August 2010

[Commentary] Candidate Barack Obama told America that he believed in an open and "neutral" Internet -- one where the owners of the wires didn't get to pick and choose which applications would run on the network. Soon after Julius Genachowski was appointed as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he outlined a clear and ambitious plan to turn that commitment into a reality.

But now Verizon and Google have struck a deal for a legislative template that would allow Verizon to be the gatekeeper for services running over its Internet Protocol pipe, and Google to be the colorful, well-branded winner. The outcome of this negotiation between Godzilla and Shamu may be good for them, but it would destroy the promise of a neutral network. The FCC needs to assert its authority if the chairman's and president's promises are to be kept. The most serious issue is wireless. Smartphones are beginning to replace computers across the nation. These companies have agreed that wireless, too, should be an oversight-free zone, which could divide the Internet up into pieces based on how a consumer connects. The template they've proposed helps these companies' business plans. But it would weaken competition in the wireless markets and place a single access provider in charge of the plans of any wireless entrepreneur.

Our country has learned hard lessons about the dangers of allowing industries to write their own rules. Policymakers must look beyond the narrow interests of particular companies and do much more to protect consumers.

[Susan Crawford is a professor at Cardozo Law School, , and Tim Wu, Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Barbara Van Schewick is a professor at Stanford Law School, Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School]

Public Knowledge filed reply comments in the FCC's "Third Way" docket, urging the Commission to take the steps necessary to protect consumers online.

With all of the commotion over this week's Google/Verizon announcement, it is important to remember that the major decisions about broadband classification (and net neutrality) will be made at the FCC. Our original comments laid out the case for why the Commission should go forward with its third way plans. The reply comments are an opportunity to refute some of the claims made by others the first time around. The first point that we made was that, without Title II, the FCC will be unable to achieve the goals described in the National Broadband Plan. We also took some time to show what Title II classification does not mean -- we explain how various services (like VoIP, Facebook, and DNS) would be impacted by proper classification. Particularly relevant in light of the Google/Verizon announcement, we repeated why it was so important not to exclude wireless from any access rules. Finally, we addressed some of the administrative and constitutional objections that various ISPs raised in their first round comments. In many ways, this is the easiest part of any filing, because incumbent ISPs have been making the same senseless arguments for months, if not years.

A coalition of public interest groups including Free Press, MoveOn.org, ColorofChange.org, Credo Action, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee are organizing a rally in front of Google's headquarters August 13 to protest a deal on Internet regulation unveiled by Google and Verizon.

"The Google-Verizon plan would create two separate, unequal sections of the Internet," wrote Josh Levy, online campaign manager at Free Press, in an email to supporters. "A high-speed and exclusive fast lane for big business, and a slow lane, the "public Internet" that would be available to the rest of us." The rally will take place at noon at the corner of Amphitheatre Parkway and Charleston Road in Mountain View (CA).

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that a majority of Americans don't think making broadband more affordable should be a "major" government priority. And the poll found that most Americans don't see lack of broadband as a "major disadvantage" in any area. Forty-three percent think it is when it comes to education and 34 percent think it hampers getting good information about health. But those percentages drop below a third for similar queries about life enrichment, access to government services, keeping up with news, and following community events.

For some folks who don't have broadband, "it's a very difficult thing to understand and obviously they think it wouldn't be useful in their life," commented Kevin Taglang of the Benton Foundation. "Obviously they're going to say, 'Why is the government pushing this thing that I think is of no value'?"

Sherwin Sly of Public Knowledge saw the problem in similar terms. "You don't know what you have until you've got it," he noted. "A person who hasn't had the experience of usable affordable connectivity isn't going to recognize its benefits." Both Sly and Joel Kelsey of Free Press pointed to skepticism in the last century about rural electrification and telephone service. "Every time the country has seen technological advancement, we've seen the same debate," Kelsey observed. "Long distance, rural electrification, even indoor plumbing. Some things just need to get built from our country to move forward. Broadband is one of them."

Indeed, for all the hoopla about "universal service" through the mid-20th century, it really wasn't until after the Second World War that residential telephone and long distance connectivity really took off in the United States. Even consumers who could afford phone connections in the 1920s sometimes declined that chance in favor of a family car, and phone subscribership dropped dramatically during the Great Depression. In that comparative context, the fact that Pew reports that a mild gain in broadband use through this punishing recession is good news. But there's definitely a divide between advocates of government-encouraged universal broadband and that big chunk of the public who haven't gotten there yet.

The "Pew report confirms what the FCC found in our broadband survey last year: there are still too many barriers to broadband adoption in America," said Jen Howard, FCC spokesperson. "That's why the National Broadband Plan lays out a strategy for improving digital literacy and ensuring that all Americans can take full advantage of the benefits of broadband. We're more committed than ever to educating Americans about the ways that broadband can improve their lives, whether that's helping them build their businesses, access education tools, enhance their health care, or communicate with their government and each other."