How Winning Becomes Losing

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It’s time for the friends of an Open Internet and of a communications ecosystem that serves the needs of democracy to make sure our issues are part of the 2016 campaign dialogue. These issues won’t get the visibility they deserve unless we work to put them there, and if we fail in this, we will have ourselves to blame for the policy decisions that are made once the elections are over.

It’s been a good run on some very big telecommunication and media issues at the Federal Communications Commission. Reformers welcomed historic victories on net neutrality, curtailing Joint Sales Agreement (JSA) loophole abuses, and progress on both the Lifeline and E-Rate programs to bring broadband to people and communities that cannot otherwise access or afford the high price of connectivity. And we saluted pushback from the FCC and the Department of Justice that caused Comcast to walk away from its ill-starred proposal to buy Time-Warner Cable, which would have created a behemoth that would have given the combined entity even more gatekeeper control over broadband and programming than Comcast already wields. But here’s the rub. None of these issues has really gone away. The victories that were achieved, wonderful though they were, are just part of a struggle that is far from over -- opening skirmishes in what is sure to be a lengthy and high-stakes battle over what kind of Internet, what kind of media, what kind of communications we will be relying on for decades to come.


How Winning Becomes Losing