u didn't expect a free ride ferever did ya?

[Guest guest]

there's money to be made...information to squash...sheep to be sheared, etc and

so forth

 

Friday, June 9th, 2006

House Passes Controversial COPE Telecom Bill, Rejects Amendment to Protect Net

Neutrality

 

--

The House voted on legislation yesterday that could determine the future of the

Internet and public access television in this country. We examine the

implications of the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act -

known as the COPE bill - with Anthony Riddle of the Alliance for Community

Media. [includes rush transcript]

--

The House voted on legislation yesterday that could determine the future of the

internet and public access television in this country. In a vote of 321 to 101,

the House voted to pass the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and

Enhancement Act, known as the COPE bill. This controversial telecommunications

legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other

digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or

governmental oversight. The bill would effectively end what is known as " net

neutrality " which is the concept that that everyone, everywhere, should have

free, universal and non-discriminatory access to the Internet. The bill would

also cut back the obligation of cable TV companies to devote channels to public

access and fund the facilities to run them. And the COPE bill would replace

local cable franchises with national franchises.

Democratic Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey had proposed an amendment to

the COPE bill that would have included stiff net neutrality regulations and

prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from

others but the amendment was rejected.

 

 

Rep. Ed Markey (D - MA), speaking on the House floor, June 8th, 2006.

 

Opposition to the COPE bill came from all corners. The " Save The Internet "

coalition, representing musicians, special interest groups, bloggers, and

others, delivered almost 800,000 petition signatures to Congress in favor of net

neutrality. Internet companies have also spoken out against provisions in the

bill. Sergey Brin, co-founder of the search engine Google, met with members of

the Commerce Committee to explain the importance of net neutrality for promoting

Internet commerce and the CEO of E-bay Meg Whitman took the unusual step of

personally e-mailing the auction site's users to ask their support for promoting

net neutrality protections. eBay stated that the e-mail reached over a million

users.

 

Anthony Riddle, executive director of the Alliance for Community Media.

 

 

 

AMY GOODMAN: This is Congressman Markey speaking from the House floor yesterday.

 

CONGRESSMAN MARKEY: Let me just make this point once again. The Bell companies

had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet. The Bell companies had

nothing to do with the development of the World Wide Web. The Bell companies had

nothing to do with the browser and its development. In fact, AT & T was asked if

they wanted to build the Internet, the packet-switched network in 1966. They

turned the contract down when the government went to them. And so a company

named BB & N, Bolt, Beranek, & Newman got the contract, a very small company --

not AT & T. They had nothing to do with the development of the Internet, but now,

at this late date, they want to come in and to create these bottleneck control

points that allow them to extract Internet taxes, Internet fees from companies

and individuals who have been using the Internet for a generation. It is this

absence of non-discriminatory language in the Manager’s Amendment and in the

bill to which I object.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined by Anthony Riddle. He’s the executive director of

the Alliance for Community Media. Welcome to Democracy Now! Is net neutrality

over?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: No, I'd say that we're halfway to the apocalypse right now.

There's been a fairly bad bill for the Internet and for public media that has

gone through the House. It’s the COPE Act, and it was passed in the dead of

night last night, 3-1 margin. Effectively, it continues this sort of decision

that was made by the Supreme Court last year in August which changed the

Internet fundamentally. Before that time, it was understood that all data on the

Internet was to be treated equally and that nobody was to block any information

going from anyone to anyone. With the Supreme Court decision in last night's

bill, the companies that operate the wires or fibers that bring the Internet to

and from your house have the ability to offer preferential treatment for pay,

and also to block any content that they deem opposing their business interests.

 

AMY GOODMAN: So users already pay Internet service per month. So this does the

other end, the content providers, people who put up websites would also have to

pay?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: No, they actually pay already now. You know, if you have a

website, you have to pay for space on the website and you have to pay for a

pipeline for people to reach, and however big that pipeline is for people to

come to your web site, that determines how many people can access your

webstreams or whatever. So people are paying on both ends already. What they're

trying to do right now is get people to pay for the middle, so that you can pay

for an EZ-Pass lane if you're Disney and have a lot of money, and if you don't,

then you're going to have to sit in the long lines waiting to go through the

toll booth.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Is this Senate going to approve this kind of bill?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: There's a set of bills in the Senate that are very similar.

There's some differences or whatever. What the Senate will have to do is pass a

bill and then the two houses will have to get together and do what they call a

“conference committee.†Since both of those houses are controlled by the

same party, you know, with large majorities, they can actually change the bills

in toto in this conversation. They don't have to stick to the bills that were

actually passed. They can add anything or take anything out as long as both

houses agree.

 

AMY GOODMAN: So what is your hope for the Senate?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: This is what I hope: what I hope is that the people who are

within the range of this program and all over the United States will check in on

this matter. This is of vital importance. We need every kind of community

organization that is organized to check in and say that they oppose the Internet

being controlled the way that it's being proposed to be controlled, and that

public media like PEG – Public, Educational, and Government access -- needs to

have the kind of funding that it's had and that it needs to survive. That we

need to be able to have the kind of channel capacity that we need in the future,

because this is -- this bill is really for the long distant future.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Now, these are two separate issues. One is net neutrality and the

Internet, and the other is public access and saving it, and they're together in

the COPE bill or whatever version will also be in the Senate. So what has

happened with access now? You were protesting at Congressmember Sheila Jackson

Lee's offices.

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: Well, there was an amendment added to the COPE Act at the last

minute, which would have allowed half of public access funding to be taken to

provide an incentive for women and minority owners of small cable systems, which

is really a good issue, and it was well-intended, but I think Jackson Lee didn't

quite understand what was at stake, that public access, for instance, has the

most female subjects, female-run produced programming, the most managers, the

same with minorities. This is where we go, you know, to get our message out

because we can't get it out anywhere. When she understood that, she very

graciously agreed to withdraw the bill with the idea that Congressman Markey and

Dingle and some of the others would help to address this issue in a different

way. But we averted losing half of P.E.G. funding just last night, just before

the vote.

 

AMY GOODMAN: You were in the gallery when Markey was making a statement and the

vote.

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: Yes. He made a very impassioned statement. It was really good.

It's such a contrast to see Markey making this statement about freedom and

understanding and how people ought to be able to interact, and then to see the

other side making these impassioned pleas that we should pass this plea, because

what the American people need is $20 off of their cable TV bill.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, wasn’t it Mike McCurry, the former spokesperson for

President Clinton, who really was the front man, the spokesperson for the key

lobbyist for a kind of Astroturf campaign where progressive bloggers had ads on

their websites that said, you know, stop government interference or regulation

of the Internet.

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: This is -- yeah, you're right, and this is like 1984. If they're

saying stop government interference, what they really mean is we want

interference. It's just like the clean air act. It's been amazing. You know,

I've known how the government ran for a long time, but I never really understood

the power of money. In California, where there's a similar bill being offered at

the state level, the telephone company bought every single lobbyist in the

state. When the Cable Television Association went to get a lobbyist, there was

not a lobbyist to be found, not even for them. When we talk about over on the

hill, Verizon had over 200 lobbyists, just on this bill. That's not even talking

about AT & T. They’ve bought every single person they could work on.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think this is payoff to the telecoms for cooperating with

the government and the N.S.A., and handing over the phone logs of tens of

millions of Americans?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: I don't want to sound cynical, but I think that's absolutely

what happened. I think, you know, the government goes and they say, you know,

we've got this massive legislation that's really important to you, this is what

you really want, you wrote it, we can pass it, this is what we need of you. You

bring up a really good point, because what we're talking about is handing over

the complete communication system to people who have no regard for your privacy,

who will hand stuff over without warrant or anything. I think people really need

to be up in arms about this.

 

AMY GOODMAN: When does the Senate vote?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: We keep hearing different things, it's hard to tell. I know they

all want to get out before summer starts so that they can get back and campaign,

because it's campaign season. But if the people check in really heavily on net

neutrality, on public access –

 

AMY GOODMAN: Where do they find that information?

 

ANTHONY RIDDLE: They can go to the Alliance website, which is

www.alliancecm.org, they can go to www.saveaccess.org, and they can also go to

the Free Press site, which is Save the Internet. We implore all organizations

– we’ve even got the Christian Coalition and the N.R.A. involved in this,

because everybody understands that if you have anything that's remotely not

mainstream, that this can be blocked if these measures go through.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Riddle, I want to thank you very much for being with us,

executive director of the Alliance for Community Media.