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How Big Telecom Tried To Kill Net Neutrality Before It Was Even a Concept
An anonymous reader writes This opinion piece at Ars looks at the telecommunications industry's ability to shape policy and its power over lawmakers. "...as the Baby Bells rolled out their DSL service, they saw the cable industry's more relaxed regulations and total lack of competition and wanted the same treatment from the government. They launched a massive lobbying effort to push the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Federal Communication Commission, and Congress to eliminate the network sharing requirement that had spawned the CLEC market and to deregulate DSL services more broadly. Between 1999 and 2002 the four companies spent a combined $95.6 million on lobbying the federal government, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, which would rank them above such trade group lobbying behemoths as the Chamber of Commerce and the American Medical Association in total lobbying expenditures for the years. The companies also spent millions to lobby the public directly through aggressive advertising and public relations campaigns."
... instead of spending that money to improve their infrastructure...
I mean.. is this really a surprise?
Fellow readers, beware of astroturf comments.
We know that the big companies hire agencies to send fake letters of support to government agencies, letters purported to come from everyday people in support of whatever the big company wants to do at the time.
We also know that the big companies hire agencies to send fake letters of support from politicians that support whatever the big company wants to do at the time. We know that political campaigns do the same thing.
I've been interested in ghostwriting/astroturfing for awhile now. It seems reasonable that if a company has enough money to mount a fake grassroots campaign, then some of that money would be put towards shaping public opinion on public boards.
Especially a highly popular board frequented by all the smart people in the country.
Looking at one previous article about network access I can't help but get the impression that people are reaching around backwards to make their point. The plight of all those poor, twisted arguments brings a tear to my eye.
Really - watch the commentary on these articles and see if any of the arguments seem weak or contrived.
We may be infested with astroturfers.
Between 1999 and 2002 the four companies spent a combined $95.6 million on lobbying the federal government, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics...
When done in other countries, my government calls it corruption. When done here, it's called lobbying.
Question is: Who is lobbying on behalf of Joe Six Pack and family?
Question is: Who is lobbying on behalf of Joe Six Pack and family?
Lots of groups!
Here's a list:
The National Smoker’s Alliance
The 50 Cent Party
Center For Consumer Freedom
Al Gore’s Penguin Army
Microsoft
Save Our Species Alliance
Working Families For Wal-Mart
The Big Ten Network
Comcast
GOP
(NB: The companies listed come from an article titled: "Ten Horrible Examples Of Astroturfing")
http://www.freepress.net/sites...
This image tells all you need to know about Cable/Telco promises.
Once you have a monopoly that has no competition there is no reason to improve service or product quality and every incentive to drive it down to as low a level as you can without people rioting outside your offices.
Hmm, $95.6M in lobbying over three years...
That's $31.9M per year, spread across four companies.
Or an average of about $8M per year each.
Let's see. Annual revenue for those companies averages in excess of $50B each (two of them managed to make >$210B, so I didn't even bother checking the other two, just used the revenue for those two averaged over four companies).
So, they're spending an average of 0.016% of their income on lobbying.
Frankly, given the power of the federal government, spending that LITTLE to buy favourable legislation is surprising.
Do remember, the more power the government has, the more worthwhile it is to just buy laws that favour you.
No, that would be graft, not corruption. There is a difference, though it's pretty much hairsplitting....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
People tend to think of "lobbying" as a dirty word, but keep in mind that lobbying also works on behalf of ideals and organizations you believe in. The EFF is involved in lobbying, for instance, and organization that many of us here appreciate and support. Or, pick an organization you care about, and you can bet they're doing some lobbying of their own. That's not inherently a bad thing.
The word essentially has it's roots in ordinary citizens waiting in the capitol lobby to bend the ear of their representative, telling them how they felt about specific topics. Eventually, it was understood that it's more efficient to hire someone to collectively represent your interested and present them to your representatives, because it's impractical for a politician to meet individually with every single citizen of their district.
The corruption comes in, of course, in the wining and dining of said politicians - when it moves beyond simply trying to convince them and instead giving them subtle or even outright monetary rewards, such as promises of lucrative employment after a term of office is served, etc. That's not lobbying - that's just bribery. I'd be curious to see what exactly all that "lobbying" money is spent on.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
From what I understand, there's been a fair bit of fear-mongering in right wing media related to it. Some of it is fueled by reflexive opposition to the current president, certainly, but a lot of it ties into the general attitude of "private = good, public = bad" that can be manipulated into viewing any sort of (federal) government action as being malign. There's also a degree of confusion fueling some of it, where "Net Neutrality" has been (deliberately) conflated with bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
Being sarcastic.
That looks like a very very good return on investment :)
The only possible way to counter these bastards is with an absolute avalanche of public backlash. It worked in turning Wheeler around; now we need to turn up the heat on our so-called 'representatives'. To hell with big cable and telecom. Burn their crops and salt their fields. Rip their monopolistic power from their hands and savour the sound of them kicking and screaming the entire way.
Annual revenue for those companies averages in excess of $50B each (...)
So, they're spending an average of 0.016% of their income on lobbying.
Revenue and income are different things.
The real issue - the elephant in the room which the net neutrality debate serves to dance around - is lack of effective local competition.
The USA professes free trade, etc, etc but is actually one of the most restrictive countries to do business - and (possibly illegal) state/regional sweetheart deals on local loop mean there is no effective competition for broadband services (A duopoly is as bad as a monopoly and in most areas there is a legislated monopoly on local loop).
With effective competition, net neutrality is a non-issue. There's a reason that this is only popping up in the USA and that's because the vast majority of consumers face a market with either only 1 or 2 broadband providers.
Meantime in Europe, I sit on a 100Mb/20Mb VDSL circuit - unthrottled - getting full bandwidth - and knowing that if my ISP plays stupid games with access to Netflix I can switch to another one with 2 phone calls. They know it too, so they actually provide good customer service instead of the surly service commonly encountered Stateside.