacorporations (see FAIR, Pirate Radio, and N.O.W.), thanks in part to the FCC’s repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 followed by the loosening of regulations limiting excessive concentration of media ownership (see esp. under "United States”). Independent news outlets have been gobbled up by large conglomerates and news staff have been cut – even while independent news outlets have thrived (cf. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s complaint that while traditional US media's viewership has dropped, "like it or hate it . . . . viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news&quot .

The powerful are no less alert to defend their existing control structure against the threat presented by the internet. As Lawrence Lessig warned back in 2001, "{t}he innovation commons of the Internet threatens important and powerful pre-Internet interests. During the past five years, those interests have mobilized to launch a counterrevolution that is now having a global impact." Ten years later, internet guru Tim Wu wrote, "{t}he internet as a model of free speech and access is coming to an end." And despite campaign promises to protect net neutrality, the Obama administration has consistently proposed rules that would for the first time allow wireless internet service providers to block content or applications whenever they liked and that permit paid prioritization (see PCMag).

The telephone system is regulated as a utility for the public good; the internet has already replaced wires for many people’s phone calls. The U.S. mail is heavily regulated for the public good; email and other online communications are rapidly replacing paper mail.

The ‘net is NOT primarily an information service, as the FCC originally, incorrectly called it. It is a communications system. Its main function is not to gather, store, or even to dispense information, although computers connected to it are certainly used for those purposes. What the internet really IS, is a facility designed to afford access to all participants equally; and THAT is what makes it so threatening to the powerful. They've got no problem with information – indeed, the more info the rest of us upload to facilities they control, the better – so long as THEY control access to that information.

The internet is not only the biggest and perhaps the last meaningful public square we’ve ever had; it’s become humanity’s central nervous system. It IS a public communications or utility system, if ever there was one.

If we allow the FCC to kill net neutrality, we may never get it back. We canNOT afford to let the same forces that have bought control of so much of our tv and our political process gain the power, directly or indirectly, to discriminate and censor content on the net (which they’ve already been caught doing when they thought they could get away with it).

[GeorgeGist]

1. kick and rec

[tkmorris]

2. Excellent. Great argument.