2006
2006
A Ten-Point Plan for Media Democracy
By: Jeff Chester
(This is a reprint of the original article published in The Nation June 2006)
1. Media Ownership
The GOP-controlled FCC wants to eliminate key media ownership restrictions affecting TV and radio stations, cable systems and newspapers. Expect fewer owners of our most powerful outlets and a further decrease in journalism budgets.
Action: Join the new "Stopbigmedia" coalition (www.stopbigmedia.com) to promote diversity of media ownership and content. Also, work against the renomination of FCC chair Kevin Martin.
2. Mergers
Sprawling new media powerhouses are emerging, in which offline and digital content and distribution, advertising and marketing are tied to the same multinational giants. For example, the pending AT&T and BellSouth merger will create a colossus spanning voice, broadband and video.
Action: Join with Media Access Project (www.mediaaccess.org) to fight the AT&T/BellSouth merger. Push for new laws to restore our trust in antitrust.
3. Network Neutrality
We can't permit the Internet to come under the control of phone and cable companies, like Comcast and AT&T, that want to transform it into a toll road, with fast lanes for corporate media and a digital dirt road for everyone else.
Action: Join the "strange bedfellows" coalition, which includes MoveOn.org, the American Library Association and the Christian Coalition, pressing Congress to pass "network neutrality" rules to protect the principles of nondiscrimination and open access. Join Save the Internet (www.savetheinternet.com).
4. Spectrum Management
The wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) has been an unprecedented success, with more than 35,000 hot spots (many of them free) operating in the United States. But for the wireless broadband revolution to continue, it needs new unlicensed spectrum. Big communications companies, including broadcasters, want to keep for themselves what should be the public's airwaves.
Action: Urge the FCC to set aside additional spectrum for unlicensed use and support legislation currently in Congress that will make unused TV spectrum available for Wi-Fi applications. The New America Foundation (www.newamerica.net) has been leading the charge for enlightened spectrum management.
5. Community Broadband
Municipal wireless systems represent the most promising alternative to the two-fisted stranglehold that cable and telephone companies currently have over the broadband Internet. Fourteen states, acting at the behest of the cable and telco lobbies, have passed laws limiting these efforts, and others are considering such restrictions.
Action: Urge your Representatives to support federal legislation (e.g., the municipal broadband provision in the otherwise objectionable Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement [COPE] Act) that will restore the right of cities to undertake their own broadband projects. See Free Press's Community Internet page (www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=US).
6. Privacy
As the recent furor over NSA access to millions of private telephone records makes clear, we need to update privacy protections for the digital age. Such protections should extend into the commercial arena too, where new data-collection and -mining technologies, coupled with personalized marketing campaigns, represent a new threat to our personal privacy.
Action: Call for a thorough overhaul of existing privacy regulations, beginning with a requirement for "affirmative consent" before personal data can be collected, and covering the latest developments in digital data collection and analysis. See the EPIC website (www.epic.org).
7. Intellectual Property
Just as privacy protection must move from the analog to the digital domain, so must copyright law reflect the reality of networked computers and other personal devices. Congress's initial effort in this regard, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, went way overboard in its desire to protect content owners (namely, the entertainment industry), and the principle of "fair use" suffered accordingly.
Action: Urge your Representative to reject the Bush-backed Intellectual Property Protection Act (which compounds the DMCA's excesses) in favor of legislation that preserves fair use. See www.publicknowledge.org.
8. Universal Digital Service
Millions of Americans still lack basic Internet, let alone broadband. We need new approaches to achieving "universal service," the policy that sought to make telephone service affordable for low-income and rural Americans.
Action: Call for Congress to expand the Universal Service Fund in the digital era, and support efforts to bridge the digital divide through municipal Wi-Fi and community networking projects.
9. Diverse Broadband Content
The phone industry is building a new system that will deliver interactive TV programming and broadband content (e.g., Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's Project Lightspeed). Cable is also expanding its network offerings. Progressive media must make sure their content is on these networks. We must also build and expand new media services, including digital TV programming channels, broadband websites and mobile networks.
Action: Urge phone and cable companies to open their system to progressive, alternative and diversely owned content. Funders must support an independent digital infrastructure.
10. Minority Ownership
African-Americans, Hispanics and others have fared poorly in the media business, owning only a handful of radio and TV stations. Most of the cable outlets aimed at minorities are owned by corporate giants (e.g., Viacom now owns BET and Comcast controls the new TV One service for African-Americans).
Action: Civil rights groups need to take a more adversarial approach to the media monopoly--seeking minority ownership of local and national broadband outlets.
Congress Poised to Unravel the Internet
Congress Poised to Unravel the Internet
By: Jeff Chester
The Nation
August 2006
Lured by huge checks handed out by the country's top lobbyists, members of Congress could soon strike a blow against Internet freedom as they seek to resolve the hot-button controversy over preserving "network neutrality." The telecommunications reform bill now moving through Congress threatens to be a major setback for those who hope that digital media can foster a more democratic society. The bill not only precludes net neutrality safeguards but also eliminates local community oversight of digital communications provided by cable and phone giants. It sets the stage for the privatized, consolidated and unregulated communications system that is at the core of the phone and cable lobbies' political agenda.
In both the House and Senate versions of the bill, Americans are described as "consumers" and "subscribers," not citizens deserving substantial rights when it comes to the creation and distribution of digital media. A handful of companies stand to gain incredible monopoly power from such legislation, especially AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon. They have already used their political clout in Washington to secure for the phone and cable industries a stunning 98 percent control of the US residential market for high-speed Internet.
Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, the powerful Commerce Committee chair, is trying to line up votes for his "Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act." It was Stevens who called the Internet a "series of tubes" as he tried to explain his bill. Now the subject of well-honed satirical jabs from The Daily Show, as well as dozens of independently made videos, Stevens is hunkering down to get his bill passed by the Senate when it reconvenes in September.
But thanks to the work of groups like Save the Internet, many Senate Democrats now oppose the bill because of its failure to address net neutrality. (Disclosure: The Center for Digital Democracy, where I work, is a member of that coalition.) Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan have joined forces to protect the US Internet. Wyden has placed a "hold" on the bill, requiring Stevens (and the phone and cable lobbies) to strong-arm sixty colleagues to prevent a filibuster. But with a number of GOP senators in tight races now fearful of opposing net neutrality, the bill's chances for passage before the midterm election are slim. Stevens, however, may be able to gain enough support for passage when Congress returns for a lame-duck session.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Thus far, the strategy of the phone and cable lobbies has been to dismiss concerns about net neutrality as either paranoid fantasies or political discontent from progressives. "It's a made-up issue," AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre said in early August at a meeting of state regulators. New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu claims that net neutrality is "what the liberal left have hung their hat on," suggesting that the outcry over Internet freedom is more partisan than substantive. Other critics of net neutrality, including many front groups, have tried to frame the debate around unsubstantiated fears about users finding access to websites blocked, pointing to a 2005 FCC policy statement that "consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice." But the issue of blocking has been purposefully raised to shift the focus from what should be the real concerns about why the phone and cable giants are challenging federal rules requiring nondiscriminatory treatment of digital content.
Verizon, Comcast and the others are terrified of the Internet as we know it today. Net neutrality rules would jeopardize their far-reaching plans to transform our digital communications system. Both the cable and phone industries recognize that if their broadband pipes (now a monopoly) must be operated in an open and neutral fashion, they will face real competition--and drastically reduced revenues--from an ever-growing number of lower-cost phone and video providers. Alcatel, a major technology company helping Verizon and AT&T build their broadband networks, notes in one business white paper that cable and phone companies are "really competing with the Internet as a business model, which is even more formidable than just competing with a few innovative service aggregators such as Google, Yahoo and Skype." (Skype is a telephone service provider using the Internet.)
Policy Racket
The goal of dominating the nation's principal broadband pipeline serving all of our everyday (and ever-growing) communications needs is also a major motivation behind opposition to net neutrality. Alcatel and other broadband equipment firms are helping the phone and cable industries build what will be a reconfigured Internet--one optimized to generate what they call "triple play" profits from "high revenue services such as video, voice and multimedia communications." Triple play means generating revenues from a single customer who is using a bundle of services for phone, TV and PC--at home, at work or via wireless devices. The corporate system emerging for the United States (and elsewhere in the world) is being designed to boost how much we spend on services, so phone and cable providers can increase what they call our "ARPU" (average revenue per user). This is the "next generation" Internet system being created for us, one purposefully designed to facilitate the needs of a mass consumerist culture.
Absent net neutrality and other safeguards, the phone/cable plan seeks to impose what is called a "policy-based" broadband system that creates "rules" of service for every user and online content provider. How much one can afford to spend would determine the range and quality of digital media access. Broadband connections would be governed by ever-vigilant network software engaged in "traffic policing" to insure each user couldn't exceed the "granted resources" supervised by "admission control" technologies. Mechanisms are being put in place so our monopoly providers can "differentiate charging in real time for a wide range of applications and events." Among the services that can form the basis of new revenues, notes Alcatel, is online content related to "community, forums, Internet access, information, news, find your way (navigation), marketing push, and health monitoring."
Missing from the current legislative debate on communications is how the plans of cable and phone companies threaten civic participation, the free flow of information and meaningful competition. Nor do the House or Senate versions of the bill insure that the public will receive high-speed Internet service at a reasonable price. According to market analysts, the costs US users pay for broadband service is more than eight times higher than what subscribers pay in Japan and South Korea. (Japanese consumers pay a mere 75 cents per megabit. South Koreans are charged only 73 cents. But US users are paying $6.10 per megabit. Internet service abroad is also much faster than it is here.)
Why are US online users being held hostage to higher rates at slower speeds? Blame the business plans of the phone and cable companies. As technology pioneer Bob Frankston and PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely recently explained , the phone and cable companies see our broadband future as merely a "billable event." Frankston and Cringely urge us to be part of a movement where we--and our communities--are not just passive generators of corporate profit but proactive creators of our own digital futures. That means we would become owners of the "last mile" of fiber wire, the key link to the emerging broadband world. For about $17 a month, over ten years, the high-speed connections coming to our homes would be ours--not in perpetual hock to phone or cable monopolists. Under such a scenario, notes Cringely, we would just pay around $2 a month for super-speed Internet access.
Regardless of whether Congress passes legislation in the fall, progressives need to create a forward-looking telecom policy agenda. They should seek to insure online access for low-income Americans, provide public oversight of broadband services, foster the development of digital communities and make it clear that the public's free speech rights online are paramount. It's now time to help kill the Stevens "tube" bill and work toward a digital future where Internet access is a right--and not dependent on how much we can pay to "admission control."
Google's Wi-Fi Privacy Ploy
Google's Wi-Fi Privacy Ploy
By: Jeff Chester
The Nation
March 2006
The digital gold rush is on across America, as cities scramble to develop free or low-cost Wi-Fi zones. These public on-ramps to the Internet are designed to provide every citizen with a form of always-on, high-speed Internet access--at the playground, in the office or at home--at low or no cost.
Dozens of communities large and small, in red states and blue, are either planning or currently constructing Wi-Fi systems. Community leaders--from Philadelphia; Houston; Columbia, South Carolina; and San Francisco, to name a few--recognize that creating a citywide Wi-Fi zone is not only vital for economic development and public safety but helps insure that Americans who can't now afford digital communications on their own can also tap in to the riches and convenience of the Internet. But there is no such thing as a free digital lunch.
Consumers and public officials should have no illusions that what is being touted as a public benefit is also designed to spur the growth of a mobile marketing ecosystem, an emerging field of electronic commerce that is expected to generate huge revenues for Google, Microsoft, AT&T and many others. Soon, wherever we wander, a ubiquitous online environment will follow us with ads and information dovetailed to our interests and our geographic location.
Unless municipal leaders object, citizens and visitors will be subjected to intensive data-mining of their web searches, e-mail messages and other online activities are tracked, profiled and targeted. The inevitable consequences are an erosion of online privacy, potential new threats of surveillance by law enforcement agencies and private parties, and the growing commercialization of culture.
Mining Your Data
Consider the application submitted to the City of San Francisco in February by search giant Google and its partner, the Internet service provider Earthlink. One of six Wi-Fi bids being considered by the City of San Francisco, the Google/Earthlink plan has attracted the most attention. Under this proposal, Google would provide a free but relatively low-speed Internet service available throughout the city (Earthlink would operate a higher-speed service on the same system charging users $20 a month). The costs of operating the "free" service would be offset by Google's plans to use the network to promote its interactive advertising services.
Everyone who uses the Google network would first be directed to a portal page, where they would be offered an array of what Google terms "personalized consumer products." Through those products and other technologies, Google plans, according to its proposal, to "target advertisements to specific geographical locations and to user interests."
What this means is that Google and Earthlink plan to use online files (known as cookies) and other data-collection techniques to profile users and deliver precise, personalized advertising as they surf the Internet. (Earthlink is working with the interactive ad company DoubleClick, which collects and analyzes enormous amounts of information online to engage in individual interactive ad targeting.)
Not everyone is enthused by the Google/Earthlink model. San Francisco was advised by a trio of privacy advocates to develop policies that would respect personal privacy. In letters to the city, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged the adoption of a "gold standard" for data privacy, insuring that its Wi-Fi system would "accommodate the individual's right to communicate anonymously and pseudonymously." The groups also suggested that the city require any Wi-Fi company to allow users to "opt in" to any data-collection scheme. [Full disclosure: I rent office space in Washington, DC, from EPIC].
Scary Syllables
These two syllables--"opt in"--strike terror in the hearts of Google, Microsoft, AOL and everyone else in the interactive marketing field. Opting in requires users to affirmatively give permission before any data can be collected. Individuals would be fully informed about how such information would be used (such as profiling, sharing with others, etc.). What companies want instead is an "opt-out" approach, in which the default is always set to collect and make full use of our personal information.
As EPIC's West Coast senior counsel Chris Hoofnagle explained, "The Google plan proposes to bargain away users' privacy for a trickle of Internet connectivity." Google will have an unprecedented ability to monitor use and build records of web activity. These records will be a honey pot for law enforcement. Individuals' privacy is worth more than a 300K download speed." (Other Wi-Fi applicants in San Francisco also favor opt-out data-collection technology. One applicant, the NextWLAN Corporation, envisions "an e-commerce monetized, fully captive, location-aware Internet portal." But also on the table is a proposal from the nonprofit Seakay that offers a free service and pledges no personal information will be collected online.
The interest San Francisco and other cities have in securing the financial support of commercial investors for their Wi-Fi grids in part reflects the success of the campaign run by the nation's largest cable and phone companies, which have opposed the idea of municipally owned and operated Internet service. Companies such as Comcast and AT&T view these low-cost local municipal competitors as a threat to what they believe is their rightful broadband monopoly businesses. Already, there have been lawsuits, lobbying and legislation against such municipal Internet services.
As a result of this pressure, cities are now seeking a more corporate-friendly approach to provide what should really be a public utility operated for everyone's benefit. Too many local governments are embracing a model for Wi-Fi, says advocate and expert Sascha Meinrath, that creates a system more favorable to "billable moments" than one designed to truly connect communities together.
Instead of creating yet another e-commerce stomping ground, San Francisco and other cities should understand that real alternatives do exist to the corporate model of municipal Wi-Fi being peddled by Google and its cohorts. It is possible to develop community networks that reflect our highest principles, including the right to personal privacy, and the cost of building such networks can be very low. There are already successful publicly supported models. St. Cloud, Florida, a city of 30,000, has built a free Wi-Fi service for its residents, seeing it as an important public service. The city has been able to build and operate the network, reduce its telecommunications costs and generate new economic opportunities.
Building a Wi-Fi network this way brings in economic development and saves the city money on telecommunications. At a time of growing media consolidation and emerging threats to the future of the Internet, America needs to create online systems that are democratically run and commerce-neutral, that protect the privacy of the citizens they serve.
Google, YouTube and You
By: Jeff Chester
(This is a reprint of the original article published in The Nation October 2006)
Under the radar of all but the most savvy Internet users, powerful commercial forces are rapidly creating a digital media system for the United States that threatens to undermine our ability to create a civil and just society. The takeover of YouTube by Google announced October 9 and the 2005 buyout by Rupert Murdoch of MySpace are not just about mega-deals for new media. They are the leading edge of a powerful interactive system that is being designed to serve the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet. (EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nation has a content relationship with both companies: YouTube hosts our online videos and Google advertisments appear on this site.)
Aware that social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube are attracting the key youth audience, and aiming to maintain their influence over future generations of consumers, marketers are aggressively seizing the initiative. Leveraging existing relationships with Yahoo!, Microsoft, the phone and cable companies, Google and the other large players, the advertising industry are developing an array of immersive online experiences--like MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach and Studio.com's Go Deep--that seamlessly blend relationships with products and brands.
Advertisers are harnessing technology that targets and follows Internet users on their journeys through cyberspace, collecting data and tracking behavior. Virtual software marketing tools will be deployed across the digital landscape so that wherever we go, whatever we do do--e-mail, instant messaging, mobile communications or searches--we will be immersed in enticing content for the lifelong sell: Witness the work of Oddcast, a New York-based immersive media company, whose "conversational character products" represent a new medium for marketing to get inside consumers' heads.
YouTube capitalizes on the growing proclivity of Internet users to be creators of information as well as consumers. And as the network television and cable audiences age, advertisers are increasingly aware that "user-created content"--be it a cute kitty video or clips from The Daily Show--are key to attracting young audiences. But as the Goo-Tube model develops, behind each video will be a powerful connection to an ad, targeted to the user's online behavior, as well as the stealth collection of personal data. As Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive, noted about his company's acquisition of MySpace, "the digital gold inside of MySpace wasn't the number of users, but the information they're providing." [Google, it should be noted, now also represents the interests of Rupert Murdoch's US empire. In August Google became Fox's principal online advertising agent for MySpace, Fox TV and Fox Interactive.]
Given this emerging marketing model, the US broadband infrastructure may well become one giant "brandwashing" machine. The most powerful communications system ever developed by humans is increasingly being put in the service of selling, commercialization and commodification. And it will lead to an inherently conservative and narcissistic political culture, in which the interests of the self and the consumption of products are the primary, most visible, media messages. And unless we begin to challenge it now, the emerging digital culture will seriously challenge our ability to effectively communicate, inform and organize.
A handful of companies now dominate much of the US new-media market. Five corporations--Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest--control the wires and cable lines delivering us broadband, digital TV and, soon, much wireless service. The viral "Singing Puppy" campaign from Nokia is an early warning that soon even our phone calls will become platforms for commercials. A few other major players--especially Google, News Corp., Viacom and Microsoft--have done the necessary deals to strategically grow their broadband content businesses (buying gaming sites and other programming to insure they ensnare the key youth market). Even if the pending update to the Communications Act of 1996 preserves the core principle of network neutrality, the voices of these most powerful media companies are likely to be the loudest.
More mergers in coming years will continue the consolidation of old media giants with the new. It's only a matter of time before a handful of companies will own TV, radio and newspaper properties along with key online services. This further interferes with the ability of mainstream news media to serve as an effective watchdog on government and big business.
Though the Internet was originally envisioned to serve the public interest, there is no guarantee it will continue to do so. Like radio, broadcast TV and cable, it will continue to be shaped by politics, telecommunication policies and the market. Web activists envision a medium that will always support social change and can serve as a platform to distribute diverse points of view. But if the economic relationships between the old and new media are allowed to dominate online culture, what guarantees do we have that the Internet will continue to be the "people's" medium? Events are moving quickly; media and telecommunications giants already have a powerful hold on members of Congress; regardless of which party is in power, it is unlikely our elected officials will deliver a federal policy that that puts the needs of citizens ahead of corporations.
That's why I suggest that progressives begin to get real--and get smart--about digital media. While we have a few reliable outlets--Democracy Now!, Alternet, Huffington Post and The Nation--the progressive community lacks a reliable well-connected broadband infrastructure that will deliver an array of news and cultural content to national and community audiences. I'm not talking about the wires and connections but about building a coalition of tech-savvy content providers that will deliver to PCs, TVs and cellphones a flow of alternative news and information challenging the status quo.
Imagine progressive organizations making smart deals with a variety of providers to carry this content deep in the heart of the digital distribution system. Imagine nimble, creative enterprises willing to experiment with new business models. Imagine having the courage to go beyond foundation grants and pledge drives and becoming adept at paying your own way. Imagine developing socially responsible advertising that respects personal privacy, is transparent about how data is collected and used, allows consumers to opt out of immersive experiences, fosters independent identity, builds community and supports social justice.
Foundations and the so-called Democracy Alliance have the potential to be the economic engines for such experiments and do the organizing necessary to patch together a content-challenge to the status quo.
As YouTube, Google, MySpace and immersive media marketing reshape the digital landscape, we need to be sure that public interest remains in the picture. And as tech-savvy progressive media find their place in that landscape, we must work together to build an online culture that not only pitches products but works for equity, social justice and the riches of a civil society.
Hijacking the Internet: How Big Cable and Phone Companies' Plans for Broadband Threaten Democracy
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies have a vision for the Internet's future. Verizon, AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, and Bell South want to create a privately run and branded "pay-as-you-go" Internet, making everything we do online a "billable," revenue-generating service. Our every cyberspace move will be tracked and stored so we can be better marketed to (a data collection system that might even rival the NSA's!). Those with the deepest pockets--think corporate special interest groups and major advertisers--will get preferred treatment. Their content will show up (and be processed) the fastest on our computer and television screens. Content seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, may be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out, say "white papers" and other documents given to the cable and phone industry.
Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from large to small content providers to individual users--will have to pay more when surfing online, streaming videos, or perhaps even sending and receiving email. Companies are mulling the imposition of new subscription plans that will limit our online experience. There will be "gold," bronze," and "silver" forms of Internet access that tightly define what they call our "level of service" (limiting how much downloading we can do, etc.)
Gone will be the more open and nondiscriminatory network of today.
To help ensure that their "vision" succeeds, the phone and cable lobbies are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communication policy laws. Both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have a far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as "private" networks--without policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Telephone and cable companies are now using the same kind of political snake oil that helped them pass the now-infamous 1996 Telecommunications Act (ten years ago on Feb 8, 1996). They have unleashed the tried-and-true rhetoric designed to lure compromised and clueless lawmakers. Our proposals, they claim, will "empower the consumer" and lead to "innovation." But these are code words used to cloak their real goal: to turn the Internet into a turbocharged digital retail machine.
The telephone industry has been somewhat more candid than cable about its plans for the Internet. Senior phone executives have publicly discussed their plans to begin imposing a new scheme for the delivery of Internet content, especially from major Internet content companies. As Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November, "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
The phone industry has been unleashing its political allies to help win it the freedom to begin imposing its broadband business model. At a conference held in December by the pro-cable and -Bell "think-tank" Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), there was support for the idea that it is okay for phone companies to begin charging some content users more and others less. "Price discrimination," noted PFF's resident media expert Adam Thierer, "drives the market-based capitalist economy." That's "good discrimination." Not surprisingly, PFF, is funded by Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and many other media companies. (PFF is also part of the conservative State Policy Network lobbying machine. SPN groups have increasingly been working to promote Big Media interests.)
Alarm Bells
To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on the information highway, some new media companies and public interest groups are calling for new federal policies requiring "network neutrality" on the Internet. This group includes Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project and Consumers Union, among others. Under their proposal, broadband providers would be prohibited from discriminating against all forms of digital content. For example, phone or cable companies would not be allowed to slow down competing or undesired content.
Without a proactive intervention from the public, the values and issues that we care about--civil rights, economic justice, the environment, and fair elections--will be further threatened by the push for ever-greater corporate control. Imagine how the next presidential election would unfold, if major political advertisers, with strategic payment to Comcast, had their ads from Democratic and Republican candidates presented in a more visible and user-friendly way than the ad of a less well-funded third party candidate. Consider the media landscape if an online advertisement promoting nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband homepage, while a competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins. It is possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial online programming would be pushed to the end of a commercial digital queue.
But such "neutrality" safeguards are inadequate to address more fundamental changes that the Bells and cable monopolies are seeking in their quest to monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet to become a medium designed primarily to serve the interests of marketing and personal consumption rather than civic-related communications, we will face the political consequences for decades to come. Unless we push back, the "brandwashing" of America will have serious consequences for both our culture and global society.
Digital Dollars
Why are the Bells and cable now aggressively advancing such plans? It's because our media system is undergoing a major transformation with the arrival of the long-awaited "convergence" of communications technologies. What the phone and cable companies see as their potential lucrative "triple play" by providing us with video, voice and data communications, will soon be flowing into our TV's, PC's and mobile devices (such as cell phones or iPods). All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines, whose owners have successfully lobbied the Feds so they can impose a near monopoly over the delivery of residential broadband service.
Of foremost interest to both the phone and cable companies is video programming. Like cable, phone companies are getting into the TV and media content business, offering customers television channels, on-demand videos, and games. Online advertising is also increasingly relying on Internet-intensive multimedia content (such as animation and full-motion video). Television-related content requires a great deal of Internet space (bandwidth) to travel to our homes. The phone and cable companies want to make sure their video-based content receives preferential treatment. But their control over the pipeline into our home (or mobile device) gives them the leverage to determine how the broadband medium evolves overall.
Big Media Brother Meets Deep Packet Inspection
Now being pitched and sold to cable and phone companies are technologies that enable them to have greater control over Internet "traffic." These network management products enable your phone or cable company to make individual business decisions about all the digital content coming into your home (in the vernacular of the industry, they can set "policy" or business rules that define the quality of service you will receive online). Through what is called "deep packet inspection" they know what kind of content you are accessing online, from email, to websites, to peer-to-peer downloads.
These deep packet inspection technologies are partly designed to make sure that Internet traffic doesn't become so congested it "chokes off" the delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to manage their Internet services more economically. They are also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.
But these products are also being sold as ways companies such as Comcast and Verizon can simply grab greater control over the Internet.
For example, in a series of "white papers" Internet technology giant Cisco warns its cable customers (such as Comcast) that they "risk" allowing their broadband service to become viewed as a "low-priced bulk commodity." [See "Cisco Service Control: A Guide to Sustained Broadband Profitability"(pdf) or "Deploying Premium Services Using Cisco Service Control Technology"(pdf) or "Service Control: The Next Step in Networking for Cable Operators"(pdf)] They are urged to use the Cisco "service control" products so they can create an unlimited number of "advanced billing schemes" for users, all designed to increase cable's "profitability." Among the added benefits, Cisco promises, is "service intelligence," including knowing (in real-time) "the identity and profile of the individual subscriber," "what the subscriber is doing," "where the subscriber resides," and "how the subscriber can use Network resources" (meaning what "service level" they are enrolled in). They will be able to "meter individual subscriber usage by application" as their online travels are "tracked" and "integrated with billing systems." Meanwhile they can begin "prioritizing" applications that bring them money, such as video games and gambling.
Cisco and others (such as Allot Communications) warn cable and phone companies about the need to "limit unprofitable peer-to-peer communications" or even ban them. Among the applications mentioned for such treatment including BitTorrent, Gnuetella, and Kazaa. One can tell a lot about the intended role of these packet-inspection products by their names: "SmartFlow," "NetEnforcer," "NetPure," "NetRedirector," and "IP Control System."
Ironically, some companies offering deep packet inspection technology claim that today's more unfettered use of the Internet is creating "a tragedy of the commons." That the public use of the Internet and "greedy" use of P2P could lead to its "overuse and eventual depletion or destruction," claims a paper from the Sandvine Corporation ["Network Neutrality: A Broadband Wild West?" (pdf)]. Companies will use the excuse that such invasive technology is required to prohibit "bandwidth hogs" from using too much of the Internet to download illegal movies. Or that it's needed to protect us from new forms of "viruses" and "worms." But these are smokescreens for a power grab of major proportions.
Will Google, Amazon.com and the others fight the plans of the Bells and cable? Ultimately, they are likely to cut a deal. After all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network providers will need to "cooperate with each other to leverage their value proposition." They will be drawn by the ability of cable and phone companies to track "content usage…by subscriber," and where their online services can be "protected from piracy, metered, and appropriately valued."
Digital Destiny
It was former FCC Chairman Michael Powell who permitted phone and cable giants to have greater control over broadband (with the support of then commissioner and now Chairman Kevin Martin). Powell and his GOP majority eliminated long-standing regulatory safeguards requiring phone companies to operate as non-discriminatory networks (technically known as "common carriers"). He refused to require that cable companies, when providing Internet access, also operate in a similar nondiscriminatory manner. As Stanford Professor Larry Lessig has long noted, it was government regulation of the phone lines that helped make the Internet a vibrant and diverse medium.
But now, the phone companies are lobbying Washington to kill off what's left of common carriage. They wish to operate their Internet services as "private" networks. Phone and cable companies claim that the government shouldn't play a role in broadband regulation--that it's an issue just involving a business decision by consumers. If consumers want to pay more to have content, such as a first-run movie or the evening news, delivered to their screens faster than what their neighbors can get, that's between them and their local cable and phone company, they argue
The Bell and cable companies also have a more sweeping political agenda. Both industries oppose communities having the right to create their own local Internet services (such as the offering of wireless or wi-fi networks). The phone companies (and undoubtedly cable) also want to eliminate the last vestige of local control over the electronic media--the ability of city or county government to impose some terms of service in the form of a "franchise" (such as funding and channels for public access television). The Bells also want to further reduce the ability of the FCC to oversee communications policy generally, permitting it to only "regulate" if they receive a formal complaint (primarily from corporations). They hope that both the FCC and the Congress--through a new Communications Act--will back their proposals (helped undoubtedly by big campaign contributions and revolving-door employment).
The entire structure of the electronic media in the U.S. will ultimately depend on whether we let the Bells and cable determine the country's "digital destiny." In the absence of intense opposition, it's likely most policymakers will treat this issue primarily as a "business" matter. But there's much more at stake. So before there are any policy decisions, we must first have a national debate about how the Internet is to serve the public. Among the issues are ensuring that phone and cable companies operate their Internet services in the public interest--as stewards of a vital medium for free expression. That will require fighting for common carrier safeguards. Everyone must also be given low-cost access. Privacy protections are urgently required, to prevent perpetual data eavesdropping (something made more pressing by both the Bush Administration's domestic spying programming and its request from Google, AOL and others for online information about the public's web search requests). Finally, we must guarantee that a whole host of content be exempt from any commercial fee or "pay-per-use" regime, such as political speech, civic communications, and non-commercial content. In other words, we must ensure the growth of a dynamic digital information commons.
An independent commission of public interest technology experts, funded by foundations, should also publicly examine how the phone and cable industries are making decisions about Internet architecture, to help make sure their networks operate fairly and offer all users sufficient capacity at affordable rates.
Unless they agree to a change of public policy, there should be a move for divestment from Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Bell South by responsible investment and pension funds. At the very least there should be stockholder resolutions challenging the political position taken by these companies, which have built their fortunes on vast public subsidies--whether they began as monopolies (such as the Baby Bells) or thrived because of access to streets and telephone polls (cable).
It will take the same kind of intensive opposition organized against the FCC's media ownership decision in 2003 if we are to even attempt to thwart what Verizon and others have in store for the Internet. Without such a public outcry, it is likely that many of the Democrats who rallied against further consolidation will be "tamed" by the well-funded lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industries.
Unless there is action, we will have a wonderful new medium for advertising and entertainment from Big Media companies--but a poor one for democratic discourse, alternative expression, and political dissent.
House Panel Shoots Down Net Neutrality
House Panel Shoots Down Net Neutrality
By: Jeff Chester
The Nation
April 2006
The GOP House leadership rejected calls Wednesday to preserve the Internet's open and democratic nature in the United States. Phone and cable industry lobbyists breathed a sigh of relief as the House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated, 34 to 22, an amendment to a broadband communications bill (known as the Barton-Rush Act) that would require "network neutrality." Under the proposal, developed by Massacusetts Democrat Ed Markey and others, phone and cable companies would have been prohibited from transforming the Internet into a private, pay-as-you-post toll road.
Over the past week, there has been a remarkable outpouring of public and corporate support for network neutrality. SavetheInternet.com, organized by Free Press and representing dozens of nonprofit groups and leading Internet experts, helped generate 250,000 signatures in less than a week for an online petition calling on Congress to protect the Internet and pass the Markey bill.
This new group, a collection of unusual bedfellows that runs the political gamut from Common Cause, the Gun Owners of America and the Parents TV Council to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, also spurred many bloggers to take a strong stand (ranging from the liberal Daily Kos to the libertarian Instapundit).
Meanwhile, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay and IAC, which make up the Network Neutrality Coalition, unveiled their "Don't Mess With the Net" campaign, running ads in Roll Call and The Hill targeting lawmakers. MoveOn.org's new Save the Internet campaign also generated many letters and e-mails to members of Congress.
It is puzzling, though, why Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and allies have not unleashed a serious--and very public--nationwide campaign in support of network neutrality. So far, these giants have worked cautiously, largely inside the Beltway, reflecting perhaps their corporate ambivalence about calling on Congress to pass Internet-related safeguards. Unlike the phone and cable efforts, there has been no saturation-TV or print-advertising campaign, something these deep-pocketed digital giants could eaily afford.
This growing pressure on the Democrats to stand up for an open Internet helped convince House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to formally support the call for network neutrality. Consequently, only five House Commerce Committee Democrats voted with the GOP majority to kill the digital nondiscrimination plan, including Edolphus Townes (New York), Albert Wynn (Maryland), Charles Gonzalez (Texas), Bobby Rush (Illinois) and Gene Green (Texas). Only one Republican committee member, Heather Wilson of New Mexico, voted in support of the network neutrality amendment.
Giants including AT&T (SBC), Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner have staked their business plans for the Internet based on being able to control and "monetize" the flow of digital communications coming into PCs, digital TVs and mobile services. The Federal Communications Commission--at the behest of the phone and cable lobby--recently overturned longstanding safeguards requiring the Internet to operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. The two industries are spending tens of millions of dollars to fight off any Congressional safeguard for the Internet that would restore the nondiscrimination principle.
Commerce Committee chair Joe Barton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have been the chief cheerleaders for the cable and phone lobby. On Wednesday, Barton derided the call for network neutrality, claiming that it's "still not clearly defined. It's kind of like pornography: You know it when you see it." Barton and Hastert are expected, as early as next week, to successfully pass the bill in the House without a network neutrality provision. A showdown is now looming in the Senate Commerce Committee, which is about to take up its own broadband Internet legislation. A bipartisan network neutrality amendment, similar to what was just defeated in the House committee, will be offered by Senators Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan. Public-interest advocates and corporate allies plan to mobilize an even larger outcry of support for this proposal.
With midterm elections looming, GOP leaders will come under increasing pressure to make a choice. Will they continue to back their few phone and cable industry supporters and keep the open Internet safeguards off the table? Or will they recognize that a genuine digital-age protest movement is emerging that could further harm their party's chances in November? The next few weeks will reveal whether the "smart mobs" can win over a tiny handful of communications monopolists.
Key House Panel Votes to Kill Community TV
Key House Panel Votes to Kill Community TV
By: Jeff Chester
The Nation
April 2006
Congress is about to strike a blow that would eliminate the last remaining policy insuring local oversight of communications companies. A GOP-led effort on behalf of the telephone lobby (principally Verizon and AT&T), also backed by many Democrats, is about to toss in the dustbin the longstanding policy enabling cities or counties to negotiate a "franchise" agreement with companies that provide cable TV service. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted Wednesday 42-12, to strip away the rights of communities to have any say in how phone and cable networks serve them in the digital era.
As Verizon and AT&T roll out their broadband Internet and video services, they wish to remove any obstacle to securing lucrative revenues from signing up customers from the wealthiest parts of the country. The phone giants complain that current law requires them to negotiate with each town (as cable TV currently does) to develop a unique deal that benefits the community, and that giving local officials the authority to have an oversight role is slowing down their business plans.
With the backing of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and in exchange for some likely Tom DeLay-style quid pro quo that will give the GOP lots of "Baby Bell" campaign cash, legislation is being rushed through Congress. Local oversight is to be replaced by a "national franchise" that will permit the most powerful communications giants in the Internet era--large cable and phone companies--to operate without regard for local concerns. Under the bill (co-sponsored by House Commerce Committee chair Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas, and Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois) phone companies could engage in a form of economic redlining, serving only the most affluent parts of town; the current local franchise system prevents such discrimination. Communities would not be able to enact any consumer safeguards, such as privacy protection; the bill would permit our very corrupt Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to set such protection rules.
While the proposed legislation does require phone and cable companies to pay annual fees to cities and also to provide public, educational and governmental (PEG) access channels for local use, it freezes in time PEG capacity--setting aside only a handful of public channels while placing off-limits the enormous potential of broadband cable systems to serve the public interest. Under the proposed national franchise plan, cable companies would be able to opt out of their current agreements, leaving local officials and residents powerless at the precise time when digital communications services are playing an ever-growing role in our daily lives.
Broken Promises
Little has been written in the mainstream press about what the potential loss of cable franchising will mean. More than thirty years ago in The Nation, Ralph Lee Smith wrote the visionary "The Wired Nation." Even back then, activists recognized cable TV's ability to serve as a "community communications" system (they even used the word "broadband" back then). Cable was supposed to be an alternative to mainstream commercial television. There would be many local channels, addressing the needs of education, civic participation, free speech and the arts. Cable systems and programming channels would be owned and operated by people of color, potentially ameliorating what was--and still is--a communications industry dominated by white males and largely programmed to their interests. The cable lobby adopted much of this rhetoric as companies vied to secure lucrative deals with cities. We will be your "community medium," they declared, promising to deliver PEG and an endless array of local services. But once these giants, whose successors today include companies such as Time Warner and Comcast, won the franchise, they used their political power--at City Hall and in Washington, DC--to break most of their promises. The cable lobby assembled a powerful political machine, including key Democratic leaders, and was able to win national legislation in 1984 that largely freed them to operate as national programming services.
But a generation of video activists and visionaries, along with pioneering public-interest FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson, had already helped usher in the concept of public-access television. Public-access advocates fought back then--as they are doing now--to preserve some form of cable's original community vision. Today, more than 20,000 hours of new local programming are produced each week by the approximately 3,000 PEG channels in the United States, relying on a largely volunteer corps of 1.2 million access producers. PEG is the only place where city councils, school boards and programs on a dizzying array of subjects, many of them serious and creative, routinely appear on television. Despite federal rules favoring cable companies, local governments have retained their ability to negotiate franchise renewal deals that have helped expanded PEG capacity to reflect updates in technology, such as streaming video and other broadband distribution.
Franchises have required special networks to be built, connecting public buildings with advanced communications services and assisting education and public safety. All of this has been possible because local authorities had the power of renewing the cable franchise deal every ten years or so (as well as approving transfers of ownership as media giants were bought and sold).
A Digital Gold Mine
But now that phone lines can deliver video and data along with voice, Verizon and AT&T envision a digital gold mine, principally by selling wealthy customers TV and movies on demand. It says a lot about their "vision" for our media future that the high-powered fiber-optic lines they are rolling out purportedly to give the public high-speed Internet service (which is what they say to lawmakers) is really about selling us reruns.
The phone lobby has deployed a gaggle of lobbyists and industry-backed groups as part of its campaign to eliminate local authority. They have used a two-pronged approach, pressuring both state and federal lawmakers. Helping to spearhead the phone lobby's efforts has been Freedom Works, run by former GOP House majority leader Dick Armey. His group has worked with phone lobbyists to pass state laws pre-empting local franchising in such states as Texas, Kansas and Virginia. Telecom industry-backed front groups working for either the phone or cable industry have sprouted up as fast as crabgrass as special interest money is doled out to almost all comers. (See a recent Common Cause report.)
But what the telephone lobby really wants is for Congress to pass a bill this session that would end forever the local franchising concept. The Barton-Rush bill (that's Bobby Rush, the former "activist" and Democrat who represents Chicago) passed the House Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee by an overwhelming 27-to-4 majority. Rush provided bi-partisan cover for the GOP-written bill. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a community center organized by Rep. Rush and his wife, has received a $1 million grant from the SBC/AT&T foundation. Only eleven Democrats and one Republican on the Commerce Committee voted against the bill: Ed Markey, John Dingell, Henry Waxman, Anna Eshoo, Diana DeGette, Lois Capps, Mike Doyle, Tom Allen, Jan Schakowsky, Hilda Solis, Tammy Baldwin and Heather Wilson (R). Fifteen Democrats supported community TV kill-off, including Jay Inslee, Charles A. Gonzalez, and Edolphus Towns. The full House could pass the new legislation as early as next week.
Democrats Cave
Lobbying over the future of cable and telephone policy has already been a financial blessing to Congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Members of the House and Senate Commerce Committees have received more than $3 million since 2003 from phone and cable companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that's just the tip of the financial largesse we can expect from grateful AT&T and Verizon. (The GOP and lots of Democrats won't have to worry about their phone, cable or Internet bills for a very long time.)
In the next few weeks, the Senate will take up broadband legislation as well. Democratic Senators John Kerry and Jay Rockefeller have already signaled their support for the plan. Whatever final bill emerges from Congress will ultimately reflect the continuing efforts by the communications industry to free itself from any real oversight and requirements for public service. (There is a provision in the bill that would permit cities to develop their own Wi-Fi networks--removing obstacles the phone and cable industries have placed in their way via another successful political campaign they have organized. But while it gives this tiny opening to communities, ultimately the legislation will close off the country's principal broadband communications system for the public interest. On Wednesday, the House Commerce Committee also voted down an amendment, sponsored by Ed Markey, to protect the openness of the US Internet, 34-22. There will also be an epic battle in the Senate to secure open Internet safeguards in the bill, the so-called "network neutrality" issue.)
It's time for progressives to take a stand against the broadband banditry of Congress and the cable-telecom cartel. Any Internet-era telecommunications legislation should insure local control, provide low-income Americans with residential Internet service, protect online privacy, and keep the Internet open and free from the control of big cable and phone companies. Such legislation should also help develop a noncommercial digital commons designed to promote civil society (as opposed to the madcap commercialism that will run rampant on the broadband networks). In that way, we can honor the vision--and the political work--of activists in decades past who strove for a democratically run "community communications" system.
Life After Net Neutrality: Replaced by a Chimp?
By: Jeff Chester
(This is a reprint of the original article published in The Nation September 2006)
Despite growing opposition, Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens appears determined to pass his telecom giveaway bill this year. If Stevens and his pals in the telecom and cable industries prevail, expect the free flow of online content to be replaced by corporate infotainment like Anheuser-Busch's lowbrow broadband Bud TV.
Stevens is using his considerable political clout to get at least sixty senators to agree to bring the flawed measure to the floor. Stevens has acknowledged that his rewrite of the 1934 Communications Act now faces an uphill battle, primarily due to the controversy generated by public-interest groups over network neutrality, the guiding principle of the Internet, which guarantees all users have equal access to content and services.
Over the summer, Savetheinternet.com, Common Cause, USPIRG and many others worked to firm up support for network neutrality rules. As a result, six senators have come out in favor of Internet freedom--Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords and five Democrats (New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman, Minnesota's Mark Dayton, Iowa's Tom Harkin, Massachusetts's Edward Kennedy and New York's Chuck Schumer). There is also growing corporate and academic support for network neutrality--from Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft to the mainstream American Electronics Association.
The intense battle over the Internet's openness, Stevens acknowledged, "may well lead to total defeat [of the telecommunications bill] this year after nineteen months of work." But Stevens, long accustomed to wielding immense power due to his seniority (he's president pro tem of the Senate, as well as chair of the Commerce Committee and a key appropriations subcommittee), doesn't plan to give up easily. It remains highly likely that some kind of backroom deal will be struck during the lame-duck session after the November elections. Stevens and his pro-big media Senate allies might also attach key parts of his bill in "must-pass legislation" such as in budget or national security laws.
The Stevens bill not only proposes to scuttle network neutrality rules but also undermines key policies designed to insure community influence over how broadband networks serve the public interest--including the ability of American soldiers stationed overseas to phone home. In a section titled "War on Terror," instead of legislation that insures maximum freedom of expression, the telecom rewrite thinks first about protecting corporate cash flow. Lawmakers could have ordered the FCC to insure that members of the military have unlimited free calls, but the Stevens bill actually prohibits the FCC from regulating any rates to do so. It simply requires the federal government to promote a "reduction of such costs" by cutting taxes or fees on phone service.
Stevens's talking points are actually being scripted--and paid for--by phone industry lobbyists. On Monday the Senator's Commerce Committee released a "bipartisan poll," which purported to show the public cared little for network neutrality. All the public really wants the Senate to do, the survey results suggested, was to support the Stevens bill as it's currently written. But neither the poll nor the press release issued by Stevens revealed, as the Wall Street Journal did today, that Verizon had paid for the study. The role of Verizon is not surprising, given that the poll was developed by the Glover Park Group lobbying shop (along with Public Opinion Strategies). Glover Park--which is run by such high-level Democratic Party advisers as Howard Wolfson, Joe Lockhart and Carter Eskew--has been helping Verizon in its efforts to scuttle broadband policy safeguards since 2005.
The GOP--including the White House--is still pushing hard to kill network neutrality. For example, at a hearing last week before Stevens's committee on his renomination for another term, FCC chair Kevin Martin came out in defense of the big cable and phone companies. The FCC chair said he thought it was fine for Verizon and others to begin charging extra fees to those content providers that want to be placed on faster Internet lanes. Martin, who was largely given an "easy ride" by senators from both parties in a recent hearing, said that without the ability to charge more, phone and cable companies wouldn't be able to offer the public new "products" such as broadband video. (The fact that Democrats aren't trying to oppose Martin's renomination--given his support for further ownership consolidation and opposition to net neutrality--illustrates the Democrats' weakness on public-interest and telecom issues.)
Such steadfast support from Stevens, Martin and others for their plans to transform the Internet sent an affirmative message to both the phone and cable lobbies. Two days after a recent Commerce Committee hearing, a BellSouth executive told a technology gathering that his industry's planned "innovative" pricing schemes for broadband would give those that could afford it preferential Internet treatment.
The broadband content most likely to benefit from the new "pay us the most to get the best service" Internet will be online programming from our biggest advertisers and media conglomerates. Take, for example, the recent announcement about the new online entertainment channel network called Bud.TV, in which Anheuser-Busch plans to use high-speed and interactive video to attract a new generation of steady beer drinkers. One Bud.TV show already in production--which will likely be able to enjoy the fruits of non-network-neutrality US Internet--is called "Replaced by a Chimp." According to an Anheuser-Busch executive, for each show they will "grab a profession, such as a waiter, or a bartender or a trial attorney and replace those people with a chimp, and film the reaction of the consumers who happen to be in the same environment as the chimp...at the end of the show, the consumer will vote on whether the chimp should stay and continue on the job."
Such dumbing-down of broadband is more likely in the absence of network neutrality rules. Expect media conglomerates and advertisers to flood our broadband networks with chimps selling beer and ketchup-colored clowns pushing fast food. Such deep-pocketed interests will be able to pay Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner to deliver their content with better video, faster processing and overall greater visibility, crowding out the unique programming that the Internet has been able to deliver to niche audiences. Given the "triple play" plans of the cable and phone industry, such digital favoritism will find its way not just via our personal computers but on digital television and cellphones as well.
It will take intense, continued pressure on both parties to effectively kill the Stevens bill this session. If such opposition is successful, a major new organizing effort must begin in January 2007 to develop a new media law that actually promotes the public interest in the digital media era.
Consumers should view the new announcement about Bud.TV as a kind of "early warning" alert. Without safeguards to insure the Internet evolves as an open, democratic network, our media system will continue to drive public culture down-market--as the late media scholar Neal Postman wrote, "amusing ourselves to death."
But regardless of what happens, perhaps we should recommend to the folks at Bud beer their first guest for "Replaced by a Chimp." I nominate the senior Senator from Alaska.
Save the Internet
By: Jeff Chester
(This is a reprint of the original article published in AlterNet April 2006)
Imagine, wanting to donate money to a charity and not being able to open the nonprofit's web page because of the charity's inability to afford the dominant internet provider's fees required to make the page efficient? Imagine the millions of life-saving dollars these charities will lose if lobbyists get their way? What if your child is sick, and you can't gain access to a support group's page because the support group can't afford the fees? Or even scarier, imagine not gaining speedy access to a politician's views because the specific provider is against his or her ideology?
--Who's the Boss? star Alyssa Milano
Will the internet in the United States become, in the words of AT&T (SBC) CEO, their company's private "pipes"? Or will it remain, as the Supreme Court cited in 1997, "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed"? These two very different perspectives reflect what's at stake in the growing fight now in Congress over the internet's future.
A growing movement of online users, public advocates, internet "visionaries," bloggers, and online corporations are fighting to have Congress enact what are called "network neutrality" safeguards. Such rules would preserve the internet's essential democratic structure: All content would be required to flow into our PCs and digital devices in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner. Network neutrality would help ensure that internet serves the interests of diversity of speech. As the new Savetheinternet coalition put it, network neutrality is the equivalent of the internet's First Amendment.
But an unfettered open road is directly at odds with the broadband business plans of AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon. The cable and telephone industry see enormous revenues as operators of a private internet toll-road. How has the internet -- so diverse and unwieldly -- fallen into their hands? The answer is (of course) the Bush administration. Heavily lobbied by the cable and phone giants, the Bush Federal Communications Commission has been eliminating the rules that required the internet to operate in a nondiscriminatory manner.
Under the "old" policy governing what's called the "dial-up" internet, the public was guaranteed that their internet service provider (ISP) had to treat all online content in an unbiased manner. ISPs couldn't, for example, speed up the email or websites they liked, or decide to slow down content it didn't like (such as from a peace group). The former rules also permitted the public to choose from literally thousands of ISPs to connect them to the internet. Such federal safeguards have, sadly, now bitten the digital dust.
It's all about broadband
Verizon, Comcast and the others had former FCC chair Michael Powell and current chair Kevin Martin strip away these rules because they were an obstacle to their plans to dominate the high-speed internet, or broadband, market. If a purely open and nondiscriminatory internet remained, then anyone could distribute a movie or video program -- a serious threat to the cable industry's monopoly over TV distribution.
No one needs a "Ma Bell" anymore to bring us telephone service. Practically anyone can now use the internet to provide phone service (known as voice over internet protocol, or VoIP). In other words, if the internet remained a real First Amendment friendly pipeline, both the cable and phone industry would see their profits and power evaporate -- fast.
But it wasn't only to prevent competitors that spurred our new broadband bandits to action. With the federal nondiscrimination policy now toast, the phone and cable companies could embark in earnest with plans to -- in their words -- "monetize" digital distribution. Through their sole control over America's residential broadband pipes (they have more than 90 percent of the market), they planned to set up a multitiered and pay-as-you-go private internet highway.
There would be a new fast lane, giving the content owned by the phone, cable and other media giants, the fastest preferential treatment. Video and multimedia programming owned by AT&T and Comcast, for example, would be received lightning speed on PCs, digital TVs and mobile devices. Those that couldn't afford to pay would be relegated to what the phone and cable lobbyists derisively called the "public" internet.
This so-called public lane would be the equivalent of a digital dirt road, easily marginalized by the majority of the public that has come to enjoy ever-faster and more efficient connections. A slew of Silicon Valley tech companies, including Cisco, have built broadband delivery equipment that allows a phone or cable company to make business decisions about every packet of data that travels over its lines.
Imagine a private air traffic controller working for Airline X. Its planes would be given priority takeoff and landings -- while competitors and others slowly circle overhead. Only those who could afford to make a payoff (such as huge fees or a cut of their business) would be afforded similar treatment. The Bells and cable hoped that with this control over the data lines, their broadband content competitors would crash and burn.
The cable and telephone broadband scam, however, is now meeting intense opposition. First, there is a growing opposition movement against the privatization of the internet. Led by Free Press, there is a new "savetheinternet.org" coalition, representing a diverse group of activists, users and experts from across the political spectrum, including Gun Owners of America, the United Church of Christ and Craigslist's Craig Newmark.
Earlier in the week, this group and MoveOn.org helped flood the halls of Congress with emails and online petitions calling on the Congress to enact safeguards for "network neutrality." The power of the cable/telco alliance to determine the future of the U.S. internet has also alarmed many of the country's most powerful online companies -- such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. They have launched their own new coalition, called "Don't Mess with the Net.com."
The GOP -- led by Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Energy and Commerce Chair Joe Barton (Texas) -- is firmly in the grip of the broadband monopoly lobby. Yesterday, Barton's committee rejected a network neutrality provision, 34-22 (sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey, among others). Helping the Republicans defeat the internet freedom measure were five Democrats, including Edolphus Townes (N.Y.), Albert Wynn (Md.), Charles A. Gonzalez (Texas), Bobby Rush (Ill.) and Gene Green (Texas). (It was the endorsement of Rep. Rush, a former activist, that permitted the Republicans to call their broadband bill a bipartisan effort).
But the growing outcry to protect the internet led to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's formally endorsing the network neutrality call. There is now growing optimism among "save the internet" supporters that the Senate, which will soon take up a broadband communications bill, will endorse a neutrality rule. A bipartisan plan to do just that has already been prepared by Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
Federal rules to ensure that the internet remains a democratic medium of expression is essential if the United States is to ever become a more just and civil society. In the emerging era, the nature of what will be a ubiquitious broadband communications system will greatly define us as a culture. It must be one where the voices of those calling for justice, health care, environmental protection and peace can resonate as loudly as the commercial messages brought to us by Time Warner and AT&T. Network neutrality, or internet freedom, is a necessary and critical step to make sure such voices are part of the mainstream -- not exiled to the digital dirt road.
The End of the Internet?
By: Jeff Chester
(This is a reprint of the original article published in The Nation February 2006)
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.
To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.
The telephone industry has been somewhat more candid than the cable industry about its strategy for the Internet's future. Senior phone executives have publicly discussed plans to begin imposing a new scheme for the delivery of Internet content, especially from major Internet content companies. As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November, "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
The phone industry has marshaled its political allies to help win the freedom to impose this new broadband business model. At a recent conference held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and other media companies, there was much discussion of a plan for phone companies to impose fees on a sliding scale, charging content providers different levels of service. "Price discrimination," noted PFF's resident media expert Adam Thierer, "drives the market-based capitalist economy."
Net Neutrality
To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on the information highway, some new media companies and public-interest groups are calling for new federal policies requiring "network neutrality" on the Internet. Common Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project and Consumers Union, among others, have proposed that broadband providers would be prohibited from discriminating against all forms of digital content. For example, phone or cable companies would not be allowed to slow down competing or undesirable content.
Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care about--civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair elections--will be further threatened by this push for corporate control. Imagine how the next presidential election would unfold if major political advertisers could make strategic payments to Comcast so that ads from Democratic and Republican candidates were more visible and user-friendly than ads of third-party candidates with less funds. Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins. It is possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial online programming would be pushed to the end of a commercial digital queue.
But such "neutrality" safeguards are inadequate to address more fundamental changes the Bells and cable monopolies are seeking in their quest to monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet to become a medium designed primarily to serve the interests of marketing and personal consumption, rather than global civic-related communications, we will face the political consequences for decades to come. Unless we push back, the "brandwashing" of America will permeate not only our information infrastructure but global society and culture as well.
Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans? With the arrival of the long-awaited "convergence" of communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative "triple play," as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines.
Video programming is of foremost interest to both the phone and cable companies. The telephone industry, like its cable rival, is now in the TV and media business, offering customers television channels, on-demand videos and games. Online advertising is increasingly integrating multimedia (such as animation and full-motion video) in its pitches. Since video-driven material requires a great deal of Internet bandwidth as it travels online, phone and cable companies want to make sure their television "applications" receive preferential treatment on the networks they operate. And their overall influence over the stream of information coming into your home (or mobile device) gives them the leverage to determine how the broadband business evolves.
Mining Your Data
At the core of the new power held by phone and cable companies are tools delivering what is known as "deep packet inspection." With these tools, AT&T and others can readily know the packets of information you are receiving online--from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music, video and software downloads.
These "deep packet inspection" technologies are partly designed to make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn't become so congested it chokes off the delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to more economically manage their Internet services. They are also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.
But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to "meter individual subscriber usage by application," as individuals' online travels are "tracked" and "integrated with billing systems." Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know "the identity and profile of the individual subscriber," "what the subscriber is doing" and "where the subscriber resides."
Will Google, Amazon and the other companies successfully fight the plans of the Bells and cable companies? Ultimately, they are likely to cut a deal because they, too, are interested in monetizing our online activities. After all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network providers will need to "cooperate with each other to leverage their value proposition." They will be drawn by the ability of cable and phone companies to track "content usage...by subscriber," and where their online services can be "protected from piracy, metered, and appropriately valued."
Our Digital Destiny
It was former FCC chairman Michael Powell, with the support of then-commissioner and current chair Kevin Martin, who permitted phone and cable giants to have greater control over broadband. Powell and his GOP majority eliminated longstanding regulatory safeguards requiring phone companies to operate as nondiscriminatory networks (technically known as "common carriers"). He refused to require that cable companies, when providing Internet access, also operate in a similar nondiscriminatory manner. As Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation of the phone lines that helped make the Internet today's vibrant, diverse and democratic medium.
But now, the phone companies are lobbying Washington to kill off what's left of "common carrier" policy. They wish to operate their Internet services as fully "private" networks. Phone and cable companies claim that the government shouldn't play a role in broadband regulation: Instead of the free and open network that offers equal access to all, they want to reduce the Internet to a series of business decisions between consumers and providers.
Besides their business interests, telephone and cable companies also have a larger political agenda. Both industries oppose giving local communities the right to create their own local Internet wireless or wi-fi networks. They also want to eliminate the last vestige of local oversight from electronic media--the ability of city or county government, for example, to require telecommunications companies to serve the public interest with, for example, public-access TV channels. The Bells also want to further reduce the ability of the FCC to oversee communications policy. They hope that both the FCC and Congress--via a new Communications Act--will back these proposals.
The future of the online media in the United States will ultimately depend on whether the Bells and cable companies are allowed to determine the country's "digital destiny." So before there are any policy decisions, a national debate should begin about how the Internet should serve the public. We must insure that phone and cable companies operate their Internet services in the public interest--as stewards for a vital medium for free expression.
If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny for themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003. Without such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven agenda, it is likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied against further consolidation will be "tamed" by the well-funded lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industry.