Tag: Robert M. McDowell

Posted on By Robert M. McDownell, Esq.

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.

Posted on By Guest Author Robert Corn-Revere, Esq.

Shadow Debate

By guest blogger ROBERT CORN-REVERE, partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLC, Washington, D.C.

During the presidential campaign, and particularly since the election, conservative talk radio and the blogosphere have been abuzz with rumors that the Democratic agenda would include reviving the Fairness Doctrine.  Prominent media activists have labeled such claims as fantasy and asserted they have no interest in reviving the policy, which required broadcast licensees to air “controversial issues of public importance” and to do so in a “balanced” way.
    
That debate has now been joined in Washington by actual experts in communications law.  FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, speaking at a Media Institute luncheon on Jan. 28, warned that there may be efforts to bring back the principles underlying the Fairness Doctrine, albeit in some modified form that may extend beyond the broadcasting medium.  In response, my friend Henry Geller, the venerable former FCC general counsel, criticized Commissioner McDowell’s views about the Doctrine and the concept of spectrum scarcity, and suggested instead that other new regulatory approaches may be appropriate.  

In a commentary written for Broadcasting & Cable, Henry acknowledged that “with the growth of cable, satellite, wireless, and, above all, the Internet, it is most unlikely that the fairness doctrine will return as a matter of general policy.”  But he also outlined other possible approaches, such as a spectrum fee to support meritorious programming, and suggested that the overriding issue is “the appropriate regulatory scheme for broadcasting in the 21st Century … not this skirmish over the unlikely re-appearance of the fairness doctrine.”
    
This looks like a debate in which both sides agree on two fundamental premises: (1) that the Fairness Doctrine is not likely to be resurrected, at least not in the form that existed before 1987; and (2) the real issue going forward is what type of regulatory model should be applied to broadcasting and other electronic media.  

Commissioner McDowell identified and critiqued various ways in which the government may assert its authority over broadcasting and other electronic media (including the Internet), while Henry Geller highlighted ways in which the “public trustee obligation” might be “clarified and made more effective.”  In short, they agree on the central issue, but simply offer quite different perspectives on the desirability of enforcing “public trustee” requirements.  
    
This overriding question about the proper regulatory approach is not confronting us because a new administration has come to Washington.  The Republican FCC under Chairman Kevin Martin launched an unprecedented number of regulatory initiatives designed to bolster and perpetuate government control over broadcast content and to extend such policies to other media. 

These efforts included a single-minded campaign to restrict broadcast indecency and Chairman Martin’s overzealous efforts to require a-la-carte marketing of cable and satellite programming.  They also included the regulation of video news releases – on cable as well as broadcasting – and proposed new rules to restrict product placement.  
    
One of Chairman Martin’s most ambitious initiatives, the so-called “enhanced disclosure form” which requires detailed quarterly reports on broadcast news and public affairs programming, and his proposed “localism” guidelines, to be overseen by mandatory local “advisory committees” and enforced by licensing review, would give the government far greater control over private editorial judgment than ever existed under the Fairness Doctrine.  In fact, forget the Fairness Doctrine.  “Localism” is the new “fairness.”  
    
The common element in all of these initiatives is the assumption that the government should oversee broadcasters’ (and perhaps others’) editorial choices – a philosophy that is antithetical to traditional First Amendment principles.  The real question, then, is whether the FCC can continue to maintain the legal fiction, eroded by time, technology, and case law, that the media it regulates are not entitled to full Constitutional protection.