Marvin Ammori

Not many hints in the record, but hopefully the confirmation means good things.  I wrote a post about this over at HuffPost.

A CBC article about today’s hearing covered our panel.  The Chairman of Canada’s CRTC seems very bright, thoughtful, and careful, and we received some good questions from members of the CRTC.

I testify on a panel before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Internet issues and network neutrality on Tuesday.

Just want to highlight a study from a few weeks back, since this issue comes up to often.

As you already know, the study concludes,  phone and cable carriers continue to raise your rates on Internet access.  Phone and cable companies also complain that you use the Internet too much so they have to block, slow down, or charge you even more for the online software you love.  But, it turns out, as is the case in high-tech industries, their costs are going down.  Technology gets better, so producer costs go down, and so consumer prices should go down with them.  In fact, abroad, broadband prices went down around the world by 37%, according to the study, while increasing here.  What’s the matter with US?

It’s not technology but policy and market structure.  The study shows that areas with more competitors benefit from lower prices–competitors have to charge less, rather than soak up fat profits.  As their own costs fall, the carriers have to pass those savings onto consumers or be killed in the market.  In the US, thanks to FCC “deregulation” under the Bush administration, we have little competition, high prices, and threats to network neutrality, rather than high-speed, open, competitive offerings.  The magic of the unfettered, concentrated market.

The FTC wants to know how phone and cable companies are using tools to monitor Internet traffic, called deep packet inspection or DPI.  DPI has been used secretly to block Internet applications in the US, spy for advertisers in the US, and crack down on dissent in Iran and China.

My last post was about Obama’s cybersecurity speech and report last Friday.

I wanted to follow up on Obama’s commitment to network neutrality, in that speech.  That quote again (and I won’t get sick of quoting the President’s support for net neutrality): “I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be — open and free.”

This is in a speech about cyberwarfare and cybersecurity, a speech that also included these lines:

And this is also a matter of public safety and national security.  We count on computer networks to deliver our oil and gas, our power and our water.  …

Our technological advantage is a key to America’s military dominance.

How can security be compatible with network neutrality?

Easily.  There is nothing in network neutrality suggesting that security must be sacrificed.  Security is a red herring, introduced those few companies (AT&T, Comcast, etc.) opposing network neutrality.  They have other red herrings.  In fact, an FCC hearing at Stanford last year featured (and dismissed) red herrings–copyright filtering, child safety–none of which are incompatible with network neutrality.

At root, carriers are saying that the Internet can’t provide… security … certainty … that the carriers themselves can uniquely provide such security.  I believe the Internet–through applications on the Internet, created by innovative people using the Internet–can meet these challenges.  We needn’t turn to the carriers–carriers whose track record of innovation pales to that of the open Internet’s competitive landscape–to provide key security.  We needn’t deputize carriers to be private enforcers.

At any rate, as a professor who teaches cyberwarfare law (teaching, in fact, 40 minutes from Strategic Command) and a longtime advocate for network neutrality, I was happy to see our President not get distracted by a red herring when so much is at stake in Internet policy, for our security and for our democracy.

President Obama continues to impress me (and everyone). He gave a speech last Friday and issued a report on securing our nation’s “cyber infrastructure” (from the title the speech) or, more broadly, our “communications infrastructure” (from the title of the report).  In his speech, he praised network neutrality, saying : “I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be — open and free.”

I was proud to see that Obama (a) gets the importance of the Internet to all we do, and (b) understands the importance of preserving our rights while preserving our security–no false dichotomy.

This post is about (a).

(a) The Internet is part of our basic infrastructure, like electricity and water.  I wish I could say anything as well as the President can.  I’ve been working for years on Internet policy, trying to capture why it’s so important.  Among media activists, we’ll often say: whatever your first issue is (environment, health care, war, poverty), your second issue should be media, because media shapes how people understand those problems and the possible solutions.  In fact, a former FCC Commissioner, beloved of media reformers, has a book on media called “Your second priority.” Essentially, democracy should always be your second priority, whether it’s media, campaign finance, etc.

But Obama was able to explain how the Internet is also a “second priority” to most everything, from security to economics to speech to talking with your children.

So what understands the importance of the Internet to everything we do. From the speech.

America’s digital infrastructure — the backbone that underpins a prosperous economy and a strong military and an open and efficient government.  …

This world — cyberspace — is a world that we depend on every single day.  It’s our hardware and our software, our desktops and laptops and cell phones and Blackberries that have become woven into every aspect of our lives.It’s the broadband networks beneath us and the wireless signals around us, the local networks in our schools and hospitals and businesses, and the massive grids that power our nation.  It’s the classified military and intelligence networks that keep us safe, and the World Wide Web that has made us more interconnected than at any time in human history.

Obame gets that the Internet is fundamental.  It is fundamental to our lives.  And we can’t let the short-term profit motives of a handful of companies (Comcast, AT&T, Cox, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, etc.).  Internet is infrastructure.  Like roads.  LIke electricity.  We should how to use it, in our lives, rather than having our options constrained by these few carriers.  And we should ensure it’s available to all Americans, as, again, basic infrastructure.

The Wall St. Journal’s fabulous Amy Schatz reports that the FCC line-up seems set.

I know it’s not the Supreme Court. I know it’s not Kobe or Dwight Howard.

But for those of us practicing communications law–or interested in the future of the Internet–the FCC line-up may matter as much as the Supreme Court’s.  And the intra-team rivalries sometimes compare to Kobe and Shaq.

The FCC is the government agency that regulates communications–TV, phone, and data over satellite, broadcast, cable, and phone lines.  Oh, and the FCC also asserts authority over providers of Internet access.  So the FCC matters–for the future of the Internet, the future of media, the future of personal and political communications.  Essentially, though the FCC might be best-known for investigating Janet Jacksons’ wardrobe malfunction, this agency helps determine the shape of American discourse and democracy.

The President can appoint three from his own party, so the new line-up includes three Democrats and two Republicans, an obvious change from the Bush years.

Here’s our line-up, according to Schatz:

Julius Genachowski (D).  The Chairman.  A classmate of Pres. Obama’s at Harvard Law School, then a Supreme Court clerk, then an advisor to President Clinton’s first FCC Chairman, then a tech executive, then a venture capitalist.  He was Obama’s top tech advisor during the campaign and gets credit for Obama’s excellent tech innovation agenda.  Public interest groups have praised this choice.

Michael Copps (D).  The Veteran Warrior.  Copps has been the hero of the media reform movement and the open Internet movement for years.  He speaks at Free Press’s major conferences every year, with uplifting speeches and charming wit, to applause and adoration.  He became a hero through dissents and through negotiating victories while in the minority.  He sees a window of opportunity while in the majority.

Mignon Clyburn (D).  The State Commissioner.  A state public utilities commissioner, Clyburn is not well-known in DC, but is expected to support the President’s agenda.

Robert McDowell (R).  The Survivor.  Schatz writes: “It wasn’t clear he would be renominated because he had drawn some opposition from AT&T Inc.” From my point of view, Commissioner McDowell has had his good votes–like on white spaces–and his bad votes–like on the Comcast network neutrality order and  cable ownership limits.  Smart guy, to say the least.

Meredith Baker (R). The NTIA head. I don’t know her personally.

These five have a lot of work ahead of them–such as building a national broadband plan on the basis of this piercing analysis.

With the line-up set, I hope we can get some confirmations soon.

Recently, the Philly papers reported that “Comcast’s lobbying budget soars.”

I’m not sure how to interpret this.  I’d like to think that our victory in the network neutrality case convinced Comcast execs they needed to make even bigger investments in influencing government, that taking on  a few folks at public interest organizations the American public takes real dollars.

But it’s more likely that standard “public choice theory” is at play.

Public choice theory predicts that big companies have more incentive than the broad public to lobby and influence government.  The big companies get huge benefits from government lobbying, while the costs to society are spread out among millions, each with a small stake. So Comcast makes 1 million; 1 million people lose a dollar.  Comcast has the incentive to lobby.  Each person will just forget the dollar, or complain, but isn’t going to hire a lobbyist.

But why is Comcast spending more now?  Probably not our net neutrality victory.  Maybe because Comcast fear more policy losses.  The Obama tech agenda is not friendly to Comcast–it’s friendly to the public.

But here’s another idea, suggested by the article itself.  When smaller companies merge into bigger companies, the bigger companies have more incentive to lobby.  Let’s leave aside that more laws potentially affect bigger companies (like antitrust limits), which would itself prompt more lobbying on more issues.  Bigger companies simply get a larger share of the benefits accruing to their entire industry from lobbying.  When Congress changes a cable law, each cable company gets a benefit.  After mergers, Comcast gets a bigger and bigger share of the benefit, so it has more incentive to lobby for the benefit.  Each member of the public still gets the same small cost, so the public becomes even more outgunned.  As a result, as an industry gets more concentrated–like when the FCC rubber stamps merger after merger for a decade–the remaining dominant players have even more incentive to invest in lobbying, getting a larger and larger share of the lobbying goodies going to the industry.  A friend of mine wrote an interesting article on this point, though he was arguing for privatization of government monopolies, rather than opposing private concentration.

The upshot is: we’ve already known concentrated industries are bad economics, that they can reduce competition, raise consumer prices, decrease supply and variety, and inhibit innovation.  But we shouldn’t overlook how concentration may affect political power, undermining the representativeness of our democracy, concentrating not just economic power but political power in the hands of a few.  That is, economic concentration may lead to industries investing more and more in lobbying, further skewing the balance between special interests and the general public interest.

The solution to this is bringing sexy antitrust back.  It’s enforcing the FCC’s public interest standard.

And, it’s working to organize with the public, in effect organizing and metaphysically merging their interests.  The only way to win in Washington, as industries invest more in influence-peddling, is to have more of the public even more committed to solving the problems that face us, from national security to network neutrality.

AT&T might have interfered with the American Idol vote.  I feel like there’s a metaphor for network neutrality in this.   AT&T tampering with electoral democracy?  Abusing its control of the telecom network to influence elections?

The metaphor’s less forthcoming than when AT&T’s Blue Room bleeped Pearl Jam for criticizing a AT&T’s biggest political patron–George W. Bush.