"I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality. Because once providers start to privilege some applications or web sites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out, and we all lose. The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history. We have to keep it that way."

In fact, Obama is making technology a central part of his plans for Executive office, revealing yesterday his plan to use Internet technology to open up government and make it more transparent.

Probably won’t happen – that open government thing – but it’s a nice thought. Nevertheless, he’s made a clear promise to uphold Net Neutrality.

Which is more than we can say for Clinton. Though she’s supported Net Neutrality legislation in the past, she has yet to mention it on the campaign trail, even within her Internet agenda released last month.

And that has organizations like MoveOn.org and other traditionally Democrat supporters nervous. MoveOn sent out word today for members to contact the Clinton campaign for fear she is backing away from her previous stance.

You know, because she’s never been known to waffle before, right?

Oh, wait.

Also among them introducing the bill was Olympia Snowe, who last week called for a Network Neutrality hearing, Daniel Inouye, who received her letter, and Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

The Community Broadband Act treats Internet access as a public utility, and is thought will help improve broadband competition and bolster municipal Wi-fi networks. It will also help ensure those without broadband get high-speed Internet access.

"The Community Broadband Act will provide local governments, schools, nonprofits and disadvantaged communities with faster, cheaper and more reliable broadband service," said Shawn Chang, deputy policy director of Free Press. "With millions still lacking the economic benefits of high-speed Internet, this legislation could not be more critical."

A question was posed by Joe Niederberger via 10Questions.com, and was voted up as an important issue. MTV said they would relay Niederberger’s question to Obama during a live dialog. Niederberger asked:

"Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to re-instate Net Neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net Neutrality?"

Obama gave a resounding reply:

"The answer is yes! I am a strong supporter of net neutrality. And in case folks weren’t following exactly the question I just want to make sure everybody’s clear.

 "Right now the speed with which and quality of your downloads or links are the same if you’re going to the CNN or Time Warner website as if you were going to barackobama.com. But what you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different websites and webcasts. So now what you’d have is, potentially, you could you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from some mom and pop site. And that, I think, destroys one of the best things about the Internet — which is
that there is this incredible equality there."

"And people, if you’ve got a good idea and get a great website — Facebook, MySpace, Google might not have been started if you did not have a level playing field for whoever has the best idea. And I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions and as president I’m going to make sure that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward."

Watch the video:

UPDATE and CORRECTION: Perhaps some wires got twisted, who knows? The stream where Obama was to address the issue was slated for 1:30. He was asked the Net Neutrality question later, and came out in support. Here’s the updated version.

Joe Niederberger submitted the question 10Questions.com, a site promising to ask the Senator directly. Users voted the question to the top, which asked:

"Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to re-instate Net Neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net Neutrality?"

The question, though, was never asked nor addressed in Obama’s MTV/MySpace speech. In fact, nothing terribly specific was addressed at all, and it appeared he was just trying to squeeze in a campus pep-rally before lunch. He stayed with the formula for this speech:

1. Shake some hands.
2. Pander to the crowd for arranging the weather so nicely.
3. Say something cutting against Bush.
4. Tell the young people they are the future and most consistent harbingers of change.
5. Tell a quaint story about small town America.

And really, getting college kids to boo Bush and cheer themselves is like making teenagers depressed which, as Lisa Simpson once said, is like shooting fish in a barrel. Chalk this one up as a raucous win, campaign manager, now lets go eat.

"The most important thing you go away with today," he said, "is a sense of your own power." But as for a Net Neutrality position — zero, zip, nada. Instead, he told the story of a little old lady in South Carolina that cheered him up on a bad day by being "fired up" and "ready to go."

Fired up and ready to go where? Maybe he’ll have more to say over lunch when the speech re-airs on MTV tonight at seven.

"In 2008, voters are looking for real leadership," said Adam Green, who leads controversial political action group MoveOn.org’s Internet freedom campaign. "Any presidential candidate who boldly promises to re-instate Net Neutrality during his or her first year in office, and to only appoint pro-neutrality FCC commissioners, will get tons of positive buzz online."

But it won’t be today, apparently.

Here is most of the text from the letter:

Over the past several months there have been incidents that have raised serious concern about the phone and cable companies’ power to discriminate against content. Just recently, Verizon Wireless arbitrarily chose to block a series of text messages on the grounds that the subject matter was too controversial.

While the carrier, to its credit, reversed this decision, this illustrates its power as a content gatekeeper. Then came the news that AT&T reserves the right in its Terms of Service to discontinue service of customers that criticize the company. And just last week, we saw reports of Comcast interfering with the popular file-sharing service BitTorrent.

All of these developments, Mr. Chairman, suggest that the Committee needs to consider the issue of content discrimination and investigate these incidents further if they were based on legitimate business and network management policies or part of practices that would be deemed unfair and anti-competitive.

The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers "a solution in search of a problem."

These recent events suggest that response is well short of being sufficient and this Congress should consider adopting targeted regulations to protect consumers and ensure an open and vibrant communications platform.

We request that the full Committee hold a hearing to discuss discrimination against content and applications by phone and cable companies, and whether current regulatory protections are enough.

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission required a commitment from AT&T to Net Neutrality principals as a condition for regulatory approval of its merger with BellSouth. The condition has been proven to have no enforcement capability, as noted immediately by FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who opposed the conditions.

The Department of Justice also recently denied the need for Network Neutrality by reiterating telecom talking points. Skeptics feel the DOJ has a vested interest not only in scratching the backs of telecommunications providers who turn over phone records, but also in their ability to differentiate data packets. Net Neutrality legislation could, conceivably, prevent telecom’s rights to do so.  

Often the Net Neutrality debate runs afoul of the central issues as sub-debates ensue about how much competition there is in the broadband space (not much is the answer), the wireless space, what speeds are available (pathetic compared to Hong Kong), or even the latest Washington politician to be bought by a telecom (Jay Rockefeller, it appears).

But the main argument against Net Neutrality, which has been routinely and in unison (fa la la’d) by telecom, cable co., and Republican alike, is that the concept in legislative form was a solution in search of a problem – and that the Internet would be crippled, causing entire economic structures to crash and people to die for lack of good connectivity.

(Which is funny seeing as proponents of a neutral network are usually the ones accused of telling Chicken Little stories).

Also is the tenet that there’s just not enough bandwidth for the next evolution of the Web, which includes a helluva lot of video (and then the side-fight begins as angry citizens remind of the missing $200 billion in infrastructure money). In order to accommodate for increased bandwidth demand, the ability to differentiate and prioritize certain packets of data is essential.

(Differentiating and prioritizing, then, leads to a nice opportunity to make some extra money, and if you’re name ain’t Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft, you won’t be able to afford to be differentiated and prioritized.)

Lastly, there is the incentive-to-invest argument. With Net Neutrality protections set in stone – well, paper – service providers would lose their incentive to invest in said infrastructure (yes, we know, side-arguers, it’s already paid for, see above $200 billion).

Yet, as all these arguments have been made (loudly) in the past, the telecommunications and cable companies belie themselves with their actions – which would usually signify a time to crank up the spin machine. AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have all demonstrated the need to limit their gatekeeping abilities in swift succession.

First Eddie Vedder’s AT&T’s censored remarks, then Verizon’s dusty SMS policy, AT&T’s more recent (and rescinded) policy of cutting off detractors, and this week Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent traffic. (A side argument is appropriate here, as well, regarding the cozy relationship between telecoms and government agencies – disallowing the ability to differentiate would also limit government agencies’ ability to snoop on us. But let’s stay on topic.)

"This [Comcast] incident is the latest in a pattern of bad behavior from the telephone and cable companies," says Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press. "This is a disturbing trend that validates all of the concerns of the Net Neutrality advocates."

In short, the problem we were looking for has been found.

Ben’s comments come just as Verizon’s John Czwartacki reveals on the Verizon Public Policy blog that bandwidth concerns are a thing of the past with the company’s fiber-to-the-premises FiOS offering.

In response to and Engadget writer, Czwartacki writes:

As you correctly point out, our fiber optic capacity and the FiOS network have almost no practical limit. We have more HD channels than many other carriers, we offer internet speeds only dreamed about by cable and over fiber — THE state of the art communications technology.   Like everyone else we’re adding more channels and more bandwidth as fast as we can.  The difference is we have the capacity to stay ahead of the pack.

Simultaneously, he also makes the case for incentive to invest (it’s in TV/Web integration), and then reiterates:

[T]here is no "technological limitation” in our video hubs and central offices.  In our fiber system it is just a matter of adding new equipment to increase capacity.  We continue to do that every day adding to the number of homes passed, the number of channels offered, and adding faster data speeds.

In another post (for you side-arguers interested in where the US ranks in broadband speeds) Czwartacki reveals there’s no incentive to give you the fastest speeds available, either:

Please note: just because we can drive 100mbs to your FiOS connected home, doesn’t mean we are going to start tomorrow.  For most users today, you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of such speed or see its full potential.  Kind of like having a Porsche in a town with all dirt roads.

Fair enough, even if the dirt roads are telecom-and-cable supplied as well, although we asked they be paved by now ten years ago. (It also means they get to charge you incrementally until – eventually – you get blistering speeds)

FCC commissioner Michael Copps recently testified before a Congressional committee that US ranks 11th, 12th, 15th, 20th, 24th, and 25th in the world, depending on which measure you look at, in broadband penetration.

Further, the lack of broadband penetration, says Copps, is costing Americans jobs. He cites recent studies to suggest that for every percentage point increase in broadband penetration – currently hovering around 50 percent – 300,000 jobs are created.

Just think how much innovation and job creation would result if we had speeds offered to Hong Kong residents – up to 1Gbps. Granted, the dirt roads still need paving.

Czwartacki did not return request for comment.
  

The DoJ weighed in on the issue for the FCC, the body that is supposed to regulate television, telephone and related industries. Rumor has it, though, that the FCC’s governing board is deeply divided over net neutrality.

If you’re not familiar with net neutrality, the basic premise is that telecom companies want to charge more for accessing certain types or sources of content. The biggest specter raised anti-telecommers always seems to be telecoms creating a “two tiered” Internet, where users have to pay extra to visit search engines or watch video.

The Financial Times puts it more gently:

The big telecoms carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications and cable operators like Comcast that would like the option to charge some users extra fees for carrying certain web content such as video.

The Financial Times also paraphrased the DoJ: “differentiating service levels and pricing is a common and often efficient way of allocating scarce resources and satisfying consumer demand.”

Call me crazy, but I could have sworn I was already paying extra for a “differentiated service level” and the ability to access video content with my huge bandwidth bill.

Let’s assume that the “some users” they’ll be charging would include, say, the users actually accessing video. Heck, I’ll even narrow it to the ones streaming video.

Oh, wait. According to comScore, that would be 75% of US Internet users, or 132 million people (that would also be about 44% of the total US population). So three-quarters of Internet users should pay more to keep getting what they’ve been getting so that the other one-quarter can pay the same for the features that they’re not using?

The Financial Times paraphrases and quotes the DoJ’s comments:

[P]recluding broadband providers from charging content and application providers directly for faster or more reliable service, “could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements on to consumers”.

So, let me go through this one more time. We’ll charge 75% of the Internet population more for the same services they get now (to save the other 25% some money) so that, somehow, the cost of infrastructure upgrades will not be passed on to the consumer. Oh but wait, that 75%’s hard-earned money is already paying for the infrastructure upgrades. Yeah, that’s sure to keep the cost off the consumers.

Let’s cut to the chase: the people at the DoJ (or at least the ones who wrote this, since I’m sure some of them are over on YouTube right now) are in the 25%.

Comments

As noted by Jason Lee Miller and numerous others, the Department of Justice gave a thumbs-up to prioritization of Internet traffic. If you want the best chance of consistently delivering content to your visitors, you’re going to have to pay.

So much has been said about net neutrality that it seemed maintaining a status quo that has helped businesses boom (and send more taxes to Washington) would be easy to accomplish. It didn’t happen that way.

CNet writer Declan McCullagh summed up ten reasons (really nine, he blames the Bush Administration twice) why net neutrality fell harder than a sack of wet cement. In his final reason, McCullagh calls vociferous net neutrality advocate MoveOn out for indirectly carrying the day for the other side:

Most technology debates in Congress aren’t especially partisan: Both Democrats and Republicans fall over each other to enact unconstitutional restrictions on free speech when it comes to laws like the Communications Decency Act. The R&D tax credit is another. But somehow along the way, perhaps because Internet companies allied themselves so closely with MoveOn.org (hardly a non-partisan group), it became a partisan issue. And that led to the usual partisan gridlock.

McCullagh also cited a conversation with Heritage Foundation senior research fellow James Gattuso, who thought the for-profit members backing net neutrality became a little frightened at the partisanship, and worse, being affiliated with the stridency of the “hard left”:

“Some of the rhetoric got a bit out of control on the left. They started talking about the evils of pricing and the evils of price discrimination in markets. Anyone in the corporate side had to have second thoughts about that.”

We contacted MoveOn for comments about these views, but the organization, which has been so active in getting the net neutrality message out, has not responded to that request. This seems like the wrong time to go silent.

Is The FCC Blocking Wireless Competition?

M2Z Networks created quite a stir and sort of speeded its own rejection by hammering the FCC into a decision about the company’s proposed free, advertising-supported wireless broadband network. But also, M2Z has sparked fierce public debate over a host of issues that aren’t easy to resolve, including debates about free speech and Net Neutrality. 

Perhaps the most pressing (if not the largest) issue: What to do with all that unused spectrum?

Listen to the Muleta Interview

M2Z CEO John Muleta, whose venture-funded Silicon Valley company proposed the FCC carve out the 2155-2175 MHz band that had lain fallow since 2000 for their "family friendly" network, says the FCC is "sitting" on a lot of unused spectrum that could be used to create new wireless broadband competition.

Muleta brings not just his vested interest in the proposal, but also a Washington Beltway insider pedigree. From 2003 to 2005, he served as the chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

In an interview with WebProNews, Muleta describes M2Z as an answer to the telecom/cable broadband duopoly, and an anticompetitive market he suggests the FCC has helped to create by blocking startups such as his own.

M2Z was quite vocal in the final days leading to the dismissal of its proposal, noting the speed with which the Commission approved the largest merger in US history – the AT&T/BellSouth merger – and comparing it to the relative slowness of considering uses for fallow spectrum.

"The FCC has spent 15 months looking at our proposal and decided to think some more about it," said Muleta.

Commissioners criticized the proposal for not being aggressive enough in its build-out plans, and for not offering fast enough speeds. Muleta rejected both arguments, saying that the goal to reach 95 percent of the US population was "aggressive" and that 384 Kbs was comparable to the wireless broadband offerings of AT&T and Verizon, who charge $60-$90 per month.

Though the FCC said it needed time to devise rules and invite public comment on what to do with the spectrum (M2Z proposed a 5 percent of profit trade out), for deciding to license or not license, to auction or not to auction, etc., one Commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, expressed disappointment that the Commission had not sought comment on service rules for this band before now.

"Why does it take 15 months to [initiate rule making]?" echoed Muleta. The answer may lie in that it’s more complicated than throwing spectrum to the first startup that asks for it.

Though there is certainly evidence that the FCC has sat on its heels in divvying up spectrum to would-be wireless competitors, or indeed, as Muleta put it, is flat out "getting in the way" of competition, M2Z’s proposal introduced two new and quite sticky elements to the debate: a Constitutional element; and a Net Neutrality element.

M2Z said content coming across its free network would be "family friendly," which means filters would be in place to block adult content. A premium service would also be available where the filter could be turned off.

Muleta equates it to free over-the-air broadcast television and radio, which has been (quite arguably) family friendly for decades, self-regulated by the networks with oversight by the FCC.

"If we granted a free service," he said, "we think it’s common sense that children don’t inadvertently get to pornographic material."

Listen to the Feld Interview

But Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Media Access Project, a 35-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to free speech in media issues and, more recently, opening up spectrum bands for unlicensed public use, says that the FCC granting a license allowing a network operator to filter content would be "an outright violation of the First Amendment."

Feld differentiates between broadcast and wireless broadband with some classic communication theory that involves passive versus active users.

"The problem was you’d be sitting there with your kids huddled around the television set or listening to the radio in this sort of Norman Rockwell type picture and then suddenly this terrible indecent content would jump out at you before you even knew it was there and your kids were exposed to it before you could even turn the dial."

Those were passive users. Active users, as with Internet users, seek out content.

On the Net Neutrality side of the debate, you might imagine, this would involve a government sanction for allowing a network operator to sniff around data packets, separate content, and ultimately decide what the end user can view. And that, says Feld, "sets an extraordinarily bad precedent."

Muleta is quick to answer, though, falling back on the argument that the free market will cure all ills and that the FCC has created the problem of Constitutional concern by clogging up the market in favor of incumbents, and preventing new entrants by doing nothing with the available spectrum.

In the rejection to M2Z’s proposal, Muleta notes not even these concerns were addressed. "What are they thinking?" he asks. "What are they doing out there? Are they fighting fires?"

Search Neutrality Before Net Neutrality

The assumptions of fairness assigned to search engines and their algorithmic work have come about because we believe computers act as the ultimate neutral arbiter of rules. Programmers and administrators have long known computers give back what has been given to them, no more and no less.

Nemertes Research president and chief research officer Johna Till Johnson thinks Google gets a lot more benefit of the doubt than it deserves. Her NetworkWorld article on Google and net neutrality suggested that Google has parlayed this way of thinking about computers into a mindset where only Google can truly judge neutrality:

On Planet Google, what

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