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FCC Commissioner Warns of Destructive FCC Policies
bugsy writes "Discrimination, Closed Networks and the Future of Cyberspace... Just over a month ago, Karl Auerbach asked, Is the Internet Dying?. Today, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a speech at the New America Foundation, is asking the very same question, 'Is The Internet As We Know It Dying?' and warning about FCC policies that damaged media now threatening the Internet. Coincidence?! Here is CircleID's report on these Remarks by Michael J. Copps, Federal Communications Commissioner: The Beginning of The End of the Internet? Discrimination, Closed Networks, and the Future of Cyberspace."
i think the internet is becoming a more commercial media, and with that come benefits as well as disadvantages. I don't like the turns the internet has been taking recently, too many lawsuits and crackers, this isn't what the internet was designed for.
The article makes repeated, general forecasts of "doom and gloom", but does not mention any specific pending decisions that might threaten the Internet. What are these threats?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
you have your goverment talking to cults/pseudo companies ?
i am beginning to see a pattern, have fun in bowling class !
I do not depend on the internet for anything I can't and haven't gotten elsewhere or can do without. The reason the big business's want the net is the customers, if they make it unpalatable I and many other people will just stop using it, then they will have spent more billions destroying a possible source of income than they have made...The rules of survival in business are similar to those in real life...the fit and strong survivwe, the weak and stupid get welfare or starve :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
How did such a guy get elected? It sounds like he actually has a brain! Ok.. that was below the belt, but to the point:
.02. :)
One of the major things holding up growth of the Internet in the US is our lousy rollout of broadband (which has improved a lot since 1997 but is still not great... South Korea is still better hooked up than the US). Perhaps if the FCC mandated that phone companies and optical carriers open their networks to smaller competitors, we would all have optical fiber connections to our homes.
This underscores my belief that the FCC should regulate the Internet (both content and connectivity) only in such a way that it maintains the openness and accessibility which the Internet promises (and does not restrict it in too many ways). It should protect the Internet and the interests of the Internet's users, not help other companies compartmentalize/control the net.
Remember, the Internet is just a network of networks, and almost all these networks connect over the physical transmission lines laid by major companies. Without some regulation there, how can anyone expect the net to grow?
Just my
The internet as I knew it when I first started using it is already dead. Back when Mosaic first came out, there was no spam, no pop-up ads, no ads on websites in general. All the content on the web was free made by hobbyists rather than large corporations. On usenet, there were no AOL newbies, spammers, or fear of e-mail harvesters.
That was pretty obvious even 10 or more years ago, that the internet, as a media with so high potentials, can not stay free for a long time, can not be not owned/not divided between corporations/businesses. It's already surviving for a surprisingly long time. But sooner or later it will be reduced to the super mega e-shop, and nothing more...
We could have saved sixpence. We have saved fivepence.
...should have your lower horn removed.
Yes, just like Linux and BSDi. Blood flows like red ink ... whatever, you know what I mean.
- Moomin
...without your lower horn?
Sure in the US maybe there is some problems with new regulations, but luckily the internet is distributed around the world.
So the internet between most non-US countries will still continue to be fine... and in fact I'd say it would be improved because it will have greater use if hosts move outside the US.
I use google to search with my Mozilla browser on a computer with a Microsoft operating system connected via a Comcast cable modem to an Internet with DNS provided by Verisign.
By my count, that's 5 companies who can vie to enhance my websurfing experience by redirecting my queries to their paying customers.
How can one possibly say competition is dying?!
It doesn't matter what you note or have noted. What matters is what *they*note. This is actually a good step. A counter step highly needed. So be glad for once (BGFO).
Don't get discouraged if what in your eyes is considered common knowledge is (finally) entering the political stage. Someone puts it there. Someone is thinking. Consider this good (relative to the ever present slipping slope).
In sympathy with the US people (if cos only we in Europe are getting the same after a certain delay).
.... news at 11!
If you do a Google Search for "death of the internet predicted", it returns over 533000 results. Now we add some more.
-ez
bill moyers
here is a nice little flash-based webpage too about the big ten media companies.
I once thought the internet was a uncontrollable stream of information, that since no government had total control of it, then no one would be silenced from sharing their views; their thoughts, their knowledge. But there seems to be this growing consensus that something must be done by the people who run our governments, I use to laugh and say don't they know the internet isn't a US only thing, that they can't control what other governments do, but it seems that if the U.S. picks it up, the others will seemingly follow.
Yes, I am plagued by spammers, telemarketers, and the occasional viral alert. But it doesn't seem to bother me as much as it bothers other people. I am more frustrated that they are trying to ruin the freedom of the internet I came to enjoy. Am I the only one that has noticed how every day the cage on our existence closes in around us, they cloak it with words like Patriot, Security, or say remember 9/11. Yeah I remember it, but I also remember the freedom I had before it, and I will most definitely remember how every day after, it was taken bit by bit. Okay, that is my rant.
> The US Isn't THE internet....
Damn dude, someone sure lied to you.
The company I work for has more IP address space than the entire country of China. China has about half the population of this planet.
If the US doesn't own the internet, it's pretty fucking close. 3 of the 13 Root Name Servers are in the US. I guess my main point is that just because you aren't in the US....don't think that our laws won't affect you. That is in fact the main problem for non-US countries.
Alright, to be fair, we don't own the internet in that no one can own the internet but you have to admit that we still have control over the rest of the worlds use of the internet.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
It may not be dying, but there seems to be a good number of powerful entrenched interests working to kill it.
Threats I see are things like the parasite and adware companies that are trying to install software on machines to either control or influence purchases.
Ad blocking and porn blocking software also poses a threat. The deal here is that the ad blockers have the choice of which ads to block. Already you are seeing situations where an advertiser reaches "terms" with an ad blocking company to let their ads through.
The number of paid listings on search engines in relation to free listings is growing.
When things like parasiteware and adblockers move from the desktop (where the user has some control) to routers where businesses control access, things get very scary.
Big media doesn't like all of these blogs stealing their thunder. Academic circles are incensed at all the commercial sites popping up everywhere and want to create little circles of their own.
Personally, I think most of the interests balance each other, but technologies like parasites and net partitioning need to be monitored closely and are likely to require regulation.
anyone else notice their qmail mta have a lot of 4.2.2 possible duplicates today? Ussually means network problems. Sendmail has similiar error called I/O error.
anyone?
elsewhere, then what?
I can think of some parties that are not really amused if their pool of knowledge is taken away from them...
With the internet knowledge and ideas are for the grabs for institutions like the militaries NGO's etc...
Also the software companies loose track of their customers again...
Now we don't want that to happen, do we?
Is USA management that stupid and short sighted today?
.....how will you get Slashdot without the Internet?!?!
D0o0o0o0om!!!!!!
Bad news: Unfortunatly yes, I just got off the phone with the hospital and we can expect the sad news anytime now :o(
Good news: Ive have been named sole benefactor of its porn collection :oD
- Michael runs it as a Slashdot story.
There are five FCC commissioners, two Republican and three Democrats, and one of the Democrats is criticizing the decisions of the majority. This is news like "Boston fans boo Yankees" is news.
And, of course, Michael ran it, just like he ran this one where we learn that the scientific freedom of people who illegally import plague, lose track of it, and then lie to the FBI is in danger.
Greed
The poster you're replying to isn't talking about technology, but a social culture. All the things you mention i.e. radio, TV, movie still exist but the early culture they grew out of is dead. The Internet hasn't quite reached the "bring out your dead" point. But it is headed that way. The Internet culture has changed, and it isn't for the better. When something is done with alturistic motives then everyone prospers i.e. the early Internet. When something is done with selfshness i.e. the present then ultimately everyone suffers, even the selfish.
Arf! Arf!
If you post it, they will read.
I read the entire speech and the issue is pretty plain. IANAL, but I'll attempt to summarize.
Under proposed regulations, owners of physical communications assets, e.g., phone and cable companies, are no longer required to be content neutral.
This allows for troubling new business models, politically motivated site censorship, control of access hardware and software and so forth.
For example, Verizon DSL could charge big sites for "premium broadband quality" access to their DSL customers. Yahoo and Google and MSN all cough up, and you can access those sites a full speed. Other sites/services, like SlashDot and most small business sites and IRC, etc. get doled out at 56K, since they didn't pay for "premium throughput". Is this an interesting business that could be highly profitable? Sure. Does it seriously maim the open Internet and turn it into something more like cable TV? You bet! And it sucks.
Imagine Microsoft buying Verizon. What kind of OS would you have to have to access the Internet? Can they simply censor sites that criticize MS security flaws? What if Fox buys Comcast? Could they limit news access to "liberal" sites like the ACLU? Can they restrict IM traffic to just AIM, with whom they have a co-marketing agreement? Can they make good money doing this? Sure!
The Internet as we know it would be dead. It would simply be another cable TV style entertainment media channel.
A set of laws and regulations dating from before and during the AT&T breakup era currently prevent many of these scenarios. But these regulations are coming undone, and the vast majority of Americans will lose out in a big way.
It matters.
I just sent a message to my congresscritter, who is a Republican. I explained that even though he says he supports the effort to reverse the FCC decision, another member of his party intends to prevent him from getting a chance to vote on this issue. I also pointed out that Tom Delay holds his powerful position because of the present Republican majority in the House, and the only thing I can do to help get rid of Tom Delay is to cast my vote in a manner that would help reduce the number of Republicans in the House.
Plain and simple: If you are not working with some other person or organization to stop powerful interests, you are part of the problem.
Dogmatic? Yes. But does that make it wrong?
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
The path is already set...the FCC doesn't have the balls [citizen backlash and all] to give the corps everything they want...yet!
Maybe it would not be such a bad thing if the internet were to die. We would all have to go back to work. It would probably jump start the economy.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The FCC was deregulated during the Reagan administration (regardless of your political viewpoint, look it up. Remember, "Truth fears no trial." -Paine) Until that time, the maximum quantity of airtime per thirty minutes was heavily regulated, particularly during primetime. Removing the leash from the dog permitted one major thing to occur: instead of dead air after hours, the stations found they could rent out the time to what we know as infomercials. Now if you are a station manager and have a choice between dead air or rent your air to marketeers (without promising audience size), which would you do? (making the numbers becomes much easier with one of those options)
When I first heard people say things like: the internet, as it was in the good old days, will be gone, the fixtures(?) of what make the internet what it is, are crumbling. I didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of corporate interests taking over and homogenizing and whitewashing cyberspace.
Take a step back and think about how the internet has changed in the last 5-10 years. Where are those homogenizing influences that everyone was sure were going to sweep over the *entire* net and turn it into the bastard child of AOL? They *are* there and can be found, but the hacker subculture is still alive and strong! I would argue that as long as this is the case it is impossible to kill the net. The hackers ( in the prejoritive and neutral sense) are what started the net and what made it great, the hackers(crackers) that wield destructive energy combined with hackers(intelectual idealists) both created the natural law in cyberspace and shape it.
Again and again, people try to control; the net reacts. Look at what is happening with intellectual property! A cornerstone in the legal system for hundreds of years, intelectual property rights, backed by some of the largest interest groups in the country, billions of dollars and hoards of raving lawyers are being crushed. Even now at this moment, jack valenti's pinhead is being crushed with an imutable fact; information WILL, MUST, flow. Like a river encountering an obstacle in its path, it will find a way and grind the object into dust.
If anyone has not read Bruce Sterling's "Information Wants to Be Worthless" you should give it a shot. The internet is completely out of control. Well maybe not completely but seriously, what does Jack Valenti think about when he goes to sleep at night? Maybe "You know, in a couple years the RIAA and MPAA will have this whole internet thing wrapped up" or "As soon as Microsoft gets that DRM bullshit going we'll be golden!" or maybe "as soon as we sieze control of every Internet backbone and filter all traffic...tell people what they can and cant do...(mumble)". Just think, if all the backbones in the country had their "spigots" turned off, there would still be enough information in manhatten, flowing over thousands of wi-fi node, to keep people downloading brittney porn and browsing endless mp3's. Shit, there's probably 500 years worth of porn sitting on hd's all across NYC.
I am starting to rant here but show me someone who thinks that they can control the internet and I will say that there is a thousand people will to step forward and circumvent that control.
Anonymous Hero
What was it Churchill said: "Never have so many words come from so little thought." Or something like that.
Copps argument boils down to: "The Internet has grown so beautifully fast because it was unregulated, uncontrolled, unfettered. So to keep it that way we (meaning him) must regulate it, control it, and, for good measure, throw in a little fettering."
The tightest bottleneck for 99% (ish) of us is that last 30 feet of wire between the pole and our home/abode/hovel. And for a decade now that bottleneck has remained tighter than a virgin on saltpeter thanx to Howard Sterns arch-nemesis, the FCC.
Have we all forgotten why broadband has been so slow in coming? Franco Charlie Charlie decided years ago that if any of those evil corporate boogeymen put forth the initial capital investment to run a fiber optic line to your house, they had to then provide access for their competitors. The inevitable result was all of those companies standing around your house in a circle each waiting for the other to pony up for that last 20 feet of line! Why shell out billions just so your competitors can have free access, giving them an immediate advantage? Nobody at this friggin agency thinks.
From assinine bureaucrats come assinine policies with assinine results. Lets all pray for wifi to break this logjam once and for all.
---Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
4. The Internet's openness should be promoted
The Internet was initially designed as a way of moving bits without preferring some bits to others. Network architects call this principle "end-to-end" networking. That way, anyone with a good idea - or a bad one - can build it and see if it works. This openness is essential to the Internet's value as a marketplace of innovation and a public square for ideas.
5. The Internet is a democracy of voices, not primarily a broadcast medium
Although the Internet certainly can be used to broadcast messages and programs from one spot to hundreds of millions of others, its most important effect socially and economically is its transformation of the broadcast model. Rather than "freedom of the press belonging to those who own one," everyone now can reach everyone else. The Internet is encouraging people to speak up, in their own voice, about what matters to them. This empowerment of human voice and conversation is profoundly in line with the ideals of American democracy.
....and judging by the way he runs his campaign, he means it.
Perhaps the industry consolidation that is starting to accelerate is a cause for concern. For example, this was just announced:
(Value Click buys Commission Junction.)
Amazon.com excluded, this merger will give one company control of about half the affiliate marketing industry. (affiliate marketing is a segment of the ad industry.)
> Your attitude is crassly narrowminded and epitomises every prejudiced thought the rest of us have about USA.
Ok first, I was stating a fact. We control the internet as it is now plain and simple. If the rest of the world dropped US connectivity or the things we control here in the US (IE Root NS) to create their on Inter(ExceptUS)net, then it wouldn't be THE Internet. I don't see how my remarks would warrant this attack.
I wasn't saying it was right, I wasn't saying it's fair to the rest of the world, and I definately wasn't saying it couldn't change. I was stating that is the way it was. Damn you're a touchy son'bitch.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
this s when someone creates a new internet-esque protocol.
The FCC is more and more becoming nothing more than enablers for Monopolies. Here is 2003 have we not yet come far enough as a society to where the government doesn't fight monopolies with one hand and grant them with another. Monopolies are NEVER, EVER, good for the consumer or public. It will be a breath of fresh air the day I see the phone and cable companies have their monopolies revoked. It's just damn unamerican. /soapbox
Things like companies embracing one technology instead of making something that would be cross compatible.. Other companies take standards and twist them to their own purposes making everyone else incompatible.
Yes It's Microsoft.
How about Napster, is it any coincidence that it's IE and WMP only. This is the begining of the new software monopoly. Microsoft will now instead of bundling all the software on a pc where everyone uses it becuase it's there is now getting companies to make MS only products. So one day you may be faced with being forced to use IE for bank transactions becuase your bank embraced the MS standard for trusted computing not any standard for trusted computing..
That's only the tip of the iceberg of what Microsoft can do to leverage it's desktop share to control those who even think of trying an alternative.
Should have The Future of Ideas by Lessig as required reading.
Maybe then they could figure out what some major contributors are to the steady decline of the incredible creative energy (or innovation - but I hate that word) that characterized the earlier incarnations of the internet/www.
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Technology Review just had a big article extolling the forward motion of the PlantLab project, made up of industry heavy weights, which is actually and boastfully intended to replace the internet, because the internet is "outdated" (read barbaric) in their eyes. It will have centralized control (read censorship) and will be owned privately, free at first, but likely to have a toll meter placed on it.
It is already in operation and plans are to have it swallow everything else.
That is about the biggest threat I can see here.
For many corporations, just getting you off the net is a benefit. Maybe the net is competing with them in their role as entertainment, news provider, long distance phone company. Maybe the net lets you know that their latest much-hyped product is crap. They would rather have you isolated and incommunicado.
Ah sorry man, i went over the top. Had a very bad week with americans
The beauty of Usenet was that anyone could go there, but the road was longer for most than they would like.
What would a Zen monastery be like if it was located in the corner of Grand Central Station?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
While his stances against Clear Channel, et all might be laudable, the thing that MOST stands out about Copps for anyone who follows the FCC (as I do, I run a broadcasting message board) is his crusade against free speech.
Copps wants to agressively enforce an artificial standard of "decency" and fine stations, even taking licenses if their speech doesn't meet his standards.
Corporatism != Free Market