Politics of Net Neutrality

For the loser now, will be later to win.
For the times they are a-changin'

This neatly summarizes the current network neutrality debate.

Advocates for network neutrality will lose this year. AT&T and Verizon will be allowed to try and favor certain companies (Yahoo) and their Web sites over everyone else. They will be allowed to turn their lines into Cable TV lines.

But something interesting is going on. Folks are noticing. MyDD has noticed. Public Knowledge has prepared a YouTube video on the subject. Online leftists like Atrios and Think Progress have talked it up.  American Progress has written about it and (as previously noted) Moveon.org has launched a petition drive about it. FreePress has a petition on it, and on Monday a coalition including Google will launch a Web site called Savetheinternet will launch dedicated to the issue.

Right now all these people, and the experts lined up on their side, and the giant companies allied with them, are not enough to carry the day.

But there is an election coming in November. The deck is going to be scrambled, for reasons unrelated to this issue.

There is not enough time between now and November for companies like AT&T to take real advantage of what the Congress is giving them. The Right is not going to be able to kill unlicensed spectrum this year.

When the political pack is shuffled, the phone companies and cable companies are going to find they have won nothing but emnity from the coming votes. They will have seen millions of customers educated on the issues, and they will likely have Democratic majorities ready, willing, and able to jump down their throats.

The net neutrality battle will be lost. But the war will be won.

Comments

[Tom Mariner]

Net neutrality is too important to let it become attached to one political persuation or the other. I shudder when I see "Moveon.org" trumpeted as an effective supporter. Now if Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly would both lend their normally politically polarizing voices to this vital fight I might accept the resulting center position like acids and bases cancelling each other out, hopefully leaving something useful.

But you are right that the telecoms are so powerful that they can not only author their own legislation, but ignore Congressional rules they don't like as in the Telecoms act of 1996 where the Bells took what they wanted (long distance) and blatantly refused to allow even the slightest access to their local lines.

But if we allow Net Neutrality to become attached to one side of the political spectrum in what will be the fiercest, most false-hyperbole-filled campaign in memory, the telecom's effort to own our access will succeed. By knee jerk instead of thought.