The Fairness Doctrine and net neutrality, natural partners

I've said many times that net neutrality regulations are tantamount to the Fairness Doctrine, an old law wherein the government determined what amounts to "fair speech". Dennis Kucinich, with the help of two FCC commissioners, has now made this explicit:

In addition to media ownership, the committee is expected to focus its attention on issues such as net neutrality and major telecommunications mergers. Also in consideration is the "Fairness Doctrine," which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner.

As a reminder, net neutrality legislation aims to regulate how Internet traffic flows over private networks. That traffic is, of course, your speech.

Similarly, net neutrality rhetoric often mentions "fairness", but the real goal is advantage for certain (for-profit) organizations at the expense of other organizations, their constituents, and their customers. The government picks winners, in other words. The ultimate loser is the public, in the form of diminished freedoms and a less dynamic media marketplace.

Here is a reminder of the bad old days under the Fairness Doctrine:

This doctrine grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio station being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available, broadcasters should make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. [...]

The fairness doctrine ran parallel to Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1937 which required stations to offer "equal opportunity" to all legally qualified political candidates for any office if they had allowed any person running in that office to use the station. The attempt was to balance--to force an even handedness. Section 315 exempted news programs, interviews and documentaries. But the doctrine would include such efforts. Another major difference should be noted here: Section 315 was federal law, passed by Congress. The fairness doctrine was simply FCC policy. [emphases mine]

In other words, the Fairness Doctrine grew out of a perception of scarcity of media outlets, based on limited radio frequencies. To say that this is an antiquated concept in a time of several-hundred-channel cable TV, satellite TV, satellite radio, and of course our little Internet, is to state the obvious. And yet, such regressive concepts are held in high esteem by folks like Kucinich.

Further, the Fairness Doctrine was enacted by the unelected FCC, above and beyond laws passed by Congress. If it were simply one elected official advocating this idea, we might not be so worried. But joining him are two current FCC commissioners who share his enthusiasm:

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also on hand at the conference and took broadcasters to task for their current content, speaking of "too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV. Too little local and regional music, too much brain-numbing national play-lists." Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein also spoke at the event.

You read that right. Mr. Copps believes he is in a position to determine what there is "too much" and "too little" of on TV. Perhaps you can sense his hand on your remote.

Let's be clear: net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine are two sides of the same coin, which is government regulation of speech. If anyone can explain to me how this comports with the First Amendment, I am all ears.

----

Not surprisingly, the Daily Kos loves the idea. After all, free speech only makes sense so long as we all agree, right?

----

Hello Slashdotters, welcome. If you have the patience, here are some extended rants on the subject, just keep scrolling.

----

Captain Ed has more. What is interesting is that most media leans left-of-center. If the Fairness Doctrine were enforced, might we see a little more balance toward the right? But then again, with gov't making the rules, "fair" is fair game.

Comments

[Matt]

I suppose that those advocating the Doctrine are mainly concerned because they think their (liberal) views are underrepresented. Would they be as gung ho if such a doctrine would mean Air America would have to start airing Rush Limbaugh?

I agree in that I don't want regulation either way. Let consumers demonstrate what they want through ad revenue and ratings.

[james]

I'd be by far more concerned with the FCC stepping in to actual regulate the wording of what is being broadcast (ala Howard Stern) then this. I consider that the definition of big government.

[Daniel]

They're not the same at all.

Network neutrality, even though I can visit a million websites, they can only get into my home through the 2 sets of wires (phone or cable) that my city gives the right of way to.

If there were a thousand different sets of cables running down your street it may be different, but the reality is space is even more scarce than radio freq allocation constraints. Not to mention backbone usage, that's controlled by only a few companies as well.

What happens when the only internet provider in your area decides your site needs to pay some money to make sure you packets don't get lost or slowed down on the way to your house? I suppose you'll pay up, even though you already paid for your bandwidth at both ends of the connection. At least they can't break your kneecaps when they demand more money for this protection.

Pay attention and understand the issues before you go spouting off and misleading people.

[tinkerman]

The problem with the Fairness Doctrine is in what does NOT get on the air. Television and Radio station management will be forced into deciding how much controversy will cost them, and make business decisions accordingly. In a MoveOn.org world, official complaints will come in, all to be answered sucessfully, or they lose the right to be broadcasters. Fairness means "nothing that can offend anybody that can e-mail the FCC" - Just look at the flood of complaints about "wardrobe malfunction" that came from exactly three sources, two private citizens, and one organization that ran a grassroots write in campaign.

[Paul]

When you look at the decision to make a government protection, you have to look at the schism between the purpose and the reality. The purpose is to keep minority opinions from being banned from all media outlets. The reality is that there becomes a hand saying who can say what. Wouldn't the purpose be better served by having a non-market public channel which has equal access for all views? Isn't this public television? Why does there need to be a law when this "quality entertainment" already exists? This problem is already solved; so what are people trying to pull? - non-partisan bay area resident

[Al]

You said: "To say that this is an antiquated concept in a time of several-hundred-channel cable TV, satellite TV, satellite radio, and of course our little Internet, is to state the obvious." That misses the point. Sure, these channels are available, but only if you pay for them. Fairness Doctrine, as applied to broadcasts over public frequencies (i.e., NOT the pay-to-view stuff like satellite) is perfectly legit.

You also seem to misunderstand the whole net neutrality debate. Daniel (above) partially clarifies it, but I don't think he goes far enough. Net neutrality is about the carriers (the companies that transport your data around) not being allowed to add surcharges to types of traffic as THEY see fit. In other words, on a neutral network, your content is carried with equal priority and no discrimination alongside everyone else's traffic. In a non-neutral network, the group with the deepest pockets wins on content distribution; whoever can pay the most can say the most. It's not about regulating your speech. It's about ensuring that you get a fair say in things, too, without having to go up against a multi-billion dollar conglomerate to do so.

A number of people think that companies like Google are backing net neutrality because of the bottom line. That's partly right; they don't want to have to get into a bidding war with everyone else to ensure their traffic isn't discriminated against. However, that's a looong ways from the "free ride" that so many people claim they're trying to get. If you REALLY think that Google doesn't pay for their connectivity, you should offer to switch bills with them for a month or two.

[Matt S]

Hi Al, I understand precisely what the net neutrality debate is about, I've been blogging it for over a year. I am also a techie by trade.

I am all for the network providers charging more for priority service, in the same way that I am happy to use Fedex. Would anyone claim that Fedex slows down the postal service?

A fast lane is a fine thing, and one which will drive more buildout for serious apps.

Keep in mind, the Internet of today is podunk, and neutrality advocates want it frozen in place. The arguments are equal parts change-aversion and fear-mongering. It's technophobia coming from actual techies, a phenomenon I've never seen before.

The greatest threat to your ability to access a site is scarcity. And, as consumers demand HD over the web, you'll find that congestion is a much bigger problem that any ill intentions of network providers.

I don't love or hate any particular provider, but I do know that gov't telling them how to apportion resources is an excellent recipe for stagnation. It ensures that network providers spend more time pleasing gov't and less time pleasing customers.

[Mynonys]

Network Neutrality is not about "giving people their fair say", whatever the misinformed may say. It is at a much lower level than that ("lower" in this case meaning "closer to the system", ie: more important)

Net Neutrality is about maintaining a fragile protocol on which the entire world economy depends, while (most importantly) allowing new and as-of-yet unconcieved of ideas about how to use the network have a chance to become real.

While I believe fully the Free Market would eventually determine that a Neutral Network is best, I also think the damage done by a non-neutral network could in the meantime collapse the Internet and every nice thing that goes with it.
enforced Net Neutrality does violate free-market principles, but the backbone only has the shallow illusion of being robust because of things like (on a protocol level) Neutrality.
I'll be all for abolishing net neutrality once you can get rid of it without giving [insert telco here, which btw built its lines using government aid] legal authority to hold America ransom

As far as regulated fairness in terms of who gets to express political views: get your damn hands off my Constitution.

The preceding was rambling. It is likely that it can be safely ignored.

[Robert Halloran]

The net-neutrality business comes about because the bandwidth providers (Comcast, AT&T-nee-SBC, etc) are also in the content business, and would like to charge other content providers to allow access to their customer base. They not-so-subtly threaten to degrade the connections of those that don't play along in favor of those that do. "Nice webpage youse got there, be a shame if somethin', um, happened to it". This is possible because of the monopoly/duopoly position most of them hold.

The result to we consumers is that the bandwidth providers will end up charging one another greater interconnect fees between themselves, and pass it along to us. Anti-competitive.

[Paul Davis]

Congestion more a problem than provider ill-intent? Are you serious? As the mass market wants HD (god knows why, but thats hardly relevant), the infrastructure will expand to support it. If a big provider decides to downgrade access to specific sites, the infrastructure will not change. There's no incentive for other big providers to step in either, unless its a single "bad" big provider that is acting up. History doesn't offer much hope of that being the case.

[Viral Tarpara]

I find it hilarious that those that are against net neutrality never give concrete real-world examples of how consumers as well as non-telco businesses benefit from a tiered internet model (non-neutral). You side muddies the argument with your free speech mumbo when in fact the issue boils down to this question.

Is it fair for ISPs, namely telcos, to charge a quality of service fee when the consumer AND the web service (Google, MSFT, YouTube) is already paying massive amounts of money for bandwidth to service those consumers?

If you agree with this, it is tantamount to double dipping. The real reason, telcos are against net-neutrality is because they want a piece of the action in media services. The only way they can compete with an inferior product is by degrading a better product if they don't pay a fee.

There are instances (medical, emergency) where QoS (quality of service) would be beneficial in rare scenarios, but the bottom line is that telcos will no doubt degrade existing neutral services in order to move people to a more expensive QoS service, directly impacting industies such as media distribution, VOIP, and search. Such a problem would not exist if they actually did their job and fully made the investment necessary to upgrade fiber infrastructure. To fairly implement a sound and "fair" QoS service would require us trusting telecoms. Who here actually does? You can't really trust them when their own executives say that they are entitled to revenue generated from service providers outside of what those providers already pay in bandwidth costs.

The real reason we are having this discussion is because companies like AT&T, Worldcome, SBC have squandered 10s of billions...yes billions in government subsidies and yet have provide little improvement in true broadband infrastructure (i.e. 1.5mbps/768 is not real broadband).

Get serious about technology and get the facts, don't mix political rhetoric with issues that directly affect innovation in the marketplace. If telcos want to compete, let them, but not at the expense of others.

Get the facts:
http://www.freepress.net/docs/nn_fact_v_fiction_final.pdf

[Matt S]

Appreciate the comments, all.

Empirically, ask yourself this: how many Internet users (and sites) have suffered from congestion? Poor quality streams? VoIP latency? And how many have suffered from deliberate provider malfeasance?

The malfeasance thing exists in the imagination, not in reality. Providers don't do themselves any favors by pissing off customers, and they know this.

And in any case, laws can't really prevent intentional degradation unless we want the gov't in our routing tables.

[jkao]

I suggest you read Lawrence Lessig on network neutrality, as you seem to be missing the point:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/posts.html?pg=6

It's about not allowing local communications monopolies to dictate what you can and can't communicate. *That* is freedom of speech.

[doctorcisco]

As others have said, you badly misunderstand "net neutrality." Perhaps a professional internetworking engineer (moi) can help.

Since the dawn of internet time, every packet of data has been treated alike as it travels from source to destination. You purchase an internet circuit from a provider, pay your monthly bill, and whatever packets you send are just as important as anyone else's. The provider makes a profit by (theoretically) providing good service at a good price. So, in the net neutral world, if you pay for adequate capacity from a good provider, people can get your stuff (web page, blog, audio stream, whatever) just as easily as they can get anyone else's.

That's "net neutrality." However, AT&T is leading a charge to change all that. They want to go to google, onlyrepublican.com, and other content providers and say, "If you pay us, we will make your traffic first priority on our network." So if Daily Kos comes up with cash, and you don't, your blog loads at speeds resembling molasses, if it loads at all. Kos' blog loads faster than you can say, "The Lunatic Left."

That would all be well and good if there were actual choice in the home broadband market. If someone implemented this kind of nonsense, consumers would have options, like telling that ISP to take a hike.

But in the real world, the local telco (ATT, PacBell, Verizon) and the local cable company (Comcast, Cox, RoadRunner, etc.) are the only choices for home users. I have to choose between ATT and Comcast. People who are out of range for DSL -- a significant part of the population -- generally have only 1 choice ... their cable company.

Especially for people locked into 1 provider, the market can't correct this problem. Comcast can send email to onlyrepublican.com and say, "Pay us $50K/month, or we will treat your traffic as lowest priority, our users will have a bad experience when they try to read your site, and so they will read something else (like Kos) instead."

Imagine a telephone company going to the Democrat, Republican, and Green parties saying, "Yes, we know you are already paying a lot of money for a lot of phone lines for your get-out-the-vote phone banks in Precinct 17426. However, if you don't pay us again to give you priority network access, people you call, and people who call you, will experience crappy connections, random disconnects, and other bad things."

Guess which party won't be able to afford "priority access" in your area of San Francisco?

Guess who makes money selling the right to free speech?

Guess who already took money from their users to deliver data packets, and then went to those 3 political parties to get paid twice for delivering the very same data?

This scheme is, in my judgment, legalized blackmail. Please do not conflate Net Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine. They're simply not the same thing. The Fairness Doctrine squelches Free Speech. Net Neutrality guarantees a level internet playing field, so that my free speech on the internet is just as free as yours.

doctorcisco

[Jeffrey]

don't waste your time. This guy obviously doesn't understand the inner workings of the internet. Fox news has deep enough pockets to guarantee that this clown will be able get to his desired websites quickly and easily.

Also, Paul, you're maybe missing something about net neutrality and google. A large percentage of their profits come from click-throughs from 'content sites.' That is to say, if my website, which gets a paultry 2,000 unique visits per day, makes (on a great day) $100 for Google from content click-throughs, it only makes sense that google wants me to maintain this site/content for as inexpensively as possible so that I continue to generate quality content. Research shows that users will simply close a window if the site is too slow. Thus, when Reps and highly lobbied dems pass a form of net neutrality, my traffic will go down, and google's revenue will go down.

Thus, from google's perspective, and from anyone who maintains a website on the cheap, net neutrality is a stupid idea economically... but I guess Republicans and certain dems care more about their back pocket than the little guy.

Guys like Christopher Yoo and this OnlyRepublican guy miss the point and seem to ignore the facts. I can almost guarantee that he'll not have read most of what many of you have written.

The fact ALL of the most educated among us who've been using a form of the internet since the late 80s disapprove of net neutrality should sway these crazies. But it doesn't because of some GOP sponsored talking point that is created because telecoms now see an economic threat.

[rdean]

You're off-base on net neutrality. Simply put, net neutrality limits the ability of ISPs to block or throttle content based on where it comes from.

I'm all for the free market, but it must be implemented in a way that is compatible with freedom. It does not work in a single or limited-supplier marketplace. As a Republican, I would think that you'd know that.

[Matt S]

Appreciate that doctorcisco, I am quite clear on all those concepts. Also appreciate your appealing to my red-island-in-a-blue-ocean instincts. :) Net neutrality might ironically do more for the righty minority than the lefty majority. Two issues, however.

First, the abuses you describe haven't happened. A little empiricism goes a long way, esp among technologists like ourselves.

(Madison River is a one-time outlier, btw.)

The abuses could happen, sure. But so could a lot of scary theoretical things. I prefer that we deal with the ones that exist.

Neutrality advocates are arguing for prophylactic laws against what is currently an imaginary problem. It's like chemo for someone who might develop cancer 10 years from now. The risk of unintended consequences is huge, esp coming from our tech-impaired representatives.

Second, I understand the concept of the neutral, best-effort Internet. The problem is, everything is treated as lowest-priority today. Equally low, sure.

Under such a scheme, let's imagine that a 20M YouTube video of mentos-and-coke-fountains is competing for the same bandwidth as a 100K CNN page of election results. YouTube wins by sheer, dumb, brute force since it is sending 200x as many packets. And how about that 50kb/s VoIP call?

I would be thrilled if CNN and Vonage had the option of buying something better than best-effort. I think consumers would agree de facto, even if they don't know how it happens.

In a world of infinite bandwidth, best-effort is fine. In the real world, priorities must be chosen and I would rather they be chosen by market (read: consumer) decisions.

[poptones]

Wow, talk about misdirection!

The fairness doctrine does NOT say what you *can't* say - we already have plenty (too many) laws that do that (and I don't hear you complaining about those, either, BTW).

The fairness doctrine says you must provide time for opposing points of view. Now, given that each broadcaster in my area has essentially had their bandwidth QUADRUPLED (ie each "tv station" - of which, my area has only three, or four on a good day) now has four "channels" on which to provide content. Given that each and every one of them has plenty of time on saturday and sunday afternoons to run anything from one to FIVE HOURS of infomercials, I daresay these folks can certainly afford a few minutes for some "opposing viewpoints."

I cannot turn to a tv station and watch Google. Nor can I turn to a tv station and watch CNN (well, save for that boring and repetetive headline edition) nor can I turn to a tv station and watch youtube.

Likewise, Google and Youtube and asking me for a monopoly on some segment of our public airwaves. They are not signing an oath to serve the community, nor are they obligated to run public service messages or participate in national disater drills.

Broadcasters are not the internet. It seems silly to even have to say that, but apparently you hollywood oligarchs love to trumpet that lie at every opportunity. Broadcasters have a special duty to the communities they serve, and rebuking that responsibility was only one of the many ways Reagan cleared the path for our present toxic tide of classism and degradation of america's middle class.

The Fairness doctrine says that free speech must be met with MORE FREE SPEECH. Gee, I wonder what those lunatics like Jefferson and even Adams would have had to say about such a novel concept?

[Wesley Shephard]

Madison River *may* be a one time outlier. However, prior to that fine being imposed, there was quite a bit of rumbling from within the *major* ISP backbone providers (which just happen to be telephone companies as well) where they were considering the same actions against their perceived competitors as well.

The Internet has grown from 300 baud dial up to my current 15GB downstream / 1.5 GB upstream without net neutrality... *and* without the backbone providers doing any packet filtering.

I can right now, this very second order better connectivity to any service I want via various methods. There is no need for filtering for me to achieve my goals, so what *does* filtering achieve?

What it does, it it allows the provider to sell the same service at a higher price point, nothing more. By discriminating against specific providers they can extract an extra level of revenue without spending a dime on actual "quality of service" improvements.

So we don't need net neutrality, but we *also* don't need enabling legislation allowing filtering by the backbone providers to be passed. Hand me the status quo please.

[Scott Norris]

Matt,

I see where you're coming from by saying that all traffic today has equally low priority, and of course we'd love it if our favorite websites got faster. And let's even assume, by focusing only on "existing problems," that telcos won't go around extorting competitors.

Even in this scenario, the fact that companies can, by paying a telco, make their own websites faster, will *introduce* a multi-tier system. The big, rich sites will pony up to get fast service, and this fast service will become the new, de facto standard! The point people are trying to make is that this new market-driven world is indistinguishable from the extortion scenario -- everyone who can't pay gets their performace "degraded" relative to the "standard".

[fred]

There are certainly cases where "force feeding" content to people actually makes them like it. (ethical or not). doesn't anyone remember payola?

On the issue of net nutrality... if there is a tiered Internet, and everyone (or mostly everyone) decides to pay to be on the upper tier, then what kind of quality would I have over anyone else? What would the benefit be?

[Matt S]

The benefit would be a newly built upper tier, ie, big new bandwidth. Fedex adding planes doesn't hurt the post office, by the way.

The worst case for everyone else is the status quo on existing pipes. That shouldn't be confused with degradation, it's just a continuation of what they have now.

A lot of folks on this thread seem to think the network providers will extort without building infrastructure. It hasn't happened. But more to the point, someone will have to explain the billions that Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are spending on new pipes.

[Kuwanger]

"Would anyone claim that Fedex slows down the postal service?"

Last I checked, the postal service relied upon a government controlled network of equal access roads. Fedex, to be desired over the postal service, has to offer features above and beyond what the postal service offers for anyone to use them. To have a similar system with the internet would require that all backbones and internet networks be owned by the government and then private businesses could create shortcut "toll roads" for paying customers. Net neutrality is, of course, an attempt to have a similar system but without having the government buy up the internet.

[poptones]

The "tiered internet" ALREADY exists and it works quite well, thanks.

How much do you pay for internet access? I pay a pretty high sixty a month for 3mbps dsl and I live way out in the sticks. There are people in cities miles from me who don't get the connectivity I get - but when the rain kicks up, or the afternoon flood comes when everyone gets home from work, do I get that full 3mbps?

No, I don't - and a great many of you don't, either. "Degreaded service" is already part of the system - it has been since the beginning. It's a simple fact of life.

When I lived in LA I was one of the first in my area to get DSL, and it was fantastic... for about six months. Then everyone else around me had it too, and they had so oversold their backend that I could not even sustain a 200kbps stream on my 1.5mbps line. I left Pacbell in the dust, told them to go to hell and went with earthlink.

No ISP is going to be able to build a business plan around "filters" because so damn few customers are stupid enough to pay for it: when they can't watch google and youtube via their lowball phone company dsl line, they'll start looking for an ISP that can.

[Matt S]

Hi Kuwanger, two things come to mind on the road analogy. First, I think roads are legitimately what Milton Friedman would call a technical (or natural) monopoly. Simply put, there is no physical space for more than one set of roads.

Some of the more doctrinaire libertarians imagine private roads, and I like the mental exercise, but it's just not realistic.

By contrast, there are very few physical limits to competing private networks. Any company has an equal right to hang wires or lay cable. (Well, municipalities make it hard but that's another discussion.) More so with WiMax, and if we count 3G from the mobile providers, there is clearly room for many.

But more to the point, how well do roads handle congestion? Do they respond well to changing traffic? I think the Internet needs a bit more dynamism than that model.