Did Republican House Landslide Kill Net Neutrality?
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By Matthew Lasar, ars technica
- November 5, 2010 |
- 1:12 pm |
- Categories: Net Neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission has published the agenda for its November Open Meeting. It comes two days after the Democrats took their shellacking in the midterm Congressional elections. And once again, the FCC’s Open Internet proposals are nowhere to be found on the list of action items.
Why not? Here’s one idea: Net neutrality foes point out that none of the nearly one hundred Democratic candidates who signed a pledge to support the policy won their race.
“The FCC should take note that the main ‘political’ driver behind trying to make net neutrality into a national grass-roots issue, SavetheInternet.com Coalition, could not get the issue to register on the election radar screen,” observed Scott Cleland on Wednesday, “and wherever they did attract a candidate endorsement of their position, they failed 100 percent [of] the time in having that candidate get elected.”
No doubt that the concept was buried under a pile of front-burner concerns — the economy, health care and immigration the biggest among them. All the more reason to wonder whether this election can be construed as a national plebiscite on net neutrality. When do telecom issues ever get that far?
It is certainly true, however, that the House is now packed with headline-hungry politicians ready to pounce on the double n-word at a moment’s notice. They squelched Henry Waxman’s (D-California) modest compromise proposal in a matter of days. That’s got to be giving the FCC’s boss Julius Genachowski a jitter or two.
Last week’s theories
We’ve heard all kinds of theories about why the Commission didn’t pursue its open-internet proposals prior to Tuesday. The big one was that White House economist Larry Summers and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel put pressure on the agency to keep the issue on a low flame. But they’ve moved on, and can’t be blamed for the delay any longer.
Another popular thesis was that Genachowski just doesn’t want to “man up” to the pushback he’s been getting from the phone and cable industries on the question. We do telecom rather than testosterone analysis around here, so we’ll pass on that observation.
In any event, if the FCC’s boss actually wants to do something about net neutrality, he still can. He’s got three votes. The FCC could launch its proposal to partially reclassify ISPs as common carriers. Or it could propose something like the Google/Verizon plan — a far weaker enforcement scheme with its exemptions for wireless broadband. Or, it could cook up something in between these scenarios.
As for all the political fallout that will come with any action — here’s an idea. Why not wait and see how hard the Republican House tries to defund the Obama administration’s health care bill? If Washington, D.C. shuts down in the ensuing stalemate, and electricity around Capitol Hill goes out, who’ll notice if the FCC issues a net neutrality order via candlelight and batteries?
Just a thought. Never mind.
Photo: Fraulein Schiller/Flickr
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See Also:
- FCC Backs Net Neutrality — And Then Some
- Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender …
- FCC Delays Net Neutrality Over Mobile, ‘Managed’ Services …
- Skype, Wireless Companies Fight to Shape Net-Neutrality Regs …
- Dems Go Populist on Net Neutrality
- Net Neutrality Protesters Call for Google to Stand Tall …
- Another Net Neutrality Option: Remove Financial Incentives …
- Surrender Monkey or Not, Google Remains Last, Best Hope for Net …
- Court Drives FCC Towards Nuclear Option to Regulate Broadband …
- Google, Verizon, Net Neutrality and The Grateful Dead
- FCC Expected To Announce Support of Net Neutrality Monday …
- 10 Media Takes on the Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal …
- FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules, Now the Fight Begins …
- Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized …
- GOP Senators Move to Stop Obama Net Neutrality Rules
- Net-Neutrality Backers, Telcos Spar Over Stimulus’ Broadband Rules …
- Apply Net Neutrality to Skype on Smartphones, Group Asks Feds …
- Obama Nominates Net Neutrality Backer for FCC Chief
In answer to the original question: Hopefully.
I agree with Ed – let’s hope so.
Let’s hope so. Net neutrality was nothing more than the govt’s way of being able to legally monitor all net traffic. It’s wire-tapping in disguise.
Interesting idea @NotEverythingYouThinkIsTrue. I have apparently missed the articles written about how the government was going to monitor all net traffic.
Any sources?
@mrzimm, while I’m not sure how Net Neutrality specifically ties into it, the government has actually made an increased effort in monitoring internet traffic. They are doing so more through trying to pass legislation which would force services like Gmail, Hotmail, etc to allow government law enforcement to hack an email account as any other wiretap would occur. It’s come up several times on various news sites recently.
How can you be against “net neutrality”. Seriously – you are pro paying for internet access? Really? Really? I mean…really?
The fact that the government gets to look into Internet traffic isn’t new. But the idea of keeping the Internet free…really?
@siege911 – yeah it’s called a wire tap. Easy to get. Get PGP and encryption and then…stop doing illegal crap and you don’t have to worry about the feds busting down your door.
@beantown01
Net neutrality isn’t about making the Internet free. It’s about controlling those that provide connectivity to the internet, controlling exactly how that service is provided. The fact of the matter is that the ISPs own the infrastructure so IMO it should be up to them to decide how that service is provided. Maintaining that infrastructure is not an easy task and having government shove it’s nose into their business will only have one effect – INCREASED costs that get passed along to consumers.
@bjill
Now we know you really work for the service providers. First, if you’re so free market oriented, then you must agree that there should be no freeloaders so let’s hear a round of applause for licensing fee service providers should pay for the use of HTTP which they didn’t invent, or for the Internet which was paid for by me and every American taxpayer, and surely you must be opposed to the monopoly they have? The infrastructure only partially belongs to the service providers; their cables and wires run through public streets, use precious airwaves which belong to the public trust.
The issue of net neutrality speaks to greed in corporate boardrooms. Now that the net threatens to reduce the role of televised/cable programming, service providers seek another channel of revenue. Sorry corporate greed but the future of this country is too important to surrender. Watch in 10 years who wins the technology race when net neutrality is replaced by greed.
Actually bjhill a majority of the cable provider ISPs (the ones who are most at fault/risk about abusing the lack of net neutrality) actually do NOT own the lines that actually run the bits and bytes, they LEASE them. I’m sorry but while I support the free market, it’s past the point of abuse when cable companies come to back-office agreements to not infringe on each others territories so they can continually set prices at whatever they want with no competition. This in itself is not an issue of net neutrality, simply a side-effect. The real thing at issue here is when Comcast decides you CAN’T go to a competitor’s website while using their service. Say you live in one of the few market areas that can support more then one major ISP, like say, Verizon and Comcast, While using comcast, you wish to look up information on Verizon’s internet service, but without net neutrality laws in place, if comcast so chose, they could simply BLOCK YOU from accessing that information. Or if they really wanted to be shady, they could put up their own verizon lookalike site, that simply specifies that service is not available to you. There is NO LEGAL PROTECTION to stop them from doing these things. At least in that particular case, you could still call Verizon and get a quote/service etc. But in many areas, there is only one viable High Speed Internet provider, if they suddenly decide to start blocking anything that competes with their television/phone service offerings, you don’t have another option to turn to. Say you have Charter at 15-20Megabits, and the next closest “High speed” offering is Qwest or At&T DSL at something like 2.5Megabits.(Hardly high speed in this day and age), Charter suddenly decides that they want you to buy more of their other services, so they block Netflix.com, Hulu.com, Skype.com, voice.google.com and anything else they feel people use enough that they can make a profit off having those users switch to their other services instead of using free web-based ones. You believe that that’s ‘OKAY’?
Net neutrality died a few years ago; it’s just taking time for those outside Washington to take notice.
I don’t understand the Net Neutrality argument. How could any corporation or institution possibly enforce anything other than a neutral Internet? It’s not like there’s one entry point to the Internet or one pathway through it. It would take complete cooperation of *millions* of people and thousands of companies to shift the Internet away from neutral. And it won’t get that.
Wired has really pulled far left this year considering their support of a global cabal to prop up global warming, their remorse over liberal senators who got voted out, and this article about net neutrality that is a thinly disguised excuse to attack repubs. Wake up people. The FCC does not need a new law to regulate Internet traffic. That is well within their current power. This is about the hopes of liberals to have total control of Internet content as expressed by Cass Stevens and others in the Obama administration such as requiring pop-ups on conservative sites with content from the Huffington Post. Here’s how you know a law is a bad idea. Ask yourself if you’d be comfortable with the political opposition having the same powers that you are advocating with the current party in power. Would you feel comfortable with repubs regulating Internet content? Would you be comfortable with repubs controlling healthcare? Would you be comfortable with dems having the power of the patriot act to snoop? Parties switch back and forth, now more often than ever. Keeping the government out of our business is our only hope of protecting our freedom. Nuff said.
When people like you tell the police and fire and EMTs to stay our of your business, I’ll start to take this sort of diatribe seriously. Dude: Stop looking for the political motive of which you disapprove in everything everyone does. It only exposes your own proclivity to politicize everything to the point of incoherence. | JCA
00Gonzo, the problem with your statement, is that you equate net neutrality with regulating CONTENT, which is specifically what it forces companies to NOT do. It does not give anyone any more power than they already have, and simply takes away the power of already proven corrupt ISPs that are doing everything they can to make it so you can’t use the internet in any way unless they say it’s ok, and it doesn’t compete with any of their other services.
@ 00gonzo
What absolute nonsense. Net neutrality has nothing whatever to do with the content on pages or any other content. It is about regulation of speed of data packets and nothing more. Pop-ups on websites?
You have not the faintest idea what you are talking about.
Net Neutrality was never alive to begin with, especially if it had to rely on the good nature of one political party over another. The FCC tries to support basic principles like it, but is often overruled by corrupt politicians under influence by lobbyists.
Sometimes I wonder how liberals even brush their teeth without killing themselves. People, “net neutrality” specifically puts the government in TOTAL charge of our internet access under the guise of making everyone totally equal. You have been totally fooled if you think anything different.
Funny how right-wing types view regulation as “total control” or “take over”. It’s not. Regulation ensures a level playing field.
I’m between opinions – as services like Netflix movie downloads get more popular, it will suck the bandwidth out of the pipe, the we will all suffer.
There has to be room for a compromise somewhere.
Regarding government snooping, the Obama admin is worse than Bush ever though of being. It’s just not reported by most of the media.
You biggest weapon for net neutrality is not buying or using services by communication companies that oppose it. This can be rough for some people but I have managed. I pay more but I’m not snooped, limited or redirected. I use a business high-speed account and it costs $97/mo about twice what I paid as a household subscriber.
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The bottom line is I choose my ISP carefully. I cal and write my senator and representative on this issue. I write the largest neutrality offenders and I put my money and my vote where my mouth is. If we ALL did, this wouldn’t be an issue.
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Also consider that the Democrats wanted an internet central override. In the end, NEITHER party wants net neutrality. Only the consumer and voter benefit in any way from it. It is up to us – all of us – to achievt NN if we really want it.
What is it about Liberals? Do you think that “net neutrality” is a good thing because anything that is “neutral” must be fair, must be even? Net neutrality means governmental control, restrictions and regulations. The end result is that all internet access will worse.
Read up a little more. You might find that this has nothing to do with cookie-cutter politics. | JCA