Copps Editorial: FCC Threat to the Future of the Internet

(Forwarded from Interesting People list.  Editorial text pasted below.  --
Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [IP] Copps Editorial: FCC Threat to the Futureof the Internet
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:41:21 -0500
From: Dave Farber <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]


Delivered-To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 18:36:33 -0500
From: [email protected]
Subject: Copps Editorial: FCC Threat to the Future of the Internet
To: [email protected], [email protected]

I thought IP/Politech might be interested in Commissioner Copps' editorial
in Tuesday's San Jose Mercury News.

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/7495091.htm

A new battle is brewing at the Federal Communications Commission. It's about
the future of the Internet. Entrenched interests are threatening open
consumer access to the Net and stifling innovation and competition in the
process.

The Internet was designed to defeat government or business control and to
thwart discrimination against users, ideas or technologies. Intelligence and
control were consciously placed at the ends of a non-discriminatory network.
Anyone could access the Internet, with any kind of computer, for any type of
application, and read or say pretty much what they wanted.

This Internet may be dying. At the behest of powerful interests, the FCC is
buying into a warped vision that open networks should be replaced by closed
networks and that the FCC should excuse broadband providers from
longstanding non-discrimination requirements.
  <snip>

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kenneth DeGraff
Technology, Media & IP

Consumers Union
Publisher of Consumer Reports
o/ 202.462.6262
f/ 202.265.9548
e/ [email protected]
w/ http://www.consumersunion.org
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 

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> http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/7495091.htm


Battle to Control Internet Threatens Open Access

By Michael J. Copps
Mon, Dec. 15, 2003   


A new battle is brewing at the Federal Communications Commission. It's about
the future of the Internet. Entrenched interests are threatening open
consumer access to the Net and stifling innovation and competition in the
process.

The Internet was designed to defeat government or business control and to
thwart discrimination against users, ideas or technologies. Intelligence and
control were consciously placed at the ends of a non-discriminatory network.
Anyone could access the Internet, with any kind of computer, for any type of
application, and read or say pretty much what they wanted.

This Internet may be dying. At the behest of powerful interests, the FCC is
buying into a warped vision that open networks should be replaced by closed
networks and that the FCC should excuse broadband providers from
longstanding non-discrimination requirements.

Proponents of eliminating non-discrimination rules claim that allowing
dominant broadband providers to build walls around the Internet is just
``deregulating'' and ``letting the market reign supreme,'' deploying the
rhetoric of Libertarianism to serve decidedly parochial interests. The truth
is that these corporations -- so fond of railing against government picking
winners and users -- are now asking the FCC to do precisely that.

Telephone companies with bottleneck control have been required for years to
treat on equal terms all those who seek to use their transmission
facilities. So when the dial-up Internet came along, dominant telephone
companies could not stop new services and new ideas from flowing over the
network. E-mail exploded and streams of new services came online.

The transition from dial-up to broadband should accelerate this innovation.
Instead, masked in murky discussions about an arcane classification scheme,
companies are lobbying the FCC to eliminate openness rules. Safeguards put
in place by Congress to guarantee consumer protection, privacy and
disability rights are at risk.

Think about what could happen if your broadband provider could discriminate.
It could decide which news sources or political sites you could view. It
could prevent you from using children's Internet filtering technology that
it didn't sell or that filtered out its own Web sites. It could prevent you
from using spam-jamming programs to block its spam. It could impose
restrictions on the use of virtual private networks by telecommuters and
small businesses to keep them as paying customers of the public network. It
could limit access to streaming video to protect its core content business.
Sound far-fetched? It's already beginning to happen.

If we continue down this path, the basic end-to-end openness that made the
Internet great will be gone. Control will have been turned over to those who
control the bottlenecks, just like Ma Bell controlled them in the heyday of
its monopoly.

Some argue that competition will save us from this fate. But today only a
minority of Americans has a choice between cable and DSL. The rest of us can
take whichever one is available -- if one of them is available. Until real
competition between technologies limits the power of incumbents, we must not
abandon anti-discrimination rules.

The FCC is rushing toward breathtaking change in regulatory policy. Whether
it's the giant media companies or telecom's gatekeepers, we are closing
networks, undermining competition, stifling entrepreneurship and threatening
consumer choice. At this rate, it won't be long until we look back, shake
our heads and wonder whatever happened to that open and dynamic high speed
Internet that might have been. ``What promise it held,'' we'll say. If that
happens, history won't forgive us. Nor should it.

MICHAEL J. COPPS is a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission.
He wrote this for the Mercury News.