[Peace-discuss] Lost in the noise: House committee voted to kill the Internet

[Chuck Minne]

posted by bluememe at 4/11/2006 
<http://bluememe.blogspot.com/2006/04/lost-in-noise-house-committee-voted-to.html> 

    Lost in the noise: House committee voted to kill the Internet
      
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/06/BUG1NI41OC1.DTL&type=business>


http://bluememe.blogspot.com/2006/04/lost-in-noise-house-committee-voted-to.html

There has been so much going on lately with plans to nuke Iran and the 
like, that a major story seems to have slipped under the radar for the 
entire blogosphere.

We've been jawing 
<http://bluememe.blogspot.com/2006/04/right-wing-seeks-to-take-your-internet.html> 
for weeks about the plans that Big Telecom have for discriminating 
between the bits they like and the bits they don't flowing through their 
pipes into our houses. Last week Matt @ MyDD flagged 
<http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/4/135854/0243> the very dangerous bill 
working through the House right now.

That bill took a big step toward being enacted into law last week 
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/06/BUG1NI41OC1.DTL&type=business>, 
and it seems nobody noticed.

    A House subcommittee handed phone companies a victory Wednesday by
    voting 27-4 to advance a bill that would make it easier for them to
    deliver television service over the Internet and clearing the way
    for all Internet carriers to charge more for speedier delivery.

    The lopsided vote was a defeat for Internet and technology firms
    like Google and Microsoft, which had hoped to amend the bill to
    enforce a principle called network neutrality and preserve the
    status quo under which all Internet traffic is treated equally.

    Earlier in the day, the subcommittee voted 23-8 to reject an
    amendment by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., that would have inserted
    specific language designed to enforce network neutrality and prevent
    the feared creation of fast and slow lanes on the Internet.

    Markey said his amendment was necessary to protect the "Internet as
    an engine of innovation" and ensure that new services had an equal
    chance to sprout.
    ...
    Supporters painted defeat of Markey's net neutrality amendment in
    bleak terms.

    "Members from both sides of the aisle endorsed a plan which will
    permit cable and phone companies to construct 'pay as you surf, pay
    as you post' toll booths for the Internet," said Jeff Chester,
    executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington.

    But Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies for the Pacific
    Research Institute in San Francisco, dismissed concerns that the
    proposed bill would lead to a two-tiered Internet.

    "There's plenty of competition," Arrison said. "The market will take
    care of it." 


Ah, yes... the market. Just as the market driven television and radio 
airwaves have been well-allocated by the market? Just as the 
oligopolistic and largely bootlicking newspaper industry reflects the 
market?

Cough, cough (bullshit) cough.

I don't mean to say that the free market is a bad thing. It is a good 
thing, but it has fatal flaws. Perhaps the biggest one is that in many 
industries the big just keep getting bigger, and eventually dominate in 
ways that hurt everyone else. I'll save the economics lesson for another 
time, but there are industries where, if left alone, the market 
eventually reduces to no more than a handful of "competitors" who don't 
actually do much competing.

Telecom is one of those industries. A few players have now bought and 
paid for enough Congresscritters (and, presumably, Senators) to get what 
they want, which is unfettered power -- to set prices, of course, and to 
grow larger, but that ain't all.

There is now an ugly symbiosis between the telecoms and their regulators 
in Congress. An unfettered, content-neutral Internet has zero direct 
cost to the telecoms, but muzzling the political rabble certainly won't 
displease them -- the more you own, the more you tend to value order. On 
the other hand, we have become a growing thorn in the side of the 
political establishment, and making it easier for their corporate 
keepers to keep us out is a high (if unstated) priority. So I have no 
doubt that, behind closed doors, the ability to shut us up was integral 
to the game plan.

 From the carrier's standpoint, my ones and zeros are no different from 
Instapundit's ones and zeros, which are no different from 
Sesamestreet.com's ones and zeros. But mine are the ones with a bullseye 
painted on them. So it doesn't surprise me that the conservative blogs 
aren't talking about this. But I am surprised that the left 
hemiblogosphere isn't making a serious stink about this.

Anyway, six Dems joined the evil Republican majority on this bill in the 
subcommittee vote. It now goes before the House Energy and Commerce 
Committeewhere it is expected to be taken up the week of April 24.

We need to get our shit together and make some serious noise about this. 
We can't afford to lose this fight, or we may not have the tools for the 
next one.

Update: I cross-posted 
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/11/194439/884>@ dKos, and it got a 
ton more comments over there. Several of the commenters there, like Jeff 
Kaplan here, pointed that a bunch of folks have been paying attention 
and are taking action. Go here 
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/netfreedomnow> right now and sign 
up to make your displeasure known. Later tonight I will try to pull 
together a buch more resources and update this again with more action items.

Use it or lose it, people.

posted by bluememe at 4/11/2006 
<http://bluememe.blogspot.com/2006/04/lost-in-noise-house-committee-voted-to.html> 



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