Net Neutrality Defeated -- Telcos and Cable Win
A House Committee sold out the Internet.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about an amendment in the House Commerce Committee that will go a long way to determining the future of the Internet.
The vote is over, and the amendment from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and others to protect the Internet and preserve openness and innovation lost. The vote was 22-34. That's the bad news.
The good news is that, considering the lobbying power of the combined cable and telephone industry lobbying, losing by this little is a good sign. It's better than we did at subcommittee.
There is some recognition that the grass roots efforts that started relatively late in the game, combined with some lobbying by e-commerce companies, is starting to have an effect. We've probably got a couple of weeks before the full telecom bill goes to the House floor. (As I write this, the final vote hasn't happened yet, but there's no doubt the Committee will approve the bill.)
This turned, unfortunately, into a partisan fight. Only one courageous Republican, Heather Wilson of New Mexico, voted in favor of the amendment. These Democrats left the reservation: Ed Towns of New York, Bobby Rush of Illinois, Al Wynn of Maryland, Gene Green of Texas and Charlie Gonzales of Texas.
There are other developments. The House Judiciary Committee's special Telecom Task Force had a hearing on the issue the other day, and was deeply concerned about the issue. And there is legislation in the Senate that could also get serious consideration.
Update: The bill passed 42-12, but not before AT&T got off its final counterattack, just before passage around 7 p.m. In the empty room, right before final passage, Gonzales, from the home town of AT&T, San Antonio, offered an amendment to require the FCC to make a study "competition in the Internet world," particularly what he called "special arrangements" between Web sites and other companies. It would be similar, he said, to the type of tie-in arrangements that proponents of Net Neutrality said will exist with telephone companies favoring content. Such arrangements between Web sites and others, Gonzales says, would make it hard for a "garage-bases startup" to make a go of it. Citing an article from Southwest Airlines' magazine, he noted that Google gets revenue from ads tied to searches and that Yahoo is "fighting for deals."
Democrats were flabbergasted. Eshoo, who represents Silicon Valley, said she was "baffled by the amendment, because Gonzales, who earlier said he was opposed to regulating the Internet. This, she said, "is about regulating search engines." Markey said he was preparing an amendment to expand the study to include the top five telephone companies and top five cable operators, but didn't get to offer it. The Gonzales amendment was defeated 11-43, but Google, and Yahoo! and the others should be on notice. This isn't over. They are squarely in the gunsights.
I called my Congressman, Steny Hoyer, yesterday to encourage him to use his office (minority whip) to oppose the Barton bill, as long as the Markey amendment wasn't part of it.
"Is there a bill number?" responded the guy answering Hoyer's phone.
"No, it doesn't have one yet - it's a committee markup in the Commerce Committee right now," I explained. "It's the telecom bill sponsored by Rep. Barton, and if there's anything more you want to know, check with Rick Boucher's office - they're probably on top of this one."
"Who?"
"Rep. Rick Boucher. He's a Democrat, and he's one of your party's go-to guys on telecom. Anyway, tell Congressman Hoyer that I'm against this bill, unless Markey and Boucher's net neutrality amendment is added. Okay?"
They really ought to have a bill number on it, well before it gets to this point. It was damned hard to explain to the guy in my Congressman's office what I was for, and what I was against, without one. Meanwhile, the telecom guys are having no problem getting their message through to our Congresspersons.
Grrr. Argh.
April 26, 2006 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
His constituents are not happy.
April 26, 2006 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, can someone please provide the bill number as it will appear when the bill reaches the full house????
April 26, 2006 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how much Verizon and AT&T contributed to the campaigns of those who voted for the bill.
Also, is there a similar bill in the Senate? What is the situation there?
C.
April 26, 2006 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gene Green:
SBC/AT&T 2004: $11,500.00 http://www.opensecrets.org/races/contrib.asp?ID=TX29&cycle=2004&special=N
SBC/AT&T 2002: $10,000 http://www.opensecrets.org/races/contrib.asp?ID=TX29&cycle=2002&special=N
SBC/AT&T 2000: $10,000 and Verizon $9,000: http://www.opensecrets.org/races/contrib.asp?ID=TX29&cycle=2000&special=N
All Gene Green. $40,500 just since 2000.
Howzat?
Charlie Gonzales has gotten almost $60k from AT&T/SBC/Verizon
April 26, 2006 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry, maybe it's just because I've been having a bad day, but I cannot make heads or tails out of the update you posted. Was the Gonzales amendment a good thing or a bad thing, and why? I don't understand what you are saying it was attempting to do. And are Google and Yahoo! good guys, or bad guys?
April 26, 2006 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right now the telcos are not allowed by law to discriminate in the traffic they carry. That is why you can pick up a phone and dial anyone in the world, or why you can browse any web site from your PC. Contrast that with trying to IM someone on another cell network.
The telcos (let's call them the "bad" guys) say that, in the name of the free market, they should be allowed to do whatever they want with their traffic, and in particular gouge Internet content providers for prioritized traffic handling. They have their collective fist up the ass of the estimable Mr Gonzalez (D-TX).
The afternoon after his vote for deregulating the telcos, Mr Gonzalez proposed legislation to consider regulating the search engines. Let's call them the "good" guys.
Got that? The bad guys are warning to good guys to shut up and go home, or they'll get their pet whores in Congress (Republican and Democrat) to beat them up.
The more you hear about the breathtaking stupidity of politicians about the Internet, the more you have to respect Al Gore's role in pushing funding for it, and the more egregious it is that this simple fact was turned into a national joke by clever propagandists and stupid inept utterly clueless alleged journalists.
BTW my reading is that this whole thing is a last-ditch Hail Mary pass by the telcos to avoid relative oblivion, since the action in the Internet in the future is with the content. Google's model of data clusters plugged in at strategic points on the backbone will basically turn the telcos into the work crews who keep the roads clean. Their over-reach is going to eventually result in a major public backlash....at least, I hope so, for the sake of any technological leadership role for this country in the future.....
It's too bad they didn't spend all that lobbying money on a national program to bring fiber to every household, the equivalent of a national roads program. That would have breathed new life into the telecom industry. Probably something about Republican sympathies of the CEOs. And now it's too late, Iraq has bankrupted the country.
April 26, 2006 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's why Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush is for this travesty.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, who sits on a committee that considers telecommunications legislation, has ties to a nonprofit organization that has received $1 million in grants from one of the nation's largest phone companies.
"The SBC Foundation awarded the Englewood group grant money to create the still unopened "Bobby L. Rush Center for Community Technology."
Rush says the "real conflict" stems from inequities in the telecommunications marketplace that hurt low-income citizens.
"It is a systemic institutional disinvestment in (the) poor by corporate America in communities such as Englewood," Rush told the Chicago Sun-Times in a statement. "We deserve an even playing field."
"The people in Englewood should not suffer because they have a congressman on the Energy and Commerce Committee," AT&T spokesman Claudia Jones said."
Somebody ought to explain to this damn fool what's really going on.
April 26, 2006 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Things are never a simple as they seem.
There are really only three major search engine companies: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. This has two effects, one is on their control of access to information. Since most people reach new sites via a search they are in effect, gatekeepers for the web. I detail the issues here:
Google Monopoly
The other issue is their dominating the online advertising business through their monopoly positions as search engines. It is a variation of "pay to play". If a firm doesn't buy into favorable placement in search results they will have a limited audience. This puts the screws on those having to advertise as well as freezing out other portal sites that might want to compete.
I don't have any suggestions, I'm just pointing out the problems.
On the other issue of the telcos wanting more money for carrying traffic over their networks, there is some indication that Google (and perhaps others) is moving into owning its own network. During the internet boom thousands of miles of fiber optic cable were installed and then not used. Google has been buying some of this up and will probably try to set up a new distribution system using it. With a recent all fiber optic infrastructure they will have the bandwidth to offer services that others can't.
Verizon has been spending billions to pull fiber to the home to offer TV and internet access, so there may be a change in market dynamics in the near future.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
April 27, 2006 6:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Precisely because search engines are essential public utilities (that's what they've become) and are natural more-or-less monopolies, people like Bill Thompson (BBC commentator on tech issues) have been saying that they ought to be regulated for the public good, like utilities.
The solution isn't to let the telcos complete their transformation into robber barons. The solution is to regulate the lot of them.
April 27, 2006 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
For those wishing to contact their representatives about this issue, the Common Cause website has a good overview of the issue, and also includes a link to a form through which people can send an email message about it to their representatives in Congress. The form includes a canned message, but the user can modify it any way they wish. Common Cause has also assembled a number of links to background information from other sites and also information about the Congressional hearings that have taken place so far on this issue (click the first link and scroll down).
Moveon.org also has a petition to sign, urging the protection of net neutrality. Phone calls are even better than petitions or emails, though. Best is all three.
It seems to me that if this measure somehow does get passed, and the two-tier system goes into place, there will be such a public outcry that if Congress does not listen now, they will certainly get the message later. Congress gets even lower marks than Bush does in public opinion polls and this sort of thing is why. They would be foolish to pass this bad legislation.
I need to read more about it, but Gonzalez appeared to be proposing an amendment that would increase access to information, not reduce it. Do I have that right?
It does seem ironic, with all the media attention recently about China's totalitarian regulation of what it's citizens can access through search engines, that this bill is being considered now. Wouldn't allowing the two-tier system have much the same effect? Just because the potential gatekeepers in the US case are capitalists doesn't make the idea any more palatable.
April 27, 2006 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know that downloading movies is as essential as, say, heating your house. There are a number of market forces at play within the Internet infrastructure, and a very complicated set of checks and balances allow the free market to work. Without light we can't function, so companies could charge thousands for it. Wouldn't work with the Internet. Governmental regulation comes with side-effects, and I don't want it for the Internet until it has proven absolutely necessary.
May 2, 2006 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget that it's not just the "evil" telco's who lobby. So to do little companies like Amazon and Google. Millions are being spent on both sides and I guarantee you its not to protect good website like this. Besides, why should we think that the government has the solution to this problem? I'd rather let the consumers and experts figure it out.
May 4, 2006 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Regulation "for the public good" never works. It leads to shortages and high costs when done with water or fuel. Done with information it could be simply devastating. I am almost never in support of regulation and especially the regulation of the internet.
May 4, 2006 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Readers of this comment thread should know that lessgov and pkp646 are part of a tag-team of industry shills who invade blog comments on net neutrality to argue against any government regulation of the Internet. Other names who run with this crowd are John Rice, oldhats, AJ Carey and Paulaner01. (Google any of these names in combination and you'll see how their game works).
By tag-teaming the blogs, this small handful of individuals gives the false impression of broad popular support for an industry-friendly position.
What they fail to point out is that Net Neutrality has been the rule that has governed access to the Internet since its inception. It's the reason that the Internet has become such a dynamic force for new ideas, economic innovation and free speech. What they really want is for Congress to radically re-write our telecommunications laws so that companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth can swoop in and become gatekeepers to Internet content -- in a way that benefits no one except the largest ISPs.
I'd like these people to tell us how it is that they appear together (usually one after the other) spouting identical industry talking points across the blogosphere.
What gives fellas? Are you being paid to do this? And by whom?
May 21, 2006 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink