Category: media industry lobbying

Telco CEOs to the Internet: We Own You and You Will Never Be Free

Top execs from Verizon, Qwest, and the USTA lobbying machine attacked the concept of network neutrality yesterday. They spoke at the annual lobbyist love-fest run by the Progress and Freedom Foundation. The exec remarks make clear that the leadership of the U.S. telephone industry is hazardous to the Internet’s health. For example, Verizon’s Tom Tauke dismissed concerns about what will happen to our democratic rights now that neutrality is lost. For the former Congressman turned top lobbyist, there are only consumer interests. “…I believe,” he said, “there is now an emerging consensus” that’s it’s all about consumers, reported Communications Daily [Aug. 23, 2006. Subscription only]. He said that calls for “non-discrimination” were coming from advocates of “old rules” (he meant the policies that made the Internet an open forum]. Meanwhile, the chief of the United States Telecom Association–Walter McCormick–said that his members “would oppose any bill with strong net neutrality language.” Qwest CEO Richard Notebaert chimed in that there was “no need for Congress to act where there’s no problem…”

Bolstering the industry’s jeremiad was the chief staffer for House Commerce chair Joe Barton. Howard Waltzman predicted, “there would not be a bill sent to the president that included [non-discriminatory net neutrality requirements] because the House would not agree to it.” Waltzman, the majority chief counsel, also proclaimed that “the Snowe-Dorgan amendment” requiring net neutrality would fail in the Senate.

These are the people—along with their bosses—who are placing the business plans of a few special interests before everyone else now online. Web 2.0 will be shaped to fit their image of broadband unless they are stopped.

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Why the Phone and Cable Industries Fear the Net

Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and others oppose network neutrality because they fear competition: from the Internet. In this piece I wrote for The Nation magazine, online, I discuss what their plans are for our broadband futures. Read it and fight (on) for a more democratic, diverse, and even perhaps competitive digital media system.

Hands Off the Internet: Better Check Your Facts, Part.1

This front-group for the Internet monopoly want-to-be’s has a “back to school” lesson just posted about Quality of Service. But they are misinforming the public. This debate isn’t about true Quality of Service (QoS). Supporters of Internet Freedom (net neutrality) support QoS. But what Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf’s funders really want is something more like OurQoS. That will give them a monopoly-like broadband service where their applications whiz by (helped via the network control mechanisms Hands Off member Alcatel is building for Verizon and AT&T). Their vision of OurQoS creates toll lanes and slow paths for everyone else. Ask your backers. What they are relying on for profits isn’t QoS. It’s really a “policy” based routing racket.

It’s the network neutrality folks who are fighting for fair traffic management. It’s the Hands Off types who want to allow privately run online traffic cops patrol the broadband beat. That’s why we will need Congress to restore the Internet’s non-discrimination safeguards.

What Comcast Uber-Lobbyist David Cohen’s Isn’t Saying about Net Neutrality

David Cohen is Comcast’s chief political lobbyist. His role is to help the company quash potential competition. Cohen operates in D.C., at state capitals, and city hall. When Comcast believes that competition will emerge, they call on Mr. Cohen. For example, Comcast played a major role in the passage of anti-public interest legislation in a number of states banning community broadband networks.

Now the Roberts family has set Mr. Cohen to undermine what is the biggest threat to the nation’s # 1 cable monopoly: an open Internet. Cohen just wrote an op-ed yesterday [registration required] in the San Jose Mercury News. He had the chutzpah to say that rules ensuring all online content is treated fairly would be harmful because they could stifle “a child friendly-content zone” online! This coming from one of the leading providers of porn—Comcast! Comcast has also just begun promoting some of its new on-demand channels, including Playboy, Howard Stern, and something called “Dating on Demand” (from its website: “our stealth crew of sneaky eavesdroppers trails close behind and captures everything on tape. And we mean everything — the good, the bad and the “Holy crap can you believe he did that!”).

So, when Mr. Cohen makes the phony charge that net neutrality would take channel space away from kids services or health information—what he really means is that Comcast wants to control all the space itself. It wants to use bandwidth/channel capacity so it can profit from porn and other high-revenue content. It doesn’t want any video or online competition to emerge that might take away eyeballs, ad dollars, and subscription revenues.

The truth is Comcast, like other net neutrality opponents AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner, are terrified of an open Internet. If the Net remains open, then anyone can provide phone or video service. Who would need a Comcast then? No one.

That’s why Comcast is opposed to net neutrality, and why it is buying next-generation broadband technology from Cisco. Comcast wants to serve as a gatekeeper over the flow of video and data coming into our homes. Net neutrality rules would prevent Comcast from becoming a digital super-monopoly.
Beware of cable lobbyists—they’re a hazard to our democracy’s health.

Kill Bill: Steven’s Commerce Committee Posts “Tube” (I mean Telecom) Bill

Here’s an example of the narrow-minded, telecom lobbyist written, communications policies that undermine the development of a U.S. democratic media system in the digital era. Congress–as usual–doesn’t really want to acknowledge why the cable and telephone industry are so afraid of the Internet as we now know it (real competition for ideas and commercial advantage). Leaders such as Sen. Stevens have their heads in the digital sands. By letting a few narrow (but powerful) interests–such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner–dominate the distribution of digital media, Stevens/Joe Barton and company are undermining both democratic discourse and competition.
This is the marked-up bill passed by Senate Commerce. It should be called the “Telephone & Cable Monopoly Giveaway and Anti Consumer/Community Act of 2006.” We will be back soon with a full analysis. But it’s revealing that the U.S. public is treated as “subscribers” or “consumers”–not as citizens and others deserving a broad and expanded set of rights.
http:// www. commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/HR5252RS.pdf

PS: The Stevens Committee also released–and then pulled, we were told–a “brochure” promoting its bill. Sen. Stevens apparently feels desperate that his bill–and lack of understanding about how the Internet works–was getting so much bad press. I guess he–and his aides–don’t know much about PR either. Here’s the brochure.

Why Take AT&T’s $1 Mil. when it Wants to Destroy a Democratic ‘Net in the U.S.?

(we won’t comment yet. Just see news story below)

From: http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2006/07/31/daily5.html

AT&T Foundation gives $1 million for technology access
San Antonio Business Journal – 3:04 PM CDT Monday

The AT&T Foundation has announced a $1 million grant to provide new technology resources for people with all types of disabilities.

The grant to the Community Technology Centers’ Network (CTCNet) is part of a three-year AccessAll initiative by AT&T to provide technology access to underserved communities. It will be used to fund training for community technology center staff on universal design and assistive technology that can be used to accommodate multiple learning styles and abilities.

CTCNet will make the AT&T funds available to regional centers through a competitive application process.

(The grant) will enable CTCNet to work with our member centers to demonstrate standards in universal design for space, learning, hardware and software,” says Kavita Singh, executive director of CTCNet.

The AT&T Foundation is the philanthropic arm of San Antonio-based AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), one of the largest telecommunications holding companies in the world.

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Time Warner’s AOL: Bad Broadband Karma

No matter how Richard Parsons and company spin it, AOL is ultimately a loser. What the press coverage on AOL’s ever-changing business model ignores is that the online service doesn’t have legal access to broadband. AOL is frozen in digital time, able to offer most users only outmoded dial-up access. But AOL’s ignoble demise is fitting—given the company’s abandonment of its call for non-discriminatory “open access” to broadband (the key issue underlying today’s network neutrality debate).

It was AOL, after all, that led the corporate campaign in the late 1990’s calling on the Clinton FCC and the Congress to require non-discriminatory access for ISPs to cable broadband. AOL argued—as net neutrality proponents are today—that the Internet’s success had been based on federal policies requiring phone networks to serve everyone in a fair and open manner. AOL’s Steve Case understood that soon high-speed Internet service would replace dial-up and that cable systems would be the leading provider of broadband. Case desperately sought to have cable operate its Internet access service under the same federal policy safeguards that governed phone company dial-up. (He even backed a non-profit group called “No Gatekeepers”).

The cable industry, including Time Warner, used its political clout to prevent any policy that would have ensured the U.S. broadband system be operated in a non-discriminatory and more competitive manner. Recognizing that AOL would be shut out of broadband and that its future was doomed, it engineered a take-over of number two cable giant Time Warner. Both AOL’s Steve Case and Time Warner’s Gerry Levin shared a similar view for the future of the Internet—to turn it into an even more powerful advertising medium than television. To achieve this goal, Case quickly dropped his call for “open access” for broadband. He foolishly believed that by having AOL merge with Time Warner it would be part of the cable “costa nostra,” its broadband access assured.

On the day the merger deal was announced, Case stood by Levin as open access to broadband became another victim of corporate greed. Levin declared that the new AOL Time Warner was “going to take the open access issue out of Washington, and out of city hall and put it into the marketplace, into the commercial arrangements that should occur to provide the kind of access for as much content as possible.” That was shorthand for: “AOL will have access through us. Everyone else forgetaboutit.”

So now Dick Parsons—who was part of the team that created the most infamously unsuccessful merger in U.S. media history—is once again re-engineering AOL. It may in the short term bring in more ad dollars, helping it fulfill the Case/Levin/Parsons vision that the Internet’s future is interactive TV-like marketing. But AOL’s real problem is that it can’t offer its users broadband since it has no legal access to it—a political cause it gave up when the going got rough in the (admittedly) politically corrupt culture of Washington, D.C. media politics. That’s why we believe the eventual demise of AOL is a fitting conclusion to its own self-serving role in the U.S. broadband debate.

AT&T’s Blue Room: Music Fans Should Beware of this Anti-Internet Freedom Sponsored Site

Guess who’s the “online broadcaster of several of the hottest summer concerts”—including this weekend’s Lollapalozza. It’s AT&T. The anti-network neutrality phone giant is now “aligned with artists such as Coldplay and Keith Urban,” notes Ad Age. This summer, AT&T’s Blue Room is bringing online music fans “LIVE webcasts from Coachella, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza.” The Blue Room site helps debut music from CBS and has interviews with many leading music artists (including Yung Joc, Rodney Atkins, LeToya, and Tom Petty). Naturally, Blue Room runs online ads for AT&T’s high-speed Internet service. AT&T is also making a major push to reach others online, including bloggers (Project D.U.).

We think it would be very cool for Blue Room’s users—and participating music artists—to make it clear that they want AT&T to support Internet Freedom (network neutrality). They should demand that the phone giant stop its political campaign to control the future of broadband in the U.S. Otherwise, they should give AT&T’s digital monopoly–including Blue Room–a real case of the blues.

Source: “A Cool, Hip AT&T? Step Inside Blue Room.” Abbey Klaassen, Ad Age. July 10, 2006

AT&T as Ma Censor: Playing the `Indecency’ Card in its Anti-Net Neutrality Campaign

In a reflection of how desperate AT&T’s executives are to stave off an open broadband medium in the U.S., the former SBC is willing to use any tactic—no matter how despicable and dangerous. It appears that AT&T is now seeking to inflame conservative family groups, as well as parents in general, by claiming that network neutrality will usher in a torrent of what it deems to be inappropriate content. Communications Daily reports that an AT&T spokesperson confirmed that:
conservative family groups’ social concerns are on a “very long and growing list” of the net neutrality campaign’s unintended consequences. “All content’s not the same and it shouldn’t be treated the same” if consumers are really in charge. “You’ll continue to see these kinds of things be brought up more publicly” as people learn about the issue, she said.” [“Net Neutrality May Face Battle from Family Values Groups,” July 17, 2007. Subscription required].

But what is most telling in this quote is how AT&T is willing to act as Ma Censor, and readily seek to place a range of content off-limits. Today, they are offering to block what many parents would likely agree is disturbing content. But tomorrow, they could seek to block all kinds of programming necessary for a vibrant and informed democracy. (This is from a company, of course, who doesn’t think twice about handing over to the Bush NSA all kinds of personal information about us).

It also reflects how AT&T is so disingenuous in the net neutral debate. Without an open ‘Net safeguard, independent content providers who seek to offer users quality content–including educational programming for children– won’t be able to readily provide it. That’s because AT&T’s fast lanes will be jam-packed with paid for video games, personalized advertising, and the latest offerings from Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network.

AT&T’s new corporate motto should be: Fueling the flames of censorship so we can make a fast buck.

Disney and Verizon: Broadband Lies about Diversity

People of color have not fared well in the U.S. in terms of owning/controlling programming content. Channels serving “minority” audiences have often been created to serve the political purposes of the media lobby. BET was financially backed to help the cable industry secure lucrative franchises from big cities. More recently, Comcast supported the new TV One cable channel to give it greater leverage with officials from the African American community. As we have pointed out previously, the TV industry views the African American and Hispanic “market” as great places to sell soap and other products—not as communities deserving a meaningful range of serious and independent content services. In the emerging interactive broadband era, the stakes are especially high, in our opinion, to ensure that there are well-supported local and national services serving a variety of needs—including news, public affairs, and culture.

Last Monday, executives from both Verizon and Disney claimed that their corporate policies opposing an open Internet and ending community oversight of cable TV would “help improve black and Hispanic presence in the industry” (according to the off-line trade journal Communications Daily, 7/11/06: “Verizon, Disney Executives Say Their Policy Positions Good for Minority Communications”). The executives spoke at a conference held by the Minority Media & Telecom Council.

Verizon’s EVP/Super-Lobbyist (and former Congressperson) Tom Tauke, in discussing why his company opposes network neutrality, said that such a safeguard wasn’t needed because “all players can reach their audiences over broadband.” Disney’s Preston Padden [once the media industry leader fighting for network neutrality] echoed Tauke’s perspectives that people of color have nothing to worry about. He said, noted the trade report, that “near as I can tell, the Internet is completely color-blind.”

But both Verizon and Disney aren’t being honest. They know well that absent network neutrality, a private system for broadband distribution is evolving in the U.S. Powerful gatekeepers are emerging for broadband—just as we’ve had with broadcast and cable TV. Deals are being struck which give a privileged few—such as what was done between Verizon and Disney last year—real access to audiences. Everyone else will be a second-class digital citizen, at best.

I fear that absent action, both in the political front and in the marketplace, the kind of rich digital environment that would meet the full needs of communities now marginalized in our media system will not readily emerge. That’s why it’s time for a serious response to the lies coming from Disney, Verizon and others. We are at a critical crossroads—a turning point—with digital communications. Now is the time to stake a claim for broadband to the PC, TV, and mobile networks. Otherwise, people from America’s diverse communities could end up responding to images and content controlled by others—folks principally interested in selling and making steady bucks.