Net Neutrality?

The FCC meeting just finished and it looks as though the Democrats are doing what they seem to do best – create a situation that does not address the problem directly but offer a proposal that merely kicks the can down the road and gives concessions to big corporations when it was not needed for passage.

The order which will be passed by a 3-2 vote will allow for “reasonable network management” whatever that means. The order on the other hand will not bar ‘paid prioritization.’ Said another way, ISP providers can offer businesses to speed up the delivery of their message while their competition could be delivered at a much lower speed.

The best comparison I can make is to cable TV. For one thing, cable offers only a small percentage of all television programs available. For the lowest rate you get a very crappy group of programs that include some network TV, some of the cable stations owned by the networks and lots and lots of 24 hour commercial and religious stations. You get the commercial and religious stations because they pay the cable companies to be carried.

As you go up in price, your choices become broader and eventually you get less and less network controlled TV. That is what I believe will be happening to the internet. While they won’t stop any site they can sure slow them down. But a company can speed up their loading time which will take some of the speed from others. Also note that cable providers have consolidated into just a few and no doubt will consolidate more. I think we can expect that in the ISP world also.

To top it off it looks like there will be different rules for fixed line versus wireless providers.
Commissioners Copps and Clyburn were able to extract some concessions favoring consumers in exchange for their votes.

Much like their counterparts in congress, Republican commissioners McDowell and Baker complained loudly because they only got 3/4ths of the pie instead of the whole thing.

Finally, one aspect that was not addressed was what jurisdiction the FCC had over the internet to begin with. This was the basis of the Comcast lawsuit and victory last April. The court then and previous courts noted that all the FCC had to do was declare they had jurisdiction over the internet under as a telecommunications service. 

They failed to do so, thus leaving themselves open for for more suits in this area.

In short they compromised in favor of corporations when they did not need to, left many questions unanswered and failed to address the basic regulatory question.

Analysis of the consequences will be all over the internet. It is still open so take some time and read up. I would recommend www.freepress.net as a good place to start with www.dailykos.com and www.firedoglake.com as other good sources.

Dave Bradley is a self-described
retired observer of American politics “trying to figure out how we got
so screwed up.”  An
Iowa City native currently living in West Liberty,  Dave and his wife
Carol have two grown children who “sadly had to leave the state to find
decent paying jobs.“