Dear FCC: It’s your mission to protect the public
The FCC has been holding closed-door meetings with big phone and cable companies like Comcast and AT&T as well as big Internet giants like Google around net neutrality. As Dereck Turner wrote the other day, the "deal" that they’re coming up with may be a big sellout:
There are currently closed-door meetings taking place between phone and cable behemoths, and the biggest Internet companies, to craft a "compromise" deal that could carve up the Internet for them and leave consumers and smaller competitors behind. If the fix is in, it won’t be long before they launch a PR campaign presenting this scheme as some kind of middle ground far from the "radical fringe." But buyer beware: This could be fake Net neutrality.
Real Net neutrality is when phone and cable companies cannot pick winners and losers on the Internet. Real Net neutrality is when new innovators with good ideas have an equal chance at competing against Google and Yahoo because they don’t have to pay ISPs for preferential treatment.
But what’s being floated in Washington, dubbed "paid prioritization," is fake Net neutrality. And a slightly more sanitized version of this known as "managed services" could secure today’s online giants a spot in the fast lane, while everyone else is left fighting over the scraps.
What’s in it for the big guys? If they can’t kill Net neutrality outright, the dominant phone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast still want to be able to favor their own video, voice, and text content, protecting themselves from the forces of competition and reducing their need to make investments in capacity expansions.
But an online giant like Amazon.com or Google might be persuaded to go along because it can afford priority treatment for its content at the expense of any future start-up competitors.
This fake Net neutrality will be a huge loss for consumers and online entrepreneurs, who will have to stand by and watch as these industry giants turn the vibrant marketplace that is the open Internet into something that looks more like cable TV, where consumers face high prices and few choices.
Today, Free Press blasted the FCC over the continuation of those meetings, saying:
President Obama and Chairman Genachowski promised to protect the open Internet, and they should reject any compromise that tries to water down real Net Neutrality or riddle it with loopholes. Any ‘compromise’ that allows the powerful telecom and Internet companies to prioritize their content over all others is not real Net Neutrality; it’s fake Net Neutrality. A deal struck by Verizon, Comcast and Google doesn’t represent the public interest, and is no excuse for the FCC to abdicate its responsibility to protect Internet users. The future of the Internet should not be decided in a back room.
Let me add my voice to that.
The FCC’s mission is to protect the public’s interest. Any fake net neutrality agreement that favors big corporations – phone, cable or Internet – over the people is a betrayal of that core mission. And it’s not something the public is going to stand for.
President Obama and Chairman Genachowski, you must do your duty, and do it before September. Corporations don’t deserve official license to cut out smaller competitors and destroy the free and open Internet. Giving them that license is counter to all your offices represent.
It’s time for the FCC to live up to its mission and protect the public interest. That means real net neutrality.
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