FCC Chairman promises Net Neutrality, openly slams politicians and lobbyists - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Shadowex3 · 11-22-2010, 01:28 PM

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FCC chairman Julius Genachowski now finds himself caught between unfulfilled promises made to the tech community to keep the internet open, and a Republican Congress ready to portray any new rules on broadband ISPs as heavy-handed, economy-killing regulation. Genachowski said Wednesday that the rules are coming. He didn't say how -- the $64,000 question -- but only that the FCC is being slow in order to be careful.
"That will happen," Genachowski said, referring to so-called net neutrality rules designed to make sure that the telecoms that own the net's pipes can't control what goes through them. "We will make sure that we get the rules right, we need to make sure that what we do maximizes innovation and investment across the ecosystem."
Genachowski, a former tech executive for IAC, was clearly at home speaking to top Silicon Valley executives at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
He made it plain to his audience that he wanted to keep the net as a platform for "innovation" -- meaning online companies should be able to build businesses without having to ask permission from the telecoms to do so.
But his use of the word "investment" is a signal to the telecoms that he's thinking of them as well. They are fighting to stave off regulation from the FCC, saying they will hurt the companies financially, ultimately reducing how much tech infrastructure they build.
The telecoms argue that competition will keep them playing fairly, even as all of them fight to find ways to be more than just a utility company -- building out app stores, Comcast buying NBC, and wireless companies offering TV services on their networks.
Genachowski made clear he wasn't too happy when Google and Verizon announced a net neutrality policy proposal in the spring. The companies released that controversial proposal at same time the FCC was trying to forge a compromise with industry players behind closed doors, effectively ending the FCC's effort.
"I would have preferred if they didn't do exactly what they did when they did it," Genachowski said. "It had the effect of slowing down some processes."
Genachowski defended the FCC's actions over the last 22 months, and sought to downplay likely confrontations with the new Congress.
"Things shouldn't change because the kinds of issues we work on aren't partisan," Genachowski said. He named the plan to have an incentive auction get broadcasters to auction off the spectrum they have to make it available for mobile broadband, and transforming the $8 billion Universal Service Fund to help people get broadband, not just phone services.
Unfortunately for the chairman, net neutrality does include some partisan elements, and as Wired.com's Sam Gustin wrote yesterday, the FCC is already being warned by the likely heads of a powerful House committee that it should not act unilaterally to impose rules on wireless and wireline ISPs.
Genachowski, who worked at the agency in the early 1990s when mobile broadband and internet policy was just being set and mobile phones were as heavy and big as bricks, said in the long view, the FCC is facing great problems.
"These are exactly the issues we hoped we'd be dealing with in the future," Genachowski said.
"The biggest issues involve the opportunities of wireless, mobile broadband and whether we have the spectrum we need. In our wildest dreams we hoped the country might have to deal with problem like that."

The FCC has been trying to accomplish net neutrality for some time, and the government has always been more or less playing both sides, but it seems like recently both have just flat out polarized on the issue. While I'm pretty sure the internet isn't really going anywhere, it's in too many people's interests to hold the status quo, it's still very interesting to see someone actually speaking this forcefully on the subject.

I'm amazed at the strength of the language being used in the Full Speech (pdf), the FCC is basically flat out calling out the government on this and openly telling it that come hell or high water the FCC is going to war for the internet and will fight to stop deals that "that exchange Internet freedom for bloated profits".

dksuddeth · 11-22-2010, 02:05 PM

maybe i'm behind the power curve on this, but is the ONLY issue about net neutrality being who controls what content on their own data streams?

Shadowex3 · 11-22-2010, 02:40 PM

No, it's a lot more than that. The simplest valid explanation is imagine if every company that owned some section of the hardware the data was travelling through was able to say "Nice data you have there, be a shame if something were to happen to it" to everything going through.

Baraka_Guru · 11-22-2010, 03:00 PM

It's good to see an organization supporting net neutrality and so adamantly at that. I look at this as basically the public vs. corporatocracy. The Internet is important in so many ways such that it is a digital form of a global public sphere. That corporations can have arbitrary influence over that sphere is a danger to the freedom of communication.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

maybe i'm behind the power curve on this, but is the ONLY issue about net neutrality being who controls what content on their own data streams?

Here is a metaphor that may illustrate what's at stake.

YouTube - Search for Spock

11-22-2010, 02:05 PM	#2 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	maybe i'm behind the power curve on this, but is the ONLY issue about net neutrality being who controls what content on their own data streams? __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."