Last night,
Newshour broadcast file footage and discussion titled "Net Neutrality. Clever name, bad idea". For the first time,
anti-trust enforcement came out of the closet of net neutrality branding ("an ongoing ad campaign").
Jeff Brown talked with PAUL MISENER and SCOTT CLELAND about the internet industry. Misener, former FCC attorney is VP, global public policy, Amazon.com. Cleland, of Precursor, a telecom industry research and consulting firm, is also chairman of NetCompetition.org, which is funded by telecom, cable and wireless companies.
They did not speculate about first amendment violations, digital products, or choice ("whether all content on the Internet is created equal"). They talked about minimizing the cost of competition for a handful of "telecommunications" retail/wholesale carriers: The Consumer Grid.
Not you: YOYO and
3 kinds of crazy
WITT: AT&T, Verizon, Bellsouth, SBC(MCI/UUnet), PacBell, Comcast, Time-Warner
Last monopoly privilege standing is price fixing, racketeering, the unmitigated power to charge their subscribers any amount for delivery of data, voice, and video "entertainment", the so-called broadcast franchise -- because there simply are no other operators with comparative share of the existing market.
JEFFREY BROWN: Why is it necessary to have that [Net Neutrality] principle put into regulation?
PAUL MISENER: Because the consumers in their homes don't have a meaningful choice of network operators, a way to get to the broadband Internet. For the foreseeable future, consumers in America will [sic] have only two choices: the phone company or the cable company.
This is the problem. This is the problem no one wanted to debate publicly. This is the problem that simplifies the GOP federalists' privitization agenda and surveillance reach into our homes.
The solution is divesting all these companies. Again. Why?
SCOTT CLELAND, Founder, Precursor LLC: Well, I think we can agree on the goal. I think everyone wants a free and open Internet. And, really, the disagreement, and it's a big one, is: How do we get there?
And the net neutrality folks say, "Let's bring the government back in, after commercializing and having the Internet not be regulated for 13 years, and bringing it back and saying that we need the government to be the policeman of this." And what we believe is, is that competition and the way the Internet has been running for the last 13 years is what's best for the Internet.
Excersing Article 1, Commerce Clause, is all the regulatory power that Congress needs to assure competition, but it has abdicated that oversight and abrogated its purposes to the monopolists' theater. Congress ridicules its Article 1 obligations within the constraints of ancient case law by even suggesting COPE, which in fact destroys the one differentiating characteristic of incumbents and rival cable network operators.
COPE gives incumbents and cable operators a national broadcast license. COPE preempts state and local permitting and revenue. COPE indemnifies carrier obligations, given in telecom acts since 1939, to operate and maintain universal access. The US Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act displaces and invalidates all other protections of personal information or expectation of privacy in law enforcement and distribution among fed contractors.
Here is the "regulatory" canard that the blogosphering "net neutrality" activists have swallowed hook n line: one, one internet, one price, undifferentiated choice, free of obligation ... In another world, these identities add up to monopoly.
JEFFREY BROWN: But why would it be beneficial for telecom and cable companies to be able to charge differently for different service?
SCOTT CLELAND: [...]
So the Internet has been tiered, and it allows you to have different services. It's consumer-driven, and it's market-driven. And what we're concerned about is, if you have the government come in with its heavy hand and says, "No, I want prices to be one way, with one price and one terms and conditions."
PAUL MISENER: Well, what you'll see here, I think, today is that the disagreement is not on the philosophy, the regulatory approach to the Internet, but rather on the facts. We're all for the free market, as Mr. Cleland is, but the emphasis on his side of the debate is all on free, and that is free of regulation, free of legislation.
"Net Neutrality" bills are default positions -- bread, circus -- offered by politicians who abandoned Markey (D-MA) in committee and refused to sponsor hearings and may actually give a shit that states and individuals will have no standing to litigate anti-trust complaints and will have no power through petitioning the FCC to enforce bread and circus.
SCOTT CLELAND: We see a totally different world. The facts and the process are on our side. The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Department of Justice, they're the experts that determine the facts on the ground.
They both have ruled that there is sufficient broadband competition, that it doesn't require regulation. That went to the Supreme Court last summer. And the Supreme Court affirmed it.
Here's the whole transcript. Yes. More reasons, more examples of Congressional graft to take to your Republican neighbors, when you ask them to vote this time. Make sure you happen to have your cable bill in your pocket with your "Had Enough?" bill.
I want those jackasses outa office so bad, I can taste it.
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this diary is dedicated to Paul Geroski my last, bestest teacher. he revealed to me, "the secret of economics is a good story."