1 February 2006 By Jeff Chester - The Nation
The End of the Internet ?
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are
crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform
the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to
a privately run and branded service that would charge
a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications
giants are developing strategies that would track and
store information on our every move in cyberspace in
a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope
of which could rival the National Security Agency.
According to white papers now being circulated in
the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries,
those with the deepest pockets -- cor****ations,
special-interest groups and major advertisers -- would
get preferred treatment. Content from these providers
would have first priority on our computer and
television screens, while information seen as
undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications,
could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
Under the plans they are considering, all of us -- from
content providers to individual users -- would pay
more to surf online, stream videos or even send
e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new
subscription plans that would further limit the online
experience, establi****ng "platinum," "gold" and
"silver" levels of Internet access that would set
limits on the number of downloads, media streams
or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.
To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone
and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political
campaign to further weaken the nation's communications
policy laws. They want the federal government
to permit them to operate Internet and other digital
communications services as private networks, free
of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.
Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) are considering
proposals that will have far-reaching impact on
the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of
the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996,
telephone and cable companies are using the
same political s**** oil to convince compromised
or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into
a turbo-charged digital retail machine.
The telephone industry has been somewhat more
candid than the cable industry about its strategy
for the Internet's future. Senior phone executives
have publicly discussed plans to begin imposing
a new scheme for the delivery of Internet content,
especially from major Internet content companies.
As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T,
told Business Week in November, "Why should
they be allowed to use my pipes ? The Internet
can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable
companies have made an investment, and for a Google
or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use
these pipes [for] free is nuts !"
The phone industry has marshaled its political allies
to help win the freedom to impose this new
broadband business model. At a recent conference
held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation,
a think tank funded by Comcast, Verizon, AT&T
and other media companies, there was much
discussion of a plan for phone companies
to impose fees on a sliding scale, charging content
providers different levels of service. "Price
discrimination," noted PFF's resident media
expert Adam Thierer, "drives the market-based
capitalist economy."
Net Neutrality
To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on
the information highway, some new media companies
and public-interest groups are calling for new
federal policies requiring "network neutrality" on
the Internet. Common Cause, Amazon, Google,
Free Press, Media Access Project and Consumers
Union, among others, have proposed that broadband
providers would be prohibited from discriminating
against all forms of digital content. For example,
phone or cable companies would not be allowed
to slow down competing or undesirable content.
Without proactive intervention, the values and issues
that we care about -- civil rights, economic justice,
the environment and fair elections -- will be further
threatened by this push for cor****ate control. Imagine
how the next presidential election would unfold if
major political advertisers could make strategic
payments to Comcast so that ads from Democratic
and Republican candidates were more visible and
user-friendly than ads of third-party candidates
with less funds. Consider what would happen if
an online advertisement promoting nuclear power
prominently popped up on a cable broadband page,
while a competing message from an environmental
group was relegated to the margins. It is possible
that all forms of civic and noncommercial online
programming would be pushed to the end of
a commercial digital queue.
But such "neutrality" safeguards are inadequate
to address more fundamental changes the Bells
and cable monopolies are seeking in their quest
to monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet
to become a medium designed primarily to serve
the interests of marketing and personal consumption,
rather than global civic-related communications,
we will face the political consequences for decades
to come. Unless we push back, the "brandwa****ng"
of America will permeate not only our information
infrastructure but global society and culture as well.
Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively
advancing such plans? With the arrival of the
long-awaited "convergence" of communications,
our media system is undergoing a major transformation.
Telephone and cable giants envision a potential
lucrative "triple play," as they impose near-monopoly
control over the residential broadband services
that send video, voice and data communications
flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell
phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits
will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines.
Video programming is of foremost interest to both
the phone and cable companies. The telephone
industry, like its cable rival, is now in the TV and
media business, offering customers television
channels, on-demand videos and games. Online
advertising is increasingly integrating multimedia
(such as animation and full-motion video) in its
pitches. Since video-driven material requires
a great deal of Internet bandwidth as it travels
online, phone and cable companies want to make
sure their television "applications" receive
preferential treatment on the networks they operate.
And their overall influence over the stream of
information coming into your home (or mobile device)
gives them the leverage to determine how the
broadband business evolves.
Mining Your Data
At the core of the new power held by phone and cable
companies are tools delivering what is known as
"deep packet inspection." With these tools, AT&T
and others can readily know the packets of information
you are receiving online--from e-mail, to websites,
to sharing of music, video and software downloads.
These "deep packet inspection" technologies are partly
designed to make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn't
become so congested it chokes off the delivery of
timely communications. Such products have already
been sold to universities and large businesses that
want to more economically manage their Internet
services. They are also being used to limit some
peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.
But these tools are also being promoted as ways that
companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can
simply grab greater control over the Internet. For
example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet
technology giant Cisco urges these companies to
"meter individual subscriber usage by application,"
as individuals' online travels are "tracked" and
"integrated with billing systems." Such tracking
and billing is made possible because they will know
"the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,"
"what the subscriber is doing" and "where the
subscriber resides."
Will Google, Amazon and the other companies
successfully fight the plans of the Bells and cable
companies ? Ultimately, they are likely to cut
a deal because they, too, are interested in monetizing
our online activities. After all, as Cisco notes,
content companies and network providers will need
to "cooperate with each other to leverage their
value proposition." They will be drawn by the
ability of cable and phone companies to track
"content usage...by subscriber," and where their
online services can be "protected from piracy,
metered, and appropriately valued."
Our Digital Destiny
It was former FCC chairman Michael Powell, with
the sup****t of then-commissioner and current chair
Kevin Martin, who permitted phone and cable giants
to have greater control over broadband. Powell
and his GOP majority eliminated longstanding
regulatory safeguards requiring phone companies
to operate as nondiscriminatory networks (technically
known as "common carriers"). He refused to require
that cable companies, when providing Internet access,
also operate in a similar nondiscriminatory manner.
As Stanford University law professor Lawrence
Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation
of the phone lines that helped make the Internet
today's vibrant, diverse and democratic medium.
But now, the phone companies are lobbying Wa****ngton
to kill off what's left of "common carrier" policy.
They wish to operate their Internet services as fully
"private" networks. Phone and cable companies
claim that the government shouldn't play a role in
broadband regulation: Instead of the free and open
network that offers equal access to all, they want
to reduce the Internet to a series of business decisions
between consumers and providers.
Besides their business interests, telephone and cable
companies also have a larger political agenda. Both
industries oppose giving local communities the right
to create their own local Internet wireless or wi-fi
networks. They also want to eliminate the last vestige
of local oversight from electronic media--the ability
of city or county government, for example, to require
telecommunications companies to serve the public
interest with, for example, public-access TV channels.
The Bells also want to further reduce the ability of
the FCC to oversee communications policy. They
hope that both the FCC and Congress -- via a new
Communications Act--will back these proposals.
The future of the online media in the United States
will ultimately depend on whether the Bells and
cable companies are allowed to determine the
country's "digital destiny." So before there are any
policy decisions, a national debate should begin
about how the Internet should serve the public.
We must insure that phone and cable companies
operate their Internet services in the public interest
-- as stewards for a vital medium for free expression.
If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable
digital destiny for themselves, they must mount an
intensive opposition similar to the successful
challenges to the FCC's media owner****p rules in
2003. Without such a public outcry to rein in the
GOP's cor****ate-driven agenda, it is likely ..........
Read the Rest :
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester
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