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Amidst GROWING PUBLIC PROTEST--100+ TECH GIANTS Blast FCC Chairman's Attack on "Free & Open Internet
Tech Giants Blast FCC Chairman's Attack on "Free and Open Internet"Letter from top companies comes amidst growing public protest and internal dissent among Democratic commissioners
- Jon Queally, staff writer
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is facing opposition on all sides (though not from Republicans) for his proposed changes to net neutrality guidelines. In a strongly-worded letter to the Federal Communications Commission delivered on Wednesday, over 100 internet companies and industry innovators—including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon—called on the FCC commissioners to reject recently proposed rules that threaten net neutrality as it urged them to protect the concept of "a free and open internet."
The letter (pdf), coordinated by Engine Advocacy and the Open Technology Institute, reads in part:
According to recent news reports, the Commission intends to propose rules that would enable phone and cable Internet service providers to discriminate both technically and financially against Internet companies and to impose new tolls on them. If these reports are correct, this represents a grave threat to the Internet.
Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination, the Commission’s rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent. The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.
Such rules are essential for the future of the Internet. This Commission should take the necessary steps to ensure that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce so that America continues to lead the world in technology markets.
Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination, the Commission’s rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent. The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low.
Such rules are essential for the future of the Internet. This Commission should take the necessary steps to ensure that the Internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce so that America continues to lead the world in technology markets.
The companies' collective message to the FCC is quite clear, said Alan Davidson, director of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation: "An open Internet is essential for innovation and expression online. This letter represents the collective voice of the world’s strongest innovators and demonstrates a shared commitment to meaningful network neutrality. As the letter argues, broadband communication without discrimination is essential to the success of the Internet economy. The Internet works best when consumers control what they say and do on the connections that they pay for, and the FCC’s rules should protect those connections from discriminatory interference.”
The high-powered letter arrived as two of the FCC's Democratic commissioners expressed their own deep concerns over the rules proposed by Chairman Tom Wheeler (a Democrat himself) last month. Now under consideration for adoption, Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voiced caution against hasty process and indicated that most of the input they've received—both from concerned citizens and from key industry experts—are warning against enshrining a two-tiered internet structure.
"The cracks are beginning to show in Chairman Wheeler's plan that would undermine Net Neutrality. The more people learn about this proposal, the more skeptical they become." —Craig Aaron, Free Press
In a blog post on the FCC website, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wrote that "tens of thousands of consumers, companies, entrepreneurs, investors, schools, educators, healthcare providers and others have reached out to ask me to keep the Internet free and open."
Rosenworcel, in a public statement, called on Chairman Wheeler and her fellow commissioners to postpoe consideration of the rules for at least a month, cautioning against a May 15th deadline now scheduled. "I believe that rushing headlong into a rulemaking next week fails to respect the public response to [this] proposal."
The expression of internal divisions and the letter from the tech industry came on the same day that public protests began outside the FCC headquarters in Washington, DC, where citizen activists vowed to maintain a protest camp leading up to May 15.
Craig Aaron, president of the group Free Press, one of the key members of a public advocacy coalition that supports net neutrality and has rallied for years to protect and promote the concept of the "open internet" said the coming together of citizens and key industry players is a powerful signal to the FCC that any effort to destroy one of the internet's key concepts will not go down without a fight.
"The cracks are beginning to show in Chairman Wheeler's plan that would undermine Net Neutrality," said Aaron in a statement. "The more people learn about this proposal, the more skeptical they become. "
He continued: "We're encouraged that both Commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel are responding to the millions of emails and thousands of phone calls from people demanding real Net Neutrality. It's time the agency took the most sensible next step and reclassified Internet service providers as common carriers. That's the only reasonable way to ensure an open Internet for everyone."
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TWO EASY ACTIONS to SUPPORT NET NEUTRALITY & Help Obama Fulfill His Promise--by Bill Moyers
How to Keep the Internet Open and Free
Don’t let net neutrality become another broken promise
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
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
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.
-------KEEP THE PRESSURE UP, TWO ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE------
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.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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Perhaps this post could inform them a bit. These are concerned tech companies along with the actions by citizens to reclassify these Internet Providers as Common Carriers so that they can be regulated for the citizens who now have little power over pricing or choice and will almost none if we can't push for "net neutrality," as apposed to what we have now with Cable Monopoly dominance.
