Tag: Open Internet Order

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Net Vitality Should Be the Cornerstone of U.S. Broadband Policy

By guest blogger PROF. STUART N. BROTMAN, faculty member at Harvard Law School and author of the study Net Vitality: Identifying the Top-Tier Global Broadband Internet Leaders published by The Media Institute.  Prof. Brotman is a member of the Institute’s Global Internet Freedom Advisory Council.  The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on April 24, 2015.

The Federal Communication Commission’s recent Open Internet Order is intended to develop an enforceable regulatory scheme to ensure that net neutrality would be achieved.  One of its rationales is that unless such government intervention is put in place, the United States is likely to slip into the category of Internet also-rans, hurting innovation and our economy as a whole as Internet “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” thwart competition and impede consumer demand.

But how accurate is this perception?  The Internet, after all, is not just a network of networks, but rather a complex ecosystem comprised of applications and content, devices, and networks.  The interdependency of these three pillars creates the rich experience of the Internet, not just in the United States, but all around the world.

And consumer usage patterns continue to be extraordinarily dynamic, as well.  More people now access the Internet through mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, than on desktops and laptops tethered in homes, for example.  And more people now rely on apps rather than browsers to get the information and help they need more readily.  Policies premised on fixed residential use of fiber-based broadband do not seem to recognize that these seismic changes already have occurred.  >> Read More

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The FCC’s Wheeler of Fortune

LAS VEGAS – Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler’s speech yesterday to broadcasters attending the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show here dealt primarily with broadcast-specific subjects.  But as expected, he also used the occasion to tout the Commission’s new Open Internet Order, arguing that broadcasters should support it because, like the must-carry rules, the order “assures that your use of the Internet will be free from the risk of discrimination or hold-up by a gatekeeper.”

To characterize this claim as 100-proof claptrap would be to understate the case.  Put simply, no Internet service provider has, or would have, the tiniest interest in discriminating against anything broadcasters might want to put online.  Indeed, net neutrality is widely embraced by the phone and cable companies.

The real issue is the way in which the FCC – through Title II regulation – proposes to define and enforce net neutrality in the future.

Much has been said about the inefficiencies and investment-reducing effects of Title II regulation, and most all of it is true.  But the less-well-discussed aspect is the potential in it for activist groups and ideologues like Free Press and kindred organizations to exploit this order in attempts to impose certain types of content controls.  >> Read More

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Is This What Net Neutrality Is Really About?

Recent congressional hearings held in the wake of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality ruling provide a glimpse into what is so deeply wrong with this regulation, and why so many activist groups were behind it.

It’s an aspect of this matter of which you were perhaps unaware while the FCC was considering its regulatory strategy. Perhaps you thought net neutrality meant what was said of it: that it was intended to prevent the blocking or throttling of websites, or of “paid prioritization.”

Silly you.  Actually, those were the interests of those companies — like Google and Netflix — that saw in governmental sway over the Internet commercial benefits for themselves.  But what about those groups and individuals who had political or ideological interests, and who played such outsized roles in the deal?

You know, groups like Free Press, Media Matters, Public Knowledge and New America’s Open Technology Institute?  Or what about the large grant-giving foundations, like Ford, MacArthur, Knight, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute that, in addition to munificently funding third-party net neutrality activists, directly lobbied the FCC themselves?

It should now be clear, even to those who weren’t paying attention earlier, that the primary interest these groups had, and have, in net neutrality is their desire to insinuate government in the regulation of speech on the Internet.  >> Read More