Coop's Corner

Hi there. We're here from Uncle Sam, and we want to help.

(Credit: Federal Communications Commission)

Let me see if I've got this right. Federal regulators determined on Friday that Comcast broke the law by slowing Internet traffic for subscribers using BitTorrent to swap large files with other people. But then the FCC decided it was enough to issue a press release declaring the victory of the rule of law and now it's time to move on.

Not a penny in fines was assessed and not the slightest penalty suggested.

(Credit: CNET News)

OK. Post-Enron, post-Bear Stearns, post the subprime debacle, I'm long past being surprised by big corporations trying to cover their posteriors for posterity. But what's really amusing here is that Comcast thinks even this rap on the knuckles is undeserved.

"We believe that our network management choices were reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices," a company spokeswoman said in a statement.

But this is less about Comcast's ham-handed ways and more about the absence of leadership in Washington. The Federal Communications Commission, a notoriously political institution, is being forced to figure out federal Internet policy on its own. Pulled and pushed in different directions, is it any wonder that the FCC decision comes off as inconsistent?

Critics correctly note that Congress still has not given the FCC explicit authority to decide Internet policy. Even as the FCC issued its decision, Chairman Kevin Martin went on record writing that while Comcast had no right to prioritize Internet traffic, it's fine to prioritize voice over IP:

We do not tell providers how to manage their networks. They might choose, for instance, to prioritize voice-over-IP calls. In analyzing whether Comcast violated federal policy when it blocked access to certain applications, we conduct a fact-specific inquiry into whether the management practice they used was reasonable. Based on many reasons, including the arbitrary nature of the blocking, the lack of relation to times of congestion or size of files, and the manner in which they hid their conduct from their subscribers, we conclude it was not.

We do not limit providers' efforts to stop congestion. We do say providers should disclose what they are doing to consumers.

So it's OK to put individual data packets under a magnifying glass? But in its group statement--which Martin presumably signed off on--the FCC approvingly cited MIT professor David Reed, a respected Internet notable, who believes "that "(n)either Deep Packet Inspection nor RST Injection"--Comcast uses both to manage its network--"are acceptable behavior."

This takes Emerson's apercu that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds to an extreme. Maybe the private sector can figure things out without confusing itself over regulation from bureaucrats. But they first need clear rules of the road to follow. Otherwise, expect more of the same.

It all started with a letter from the American Corn Growers Association to Congress, complaining about a proposed Yahoo-Google advertising deal. But why in the world would a farm lobbying group get involved in something so seemingly tangential to its business? But when it comes to money and politics, appearances are often deceiving. So it was that sleuthing by my colleague Declan McCullagh uncovered a lot more to this story.

MPAA Dan Glickman: Nyet on Net neutrality

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

Dan Glickman, who runs Hollywood's most powerful trade organization, has got to start watching something hipper than It's a Wonderful Life.

The MPAA's senior honcho is an experienced and capable lawyer, but is Glickman's nostalgia for the pre-Internet era clouding his judgment about the movie industry's future? Glickman delivered a speech (PDF) on Monday to the annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas and it was a corker. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Government regulation of the Internet would impede our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways, and it would impair the ability of broadband providers to address the serious and rampant piracy problems occurring over their networks today.

This is a high-stakes debate. Do we take a stand for intellectual property rights or cast them aside in the digital environment? Are we permitted to respond to consumers, innovate on their behalf, and compete with the world? Or are we told by our government to stand down? Today MPAA and all of our studios are standing up in opposition to broad-based government regulation of the Internet. We are opposing so-called "Net neutrality" government action. And, in the process, we are standing up for our customers, for our economy, and for the ability of content producers to continue to create great movies for the future.

(Stage instructions: Slow fade out to the background theme of a Lawrence Welk polka, as Zuzu petals sprinkle across the Capitol Dome.)

Now, back to the real world.

Don't believe for a minute that Glickman's as clueless as that speech might suggest. He was a United States Congressman for Kansas' 4th district from 1977 until 1995. Then he served as Secretary of Agriculture under Bill Clinton. He's been running the MPAA since succeeding Jack Valenti in 2004. He knows his way around the corridors of power and how legislation gets passed in Washington. Glick's doing what a smart hired hand representing any powerful interest group does: he's exaggerating for effect.

But here's my rule of thumb: When you find a collection of billion-dollar interests--in this case content companies, cable operators, and telcos--lining up on one side of the issue, you know the fix is in. Glickman is purposely demonizing the import of the Net neutrality bill proposed by Reps. Ed Markey and Chip Pickering and now waiting in the queue before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Read the proposal for yourself, but the attacks are over the top. I wonder whether Glickman would toe the same line if Hollywood was making serious money from Internet downloads (and that day inevitably will arrive.) Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jon Healey fills in the picture:

Yet Hollywood's vision is focused on the near-term risk of piracy, rather than the long-term risk of its distribution pipelines deciding to collect extra tolls. Glickman argued in his speech that neutrality regulations would bar the use of emerging tools that ISPs can use to prevent piracy. That's what some studio lobbyists have been telling lawmakers, too, in their efforts to derail neutrality legislation. And depending on how the regulations are written, they could be right.

But the bill that's awaiting action in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, by (Markey and Pickering) doesn't fit that description. It would make it U.S. policy to preserve the public's access to "lawful" content, applications, and services online, carving out wide latitude for ISPs to interfere with infringing works. For example, ISPs couldn't block all BitTorrent traffic simply because it might be used for piracy, but they could use video fingerprints to try to stop BitTorrent from being used to deliver bootlegged movies.

Sounds mild enough, though I'm sure Comcast might have a problem with that. I'm not sure that most of the rest of us would mind so much.