FCC Site For Accepting Net Neutrality Comments Falls Over (Again) On Final Day To Submit

from the make-your-fast-lane-jokes-now dept

It's already happened once that the FCC's commenting system buckled under the weight of a flood of submissions. However, today is the final day to send in official comments on the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), and once again, FCC.gov appears to be unable to handle the deluge. I've been personally trying for a while now to submit Floor64/Techdirt's comments, without any luck. I'll have a post up soon about our actual comments, whether or not I can actually get them delivered to the FCC, but you'd hope that the FCC could at least figure out how to keep a (rather basic) site up at such a time. Unexpected downtime happens, but the FCC had to know they were going to get a flood of traffic and submissions today and had months to prepare. Update And... the FCC has extended the deadline to Friday at midnight, because of the technological problems.

Filed Under: comments, fcc, net neutrality, technology

Awesome Stuff: Want To Make Sure The Internet Stays Open And Free For Innovation?

from the tooting-our-own-horn-a-bit dept

Each week, we post an "awesome stuff" post that looks at a few interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) crowdfunding projects. This week, however, we're doing our own. On Monday, we launched a crowdfunding campaign to support our coverage of net neutrality. The idea is to let us put more resources towards really digging into every aspect of this battle. We're a very small team trying to cover a variety of subjects, and we work quite hard at it, but if we can dedicate greater efforts towards this important debate, we're hoping to really dig deep and look at what's really happening -- beyond just the basic headlines of what's out there.

TL;DR: Support our net neutrality coverage
and double your impact right now! »
We were able to do that with the SOPA/PIPA fight, but as I mentioned in our last post, doing so meant that we lost big on the advertising side. While that didn't stop us, we'd rather not have to worry about that, but rather just focus on just getting you the best reporting we can. While we've written hundreds of stories on net neutrality, here are a few memorable ones to highlight the kinds of things we want to be able to keep bringing you:

• How telco astroturfers tried to bring down review of a book about net neutrality
• What inefficient airline boarding processes have to do with net neutrality
• Asking if Comcast CEO Brian Roberts would pay Netflix's bandwidth bill, after he claimed it was "free."
• Verizon lobbyists pretending that "blind, deaf and disabled people" are supportive of an internet fast and slow lane
• Looking at whether or not broadband providers are violating FTC rules by lying about what they're delivering to customers
• Discussing how Verizon loves to be classified under Title II in order to get subsidies and tax breaks, but pretends it would be deathly if it were expanded

As you can see, we really try to dig deeper, past the straight up headlines to see what else is going on. We can do a lot more of that, but we need to reach our funding goal. We're off to an amazing start so far, with it getting well over a third of the way funded in less than a week. But there's still a long way to go, and it needs your help. Please, if you can, look at supporting this project, and sharing it with your friends.

Once again, if you donate now, there are matching funds that we get from a group of donors, meaning that every dollar you give creates twice as much impact. Please consider supporting this effort. We won't let you down.

Support our net neutrality coverage
and double your impact right now! »

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, innovation, net neutrality

Kickstarter, Etsy And Dwolla All Speak Out On Net Neutrality And Why The FCC's Plan Is Dangerous To Innovation

from the make-your-voice-heard dept

During this open comment period for the FCC's proposed rulemaking on net neutrality, it's been great to see hundreds of thousands of comments go in to the FCC on the matter. It's also been fantastic to see that a number of innovative startups have decided to speak out on how important an open and free internet is for being able to build their businesses, to innovate and to compete on the modern internet. They also point out that the current plan from Commissioner Tom Wheeler would put that all at risk. Here are three interesting ones worth mentioning.

First up, is Kickstarter. CEO/co-founder Yancey Strickler wrote a great opinion piece for the Washington Post along with a blog post highlighting the company's actual FCC filing, which is similar to the WaPo piece. Here's just a bit of it, but gives you a sense of why this is so important:

Kickstarter, like Wikipedia, Twitter and every other service on the Web, was built on the foundation of an open Internet. We would not exist without it. The more than 60,000 creative ideas that have been brought to life using Kickstarter — from new technologies to new restaurants to new symphonies — also depend on a free and open Internet.

Once a fast lane exists, it will become the de facto standard on the Web. Sites unwilling or unable to pay up will be buffered to death: unloadable, unwatchable and left out in the cold. It won’t be enough anymore to have a great idea and to execute it well. New entrepreneurs will have to pay their ISP tax, too.

Though Kickstarter is the largest and best-known “crowdfunding” platform, there are now dozens of similar sites out there. Competition is good. It inspires a better experience for customers. We’re happy to compete on the basis of our product. Under a paid-prioritization system, however, this kind of competition would end. Sites like ours would succeed or fail not on the basis of their passion or service but on whether they have the resources and desire to pay the big Internet carriers.

This proposed system would incentivize entrepreneurs to divert resources from their customers and staff and into paid deals with ISPs. Trading healthy competition for deep pockets is a terrible way to create an innovative, competitive economy.

That third paragraph is a key point that policy makers often don't get about the startup world. People in the startup world thrive on competition -- and they're happy with an open playing field because they believe in their own ability to out-innovate others. It's that sort of entrepreneurial spirit that makes such wonderful innovations online. The whole idea of putting up roadblocks for competitors is the type of thing that tends to happen later in a company's life, when they're less about innovating and expanding markets, and more about protecting their turf.

The end of net neutrality would make it easier for turf protecting, but make it much harder for the kind of open competition and innovation that drives so many entrepreneurs.

The next company is Etsy, the famed online marketplace, which has a blog post from Althea Erickson (the company's director of public policy) and a link to the company's comment with the FCC from CEO Chad Dickerson. Both are worth reading.

Etsy’s continued growth depends on equal access to consumers. Any rule that allows broadband providers to negotiate special deals with some companies would undermine our and our sellers’ ability to compete.

Etsy hosts over 25 million products; yet we are a low-margin business. We made a values-based decision to charge only $0.20 to list an item and 3.5% of every sale, much lower than other e-commerce platforms.

We spend considerable resources ensuring that large, high-resolution photos load quickly and efficiently. We have also considered offering our sellers the ability to create and share videos, which they could use to introduce themselves and the unique process behind their products. But our low margins would not allow us to pay for priority access to ensure our site loaded as quickly as rival sites if the FCC’s proposed rules went into effect.

If a consumer were to click on an Etsy shop and perceive delays in images loading or videos buffering, they would likely click away to another site, and our seller would lose that sale. We can’t predict the future of e-commerce or product innovations, but we want to ensure that Etsy sellers can reach buyers with the same technologies as any other online retailer.

Ultimately, the micro-businesses who sell on Etsy would suffer most if the FCC moves forward with this proposal. Most US Etsy sellers (88%) are women running micro-businesses out of their homes. Taken individually, they may be small, but together they sold over $1.35 billion worth of goods last year. The Internet has democratized access to entrepreneurship for a whole new cohort of Americans, and Chairman Wheeler’s proposal threatens to undermine this progress by creating a pay-to-play environment that gives even greater advantage to entrenched interests.

As with Kickstarter, Etsy is highlighting how the real impact will be on the users of these services, people who have been able to build tons of unique and wonderful businesses that mostly wouldn't have been possible before. They are now -- but they could be at risk if the FCC mucks this up.

The final company is payments company Dwolla, which posted its comment to the FCC from the company's founder and CEO Ben Milne. Here's an excerpt:

Dwolla supports an open Internet and we rely on it for the success of our business. Without an open Internet, companies, such as ours, would not be able to achieve the level of innovation made possible today. Technical discrimination and pay-to-play deals may directly harm Dwolla. We are working hard to develop our networks and scale our breakthroughs to the masses. Dwolla does not believe we can sustain our low-cost value proposition should a pay-for-priority come to fruition. We believe that there are legitimate concerns around the payments incumbents’ ability to outbid newer companies, such as ourselves, with existing cash on hand. Should we be negatively affected, Dwolla could be forced to increase transaction rates to our users, which conflicts directly with our low-cost business model. Additionally, Dwolla’s real-time payments service is dependent on the speed and reliability of payments. This impacts both us and our users. First, conducting business outside of the fast-lane would mean slower transactions and an impairment of one of our major competitive advantages; second, our users would not be able to transact amongst themselves with the same ease and assurances.

Government policy should encourage competition and innovation in payments processing, which would result in greater efficiency, speed and low-costs for businesses and consumers across the economy. The FCC should impose a rule against unreasonable discrimination, relying on Title II of the Communications Act. Technical discrimination and pay-for-play arrangements considered by the FCC will only stymie the types of innovation and creative solutions needed to address our country’s financial needs, which we believe the CFPB should encourage for the benefit of all consumers.

While so many like to pit the net neutrality fight as just a battle between internet giants like Netflix against broadband giants like Comcast, it's stories like the three above that show it's about much, much more than that. These three platforms have had tremendous success over the past few years, but in all three cases, the success is driven by the fact that they've enabled people and many thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs to do things that simply weren't possible before. It's a powerful message that's often lost in this debate.

As a reminder there are just a few days left if you want to add your own comments for the FCC to consider. And, as a further reminder, our crowdfunding campaign for our net neutrality reporting is still ongoing. If you support it, it will allow us to dig deeper and explore how the potential rules might impact companies like those above and many others as well. And, if you pledge now, you'll have double the impact thanks to the matching funds that have been agreed to by some key donors.

Filed Under: competition, fcc, innovation, net neutrality, startups, title ii, tom wheeler
Companies: dwolla, etsy, kickstarter

YouTube Quietly, But Publicly, Shaming ISPs That Make Your Video Streams Stutter

from the good-for-them dept

For years, people have wondered if one of the best tools to prevent ISPs from behaving too badly in breaking net neutrality would just be public shaming. Netflix has long released data on ISP performance, and then got into some hot water last month when it started directly blaming ISPs for network congestion, leading Verizon to send a cease-and-desist letter. Quartz is reporting that YouTube has been doing something similar, though it's not quite as in-your-face as the Netflix example. If the connection is weak, YouTube displays a blue bar beneath the video, with the words "Experiencing Interruptions?" in white: Click on the "Find out why" link and you get taken to Google's "Video Quality Report" which tells you some information about your ISP and how congested the network is (or, at least sometimes -- in my case, it tells me it doesn't have enough information about my provider, which happens to be Sonic.net, to determine any results).

Of course, all the public shaming in the world isn't going to matter much if ISPs are free to clog up interconnection points and you have no real competition to go to.

Filed Under: congested networks, isps, net neutrality, public shaming, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

Want In-Depth Coverage Of Net Neutrality? Crowdfund Our Reporting - And Double Your Impact

from the beacon-time dept

TL;DR: Support our net neutrality coverage
and double your impact right now! »
As I'm sure you remember, a few years ago, the biggest story in the technology world was the fight to protect the internet from dangerous copyright legislation in Congress called SOPA/PIPA. Here at Techdirt, we covered that story top to bottom -- even walking the halls of Congress on January 18th, 2012, the day of the big internet blackout. A study done by Harvard following that fight, found that Techdirt became "the single most important professional media site over the entire period, overshadowing the more established media." We've already highlighted how the ongoing fight over net neutrality has some similarities, in that the threat to the future of the internet may be made by folks in Washington DC who don't fully understand what they're doing. And we'd like to do the same level of blanket coverage we gave to the SOPA/PIPA fight.

But we need your help to do it. And we need it now. Today we've teamed up with BeaconReader, a startup that is leading the way in crowdfunding journalism, to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Techdirt to cover "The Net Neutrality Battle."

You can help by supporting our coverage right now »
Here's the exciting part that is different from most crowdfunding campaigns. Beacon has helped bring together additional donors who have promised to match the first $30,000 in funds (with potentially more on the way -- so stay tuned), so if you support our coverage now you'll double your impact.

Net neutrality is obviously a big story -- but it's one that simply isn't getting that much coverage. A recent Pew study found that earlier this year, even as the debate heated up, it was all but absent from national television news and most major newspapers. While there was a brief breakthrough moment when John Oliver discussed net neutrality, even that was somewhat limited (HBO), and not the most nuanced of reports. As Oliver himself noted, the reason that this debate is so dangerous is because often it's been designed to seem boring to the average person so that they have no idea what it means and how it will impact them.

We aim to change that as much as possible. We want to be able to take the time and break down every angle of this story: including cutting through much of the rhetoric being spewed about what's happening and what it means. Things like Title II, Section 706 and "forbearance" are confusing and very deep in the weeds, but actually understanding these things and how they'll impact you are important. There are many vested interests who know that keeping you bored and confused works to their advantage -- and we're hoping to better educate you, so that you can take part in this debate in an informed manner, calling out bogus claims when you see them, and being able to help others understand the issues as well.

Back that Harvard study, which highlighted just how central Techdirt was to that story, noting that there were more in-links to Techdirt than any other source concerning SOPA and PIPA: But here's the part that hasn't been discussed before: covering truly important issues like this, which mostly focus on incumbents trying to stifle upstarts and innovation, is really bad for paying the bills. Our coverage of SOPA/PIPA cost us dearly. While we had some critics insist the only reason we were covering the story was because of the revenue it brought in, the truth is that we lost a very big advertising deal in large part because of our coverage. In the midst of the fight, we actually had an ad partner contact us to ask if we would "tone down" such "political stuff" on the site. That's not how we work, obviously. We cover what we think is important because we think it's important, and not based on what will attract the most advertising dollars. But, there's a big cost to that. In our case, advertising, which almost always comes from large incumbents, dried up significantly, despite the fact that our traffic basically doubled.

Thankfully, we have the research and consulting side of our business, which helps fund this site, but the site increasingly runs at a loss if you just view it in terms of advertising and sponsorship. We took another hit on that front last month, when we (basically alone among media sites) agreed to go 100% SSL, to protect your privacy -- which forced us to cut loose a number of ad partners who simply don't want to bother supporting SSL.

For years, though, we've reported on crowdfunding campaigns -- and we've had some success with our own Insider Shop, but it's not nearly enough for the kind of coverage we'd like to bring to these and other important issues. So that's where this crowdfunding campaign comes in. Beacon is a fascinating startup that is working hard to combine the best concepts of crowdfunding, but with a 100% focus on making it work for journalism, leading to some unique opportunities. With this campaign, our net neutrality coverage will appear on both Techdirt and Beacon, and supporters will get some specific perks from Beacon as well.

Like all crowdfunding campaigns, this is something of an experiment -- meaning that it's also an opportunity for you to tell us how important you think net neutrality is as well. We'll obviously cover the unfolding story no matter what, but if we can meet our goal with this campaign, we'll be able to dedicate a lot more resources to making sure that we can truly cover every angle, including following the story to wherever it leads us: whether that's Washington, DC or elsewhere, and adding more voices and more in-depth coverage on what's really happening and what it really means for you and the future of the internet. The fact that any money pledged now gets immediately doubled by matching donors makes it easy for you to have even more impact right now.

We've mentioned ways to supports us in the past, but we've never before made a direct plea to help us out. Today, however, I'm asking if you'll step up and contribute and enable us to bring you more thorough reporting on the net neutrality fight. The fact that BeaconReader will match your dollars, doubling the impact of every dollar you give, will act as added incentive. Thanks for any possible support you can give.

Once again: Support our net neutrality coverage
and double your impact right now! »

Filed Under: crowdfunding, journalism, net neutrality
Companies: beaconreader, techdirt

EFF Changes Position On Net Neutrality: Recognizes FCC Must Act, But Narrowly

from the makes-sense dept

For years, the EFF has pushed back against the FCC's attempts to preserve net neutrality, reasonably worrying that it might open the door to the FCC further meddling in the internet where it had no real mandate. We here at Techdirt have been similarly concerned. As we've noted, net neutrality itself is important, but we were wary of FCC attempts to regulate it creating serious unintended consequences. However, over the past few years, the growth in power of the key broadband internet access providers, and their ability to degrade the internet for profit, has made it quite clear that other options aren't working.

Thus, the EFF has -- quite significantly -- announced that it has changed its position on the FCC's role in net neutrality, starting with Title II reclassification, combined with a strong forbearance, which effectively blocks the FCC from claiming too much power to regulate other aspects of the internet:

We want to be very, very clear: the FCC’s regulatory role should be narrow and firmly bounded. Network neutrality rules should be limited to specific prohibitions—such as blocking, discrimination among applications and prohibiting special access fees—potentially combined with a renewed “open access” requirement that would foster local competition, and no more.

Luckily, the FCC has a way to bind itself and thereby limit its own regulatory reach. It’s called “forbearance.” While forbearance doesn’t set the limits on the regulatory agency in stone as Congress could, it does require the FCC to make a public commitment that is difficult to reverse.  If it ever wants to change course, it has to engage in a contentious and tedious public process of notice and comment. We’ll have more to say about these very basic regulations in our comments on the FCC’s proposed rules, which we will also unpack in upcoming posts.

To get to a place where it can actually enforce neutrality rules and do nothing further, however, the FCC first needs to do one important thing: reverse its 2002 decision to treat broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” This is what’s known as Title II reclassification. 

Part of the problem with the net neutrality fight is that there's a lot of nuance and technicalities involved. Many -- especially in the telco world -- point to the fact that Title II reclassification would grant the FCC much greater ability to regulate all parts of the internet, but they ignore the fact that basically everyone pushing for reclassification is doing so with the forbearance process in mind. And, yes, the whole forbearance process opens up a whole new avenue for potential game playing and abuse, but as the EFF is recognizing, this seems like the only real near-term solution to the current situation in which the big broadband companies are looking to hold the rest of the internet hostage.

It's worth noting that this is, in no way, an "ideal" solution. There's a tremendous amount of details and nuances involved in all of these decisions -- almost none of which you'll read about in the press (and, of course, good luck finding anything about net neutrality on TV news). The reality is that this is what we're left with after a decade or more of failed broadband policy, which has brought us to the situation today where the broadband access providers have basically set themselves up as being able to set up toll booths to doublecharge, not because of any innovation or improved service on their part, but solely by nature of themselves getting so big that they can make life difficult for internet services.

There's one other key point in the EFF's "change of heart," which is the response to anyone who claims Title II grants too much power to the FCC (leaving aside the question of forbearance). And that's that under the appeals court ruling back in February, it was made clear that the FCC already has tremendously broad powers to regulate other aspects of the internet under Section 706. As some noted after that ruling came out, while many people were talking about how the court rejected net neutrality, they may have missed how much the court broadened the FCC's powers under Section 706. The end result is that we should be equally worried about the FCC abusing 706, where its powers are dangerous and also ineffective at protecting net neutrality, while focusing on putting in place a better regime under Title II with a strong forbearance plan:

Some have said that reclassification would give the FCC too much power to regulate the Internet. That very concern is why forbearance is so important. Nor is it the case that the FCC has very limited power now—the D.C. Circuit affirmed that the FCC has broad powers to “promote competition” which could be just as vulnerable to misuse by a future FCC as any regulatory authority granted via a “common carrier” reclassification. More important than the potential breadth of power, however, is the fact that the powers that the FCC has now don’t match the real goal: protecting the neutral Internet we expect and need to flourish. Reclassification, combined as it must be with a commitment to forbear from imposing aspects of Title II that were originally drafted for 20th century telephone services and that don't make sense for the Internet, can give the FCC the right tool for the job without giving it regulatory tools it doesn’t need and may dangerously misapply.

In other words, while there are dangers of giving the FCC too much power under Title II, those can be dealt with via forbearance, while at the same time actually allowing it to protect net neutrality. Under the current system, we have the worst of both worlds. Section 706 has now been interpreted such that the FCC has powers that are too broad in regulating a variety of aspects of the internet... but without the power to actually protect net neutrality!

Given that reality, it does seem that the best path forward has to be reclassification under Title II, with clear forbearance that limits the FCC's powers under Title II to just the situations where it can prevent net neutrality abuses.

Filed Under: broadband access, competition, discrimination, fcc, forbearance, net neutrality, open internet, reclassification, title ii
Companies: at&t, comcast, eff, verizon

Latest Cybersecurity Bill Could Actually Be A Backdoor To Destroying Net Neutrality

from the bad-definitions-make-bad-law dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the Senate's latest attempt at a cybersecurity bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which tries to distinguish itself from the toxic attempts to pass CISPA over the past few years. We and many others have already detailed how CISA, like the CISPAs before it, has a tremendous problem in creating perverse incentives for companies to help the government spy on people, but as a bunch of public interest groups are noting, the definitions are so broad, that the bill could actually be a backdoor way to undermine net neutrality. That's because it has an incredibly broad definition of a "cyberthreat" such that an ISP could declare, say, Netflix to be a cyberthreat, allowing it to throttle Netflix's bandwidth. Here are two key paragraphs from a letter sent by CDT, EFF and a bunch of other groups:

Arbitrarily Harms Average Internet Users: The definition of “cybersecurity threat” is overbroad, and includes “any action” that may result in an unauthorized effort to adversely impact the security, confidentiality and availability of an information system or of information stored on such system. Countermeasures can be employed against such threats absent risk of liability. This could lead to use of countermeasures in response to mere terms of service violations. For example, logging into another individual’s social networking account – even with their permission – typically violates the website’s terms of service, and therefore qualifies as unauthorized access under the CFAA, and could be treated as a “cybersecurity threat.” A provision preventing this harm appeared in the July 2012 Cybersecurity Act and should be included in CISA.

Infringing on Net Neutrality Policy: Likewise, the July 2012 bill also contained provisions clarifying that nothing in the Act, including overbroad application of the terms “cybersecurity threat” and “countermeasure,” could be construed to modify or alter any Open Internet rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission. Net neutrality is a complex topic and policy on this matter should not be set by cybersecurity legislation.

In other words, under the current broad definition of "cybersecurity threat," an ISP (e.g., Comcast) could argue that another service provider (e.g., Netflix) was "adversely impacting the availability" of information on its network, and thus it was going to take "any action" (e.g., throttling it down to nothing) to deal with the "threat." And, under the proposed legislation, there would be nothing anyone could do about it, as Comcast would be absolved from liability, as long as it could claim that all of that Netflix traffic was the equivalent to a cybersecurity threat according to its own definition.

The fact that there was language in previous bills that prevented this kind of thing, but is absent from this latest bill seems quite troubling. One hopes it was just an oversight in getting the bill out -- and that seems most likely. But, given how often we've seen nefarious language sneak into certain bills, it's not out of the question that others are recognizing the opportunities to backdoor in a way to get around any possible net neutrality proposal.

Filed Under: cisa, cispa, cybersecurity, cyberthreats, dianne feinstein, information sharing, net neutrality

Don't Be Fooled Or Distracted By Trollish Comments To The FCC

from the that's-not-the-story dept

This is hardly a surprise, but with John Oliver exhorting "internet commenters" to go comment on the FCC's net neutrality proposal, potentially flooding the FCC's servers, many of the comments are fairly childish and unproductive. And while reporters love to pick up on those kinds of comments as a highlight of how silly this process has become, enabling them to shake their head or wag their finger about "oh that silly internet," that's misleading in the extreme. It's the same sort of thing as traditional journalists totally dismissing the idea of internet comments on news stories, because there will always be some idiot who posts something stupid.

Yes, stupid, pointless and juvenile comments will happen. That's part of the internet. But to focus only on those comments is to ignore two much more important things: (1) the sheer number of folks expressing concern about the big broadband companies messing up the internet and (2) the very large number of thoughtful, intelligent and insightful comments that have been submitted as well. As of right now, the FCC shows somewhere around 125,000 comments, but that hasn't been updated in a while, and we've heard that they may have double that (or more) waiting to be posted. And, yes, when you have ~300,000 comments on a contentious issue, some of them are going to be silly, but that outpouring of opinion suggests that this is a topic that the public is very interested in, even if not everyone is able to express their thoughts in the most professional of ways.

Filed Under: comments, fcc, net neutrality, open internet, trolls

Everytime AT&T Wants Federal Approval Of Merger Or Policy, It Promises It's Necessary To Deliver 100% Broadband... Then Doesn't Deliver

from the because-fulfilling-promises-is-hard dept

We've covered in the past how Verizon has a long history of making promises to regulators to get special deals, and then never delivering. Usually these promises involve providing high speed fiber to the home connections, for which they get massive tax breaks and subsidies... and then never delivering. And, if people finally point out that it didn't deliver, it lobbies to drop the requirements that it had agreed to abide by (but never actually did). Of course, there's a very similar story with AT&T, and telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, who's been the leading voice on these broken promises for years, has the details. In fact, what he notes is that AT&T has made some rather specific promises about providing broadband to get approval of mergers, but has never delivered. And now it's doing the same for its attempted merger with DirecTV.

He notes that, first, AT&T (then called SBC) promised a massive fiber broadband in 2004, as part of convincing the FCC to kill off open access requirements for fiber optic networks. So did BellSouth (eventually bought up by AT&T). And yet, the numbers they promised were never met. Because, of course they weren't. Then, when the AT&T was buying BellSouth a few years later, it promised to offer 100% broadband penetration. If you can't see that, all you really need to know is that it says "By December 31, 2007, AT&T/BellSouth will offer broadband Internet access service... to 100 percent of residential living units in the AT&T/BellSouth in-region territory." Okay. Now, remember that, and fast forward to today. As you know, AT&T is trying to buy DirecTV, and one of the reasons it's citing for the merger is... that it will help bring broadband to 15 million customers that don't currently have broadband. Here's the press release.

AT&T will use the merger synergies to expand its plans to build and enhance high-speed broadband service to 15 million customer locations, mostly in rural areas where AT&T does not provide high-speed broadband service today, utilizing a combination of technologies including fiber to the premises and fixed wireless local loop capabilities."

Huh. As Kushnick points out: "If AT&T is already supposed to have 100% completed, how can 15 million locations -- at least 20% of all AT&T areas, not already have high speed broadband?" This certainly suggests that AT&T just flat out lied to help get the earlier merger completed.

Meanwhile, Karl Bode is pointing out that it's not just on the wireline side that this happens. Jump over to the wireless side, and its attempted (but failed) acquisition of T-Mobile, and you'll find a similar story:

AT&T does the same thing with wireless. Back when AT&T was trying to get approval to acquire T-Mobile, the company shot itself in the foot by accidentally posting a confidential document showing it would cost AT&T just $3.8 billion more to go from 80% nationwide LTE coverage to 97% coverage, something AT&T had been claiming was only possible if they were allowed to pay $39 billion to eliminate T-Mobile.

Of course, what we've now learned is that the telcos appear to know that they can pretty much say whatever they want, as long as it sounds good, because no politician or regulator is likely to ever look back and call them out on their previous unmet promises.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, ip transition, mergers, net neutrality, promises
Companies: at&t, directv

Rep. Issa Pretends Net Neutrality Means The End Of Porn Online

from the because-that's-not-even-remotely-true dept

I'm not sure what it is about net neutrality that brings out absolutely insane arguments that make no sense, but it certainly seems to happen with annoying frequency. The latest is Rep. Darrell Issa taking a few words from a statement by leading net neutrality advocate, professor Tim Wu, and claiming that it means net neutrality could end porn online.

Issa has carved out a position for himself at times as a defender of the internet and innovation on the Republican side of the aisle. He was a key player in stopping SOPA, and has also been quite important in pushing back against USTR secrecy in questionable trade deals and in making sure you can actually rip your DVDs. He was also among those trying to dig into the ridiculous prosecution of Aaron Swartz. That said, he's also made some serious missteps when it comes to tech policy. He supported an Elsevier-backed bill that would have cut off open access policies. He's been a bit wishy-washy on NSA stuff as well, though more recently has generally sided more with protecting privacy.

Many of those positions have been ones that don't have a particularly partisan bent (sometimes going against the prevailing view in the party). But, when it comes to net neutrality, he's toeing the standard partisan line. As we've noted all too often, about a decade ago, net neutrality suddenly became a "partisan" issue with Republicans against it and Democrats for it -- and since then it's been almost impossible to have a real policy debate about it that doesn't immediately descend into partisan talking points that have little basis in reality. Unfortunately, it appears that rather than actually dig into the issues here, as he's done in the past on other issues, Issa chose to take the easy grandstanding way out on this one. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing asking if antitrust law would be more effective in protecting consumers and innovation online. Now I've already gone on record in arguing that the FTC may be a good place to look to protect net neutrality, but less from the antitrust angle than the "actually delivering what you sold customers" angle.

The hearing itself was weighted with three anti-net neutrality folks against Tim Wu (who used to work at the FTC, and who has long been a strong advocate of antitrust policy -- something I disagreed strongly with him about in the past). So it wasn't entirely a fair fight. But when it came time for Issa to go after Wu, the whole hearing just became a joke.

Issa: Professor Wu. I really appreciate your being here. I think you've given us the appropriate characterization of the true reason for net neutrality. You said it was 'social media police, speech policy, political policy.' You used words including 'control.' All of that, you did voluntarily here, right?

Wu: *Silence* (I assume he nods)

Issa: So, what you're saying, in effect, is, if the FCC gets ahold of this, we can go back to the Leave it to Beaver times. Times in which two married adults had to be in twin beds in order to get passed the social norms of the day. Times in which, even today, Bill Maher, who I often disagree with, can't be on broadcast because the FCC won't let him on because he uses the F-bomb too often. Times in which complaints are being considered today, and in the last year, against Two and A Half Men, because they're too sexually explicit. This is the FCC's role. They're a regulatory policy entity that actually does limit free speech, carefully question moral norms and the like. Do you have any way to tell me that's not true after your opening statement?

Wu: What I'm trying to suggest...

Issa: Please answer the question. Then you can get to your suggestion.

Wu: I'm suggesting that if the antitrust agencies overtake the...

Issa: No, no. You were telling me the good reasons for the FCC to have this kind of control. And I have countered with, you're absolutely right. Everything you said about social policy, speech, political. These are things the FCC has controlled over the airwaves for my entire life.

From there he turns to a former FCC commissioner and asks a leading (and misleading) question about FCC regulations on speech.

So, here's the thing: Issa is correct in pointing out that the FCC has a mandate in regulating "indecency" over broadcast spectrum. Many people -- including us -- have been quite critical of the FCC's attempts to "fight indecency" on broadcast TV, and have been happy when the courts have curtailed its ability to do so. However, that issue has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with net neutrality. The FCC has this (already questionable) mandate over regulating indecency solely on broadcast (not cable or satellite) TV under the theory that the spectrum used for broadcast TV is scarce and owned by the US government who then gave it out to the networks (for free) in exchange for promising to use it to broadcast good, wholesome content.

None of that says anything about what's happening on the internet, which is not broadcast TV in any way, shape or form. Even more ridiculous is that it's quite clear that if you actually read Tim Wu's opening statement, he's saying the exact opposite of what Issa implies he's saying. Issa simply cherry picked a few words, completely out of context, and did this grandstanding show of pretending Wu said the FCC would be regulating speech. Wu, instead, pointed out that the FCC has a role here in making sure the internet stays open for the purpose of keeping open the marketplace of ideas.

There is, in our times, an intimate relationship between Internet policy, free speech and the political process. At the risk of stating the obvious, the Internet now serves as an incredibly important platform for both political and non-political speech of every possible description. In this respect, it probably comes closer than any other speech technology to creating Oliver Wendell Holmes’ vision of a marketplace of ideas. The Internet has also served as the launching pad for numerous political movements and campaigns, and has tended to provide a place for outsider parties and candidates to challenge the establishment.

When we understand the Internet as a speech and political platform, it is clear that protecting the open Internet – dealing with matters like discrimination as between competing forms of content – has obvious implications for both free speech and the political process. You might say that to protect the open Internet is much the same thing as protecting the United States as an open society.

So Wu is making the point that by not allowing discrimination and favoritism online, we better guarantee a marketplace of ideas and open and free communications online. And Issa took a few words out of that, and pretends that it means the FCC would suddenly, magically, get the power to not just regulate speech online, but to try to censor the internet to not just get rid of porn, but bring us back to the Leave it to Beaver days? Issa, later in the talk tries to argue that given that the FCC has the power to regulate speech on broadcast TV it will obviously, automatically, seek to expand that power to new realms. This, despite absolutely no evidence that the FCC has any interest in doing that. Yes, when (Republican) Kevin Martin was in charge of the FCC, he suddenly was much more interested in enforcing the indecency stuff, but no one has realistically sought to expand the FCC's charge over indecency beyond over the air broadcast TV, and there's nothing in the discussion of net neutrality even close to suggesting that anyone will move in that direction. Again, if anything, guaranteeing net neutrality would do the exact opposite in making it clear that no one can regulate what content has access and what does not.

Admittedly, Wu did not handle himself very well. Right after Issa tells him not to suggest something, to immediately repeat that phrase was a bad idea -- and later on he makes the cardinal sin in a Congressional hearing of trying to interrupt Issa and speak when no question was asked of him. I understand why he did it, but that's generally considered a huge faux pas in Congressional hearings. Issa then slaps him down for trampling on his "time" which is kind of amusing, since he was just bitching about how the government shouldn't get involved in stifling speech, but then actively seeks to not let Wu talk.

Anyway, Issa tries to drive home his suggestion that the FCC might try to ban porn online, with a massively convoluted question that is both wrong and misleading:

Issa: In my 14 years, the one thing that I have noticed is that we like to "harmonize" things. So, Commissioner Wright and Commissioner McDowell, do you have any question that if the FCC takes full net neutrality authority, if you will, that the FCC, by definition, will tend to want to harmonize other spectrum such as broadcast, and its limited cable role, with the internet. In other words, the rules of the road for broadcast, that have given us not having things on broadcast inevitably would be applied, at least in some part, to the internet. Maybe similarly to how we regulate cable to only go so far. So I'm just going to give you a simple question: You can't put what some people consider pornography on broadcast television, can you?

McDowell: No.

Issa: And it's extremely limited as to what can be on cable? It cannot be a free for all.

McDowell: It can't be obscene. It's a different constitutional standard.

Issa: Right. But, on the internet today, it is limited only to criminal acts? Is that correct? You can put anything you want on the internet, so long as it's not a crime. Is that correct?

McDowell: Correct.

Issa: And if it is a crime, then law enforcement regulates it?

McDowell: Correct.

Except, no, not correct. At least not the implication here. The FCC has the (yes, questionable) mandate that lets it fight against indecency on broadcast TV. The claims about its role concerning cable TV are quite limited to almost non-existent. When McDowell points out that things on cable can't be obscene, that's also the existing standard for the internet as well. That is, when Issa says it can't be "criminal" and that "law enforcement" will take care of criminal issues, that's the same thing as talking about "obscene" content on cable TV, which the FCC has no real mandate over. The Supreme Court has long ruled that obscenity isn't protected speech -- and whether or not you agree with that, that's the rule. And that applies equally on cable TV and the internet. Yes, there are a few specific parts of the law that specifically call out subscription TV for not being able to show obscene material, but it's still based on the basic laws around obscenity.

And, nothing in any of the net neutrality stuff has anything to do with any of that. At all. Which McDowell could have explained, and sort of hinted at with his "different constitutional standard," but it goes beyond that. Because there is nothing in the debate that has anything to do with the FCC trying to keep anything offline. In fact, throughout all of this, it's been abundantly clear that the focus is on trying to make sure that there are no restrictions on content, rather than adding restrictions. The problem is that people (led by the telcos) are deliberately trying to conflate regulating the infrastructure layer with the content layer, in a sad and desperate attempt to block these rules that would serve only to stop broadband companies from trying to set up extra toll booths online.

Also, note the ridiculousness of the (mis)leading line of questions. Issa appears to set up a question about the likelihood of the FCC expanding or "harmonizing" efforts to censor content, even asking that specific question but never letting anyone answer it, and then completing the very same question with a much more mild question about whether or not you can put porn on broadcast TV. It's a pretty standard political trick. You start out by asking the question you really want to imply, but never let anyone answer it. You follow up instead with an easy "yes/no" question, thereby implying to the public that the answer to the first question was also an easy "yes."

Issa then turns back to Wu, though again fails to let him talk:

Issa: Okay, Professor Wu, I'll give you the last word. Do you see any inconsistency with exactly that? Because you're talking about -- in your statement -- about speech policy, social policy, control. Isn't that part of the concern that the American people should have, that much of what they see on the internet could be regulated out of existence?

Wu: No, I disagree. Net neutrality prevents the exact opposite. Net neutrality protects the...

Issa: Net neutrality doesn't exist! Net neutrality is a concept, isn't it?

Wu: Net neutrality protects the internet as a platform for an incredible diversity of speech. We've had net neutrality rules, de facto, for the past 20 years. We've had an incredible outpouring of speech from all across the political spectrum. And I'm suggesting that if we maintain...

Issa: Professor! Professor, your own words indict you.

Issa then moves on to a different question about defining the relevant market in antitrust for competition, leading Rep. Hank Johnson to jump in and ask if he could let Tim Wu actually answer the original question. Issa claims that Wu went off topic and thus the time goes back to being Issa's. He also suggests that Wu failed to be "succinct" in answering his questions, though as far as I can tell, at no point does Wu even get 3 full sentences in any where without Issa interrupting or talking over him.

Look, I'm just as concerned about the FCC overregulating speech with things around "indecency" on broadcast channels. And I have my concerns about the Supreme Court's rulings on "obscenity" and how regulating against it is not a First Amendment issue. But none of that has anything to do with net neutrality. And nothing in this debate even remotely touches on the question of the FCC suddenly taking porn off the internet or making it like Leave it to Beaver. As Issa's colleague, Rep. Jared Polis noted a few years back in a hearing on SOPA (at which Issa was also present,) the internet is for porn (placing the lyrics to the classic Avenue Q in the Congressional record). And that's not going to change any time soon.

In fact, it could reasonably be argued that without more explicit recognition for net neutrality, the big broadband providers are more likely to try to cordon off internet porn into "premium" parts of the internet. Thus, if Issa is really fighting for more porn on the internet, he might want to listen more closely to what Wu is actually saying, rather than trotting out a highly misleading attack on Wu.

Filed Under: darrell issa, fcc, first amendment, free speech, ftc, indecency, net neutrality, obscenity, porn, regulations, tim wu