Posted: Sep 24, 2009 11:13 AM
Updated: Sep 24, 2009 11:13 AM
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Monday outlined plans to turn the agency's principles for open Internet access into official regulation. The speech to the Brookings Institute is being praised by net freedom advocates and roundly criticized by the wireless industry, and this is an issue that we need to weigh in on. Republicans are lining up on the side of the wireless carriers, while Democrats, including President Obama, support Genachowski's plans. On the surface, it looks like a typical big business versus big government debate, but this one is much more complicated.
Steve and I have both quoted Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig on matters pertaining to copyright and net neutrality, and he's calling Genachowski's rules "perfect," but the business community thinks otherwise.
The pro-business Institute for Policy Innovation issued a blistering statement saying the proposed rules will "...undoubtedly jeopardize not only the future of new and currently unforeseen innovations in Internet services, but also current services that consumers have come to expect and enjoy."
"'Net neutrality' is nothing more than sweet-sounding words to obscure an attempt to involve the government in directing private sector investment and business models," said Bartlett Cleland, director of the Dallas-based group Center for Technology Freedom. "The discussion regarding where investment should take place should be left to consumers and business owners."
This issue centers around a case last year involving Comcast and the quiet restricting of certain types of heavy-bandwidth use traffic on its network. It wasn't discovered until a couple of geeks started snooping around, and the case caused a ruckus among those who want a level playing field for everybody online. Genachowski referred to this case in his speech Monday, especially noting the surreptitious nature of Comcast's behavior.
"The blocking was initially implemented with no notice to subscribers or the public," Genachowski said. "It was discovered only after an engineer and hobbyist living in Oregon realized that his attempts to share public domain recordings of old barbershop quartet songs over a home Internet connection were being frustrated," he said, referring to Robb Topolski, the engineer who first identified Comcast's traffic interference. "It was not until he brought the problem to the attention of the media and Internet community, which then brought it to the attention of the FCC, that the improper network management practice became known and was stopped," the chairman said.
The wireless carriers are nervous that these rules will slide over into their territory in providing Web services to their customers, and so the battle of words has begun.
There may be some short-term benefits for big media companies in siding against net neutrality. After all, if the folks who own the pipes can restrict those pipes in any way, then those who have the deepest pockets will get the good bandwidth. That's a very narrow view of the issue, however, because the bigger point is that we all need to innovate and become much more entrepreneurial in our approach to online business, especially at the local level, and for that, we're going to need the level playing field that net neutrality promises. Do we really want to stop innovation today and cede future wealth to Google without a fair chance for us to compete with them locally?
To those who say that the Web has grown as it has without such official oversight, one only needs to point to the actions of Comcast because, absent mandated transparency, this kind of thing will naturally evolve. The Web is our future, an unrestricted marketplace, where good ideas and smart strategy can bring prosperity to those who aren't afraid of a little heavy lifting, not where one's relationships with the powerful determines who wins and who loses. It's a future worth protecting.
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