The End of the Internet?

[Guest guest]

This article can be found on the web at

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester

 

 

 

 

The End of the Internet?

 

by JEFF CHESTER

 

[posted online on February 1, 2006]

 

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an

alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and

nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded

service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

 

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are

developing strategies that would track and store information on our

every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing

system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency.

According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone

and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest

pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major

advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these

providers would have first priority on our computer and television

screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer

communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

 

Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content

providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream

videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new

subscription plans that would further limit the online experience,

establishing " platinum, " " gold " and " silver " levels of Internet access

that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or

even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

 

To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists

are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's

communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit

them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as

private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.

Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission

(FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on

the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised

Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are

using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless

lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail

machine.

 

The telephone industry has been somewhat more candid than the cable

industry about its strategy for the Internet's future. Senior phone

executives have publicly discussed plans to begin imposing a new

scheme for the delivery of Internet content, especially from major

Internet content companies. As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT & T,

told Business Week in November, " Why should they be allowed to use my

pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the

cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or or

Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts! "

 

The phone industry has marshaled its political allies to help win the

freedom to impose this new broadband business model. At a recent

conference held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank

funded by Comcast, Verizon, AT & T and other media companies, there was

much discussion of a plan for phone companies to impose fees on a

sliding scale, charging content providers different levels of service.

" Price discrimination, " noted PFF's resident media expert Adam

Thierer, " drives the market-based capitalist economy. "

 

Net Neutrality

 

To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on the information

highway, some new media companies and public-interest groups are

calling for new federal policies requiring " network neutrality " on the

Internet. Common Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access

Project and Consumers Union, among others, have proposed that

broadband providers would be prohibited from discriminating against

all forms of digital content. For example, phone or cable companies

would not be allowed to slow down competing or undesirable content.

 

Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care

about--civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair

elections--will be further threatened by this push for corporate

control. Imagine how the next presidential election would unfold if

major political advertisers could make strategic payments to Comcast

so that ads from Democratic and Republican candidates were more

visible and user-friendly than ads of third-party candidates with less

funds. Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting

nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a

competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the

margins. It is possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial

online programming would be pushed to the end of a commercial digital

queue.

 

But such " neutrality " safeguards are inadequate to address more

fundamental changes the Bells and cable monopolies are seeking in

their quest to monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet to

become a medium designed primarily to serve the interests of marketing

and personal consumption, rather than global civic-related

communications, we will face the political consequences for decades to

come. Unless we push back, the " brandwashing " of America will permeate

not only our information infrastructure but global society and culture

as well.

 

Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such

plans? With the arrival of the long-awaited " convergence " of

communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation.

Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative " triple

play, " as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential

broadband services that send video, voice and data communications

flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods.

All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the

telephone and cable lines.

 

Video programming is of foremost interest to both the phone and cable

companies. The telephone industry, like its cable rival, is now in the

TV and media business, offering customers television channels,

on-demand videos and games. Online advertising is increasingly

integrating multimedia (such as animation and full-motion video) in

its pitches. Since video-driven material requires a great deal of

Internet bandwidth as it travels online, phone and cable companies

want to make sure their television " applications " receive preferential

treatment on the networks they operate. And their overall influence

over the stream of information coming into your home (or mobile

device) gives them the leverage to determine how the broadband

business evolves.

 

Mining Your Data

 

At the core of the new power held by phone and cable companies are

tools delivering what is known as " deep packet inspection. " With these

tools, AT & T and others can readily know the packets of information you

are receiving online--from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music,

video and software downloads.

 

These " deep packet inspection " technologies are partly designed to

make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn't become so congested it

chokes off the delivery of timely communications. Such products have

already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to

more economically manage their Internet services. They are also being

used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.

 

But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such

as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the

Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet

technology giant Cisco urges these companies to " meter individual

r usage by application, " as individuals' online travels are

" tracked " and " integrated with billing systems. " Such tracking and

billing is made possible because they will know " the identity and

profile of the individual r, " " what the r is doing "

and " where the r resides. "

 

Will Google, Amazon and the other companies successfully fight the

plans of the Bells and cable companies? Ultimately, they are likely to

cut a deal because they, too, are interested in monetizing our online

activities. After all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network

providers will need to " cooperate with each other to leverage their

value proposition. " They will be drawn by the ability of cable and

phone companies to track " content usage...by r, " and where

their online services can be " protected from piracy, metered, and

appropriately valued. "

 

Our Digital Destiny

 

It was former FCC chairman Michael Powell, with the support of

then-commissioner and current chair Kevin Martin, who permitted phone

and cable giants to have greater control over broadband. Powell and

his GOP majority eliminated longstanding regulatory safeguards

requiring phone companies to operate as nondiscriminatory networks

(technically known as " common carriers " ). He refused to require that

cable companies, when providing Internet access, also operate in a

similar nondiscriminatory manner. As Stanford University law professor

Lawrence Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation of the

phone lines that helped make the Internet today's vibrant, diverse and

democratic medium.

 

But now, the phone companies are lobbying Washington to kill off

what's left of " common carrier " policy. They wish to operate their

Internet services as fully " private " networks. Phone and cable

companies claim that the government shouldn't play a role in broadband

regulation: Instead of the free and open network that offers equal

access to all, they want to reduce the Internet to a series of

business decisions between consumers and providers.

 

Besides their business interests, telephone and cable companies also

have a larger political agenda. Both industries oppose giving local

communities the right to create their own local Internet wireless or

wi-fi networks. They also want to eliminate the last vestige of local

oversight from electronic media--the ability of city or county

government, for example, to require telecommunications companies to

serve the public interest with, for example, public-access TV

channels. The Bells also want to further reduce the ability of the FCC

to oversee communications policy. They hope that both the FCC and

Congress--via a new Communications Act--will back these proposals.

 

The future of the online media in the United States will ultimately

depend on whether the Bells and cable companies are allowed to

determine the country's " digital destiny. " So before there are any

policy decisions, a national debate should begin about how the

Internet should serve the public. We must insure that phone and cable

companies operate their Internet services in the public interest--as

stewards for a vital medium for free expression.

 

If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny

for themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the

successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003.

Without such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven

agenda, it is likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied

against further consolidation will be " tamed " by the well-funded

lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industry.