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Civil Rights Groups Divided On Net Neutrality
HughPickens.com writes: Edward Wyatt reports at the NY Times that the NAACP, the National Urban League and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition have sent representatives, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, to tell FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that they think President Obama's call to regulate broadband Internet service as a utility would harm minority communities by stifling investment in underserved areas and entrenching already dominant Internet companies. "We got a lot of poor folks who don't have broadband," said Jackson. "If you create something where, for the poor, the lane is slower and the cost is more, you can't survive." "I think we're all on board with the values embedded in what President Obama said, things like accelerating broadband deployment and adoption," says Nicol Turner-Lee, vice president of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council and a member of the group including Mr. Jackson that met with the F.C.C. chairman. "The question is, will we be able to solve these issues by going so far with stringent regulation?"
Some of the groups that oppose Title II designation, like the Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens, have received contributions from organizations affiliated with Internet service providers, like the Comcast Foundation, the charitable organization endowed by Comcast. But those organizations say that the donations or sponsorships do not influence their positions. "We get support from people on all sides of the issue, including Google and Facebook," says Brent A. Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "We don't let any of them influence our position." For it's part, the NAACP says its formal policy position is that the NAACP neither endorses, nor opposes the formally defined concept of net neutrality but supports the need to particularly focus on underserved racial and ethnic minority and poor communities, while highlighting the importance of protecting an open internet.
Some of the groups that oppose Title II designation, like the Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens, have received contributions from organizations affiliated with Internet service providers, like the Comcast Foundation, the charitable organization endowed by Comcast. But those organizations say that the donations or sponsorships do not influence their positions. "We get support from people on all sides of the issue, including Google and Facebook," says Brent A. Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "We don't let any of them influence our position." For it's part, the NAACP says its formal policy position is that the NAACP neither endorses, nor opposes the formally defined concept of net neutrality but supports the need to particularly focus on underserved racial and ethnic minority and poor communities, while highlighting the importance of protecting an open internet.
And then let the incumbents try to explain, rather than having to dispute every negative claim about Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality would, instead of being tiered, would allow and has allowed each community to be treated equally. It would allow the Internet to be treated more like a utility. It is like how you receive water in your community now, everyone pays the same rate. If these guys think that the water company will allow them to get their water for little or less money and that somehow someone else would foot the bill for them because of a tiered structure, would you believe the water company? No they would probably only invest money that they were getting back from the community. If water was declared a right, then the company providing might be forced into providing set water. I can think of ways a person or a company can benefit from Net Neutrality. I will give three examples: Google and Facebook and Paypal. Mark Zuckerberg only had a few thousand in cash to start his first server farm, and I doubt the founders of Google had that much more. When Elon Musk came to the United States he had little cash and received $300 million from his part the sale of Paypal to Ebay. Where would Google, Facebook, Tesla and countless others be today without Net Neutrality? They depended on access of various users to be consistent when they were small and when they became large. Try explaining to poorer neighbourhoods that they could create a startup based upon money to pay and not being in a slow lane. The Internet is part of the American dream, we are not done yet. The results are plain to see.
Society use your Sciences
"We'll give your community 'internet service', but you're only allowed to use MSN" Isn't my idea of of improved service.
If you want to improve service, then stop banning communities from putting together their own ISP's. If AT+T doesn't want to service the South Bronx, then the South Bronx Community Association should be able to run it's own community internet service.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The urban poor can't afford Internet? Every time I drive through "poor" urban areas, I'm always amazed at the forest of DISH/DirecTV dishes on apartments. Half the time I wonder if its not an NSA branch office or occupied by a NASA tracking station.
AFAIK most cities who signed cable franchise agreements required the entire city to be wired. While I'm sure more affluent areas were wired first, I seriously doubt my own city (Minneapolis) isn't universally wired 30 years later.
And 80% of the population is urban, and I would wager that number is slightly higher for African Americans, meaning that most of them live in areas with accessible broadband.