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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.
Give Jackson money and he'll go away.
Thankfully no one is proposing 'strict regulations'. The modest and reasonable regulations (which already apply to not-insignificant chunks of Verizon's FiOS network) being pushed for by Title II advocates would cut off things such as paid prioritization schemes and providers favoring their own paid services by exempting them from technologically unnecessary bandwidth caps, however.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
What problem will be solved RIGHT NOW by passing strict regulations for ISP's to abide by?
The fact that the United States is something like 26th of industrialized countries in average internet bandwidth, AND more expensive than even those that have far better service.
The big ISPs haven't been investing in infrastucture, because they haven't had to. They don't compete. In 80% of the United States, people have only one real choice for low-latency, modern broadband.
Instead, they've just been pocketing their insane profits.
You can't expect free market forces to fix a situation in which there is no free market. The obvious answer is Title II Common Carrier status.
It worked just fine for landline telephones. It can work for internet.
(PS: before anybody yells that it didn't work for landline telephones, yes, it did. Ma Bell wasn't broken up for lack of service and high service fees. It was different reasons altogether.)
I think these guys don't know what they are talking about. How about 1mbs for $10. That is not net neutrality just a crappy connection. I don't think that anyone disagrees with various speed connections in that it is the end user who makes the choice as to how much speed they want, not some backroom strongarming where they screw the upstream providers out of business.
As far as I know, most minorities have access to electricity, water, and telephones. But treating internet like a utility will somehow keep it out of the inner city? And the free market will soon be bringing low-cost internet to the poor that's just as good as the overpriced connection I pay for? What planet do these guys live on?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
What you are saying is in effect "We have local monopolies. That's bad. Let's add regulations to make sure that the local monopolies wont' do bad things." That is putting a lot of faith in regulation. How did that work in other markets?
The only thing that will help is breaking up the local monopolies. That is where poeple should put their lobbying efforts. ANything else is a fool's errand.
The problem here is one of marketing. The parties interested (read: Telcos) are big corporations with millions of PR budgets. They've managed to create terms like two-tier Internet and "fast lane" and all the other PR bullshit. They've created a story to sell, that what they want would be good and has many advantages. It's really text-book PR work.
Some people didn't see the thing being built and are falling for the smoke and mirrors. The simple truth they need to be told is that yes, the story sounds compelling, maybe even convincing. But the reality is that anything that can be abused for profit will be abused for profit, and it will look nothing like the story they're being sold now.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
Look, I don't want to be smug about it, and I do feel your pain, I really do, but this is the kind crap you get when you live under the ideology of the 'free' market and 'small state'. I know, your state is broken and corrupt, but it doesn't really have to be like that - it's broken because it is owned by large corporations that have no interest in real democracy or taking care of the interests of ordinary people. Call it communism if you must, but then bear in mind that what you think you know about communism has been fed to you by those self-same corporations, who are terrified that people might think that more common ownership could be worth trying.
I'm not arguing that the state should own everything and that private ownership should be abolished, but there are things that are best cared for by society as a whole - the state is only one of several possible candidates to represent society's interests. Infrastructure, including telecommunication, is definitely one of those areas that should be owned wholly by society, regulated by legislation and possibly paid for through taxes. As I said, it doesn't have to be through the state, but it should definitely not be owned by large, for-profit corporations like it is now.
The NAACP is completely, utterly wrong about this. They have it completely backwards. We already paid the phone company to extend the DSL network to all subscribers, they were supposed to be done with that back in 2000, how's that coming along? Oh, fourteen years behind schedule, and still not done, and never going to happen unless we force it. And we aren't in the habit of forcing AT&T to do anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hate to have to point this out but Rainbow/PUSH isn't a "civil rights organization" by any stretch of the imagination. It's Jackson's personal vehicle for racialist shakedowns like this:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c...
He has about $10M in the bank:
http://www.celebritynetworth.c...
The only "civil rights" he cares about are those of his bank account.
Do you have ESP?
What you are saying is in effect "We have local monopolies. That's bad. Let's add regulations to make sure that the local monopolies wont' do bad things." That is putting a lot of faith in regulation. How did that work in other markets?
Well, today you are allowed to connect non-approved devices to your telephone line, and telcos have common carrier status. So it worked beautifully.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Regulation is what kept airlines profitable, regulation is what got phone service to rural parts of the country. Regualtion can be good, in can also be bad in the case of long distance service because of the illusion of "natural monolpolies" in services that don't really have natural monopolies. Regulations are also why city water is cleaner than bottled water.
I have Verizon as my telecommunications provider here in Maryland. I had DSL Internet and phone with Verizon until I met with Verizon's marketing engine following the big FIOS rollout. My Internet/phone bill combined was $75 prior to FIOS. Verizon convinced me to switch to FIOS Internet and phone with a 3-year agreement; my bill initially went down to $68/month, but would rise to $113 in the third year. I was assured that there would be "another deal" that would make the price lower as long as I committed to another term of service. A little over four years later, and Verizon is charging me $125/month for Internet and phone, insisting that this is the "best price" I can get. Color me a sucker.
I was recently upgraded "for free" to 15 Mbps up in addition to 15 Mbps down. This happened after I was heavily marketed to buy this not-so-valuable (to me) capability 2 months earlier. Funny thing - the same day that I received the glossy postcard from Verizon announcing the "free" upload speed upgrade, I received that month's bill from Verizon, complete with a $7 cost increase for FIOS Internet (which took my bill from $116 to $125). Just how stupid does Verizon think I am? The message is clear - I will buy whatever Verizon wants to sell me, and if I don't, I'll get anyway, and Verizon will increase the cost of my service.
The real kicker is the way that the cost is divided up. FIOS Internet service is $75/month; my phone is $30 (the balance of my bill is various fees and taxes that Verizon has broken out separately over the years to obfuscate their rate increases). Of the two (Internet and phone) I believe that I could do without Verizon's phone service much more easily than the Internet. I have a cell phone, and I can subscribe to a broadband VoIP service for about $3/month and operate it over my Internet service. I can't cut out Internet at this point and run it over my phone service. My job, my wife's job, my kid's school work, and access to a myriad of necessary on-line services (banking, investments, my grad school, Amazon for purchasing, etc.) all depend on my Internet service. Hardly anything depends on my phone. If that isn't a clear sign of a utility service, I don't know what is.
Its long past time for Internet service to be classified and regulated as a utility - the Verizons and Comcasts of the world have clear demonstrated how they will reap a fortune in fees from people who have to use their services left unregulated. With regulation will come other encumbrances, such as the ability for the FCC to enforce (or not) "Net Neutrality". So be it. The big communications providers have gobbled up all of the Internet access services and combined them under a very small number of companies, while at the same time the public's use of Internet for practically every aspect of work, school, and commerce as grown by leaps and bounds. Internet access is a utility. Let's declare it so.
Neither of those assertions are remotely true. There were already periods where Internet access was subject to Common Carrier regulations, and parts of Verizon's FiOS network are still under it to this day because it gave a tax and subsidy benefit to Verizon. If anything, internet access is already HEAVILY regulated, and Title II would simplify things immensely.
The bit about the USF tax is just propaganda from the NCTA.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them