Focusing on ‘Net Vitality’ Can Help End ‘Net Neutrality’ War

The latest battle over “net neutrality” has returned to the federal courts and to the sharply divided perspectives regarding the extent to which the Federal Communications Commission should assert regulatory authority over how internet service providers offer broadband network service.

In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a stay that freezes the latest move by the FCC to re-impose a regime that requires ISPs to treat all services they carry equally, akin to the way that more traditional telephone companies have been regulated for nearly a century as nondiscriminatory common carriers. However, it has not yet rendered a decision on the case’s merits, which offers a real opportunity to look at the issue differently.

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FCC Ready To Ramp Up Rulemaking on Two Key Issues

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is one of the most important regulatory agencies in America, and perhaps the world.  It is home to scores of talented, dedicated, and hard-working engineers, economists, and legal experts who have eschewed private-sector lucre for selfless public service.  

With statutory authority to regulate the nation’s communications systems, devices, and technology, the FCC has power to approve or deny mergers; levy fines and penalties; bring suit; award licenses and contracts; allocate spectrum; conduct hearings and inquiries; establish standards and codes; and promulgate regulations governing television, radio, telephone, wireless, mobile, Internet, cable, satellite, and international services in the multibillion-dollar telecom, media, and technology sector.  

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How California’s Net Neutrality Law Can Inform Federal Digital Privacy Policymaking

One of the major unresolved issues in crafting comprehensive federal digital privacy legislation has carried over from last year to the current 117th Congress.  This regards whether current or future state privacy laws should be preempted so that there only will be one uniform national set of enforceable rules regarding the collection, storage, and transmission of personally identifiable information.

A one-size-fits-all approach makes intuitive sense since online services and social media are not confined to traditional geographic boundaries.  And absent a fully federal approach, there is the possibility that digital companies will be faced with a crazy-quilt pattern of regulatory compliance, increasing both their potential legal liability and the cost of doing business.  In short, this is a scenario for Plan A.

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Campaign To Break Big Tech Is Regulatory Overkill

When Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) first went on the warpath against big banks, she captured the attention of middle America.  Now, Warren has turned her wrath on Big Tech.  Her mantra is that big companies are bad, and the bigger the badder they are for all of us.  The government, she argues, should step up its regulation of these companies and step in to break them up if necessary.  Not only is Warren wrong but she is also out of step with most Americans today.

It would be unfair to lay all the blame on Warren for the campaign against big corporations.  This sort of populism has been a strain in American politics since the Revolution, and most recently since the Occupy Wall Street campaign.  But today’s anti-corporate movement has a new look and a new lexicon, including terms like privacy, net neutrality, and transparency, to accompany the typical notions of competition and consumer protection.

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Conflict and Compromise Await New Congress in Telecom, Media, Tech

A new era of American history begins when the 116th Congress convenes in January 2019 with one of the most partisan classes in modern history. Depending on which side of the aisle they sit, the members’ mission will be either to balance the ship of state or continue full steam ahead.

Conventional wisdom suggests there will be conflict. Optimists hope there will be compromise. The reality will be somewhere in between as the new Congress will have the opportunity to forge a unified path on things that matter to all Americans. With so many pressing policy issues facing the republic – immigration, healthcare, homeland security, and more – it is a stretch to think telecom, media, and technology (TMT) issues will top the agenda or lead the day.

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Time To Review Kid Vid Regulations

Under Chairman Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission has made some remarkable strides in reviewing and moving to repeal a host of burdensome regulations that have outlived their usefulness. Media ownership rules like the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership ban come to mind, as do the Commission’s highly inflammatory efforts to roll back the enforcement of net neutrality under Title II.

The Commission continues to forge ahead. The next salvo may well be the initiative announced by Chairman Pai to review the rules governing educational and informational programming for children aired by broadcasters, known as the “Kid Vid” rules. Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has agreed to oversee the review of these regulations.

The story of the Kid Vid rules is a familiar one, at least in its broad strokes. Congress enacts legislation to address a perceived problem, in this case deficiencies in broadcast programming aimed at children (Children’s Television Act of 1990). The FCC carries out its obligation to issue regulations implementing the legislation (Policies and Rules Concerning Children’s Television Programming, 1991).

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Net Neutrality: How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going?

It’s hard to imagine an issue in today’s media/telecom policy universe that has sparked more controversy or inspired more passion than the innocuous-sounding Net Neutrality. How could such a seemingly simple concept – that Internet access should be open to everyone and that services should be provided on a neutral basis without discrimination by type, price, speed, or quality – create such a firestorm?

One need look no further than the cover of this edition of Inside the FCC for the answer, or at least a major clue: “The Pros and Cons of Internet Regulation.” Many advocates of Net Neutrality believe this goal can’t be achieved without the regulatory hand of government exerting its grip on the Internet – and the more forcefully, the better. In contrast, other advocates of Net Neutrality believe it is a goal best achieved through the workings of the marketplace, and point to the successful operation of the Internet for years prior to any regulation.

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The Enduring Threat of Net Neutrality

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H.L. Mencken

No regulatory issue in memory has been quite like that of “net neutrality.” A solution in search of a problem, bankrolled and of early and particular economic benefit to two companies, and a regulation that threatens to give government sway over an industry where it had none before, network neutrality by regulation defies logic, history, and the way the world works. Other than that it’s one terrific idea.

Net neutrality was conjured up by an alliance of left-wing activists, Democratic commissioners of the FCC, and certain Internet companies and their trade associations. The regulations that followed have been on a devolutionary path, such that what was merely bad (net neutrality under Title I) became, in 2015, very much worse – net neutrality under Title II. Continue reading “The Enduring Threat of Net Neutrality”

Netflix, Self Interest, and Net Neutrality

The recent announcement by Netflix that it has been reducing the video quality of its programs on mobile networks for years – something the new net neutrality rules prohibit Internet service providers (ISPs) from doing – has sparked a firestorm by opponents of net neutrality regulations.

From the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and cable and telecom interests have come expressions of outrage that Netflix never acknowledged this practice during the time when regulators were actively considering, and ultimately approving, utility-style regulation of ISPs.

Though Netflix has kept a low profile since acknowledging its throttling, it has averred that it did so to assist some of its customers in remaining under data caps.  FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, though, takes a dim view of that argument, saying in a recent speech that “Netflix has attempted to paint a picture of altruism whereby it virtuously sought to save these consumers from bumping up against or exceeding their data caps.  There is no way to sugarcoat it: The news is deeply disturbing and justly generates calls for government – and maybe even congressional – investigation.” …

The thing that troubles O’Rielly is that this Netflix practice was never revealed in the company’s many filings to the FCC during that agency’s net neutrality proceeding.  >> Read More

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.  The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on April 5, 2016.

Title II Places Global Internet Freedom in Jeopardy

By guest blogger ROBERT M. McDOWELL, partner at Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, D.C.  Former FCC commissioner McDowell is chairman of The Media Institute’s Global Internet Freedom Advisory Council.

In February, the Federal Communications Commission reversed decades of bipartisan consensus on America’s foreign policy for the Internet when it adopted new “open Internet” rules.  These sweeping new regulations undermine America’s ability to resist increased government control of the Internet internationally, thus placing global Internet freedom and prosperity in jeopardy.

Proponents of more Internet regulation argued that “the strongest possible” laws were needed to prevent Internet service providers, such as cable and phone companies, from acting in anticompetitive ways and harming consumers by, say, blocking selected Web destinations.  Their solution?  Imposing regulations designed for the Ma Bell phone monopoly on 21st-century technology by declaring the Internet a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.  After unprecedented pressure from the White House and net neutrality activists, the FCC abandoned a more moderate approach in favor of Title II classification.

It is important to remember that this represented a stunning reversal of the policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations.  Both presidencies rejected regulating the Internet like a public utility – domestically or internationally – instead adopting a highly successful “hands-off” approach.   The result: The Internet is the greatest global deregulation success story of all time.

Despite the long-held policy against subjecting the Internet to telephone-style regulations, the FCC’s imposition of more than 1,000 new regulations under Title II – including the power to set “rates, terms, and conditions,” will serve to legitimize international efforts to expand government control of the Internet as well.  With America’s bargaining power regarding the issue of Internet freedom weakened as a result, countries like Russia and China may encounter less resistance to increased multilateral authority over the Net.

Furthermore, the FCC’s new rules could have tangible consequences for America’s existing treaty obligations.  For example, defining the Internet as a phone network may trigger expanded jurisdiction over the Web through existing treaties of the International Telecommunication Union, a regulatory arm of the United Nations.  In reaction to similar proposals in 1998, President Clinton’s FCC chairman, William Kennard, presciently said that “classifying Internet access services as telecommunications services could have significant consequences for the global development of the Internet.”

In 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), the United States led a coalition of 55 nations that refused to sign a global treaty that would presume new authority to regulate disparate aspects of the Internet.  Now, however, with more government intrusion into this space at home, maintaining such global coalitions in the future will become increasingly more difficult.

Another potential consequence of the FCC’s rules is an unintended encouragement of intergovernmental rules to impose “sending party pays” fees for international Internet traffic that terminates on networks owned by foreign phone companies.  Such a plan was put forward in 2012 by a handful of European phone companies and ITU member states.  Fortunately, the plan was rejected, as the Unites States and others recognized it would increase costs for consumers as Internet content and app companies would have to pay fees – as a matter of international law – that would be passed on to all Internet users.

Additionally, China continues to advance a proposal to make a special committee of the U.N. General Assembly the dominant body to determine global Internet governance.  Meanwhile, Russia has joined China in sponsoring an “international code of conduct for information security” at the U.N. that would authorize Internet censorship and enshrine multilateral state control of the global network.  These countries have many client states that would support them in a one-country-one-vote treaty adoption.

This week, many of these same countries will be advocating their vision of the Internet’s future at a major international conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.  Global multilateral oversight and regulation of the Internet is their goal.  Included in the written submissions preceding the conference is a proposal by China, and members of the G-77 group of developing countries, calling on member states to reject use of the Internet for “subversive” or “political” purposes.

Also this week, China hosts the Second World Internet Conference.  With government leaders from Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan – among others – in attendance, the purported goal of the conference is to promote “an interconnected world shared and governed by all.”  At the conference, China will continue to push for “Internet sovereignty,” a vision for Internet governance that threatens to fundamentally transform the Internet from a truly international information sharing platform, to a compartmentalized series of intranets heavily regulated by governments.

By reversing decades of bipartisan agreement to limit Internet regulation, the FCC has created an irreconcilable contradiction between America’s domestic and foreign policies.  Unfortunately, the cause of an open and freedom-enhancing global Internet will suffer as a result.