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As if there weren’t enough things going to pot today, the FCC has decided to come out with a proposal to pretend to institute net neutrality regulations.
In a speech he plans to give Wednesday in Washington, Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, will outline a framework for broadband Internet service that forbids both wired and wireless Internet service providers from blocking lawful content. But the proposal would allow broadband providers to charge consumers different rates for different levels of service, according to a text of the speech provided to The New York Times.
Mr. Genachowski has decided not to use the commission’s telephone regulatory powers to govern broadband Internet service, a move that he proposed in May that would potentially open Internet service to heavier government regulation.
His proposal would also allow broadband providers to manage their networks to limit congestion or harmful traffic.
I don’t know how you could call this net neutrality at all. Broadband providers could charge different rates for “faster” service; they will not be subject to common carrier regulations on their product; and they can “manage their networks,” which is precisely the point of net neutrality. You can’t block content, but if you can “manage” it, you can essentially slow it out of existence.
I’ll go with Marvin Ammori on this one; we have garbage masquerading as net neutrality.
It exempts wireless. Like the Google-Verizon proposal, Julius’s makes an artificial distinction between accessing the Internet through a wire and through a wireless connection. No nondiscrimination rule applies to wireless. The Chairman’s fig leaf is to ban “blocking” on wireless, but not discrimination [...]
The proposal may not ban paid-priority. A ban on paid priority is central to any real net neutrality proposal, beginning with the Snowe-Dorgan bill of 2006. Indeed, the notion of “payment for priority” is what started the net neutrality fight; in late 2005, AT&T’s CEO said that Vonage and Google had to stop using his pipes for free. The only way a carrier could charge for priority is if basic Internet access was not sufficient for a company to compete; if Yahoo! does need priority to compete effectively, why pay? Without a ban on paid priority, we can expect basic access to deteriorate so companies have to pay for priority [...]
There may no jurisdiction for any of this anyway. In April, the D.C. Circuit interpreted Title I of the Communications Act narrowly, severely curtailing the FCC’s ability to adopt rules for Internet access [...] After a month of studying the question, the FCC General Counsel concluded the obvious: relying on Title I authority after that case was irresponsible and doomed to failure. The Chairman made a video explaining how the FCC should rely on authority under Title II, which is something that several Justices of the Supreme Court (including Scalia) thought the FCC should have done from the beginning. The Chairman described reclassifying to Title II as the principled center, but without principle, the center keeps shifting.In the proposal, the FCC will not reclassify.
So this is a pretend net neutrality proposal, which has all the problems of the status quo if not more, and which is still drawing fire from Republicans because it pretends to call itself net neutrality. They keep pushing from the right, but in reality this proposal would be a gold mine for the telecoms.
More from Josh Silver. You’re seeing the freedom of the Internet slipping away.
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it’ll pass the Senate unanimously, too. when it comes to telecom and copyright and such there really is only one party – not even the kabuki.
This does not even rise to the level of “Pretend” it is an outright gift to the telecoms/corporations to fleece the public out more and more $$ while giving us third world internet. The Government Must take ownership of the backbone of the Internet, the people paid to have it built BTW! The internet should be treated like a national utility and not a playground for the rich to try and fleece the rest of us.
Jane is on Dylan!!
This is the heart of the matter. In finance and government, “the power to tax is the power to destroy”; on the Internet, the power to slow is the power to destroy. That’s why net neutrality is so important.
Are we truly alone on this, or is this one of the issues where we might be able to make a temporary alliance of convenience with some elements of the far Right? My reasoning tells me no, since they worship corporations and property rights (including intellectual property), but I’d like to hear an answer from someone in a position to know more directly.
Kabuki. The one constant in DC is that lobbyists issue checks before a vote like this, right in the chambers sometimes. There won’t be any “Net Neutrality” except in a form similar to “Health Care Reform” which mandated we buy a shitty private product while they called it a victory and anybody who didn’t like it a fucking hippie.
Precisely! They have to shut down sites like this eventually but they don’t want to be accused of using the heavy hand of censorship. The Corporatist/Fascist noose tightens. The simple truth is democracy is DEAD and the present regime is just shoveling dirt on it’s coffin each day and calling it a new beginning. The system is working for a select % oat the top of both Gov’t and Biog Biz and to hell literally for the rest of us.
Shall I just slit my wrists now, or watch the train wrecks get worse first.
I for one don’t intend to do their dirty work for them.
Morans. Money always wins.
http://www.fcc.gov/
Click on link to commissioners for their email addresses. Not that I think this will do any good but at least it made me feel productive instead of the futility of raging against the machine.
Somebody please make it stop.
FCC is “calling football soccer” essentially.
The game that the players kick a ball around on the ground. That’s soccer.
The game the players run around carrying a ball with their hands, and throwing it to each other with their hands and catch it with their hands. Football, of course.
thats spelled “morons” not “Morans”
Nope.
Verizon’s CEO is Chairman of the Business Roundtable, which the Obama administration has been saying they’ve wanted to kiss up to the BR. This is probably the first among many things we’ll see from Obama that gives gifts to the BR.
When Murdock and his ilk consolidate and control ALL sources of information, they still won’t be satisfied.
The saddest part of this is sites like the ‘Lake will be the first to go. They’ll deprioritize the sites that dare to critize the telecoms. It’ll take forever to load FDL and web browsers will just give up.
Shitty.
The original Telecomm bill in the 1930s had 5 titles. Title II was the common carrier title, derived from the idea of ‘commerce’ back in the old coach days on Publick Roads in Olde England. If anyone could purchase a ticket to ride a coach, then it was a public transport. From that are derived, over generations and technologies, our Internet regs of today.
The FCC’s unwillingness to reclassify – all digital content, not just broadband – into Title II is appalling.
They’re going to split hairs, but fundamentally, I don’t see their logic — other than political pressure, vast fortunes, and possibly the NewSurveillanceStateHiddenInterests in failing to put telecomm squarely under Title II.
Back in the last decade, telecomm had argued that it could be released from common carrier oversight because ‘digital’ was not ‘analog’. That was mostly bullshit, as far as I’m concerned; the two technologies are each distinctive, but a phone call is a phone call is a phone call, and a text message is sent from a ‘phone’.
But the FCC and too many congressional staffers and congresscritters have been bamboozled into thinking that the Internet is somehow completely different from the old phone system; it is in some respects, but if it does not remain a common carrier, the economic impacts on every single sector of the US economy could be unbelievably sinister.
An acquaintance of mine once described the Bush Regime as an integrity sieve — if you were a member of the club, it constituted irrefutable proof that you had no integrity.
I’m starting to feel that way about his successor…
Tell me that I’m insane.
That I took bad medicine and this incident didn’t happen in the real world…just in a fevered nightmare dream where the corporate takeover is something out of a romero movie.
Tell me this isn’t happening in reality with all of the other soul destroying news like the tax cut, unemployment, the catfood commission and alan simpson rand paul and jan brewer being allowed to continue breathing.
If this is just a fevered nightmare I know I can wake up.
Net neutrality is the only reason why we are still innovating and are the leaders in this economic sector. This is the only sector where people can still dream of and make dream reality if they work hard and innovate.
They keep on adding toll booths in favor of monopolies and they will see the result. Anti-trust is the most important component in a market oriented system and if Government works actively increasing the monopoly, US will drop to last with all the talent getting no chance to work, innovate and succeed. Soon it will be other countries which will be overtaking US in this sector which is even now the undisputed leader.