[1st-mile-nm] 1st-mile-nm Digest, Vol 87, Issue 5

[T.L.Thomas]

Thanks for forwarding that, Richard; a great
article.

- TLT



On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 1:00 PM, <1st-mile-nm-request at mailman.dcn.org>wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Susan Crawford: Back to the Digital Drawing Board
>       (Richard Lowenberg)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 15:12:08 -0700
> From: Richard Lowenberg <rl at 1st-mile.com>
> Subject: [1st-mile-nm] Susan Crawford: Back to the Digital Drawing
>         Board
> To: 1st mile nm <1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org>
> Message-ID: <3474bc0306dfa42c3d71235deefc8e6f at dcn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> There has been much news in the last couple of days about the DC
> Circuit Court decision in Verizon vs. the FCC.
> Susan Crawford, I think, gives a good short assessment of the decision
> and of possible next steps.
> RL
> -----------
>
> http://nyti.ms/1eVI1AI
>
> Back to the Digital Drawing Board
>
> By SUSAN CRAWFORD JAN. 16, 2014
>
> CAMBRIDGE, Mass. ? IN less than 20 years, ubiquitous, reliable
> high-speed Internet access has gone from a vision to a novelty to a
> fundamental part of the American economy ? not to mention our civic,
> social and personal lives.
>
> Central to this is the principle of net neutrality: that the cables
> that bring the Internet into our homes should be there for all to use
> equally. Whether you are a content provider or a subscriber, as long as
> you pay your bill, it shouldn?t matter whether you use them to send
> email or connect to Netflix or YouTube.
>
> That, however, may change, thanks to a circuit court ruling this week
> in the case of Verizon v. the Federal Communications Commission. The
> decision deferred to an old F.C.C. determination that telecom cables,
> the primary conduit for Internet access, are not utilities, and cannot
> be regulated as such, leaving American businesses unprotected from the
> depredations of a handful of giant Internet access providers.
>
> Service providers can now strike a deal with YouTube to get faster
> delivery speeds to customers, and Comcast, which owns sizable content
> assets itself, can use its control of the cables to get an edge over
> rival content providers.
>
> But rather than despair, this is a moment of opportunity. The court
> didn?t make its decision because it was opposed to net neutrality, but
> because the F.C.C. had painted itself into a regulatory corner, having
> developed a convoluted, contradictory set of rules regarding Internet
> access over the last decade.
>
> The decision now forces the commission to go back to square one and
> reverse the industry-compromised decisions that set it on this path in
> the first place and that have long undermined its authority over this
> crucial infrastructure.
>
> The problem began in 2002, when Michael K. Powell, the F.C.C. chairman
> who now heads the cable industry?s trade association, decided to exempt
> high-
>
> speed Internet access from so-called common carriage regulation. Those
> rules, applied most notably to phone service, bar providers from
> discriminatory service ? everyone who pays a phone bill gets the same
> quality of service.
>
> But Mr. Powell reasoned that Internet access was an information
> service, distinct from the traditional communications infrastructure,
> and that competition would be better than oversight at protecting
> Americans from any abuses by access providers.
>
> It?s a good thing the F.C.C. is staffed by so many lawyers, because it
> was soon faced with complaints by consumer groups and Internet content
> providers alleging that companies like Comcast, far from being checked
> by competition, were using the lack of competition in local Internet
> service, combined with the lack of oversight, to favor their own
> commercial interests.
>
> After it was revealed in 2008 that Comcast had interfered with access
> to certain file-sharing networking applications, the commission
> performed an about-face, ordering the company to adhere to a new
> approach for managing bandwidth demand.
>
> This put the commission in a logical bind. It claimed, somehow, that it
> both repudiated the need for ?common carriage? rules and, at the same
> time, had the power to prevent discrimination by service providers.
>
> Comcast, Verizon and other Internet service providers quickly filed
> suit. Though the commission fought a valiant fight, defending this
> contradiction was always a losing battle. The commission first lost
> following a challenge by Comcast in 2010, after which it recast its net
> neutrality stance, mandating that service providers not choose winners
> and losers among providers of online content or require them to pay fees
> as a condition of carriage.
>
> Verizon then challenged that mandate, and the result was this week?s
> court ruling. Unlike the 2010 decision, this time the circuit court left
> little room for the commission to revise its rules yet again.
>
> The court did, however, offer a way forward, if the commission was
> willing to take it. The agency must revisit and reverse Mr. Powell?s
> 2002 decision, relabeling high-speed Internet access a common carriage
> service.
>
> That has always been the obvious solution. But for years the commission
> has refused to do so, because its jury-rigged, contradictory stance
> worked well enough. Now it has no choice.
>
> And it must act, soon. Otherwise, we will have an Internet in which,
> say,
>
> Google can pay extra to give Gmail users faster access to their email
> than Hotmail users. And Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, will have no
> choice but to pay more, too, because each Internet service provider has
> a monopoly, or close to one, over local networks.
>
> In the end, the providers? slicing, dicing and gouging is great for
> their shareholders, but not for the country. We?ll end up with a digital
> replica of pay TV, rather than the Internet that has prompted such
> economic growth and innovation in America.
>
> Without the right administrative label applied to these services, every
> step the commission takes to address these problems will be subject to a
> protracted battle over whether the F.C.C. is impermissibly treating the
> network providers as ?common carriers.? In the meantime, we will be no
> closer to having the reliable, ubiquitous, neutral, world-class
> communications infrastructure we need than we are today.
>
> High-speed Internet access isn?t a luxury; it is basic infrastructure,
> like electricity, clean water and a functioning street grid, that is
> essential for the free market to function. The F.C.C. can show its
> strength by having the guts to change its mind.
>
> Susan Crawford is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the
> author of ?Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in
> the New Gilded Age.?
>
> A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 17, 2014, on page
> A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Back to the Digital
> Drawing Board.
>
> ? 2014 The New York Times Company
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Richard Lowenberg, Executive Dir.
> 1st-Mile Institute, 505-603-5200
> P.O.Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
> www.1st-mile.org  rl at 1st-mile.org
> ----------------------------------------
>
>
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> End of 1st-mile-nm Digest, Vol 87, Issue 5
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