[Infowarrior] - Republicans defeat Net neutrality proposal

Wed Apr 5 19:50:14 EDT 2006

Republicans defeat Net neutrality proposal

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Republicans+defeat+Net+neutrality+proposal/2100-1028_3-6
058223.html

Story last modified Wed Apr 05 15:37:56 PDT 2006

A partisan divide pitting Republicans against Democrats on the question of
Internet regulation appears to be deepening.

A Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday
defeated a proposal that would have levied extensive regulations on
broadband providers and forcibly prevented them from offering higher-speed
video services to partners or affiliates.

By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed
"Net neutrality" amendment to a current piece of telecommunications
legislation. The amendment had attracted support from companies including
Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and their chief executives
wrote a last-minute letter to the committee on Wednesday saying such a
change to the legislation was "critical."

Before the vote, amendment sponsor Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat,
assailed his Republican colleagues. "We're about to break with the entire
history of the Internet," Markey said. "Everyone should understand that."

This philosophical rift extends beyond the precise wording of the
telecommunications legislation. It centers on whether broadband providers
will be free to design their networks as they see fit and enjoy the latitude
to prioritize certain types of traffic--such as streaming video--over
others. (In an interview last week with CNET News.com, Verizon Chief
Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner said prioritization is necessary to make
such services economically viable.)

After a day of debate, the committee went on to vote 27-4 in favor of
approving the final bill--minus the Democrats' amendment--sending it onward
to full committee consideration, expected in late April. The vote on the
amendment itself did not occur strictly along party lines, with one
Republican voting in favor and four Democrats voting against the bill.

Leading Republicans have dismissed concerns about Net neutrality, also
called network neutrality, as simultaneously overblown and overly vague.

"This is not Chicken Little, the sky is not falling, we're not going to
change the direction of the axis of the earth on this vote," said Rep. John
Shimkus, an Illinois Republican. He said overregulatory Net neutrality
provisions would amount to picking winners and losers in the marketplace and
discourage investment in faster connections that will benefit consumers.

Last week, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton said: "Before
we get too far down the road, I want to let the market kind of sort itself
out, and I'm not convinced that we really have a problem with Net
neutrality."

Barton and other Republican leaders of the House panel did, however, offer
some modest changes to a telecommunications bill in response to concerns
from Internet and software companies.

Their replacement bill would require the Federal Communications Commission
to vet all complaints of violations of Net neutrality principles within 90
days. It gave the FCC the power to levy fines of up to $500,000 per
violation.

It also contained explicit language denying the FCC the authority to make
new rules on Net neutrality. Democrats charged that lack of enforcement
power would mean the FCC would be unable to deal with the topic flexibly.

Rep. Charles Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, backed that
less-regulatory approach, saying that a "case-by-case adjudicatory process"
is the best way to address Net neutrality concerns while ensuring
competition in the marketplace.

The amendment that was rejected on Wednesday took a similar approach to
strict Net neutrality legislation introduced in the Senate last month by
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.

It said that any content provider must be awarded bandwidth "with equivalent
or better capability than the provider extends to itself or affiliated
parties, and without the imposition of any charge." That would likely
prohibit any plans by Verizon or other former Bell companies to offer their
own video services that would be given priority over other traffic (video is
bandwidth-intensive and intolerant of network delays).

"I think this walled garden approach that many network providers would like
to create would fundamentally change the way the Internet works and
undermine the power of the Net as a force of innovation and change," said
Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat.

Markey warned: '"There is a fundamental choice. It's the choice between the
bottleneck designs of a...small handful of very large companies and the
dreams and innovations of thousands of online companies and innovators."

By "very large companies," Markey was not referring to Microsoft, which has
a market value of $287 billion, but its much smaller political rival
Verizon, which has a market value of $101 billion and has opposed Net
neutrality mandates. Markey did not appear to be referring to Google, which
has a value of $121 billion and has been lobbying on behalf of federal
regulations, but to AT&T, which has a value of $105 billion and has opposed
them.

A CNET News.com report published last week, however, showed that the
Internet industry is being outspent in Washington by more than a 3-to-1
margin.

AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians
from 1998 until the present, while the three Internet companies plus
Amazon.com and eBay spent only a combined $71.2 million. (Those figures
include lobbying expenditures, individual contributions, political action
committees and soft money.)