Comcast And Mozilla Partner Up To Help Encrypt DNS

from the strange-bedfellows dept

Over at our Tech Policy Greenhouse, Article19's Joey Salazar and Consumer Reports' Benjamin Moskowitz just discussed how it's long past time to encrypt the Domain Name Server (DNS) system at the heart of the internet. Thanks to the GOP demolishing of FCC broadband privacy rules in 2017, ISPs have carte blanche to monetize this data as they see fit, storing and selling access to your DNS browsing data to data brokers who continue to build detailed user profiles with little to no meaningful oversight.

At the forefront of encrypting DNS have been Google and Mozilla, both of which have been pushing for a standard known as "DNS over HTTPS," a significant security upgrade to DNS that encrypts and obscures your domain requests, making it more difficult (though not impossible) to see which websites a user is visiting. The proposal doesn't come without downsides, and has seen opposition from ISPs that are either eager to continue to profit off of this data, or are worried that somebody else will (usually Google) if they can't.

Comcast, AT&T, and others had previously been trying to demonize the Google and Mozilla efforts any way they could, from insisting the move constitutes an antitrust violation on Google's part (it doesn't), to saying it's a threat to national security (it's not), to suggesting it even poses a risk to 5G deployments (nah).

After Mozilla claimed to Congress that ISPs were being disingenuous with their opposition to the plan, at least one major ISP appears to have come around to the proposal. This week Mozilla announced that Comcast had joined the Firefox Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) program, which requires encrypted-DNS providers to not only meet privacy and transparency standards, but to promise not to block or filter domains by default "unless specifically required by law in the jurisdiction in which the resolver operates." From the blog post:

"This program aims to standardize requirements in three areas: limiting data collection and retention from the resolver, ensuring transparency for any data retention that does occur, and limiting any potential use of the resolver to block access or modify content. By combining the technology, DoH, with strict operational requirements for those implementing it, participants take an important step toward improving user privacy."

While Comcast has a well-deserved and terrible reputation for anti-competitive behavior, lobbying shenanigans and comically awful customer service, the company's engineering folks remain top notch, and obviously appreciate the benefits of encrypting the DNS in the wholesale snoopvertising age. In conversations, the company continues to insist to be they've never monetized this data (not that anybody in government would ever have the ability or courage to confirm this), and had been running a beta version of its own encrypted DNS offering since last year.

Mozilla helping to standardize this and forming a coalition with Comcast is foundational, and under the partnership, Comcast is promising to not "retain, sell, or transfer to any third party (except as may be required by law) any personal information, IP addresses, or other user identifiers, or user query patterns from the DNS queries sent from the Firefox browser." Now it's just a matter of Comcast transparently proving that they're actually adhering to those standards.

Filed Under: dns, dns over https, encryption
Companies: comcast, mozilla

Comcast Graciously Extends Suspension Of Completely Unnecessary Data Caps

from the how-sweet-of-you dept

After pressure from consumer groups, major ISPs last month announced that they would be suspending all usage caps and overage fees for 60 days in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, US consumers already pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world, and imposing draconian usage restrictions and overage fees created added hardships for consumers already facing unemployment and additional financial headaches due to the pandemic. Being the sweetheart it is, Comcast also stated it would temporarily stop kicking poor folks offline during the pandemic.

This week Comcast announced it would be graciously extending the suspension of said caps for another 60 days. This is, Comcast insists, part of the company's dedication to ensure people remain connected during a crisis:

"These extended measures will continue to keep Americans safe and ensure that households are equipped for students to learn and stay informed at home as the nation copes with this unprecedented disruption to our daily lives,” said Dave Watson, Comcast Cable Chief Executive Officer. “Our services have never been more important, and we’re doing everything we can to keep people connected to the internet."

The problem, as we just got done exploring, is that there's no justification for these limits in the first place. They never should have been imposed, therefore removing them, temporarily, isn't much of a concession or accomplishment.

Both leaked documents and industry executives long ago made it clear: usage caps don't actually help ISPs manage congestion. There's no technical purpose for them. There's no financial justification either, given that flat-rate broadband is perfectly profitable, and "differentiated pricing" already exists for the heaviest of users who need more than a residential connection can provide (aka: a business class line). Usage caps are little more than a cash grab on captive customers in uncompetitive markets, which is a major reason Comcast never implemented them in the Northeast, where uncapped Verizon FiOS is a major competitor.

Caps create an entirely additional problem in that incumbent ISPs can abuse these limits to give themselves an unfair market advantage. AT&T, for example, lifts these unnecessary restrictions for its broadband customers if they use AT&T's own streaming video services, but enforces them if the user uses a competitor's streaming video service like Netflix. Comcast has long exploited the restrictions in much the same fashion. In short not only are caps not technically or financially necessary, they open the door to an entirely new layer of anti-competitive behavior.

So while Comcast will likely grab kudos from press outlets and consumers that don't know any better, there's not much to celebrate about extending a temporary suspension of a business practice that was never justifiable in the first place.

Filed Under: covid-19, data caps
Companies: comcast

AMC Theaters Pouts Like A Child Because NBC Universal Proved Movie Release Windows Are Nonsense

from the take-my-ball-and-go-home dept

There's a laundry list of shoddy arguments and business structures that have been exposed as nonsense and folly during the pandemic. One of them is the traditional Hollywood film release window, which typically involves a 90 day gap between the time a move appears in theaters and its streaming or DVD release (in France this window is even more ridiculous at three years). The goal is usually to "protect the traditional film industry," though it's never been entirely clear why you'd protect traditional theaters at the cost of common sense, consumer demand, and a more efficient model. Just because?

While the industry has flirted with the idea of "day and date" releases for decades (releasing movies on home video at the same time as brick and mortar theaters) there's long been a lot of hyperventilation on the part of movie theaters and traditionalists that this sort of shift wasn't technically possible or would somehow destroy the traditional "movie experience," driving theaters out of business.

Then came the pandemic, when visiting a traditional theater suddenly became potentially fatal. Numerous studios quickly adapted, and began experimenting with much shorter release windows or in some instances, no window at all. Comcast NBC Universal, for example, offered early access to some films for $20 at home while they were still in theaters. Other films, like "Trolls World Tour," were released simultaneously on video on demand and in theaters that remained open.

Guess what: the film did very well, raking in $100 million in premium VOD rentals in its first three weeks in North America, which wasn't just profitable, but wasn't that far behind the $116 million grossed by the original Trolls film during the first three weeks it was in theaters in 2016. Excited by the success, Comcast NBC Universal CEO Jeff Shell gave a fairly innocuous statement to the Wall Street Journal:

"The results for Trolls World Tour have exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability of PVOD," Shell told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the numbers. "As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats."

There's really nothing wrong with that. Adaptation is a good thing. Unless apparently you're AMC Theatres chair-CEO Adam Aron, who immediately threw a temper tantrum and declared that AMC would never again show a Comcast NBC Universal picture, anywhere in the world:

"It is disappointing to us, but Jeff’s comments as to Universal’s unilateral actions and intentions have left us with no choice. Therefore, effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theaters in the United States, Europe or the Middle East," Aron wrote."

It's understandable that the traditional theater sector is worried, especially given the number of employees that are struggling right now. That said, Aron's comments are one of the more embarrassing "I'm taking my ball and going home" moments in modern history. Comcast was forced to adapt during a pandemic, discovered a profitable way to do so, yet this is somehow perceived as a fatal sin worthy of being blackballed worldwide. Aron proceeds to insist that his very clearly vindictive and punitive toddler moment was in no way a vindictive and punitive toddler moment:

"Incidentally, this policy is not aimed solely at Universal out of pique or to be punitive in any way, it also extends to any movie maker who unilaterally abandons current windowing practices absent good faith negotiations between us, so that they as distributor and we as exhibitor both benefit and neither are hurt from such changes. Currently, with the press comment today, Universal is the only studio contemplating a wholesale change to the status quo. Hence, this immediate communication in response."

Comcast in turn was forced to issue a counter statement blowing smoke up the traditional brick and mortar industry's posterior about how they weren't being forgotten, there's kind of a pandemic going on if you hadn't noticed, and the company remained dedicated to traditional film releases because it remains a big part of its business model and will probably remain that way for years to come.

Regardless, it's abundantly clear that such windows have outlived their usefulness, and if movie theaters want to adapt to the streaming and broadband era, they're going to need to adapt and find creative new offerings. They're going to need to embrace more innovation, and less crying like babies every time Netflix or anybody else dares to move the ball forward. Many bar/restaurant hybrid establishments have focused on making the traditional theater more enjoyable. Others, apparently, see pouting over inevitable evolution as the best path forward.

Filed Under: adam aron, covid-19, day and date, home video, jeff shell, movies, pandemic, theaters, theatrical releases, trolls world tour
Companies: amc, comcast, nbc universal

Fancy That: Comcast's Network Holding Up Fine Without Usage Caps

from the captive-audience dept

For many years in the early aughts, broadband providers insisted they needed to impose usage caps and costly overage fees to help manage network congestion. By 2015, leaked documents from Comcast revealed that was never true. In the years since, even industry CEOs have acknowledged that the limits are little more than an additional tax on captive customers in uncompetitive U.S. broadband markets.

As COVID-19 struck, ISPs quickly bowed to pressure to eliminate such restrictions so home-bound Americans weren't inundated with significantly higher bills. In a press release, Comcast makes it clear that its network has (gasp), performed perfectly well under the added load -- despite a 32% increase in upstream traffic and 18% increase in downstream traffic. There's been a 77% surge in gaming downloads, a 37% bump in streaming video consumption, and a 228% bump in VOIP and teleconferencing use. This is, Comcast says, causing no issues for Comcast:

"Our ongoing, proactive network investment to add fiber and capacity has put us in a good position to manage the increases that we are experiencing today. While the COVID-19 experience is new and unprecedented, the Internet ecosystem is flexible and performing the way it was designed. We engineer the network to handle spikes and shifts in usage, and what we have seen so far with COVID-19 is within our capacity."

Many ISPs, like Comcast, backed off the "congestion" claims a few years ago after their own memos, and numerous researchers and journalists, kept debunking them.

These days, most ISPs can't even be bothered to offer a justification for the arbitrary limits. When they do attempt to justify them, they're usually (falsely) passed off as an "issue of fairness." But that's false too: Americans already pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the OECD, and flat rate broadband is perfectly profitable, regardless of usage. Comcast's CEO has also routinely tried to compare bandwidth to electricity and gasoline consumption, which is again a misleading comparison to finite, completely different resources -- all in a bid to make the restrictions sound sensible and necessary.

Imposing additional surcharges on everybody isn't an issue of fairness, it's monopoly price gouging of captive customers. Such restrictions wouldn't work in competitive markets; users would simply flock to the uncapped provider. But thanks to apathetic US telcos that refuse to upgrade their aging DSL networks, Comcast is securing a bigger monopoly than ever across countless US markets. Worse perhaps: such limits create a perfect opportunity for ISPs to anti-competitively exploit them in their battle against streaming providers, something that's already happening at AT&T.

Yet there are still occasionally folks who try to justify these arbitrary restrictions as just normal, creative, business price differentiation. But that logic not only ignores the monopoly, consumer, and competitive problems noted above, it ignores that extremely heavy users of bandwidth -- say like a guy running a server in his garage -- can already be (and are) nudged to more expensive business class tiers without applying confusing, costly additional surcharges on everybody. It also ignores that (again due to no competition), you'll never see very light users (like grandma who just checks the weather and email) pay significantly less. She too pays a high price. Everybody pays a high price for broadband in America. Again, with with a few regional exceptions, because it's a broken, monopolized market.

Like so many "normal" behaviors, COVID-19 has exposed broadband usage caps as folly. Yet once things settle down it remains likely that large ISPs will bring back such surcharges -- along side ambiguous, debunked, and nonsensical justifications for them. After all, with very little competition in US markets, and US regulators now a rubber stamp for industry interests, who or what exactly is going to stop them?

Filed Under: broadband, congestion, data caps, home working, infrastructure
Companies: comcast

Big Telecom's Quest To Use The First Amendment To Scuttle Privacy Laws Won't Go Well, Experts Predict

from the we-have-the-Constitutional-right-to-do-whatever-we-want dept

For a few years now, US telecom mono/duopolies like Comcast and AT&T have been trying to claim that absolutely any government attempt to hold them accountable violates their First Amendment rights. When their lobbyists were pushing to kill FCC net neutrality rules (and FCC oversight of telecom in general), they repeatedly tried to claim the rules violated their right to free speech, despite the fact that as simple conduits they don't engage in "editorial" decisions, making the argument both flimsy and silly.

That hasn't stopped them from aggressively abusing the 1A argument constantly to see if it sticks anyway. Verizon has argued it has a First Amendment right to hand your call data over to the government. Comcast has argued its First Amendment rights were violated when it was told to stop blocking competing channels' access to its cable lineup. Charter has tried to argue that requiring it adhere to local video franchise agreements (it signed) similarly violates its free speech rights. Inversely, the industry-friendly FCC has falsely claimed community-owned and operated broadband ISPs pose a dire threat to free speech.

And as companies try to scuttle efforts to finally pass some kind of US privacy law for the internet era, this argument has popped up yet again. As you might recall, the telecom lobby convinced the GOP-held Senate to kill off some modest federal FCC privacy guidelines back in 2017. In response, much as we've seen with the net neutrality fight, numerous states have responded by trying to fill the void with an inconsistent platter of state-level privacy guidelines.

After effectively creating this problem telecom lobbyists have whined endlessly about these state laws clinging once again to the argument that it somehow violates their First Amendment right to free speech. Hoan Ton-That, the CEO of Clearview AI, has similarly been trying to claim that his company has the First Amendment right to scrape user photos from social media platforms.

Given the shaky nature of the US court system when it comes to ignoring hard logic and data (Exhibit A: both the T-Mobile Sprint and AT&T Time Warner merger approvals) it's not impossible that some courts will help prop up these shaky, self-serving arguments. But Colorado Law's Margot Kaminski and Scott Thompson at Slate have a good primer on how they probably won't:

"We are cautiously optimistic that courts won’t fall for the simplistic arguments offered by companies trying to fend off new privacy laws, in part because the Supreme Court has recently expanded its understanding of privacy harms. Companies often ignore that the above cases do empower governments to enact privacy laws when they have an interest “of the highest order” in doing so—that is, when they can articulate significant privacy harms.

Of late, the Supreme Court has recognized exactly the kinds of harms implicated by large-scale, ongoing surveillance enabled by technologies such as facial recognition, even when the surveillance is of “public” space. Such surveillance, the court acknowledged, reveals traditionally sensitive information such as your health (if you are recorded regularly visiting a doctor), your political affiliations (if you are tracked to a protest), your addictions (if you are tracked to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting), and even your sexuality (if you are tracked to a gay bar). Additionally, surveillance over time reveals patterns in your behavior, sensitive inferences that you may not knowingly reveal at all."

Their central argument is that regulations aimed at protecting basic privacy rights are often necessary to safeguard First Amendment rights. As a result, efforts to scuttle state-level privacy efforts in states like Maine may not go all that well, given that ISPs ignore that privacy in one’s communications is central to free expression and free association:

"There is a not insignificant chance that courts will consider most of the wave of new privacy laws (such as Maine’s) to be regulation of bargains struck between consumers and companies, not regulations of speech.

...As we’ve each underscored in our research reconciling the right to privacy with the First Amendment, the two are often interdependent. Where privacy regulations advance First Amendment interests, they are on stronger legal ground against First Amendment challenges.

Keep in mind, the privacy, hacking, and security scandals we've seen to date -- even the extraordinarily dumb ones like Equifax or Cambridge Analytica -- are probably a faint echo of the privacy scandals to come. Especially if we continue down the same path of feckless regulators, flimsy antitrust enforcement and consumer protection, and a refusal to even embrace some very basic privacy and security guidelines for the internet era. As such, as even dumber scandals arise, the arguments cited above are likely to become more potent.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, free speech, privacy, telco
Companies: at&t, comcast, verizon

Comcast, Disney Embrace Faster Home Video Release Windows In Wake Of COVID-19

from the adaptation-is-no-longer-optional dept

There's a growing list of things that the COVID-19 crisis has exposed as unnecessary nonsense. Broadband usage caps come first to mind, followed quickly by a lingering disdain for telecommuting by a long list of executives. But the outbreak is also shining a light on another dumb practice that has long been a point of contention: Hollywood movie release windows.

For the better part of a decade now, we've highlighted Hollywood's often vicious opposition to disrupting the traditional delay between a film's theatrical debut, and its release on home video or streaming platforms. Companies like Netflix that have attempted to disrupt this system have traditionally been quickly demonized by the industry. AMC, Regal and Cinemark have all fought tooth and nail to preserve the (usually) 90 day restriction period between a film's theater release and its availability to home consumers, even if such restrictions no longer make much sense in the broadband era.

Movie patrons, like most other sensible people, are now practicing social distancing in a bid to slow COVID-19's expansion and ease the looming strain on already maxed out US healthcare systems. In some locations (like here in Seattle), movie theaters are being told to close their doors entirely. In the process, Hollywood is having to suddenly and quickly rethink its longstanding dedication to a release window model that already made no sense in the modern world, and makes even less sense in the wake of a pandemic quarantine.

Disney, for example, is now considering moving big releases more quickly to its Disney+ streaming video platform:

"A senior Disney executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to a reporter, said that rerouting “Mulan” to the company’s Disney Plus streaming service was not currently under discussion, in part because of piracy concerns. (Disney Plus is not yet available outside the United States.) Even so, Disney is clearly mindful of the power of its video platform. The company brought “Frozen II” to Disney Plus on Sunday — three months earlier than planned. (The musical was released in theaters on Nov. 22.) Disney described that move as “surprising families with some fun and joy during this challenging period."

Comcast NBC Universal announced it would be going one step further, providing online access to many of its film releases long before the traditional window expires:

"Comcast Corp.'s Universal Pictures said it is making its movies available to watch at home while they are still in theaters, a massive change from Hollywood's long-established business model that could upend the industry if other studios follow suit.

The decision comes amid widespread closures of movie theaters as the global coronavirus pandemic spreads. Authorities in New York City and Los Angeles on Sunday ordered all movie theaters to close; exhibitors had previously said they would limit attendance in theaters to 50% of their capacity. China, the world's second-largest market, has kept tens of thousands of theaters closed since late January."

To be very clear, there will be significant financial hardship for everybody, including brick and mortar theaters, in the months to come. Everybody whose livelihood depends on brick and mortar establishments will need sympathy and every shred of assistance they can get. At the same time, it's still interesting to watch COVID-19 so quickly dissolve resistance to artificial constructs whose usefulness expired decades ago, but have been propped up by flimsy arguments for just as long. And had the industry been less stubbornly resistant to adaptation and change, this particular shift likely wouldn't be quite as painful now.

Filed Under: covid-19, hollywood, movie releases, movie windows, movies
Companies: comcast, disney

US ISPs Drop Usage Caps, Pledge To Avoid Kicking Users Offline During Coronavirus

from the every-bit-helps dept

While it required some nudging, several of the nation's biggest ISPs this week announced they would be suspending their usage caps and overage fees as millions of Americans prepare to hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19. Comcast, AT&T, and Centurylink all stopped imposing such limits for at least the next 90 days. Critics (and even leaked Comcast memos) have long made it clear such restrictions (particularly on fixed line networks) aren't technically useful in managing congestion as the industry once claimed, and are little more than glorified price hikes on captive customers.

The speed at which such restrictions were dispatched (during a time when overall bandwidth consumption is up, no less) supports industry executive claims that such limits are arbitrary, confusing, and unnecessary.

That said, numerous ISPs say they're taking additional steps to ensure users can stay online during the outbreak. For example, a coalition of several dozen ISPs struck a voluntary "Keep Americans Connected Pledge" that they wouldn't kick users offline during the outbreak for lack of payment due to Coronavirus, and wouldn't impose late fees either. From the FCC announcement:

"Given the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on American society, [[Company Name]] pledges for the next 60 days to:

(1) not terminate service to any residential or small business customers because of their inability to pay their bills due to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic;

(2) waive any late fees that any residential or small business customers incur because of their economic circumstances related to the coronavirus pandemic; and

(3) open its Wi-Fi hotspots to any American who needs them.

To be clear, this is a good thing. Those struggling during the obvious economic difficulties to come should not be kicked offline during a pandemic. That said, this is all voluntary and there's no genuine legal mandate for ISPs to do follow up. Given this FCC's tendency toward giving industry a pass for pretty much anything, it's unlikely it would penalize any ISP for non-compliance barring the most obvious instances of attention-grabbing misbehavior. At lobbyist behest, the FCC has stripped away much of its industry oversight as it applies to everything from sneaky fees to transparent billing, making this sort of thing notably more difficult to actually police.

Again, that's not to say that much of these efforts won't be a good thing in the weeks or months to come. Comcast and Spectrum in particular lay claim to tens of thousands of hot spots across the United States, and opening them up to the general public should prove greatly beneficial. Especially if the nation's libraries -- often the first place lower income Americans go to connect to the internet -- are forced to close their doors. Other ISPs, like T-Mobile, have announced they're effectively getting rid of caps and will be giving all of the company's customers unlimited data:

Starting now - ALL current T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers who have plans with data will have unlimited smartphone data for the next 60 days (excluding roaming).

Providing T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers an additional 20GB of mobile hotspot / tethering service for the next 60 days – coming soon.

In the weeks and months to come, Americans will face notable financial hardships as the country struggles with business closures as the country attempts to "flatten the curve." At the very least, they won't have to worry about usage restrictions and consumption fees that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, coronavirus, covid-19, usage caps
Companies: at&t, centurylink, comcast, t-mobile, verizon

Comcast's Broadband Market Domination Continues To Grow

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

We've noted for years how as US telcos have given up on upgrading their aging DSL lines, they've effectively helped cement a bigger monopoly for cable giants like Comcast and Spectrum in countless markets nationwide. A recent study estimated that 40 million Americans can't get broadband at all -- double FCC estimates. And FCC data indicates that in 44% of US markets, users have the choice of only one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps or higher. More often than not, your only option for "real" broadband is probably going to be Comcast.

Even if you're "lucky" enough to have the choice of two options, telcos and cablecos don't go out of their way to actually compete. Combine this lack of competition with the Trump administration's decision to effectively neuter FCC consumer protection authority, and these mono/duopolies have less incentive than ever to compete on price, improve terrible customer service, avoid net neutrality and privacy violations, or expand service into the many under-served corners of the US.

It's a problem that's slowly but surely getting worse. The latest data from Leichtman Research indicates that the nation's eight biggest cable broadband providers added 3.14 million broadband subscribers in 2019, reaching a total of 67.98 million. In contrast, the nation's top eight traditional phone companies, which offer a mix of fiber and DSL, lost a combined 619,605 subscribers to reach a historic low of 33.24 million subscribers last year:

AT&T, Verizon, Windstream, CenturyLink, and Frontier are all losing subscribers because they've largely given up on fixed residential broadband in countless markets. Most long ago shifted their focus to enterprise services, video advertising, or anything other than residential broadband, which has never been profitable enough, quickly enough for their liking. As a result, DSL lines aren't being upgraded (or even repaired), service is no longer being seriously expanded, and consumers are heading to their only alternatives: either a capped and expensive cellular connection, or a capped and expensive cable broadband line.

Leichtman notes that at the end of 2019, cable broadband providers had a 67% fixed broadband market share versus 33% for US telcos. That 67% market share is the highest level since the third quarter of 2001. So despite all the talk about gigabit fiber, our breathless dedication to the "digital divide," and the "race to 5G," the biggest untold story in US broadband remains the fact that cable monopolies are growing bigger and more powerful at the same time we strip away all of the government's consumer protection authority. What could possibly go wrong?

And while 5G is often bandied about as a panacea to this problem, the same issues that have plagued traditional broadband are going to be replicated with 5G: including high prices, regional mono/duopolies (this time over cell tower fiber backhaul), feckless, industry-captured regulators, and an unwillingness by carriers to spend the money needed to seriously deploy to under-served areas.

There's some hope that low orbit satellites from the likes of Amazon and Space X could finally disrupt this broken-ass status quo, but having seen numerous disruptive efforts scuttled by the industry's dominant and politically-powerful incumbents over the last few decades, genuine US telecom disruption at any meaningful scale is something you'll need to see before you believe it.

Filed Under: broadband, cable, competition, dsl, market
Companies: comcast

Comcast, AT&T Sue Maine Over Privacy Law, Claim It Violates Free Speech

from the ALL-the-rights-for-me,-none-of-the-rights-for-you dept

Back in 2017, the telecom industry successfully lobbied Congress to kill some modest FCC privacy rules before they could even take effect. The rules simply required that ISPs be more transparent about what data they collect and who they sell it to, requiring that consumers opt in to the sale of more sensitive location data (financial, location). From there, the telecom lobby proceeded to convince the FCC to effectively neuter its consumer protection authority almost entirely. Not only that, it successfully lobbied the FCC to try and ban states from stepping in and protecting consumers -- though the courts (so far) didn't look too kindly upon that.

In short the telecom sector lobbied to kill federal oversight, resulting in a lot of states now rushing in to try and fill the void. It then proceeded to cry like a toddler about a "discordant and fractured framework of state protections," hoping you'd ignore this was a problem the sector created.

Case in point: the telecom sector has now stepped in to sue Maine for attempting to pass a new privacy law that closely mirrors the FCC's discarded 2017 rules. According to a coalition of telecom lobbying organizations, Maine's law violates AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Spectrum's First Amendment rights:

"Maine cannot discriminate against a subset of companies that collect and use consumer data by attempting to regulate just that subset and not others, especially given the absence of any legislative findings or other evidentiary support that would justify targeting ISPs alone. Maine's decision to impose unique burdens on ISPs' speech—while ignoring the online and offline businesses that have and use the very same information and for the same and similar purposes as ISPs—represents discrimination between similarly situated speakers that is impermissible under the First Amendment."

Maine's law was signed by Governor Janet Mills last June, and is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2020. The law not only requires that consumers opt in before sensitive data is collected and sold, but it also attempted to ban ISPs from charging broadband subscribers even more money to opt out of snoopvertising, something AT&T engaged in for years. Again, Maine's law, like the laws popping up in other states, wouldn't exist if the telecom sector hadn't lobbied to effectively obliterate modest federal FCC rules. And again, this is a problem the sector created by trying to have its cake and eat it too.

One of the key arguments underpinning most of the telecom sector's lobbying shenanigans of late involves one central claim: that state or federal efforts to hold giant ISPs accountable somehow violates Comcast and other ISPs' First Amendment rights. You'll recall ISPs tried to claim that net neutrality also somehow violated ISPs' free speech rights, despite the fact that as simple conduits they don't engage in "editorial" decisions, making the argument rather silly. Effectively, the industry has spent a decade trying to claim that any federal or state consumer protections violate ISPs' free speech rights and therefore shouldn't exist.

All the while, the industry falsely claims it really wants meaningful privacy guidelines. In reality, what the industry wants is either no privacy guidelines at all (pretty much what we've "enjoyed" for 20 some odd years now), or weak federal guidelines their lawyers get to write -- so flimsy and loophole filled that they don't do much of anything. Well, anything except pre-empting other better state or federal privacy laws written with something vaguely resembling a consensus.

While everybody fixates on "big tech," "big telecom" is effectively gutting all meaningful oversight of a quickly consolidating sector that was already an anti-consumer, anti-innovation, and anticompetitive mess. Gosh, wonder how that's going to turn out?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, fcc, free speech, maine, privacy, privacy laws
Companies: at&t, comcast, spectrum, verizon