(A big h/t to Kossack Bill in Portland Maine for putting Moyers' Friday show on our radar.)
Bill Moyers has been on a roll on Net Neturality this past week, culminating with his show on Friday evening.
Starting with Friday's show and working our way backwards…
Full Show: Is Net Neutrality Dead?
Bill Moyers
BillMoyers.com
May 2nd, 2014
For years, the government has upheld the principle of “Net neutrality,” the belief that everyone should have equal access to the web without preferential treatment.
But now, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a former cable and telecommunications top gun, is circulating potential new rules that reportedly would put a price tag on climbing aboard the Internet. The largest and richest providers, giant corporations such as Verizon and Comcast – in mid-takeover of Time Warner Cable — like the idea. They could afford to buy their way to the front of the line. Everyone else — nonprofit groups, startups and everyday users – would have to move to the rear, and the Net would be neutral no more.
This week, speaking with Bill Moyers about these latest developments are two keen observers of media and the world of cyberspace. David Carr covers the busy intersection of media with business, government and culture for The New York Times. Susan Crawford is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, contributor to Bloomberg View and author of, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age...
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Bill Moyers Essay: What Happened to Obama’s Promised Net Neutrality?
Bill Moyers
BillMoyers.com
May 2, 2014
Running for president in 2007, Barack Obama pledged to keep the Internet open to all, upholding the principle of Net neutrality. Now his FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, has introduced new rules that have caused an uproar among public interest groups and media reform advocates. They believe Wheeler’s proposed changes break Obama’s campaign promise and will allow providers like Verizon and Comcast to sell faster access to the Web to the highest bidder.
The problem, Bill Moyers says, is that “business and government are now so intertwined that public officials and corporate retainers are interchangeable parts of what Chief Justice John Roberts might call ‘the gratitude machine.’” FCC officials, including Wheeler, transit back and forth through the revolving door between public service and lucrative private commerce, losing sight of the greater good. But there’s still time to speak up and make your voices heard…
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Don’t Let Net Neutrality Become Another Broken Promise
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
BillMoyers.com
May 2, 2014
Barack Obama told us there would be no compromise on Net neutrality. We heard him say it back in 2007, when he first was running for president.
“We have to ensure [a] free and full exchange of information and that starts with an open Internet,” he said in a speech at Google headquarters, the presidium of cyberspace. “I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality, because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose. The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history and we have to keep it that way.”
He said it many more times. And defenders of Net neutrality believed him, that he would preserve Internet access for all, without selling out to providers like Verizon and Comcast who want to charge higher fees for speedier access – hustling more cash from those who can afford to buy a place at the front of the line. On this issue so important to democracy, they believed he would keep his word, would see to it that when private interests set upon the Internet like sharks to blood in the water, its fate would be in the hands of honest brokers who would listen politely to the pleas of the greedy, and then show them the door.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be Washington’s infamous revolving door. Last May, President Obama named Tom Wheeler to be FCC chairman. He had other choices, men or women whose loyalty was to the public, not to rich and powerful corporations. But Tom Wheeler had been one of Obama’s top bundlers of campaign cash – both in 2008 and again in 2012, when he raised at least half a million dollars for the president’s re-election. Like his proposed new rules for the Web, that put him at the front of the line.
What’s more, Wheeler had been the top gun for both the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), lobbyists for the cable and wireless industries. However we might try to imagine that he could quickly abandon old habits of service to his employers, that’s not how Washington works. Business and government are now so intertwined that public officials and corporate retainers are interchangeable parts of what Chief Justice John Roberts might call “the gratitude machine”…
One of many calls to action (see above and below for many other ways via which we may bring this to the attention of people inside the Beltway, from the White House to the FCC, to Capitol Hill) by Moyers, et al…
…President Obama could stiffen Tom Wheeler’s spine with one phone call. That’s not likely, given the broken promises that litter the White House grounds. But the FCC meets on May 15. Before then, you can send an e-mail to make your opinion known at [mailto:openinternet@fcc.gov openinternet@fcc.gov]. Or direct a tweet to Wheeler @TomWheelerFCC.
After the meeting, there will be a “public comment” period of 30 to perhaps 45 days before they start finalizing any new rules. Speak up. You have a chance to tell both Obama and Wheeler what you think, so that the will of the people, not the power of money and predatory interests, is heard.
Please don’t stop at just an email to the FCC. There’s much more to do…
A Call To Action!
» Save the Internet has a sample script, an email petition and instructions on how to call Wheeler and request that the chairman abandon his proposal.
» Using WhiteHouse.gov’s We the People site, critics of the new proposal have also launched a petition, calling for “nothing less than complete neutrality in our communication channels.” It already has over 40,000 signatures.
» A second petition asks the FCC to reclassify broadband as a regulated common-carrier service, which means it would have to be open to all, and serve all customers without discrimination. Currently broadband is classified as an information service, a category that gives the FCC a fairly limited set of regulatory options.
» There are a number of other organizations that are working on maintaining Net neutrality, including: Access, CREDO Action, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, Voices for Internet Freedom
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A Primer: Just What Is Net Neutrality — and Why All the Fuss?
by Joshua Holland
BillMoyers.com
May 2, 2014
The battle over Net neutrality is once again heating up. But not everyone has followed this somewhat complicated issue. Here, then, is a primer for understanding what’s at stake in the fight for an open Internet.
Just what is Net neutrality anyway? Net neutrality is a principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – and the regulators that oversee them — treat all Internet traffic the same way. The idea is to keep the Net free and open, giving users equal access to any website or application. Net neutrality would prevent companies that provide Internet access from blocking or slowing down traffic to or from specific sites in much the same way as a phone company has to put through your call, regardless of whom you’re calling. Timothy Lee has a simple explainer at Vox. Rob Frieden, a professor of telecommunications and law at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a more detailed backgrounder on the issues surrounding Net neutrality. And Armand Valdez at Mashable offers an accessible, two-minute video explaining the concept.
How does this affect me? As Susan Crawford, a telecommunications policy analyst, explained to Bill Moyers, “For most Americans, they have no choice for all the information, data, entertainment coming through their house, other than their local cable monopoly. And here, we have a situation where that monopoly potentially can pick and choose winners and losers, decide what you see, how interesting and interactive it is, how quickly it reaches you — and then charge whatever it wants…”
…
…So, is real Net neutrality dead? Not dead, but it is endangered. As John Nichols wrote in The Nation, the open Internet can be saved if citizens rally to its cause. First, as mentioned above, the FCC can overturn its earlier decision and reclassify residential broadband services as “telecommunications” — which they are. Second, the January ruling left open the possibility that the FCC would review state bans on “municipal broadband” – allowing cities to install their own fiberoptic networks that would then be owned by the public rather than private companies. As Susan Crawford explained in The New York Times, municipal broadband offers the potential to create an open Internet from the bottom-up. Moyers and Winship have some ideas about what you can do to make that happen.
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Net Neutrality Will Be Saved Only If Citizens Raise an Outcry
April 25, 2014
by John Nichols
This post originally appeared at The Nation.
When Barack Obama was running for president in 2007, he earned a great deal of credibility with tech-savvy voters by expressing support for net neutrality that was rooted in an understanding that this issue raises essential questions about the future of open, free and democratic communications in America.
Obama “got” that net neutrality represented an Internet-age equivalent of the First Amendment — a guarantee of equal treatment for all content, as opposed to special rights to speed and quality of service for the powerful business and political elites that can buy an advantage.
Asked whether he thought the Federal Communications Commission and Congress needed to preserve the Internet as we know it, the senator from Illinois said, “The answer is ‘yes.’ I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.”...
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...Obama’s bottom line: “That I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet —which is that there is this incredible equality there.”
Candidate Obama was exactly right.
So was President Obama when, in 2010, the White House declared that “President Obama is strongly committed to net neutrality in order to keep an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, consumer choice and free speech.”
And President Obama certainly sounded right in January 2014, when he said, “I have been a strong supporter of net neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of net neutrality.”
The president expressed that confidence in Wheeler, even as concerns were raised about an appointee who had previously worked as a cable and wireless industry lobbyist.
The president expressed that confidence in Wheeler, even as concerns were raised about an appointee who had previously worked as a cable and wireless industry lobbyist…
The above article is outstanding, and a must-read if you’re still unsure why we all should be screaming at the top of our lungs about this critical issue.
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Again, from above...
A Call To Action!
» Save the Internet has a sample script, an email petition and instructions on how to call Wheeler and request that the chairman abandon his proposal.
» Using WhiteHouse.gov’s We the People site, critics of the new proposal have also launched a petition, calling for “nothing less than complete neutrality in our communication channels.” It already has over 40,000 signatures.
» A second petition asks the FCC to reclassify broadband as a regulated common-carrier service, which means it would have to be open to all, and serve all customers without discrimination. Currently broadband is classified as an information service, a category that gives the FCC a fairly limited set of regulatory options.
» There are a number of other organizations that are working on maintaining Net neutrality, including: Access, CREDO Action, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, Voices for Internet Freedom
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