30
Apr
Net Neutrality and the telecom protection racket
Protection rackets are as old as commerce. You build yourself a nice little business, and along comes someone with a broadsword or a baseball bat or a gun, telling you it’d be a shame if something happened to wreck all your hard work. But help is at hand: for a percentage of your take, you can avoid any trouble. There won’t be a fire; there won’t be a strike; the goods and services you need will be delivered on time.
That’s against the law, of course. If you’re a criminal organization running a protection racket and you want to stay out of jail, you rely on intimidation and paying off the cops. If you’re a giant cable or telecom outfit, you pay off Congress and get your racket legalized.
A number of people have written about the effort by the nation’s largest internet providers to create a two-tiered internet, one where web sites pay the providers not to interfere with their content and services, and where the internet providers can block or slow down sites they don’t like or who don’t pay.
But nobody is calling it what it is: a protection racket. The internet providers are acting like street corner thugs. If you run a web-based business or content site and you can’t or won’t pay, you’re screwed. If you rely on a site for content or services and that site can’t or won’t pay the protection, or your internet provider simply doesn’t like the site, you’re screwed.
Under current law, internet providers are required to offer their customers equal access to every site on the web; that’s known as Net Neutrality. Under the proposed law, the providers could facilitate or block access at their pleasure. And the cops, Congress, are eagerly lapping up the bribes: an amendment to the COPE Act (Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act) ensuring Net Neutrality was defeated in the House Energy & Commerce Committee despite the efforts of Congressman Ed Markey and a coalition of other House representatives and grass roots Net Neutrality supporters.
I’m coming late to this issue. Other people know more about it and can provide better information. You should read what they have to say, and if you’re as concerned as I am and they are, you should join the effort to guarantee your continued access to the content and services you rely on now. This isn’t a partisan issue, although Republicans in Congress are heavily tilted toward the internet providers: if the effort fails, Republican internet users will be just as much affected as Democrats.
All I’m here to say is that I know a racket when I see one, and the what the big internet providers are after is a racket. I know a thug when I see one, and the big internet providers are acting like thugs. I know a crooked cop when I see one, and the Congressional opponents of Net Neutrality are bought and paid for by the thugs. But like any protection racket, the key to defeating it is united action from the victims.
Don’t be a victim. Don’t let the thugs win.
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Net Neutrality is not the law today. ISPs have been able to do as they wish and for the most part. ISPs have been open pipes for web site content and have not discriminated between sites or sizes of downloads.
On the other hand some ISPs have blocked large attachments over certain sizes from going through their email systems. Or the ISPs have turned off customers or blocked certain IP addresses or IP blocks where there are Denial of Service attacks or spam mail being generated. There has been no law on this issue.
The real problem is lack of competition for the “last mile” access. In other words, there is currently a duolopoly – cable and the old Bell telephone companies (now called Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T). These Bell companies have worked in a systematic way to close down other competing ISPs using the Bell network and wires to deliver internet. It is natural to want to stop competition especially when the competitors are allowed by law to use the monopoly’s wires.
It is not because MCI and the old-AT&T voluntarily wanted to get away from offering their “family” and unlimited calling telephone plans in 2004. These companies were forced out of the business by the FCC. The Bells “lobbied” hard with Congress and the FCC to bring competition to a stop, threatening not to deliver fiber to the home if competition continued. The result was that MCI and the old AT&T businesses suffered. MCI and the old AT&T were sold to their competitors at rock bottom prices. Verizon snatched up MCI and SBC took AT&T. This is really good business if you are the winner. The AT&T brand name is amazingly powerful, almost equalling the authority and power of a government agency which AT&T what is was, in effect, from 1934 to 1984.
Less competition means less choice. Why use Verizon DSL if you have a choice? If there was choice competition would force network neutrality. If there is one, or two sources, of internet in your town, then these companies control the bottleneck, the “gateway” it is called in anti-trust law. Controlling the gateway allows the “competitor” to charge what they want to users on both sides. Thus, the old Bell companies will be able to charge the DSL home user and the web site sought out by the home user.
No competition is the issue. There is no IPS competition because the FCC has given the Bells duopoloy control of the wires outside your homes.
Change this and network neutrality will not be an issue. Customers who do not get to Google because of their Bell ISP can go to another ISP.
Competition will prevent the Bell’s from blocking.
April 30th, 2006 at 4:55 amHi, Barlow. Thanks for the clarification. I had thought there were FCC rules on the issue. I’m not sure competition will do the trick, though: I have two broadband options here, one DSL and one cable, and I suspect that if the phone company goes for the two-tiered structure, so will the cable company.
April 30th, 2006 at 8:23 amPlease be aware that the COPE bill goes far beyond the net neutrality issue. It also threatens PEG community media and offers no protection against the red-lining of telco/cableco services.
More info can be found at: http://saveaccess.org
Also – competition between two media monopolies is hardly competition. And while the sponsors of this Bill tout lower consumer prices, the reality and trade-offs are far more costly. In Texas where a State Franchise Bill passed, there has been slight drops in cable prices, but telco rates went up. In addition, local Public, Educational and Governmental access channels are already under attack and have an uncertain future.
April 30th, 2006 at 8:49 am