[Reader-list] The End of the Internet

Monica Narula monica at sarai.net
Tue Mar 28 01:20:05 IST 2006


The End of the Internet
By Jeffrey Chester, The Nation

Posted on February 6, 2006, Printed on February 9, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31753/

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an  
alarming
set of strategies that would transform the free, open and  
nondiscriminatory
Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would  
charge a
fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are  
developing
strategies that would track and store information on our every move in
cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of
which could rival the National Security Agency.

According to white papers now being circulated in the cable,  
telephone and
telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets --
corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers -- would get
preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first  
priority
on our computer and television screens, while information seen as
undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated  
to a
slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us -- from content  
providers to
individual users -- would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even
send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans  
that would
further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and
"silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the  
number of
downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or
received.

To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists  
are now
engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's
communications policy laws. They want the federal government to  
permit them
to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private
networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.  
Indeed, both
the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are  
considering
proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's  
future. Ten
years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996,
telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to
convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet  
into a
turbo-charged digital retail machine.

The telephone industry has been somewhat more candid than the cable  
industry
about its strategy for the Internet's future. Senior phone executives  
have
publicly discussed plans to begin imposing a new scheme for the  
delivery of
Internet content, especially from major Internet content companies.  
As Ed
Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November, "Why
should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in  
that
sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment,  
and for a
Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for]
free is nuts!"

The phone industry has marshaled its political allies to help win the
freedom to impose this new broadband business model. At a recent  
conference
held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by  
Comcast,
Verizon, AT&T and other media companies, there was much discussion of  
a plan
for phone companies to impose fees on a sliding scale, charging content
providers different levels of service. "Price discrimination," noted  
PFF's
resident media expert Adam Thierer, "drives the market-based capitalist
economy."

Net Neutrality

To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on the information  
highway,
some new media companies and public-interest groups are calling for new
federal policies requiring "network neutrality" on the Internet. Common
Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project and Consumers  
Union,
among others, have proposed that broadband providers would be prohibited
from discriminating against all forms of digital content. For  
example, phone
or cable companies would not be allowed to slow down competing or
undesirable content.

Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care  
about --
civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair elections --  
will
be further threatened by this push for corporate control. Imagine how  
the
next presidential election would unfold if major political  
advertisers could
make strategic payments to Comcast so that ads from Democratic and
Republican candidates were more visible and user-friendly than ads of
third-party candidates with less funds.

Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting nuclear
power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a competing
message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins. It is
possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial online programming  
would
be pushed to the end of a commercial digital queue.

But such "neutrality" safeguards are inadequate to address more  
fundamental
changes the Bells and cable monopolies are seeking in their quest to
monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet to become a medium  
designed
primarily to serve the interests of marketing and personal consumption,
rather than global civic-related communications, we will face the  
political
consequences for decades to come. Unless we push back, the  
"brandwashing" of
America will permeate not only our information infrastructure but global
society and culture as well.

Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans?
With the arrival of the long-awaited "convergence" of communications,  
our
media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable
giants envision a potential lucrative "triple play," as they impose
near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send
video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home
computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits  
will be
delivered over the telephone and cable lines.

Video programming is of foremost interest to both the phone and cable
companies. The telephone industry, like its cable rival, is now in  
the TV
and media business, offering customers television channels, on-demand  
videos
and games. Online advertising is increasingly integrating multimedia  
(such
as animation and full-motion video) in its pitches. Since video-driven
material requires a great deal of Internet bandwidth as it travels  
online,
phone and cable companies want to make sure their television  
"applications"
receive preferential treatment on the networks they operate. And their
overall influence over the stream of information coming into your  
home (or
mobile device) gives them the leverage to determine how the broadband
business evolves.

Mining Your Data

At the core of the new power held by phone and cable companies are tools
delivering what is known as "deep packet inspection." With these  
tools, AT&T
and others can readily know the packets of information you are receiving
online -- from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music, video and  
software
downloads.

These "deep packet inspection" technologies are partly designed to =20
make sure
that the Internet pipeline doesn't become so congested it chokes off the
delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been  
sold to
universities and large businesses that want to more economically manage
their Internet services. They are also being used to limit some peer- 
to-peer
downloading, especially for music.

But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as
Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the  
Internet.
For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology  
giant
Cisco urges these companies to "meter individual subscriber usage by
application," as individuals' online travels are "tracked" and  
"integrated
with billing systems." Such tracking and billing is made possible  
because
they will know "the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,"
"what the subscriber is doing" and "where the subscriber resides."

Will Google, Amazon and the other companies successfully fight the  
plans of
the Bells and cable companies? Ultimately, they are likely to cut a deal
because they, too, are interested in monetizing our online  
activities. After
all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network providers will  
need to
"cooperate with each other to leverage their value proposition." They  
will
be drawn by the ability of cable and phone companies to track "content
usage...by subscriber," and where their online services can be  
"protected
from piracy, metered, and appropriately valued."

Our Digital Destiny

It was former FCC chairman Michael Powell, with the support of
then-commissioner and current chair Kevin Martin, who permitted phone  
and
cable giants to have greater control over broadband. Powell and his GOP
majority eliminated longstanding regulatory safeguards requiring phone
companies to operate as nondiscriminatory networks (technically known as
"common carriers"). He refused to require that cable companies, when
providing Internet access, also operate in a similar nondiscriminatory
manner. As Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig has long  
noted,
it is government regulation of the phone lines that helped make the  
Internet
today's vibrant, diverse and democratic medium.

But now, the phone companies are lobbying Washington to kill off  
what's left
of "common carrier" policy. They wish to operate their Internet  
services as
fully "private" networks. Phone and cable companies claim that the
government shouldn't play a role in broadband regulation: Instead of the
free and open network that offers equal access to all, they want to  
reduce
the Internet to a series of business decisions between consumers and
providers.

Besides their business interests, telephone and cable companies also  
have a
larger political agenda. Both industries oppose giving local  
communities the
right to create their own local Internet wireless or wi-fi networks.  
They
also want to eliminate the last vestige of local oversight from  
electronic
media -- the ability of city or county government, for example, to  
require
telecommunications companies to serve the public interest with, for  
example,
public-access TV channels. The Bells also want to further reduce the  
ability
of the FCC to oversee communications policy. They hope that both the  
FCC and
Congress -- via a new Communications Act -- will back these proposals.

The future of the online media in the United States will ultimately  
depend
on whether the Bells and cable companies are allowed to determine the
country's "digital destiny." So before there are any policy decisions, a
national debate should begin about how the Internet should serve the  
public.
We must insure that phone and cable companies operate their Internet
services in the public interest -- as stewards for a vital medium for  
free
expression.

If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny  
for
themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the
successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003.  
Without
such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven agenda, it is
likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied against further
consolidation will be "tamed" by the well-funded lobbying campaigns  
of the
powerful phone and cable industry.

Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital  
Democracy
(www.democraticmedia.org).

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31753/


Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net





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