The FCC May Decide Not To Regulate Broadband

This morning the Washington Post reported that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is leaning toward letting the telecomms have their way — not asserting greater authority to regulate the Internet by reclassifying broadband as a Title II service. The blogs are atwitter (HuffPo, StopTheCap) that not voting to apply Title II regulation to Internet carriers is tantamount to giving up on net neutrality — which has been a centerpiece of the Obama administration's tech policy. The Post paraphrases its sources, who are reading the chairman's mind, that Genachowski believes "the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy." The FCC will say only that the chairman has made no decision yet.

Comments

Regulation requires upkeep

[Anonymous Coward]

If carrier neutrality won't be regulated then I want all government/carrier deals to be outlawed. I want to be able to sign up with anyone who is willing to toss me a line.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[KibibyteBrain]

I don't think it makes much sense to allow anyone to dig all the lines they want. To the extreme, it just wouldn't work as it would become an unmanageable mess, and to the norm, it just makes no sense as one or two relatively cheap fibers to every home is all we will need for a decade or two. The current system works, except for the illusion that some company owns the lines connecting your home to the world, which doesn't work and requires oppression by either the provider or the government, neither of which is very desirable.
It should be a common community asset leased to service providers, much like the airwaves.

Re:Regulation requires upkeep

[Shotgun]

As a dyed in the wool conservative libertarian, I must say that you have no clue what the hell network neutrality is.

Here is a clue: It doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth caps or allocation.

Didn't mean to get you all confused, but you see, cable companies sell cable-TV services as well as internet access. Phone companies sell voice telephone as well as internet access. Both would prefer that I pay them $50/month for a stated amount of bandwidth, and then another $50/month for the other service. But I've found ways of fitting the other service into my alloted bandwidth.

Well, we can't have THAT, now can we? The cable and phone companies have tried to fix their little business plan snafu by blocking my access to these alternate services. They have sold me a connection and now want to tell me what I can do with it. It is tatamount to telling me who I may call, or what television shows I may watch.

Heh, that is all well and good, IFF they put that bullshit in the contract. They don't, because they know people would tell them where to stick it. Instead, they try to slip it in on the backend, or get the service provider to pay them. Plain and simple, this could better be described as fraud or false advertisement.

In any case, I signed a contract for a stated amount of bandwidth for a stated price. It is now my bandwidth. Until contracted otherwise, the provider should be required to be neutral about what I do with MY network bandwith.

Great

[elrous0]

Now Comcast gets to decide what websites I can visit and at what speed. Or, alternately, I can go to the one other alternative I have (AT&T) and let THEM decide what websites I can visit and at what speed.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the Invisible Hand(TM) will reach down from Heaven and drop off a brand new ISP that doesn't interfere with your connection. Any minute now.

Re:Great

[MBGMorden]

And be limited to 5GB per month - and likely subject to the same limitations.

Re:Great

[GaryOlson]

3G degrades to 0G rather quickly during Midwestern thunderstorms. I'll keep the landline.

Re:Great

[GaryOlson]

Or form a neighborhood Internet co-op.

You mean let my local municipal government build a last mile connection to my house. This has been tried. The regulated profits of the regulated monopolies provide the incumbents with the ability to write off litigation costs -- regardless of the source of those litigation costs. Those of us who would prefer a municipal network are instead forced to pay the legal expenses which prevent municipal networks.

Re:Great

[MBGMorden]

The reason why is irrelevant. I'm a consumer. I want services that meet my needs, not things that don't work and a list of excuses as to why. 5GB is a metric I would hit within a few days each and every time, and without any need for bittorrent. The current web has podcasts (both video and audio), streaming sites (eg Hulu and Netflix) and pay download sites (iTunes and the like) that will SWAMP 5GB in a heartbeat. Video games are being distributed in full over the net via Steam & other services - that's several GB per game in most cases. Even traditionally purchased games have patches that can run 1GB plus (ie, a large content patch to WoW for example).

If it was 1998, then sure 5GB would be all I ever needed. Today though it's a very different story.

try to scare the politicos to do the right thing..

[smoothnorman]

Here is a good direct opinion piece to point to your congress critter: "Comcast Can Censor This Blog Post ... With FCC's Permission?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-ammori/ten-things-comcast-will-b_b_560897.html Try to impress on them the notion of what if Comcast should decide not to be supportive of your their reelection webpage?

Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

People vote based on what they read, see, or hear on the news. The FCC has already abdicated its responsibility regarding broadcast media, no more fairness doctrine and nothing to replace it. Now they want to do the same with the internet. What this means is that the United States will move very solidly toward being even more of a plutocracy than it is today.

I can't say what bad news this is for democracy.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The fairness doctrine is dead as a doornail, and as much as I'd like to see more balance in mainstream media, that's probably a good thing; it's not the government's place to decide how the news is reported. Meanwhile, advocates of net neutrality do themselves no favors by comparing the two. It is the mainly the enemies of net neutrality who keep bringing up the fairness doctrine, because they want to discredit net neutrality, a technical matter, by mixing it up in people's minds with the fairness doctrine, a political matter. Please don't fall into their trap.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

The 'fairness' doctrine is complete BS. It leads to straw man-type arguments and too much liability for broadcasters.

And net neutrality is -completely- different than the fairness doctrine. All net neutrality does it make sure that broadband providers can't give preferential treatment or throttle connections.

What needs to happen is taxpayers must rise against ISPs taking public land without giving the public what it wants. Want to throttle? Don't use public land. If you don't use public land, you don't have to follow what the public wants. But most if not all ISPs do use public land and so the public needs to have a say on what goes on there.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Technical net neutrality is a desirable goal in itself, but not a sufficient one. Just look at the current polarization in congress, which follows the polarization of the electorate, which follows the polarization of news reporting, and tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States.

Good legislation for fair news reporting has suffered so far because it's confused with freedom of the press. But the constitution doesn't give you the freedom to deliberately lie to the electorate about news they will vote upon - whether you're a news medium or an elected official. We're not going to have a healthy democracy if we can't come up with any way to prosecute that.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

tell me that the current way the news is reported is good for the political health of the United States

Of course it's not. But that does not mean that for the government to decide what news can be reported, and how it will be reported, is better.

the constitution doesn't give you the freedom to deliberately lie to the electorate about news they will vote upon

Of course it does. The First Amendment doesn't say, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of true speech, or of the press except when they're lying." You have the right to say what you want to say, I have the right to say what I want to say, and Fox News and CNN have the right to say what they want to say even when it's apparent to you and me and a lot of other people that what they're saying is bilge. The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.

And this is why net neutrality is so damned important: as long as we have the mechanism by which we can speak out -- and I think you'll agree that the internet is one of the greatest such mechanisms in history -- we have a chance to counter all the crap that gets shoveled at us by politicians and massive corporate media. Lose that mechanism, and we lose the best hope we have. By mixing up net neutrality with the fairness doctrine, we increase the chance of losing it all.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Darkness404]

Net Neutrality should be politically desirable because of several reasons.

A) It is fraud to offer 'internet' access and cut off or slow down access to the internet you are paying for.

B) Taxpayers have a fundamental right to be able to control what happens on public land. If it is your own private land you should have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others, but on public land it is every taxpayer's land.

C) Most ISPs have received large tax payer 'donations' to 'modernize' America. And taxpayers have a fundamental right to use their tax dollars, net neutrality allows taxpayers to receive the services they pay for.

As for your point, whenever you confuse it with the 'fairness' doctrine you lose people because many people are smart enough to realize that the fairness doctrine is damaging. Net neutrality is an issue because the ISPs have been messing with public land and public funds and the public has the right to use those funds/land the way they choose.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

A) It is fraud to offer 'internet' access and cut off or slow down access to the internet you are paying for.

Only for your private definition of internet service. Now, I might actually like that definition, but there isn't a similar definition in U.S. law where it counts, or this would not be nearly so much of an issue.

B) Taxpayers have a fundamental right to be able to control what happens on public land. If it is your own private land you should have the freedom to do whatever the heck you want so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others, but on public land it is every taxpayer's land.

So, you're talking about the pole plant, and the radio airwaves. But this applies to 1) how the right to build a pole plant or operate on a radio frequency is granted and 2) what right you have to operate a channel on a partially publicly supported pole plant before we get to 3) how a particular private network - and if there's more than one of them they will tend to be treated as private - is operated. I think you might better direct your efforts to 1 and 2.

C) Most ISPs have received large tax payer 'donations' to 'modernize' America. And taxpayers have a fundamental right to use their tax dollars, net neutrality allows taxpayers to receive the services they pay for.

I can't imagine how many trillions of dollars GM has had in subsidies through the construction of the interstate highway system, etc. (Although one of you might be able to come up with an estimate.) And we get to say precious little about GM's operation, even now that we own it temporarily. Although it would be very desirable to see fairness in many things that you spend tax dollars on - private patents driven by public research dollars is another case worthy of reform - you are not going to win any of these arguments while using a plutocratic channel to communicate with the electorate.

As for your point, whenever you confuse it with the 'fairness' doctrine you lose people because many people are smart enough to realize that the fairness doctrine is damaging. Net neutrality is an issue because the ISPs have been messing with public land and public funds and the public has the right to use those funds/land the way they choose.

I just happen to think that how you get information that you will vote upon is a lot more important than your right to distribute an illegitimate copy of American Idiot.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[mysidia]

US is not a democracy. I'm not sure what it is -- people run for election to represent the people, they make certain promises, and express what their position is on various issues to appeal to the masses.

They get elected, and then they vote in a manner that is diametrical opposite to the sales pitch they gave to get elected.

Because they have a multi-year term, there's absolutely nothing the people they represent can do to revoke or cancel the benefits of having won the election based on their unfulfilled contract with their constitutents, when they start to go wrong.

Or they 'sell' the choice of how they'll represent their people to the highest bidder. So in exchange for personal favor X, they falsely represent that the people want Y, in order to secure that favor, and they do it on every single vote.

I compare it to a corporate board of directors hiring a candidate with a 2 year non-revokable contract to be CEO, so the new employee can't be removed, limited, or rendered powerless, as long as they don't do anything actually illegal, and very high salary, based on a 5 minute interview, with very limited background information being available (other than their claimed positions on certain governance issues).

Of course the moment the deal is done, they can do whatever they want, including managing the company very badly.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I agree that in a strictly linear tax system there would have to be a subsidy for the poor to offset the discriminatory effect of the taxation. And anyway I find nonlinear taxation to be fair as long as it increases for the rich rather than the opposite. But taxation with thousands of exceptions doesn't seem fair to anyone.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Kirijini]

The solution to speech we don't like is, always, more speech. There is never a good alternative.

The fairness doctrine promotes more speech. More accurately, it promotes availability of more viewpoints.

The fairness doctrine doesn't suppress speech - its a mechanism for forcing people/corporations with a megaphone to hand the megaphone over to to the people they talk about. Since the megaphone is government sponsored, this is entirely reasonable.

In a world where people's voices are equally strong, you can't just ignore what your enemies say. You have to actually engage them if you want to win an argument. In this world, broadcasters can just say whatever they want and ignore the response. Nobody (or at least, very few people) hears the response, so broadcasters don't have to engage it. This is not healthy for democracy.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

I'm a bit confused about your use of pole plant, all Google comes up with is references to skiing...

The poles, trenches and other means of passing a wire from place to place, and the system of wiring built upon them. Although it's generally the case that one "utility" predominantly owns the poles and trenches - even though they are on public land - and may lease them to the others, the wiring and/or optical fiber and its infrastructure are a separate property for power, telephone, cable, etc.

However, my basic stance is that if you use public funds, you are accountable to the public.

Go tell Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker, and every such business since. Yes, it should have been the law that the railroad right-of-way remained the public property, and they didn't get incredibly large grants of land and mining rights as well. And so on for pole plants, etc. Great thing to achieve but you have to start working on the politics now, because today it isn't the case.

Regarding GM and the public highway, consider that it has been a much larger give-away than the train folks got, and it didn't benefit the trains, and you and I lost the viable mass transit network of the time.

IMO you don't get more parties and a parliamentary system without a fair media voice.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Wildclaw]

No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most.

Are you kidding me. 95% of the benefits that government provide is so that rich can make more money.

* Law & Order/Military - protect the resources of the rich
* Social Security - proactive law & order
* Infrastructure - pooling resources on infrastructure so those with property (the rich) can make more money.
* Education - create low level employees that can make money for the rich.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[ffreeloader]

And just how does it do that? It says who can broadcast. Say there are 10 conservative talk radio shows and 1 liberal talk radio show. How are the 10 conservative talk radio shows hurting the 1 liberal show? If the same market was there for liberal talk radio that's there for conservative talk radio don't you think it would exist already? There have been a lot of efforts at liberal talk radio and they have all failed. None of them had enough listeners to make the money needed to stay on the air. Whose fault is that? Conservatives? Don't make me laugh.

Same with TV. It's the number of viewers who decide what the most popular talking head shows are. If the liberal news shows were the most popular then they would have the most viewers.

What's been shown over and over again is that the conservative talk radio shows and conservative news/opinion channels make the most money because they have the largest audience. The vast majority of people like them better.

How is the fairness doctrine going to change that? Run the conservative shows off the air because the liberal ones don't have a large enough audience? Try to force people to watch/listen-to shows they have no interest in? Yeah, like that's fair or will work. That's limiting political speech under the guise of "fairness". If the liberal/progressive viewpoint was actually the majority opinion progressive talk radio and tv talking-head shows would dominate the airwaves. They don't.

Making a law just to enforce your own political viewpoints to have "equal time", as in equal audience, is anti-American at best. We are free to choose to listen to what we want to. You limit the number of conservative shows and all that will happen is that the audience for the remaining shows will grow tremendously. Conservatives aren't going to listen to progressive political commentary. They disagree with it and aren't going to support it. That's their right as Americans. You might disagree with them and not like their political philosophy, but so what? They disagree with you and don't like your political philosophy. Seems fair enough to me.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[Bruce Perens]

Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions

Yeah, like being born with too much melanin in their skin. Terrible decision.

A large number of the poor people around where I live are from families that were enticed by the U.S. government to move off of the farm to the city so that they could build ships during World War II. Then when the war construction effort ended, their jobs were taken away (along with those of the women) and if anyone got a job, it was a returning GI.

They didn't make a bad decision so much as they were cheated by their own nation.

Re:Bad news for democracy

[tomthepom]

Where on earth do you think that money comes from?
How much do you think your stocks will be worth if the workers in those companies are sick or can't get to their offices because the roads are in disrepair and the police can't protect them from robbers? How long do you think your land will stay yours when the mob come to take it from you? And just how much do you think your nice pile of shiny dollar bills wil be worth if you don't have a strong economy and government - paid for by taxes - to back it up?
So yeh, you might never meet a policeman in your life, your mansion might be totally self sufficient and you might travel around in your own private helicopter, but the richer you are the more you've benefitted from the society that tax has paid for and the more you have to lose if you try to weasel your way out of paying some back.

So?

[Chunky Kibbles]

"the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC's authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy."

And... so?

"Something's good for consumers but unpopular with service providers; because the service providers might be bitchy let's not do it."

What? The *point* of the FCC is *exactly* to suffer being that middle man.

Gary (-;

Can't wait...

[rennerik]

This is disastrous. I don't even know where to begin...

While there will undoubtedly be some competition by way of cable companies vs. DSL/fiber providers (pushing video/television and what-not), on both sides there will be hefty opposition against bandwidth sinks like like Hulu and Youtube. I can see it now: "Comcast Cable is now offering unlimited bandwidth! Experience our 6mbps* high-speed Internet for a low fee of only $45.00/month! Some restrictions apply! *Certain content may not be available at full speed, such as YouTube, Hulu, and non-Comcast partners. YouTube is available at full-speed for an additional fee of $1.99/month; Hulu is available for $3.49/month; non-Comcast partners are available for a low monthly fee per site. Please see full price list for details. Comcast partners include sports sites such as NHL.com and NFL.com, as well as networks such as Comedy Central and Syfy. Switch to Comcast today to see these sites at full-speed! (Television network sites are available for $1.99/month)"

And really, nothing can stop them from doing that. They can throttle BitTorrent traffic, slow down competitors' sites, or even detect streaming media and throttle it down.

Plus, micropayments via web games such as Farmville and MMOs have proven to be a good source of income. Maybe they'll offer to unthrottle BitTorrent traffic for a "low low price of $1.99/week".

Yeah, net neutrality is a bunch of bull. If you want fast sites, you need to *pay* for fast sites, you communist. Don't expect handouts like "unlimited internet"; hell, even roads have tolls!

Because lack of regulation is ALWAYS good.

[Infirmo]

I mean, just look at the banks.

(Or forestry in the 1980s. Or the savings and loan arena in the 1980s. Or AT&T in the 19th Century...)

Great.

[unity100]

Now isps will be able to screw americans using the lines they built on public land with government subsidies, saying 'our network'.

only in america. no really, only in america. there is no other example of this being let happen in any place around the world. this includes turkey. when the isps here tried to bullshit by saying 'these networks are ours', regulatory agency bitchslapped them into submission.

This is Good News

[jeko]

Seriously. It's better to have an open, above-board policy that says "We do not regulate this," than an agency that supposedly regulates it but doesn't.

We haven't had effective government regulation of anything since Ronald Reagan. As I sit here, Exxon has yet to pay for or clean up the Valdez oil spill, and BP just destroyed the Gulf of Mexico from Houston to Pensacola because a standard emergency valve was "too expensive."

I'd just as soon drop the pretense. There's no such thing as "government regulation" any more.

Re:This is Good News

[ratnerstar]

I'm sorry, but that's just flat out incorrect. And worse, it's counterproductive.

Do our regulatory structures need serious reform? Are there areas we are extremely ineffective at regulating? Do companies often find ways to wiggle around stringent regulations? Have politicians gutted good regulations for ideological or fund-raising reasons? Yes yes yes and yes. But to argue that there is "no such thing" as government regulation anymore is to deny evidence all around us. Look at our environment, specifically air and drinking water quality. Look at workplace safety, medical procedures and drugs, automobiles, construction, fishery management, etc etc etc. Now compare them to countries that really don't have any enforced regulations or periods in history where the US didn't; the difference is profound. If you want to see what "no regulations" looks like, go live in Africa or southeast Asia for a while. Then come back and we'll talk.

To say that regulation is dead is to just give up on the idea that we can improve our regulatory systems. It's the same cynical bullshit we see all the time on slashdot. If there's one reason we don't have perfect regulation, it's that people sat around moaning about how it's impossible.

Disillusioned

[Bob9113]

"...not voting to apply Title II regulation to Internet carriers is tantamount to giving up on net neutrality -- which has been a centerpiece of the Obama administration's tech policy."

As one who bought the hype and strongly advocated for Obama, let me say I think this sentence is under-broad. From Gitmo to torture to open government to bringing everyone to the table on health care, the story has been the same.

The author mentions giving up on netneut, a centerpiece of tech policy. I think giving up on things has been a centerpiece all Obama policy.

Re:try to scare the politicos to do the right thin

[Sir_Lewk]

Try to impress on them the notion of what if Comcast should decide not to be supportive of your their reelection webpage?

Unlikely, my politician is already in Comcast's pocket. Why would comcast censor their own politician? :(

we should drop the pretense

[jeko]

Hyperbole

Irony

No, I'm not serious.

*BEGIN EMOTIONAL AND FRUSTRATED RANT*

No, scratch that, I think I actually am. If admitting you have a problem is the first step, then let's go ahead and just admit that the FCC is utterly useless. I've got a few dozen dead miners' ghosts who'd like to talk about the uselessness of OSHA, and the line of people who would like to talk about the toothlessness of the EPA begins in Galveston and is expected to run through Pensacola.

The plutocracy we currently have is exactly a dictatorship of the rich. I've been fighting the good fight since before Reagan and it has been a flood of crap from James Watt through Glenn Beck. It has been one long slide down and back.

The Bill of Rights stands in tatters. We measure our national debt in trillions. We're so deeply in bed with various murderous dictators around the world I can't even say the words "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" with a straight face any more. We're torturing prisoners. Our cops are shooting unarmed, handcuffed, face-down pleading men in the back. Texas has disappeared Thomas Jefferson from their civics curriculum. We're so afraid of terrorists we think strip-searching everyone is a good idea. I routinely, day in and day out, hear my fellow citizens argue that women with terminal breast cancer should be left to die in the street, and that only children who can afford it should have access to health care.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave? I don't even recognize my country any more. We've become a small, cowardly people with no heart, and the justifiable laughingstock of the civilized world.

So in my darker moments, Bruce, yeah, every so often I'm tempted to say "Frack it. Give 'em what they want." America didn't quit smoking until pretty much everyone knew at least one close friend or family member who died hacking up bloody bits of lung cancer in the 70s. Maybe that's what it's gonna take for us to learn. Maybe when someone in every family has been left to die of a curable disease in the gutter, maybe when real unemployment hits 50 percent and stays there, maybe when we go back to the bad old days of Dickens' worst dream, maybe then we'll wake up and start to deal with these issues.

And then I see my kids, and I see their future, and I ease off the "Lethal Weapon" Martin Riggs crazy throttle.

*END RANT*

No, Bruce, I'm not serious. Yes, Bruce, I would dearly love to see the FCC rediscover their mandate and begin fighting the good fight. But if the choice is the FCC as a telco sock puppet, or no FCC at all...

I can't say I'd miss them.