Why The White House Is Passing On The Latest Net Neutrality Debate

Net Neutrality = Big Brother
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Hello Orwell, welcome to 1984!!

Net Neutrality = Fair Playing Field.
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Hello Orwell, welcome to 1984!!

“Another White House aide said that, while the White House did not want to interfere with the deliberations of the FCC, an independent agency, it was important that any final FCC rule address wireless and managed services, two of the issues raised by Google and Verizon”
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Who, if we may ask?
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While trusting this administration to make anyone they think may be part of the “professional left” not cheesed off would be folly I’m not sure that saying they don’t want to interfere in deliberations is out of line.
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So, for context, who was the aide?

Michael Scherer:
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What does this mean?

Under their proposal, Internet providers would not be able to block or slow down content over the current wireline Internet. But companies could give preferential treatment over wireless, cellular Internet networks. They could also establish new, premium broadband services that would offer faster speeds for certain content.

Don’t “wireless, cellular Internet networks” send and receive data over the same IP networks to which they ultimately connect, i.e. “the current wireline Internet?”
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Isn’t that like Googrizon saying that they’re all for establishing a toll-free interstate highway system, but that there are certain “transportation paths” like “expressways” upon which they’re advocating toll booths only the biggest trucking companies can afford to pay?
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Also, what “new, premium broadband services” would not be using some portion of the internet –the world wide web?
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Aren’t these companies simply playing semantic games with what is and isn’t “the internet” so that they can have it both ways, i.e. public support of the popular “net neutrality” principle, and the introduction of a consumer and little-guy crushing “premium” internet to replace the current system?
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Can you explain what these people mean, Michael Scherer, rather than simply report what they say exactly as they’d like it to be said?

Interview was on background. I am not at liberty to say. And the source is not quoted attacking anyone, so don’t feel the granting of anonymity for the interview is out of line. Also not sure how context would matter in this instance. It is someone in the White House. Based on my quoting this person, you can assume that it is someone who is informed about the White House view of this issues, i.e. not the White House chef.

Net Neutrality = Fair Playing Field

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Yea right stuart. Anytime the government gets involved with making anything about communications “fair”, you can bet a Hugo Chavez is not far from the decision making process.
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Perhaps you missed this video on Obama’s head of the FCC diversity section, Frank Lloyd says about it all.
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From Lloyd’s piece:

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn’t hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. “Thank God for them,” Quinones said. “I wouldn’t be here.”

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine.

“Community organizations” (run one would think by community organizers) threatening the licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically.

Or making them pay hefty fines, which would be added to the public monies already being given to liberal public broadcasting.

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (i.e. Rush Limbaugh fans, meant here by Lloyd to more broadly refer to fans of all conservative talk) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community.

Lloyd’s instructions to Leftist activists are clear: use the FCC to pummel conservative talk radio. With fines, or entirely out of existence.
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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/06/new-fcc-chief-diversity-officer-co-wrote-liberal-groups-structural-imb#ixzz0wQ7791x8

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http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=GdnznzSUaG

Don’t “wireless, cellular Internet networks” send and receive data over the same IP networks to which they ultimately connect, i.e. “the current wireline Internet?”

In some cases yes, but wireless services, wireline services, and cable are regulated under different parts of the Communications Act, and in different ways.

Which is part of the problem the FCC faces. When the Communications Act was last overhauled in 1996, ‘internet access’ was mostly dial-up, ‘cable modems’ were a novelty, and ‘wireless internet’ was limited to Palm VII devices. Wireline voice, wireless voice, cable, and internet networks were largely segregated.

Now, IP has won the battle, but the old stovepipes still exist in the regs, and have to be dealt with.

MS-Firstly, thank you for the response.
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I had hoped that, as we follow how this, having an idea of who is saying what-no matter how innocuous- would help the reader have a better idea of where the administration really stands.
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That saying “it was important that any final FCC rule address wireless and managed services” has to be “on background” isn’t comforting.
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But perhaps illuminating.
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Again, thanks for the response.

That was a gigantic non sequitur, Rustydog.
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Absolutely none of that business about the “fairness doctrine” has anything to do with the biggest corporations attempting to construct Federal regulations in ways that assist their dominance and structurally prevent competition.
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That’s what “fair playing field” means: that the quasi-monopolies granted by the state to these enormously powerful companies aren’t abused to the detriment of truly free and fair markets.
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Don’t you remember the trust-busting Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, Rustydog? Don’t you remember the railroad companies that conspired with each other and the biggest steel, coal and food companies (and regulators, too) to control markets? Don’t you remember how un-American that “network bias” turned out to be?
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These enormous companies are in bed with the government already. That’s why they own as much of the information highway as they do. They basically own the roads your email and telephone calls drive on. Don’t you want net-neutrality instead of net-bias when it comes to handling your information? Do you really want these private postal workers examining the contents of every packet coming to and from your computer, to make sure that ever bit and byte is appropriately paid for by whoever sent it to whom?
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Are you familiar with the phrase “rent-seeking behavior,” by any chance, Rustydog?

Thanks so much for responding to commentary, Michael Scherer, it is always greatly appreciated.

in practice, ISPs can manage internet traffic on broadband networks distinctly from wireless networks. Hypothetically, Verizon could block or speed up delivery of say National Football League video on Fios or its wireless service independently of each other. John is right that the regulation is different. … As for what new premium broadband services are, I would refer you to the Google/Verizon document, which I link to in this post above, and my story on the document.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2009541,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo

That would be great stuartzechman if that was actually what the government would go with the regulations. However, we also know that net neutrality also means the “fairness doctrine” for the FCC.
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Yes, let the free market be the judge, not the government as to who has the ability to provide internets or those services that go as a sideline. The FCC can make the playing field fair by allowing for the purchase of the “air rights” to play on. If someone becomes too big or monopolizes the system, then yes by all means break them up ala Ma Bell. If not stay out of it.
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But, we all know where this is going to go. It is right back to Clintons “Fairness Doctrine”, this is nothing more than a front for the liberal meme to get the airwaves and internets “equal” in the ability to spread their brand of garbage. If you want to tout your liberal philosophy, it shouldn’t be on the backs of those of us who own or listen to more conservative radio, Tv, or internet sites.

Thank you so much for responding to commentary with clarifying links and information, Michael Scherer, it makes your pieces on this blog that much more valuable to readers.

Stuart,
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In fairness to Rusty, he’s just to stupid to understand this issue. It isn’t that he is ideologically opposed to the concept. On the contrary, he is for the principle.
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It is just that he has been bamboozled into believing that large telecommunications companies are for a level playing field and that we are opposed to it.

“Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.[1][2][3]

The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access.

Though the term did not enter popular use until several years later, since the early 2000s advocates of net neutrality and associated rules have raised concerns about the ability of broadband providers to use their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications and content (e.g., websites, services, protocols), particularly those of competitors. In the US particularly, but elsewhere as well, the possibility of regulations designed to mandate the neutrality of the Internet has been subject to fierce debate”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
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This means that Fox News, MSNBC, the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post all are as easy to access online.
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So, you want the “lamestream” media to pay more and give quick access to the “liberal media” side of the story available in one tenth of one second while getting onto the Drudge Report’s website would take ten or fifteen seconds and have a page which will not reload?
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You do realize that this is 0% similar and totally unrelated to the Fairness Doctrine, don’t you?
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The winners: conservative and liberal bloggers and those who wish to read them.
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The losers: deep pocketed mainstream media and the internet service providers who want to get an extra fee for extra fast connections.
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Rusty, your best move right now is to say that you mistook something you neither knew nor cared about for the Fairness Doctrine.
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Then we can disagree, but, you would seem far, far more logical to everybody reading what you wrote.

Because there is such a burning need to tell us that an unnamed White House aide agrees with the on-the-record statement of the WH Spokeswoman that is quoted above…
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It is beyond me why journalists would invite questions about their ethics by granting anonymity to government officials who are more or less paraphrasing an official statement of another government official?

John Craft:

In some cases yes, but wireless services, wireline services, and cable are regulated under different parts of the Communications Act, and in different ways.
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Which is part of the problem the FCC faces.

Thanks for your response.
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I think that a reliance on the 1996 Telecommunications Act for the framework of the discussion serves to elide the basic premise that “the Internet” was never and is not a carrier-dependent term, despite the semantic exigencies of those legislators.
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Put another way, to describe “the Internet” as “wireless” or “wireline” is to cast the debate in terms favorable to those in whose interests it is to exploit the obviously artificial distinctions created by the 1996 law, in order to establish rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior as firmly legal.
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The web page at “www.google.com” shouldn’t be delivered faster than the web page at “www.eschaton.com” to a user’s requesting instrument, depending on the carrier over which the request was made. It doesn’t matter that the page displayed by “www.google.com” was created by leveraging billions of dollars in stock, and contains potentially life-altering, miraculous inventions that should drive the receiver into perpetual consumptive ecstasy, and the page at “www.eschaton.com” was some guy typing words in his pajamas.
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Whether my request for a piece of content comes over my phone, through my cable internet connection, through my copper-wire dial-up modem, or through a previously unimagined network of the future, “www.google.com” shouldn’t get preferential delivery speed over “www.eschaton.com.” The type of network shouldn’t matter –the application of the pro-competitive principle should be “network neutral.”
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The irony of the 1996 framework being employed to establish tiered delivery speeds in excess of the speed and capacity of the connection paid for by both requester and sender is severe, given that

Its stated objective was to open up markets to competition by removing regulatory barriers to entry: The conference report refers to the bill “to provide for a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced services and information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition….” [2]
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Congress attempted to create a regulatory framework for the transition from primarily monopoly provision to competitive provision of telecommunications services.

While it’s certainly true that

IP has won the battle, but the old stovepipes still exist in the regs, and have to be dealt with.

, the purpose of the regulation should never be a race to the least competitive environment envisioned by the biggest players.
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The language of the debate shouldn’t be subverted by the parties in best position to control public debate to imply that the cable model, with its “premium channels” and discriminatory access framework should be favored over the telephone network model, with its common prohibitions on preferential treatment of calls, depending on the conversation of the caller and the answerer.
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Whoever provides the network over which users access “the Internet” is a “common carrier,” i.e. fulfills the function of a public utility, whether the authors of the 1996 law foresaw wireless carriers or cable companies doing so or not. Despite the problems inherent in the law, which you rightfully point out, we shouldn’t have “the Internet” redefined for us by those who would like to create a system by which they can escape the regulatory burdens of public utilities, while enjoying the monopoly powers and market position of new Ma Bells.
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Thanks once again for responding, John Craft.

Who disagrees with this statement: Wireless networks are the future of the Internet.

So why should wireless be free from net-neutrality rules?

The real problem is that phones don’t have the processing power desk and lap-tops have so running Flash or Java for example to improve web abilities of the phones is less attractive when considering how easy it would be to just prioritize the packets over the networks.

Ever wondered why Flash is popular as a platform for streaming video and multimedia applications? It’s because it requires the machine running the application to use more resources in exchange for a quality stream. Phones don’t have more resources and neither does phone networks.

Google and Verison are simply trying to step into the future before the technology is capable of providing quality service. The end of their conclusions is that some data should be aloud higher priority than other data. This is reverse innovation.

The Internet isn’t free, we all pay for it, and we get what we pay for. What you do with your 52Mbits per second is your business, but don’t tell me because I use an application you don’t like that I don’t deserve the 52Mbits per/second that I’m paying for.

If the network is saturated, I expect my VoIP to be useless – along with a lot of other things. Within my private network, I can establish QoS standards, but those standards are not ubiquitous by any means on the public Internet. If an ISP believes it needs to implement traffic shaping because they lack sufficient capacity, then the answer is not to implement traffic shaping, but to add more capacity.

The Internet is telecommunications. The internet is just like telephone lines. We (the users) dial a number (IP address) of the website we are interested in seeing. Phone #’s look like (607)667-9999. IP addresses look like 234.354.354.345. We the users have the right to dial (search) any number (website) we see fit and have a quality connection unrestricted based on what we choose to find.

Remember, the Internet as we know it today was created by the US Government with the High Speed Computing and Communications Act of 1991. Until 1993 the National Science Foundation (NSF) owned and operated the commercial Internet. In 1993 control of the Internet was leased to the original telcos (AT&T, MCI, Pacific Bell, Bell Atlantic) with the understanding that the Internet be operated in the public interest.

The FCC absolutely needs to determine if the public interest is being served by the current Internet environment where home users and businesses typically have a choice of one carrier or cable company, no competition. If the telcos are not serving the public interest, then the NSF should take back control of the Internet, or lease control to a group or organization that would operate the Internet in a way that is fair to all.

Net-neutrality rules should be in place forever.

It truly is amazing at how completely and utterly stupid you sound in each and every post, newfreedomtard. There is no way I can think of that someone could just casually be so stridently idiotic… so my question is this: what is you exercise regimin for the lizard part of your brain? Or do you just start each day with a big bowl of Trollio’s?

i support the google verision proposel all except one part

They could also establish new, premium broadband services that would offer faster speeds for certain content.

that part is pure evil everything else even having net neutrality not appley to wireless i can accept i might not like it but i can accept it

Thank you Apostasyusa and Stuart Zechman for commentary that gives us new content on Net Neutrality.

You obviously know what you’re talking about, bolstering my condemnation of the proposed Google/Verizon payola scheme.