Despite the FCC's having called off closed-door meetings with the big telecoms, the companies are continuing on without them, using the current vacuum in government policy-making to decide how they want to carve up the Internet.
The new discussions are being led by industry lobbyists and began Wednesday at the offices of the Information Technology Industry Council, a Washington-based lobbying group that represents dozens of tech companies.
According to people close to the talks, a larger number of companies are involved in this round of negotiations, including Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Officials from the Federal Communications Commission aren't involved in the latest discussions.
"Today's meeting is the first in a series of focused discussions, with ITI serving as facilitator, aimed at developing Internet openness principles that can achieve broad cross-sector support," said Dean Garfield, president of ITI, in a statement. "Over the last few months, much work has been directed at developing such a solution—including by Google—with significant positive steps forward."
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FCC officials also aren't actively involved. "While we're not involved in these new discussions, we're glad that there is ongoing dialogue," a FCC spokeswoman said in a statement.
Apparently, that spokewoman doesn't speak for the entirety of the FCC. Two of those commissioners, Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps, are speaking for themselves in an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
[O]nline freedom of Americans is at risk. Right now, the few companies that provide access to the Internet can control what we see and do online, with or without our knowledge. They tell us not to worry because surely they can agree among themselves to behave appropriately. History teaches us, however, that when technological capability to exercise control combines with a financial incentive to do so, some will try to turn this power to their own advantage.
Just last week, Verizon and Google, two major players in the Internet access and content industry, announced an agreement for a policy framework that they insist will work for the benefit of the American people. But this new framework is not what the American people have been waiting for, not by a long shot.
The Federal Communications Commission has been considering how to ensure that we all continue to have access to lawful information, services, and applications available on the Internet, without service providers blocking or degrading such access, or favoring some content (such as their own) over others. This is not about regulating the Internet. It's about ensuring that consumers, rather than gatekeeper corporations, maintain control over their online experience.
There's two (out of five) votes for not letting the telecoms regulate themselves on this one. The sooner the FCC acts, particularly since the telecoms are moving full steam ahead on this, the better. Which was the message delivered by Sen. Al Franken and reiterated by Copps and Clyburn at a town hall meeting last night in Minneapolis.
"I believe that net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time," declared Democratic Senator Al Franken at Thursday's public hearing on the Internet, held in his home state of Minnesota.
"Unless it's freedom of religion," he added, "which, until last week, I thought we had kind of worked out."
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Google and Verizon's scheme empowers the FCC to, "get this—'publish a report'," he dryly commented, while his audience laughed again.
"But there's an even bigger issue here. It's that when government will not act, corporations will. And unlike government agencies, which have a legal responsibility to protect American consumers, the only thing corporations care about, the only thing that they have a legal duty to promote, is their bottom line."
"We can't let companies write the rules that they're supposed to follow," Franken added, "because if that happens those rules are going to be written only to protect corporations."
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FCC Commissioner Michael Copps accepted Franken's implied criticism, calling the agency's eight-year-long practice of classifying ISPs as "information" rather than "telecommunications" services a dodge to avoid providing common carrier protections to consumers. "Our job now is to correct course by reclassifying broadband as the telecommunications service that it is," Copps told the applauding crowd.
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In her remarks, Mignon Clyburn cited a study indicating that minority consumers more often get their Internet via wireless handsets than from laptops or desktop computers. "So any proposal that treats fixed and mobile broadband differently would be impossible for me to support," Clyburn declared.
The FCC has to act if the Internet is going to remain open, and act soon. If the telecoms are allowed to write their own rules, a free and open Internet will be a thing of the past.