Net Neutrality In Danger

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Published on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 by Save the Internet

The Fate of the Internet. Decided in a Back Room

by Tim Karr

The Wall Street Journal just reported that the Federal Communications Commission is holding "closed-door meetings" with industry to broker a deal on Net Neutrality – the rule that keeps control over the Internet with the people who use it. Given that the corporations at the table all profit from gaining control over information, the outcome won't be pretty.
The meetings include a small group of industry lobbyists representing the likes of AT&T, Verizon, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Google. They reportedly met for two-and-a-half hours on Monday morning and will convene another meeting today. The goal according to insiders is to "reach consensus" on rules of the road for the Internet.
This is what a failed democracy looks like: After years of avid public support for Net Neutrality – involving millions of people from across the political spectrum – the federal regulator quietly huddles with industry lobbyists to eliminate basic protections and serve Wall Street’s bottom line.
We’ve seen government cater to big business in the same ways, prior to the BP oil disaster and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. The Industry's regulatory capture of the Internet is now almost complete. The leadership of the one agency tasked with oversight of communications policy now thinks they can wriggle free of their obligation to protect the open Internet if only industry agrees on a solution.
Congress is holding its own series of meetings and, while they’ve been ambiguous on the details, many remain skeptical on whether the process will lead to an outcome that serves the public interest. After all, this is the same Congress that is bankrolled by the phone and cable lobby in excess of $100 million.
Why is this so startling even for the more cynical among us? The Obama administration promised to embrace a new era of government transparency. It’s the tool we were supposed to use to pry open policy-making and expose it to the light of public scrutiny.
In that spirit, President Obama pledged to "take a backseat to no one" in his support for Net Neutrality. He appointed Julius Genachowski to head the FCC -- the man who crafted his pro-Net Neutrality platform in 2008.
But the mere existence of these private meetings reveals to us a chairman who has fallen far short of expectations. Instead Genachowski is shying from the need to fortify the Internet’s open architecture in favor of deals made between DC power brokers.
These deals will determine who ultimately controls Internet content and innovation. Will phone and cable companies succeed in their decade-long push to take ownership of both the infrastructure of the Internet and the information that flows across its pipes? Will they cut in a few giant companies like Google and the recording industry to get their way?
Whatever the outcome, the public – including the tens of millions of Americans who use the Internet every day and in every way – are not being given a seat at the table.
Genachowski’s closed-door sessions come after six months of public comments on whether the agency should proceed with a rule to protect Net Neutrality.
During that period, more than 85 percent of comments received by the agency called for a strong Net Neutrality rule. Look at it this way: If a candidate received more than 85 percent of the vote, wouldn’t she have a mandate to decide on the public’s behalf?
In Chairman Genachowski’s alternative view of reality, though, the public is immaterial, and industry consensus supreme.

Timothy Karr oversees all Free Press campaigns and online outreach efforts, including SavetheInternet.com and its work on public broadcasting, propaganda, and journalism.

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Bill Moyers Journal Bids Adieu

Published on Friday, April 30, 2010 by Bill Moyers Journal
On Retiring from the JOURNAL

by Bill Moyers

Thanks to all of you who wrote to express your disappointment and dismay at hearing me say last week that the JOURNAL will be coming to an end with the April 30th broadcast. My team and I were touched by your messages, but I want to disabuse those of you who fear that we are being pushed off the air by higher-ups at PBS pointing to the door and demanding that we go. Not so. PBS doesn't fund the JOURNAL; our support comes from foundations and our sole corporate funder, Mutual of America. Together they've given me an independence rare for broadcast journalists. Our reporting and analysis trigger controversy from many quarters, as any strong journalism will, but not one - not one! - of my funders has ever mentioned to me the complaints directed their way. They would continue their support if I were to stick around.



I'm leaving for one reason alone: It's time to go. I'll be 76 in a few weeks, and while I don't consider myself old (my father lived into his 80s, my mother into her 90s) there are some things left to do that the deadlines and demands of a weekly broadcast don't permit. At 76, it's now or never. I actually informed my friends at PBS of my decision over a year ago, and planned to leave at the end of last December. But they asked me to continue another four more months while they prepare a new series for Friday night broadcast. I agreed, but said at the time - April 30 and not a week longer.

It wasn't easy deciding to close the JOURNAL. I like what I do, I cherish my colleagues, and my viewers remain loyal and engaged. I will miss the virtual community that has grown up around the broadcast - kindred spirits across the country whose unseen but felt presence reminds me of why I have kept at this work so long. But it has indeed been a long time (almost 40 years since I launched the original JOURNAL in 1971), and that's why I can assure you that my departure is entirely voluntary. "Time brings everything," an ancient wise man said. Including new beginnings.

But I still have two weeks before signing off. This Friday night my guests include Michael Copps, the FCC commissioner who later this year will hold public hearings around the country to get your views on net neutrality. In his nine years on the FCC Mike Copps has opposed the concentration of media ownership and advocated for an open Internet. He says the recent federal court decision restricting the Commission's authority over the net shouldn't be a deterrent to the FCC's pressing forward on assuring access for all to the Web. [Check out Bill Moyers' 2006 documentary on net neutrality, NET AT RISK.]

My second guest this Friday is another staunch public interest advocate, whose anger at the predatory tactics of Wall Street approaches the intensity of the Iceland volcano. As a federal regulator many years ago Bill Black helped put in jail a lot of culprits involved in the costly savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. His book about that experience - THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE - is one of my favorites. You first saw him on the JOURNAL a year ago when he voiced his suspicion that it was more than incompetence that brought down the financial sector in 2008 and plunged the economy into recession - it was greed. When it comes to financial shenanigans, Black is the modern equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. He's been on the trail of "liars' loans" - loans issued without verifying income. He'll have more to say about "liars' loans" on the JOURNAL Friday. But in the meantime, you can check out his testimony before Congress yesterday on the fall of Lehman. He has a lot more to say on the JOURNAL Friday night - for you Tweeters, his 140-character message is simple: "Lock-em up!"

See you Friday.

Bill Moyers
© Public Affairs Television 2010

Support Network Neutrality

Published on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 by Save the Internet
American Library Association Wants Network Neutrality

by Carrie Lowe

At last month’s American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, I served on a Sunday morning panel presentation on the topic of Network Neutrality. On that day, there was no Network Neutrality legislation in Congress (like there is today, thanks to Reps. Markey and Eshoo). There was no flashy evening news piece on the topic, no rock stars on the Hill advocating for a free and open Internet. Yet 500 librarians showed up on a spectacular Chicago summer morning to hear Cliff Lynch, Greg Jackson and me talk about Network Neutrality.

If you are not familiar with librarians, this story might surprise you. But if you have ever found yourself on the business end of a discussion of intellectual freedom issues with someone from our community, you can predict what I am going to say next: The audience asked incredibly thoughtful questions and challenged some basic assumptions.

You see, Network Neutrality is, at its core, an issue central to librarians’ professional hearts. Like other issues that we’ve dealt with – such as censorship or book banning – Network Neutrality is fundamentally about having access to ideas.

Libraries’ Position on Network Neutrality

The ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy laid out its position on Network Neutrality in an issue brief published in 2006. In that paper, we argued that libraries’ interest in Network Neutrality is twofold.

First, Network Neutrality is an intellectual freedom issue. The ALA defines intellectual freedom as the right of all people to seek and receive information from all points of view, without restriction. Unfortunately, there is no law that protects intellectual freedom on the Internet today. Internet service providers (such as the cable and telephone companies) have the ability to block or degrade information or services travelling over their networks. If these companies discriminate against certain kinds of information based on the content of the message being delivered, this would represent a severe violation of intellectual freedom.

Second, Network Neutrality is a competition issue. Libraries in the digital age are providers of online information of all kinds. Among hundreds of examples, public libraries are developing online local history resources, and academic libraries allow the online public to explore some of their rarest treasures. Libraries, as trusted providers of free public access to information, should not compete for priority with for-profit history or literature Web sites that might be able to afford to strike deals with service providers. This makes the Network Neutrality debate not only a matter of philosophy and values for librarians, but also of livelihood.

In addition, librarians value innovation. Many of the technologies most central to the Internet are founded in principles of librarianship. Metadata? We call it cataloging. Online search? May I point you to the online public access catalog (OPAC)? Linked content? Cross references in the card catalog. Indexes, full-text search – the list goes on and on. We understand that in the context of the Internet, innovation begins at the edges; a killer app is more likely to be developed by two guys in a garage than by a highly paid executive in an industrial park. It is vital to preserve and encourage this innovation that has built the Internet. Network Neutrality is central to achieving this goal.

So What Do Libraries Want?

While our profession is built on some lofty principles – and librarians are among the fiercest free speech and intellectual freedom advocates you’ll meet – we are also a community of pragmatists. We believe that there is a way to strike a balance on Network Neutrality.

There oughtta be a law. The FCC changed the rules in 2005, removing the legal protections that guaranteed consumers the right to send and receive communications and content of their choosing over the Internet. Legal protections to prevent discrimination by ISPs and to protect intellectual freedom and innovation on the Internet should be restored. There are two ways to do this:

1. The “fifth principle”of nondiscrimination is right on the money. The language of the nondiscrimination condition the FCC applied to the AT&T/BellSouth merger (and echoed in the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program rules) is rational and appropriate. We urge the FCC to make this principle official.

2. Congress should act to preserve the neutral and open nature of the Internet. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act is the right bill at the right time. We urge Congress to pass this legislation.

Tiered pricing structures are both fair and unrelated to the central debate. We strongly agree that any Web site or organization (including libraries – nearly all public libraries provide no-cost access to the Internet) with a high-bandwidth connection should pay more for that service than a home user or a smaller organization. This is a traditional tiered pricing structure, and it is a fair and proven model. However, once a user has purchased bandwidth, there should be no artificial restraints on the legal content that he or she receives.

The Network Neutrality debate shows no signs of slowing down, and as I witnessed in Chicago, librarians show no sign of losing interest in this topic. We look forward to working with policymakers to protect the free and open nature of the Internet. Our libraries – and our nation – deserve nothing less.
Carrie Lowe is the Director of the Program on Networks at the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology