FCC Commissioner Warns of Destructive FCC Policies 110
bugsy writes "Discrimination, Closed Networks and the Future of Cyberspace... Just over a month ago, Karl Auerbach asked, Is the Internet Dying?. Today, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a speech at the New America Foundation, is asking the very same question, 'Is The Internet As We Know It Dying?' and warning about FCC policies that damaged media now threatening the Internet. Coincidence?! Here is CircleID's report on these Remarks by Michael J. Copps, Federal Communications Commissioner: The Beginning of The End of the Internet? Discrimination, Closed Networks, and the Future of Cyberspace."
Issue - New regulations allow choke points (Score:2, Informative)
Under proposed regulations, owners of physical communications assets, e.g., phone and cable companies, are no longer required to be content neutral.
This allows for troubling new business models, politically motivated site censorship, control of access hardware and software and so forth.
For example, Verizon DSL could charge big sites for "premium broadband quality" access to their DSL customers. Yahoo and Google and MSN all cough up, and you can access those sites a full speed. Other sites/services, like SlashDot and most small business sites and IRC, etc. get doled out at 56K, since they didn't pay for "premium throughput". Is this an interesting business that could be highly profitable? Sure. Does it seriously maim the open Internet and turn it into something more like cable TV? You bet! And it sucks.
Imagine Microsoft buying Verizon. What kind of OS would you have to have to access the Internet? Can they simply censor sites that criticize MS security flaws? What if Fox buys Comcast? Could they limit news access to "liberal" sites like the ACLU? Can they restrict IM traffic to just AIM, with whom they have a co-marketing agreement? Can they make good money doing this? Sure!
The Internet as we know it would be dead. It would simply be another cable TV style entertainment media channel.
A set of laws and regulations dating from before and during the AT&T breakup era currently prevent many of these scenarios. But these regulations are coming undone, and the vast majority of Americans will lose out in a big way.
It matters.