Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > The Academy > Tilted Politics


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 11-22-2010, 01:28 PM   #1 (permalink)
Addict
 
Shadowex3's Avatar
 
Location: Florida
FCC Chairman promises Net Neutrality, openly slams politicians and lobbyists

Quote:
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski now finds himself caught between unfulfilled promises made to the tech community to keep the internet open, and a Republican Congress ready to portray any new rules on broadband ISPs as heavy-handed, economy-killing regulation. Genachowski said Wednesday that the rules are coming. He didn't say how -- the $64,000 question -- but only that the FCC is being slow in order to be careful.
"That will happen," Genachowski said, referring to so-called net neutrality rules designed to make sure that the telecoms that own the net's pipes can't control what goes through them. "We will make sure that we get the rules right, we need to make sure that what we do maximizes innovation and investment across the ecosystem."
Genachowski, a former tech executive for IAC, was clearly at home speaking to top Silicon Valley executives at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
He made it plain to his audience that he wanted to keep the net as a platform for "innovation" -- meaning online companies should be able to build businesses without having to ask permission from the telecoms to do so.
But his use of the word "investment" is a signal to the telecoms that he's thinking of them as well. They are fighting to stave off regulation from the FCC, saying they will hurt the companies financially, ultimately reducing how much tech infrastructure they build.
The telecoms argue that competition will keep them playing fairly, even as all of them fight to find ways to be more than just a utility company -- building out app stores, Comcast buying NBC, and wireless companies offering TV services on their networks.
Genachowski made clear he wasn't too happy when Google and Verizon announced a net neutrality policy proposal in the spring. The companies released that controversial proposal at same time the FCC was trying to forge a compromise with industry players behind closed doors, effectively ending the FCC's effort.
"I would have preferred if they didn't do exactly what they did when they did it," Genachowski said. "It had the effect of slowing down some processes."
Genachowski defended the FCC's actions over the last 22 months, and sought to downplay likely confrontations with the new Congress.
"Things shouldn't change because the kinds of issues we work on aren't partisan," Genachowski said. He named the plan to have an incentive auction get broadcasters to auction off the spectrum they have to make it available for mobile broadband, and transforming the $8 billion Universal Service Fund to help people get broadband, not just phone services.
Unfortunately for the chairman, net neutrality does include some partisan elements, and as Wired.com's Sam Gustin wrote yesterday, the FCC is already being warned by the likely heads of a powerful House committee that it should not act unilaterally to impose rules on wireless and wireline ISPs.
Genachowski, who worked at the agency in the early 1990s when mobile broadband and internet policy was just being set and mobile phones were as heavy and big as bricks, said in the long view, the FCC is facing great problems.
"These are exactly the issues we hoped we'd be dealing with in the future," Genachowski said.
"The biggest issues involve the opportunities of wireless, mobile broadband and whether we have the spectrum we need. In our wildest dreams we hoped the country might have to deal with problem like that."
The FCC has been trying to accomplish net neutrality for some time, and the government has always been more or less playing both sides, but it seems like recently both have just flat out polarized on the issue. While I'm pretty sure the internet isn't really going anywhere, it's in too many people's interests to hold the status quo, it's still very interesting to see someone actually speaking this forcefully on the subject.

I'm amazed at the strength of the language being used in the Full Speech (pdf), the FCC is basically flat out calling out the government on this and openly telling it that come hell or high water the FCC is going to war for the internet and will fight to stop deals that "that exchange Internet freedom for bloated profits".
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hectonkhyres
I'm imagining crazed dwarves doing profoundly weird things. Urist McNutcase has developed a compulsion to jam anything colored blue up his anus, or alternately other peoples anuses

Last edited by Shadowex3; 11-22-2010 at 01:37 PM.. Reason: fixed ridiculous paragraph breaks
Shadowex3 is offline  
Old 11-22-2010, 02:05 PM   #2 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: bedford, tx
maybe i'm behind the power curve on this, but is the ONLY issue about net neutrality being who controls what content on their own data streams?
__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
dksuddeth is offline  
Old 11-22-2010, 02:40 PM   #3 (permalink)
Addict
 
Shadowex3's Avatar
 
Location: Florida
No, it's a lot more than that. The simplest valid explanation is imagine if every company that owned some section of the hardware the data was travelling through was able to say "Nice data you have there, be a shame if something were to happen to it" to everything going through.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hectonkhyres
I'm imagining crazed dwarves doing profoundly weird things. Urist McNutcase has developed a compulsion to jam anything colored blue up his anus, or alternately other peoples anuses
Shadowex3 is offline  
Old 11-22-2010, 03:00 PM   #4 (permalink)
warrior bodhisattva
 
Baraka_Guru's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: East-central Canada
It's good to see an organization supporting net neutrality and so adamantly at that. I look at this as basically the public vs. corporatocracy. The Internet is important in so many ways such that it is a digital form of a global public sphere. That corporations can have arbitrary influence over that sphere is a danger to the freedom of communication.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth View Post
maybe i'm behind the power curve on this, but is the ONLY issue about net neutrality being who controls what content on their own data streams?
Here is a metaphor that may illustrate what's at stake.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
Baraka_Guru is offline  
 

Tags
chairman, fcc, lobbyists, net, neutrality, openly, politicians, promises, slams

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 12:24 PM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360