Lost in the noise: House committee voted to kill the Internet

[Guest guest]

" Dan Stafford " <aqmstaffo

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:51:10 -0500

Lost in the noise: House committee voted to kill the Internet

 

 

 

 

Lost in the noise: House committee voted to kill the Internet

 

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 for weeks about the plans that Big Telecom have for

discriminating between the bits they like and the bits they don't

http://bluememe.blogspot.com/2006/04/right-wing-seeks-to-take-your-internet.html

flowing through their pipes into our houses. Last week Matt @ MyDD

flagged the very dangerous bill working through the House right now.

http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/4/135854/0243

 

That bill took a big step toward being enacted into law last week, and

it seems nobody noticed.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/06/BUG\

1NI41OC1.DTL & type=business

 

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 @ dKos, and it got a ton more comments over there.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/11/194439/884

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 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.

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/netfreedomnow

 

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

 

 

 

--

" Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the

government when it deserves it. "

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