Will capitalism be the death of the Internet?

EllisDTripp · Feb 2, 2006

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester

The End of the Internet?

by JEFF CHESTER

[posted online on February 1, 2006]

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 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.
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Soulless||Chaos · Feb 2, 2006

That's really terrible.. But not exactly surprising.. I hope they can't get away with that, but for some reason I doubt anyone who would be in a position to would really care.

Flight From Ashiya · Feb 2, 2006

Interesting article.I have always believed that the 'free' stage of the World Wide Web was to attract enough users.Once that was achieved :- everything is charged for.Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

Soulless||Chaos · Feb 2, 2006

Reminds me of the whole software as a service thing.. Pay more to get less. Oh yay.

Syntax · Feb 2, 2006

And this is where Google comes in and saves the day! Once its wireless network covers the world, there will be no stopping freedom (that is, until they sell out and become Big Brother).

EllisDTripp · Feb 3, 2006

Google is ALREADY "selling out". They are working with the Chinese government to provide censored search results within China, removing references to things like democracy, Falun Gong, or Tiananmen Square.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4647398.stm

So much for "don't be evil". huh? Now that they are listed on Wall Street, the stockholders come first....

Syntax · Feb 3, 2006

That's not really evil. The way I see it, they have two choices: to be censored, or be blocked. And I think that the citizens of China will be a lot better off with some access to a search engine.

AreYouExperienced · Feb 3, 2006

Capitalism has already permanently fucked up the internet, by way of ads/spam/pop-ups etc.

Green · Feb 4, 2006

AreYouExperienced said:

Capitalism has already permanently fucked up the internet, by way of ads/spam/pop-ups etc.
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Capitalism has fucked up the world and government. Fucked up seriously, fucked straight up the fucking ass, because I fucking hate capitalism. I hate greedy ass elitists who think they have the right to property. The internet is all I have, and if it weren't for the internet I'd be a stupid brainwashed ignorant teenager who mindlessly voted "Democrat" or "Republican" based on my views on abortion or some other unimportant shit.

I swear if they did that, I'd go insane. I'd literally go insane. The internet is like a sancturary where I can say what I think without getting burned alive, and I can read or watch anything I want.

................. That would piss me off more than somebody coming to my house and punching me in the face every day for the rest of my life.

EllisDTripp · Feb 4, 2006

Syntax said:

That's not really evil. The way I see it, they have two choices: to be censored, or be blocked. And I think that the citizens of China will be a lot better off with some access to a search engine.
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China already HAS search engines. Here's one of the biggest ones:

http://www.baidu.com

By working with the Chinese government to censor search results, all they are doing is making a buck, while helping to perpetuate the oppression of the Chinese people.

raysun · Feb 4, 2006

I wasn't aware of this I expected some kind of privatisation of the net but I always thought that it would take place in the distant future I find this a disturbing development hopefully there also will be a free net tks for the post....

TokeTrip · Feb 5, 2006

EllisDTripp said:

Google is ALREADY "selling out". They are working with the Chinese government to provide censored search results within China, removing references to things like democracy, Falun Gong, or Tiananmen Square.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4647398.stm

So much for "don't be evil". huh? Now that they are listed on Wall Street, the stockholders come first....
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Well, they also decided to not release any search info to the NSA.

TokeTrip · Feb 5, 2006

Capitalism works. Communism doesn't. Neither does socialism, anarchy, or any other economic system. Well, except mercantilism, which is even worse.

EllisDTripp · Feb 5, 2006

TokeTrip said:

Well, they also decided to not release any search info to the NSA.
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Only because they don't want competitors to gain access to it...

Green · Feb 5, 2006

TokeTrip said:

Capitalism works.
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Does it? Who does Capitalism work for? Capitalism works for the ruling class.

EllisDTripp · Feb 5, 2006

Think the system is working? Ask someone who isn't....

Soulless||Chaos · Feb 5, 2006

Green said:

Does it? Who does Capitalism work for? Capitalism works for the ruling class.
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So you agree then it works?

Hikaru Zero · Feb 19, 2006

TokeTrip said:

Capitalism works. Communism doesn't. Neither does socialism, anarchy, or any other economic system. Well, except mercantilism, which is even worse.
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Capitalism works alright. But it's kind of like playing with cards. You can't have all the cards. You can only have like 5. And if you want different ones, you have to trade.

Capitalism is like straight up poker.

Communism has never been correctly implemented, so don't you DARE say communism doesn't work. Or do you honestly believe that Stalin's Russian government was actually commmunist?

Communism is based on a CLASSLESS society. It is not an economic system, it is a form of government. Russia, even as a self-declared communist country, had castes and classes just as America does. In fact, Stalinism (which is what government majors now call Russia's former government, since it wasn't very close to communism) is actually CLOSER to a dictatorship than it is to communism (which has no all-powerful leader of sorts), in a variety of ways. Just because it had a socialist economy, doesn't mean it wasn't close to democracy; democracy can have a socialist economy too. It doesn't have to be a free market.

Secondly, how can you say that socialism doesn't work? Socialism is what brought Germany from an impoverished nation that owed billions of dollars to the rest of the world, into a WORLD POWER that nearly conquered the world, in just 8 years! Socialism was the Soviet Union's economy, and if socialism doesn't work, then how do you explain Soviet rivalry with the U.S. during the cold war?

Socialism is more like Texas Hold'em. Everybody gets the cards, not just you or the other guy.

Also, anarchy is NOT an economic system, NOR is it a form of government.

And mercantilism ... please. Mercantilism is ALSO NOT an economic system, it is merely the idea that a nation is only worth as much as its capital is.

Wikipedia said:

Mercantilism is the economic theory holding that the prosperity of a nation depends upon its supply of capital, and that the global volume of trade is "unchangeable."
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Mercantilism is a pretty common thing in this world, seeing as nations are constantly evaluating their GNPs and comparing their currency to the next country's currency.

In conclusion, I dare you to read the Communist Manifesto.

TrippinBTM · Feb 20, 2006

Hikaru, I'm reading it now and am about halfway done (even though you didn't dare me personally); and though parts make a lot of sense, I'm left wondering why I'm supposed to believe communism would, even in a pure form, be better than capitalism. It says right in it that the state will own everything. We've all seen how that turned out when put into practice. The people still suffer and are still exploited, poor and powerless. It will never be classless, because there will be the government in charge and the people at the bottom. Ideology aside, whoever controls the money (as the centralized communist state would/does) will control everything. Capitalism or Communism, it doesn't matter.

And I've heard it said that under communism, eventually there would be no government. Bullshit. People don't just walk away from money and power. Aside from a few exceptions, that will almost always corrupt people.

chameleon_789 · Feb 21, 2006

Forget all the countries where people are starving/dying/don't have easy access to luxuries such as water, and capitalism is fine.

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