Democrats sneak Net neutrality rules into 'stimulus' bill
The House Democrats' $825 billion legislation released on Thursday was supposedly intended to "stimulate" the economy. Backers claimed that speedy approval was vital because the nation is in "a crisis not seen since the Great Depression" and "the economy is shutting down."
That's the rhetoric. But in reality, Democrats are using the 258-page legislation to sneak Net neutrality rules in through the back door.
The so-called stimulus package hands out billions of dollars in grants for broadband and wireless development, primarily in what are called "unserved" and "underserved" areas. The U.S. Department of Commerce is charged with writing checks-with-many-zeros-on-them to eligible recipients, including telecommunications companies, local and state governments, and even construction companies and other businesses that might be interested.
The catch is that the federal largesse comes with Net neutrality strings attached. The Commerce Department must ensure that the recipients "adhere to" the Federal Communications Commission's 2005 broadband policy statement (PDF)--which the FCC said at the time was advisory and "not enforceable," and has become the subject of a lawsuit before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
One interpretation of the "adhere to" requirement is that a company like AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast that takes "stimulus" dollars to deploy broadband in, say, Nebraska must abide by these rules nationwide. (It's rather like the state of Nebraska demanding that a broadband provider filter out porn nationwide in exchange for a lucrative government contract.)
In addition, recipients must operate broadband and high-speed wireless networks on an "open access basis." The FCC, soon to be under Democratic control, is charged with deciding what that means. Congress didn't see fit to include a definition.
The Bush administration has taken a dim view of Internet regulations in the form of Net neutrality rules, warning last year that they could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality' would do just that, with respect to the Internet." A report from the Federal Trade Commission reached the same conclusion in 2007.
In addition, a recent study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the absence of Net neutrality laws or similar federally mandated regulations has spurred telecommunications companies to invest heavily in infrastructure, and changing the rules "would have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy, investment, and innovation."
Now, perhaps extensive Net neutrality regulations are wise. But enough people seem to have honest, deep-seated reservations about them to justify a sincere discussion of costs and benefits--rather than having the requirements stealthily injected into what supposed to be an emergency save-the-economy bill scheduled for a floor vote within a week or so.
Net neutrality requirements can, of course, always be imposed retroactively on broadband "stimulus" recipients. As recently as one day ago, a Democratic Senate aide was saying the topic would be addressed in the Judiciary Committee in the near future; there seems little reason to rush to lard up this particular legislation.
But it always seems to happen. Last fall's TARP bailout bill included IRS snooping. A port security bill included Internet gambling restrictions; the Real ID Act was glued onto a military spending and tsunami relief bill; a library filtering law was attached to a destined-to-be-enacted bill funding Congress itself.
It's enough to make you want to force our elected representatives to actually read the bills they pass.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
Interesting. In fact, its rather like the opposite of this, forcing the state of Nebraska to NOT filter out porn nationwide in exchange for a lucrative government contract.
Net neutrality takes it out of the hands of the telecom utilities (aka monopolies) and puts it back in the hands of the people. In fact, it is the duty of the government to protect the people, not corporations.
Net Neutrality is, or should be, simply telling the Telcos and Cable companies that they operate in the public right of way (that was paid for by all of us through tax dollars) and therefore are obligated to serve the people as much as they serve themselves. Don't block me from using, or offering a service that simply uses standard Internet protocols. It's anti-competitive and monopolistic to do so and should be regulated.
There's no interest like self interest, and you can bet that if unregulated, these companies will protect and extend their market and limit what others can do over 'their' networks.
Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. Net Neutrality guarantes a free and competitive market for Internet content. Currently, the telcos are planning to parse "their" lines to delineate between different uses of the lines for internet access. It basically means that we, the netizen, will have to pay more for the exact same service we're using today. Use more bandwidth? Pay more. Want to stream movies into your home? Pay more. Regardless of ISP, if it travels over "their" lines, they feel they want the right to charge more for more bandwifth useage. The reason I say "their" lines, is because we did grant them monopolies to expand the infrastructure and granted them hugh tax breaks at the same time.
And investment banks, hedge funds and the like need no regulation to ensure free markets operate well.
It's time to grow up, internet service providers are just as human as investment bankers and hedge fund managers. They need something more than our naive trust. They need rules and regulation to ensure net neutrality. I don't want to give them money without guarantees that all internet users have equal access.
You obviously don't understand what "Net Neutrality" means. To give it a comparison to a to a more understandable technology, telephones. All phone companies' networks are inter-connected, which is why you can call anyone with a phone.
Imagine if AT&T wanted to make extra money. They decide any calls coming from Sprint customers, regardless if it is just passing through their (publicly subsidized and located on public land) network back to another Sprint customer, will get the sound quality turned down unless Sprint pays them a cut. Or maybe takes an extra 30 seconds to connect. Or in any other way hijacks, degrades or delays the call. The law, as it stands now tells them they have to pass the calls through unhindered. In this hypothetical example, Sprint may very well say "Forget that noise, we'll do the same to you" and ideally both hash out their differences. But a smaller company hasn't got the cash to pony up. People suddenly say "Well why use them? I don't have the patience to wait that 30 seconds." and they switch to AT&T. Now that smaller company goes out of business. Customers all go to ATT. now ATT has enough people to imbalance the situation and tell Sprint "Now you have to pay us" and Sprint has to to avoid the same fate as the previous company. But because they have to pay a surcharge to ATT, they can't keep their rates as low, and lose more business to ATT, they eventually will go under. Now ATT has a monopoly, which is good for no one except ATT.
I'm not sure how old you are, but because of a monopoly for phone service in the 80's $.25 (25 cents) a minute was considered a good rate for long distance. Even local rates could be 10 cents a minute. It was bad enough that the federal government had to break the company (AT&T, aka Ma Bell) into the RBOCs (regional bell operating companies) in an anti-trust suit.
Then companies like Sprint, and MCI came along and forced the RBOCs into competition for long distance, driving the rates down. Our modern communications network would not be possible without this, because without competitive forces, there is no incentive for a telecom company to improve. But if people have a "vote" (choice) they have to cater to them.
All Net Neutrality means is that just like the phone calls, all internet traffic goes through without being hindered. Just like phone calls.
That would be essentially giving money away to a company to profit from, without concern for the public's benefit.
Seems like Net Neutrality rule are highly applicable, just as you would expect that the first half of the TARP money would have had strings attached to protect the public's money from being used to feed the year-end bonuses of CEOs and management.
I think it is absolutely a requirement that we put strings attached to any money we hand out, and Net Neutrality is a perfect fit for broadband money.
If we want to talk about the US Chamber of Commerce's study or the 'honest, deep-seated reservations' about how Net Neutrality is defined, we can take that up, mano-a-mano. Just let me know when to attack.
If you don't like the strings, don't take the money. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The title of the article is misleading - Congress is not forcing anyone to follow Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is actually an insufficient remedy - what we need is structural separation, to ensure monopolies do not leverage their power over one layer to gain uncompetitive advantage in another.
A Google search didn't reveal any other articles on this, and you beat me to it. Congratulations.
However, I think your headline is inappropriate. It stood out like a sore thumb when I read the bill. If other reporters missed it because they didn't do a search on broadband in the bill text, shame on them. My take, if you're curious, is at http://www.fastnetnews.com/policyblog/806-broadband-stim-net-neutrality-required
Why of course, and the open freeways were the worst thing that ever happened to the US. How dare the government invest all that tax money on road building without giving Detroit an absolute monopoly on making the vehicles that can drive on them, and giving a monopoly to one taxi company in each town? Don't people know the roads cost money to build?!
Just don't tell me that I'm some sort of socialist for insisting on the right to drive the car model of my choice on the roads instead of being forced to buy one from Detroit because they can't make one I want (oh, wait, the auto bailout...)
This country repeated a MAJOR mistake when it handed local broadband transmission over to private monopolies. This repeated the very mistake made with the railroads a century earlier when, starry-eyed by the potential of another new technology, the government doled out monopolies to build and operate them, trusting them to be operated in the public interest. That quickly gave us the term "robber baron" and an entire body of antitrust law that worked very well until the Reagan and Bush administrations decided to stop enforcing it.
What we need is a broadband network very much along the lines of the transportation system. To prevent monopoly abuse, the government builds and maintains the roads as a public good. They are equally available to everyone, and their costs are recovered through gasoline and road taxes. Meanwhile, the private sector does what it does best, competing to providing the vehicles and the services that run on these roads. And we get the best of both worlds.
Somehow the phone and cable companies who benefit from their present monopoly on local broadband want to claim this model is socialism. Well, if it's socialism, then it's one that actually seems to work.
To be complete, there is one difference between the road network and broadband transmission. There seems to be adequate competition in longhaul broadband; the problem is in local retail broadband. So there's no need for the government to run the long haul networks. And if we had a similar amount of open competition at the local level, I'd say let the private companies do that too. But we don't. The telephone and cable companies have a chokehold on local transmission, and that's why we need an alternative.
Net neutrality is not about preventing ISP's etc from making profits, it's to prevent them from essentially extorting people into paying extra to get decent performance, or to prevent them from severely degrading the user experience for people using, for instance, a VoIP service sold by a competitor. It would also force the ISP's to keep their pipes big enough to handle all the traffic without discriminating against some particular types of data.
The big problem here is sneaking stuff into a bill about something else. It clearly happens all the time, but why such frankenstein bills are allowed in the first place is a mystery to me.
Imagine this for second. The highway comparison used elsewhere is perfect. Imagine a 4-lane highway.Now imagine the highway department reserves the left two lanes of the highway for those paying a higher premium, and charge a lower premium for the right two lanes. Obviously, the right two lanes will be congested and sluggish. Unless you want or are able to pay for the left two lanes, you're stuck with the rest of us schmoes.
To Karn,
Need I remind you that the Interstate system was inspired by Nazi Germany. Hardly a model state. Their autobahn also made it easier for invading armies to conquer them as would ours. Also opening freeways at taxpayers expense gives everyone a sense of obligation to use it and they do, hence all of the commuter traffic on them. Socialism is not very good at distribution of goods when it comes to freeway space or anything else thats why it fails, and thats why Net Neutrality is wrong.
As to the subject of my "fuzzy thinking" I never said that Net Neutrality means that nobody pays. Someone always pays. The question is how much, by whom, at what rate, and who decides. Under Net Neutrality the government would dictate to bandwidth providers that they not give preferential treatment to their customers who use bandwidth most or whomever they choose to for whatever reason they deem reasonable. They will have to be "neutral". I guess Cruise ships will have to downgrade all cabins to standard now as well ?
Private Monopolies ? First of of there is no such thing as a private monopoly unless the state creates one. A private monopoly would be like the East India Trading Company. Which could not maintain its monopoly without the state to enforce it. There is no monopoly in bandwidth service, I don't think you really know what your talking about. Where I am right now, I have about 10 different choices for internet service with various speeds, prices, and features. Hardly a monopolized market.
What you are advocating is in fact a real Monopoly. We have government monopoly of roads with very few private roads. So while claiming that all of the internet companies out there investing in their network and providing bandwidth and competing with each other for my business does constitute a monopoly in your world, a government, single system, tax payer funded network does not ? If your not a socialist then I am Mickey Mouse.
Phone Monopolies ? Again, you seem to see monopolies under every rock. None exists. Right as I type I don't have a hard line in my house for phone, yet I can make calls and not on my cell either. Hmmm, guess no monopoly here.
What are the real Monopolies ? The ones that have government backing and have outlawed competition. Can you say Utillities, or Garbage, or Schools (nearly so), or the Post Office. Thank God for loop holes.
Your talking out of both sides of your mouth using the plural word "companies" and monopoly in the same sentence, seems one cancels out the other.
Amondale, thanks for the arrogant assumptions about my "blue collar" credentials. You have it wrong first of all, I am not blue collar, and second all a smart person like yourself should recognize an ad homonen argument when you use it.
b_smark, the internet is not a public right of way. Some parts of it are public, but the now most of the cables in the ground are there as a result of private investment and they belong to someone not to the public. To use the roads an example there are such things as private roads, and not everyone is entitled to drive on them. Same here. Also of course favors from Uncle Sam come with strings, that why Uncle Sam should get out of the special favors business for good, and people should stop accepting the help.
I say, throttle now, throttle forever !! I know the socialist, and egalitarians hate this, but stop mandating what people can do with their own property, if you don't like it then get some capital, start your own network and provide bandwidth based on your own values, and see if you succeed or not. Those guys at Craigslist did it, at least they didn't pass a law banning others from doing things with their property they just came out with something on their own and ran it how they wanted. If they wanna give away the store, its theirs to give away. Go do the same, and leave these companies alone.
Ah, read your history, the internet was developed with goverment money and grants (see ARPNET), was originally carried over goverment networks, and to this day is still somewhat of a consortium, and not a business, and is very much a socialized model, designed to be open to everyone.
Don't confuse the internet with the owned networks used to provide acess to it. The internet is a group of protocols and standards that are free for anyone to use, and developed by commitee, started and funded by the government.(again that socialized thing you can't stand).
Karn, is exactly right (glad to see my posts and ideas are getting out there), and throwing around 'Nazi', to try to influence someone into thinking that our highway system (and automotive culture in general) hasn't been the single most powerful -driving- force in this country's developement, is just plain childish. Germany both industrially and economically was actually very successful even when it was 'Nazi-Germany'. The political idealology, and economic idealology are somewhat independant. We supposedly have a democracy, but function politically like a republic, and our economy is described as capitalist, but many other combinations are possible.
The Internet IS a public right of way, it protocols were designed and developed with that mind set exactly (as a network that transported packets of data not caring what the data was, or where it went, or who sent it, only that it gets delivered hopefully accurately). It has only been since the mid 1980's that telco's even began carrying internet data, it has existed long before that, as a network between government and universities. I know, I was there, I helped to contribute to it.
Of course your not blue collar, you sound like an elitist. I suppose you would say the government has a monopoly on creation of laws and policies too, that we should open our legal system up to more competition, so that Wal-Mart can start holding civil trials, etc.
Standards are meant to unify people, create a method of cooperation, without which we would be no where. Competition and cooperation are opposites, and monopolies are neither competetive nor cooperating. You do not like the word socialism, but yet you have benefited, and probably would not have had any success in life without the things done in this country, that are actually socialist in nature. We certainly would not be talking if were not for the socialist act of creating the internet in the first place.
And as to the pollution thing, if there was private property rights to airspace I guarantee you air pollution would not exist. Pollution is a problem as a direct result of the lack of property rights, and the public nature of airspace not the other way around
I personally think every public library should have a huge WiMax antennae on the roof providing EVERYONE WITH FREE BROADBAND!!!
Maybe then we could break free from those useless telcos and ISP's.
GIVE ME A WIMAX VOIP PHONE!!!..
There's no substitute for fiber when it comes to fast communication between fixed points. It scales when radio does not. Get your municipality to build a dark fiber network and lease it out to any and every interested service provider on equal terms. The service providers reimburse the municipality for the costs of construction and maintenance, and they pass those costs onto their customers in their service charges. Voila -- your choice of a wide range of competitive local broadband services.
SHARE- (verb) ; to divide, apportion, or receive equally.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:55 am
If Congress gives the FCC (or what ever) the power to regulate the Internet, it will make things worse, either because it cannot keep up with the Internet?s rapid evolution, or because industry incumbents will succeed in getting their own allies in key positions within the commission. Either way, the results could be very different from what network neutrality proponents are hoping for.
The internet is naturally neutral by design [http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9775], we don?t need politicians $!@#ing it up!
Anyone who's against net neutrality needs to either read up on the issue or flat out admit they work for the telcos.
I could write a Perl script to do everything he's ever written. Change a few details in a short form-based interface and MadLib them into stock, market fundamentalist boilerplate. It'd be a form of social justice if his automatic and unimaginative whoring were automated and Declan had to go drive cab, flip burgers or pick lettuce.
Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder?
So what ever this net neutrality thing is, it's either not working or its working because before the Dems took the White House I didn't have this problem.
Now I'll have to switch back to cable internet ;(
Damn this moral society.
- by tgovostis March 4, 2009 12:11 PM PST
- BTW for those that don't know, the US Chamber of Commerce is NOT a government agency. It is a pro-big business lobby group, whose study that the article above references is far from unbiased.
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