In a blow to privacy groups and VoIP providers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today upheld the FCC’s decision to apply wiretapping to VoIP providers. The Court concluded that the FCC made a “reasonable policy choice” in imposing CALEA (Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act) requirements on Internet-based voice providers even though the law that established CALEA specifically exempted “information services.” The FCC has long considered broadband Internet services “information services.”
Last Fall, a group, including EFF, the Center for Democracy and Technology and Pulver.com, appealed the Commission’s application of these requirements on nascent Internet voice providers. No word yet from Jeff Pulver, who is already in a funk over the shoot-down of the Markey net neutrality amendment. “I am too discouraged by the alleged pinnacle of democracy to say any more at the moment,” he wrote yesterday after the House vote.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:56 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The Monday morning quarterbacking is in full swing regarding the defeat of the Markey net neutrality amendment. One view is that net neutrality proponents lost because of their reliance on a grassroots strategy aimed at drumming up popular and press support. The cable and phone companies, on the other hand, just spent a ton of cash on advertising, lobbying and wooing members.
During a conference call today hosted by Itsournet.org, a coalition devoted to net neutrality rules, representatives from Google, Public Knowledge and Comptel said that net neutrality proponents plan to stick to the grassroots strategy despite yesterday’s blow. Google Washington Policy Counsel Alan Davidson said “we think this is not an issue where we can buy support.”
Even though Google and Amazon and other big companies supporting net neutrality have deep pockets, they’re no match for the incredible political savvy and bank accounts of the broadband providers. “We are never going to match the army of lobbyists that our adversaries have and the tens of millions that they spent on the telecom bill,” Davidson said.
Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, defended the grassroots effort saying that it really only got underway at the 11th hour. “To be fair, the real grass roots push is really only a month to six weeks old,” she said. “It takes time for a buzz to start to grow.”
The advocates on the call are clearly disappointed in yesterday’s loss but are equally determined to carry on the fight in the Senate. “We believe the House vote against net neutrality should be a wake-up call to anybody who cares about the Internet,” Davidson said. “What the House did yesterday was affirmatively keep the regulatory regime in place and that regime allows broadband providers to pick winners and losers,” Sohn said.
A vulnerability for net neutrality proponents is that Google, Amazon and eBay, companies leading the fight, look like fat-cats as much as the cable and phone companies do. That’s why the coalition pulled small-guy speakers into the conference call, including a representative from the American Library Association and the head of a small start-up called OR-live.com, which supplies live surgical videos to the National Library of Medicine, among other customers.
Earl Comstock, the head of Comptel, a trade group for competitive telcos, tried to correct the misperception that the net neutrality fight is a struggle among giants. “There’s a perception that this is just a fight between [broadband providers] and the multibillion dollar Googles and Amazons of the world.” It’s really a fight to get to the place “where people can innovate without having to get permission from the cable and telephone companies to do so,” Comstock said.
Not only are democracy and free speech at stake, but also the economic engine of the entire country. The fight, then, goes far beyond Google versus AT&T, Comstock said. “Are we going to see our content innovators move offshore because they’re going to get restricted here by big cable and telephone companies?”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:59 AM | Print | Comments (0)The National Journal’s Drew Clark got an exclusive interview last night with Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) the sponsor of the COPE Act, the telecom reform bill passed by a wide margin last night. The big drama surrounding the bill’s passage was whether a net neutrality amendment sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) would pass, but it was soundly defeated.
In his interview with Barton, Drew asked the Congressman whether Barton is afraid of what he just enabled — namely that broadband providers now feel more comfortable creating multiple tiers of Internet service based on the fees content providers pay to access their networks.
CLARK: Are you at all afraid that without neutrality rules, we are letting the genie out of the bottle and creating a second-tier Internet?
BARTON: That is a bogus argument. You will not see a second-tier Internet. These companies are going to spend billions of dollars and offer new choices in markets where there is one cable company.
Clearly Barton is planning on big telco competition to keep the broadband providers honest. In other words, a cable company won’t dare charge special access fees for, say, Google, if its rival telco is in the market.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:38 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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