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What You Need to Know About Net Neutrality

By Peter Plantec   /   Mar 30, 2011
I think it’s a fact that most Americans haven’t got a clue what the Net Neutrality issues are. As a StudioDaily reader, you will need to know them, both now and in the future. Traditionally the halt of honest information flow comes from totalitarian governments like we see in China. But here in America today, the threat comes from major communications and media corporations who wish to gain power by controlling the flow of all information both in the media and on the web. They are arranging to control media from source to delivery, kind of a linear monopoly. As you may know, I’ve been disgusted by the incompetent management at NBC Universal. Now Comcast had taken over NBC, thus gaining control over a major network along with their control of cable distribution and the US’s largest Internet service area. This is just the beginning. The major media companies and the major information distribution channels are hooking up. They’re talking about consolidation of power and the FCC seems to think it’s in the public interest. Okay, the FCC seems to talk out both sides of its mouth. It frequently says and does things in favor of network neutrality. But there is even an issue about whether the FCC has any authority over the Internet. One Federal Court found that it did not. So what really is Net Neutrality? Watch this YouTube video from the folks at Freepress and you’ll see what we’re talking about here, perhaps the end of one of the Internet as we know it: First, an update. One good thing has come out of the Comcast/NBCU merger. The first thing Comcast did was bring on Steve Burke as the new CEO of NBCU. He immediately fired NBCU’s incredibly incompetent CEO, Jeff Zucker in mid September. Immediately the programming lineup on NBC started to improve. Burke has been able to lure some big names like David E. Kelley back. Burke is a loyal Comcast guy who’s been with them since 1998 as President of Comcast Cable. He pioneered OnDemand television, and he has also served as president of ABC Broadcasting, and COO of EuroDisney. Clearly the man has some eye for entertainment. So we’re likely to see better programming showing up on NBC. But none of this helps us with the network neutrality issue that this merger brings to the fore. Burke is staunchly against Net Neutrality. I contacted Senator Al Franken, a smart guy who is also a valiant fighter for Net Neutrality. He said: “Right now our free speech rights are under assault — not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information in America. If that scares you as much as it scares me, then you need to care about net neutrality.” Franken is spearheading an effort in Congress to raise awareness of the deeper implications and dangers involved in recent FCC decisions, and the corporate thrust to gain complete control of the flow of information in America. Senator Maria Cantwell from Democrat from Washington State told me, “Without net neutrality, I am concerned that broadband Internet service providers have the economic incentive and the technical means for favoring their own or affiliated content, applications, and services at the expense of their competitors.” When I asked her about the FCC involvement, she said, “While I agree the FCC has the authority to issue its own rules, the Commission’s December proposal does not do enough to protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains a force for innovation and economic growth. That’s why I introduced net neutrality legislation that protects consumers and businesses, supports innovation and investment, and will preserve the free and open Internet.” I’m glad we have Maria on our side. Our Problem with Information Pipeline Mergers The latest FCC approval of the massive merger of Comcast and NBC Universal (NBCU) is a crime against the American people in my opinion. The FCC officially has found that this merger is in the public interest. It clearly is not. The way they justified their decision was to require Comcast/NBCU to add a few extra channels and maybe some public interest channels. And they told the new conglomerate not to mess with HULU. Meanwhile, they’re creating a massive pipeline monopoly that goes from content creation to delivery. That monopoly now includes the US’s largest ISP (Internet Service Provider). Since the Internet is daily becoming more integrated into our lives and TV and Internet are becoming joined at the hip, we need to be concerned about keeping the Internet open and neutral. That’s kind of difficult when Comcast, the largest provider of Internet, and a known throttler, wants to convert the open Internet into a private enterprise. As I understand it, they want to see to it that their competition, like Netflix, has to pay extra large fees to access the citizens serviced by Comcast Internet. This brings the neutrality issue close to home. I had a chat with my articulate friend and media expert John Tarnoff. He’s Head of Industry Relations for the Master of Entertainment Industry Management (MEIM) Program at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College in Hollywood. John has been at the center of media/entertainment business for 30 years. His broad management experience as studio executive, film and interactive producer, and technology entrepreneur really qualify him to have an opinion here. Here’s what he told me: “Net Neutrality is today’s single most important policy issue for young, emerging content creators. The Net Neutrality debate is all about opening the flat and wide Internet to content produced and distributed directly to consumers vs. preserving the traditional content distribution gates (and gate keepers!) who seek to meter access to content, maintain the illusion of scarcity, and preserve a neolithic pricing structure that is necessary only to support outdated and irrelevant corporate infrastructures. Honestly I think this is the best statement of the problem I’ve seen to date. Picture it this way: Right now the on ramp of the Internet is reasonably wide open. A media company or website pays for so much bandwidth to put their media on line. Everybody pays the same for a given bandwidth. The ISP can’t charge one company a higher rate for the same bandwidth because they plan to upload competing media. That keeps a level playing field. I pay a few dollars a month for my website and people can access my site from anywhere at a very high bandwidth. On the other end of the pipeline, we ordinary people pay for download bandwidth. It’s usually asymmetrical, meaning the download speed is faster than the upload speed. I have a 7 Mbs down and I think 2MBs up. The connection costs me about $60/month. That’s expensive by today’s standards, but I live in a rural area. It costs more to deliver service here. I like being able to watch video real-time, TV etc. This is pretty much as it should be. Competition keeps rates reasonable and everybody’s happy. Big profits are being made in spite of massive infrastructure development costs. What the Megamedia companies want to do is tilt the playing field to their advantage. Since they have an ax to grind…they want to sell media services such as TV, PPV, Interactive games, etc. They don’t want to let competing smaller media companies and websites have access to what they consider their audience. So they developed throttling, the practice of slowing down data flow from specific users. Thus they want to become the gate keepers to keep out the competition. The FCC has put out a press release trying to explain their reasoning. Here’s a partial quote from the FCC release: Protecting the Development of Online Competition Recognizing the risks this transaction could present to the development of innovative online video distribution services, the Commission has adopted conditions designed to guarantee bona fide online distributors the ability to obtain Comcast-NBCU programming in appropriate circumstances. These conditions respond directly to the concerns voiced by participants in the proceeding including consumer advocates, online video distributors (OVDs), and MVPDs ( Multichannel Video Program Distributors ) while respecting the legitimate business interests of the Applicants to protect the value of their content. Among other things, the Commission requires that Comcast and/or Comcast-NBCU provides to all MVPDs, at fair market value and non-discriminatory prices, terms, and conditions, any affiliated content that Comcast makes available online to its own subscribers or to other MVPD subscribers. Also, that it: • Offers its video programming to legitimate OVDs (Online Video Distributors) on the same terms and conditions that would be available to an MVPD. • Makes comparable programming available on economically comparable prices,terms, and conditions to an OVD that has entered into an arrangement to distribute programming from one or more of Comcast-NBCU peers. • Offers standalone broadband Internet access services at reasonable prices and of sufficient bandwidth so that customers can access online video services without the need to purchase a cable television subscription from Comcast. • Does not enter into agreements to unreasonably restrict online distribution of it’s own video programming or programming of other providers. • Does not disadvantage rival online video distribution through its broadband Internet access services and/or set-top boxes. • Does not exercise corporate control over or unreasonably withhold programming from Hulu. In addition, they’ve added a few public access TV channels…etc. It all sounds good, but. . .This all sounds like the FCC is trying to protect the little guy. But very few of these provisions cover the Internet, and those that do will soon come under legal attack. Comcast has been, and will continue to bring its massive financial and legal resources to bear in its efforts to wiggle out of FCC constraints. The situation is an army of fancy lawyers against a few government officials and lawyers. They’ve already won at least one major battle against the FCC’s rulings in Federal Court…more to come. With the very conservative Supreme court we have now I don’t think the FCC has much chance. It appears that most conservatives including the Tea Party are vociferously against net neutrality. Can the top court be far behind? What happens when smaller media companies try to protect themselves in court? Same thing — massive onslaught of corporate lawyers will bury them in paper to start. They are masters of delay. I expect some of these agreements to be violated right away. The lawyers will argue that it’s all a matter of interpretation. The FCC seems to have left the doors WIDE open to interpretation with their ruling. It’s interesting that they name Hulu but not Netflix as the most threatened by this merger. Netflix distributes material in direct competition with Comcast and NBC. Worse yet, Comcast has long been reported to use deep packet inspection to snoop on the content of stuff being sent over the Internet through their servers. Peter Svensson of the Associated Press published an article way back in 2007 clearly stating that Comcast has been interfering with the flow of files between their Internet subscribers on P2P networks. He called them the most drastic of data discriminators, especially against P2P networks. In 2009 Comcast had to pay $16 million in a settlement for blocking P2P content. These billionaire companies have also been lobbying Congress mightily for some time now. They’ve reportedly spent in the hundreds of millions at it. They have armies of lobbyists with massive budgets out there influencing a lot of Senators and Representatives in their favor. How is that even legal? And how is it in the Public Interest? It’s not. The US courts seem divided on whether or not the FCC has jurisdiction over the Internet. There is some question over whether the Internet is a form of telecommunication. It’s all very confusing. Storm Clouds Gathering Damn, before I even get to press with this post ATT and T-Mobile are talking about a merger. ATT is one of the strongest anti-net neutrality advocates in the country. What You Can Do Fortunately, there are a few honest and dedicated members of Congress who are both aware of this problem and are working to prevent corporate takeover of the Internet. They are also working to clarify the issues involved. The most active right now seems to be Senator Al Franken, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Sen. Maria Cantwell  (D-Wash.), Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) also in the fray. The site www.freepress.net , which brought you the video above, also has an informative campaign going. One way to help the situation is to contribute whatever you can to the war chests of these noble Congress People. Also I suggest following the situation on Freepress.

14 Comments

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  • Speak2Truth

    Historically, governments have sought control over routes of information dissemination in order to impose ideological control over content. With the “Fairness Doctrine” high on the Left’s priority list, this seems to be the goal in the USA as well. To allow Government to take control of the Internet, giving it a foot in the door to micromanage content, would be an enormous mistake.

    By their own admission, their goal is not neutrality, it is to silence opposing viewpoints or compel stations with an audience seeking a particular viewpoint to also spend its resources to provide the opposing viewpoint.

    Air America went belly up because people get tired of listening to biased falsehood. So, the folks on that side of the aisle are scheming to compel conservative stations to spend resources to carry the Leftist message. Micromanagement of on the air content is one objective. Micromanagement of Internet “fairness” is another.

    When government controls your information flow, that flow of information serves the ruling Party. That is the real goal.

  • Pingback: Net Neutrality 101 — Tech Tilt

  • Francis

    If Al Franken is for it, you should be against it…

  • http://www.mlearningassociates.com Robert Bows

    Thank you for your frank discussion of these issues. Believe it or not, the situation is even worse than you have described it, because what is happening regarding this attack on free speech and the Internet is happening in all facets of our society and around the world.

    It is being perpetrated by the the financiers who control the currencies and money supplies of most of the countries. In the U.S., it is the “too big to fail” (TBTF) banks that own the Federal Reserve and expand and contract the money supply and credit to steal the fruits of our labor at fire sale prices. The criminal actions regarding mortgages and foreclosures is just one example of how this works.

    In addition to profiting from wars and depressions, the money cartel attacks countries in which the central bank is owned by the state rather than the private banks. These attacks are perpetrated using both traditional military tactics and top secret electronic warfare techniques that were built under the guise of “weather modification.” A list of countries with publicly owned banks include Libya, Japan, and New Zealand.

    There is only one publicly owned bank in the U.S. at this time, the Bank of North Dakota (BND), which has been in operation since 1919. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. It is the only state with a major budget surplus. It also has the highest number of community banks per capita, because the BND participates (backs up) community banks and doesn’t steal their customers (like the TBTF banks do).

    For more information on public banks, see http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org.

  • Brian Galford

    I liked your article; its good to bring policy issues to light for videographers. But would you please learn to use “whether” not weather? This issue has nothing to do with global warming.

  • Sean

    Wow there is so much contradiction in this opinion piece about net neutrality I hardly know where to begin. I’ll stick with just the philosophical and historical arguments and not get mired in the minutia of the law because in the end what a law says has very little to do with how it will evolve.
    First, the most benign sounding legislation is usually the most oppressive. Net Neutrality sounds like you’re trying to keep things “fair” and neutral but in reality it’s just a series of price controls (which have never worked and have always victimized the middle class).
    Second, any government intervention always leads to the rule of unintended consequences. The Department of Energy was supposed to lesson our dependence on foreign oil, billions of dollars later we are more dependent. The Department of Education was supposed to raise the education level of America’s public schools, billions of dollars later America’s students are either no further ahead or behind the rest of the world. The Commerce Department was supposed to protect American business interest, instead billions of dollars later and a host of regulations and we are hemorrhaging industry and jobs at an alarming rate. The examples are legion and the most freighting thing of all is that a government agency or regulation no matter how destructive or counterproductive is almost never repealed or even audited.
    Third, all these big corporate monopolies you fear were able to thrive under the excessive regulation and bureaucracy we currently have. Are over 70,000 pages of tax code enough? The lesson is the more regulations and regulators you have the more monopolies you get. The reason is you create a scenario where whoever can afford the most lawyers and lobbyists wins. This keeps new start up cable companies and internet provides out of the market because they can’t afford to comply with all the regulation. If there was a true free market people would dump the companies they don’t like, such as Comcast, and go with another company. Then the throttling of band width won’t be an issue as you can get your content somewhere else. Competition creates customer focused companies, government creates favored monopolies.
    Fourth, the sponsors of Net Neutrality are all big government central planners. These politicians are people who supposedly fear evil corporate monopolies yet relentlessly grow the biggest monopoly of all the Federal Government. The difference between a Comcast and the government is that I can always unplug my cable and Comcast won’t put me in jail but I can’t stop paying taxes.
    In your article you contrast the government control of media in places like China versus corporate control in the U.S. Net Neutrality sets the conditions for Government control just like China. More regulation is more control no matter how noble the intent. You say with a “very conservative” Supreme Court that Comcast will be able to bludgeon the FCC into submission. Conservatives are people who adhere to the Constitution and the rule of law, if they ruled in favor of Comcast than the FCC must have overstepped its legal bounds. Don’t feel sorry for the poor little FCC with its few government lawyers, they wield more oppressive power than you think.
    The point is, be very, very careful of utopia through control and regulation. Net neutrality sets the conditions for a policing of the internet in the interest of the ever illusive fairness. Instead of rushing toward more government control, hiring more bureaucrats and creating more regulation, let’s try the opposite approach just once, after all the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Believe me you may think you’re sticking it to the big corporations when Net Neutrality becomes law (and it will) but the Comcast’s of the world will continue to thrive; the competition and the consumer will be the only losers.

  • http://www.x-dissolve.net James Nielson

    Thank you for publishing this article. I’ve been plagued by that “am I the only one seeing this!!!” feeling for too long now. I liken it to our roads. Imagine certain “virtual” (or actual) monopolies, like Comcast, got control of our roads under the guise of “we’re more efficient than stupid ol’ government! Just look at how much money we make (off of you)!”. Now say you want to go to the bank. To the store. To school. Say you want to go to the library to research a political issue. Talk to the gate-keeper.

    We’ve all seen movies where the ultimate tool for good falls into a villain’s hands. This is that tool, only in the real world, power-mongers don’t want to destroy the world, they want to monetize everything they can, give up the least amount of product for the greatest amount of gain, kill off their competition, and change as little as they have to. Basic, intrinsic principles of business. And they want to apply that to the greatest exchange of information the world has ever known. Again, thank you for re-assuring me that others GET it.

    P.S. NetFlix, stop being such a spineless, formulaic “we don’t want to inform, i mean offend anyone” machine, and to start using your power to ENLIGHTEN people of this issue!

  • Brian DuBridge

    This is a fairly informative article.

    Now for the criticism: Weather, whether. Which one means between two choices? You’ve also left holes in sentences such as “When I asked her about the FCC involvement stated:” which should end ‘she stated’. “Maria Cantwell from Democrat from Washington State” is obviously a proofreading error. You do see the problem, don’t you?

    If you want to be taken seriously you need to avoid such errors as these. Just because you’re writing for the free, as in anybody can do it, internet doesn’t excuse poor quality. In reference to your Television Executives article, IMHO belongs only in Instant Messaging and Texting. Leave it out of scholarly articles and critical diatribes . The mistakes make you seem like an amateur akin to a high school literature student. You are out of high school, right? If not then forgive me, and well done. If you learn to correct such items I believe you could be a very influential writer.

  • http://www.ordinarymagic.com Peter Plantec

    My apologies for the really bad self-editing on my article. Once I make a mistake, I can’t see it due to a type of dyslexia. My wife usually edits me but she’d just gotten a wisdom tooth pulled and definitely was NOT in the mood.

    Also All of you except Francis make good points. Francis, make your point! I certainly do not agree with all of them, but we’re all at least expressing our opinions. We are a damned articulate group, and I have to say I agree with parts of some of the more conservative posts here.

    I hope we all agree that we’d like to see the Internet remain free and unregulated but Corporations or the Gov.

    I see the FCC’s roll not regulate the Internet, but to Protect its neutrality from profit hungry mega-corporations. Also color my face red with all the typos and please substitute Whether for Weather where ever you see it. I can’t believe I did that.
    -P-

  • http://www.ordinarymagic.com Peter Plantec

    Special note to Brian…believe it or not…thank you, thank you, thank you. And in my last post, my wife just pointed out that the “but Corporations…” should have been “by corporations” Thank you Adele.

  • Jay Ankeney

    What a biased screed! Once I read “I contacted Senator Al Franken, a smart guy who is also a valiant fighter for Net Neutrality.” the baloney really started to stink.

    It was cute the way you took on Fox News, though. Very cute. Almost worth a snicker.

    Once again, the left wants government to save us from the economic strength of open competition.
    I will be unsubscribing from this newsletter as soon as I finish this comment. It’s kind of a shame because some of your postings have been informative. But this was a waste of time.

  • http://www.studiomonthly.com Beth Marchant

    To Our Readers: Wednesday was a very busy day at StudioDaily. But we wanted to share Peter’s thoughts on our blog in a timely fashion and as a result, his initial post did not receive the usual scrutiny from the editorial team (we focused more on formatting and adding images and video). For that, I apologize both to Peter and to our readers. We’ll do better next time!

    Note: This blog was created as a platform for the opinions of our writers and a forum for exchange on issues relating to our industry. Thank you all for joining the discussion!

  • Bob G

    Wow, Jay, I didn’t realize you were such a hothead. As soon as I finish writing this, I will avoid any article you have written and any product you recommend. Thanks!

  • http://www.ordinarymagic.com Peter Plantec

    Jay, I’m sorry you had such a gut reaction to my mention of Franken. You and Francis both went ballistic at the mention of his name. Then neither of you made any useful comments about the issue. My hope was to pull out all sides of the issue. I don’t mind hearing your side. I do think it’s funny how one side says: “It’s the mega-media corporations that are trying control the Internet.” The other side saying: “It’s the Government trying to control the Internet.” That fact is, I don’t want anybody messing with the flow of the Internet — government or corporations. Conservatives are very often Law and Order types. Well Laws are there to protect, not control.

    Let’s not over protect the corporations while they eat away at our freedoms by stuffing the pockets of legislators on both sides of the aisle. Let’s protect the Internet from the already started massive corporate assault on the free flow of information. Until that onslaught started, the FCC wasn’t paying all that much attention to the Net.