By Amy Paige Condon
Paying attention to the issues of our time gets lost somewhere between mid-terms and studios, part-time jobs and full-time social lives, boys and girls, Facebook and YouTube. So much technology and information competes for those few lucid moments, it’s easy to miss the slippage of a civil right; the slight erosion of a freedom we take for granted.
A couple of weeks ago a brief report of the Huffington Post noted that Jeff Zucker was fired from his job as head of Universal/NBC Entertainment.
While his head should have rolled years ago for greenlighting “Fear Factor,” Zucker’s golden parachute jump comes just as Comcast’s bid to acquire NBC overcame the final hurdle in Congress and was approved. Zucker’s move leaves room for Comcast to populate the offices at 30 Rock with its people.
Just another business merger, right?
Well, not quite.
In April, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed a 2008 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against Comcast Corporation, saying that the agency did not possess the authority to tell Internet service providers (ISPs) how to manage the traffic flow of content on their networks.
The FCC issued its original ruling in response to Internet users’ discovery that Comcast limited speeds on peer-to-peer file sharing, such as music and video downloads, raising the issue of content discrimination and prioritization by corporations, and calling into question “net neutrality.”
Net neutrality is the concept that maintains that owners of networks, such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network. It also says these corporations should not be able to discriminate against content providers, such as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, by determining the nature, cost or speeds at which that content moves along their lines.
In other words, the reversal of net neutrality means that ISPs can block certain websites or charge money to access others, much like how cable television works now. Customers pay more money for more access, while those who don’t pay get less channels.
This premise is an integral foundation of a free and open Internet that has been in place since the Web’s inception.
In this case, the court actually decided appropriately according to the letter of the law, because the authority of the FCC to regulate telephone, radio, television, cable and other forms of media in the public interest has swiftly eroded since the Reagan era.
This “Fairness Doctrine” maintained that broadcast licenses were granted as public trustees, and required that they cover contrasting points of view on critical issues within communities. The firewalls put in place to ensure a diversity of voices and fairness in the media landscape—such as no one company can own the radio, television and newspapers in a single market—have been gutted by each administration since the 1980s.
With the allowance of the merger between Comcast and NBC, the broadband provider and the content developer now join forces. Comcast now will control access to and prioritization over user content on its network. Considering Comcast is the only dog in this market, we may see much less investment in networks to disenfranchised communities, prioritization given to NBC’s content over competitors’, and a charge for super highway access, whereby the highest bidders will purchase the best speed, effectively squelching opportunity and investment by small businesses and start-ups. Comcast is just the first pig at this trough.
Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) considers net neutrality the First Amendment issue of our time. He’s right. If the Internet is the place most people go for information, and that information is dispersed based on ability to pay the highest price then we’ve all lost a free and open Internet.
