Policy Blog Entries by Art Brodsky

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) shipped off to Congress a 376-page National Broadband Plan earlier today, and yet some of the most pointed commentary from the Commissioners at their meeting was about a part of the plan that was given relatively little emphasis.

It almost sounds silly to say there was too little discussion of a topic in a report that long and that comprehensive. Just looking at the table of contents, and all of the recommendations for moving the country ahead into the era in which high-speed Internet is the norm and not the exception. After all, this is a strategic outline for future actions, and there are lots of future actions in the report to contemplate on items big and small.

It’s springtime in Washington, finally, after the snowpocalypse of last winter. Pretty soon all sorts of summer foods will be available. Let’s take a stroll into the grove to see how some really big companies pick cherries.

Over the last couple of weeks, a fierce little debate has started to rage about how the United States should treat high-speed Internet access. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the whole ecosystem surrounding the big telecom carriers got together to warn the Federal Communications Commission about really and truly regulating this crucial service.

While the whole letter was outrageous, there was one little part that particularly stood out for special mention, because it demonstrates the rhetorical trickery and intellectual dishonesty that unfortunately inhabits our little telecom world.

The Pew and the American Life project came out with a pretty scary report last week. The words, “Pew” and “scary” aren’t often used together, but in this case the description is apt.

Pew’s latest study on the future of the Internet asked in technical terms whether the Internet over the next 10 year will be controlled by consumers. The specific question was: Will the Internet still be dominated by the end‐to‐end principle? The “end-to-end principle” that was built into the Internet at its early stages means that consumers at one end of an Internet connection had a direct, one-to-one relationship with the online destination – a chat site, music site, shopping site, news site, whatever you want and wherever you want to go without interference or influence from the company making that connection for you – the Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Google’s announcement that it’s going to create one gigabit-per-second networks in a few selected communities looks like what the broadband stimulus program should have been – an attempt to jump start technology, to invest in new ideas and to determine how people will use advanced networks given the chance to use them.

There is no downside to the Google announcement, except perhaps from the point of view of the Federal government, which gave in to the lowest-common-denominator philosophy when structuring the stimulus program, and from the point of view of the incumbent telephone and cable carriers.

Let us give props where props are due. Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn spoke last Friday before the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC). This is a group that on one hand could provide her a sympathetic audience, were it not for the fact that their stance on Net Neutrality has tended to embrace the talking points for the telephone and cable companies.

In comments in the Net Neutrality docket, MMTC and other organizations put forward the industry talking points that an open and non-discriminatory Internet could raise prices for consumers (citing a Bell front group as evidence).

Second Panel —Commentary, Criticism and the New Publishing Paradigm, moderated by David Bollier.

The first speaker is Pat Aufderheide, director of social media at American University’s School of Communications. The purpose of copyright is to promote culture, with “limited” monopoly and provide balance with exemptions to make new culture. Copyright holders created imbalance in copyright. At this point, fair use which was “dinky backwater” is now escape hatch from copyright holders. It’s the most flexible copyright exemption in the world. Best Practices movement is about education. AU has published best practices guides, with filmmakers as first one. Eight weeks after guide, three films went to Sundance and got picked up.

“To boldly go.” There may be no more famous split infinitive than the one used to introduce the voyages of the starship Enterprise through the more than 40-year history of the Star Trek franchise. Whether it was “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” in the original series, or “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” in the Next Generation, the sentiment was clear. Bold is better.

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president, the tech sector was all atwitter (you should pardon the expression) about a campaign and policy staff that seemed to get it. Candidate Obama said all the right things, and now, President Obama has reaffirmed his commitment to an open Internet. There is the vision and the capacity to reach for a greater goal, and we have every right to expect it. The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Net Neutrality rulemaking is one example of a bold stroke, so we know that it can be done.

Trying to figure out who’s naughty and nice this time of year can be difficult. Many people are both, and figuring it all out by the end of the week will be quite the challenge.

Take for example two days last week in the life of Vice President Joe Biden. On Dec. 15, he hosted a meeting for the crème de la crème of Big Media, which by all accounts, like this one and this one brought top government officials together to focus on combating the scourge of “piracy.”

No one likes “piracy,” but this over-the-top meeting put so much of a focus on the issue, and pandered so much so the assembled multitudes that it lacked any credibility whatsoever.

After a couple of years of writing about Connected Nation, there’s not much more to say. They do the bidding of the telephone and cable companies, presenting broadband deployment as those companies wish it to be presented. They hide behind non-disclosure agreements. They have so many caveats to their maps that the products are not useful for serious planning.

And our government just gave them $10 million, give or take. In announcing a batch of broadband mapping grants on Dec. 22, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) turned the shape of the broadband world over to the parties most interested in shaping the outcome.

Any guesses who wrote the script for Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting later today on the threat of “piracy” to intellectual property?

Take a look at the guest list and try to figure out how the meeting came about. Let’s be honest, here. For an Administration, and a President, who believes in an open Internet, this little confab is a great big embarrassment.

We know that Big Media is a source of Big Money for Democrats. We know that Biden, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was favorably disposed to the “creative community,” as many legislators are. Even so, to have three cabinet officers, agency heads, studio heads, Big Media lobbyists representing companies which think fair use is theft and companies which want the Internet Service Providers to spy on you – all in one room?