[Dialogue] Save the Internet

[george]

The following article highlights an upcoming threat to our  
communication abilities and the first in a series of moves by the  
large companies to use congress to control the flow of information  
and make much more money off the internet.  We've had extensive  
battles in the Texas legislature to prevent the major telecom and  
cable companies from inserting laws on the books forbidding cities  
from putting up wireless networks, which have become necessary for  
small towns to retain their assembly plants and warehouses, since the  
majors won't serve them.
–george holcombe


Save the Internet
By Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet
Posted on April 27, 2006, Printed on April 28, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/35557/



Imagine, wanting to donate money to a charity and not being able to  
open the nonprofit's web page because of the charity's inability to  
afford the dominant internet provider's fees required to make the  
page efficient? Imagine the millions of life-saving dollars these  
charities will lose if lobbyists get their way? What if your child is  
sick, and you can't gain access to a support group's page because the  
support group can't afford the fees? Or even scarier, imagine not  
gaining speedy access to a politician's views because the specific  
provider is against his or her ideology?
--Who's the Boss? star Alyssa Milano


Will the internet in the United States become, in the words of AT&T  
(SBC) CEO, their company's private "pipes"? Or will it remain, as the  
Supreme Court cited in 1997, "the most participatory form of mass  
speech yet developed"? These two very different perspectives reflect  
what's at stake in the growing fight now in Congress over the  
internet's future.

A growing movement of online users, public advocates, internet  
"visionaries," bloggers, and online corporations are fighting to have  
Congress enact what are called "network neutrality" safeguards. Such  
rules would preserve the internet's essential democratic structure:  
All content would be required to flow into our PCs and digital  
devices in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner. Network neutrality  
would help ensure that internet serves the interests of diversity of  
speech. As the new Savetheinternet coalition put it, network  
neutrality is the equivalent of the internet's First Amendment.

But an unfettered open road is directly at odds with the broadband  
business plans of AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, Time Warner and  
Verizon. The cable and telephone industry see enormous revenues as  
operators of a private internet toll-road. How has the internet -- so  
diverse and unwieldly -- fallen into their hands? The answer is (of  
course) the Bush administration. Heavily lobbied by the cable and  
phone giants, the Bush Federal Communications Commission has been  
eliminating the rules that required the internet to operate in a  
nondiscriminatory manner.

Under the "old" policy governing what's called the "dial-up"  
internet, the public was guaranteed that their internet service  
provider (ISP) had to treat all online content in an unbiased manner.  
ISPs couldn't, for example, speed up the email or websites they  
liked, or decide to slow down content it didn't like (such as from a  
peace group). The former rules also permitted the public to choose  
from literally thousands of ISPs to connect them to the internet.  
Such federal safeguards have, sadly, now bitten the digital dust.

It's all about broadband

Verizon, Comcast and the others had former FCC chair Michael Powell  
and current chair Kevin Martin strip away these rules because they  
were an obstacle to their plans to dominate the high-speed internet,  
or broadband, market. If a purely open and nondiscriminatory internet  
remained, then anyone could distribute a movie or video program -- a  
serious threat to the cable industry's monopoly over TV distribution.

No one needs a "Ma Bell" anymore to bring us telephone service.  
Practically anyone can now use the internet to provide phone service  
(known as voice over internet protocol, or VoIP). In other words, if  
the internet remained a real First Amendment friendly pipeline, both  
the cable and phone industry would see their profits and power  
evaporate -- fast.

But it wasn't only to prevent competitors that spurred our new  
broadband bandits to action. With the federal nondiscrimination  
policy now toast, the phone and cable companies could embark in  
earnest with plans to -- in their words -- "monetize" digital  
distribution. Through their sole control over America's residential  
broadband pipes (they have more than 90 percent of the market), they  
planned to set up a multitiered and pay-as-you-go private internet  
highway.

There would be a new fast lane, giving the content owned by the  
phone, cable and other media giants, the fastest preferential  
treatment. Video and multimedia programming owned by AT&T and  
Comcast, for example, would be received lightning speed on PCs,  
digital TVs and mobile devices. Those that couldn't afford to pay  
would be relegated to what the phone and cable lobbyists derisively  
called the "public" internet.

This so-called public lane would be the equivalent of a digital dirt  
road, easily marginalized by the majority of the public that has come  
to enjoy ever-faster and more efficient connections. A slew of  
Silicon Valley tech companies, including Cisco, have built broadband  
delivery equipment that allows a phone or cable company to make  
business decisions about every packet of data that travels over its  
lines.

Imagine a private air traffic controller working for Airline X. Its  
planes would be given priority takeoff and landings -- while  
competitors and others slowly circle overhead. Only those who could  
afford to make a payoff (such as huge fees or a cut of their  
business) would be afforded similar treatment. The Bells and cable  
hoped that with this control over the data lines, their broadband  
content competitors would crash and burn.

The cable and telephone broadband scam, however, is now meeting  
intense opposition. First, there is a growing opposition movement  
against the privatization of the internet. Led by Free Press, there  
is a new "savetheinternet.org" coalition, representing a diverse  
group of activists, users and experts from across the political  
spectrum, including Gun Owners of America, the United Church of  
Christ and Craigslist's Craig Newmark.

Earlier in the week, this group and MoveOn.org helped flood the halls  
of Congress with emails and online petitions calling on the Congress  
to enact safeguards for "network neutrality." The power of the cable/ 
telco alliance to determine the future of the U.S. internet has also  
alarmed many of the country's most powerful online companies -- such  
as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. They have launched their own new  
coalition, called "Don't Mess with the Net.com."

The GOP -- led by Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Energy and  
Commerce Chair Joe Barton (Texas) -- is firmly in the grip of the  
broadband monopoly lobby. Yesterday, Barton's committee rejected a  
network neutrality provision, 34-22 (sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey,  
among others). Helping the Republicans defeat the internet freedom  
measure were five Democrats, including Edolphus Townes (N.Y.), Albert  
Wynn (Md.), Charles A. Gonzalez (Texas), Bobby Rush (Ill.) and Gene  
Green (Texas). (It was the endorsement of Rep. Rush, a former  
activist, that permitted the Republicans to call their broadband bill  
a bipartisan effort).

But the growing outcry to protect the internet led to House  
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's formally endorsing the network  
neutrality call. There is now growing optimism among "save the  
internet" supporters that the Senate, which will soon take up a  
broadband communications bill, will endorse a neutrality rule. A  
bipartisan plan to do just that has already been prepared by Sens.  
Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

Federal rules to ensure that the internet remains a democratic medium  
of expression is essential if the United States is to ever become a  
more just and civil society. In the emerging era, the nature of what  
will be a ubiquitious broadband communications system will greatly  
define us as a culture. It must be one where the voices of those  
calling for justice, health care, environmental protection and peace  
can resonate as loudly as the commercial messages brought to us by  
Time Warner and AT&T. Network neutrality, or internet freedom, is a  
necessary and critical step to make sure such voices are part of the  
mainstream -- not exiled to the digital dirt road.

Sign the petition HERE or contact your rep HERE.

Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital  
Democracy (www.democraticmedia.org).

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/35557/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060428/610ab122/attachment-0001.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: logo.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 1542 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060428/610ab122/attachment-0001.gif