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With outcries of censorship of reporters in China, it's worth noting that there are Republicans standing up against the possibility of domestic censorship, even within the Bush administration, which has become known - even within Republican circles - for its cronyism and subservience to corrupt industries. FCC Chair Kevin Martin is the latest Bush appointee actually standing up for our rights as consumers and citizens, and for the countless businesses that have not been created yet on the internet. And so, of course, the conservative business right press is going after him viciously.
Here's what's going. Some time ago, the cable giant Comcast began illegal blocking access its subscribers had to file sharing software in its first documented instance of violating net neutrality, or the principle that similar types of data on the internet be treated equally. We know that Comcast likes to censor - it blocked ads critical of corrupt Democrat Chris Carney because they included criticism of Comcast contributions to Carney - and we know that if it is not stopped, it will eventually shape the internet the way that China shapes the internet, for its own political and financial purposes. That's not an indictment of the company, incidentally, more of a recognition that powerful organizations that control communications networks and have content to sell have a business and political incentive to block alternate viewpoints and content.
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| And so, caught blocking access to consumers, Comcast is now before the Federal Communications Commission, where the commission will in all likelihood vote to enforce net neutrality provisions. Comcast knows it is in trouble, cutting a deal with the company whose software it blocked (but no other companies that might be blocked), and is already making noise about refusing to follow the rule laid down by the FCC. The commission has 5 members, 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. In this case, despite a history of pushing for deregulation, Republican Chairman Kevin Martin decided to throw his lot in on the side of an open internet and against the censorship of a company like Comcast.
Now, Martin is no liberal. He aggressively pushed through a merger of AT&T and Bellsouth into the largest telecom company in the world, attempting to impose no restrictions on the merged company. He supported the massive Sirius-XM Merger, supported relaxed cross-ownership restrictions on local media, deregulated DSL broadband providers, and enforcing indecency provisions. This is not someone who is usually on our side.
He's an ideologue that believes in deregulation because he thinks it works. In the case of net neutrality and Comcast, he saw a real problem, and acted because he got that Comcast really was acting badly. And so now, the conservative business press is getting ready to try to damage him, even though he has done an enormous amount to further their agenda. For these extremists, it's all or nothing, as this Wall Street Journal editorial suggests. It's full of lies, which is what the cable guys are now throwing at the Martin to keep their desire to control the internet secret. Take this assertion.
The FCC is by all accounts planning this week to uphold a complaint against Comcast, the cable company accused of throttling attempts to trade movies and other high-bandwidth files on its network that slow down Internet service for everyone else. Comcast has maintained that its "terms of service" agreement allowed such network-management.
No, Comcast was caught red-handed blocking the Internet. They secretly interfered with legal content. They broke the rules. There must be consequences. Ironically, the line used by anti-net neutrality proponents prior to this incident is that net neutrality is a 'solution in search of a problem'. Now that there's an actual problem, here's what they are saying.
To the extent that Comcast and BitTorrent have worked out their differences, Mr. Martin is forcing a solution in search of a problem.
Comcast put out a press release with one company called BitTorrent - the other innovators using this service weren't party to the deal. It wouldn't stop any other providers from discriminating. It wouldn't stop Comcast from discriminating against future innovations. And it's a nice morphing of their old talking point.
Then there's this pack of lies.
Instead, he wants to make an example of Comcast in order to advance a "network neutrality" industrial policy being pushed by high-tech rivals like Google and pro-regulation advocacy groups like MoveOn.org, Consumers Union and Free Press. Net neutrality proponents want all Internet traffic treated "equally." They would prohibit Internet service providers from using price to address the ever-growing popularity of streaming video and other bandwidth-intensive programs that cause bottlenecks.
This is simply false. The Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, the American Library Association, and an entire coalition of public interest groups are part of the coalition. But the real lie is that price wouldn't be allowed to address bandwidth; of course companies can charge more for more bandwidth. I can guarantee you that, say, Google, does not pay $59 a month for bandwidth like I do. What companies can't do is block content or shape the content their customers use. They can charge more for more, they can't charge more for the video you download from youtube versus the video Comcast wants to sell you. This is for a very good reason. Comcast sells billions in video services every year, and there's no reason to think the company doesn't want to do turn the internet into their onramp and block others from innovating or communicating on top of their network. That is what their illegal blocking of their customer's use of the internet actually means, although to the extent that they do want to limit bandwidth usage, it's mostly because they don't want to spend the capital to invest in upgrading their network, which is why America is rapidly dropping in the international rankings of broadband speed and access.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to play the naif.
It's not the private sector they should be worried about. There's no evidence that Comcast was trying to suppress a political view or favor one of its own services.
True, though of course that Comcast has a history of doing precisely that.
And more intentionally naive assertions.
By all appearances, the company's policies were motivated by nothing more than making sure a tiny percentage of bandwidth hogs didn't slow down Internet traffic for everyone else on the network.
BitTorrent is a file sharing service that allows users to share video. Comcast is a cable giant that sells video. They are competitors. That's a pretty damning 'appearance'.
And then we get the whole 'government is evil', followed by an attack on Martin's character.
Giving the government more say in network management, by contrast, introduces all kinds of potential for political mischief. Net neutrality is a slippery slope toward interventions of all kinds -- not merely over access but ultimately over content. Naturally, the most powerful lobbies will have the largest sway. Mr. Martin's decision in this case may well be driven by his own political hostility to Comcast and the cable industry for resisting some of his other policy priorities.
It's Comcast that has a history of political censorship on the closed network they do control - their cable network, and yet this piece is criticizing Martin for stepping in to block Comcast from furthering its control over the internet, where it legally can't censor. As for Martin's hostility to cable, that might be a factor, or it might not. But what about the public? Millions of people have weighed in on net neutrality, and almost all of them have come down on Martin's side. Maybe that had some effect.
I keep rereading the WSJ in disbelief. Literally everything in it is untrue or highly misleading. The piece concludes with the following.
Regulators would do better to focus on keeping the overall telecom marketplace competitive. If Comcast customers don't like the company's network management policies, they're free to take their business to Verizon, or AT&T, or some other Internet service provider. A World Wide Web run by Kevin Martin and his political friends will leave us with poorer quality and fewer options all around.
Most people don't actually have access to more than 2 broadband providers, so switching providers isn't actually an option. Competition in fact dried up because of deregulation at the FCC of phone and cable networks.
I agree that a World Wide Web run by any private entity or set of individuals who can censor and limit choices is a bad idea. And that's why Kevin Martin is actually standing up against Comcast, which actively is censoring where it can for clear political reasons, and blocking people on the internet for commercial purposes.
In this case, he actually deserves - gasp - praise. |
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