The Federal Communications Commission picks winners and losers, which is why we ought to get rid of it. During the chairmanship of Reed E. Hundt, the losers were incumbent phone companies, whom Hundt considered too Republican. Now it is a cable company, who some consider too Democratic.
The FCC issued an order last week concluding that Comcast acted discriminatorily and arbitrarily to squelch the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet, and that its failure to disclose it’s practices to its customers has compounded the harm. Wow. The FCC will require Comcast to end its network management practices and submit a compliance plan, which is code for submitting to bureaucratic micromanagement.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin recently asked, “Would you be OK with the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped ‘address unknown – return to sender’?”
Martin, who the Wall Street Journal identifies as one of the Bush administration’s more questionable personnel picks, lately has become a bit excitable.
Martin is upset with Comcast because it rejects his hypothesis that allowing consumers to pay only for the cable channels they prefer would reduce cable rates.
Martin sided with the commission’s two Democrats to slam Comcast for managing its broadband network like a traffic cop who works hard to prevent gridlock.
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Bruce Schneier has a very good op-ed on the Transportation Security Administration’s airport security programs in the Los Angeles Times today. The winner line: “That’s the TSA: Not doing the right things. Not even doing right the things it does.”
In fairness, security is hard. By their nature, federal agencies aren’t smart and nimble. I argued that the TSA should be scrapped in a March, 2005 Reason magazine debate.
Along similar lines, I found this amusing:
In-flight Internet access is finally starting to be rolled out by some carriers, and as they do so the inevitable question of what to do about objectionable material is already being debated. Surprisingly, many airlines have decided to not filter in-flight Internet access but instead rely on “peer pressure and the presence of flight attendants,” according to Tim Maxwell, Vice President of Marketing for Aircell, the company providing American’s broadband service.
But others are wondering if that’ll be enough. I share that concern. I can only imagine how ugly things will get on a flight once somebody starts streaming porn from their aisle seat. Flight attendants are going to become “fight” attendants once that happens. And you better believe that somebody in Congress is already cooking up legislation with some snappy title like “The Family Friendly Flights Act” to impose a regulatory solution. (Oh wait, a bill with that title was already introduced last year!! I wrote about it here. But that bill was just for violent movies, not Net access. So expect another measure soon mandating in-flight Net censorship).
Before things get ugly and bills start flying up on the Hill, the airlines need to think about crafting some constructive solutions to this problem. Here are three possibilities:
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Declan McCullagh has a great write-up on presumptive Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden over at CNET. Some highlights:
- Biden was one of only four Senators invited to a champagne reception with Jack Valenti for his work on the DMCA
- Surveillance legislation by Biden inspired Phil Zimmermann to write PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), an encryption program
- Biden wrote an early precursor to the USA PATRIOT Act
- Posting the anarchist cookbook online is now a felony thanks to Biden, resulting in a single conviction of a 20 year-old webmaster
- Biden proposed spending $1 billion so cops could police P2P networks
Check out the post to read more about Biden’s spotty record on tech policy.
William Kennard, Obama for President Telecommunications Adviser, describes the FCC’s jurisdiction in the Comcast case as “murky” today on C-SPAN’s “The Communicators.” Kennard went on to say that enshrining net neutrality into law would be necessary to clear up this authority issue.
This is a guy who knows what he’s talking about. As a former chairman and general counsel for the FCC, he knows just as well as anyone else where the commission’s authority begins and ends.
Many folks involved in the tech policy world don’t agree with the bloggers here at TLF, who oppose network neutrality regulation. But, I’m sure everyone in the tech community would agree that we should maintain the rule of law and stop the abuse and unlawful expansion of government power—something Kennard seems to believe is happening at the FCC.
It seems as though Kevin Martin needs to hit the books and start looking into the legality of his own actions. I hope the good folks at Comcast do the same. With any luck, we’ll soon be seeing both parties in court.
A number of TLF readers seem to have leapt to certain conclusions concerning political ads shown on the site. Most recently, Garrett Dumas responded to Sonia’s post Obama vs McCain: Who deserves the tech vote? (which generally sides with McCain) as follows:
Perhaps you think this because there is a John McCain banner on your site? The “tech vote” is a non issue as it is not up to the president or his cabinet to determine the future of technology. It is market driven and whoever controls the market, controls the direction.
Garrett’s understandable confusion merits a brief explanation. The only “banner” ad on the site chosen by us is the “Crispy on the Outside” blog ad at the top right. The ads below that are placed there by Google’s “AdSense” program, which automatically decides which ads to place on a page based on how much advertisers have bid for keyword combinations that appear on that page. TLF readers will see a mix of political ads on our site until election day from both campaigns and a variety of other groups targeting keywords that appear on our blog. For example, I currently see the following ads on our blog: Continue reading →
On Wednesday, the FCC released the decision (PDF, text) it adopted back on August 1 holding that Comcast had violated the FCC’s 2005 net neutrality principles (PDF, text) by “blocking” peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic on its network using the popular program BitTorrent. Paragraphs 3-11 lay out the FCC’s (still-disputed) finding of facts.
Commissioner McDowell‘s Scaliaesquely scathing dissent (PDF pp 61-67) provides an accessible summary of the order and should be required reading for everyone on all sides of the issue. Despite having been provided with the final version of the order only the night before its release, McDowell distills the order into six key points, rejecting the Commission’s reasoning on all but one point (jurisdiction):
- Was a complaint properly brought against Comcast under FCC rules? No, FCC rules allow the kind of complaint brought against Comcast to be brought only against common carriers, which cable modem operators are not.
- Does the FCC have jurisdiction over Internet network management? Yes, under the Supreme Court’s 2005 Brand X decision.
- Does the FCC have rules governing Internet network management to enforce? No, “the Commission did not intend for the [2005] Internet Policy Statement to serve as enforceable rules but, rather, as a statement of general policy guidelines,” nor can the Commission “adjudicate this matter solely pursuant to ancillary authority.”
- What standard of review should apply? No, even assuming this case had been properly brought under enforceable rules, the Commission applied what amounts to a “strict scrutiny” standard–something unprecedented for reviewing private, rather than governmental, action.
- Was the evidence sufficient to justify the Commission’s decision? No, the “FCC does not know what Comcast did or did not do” and should have “conduct[ed] its own factual investigation” rather than relying on “apparently unsigned declarations of three individuals representing the complainant’s view, some press reports, and the conflicting declaration of a Comcast employee.” The evidence did not suggest any discriminatory motive behind Comcast’s network management techniques
- Is the decision in the public interest? No. “By depriving engineers of the freedom to manage these surges of information flow by having to treat all traffic equally as the result of today’s order, the Information Superhighway could quickly become the Information Parking Lot.” Comcast had already resolved its dispute with BitTorrent through outside arbitration. The FCC should “allow the longstanding and time-tested collaborative Internet governance groups [already working to establish processes for resolving such disputes] to continue to produce the fine work they have successfully put forth for years.”
Nine months after Barack Obama, John McCain has unveiled his own technology plan for America. At last, both candidates can be graded for their long-term friendliness to the tech sector. You can read my analysis here, but the upshot is that Obama has multiple weaknesses, particularly when it comes to taxes, property rights, labor and government waste that harms America’s tech sector. McCain’s weakness is the transparency issue, but overall he looks better positioned than Obama on issues that matter most to innovators in the tech community.
WASHINGTON, August 19 – BroadbandCensus.com is pleased to support One Web Day, and I am very happy to be an Ambassador for this effort.
Most Americans who have high-speed internet can’t imagine life without broadband. How could you connect to the Internet of today without it? In today’s world, broadband is as basic as running water and electricity. And yet the U.S. is falling behind globally.
As a technology reporter, I’ve been writing about the battles over broadband and the Internet for more than a decade here in Washington. Yet there is one fact about which nearly everyone seems to be in agreement: if America wants better broadband, America needs better broadband data.
That’s why I’ve recently started a new venture to collect this broadband data, and to make this data freely available for all on the Web at http://BroadbandCensus.com.
One Web Day presents an opportunity for all of us to take stock with the true state of broadband in this country. BroadbandCensus.com wants to work with each of you to help us “crowdsource” the data we need to get a better handle on availability, competition, speeds, prices, and quality of service of local broadband.
What is BroadbandCensus.com?
When an Internet user goes to the BroadbandCensus.com web site, he or she types in a ZIP code. By doing so, the consumer will find out how many broadband providers the FCC says are available. The consumer can compare that number to his or her own sense of the competitive landscape, as well as the names of the carriers published by BroadbandCensus.com.
Continue reading BroadbandCensus.com Joins with One Web Day
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.