FCC in the Tank for Industry It Regulates

What’s Wrong Today:

The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and pipes to consumers (called net neutrality) looks all but dead. From the NYT:

The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday that it would propose new rules that allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers

These proposed changes end net neutrality — the idea that no providers of legal Internet content should face discrimination in providing offerings to consumers, and that users should have equal access to see any legal content they choose.

Today consumers can pay Internet service providers for a higher-speed Internet connection, but at whatever speed they choose, under the new FCC rules, they might get some content faster, depending on how much the content provider has paid the service provider.

Tim Wu at the New Yorker offered some insight: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic. We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won’t. They’ll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies’ speed ahead

The new rule gives broadband providers what they’ve wanted for about a decade: the right to speed up some traffic at the expense of others. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices for a service that costs less than $5/month to provide. To get cheap broadband that actually delivers, you could take a look at HTTPS://WWW.EATEL.COM/ for some of the best plans on the market.

It is troubling that the FCC is caving in only three months after a federal appeals court struck down agency rules intended to guarantee a free and open Internet. After all, it was in January, in response to the court decision that Tom Wheeler, FCC Chair, said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

We will consider all available options
including those for appeal, to ensure that these networks on which the Internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expression, and operate in the interest of all Americans

So, Mr. Wheeler changed his mind. Why? Jan Brodkin of Ars Technica speculates that the revolving door at the FCC may help explain it:

Tom Wheeler, the current chair of the FCC, has previously been the CEO of the industry organizations for both the cellular industry (CTIA) and the cable industry (NCTA). The NCTA is currently headed by Michael Powell, a former chair of the FCC

He also outlines the career of Meredith Baker: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The CTIA [cell phone industry] announced that its next CEO will be Meredith Attwell Baker. Her résumé goes like this: lobbyist for the CTIA; lobbying firms; National Telecommunications and Information Administration (part of the Department of Commerce), where she sided with Comcast against the FCC; FCC commissioner who voted for the Comcast-NBC merger; head lobbyist for the NBC division of Comcast; and now CEO of the CTIA

Here is a graphic illustration of the revolving door at the FCC:

The history of regulation is that large firms in an industry buy politicians and use them to extract rents, raise barriers to entry, erect tariff barriers, and do other things to pad their bottom lines. Most of the time, the sales window is open and everyone just looks the other way. Who got bought? The man who appointed Mr. Wheeler in 2013 will never again run for reelection.

Big business groups like to say that they are against regulation because of free market, big government, economic efficiency, consumer choice, blah, blah, blah.

The need to pay access fees for faster service will make it harder for new entrants on the content and services side; in the long run, paying these fees will be good for Netflix, since it won’t have to worry as much about competition. The ultimate result will be to lock in the current set of incumbents that control the Internet, ushering in the era of big, fat, incompetent monopolies.

This is another case where the regulators support the regulated, the corporatists and the pl
utocrats.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a war going on. Small businesses and individuals with less than multimillion dollar bank accounts are in the cross-hairs. The average American must pay for and account for every little thing we do, while the mega corporations are able to make what are for them, small payments to big lawyers and accountants to limit access for the rest of us.

All while avoiding paying their fair share of taxes.

The whole money-politics-power crowd has deployed a well-oiled model of how political corruption actually works.

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2 Comments

Terry McKenna

We have been told that allowing ownership of multiple radio stations or Newspaper and broadcast, or a host of other changes would do no harm, but they have all turned out badly. This too is wrong. It wil turn out badly.

Capital is winning every battle. Big capital, over small capital and over people.

The Wrongologist

@ Terry: Amen, brother! We could call all these wrong decisions a learning disability, if it wasn’t a fact that the decision-makers know full well what the ultimate outcome of these decisions will be. They plan to advantage capital over people, they always have, they always will.  

We have to organize. We have to shout them down with a story that the average person can understand.

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