— unpredictable thoughts

Do you want Comast to own the net? Do you want any­one but the pub­lic to con­trol the net?

I read this essay today and needed to pass it around. The big guys are start­ing to bind up one of the last demo­c­ra­tic spaces we know. A place for free expres­sion and diver­sity of view­point is in dan­ger. Con­gress may vote this week.
You can take action. go to http://www.savetheinternet.com

War on The Web by Robert B. Reich
from TomPaine.com

Thurs­day 11 May 2006

This week, the House is expected to vote on some­thing termed, in per­fect Orwellian prose, the “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Oppor­tu­nity, Pro­mo­tion and Enhance­ment Act of 2006.” It will be the first real bat­tle in the com­ing War of Inter­net Democracy.

On one side are the com­pa­nies that pipe the Inter­net into our homes and busi­nesses. These include tele­com giants like AT&T and Ver­i­zon and cable com­pa­nies like Com­cast. Call them the pipe companies.

On the other side are the peo­ple and busi­nesses that send Inter­net con­tent through the pipes. Some are big out­fits like Yahoo, Google and Ama­zon, big finan­cial insti­tu­tions like Bank of Amer­ica and Cit­i­group and giant media com­pa­nies soon to pump lots of movies and TV shows on to the Internet.

But most con­tent providers are lit­tle guys. They’re mom-and-pop oper­a­tions spe­cial­iz­ing in, say, antique egg-beaters or Brook­lyn Dodgers mem­o­ra­bilia. They’re anar­chists, kooks and zealots ped­dling all sorts of crank ideas They’re per­sonal pub­lish­ers and small-time inves­ti­ga­tors. They include my son’s com­edy troupe-streaming new videos on the Inter­net every week. They also include gazil­lions of bloggers-including my hum­ble lit­tle blog and maybe even yours.

Until now, a basic prin­ci­ple of the Inter­net has been that the pipe com­pa­nies can’t dis­crim­i­nate among con­tent providers. Every­one who puts stuff up on the Inter­net is treated exactly the same. The net is neutral.

But now the pipe com­pa­nies want to charge the con­tent providers, depend­ing on how fast and reli­ably the pipes deliver the con­tent. Pre­sum­ably, the biggest con­tent providers would pay the most money, leav­ing the lit­tle con­tent peo­ple in the slow­est and least-reliable parts of the pipe. (It will take you five min­utes to down­load my blog.)

The pipe com­pa­nies claim unless they start charge for speed and reli­a­bil­ity, they won’t have enough money to invest in the next gen­er­a­tion of net­works. This is an absurd argu­ment. The pipes are already mak­ing lots of money off con­sumers who pay them for being con­nected to the Internet.

The pipes fig­ure they can make even more money dis­crim­i­nat­ing between big and small con­tent providers because the big guys have deep pock­ets and will pay a lot to travel first class. The small guys who pay lit­tle or noth­ing will just have to set­tle for what’s left.

The House bill to be voted on this week would in effect give the pipes the green light to go ahead with their plan.
Price dis­crim­i­na­tion is as old as cap­i­tal­ism. Instead of charg­ing every­one the same for the same prod­uct or ser­vice, sell­ers divide things up accord­ing to grade or qual­ity. Buy­ers will­ing to pay the most can get the best, while other buy­ers get lesser qual­ity, accord­ing to how much they pay. The­o­ret­i­cally, this is effi­cient. Sell­ers who also have some­thing of a monop­oly (as do the Inter­net pipe com­pa­nies) can make a killing.

But even if it’s effi­cient, it’s not demo­c­ra­tic. And here’s the rub. The Inter­net has been the place where Davids can take on Goliaths, where some­one with­out resources but with brains and guts and infor­ma­tion can skewer the high and mighty. At a time in our nation’s his­tory when wealth and power are becom­ing more and more con­cen­trated in fewer and fewer hands, it’s been the one forum in which all voices are equal.

Will the pipe com­pa­nies be able to end Inter­net democ­racy? Per­haps if enough of the small guys make enough of a fuss, Con­gress may lis­ten. But don’t bet on it. This Con­gress is not in the habit of lis­ten­ing to small guys. The best hope is that big con­tent providers will use their for­mi­da­ble lob­by­ing clout to demand net neu­tral­ity. The finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, for exam­ple, is already spend­ing bil­lions on infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy, includ­ing online bank­ing. Why would they want to spend bil­lions more pay­ing the pipe com­pa­nies for the Inter­net access they already have?

The pipe com­pa­nies are busily try­ing to per­suade big con­tent providers that it’s in their inter­est to pay for faster and more reli­able Inter­net deliv­er­ies. Verizon’s chief Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist recently warned the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try that if it sup­ports net neu­tral­ity, it won’t get the sophis­ti­cated data links it will need in the future. The pipes are also qui­etly reas­sur­ing the big con­tent providers that they can pass along the fees to their customers.

Will the big con­tent providers fall for it? Stay tuned for the next episode of Inter­net democ­racy ver­sus monop­oly capitalism.

——–

Robert Reich is pro­fes­sor of pub­lic pol­icy at the Richard and Rhoda Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­icy at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. He was sec­re­tary of labor in the Clin­ton administration.

MORE LINKS.
Video of Moby: http://www.savetheinternet.com/moby
Audio clip of Moby: http://www.SavetheInternet.com/moby_bite2.mp3
Air Amer­ica inter­view with Moby: http://www.airamericaradio.com/saveinternet
CNN high­lights Moby: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/situation.room/blog/
AP story on Moby: http://asap.ap.org/stories/592550.s
REM’s announce­ment: www.remhq.com