Closing The Internet: Coming to an FCC Near You

Per JD Lasica, take a look at this op-ed from the SJ Mercury News on closing the internet off, by FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Battle to control Internet threatens open access. It's quite a scary story, where basically, big companies are lobbying the FCC (and after the broadcast flag win, you know big companies feel confident these days...) to reduce FCC requirements that those big companies not restrict services to their customers. What is that double negative, you say?

Well, the FCC requires that networks stay open, and be non-discriminatory. Customers can access most anything, anywhere out on the free internet. But companies that want to control what content you see, what software you use, and would like to change the rules so that they can control the content you see or force you to use their software and services, and keep you from their competitor's sites.

Think about what could happen if your broadband provider could discriminate. It could decide which news sources or political sites you could view. It could prevent you from using children's Internet filtering technology that it didn't sell or that filtered out its own Web sites. It could prevent you from using spam-jamming programs to block its spam. It could impose restrictions on the use of virtual private networks by telecommuters and small businesses to keep them as paying customers of the public network. It could limit access to streaming video to protect its core content business. Sound far-fetched? It's already beginning to happen.

Read the article, either on JD's site, or at the Merc.

It would be a nightmare to try to reverse this sort of thing in the courts and take many years, and might not be successful. Let's stop it before it gets adopted by the FCC. Remember when Michael Powell told us that it didn't matter about upping the media concentration rules because "the internet would save us" due to all the openness and choice present there? Well, kiss choice goodbye under this latest plan.

Here is John Walker's view of this issue.

Posted by Mary Hodder at December 15, 2003 01:28 PM