Next week the FCC meets to make a decision on Net Neutrality. So there’s plenty going on as all sides press the FCC to do one thing or another. Some are lobbying more competently than others, though. Doing well are the Senate Republicans who prepare to fight and the incoming House Committee leadership who are getting loud on Net Neutrality and the runaway FCC.
Doing not so well are the forces of regulation caught this week making bad mistakes. First is the fringe neo-Marxist group Free Press. The Free Press tech brain trust made a terrible technical mistake on its website by sending anti-Comcast letters when they promised to send pro-Internet Takeover letters. Second we have radicals Media Access Project and Public Knowledge lying about Amazon’s Net Neutrality position, making the firm out to be taking a hardline pro-Internet Takeover position when in fact the firm supports a modest compromise.
If the radicals can’t even run their own lobbying efforts correctly, why should we trust them to run the entire Internet?
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Once upon a time I used to be sleep at midnight. Of course, if I’d buckle down and get Tech at Night out the door a few hours earlier, then I’d be able to be asleep right now at midnight, I suppose. Regardless, here we go.
The FCC’s Net Neutrality vote is still on for the 21st, that is, Tuesday. Of course they’d miss the regular Tech at Night schedule after all of this. The FCC couldn’t make it easy on me, oh no. The good news though is that by now the storyline is that Republicans think the FCC is going too far, most Democrats are ready to move the heck on already, and radical Democrats think the FCC doesn’t go too far enough.
If the FCC were to try something radical, it’s clear the courts would have none of it, just as in Comcast v. FCC which started this whole mess. But that will take time and will scare off investment. Who benefits from an underinvested Internet? Nobody. So we’ve just got to push for the lightest possible touch from the FCC, but remind them that Fred Upton and company are waiting in case they try a fast one.
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Now that the FCC has made itself the center of attention by planning a big power grab online, it may be the case that the FCC gets some unwanted attention. The Free State Foundation is calling out the FCC for not being very open even as the FCC is calling for an Open Internet™. Here’s the punchline, but read the whole thing, and that’s not something I say often in this space:
But preserving the Open FCC is much more fundamentally important to the public, over the short, medium, and long term. I have my doubts concerning how the FCC’s dumping of 1900 pages of documents into the public record on the eve of the date it cuts off public participation is consistent with preserving an Open FCC.
The last time I saw a data dump this bad was when Saddam Hussein was toying with the UN Security Council. That’s just great company for Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman, to have put himself in.
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Good evening. In case you missed it, I weighed in with great detail on the Level 3/Comcast/Netflix flap, getting down to the basics to unravel the issue technically.
But tonight we discuss Net Neutrality. House Republican Reps. Cliff Stearns and Joe Barton fired a warning shot, challenging the FCC to justify any action it takes this month, so now that’s an issue getting some attention. ISPs are already scoffing at one proposed legal avenue because it’s ridiculous. Net Neutrality has zero to do with deploying high speed Internet access, and in fact such regulations would likely hinder deployment. Even left-wing universal access folk have been saying that for ages.
I guess it’s a good thing various big names turned down stimulus bucks for deployment.
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Just as I was saying copyright was soon to replace Net Neutrality as the big tech issue of the moment, circumstances prove me wrong. Instead, regardless of the results of the December FCC meeting and the future of that whole Net Neutrality debate (more later), the coming issue now is going to be peering.
Some will play word games and say it’s all covered under the blanket issue of Net Neutrality, but be careful. Net Neutrality as promoted and sold by Free Press, the FCC, Google, Verizon, and others has been all about the so-called last mile from the Internet to your home or business, including wired and wireless access. That’s what the FCC is talking about regulating as Net Neutrality, that’s been the focus of the scare stories calling the need for Net Neutrality a Crisis™, and we cannot now let them do a bait and switch.
So in your mind, I suggest separating the Comcast/Level 3/Netflix issue from the Free Press/Net Neutrality issue. The former deals with the back end of the Internet, from the user’s perspective, while the latter deals with the front end that we directly pay for and use.
They’re both important though, so here’s my explanation and view of the Comcast/Level 3 Peering controversy broken out as a separate post because it got so long. To sum it up, Comcast did the right thing, because Netflix and Level 3 were being unfair and trying to take advantage of sharing deals made in good faith.
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Good night/morning. Yes, the world now waits on the FCC to see whether it will act to claim broad, unprecedented regulatory powers over the Internet, the pricing of services on it, as well as the content on it. Free Press is happy, of course, because that organization’s long-term goal is the total state control of all mass media.
They recognize the FCC’s so-called Net Neutrality plans for what they are. The rest of us must recognize the same, and get loud against the FCC to make others see, as well. And then we must get Republicans in the House fired up to make refudiating the FCC’s plans a top priority come January.
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I know it’s a big day for Net Neutrality when I wake up and my Email Inbox is jammed full with links, so many basically saying the same thing: The FCC is on the move. I’m told it all goes back to a November 15 speech by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in which he expresses an urgency for the FCC to pass a bunch of new rules quickly. It’s a crisis, he says.
He then called out Google and Verizon, saying that their temerity to contribute to the debate “slowed down some other processes.” You see: the whole process of talking to industry is apparently a sham, and the only speech that counts is speech that leads the FCC closer to the Obama administration’s predetermined outcome.
And it’s that Net Neturality outcome we may be nearing after all. That’s the Red Alert.
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Good evening. Apologies again for missing two of three Tech at Night episodes last week. I can only plead an overabundance of desire for the weekend causing me to be forgetful on Friday. But that just means we have more to look at tonight, so let’s go.
Yes, the forces of Net Neutrality Internet regulation were beaten badly last week. How badly? We already knew that All 95 PCCC Net Neutrality Pledge signers lost, but on top of that, the PCCC itself raised only $300 on the cause. Even if every donor gave only one dollar, that’s the sign of a failing fringe movement, not a popular position with broad, bipartisan support.
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Good evening. Through the magic of Claritin, my favorite drug, I’m able to bring you tonight’s edition. On the Net Neutrality front, the progressive left is getting delusional. They’re pretending that it matters what their members of Congress think when their President has done not one thing to stop his FCC from going off on its own to break the law, defy the courts, and go ahead with Title II Reclassification. This is not Sparta. This is madness.
Of course, the online petition? Meaningless of course except as a trap to build mailing lists. And it’s not me who says that, it’s Clay Johnson who says that, founder of Blue State Digital and the New Media Director of Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s petition is nonsense upon stilts.
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