(1) Here's Why the Broadband Debate Matters For You
(2) A Paper Trail of Betrayal: Google's Net Neutrality
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(1)
Here's Why the Broadband Debate Matters For You
by Jamilah King 
ColorLines
August 13 2010
http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/heres_why_the_broadband_debate_matters_for_you.html

So what's the big deal with Google, anyway? Broadband
and Internet regulation have been in the news a lot this
week-and activists are converging on the company's
headquarters this afternoon to protest its recent
proposal with Verizon. There are a lot of big, techy
words in this debate and it can get hard to follow. So
here's a primer on what it's all about, and why it
matters to communities of color.

What is broadband access?

Right, let's start at the basics. Put simply: Broadband
is high speed Internet access. It's much faster than
dial-up, sometimes cheaper and more reliable than
satellite, and far more comprehensive than wireless
connections.

So what's "net neutrality"?

Net neutrality is the principle that users should have
unrestricted access to the Internet, without
interference from service providers. Though it's often
framed as a new debate, the principles of net
neutrality-also called open Internet-have existed
informally for about as along as the Internet's been
around. It means that your Internet service provider
(ISP) doesn't distinguish between, say, CNN, ColorLines,
or someone's personal blog. You can access each site at
the same speed without interference from your ISP. So
those same ISP's, like Time Warner or AT&T, don't charge
users more to connect faster to certain sites or block
them from going onto others; every site is, in effect,
treated the same.

The current debate is merely a matter of formalizing
these principles by imposing regulations that say
service providers must continue to treat everything on
the Internet equally. That means that Verizon, for
instance, couldn't go and block its users from going to
sites it didn't like, or slow users' connectivity to
sites that don't drive revenue.

Got that? Good, because now it gets a bit complicated.
Industry, government, advocates and even courts are in a
heated battle over who exactly gets to set the ground
rules for the Internet.

And what's the fight about?

The fight started because those scary scenarios about
blocking and slowing traffic aren't merely speculative.
In 2005, Comcast blocked its users from sharing
BitTorrents, which are popular ways to send and receive
large files. The company claimed that it was preventing
its users from committing copyright infringement, since
the file-sharing platforms are often associated with
quick and easy ways to get free music and movies.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stepped in
and ruled that no Internet service provider could block
or interfere with user traffic-unless it was for
"reasonable network management purposes." Comcast
challenged the ruling and this year a federal court
overturned it, finding that the FCC didn't have the
authority to regulate broadband in the first place.

The court ruling has added yet another layer to the
debate. The FCC is scrambling to regain its regulatory
authority. That authority actually began eroding years
ago, when a conservative majority of commissioners ruled
that broadband be treated differently from landline
phone and TV services, which are seen as essential to
every household and therefore subject to federal
oversight.

Meanwhile, service providers have argued vehemently
against net neutrality regulations, saying that any
formal rules would stifle competition and innovation-
which would in turn keep prices up and limit broadband
expansion into poor and rural communities.

On the other hand, some consumer and civil rights
advocates have argued the exact opposite: that the
principle of having an open Internet is at the heart of
innovation to begin with. And, further, that the claim
that regulation will stifle competition is baseless-
especially considering that there are only a handful of
service providers left to make the decisions in the
first place and, for them, it's a matter of will. Not
opportunity.

But why should people of color care?

The Internet's become an essential part of everyday
life. Increasingly, crucial parts of society are moving
online, including everything from scholarship and
college applications to social security forms. But the
Internet's also allowed folks of color to engage with
democracy in pretty unprecedented ways. Think Jena 6 or
Oscar Grant, where online campaigns and petitions shed
national spotlight on cases that eventually found their
ways to court. The same sentiment even extends to Barack
Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, which used online
action as a crucial part of its strategy. In each case,
keeping online traffic neutral allowed users to access
information on their own and help shape the public
conversation.

Yet many communities of color still lack regular, home-
based access. What's been called the "digital divide"
has been helped incrementally by the surge in popularity
of mobile wireless devices for black and brown folks,
but advocates say it's not enough. For instance, you
generally can't write a paper on your Sidekick, and your
grandma might be hard pressed to fill out immigration
renewal forms on an iPhone.

The key point here is that everyone knows that there's a
problem, but they're all bickering over how to solve it.
The Obama administration included $7.2 billion in
broadband stimulus funds as part of the Recovery Act
(though Congress voted to rescind $300 million of it
this week), and the FCC expressed high hopes for
nationwide expansion when it released its National
Broadband Plan earlier this year.

But a study by the Social Science Research Council
recently showed that cost is just one part of why
communities of color have a hard time getting online.
While many still rely on so-called "third spaces" -
libraries, community centers, and schools - for high
speed access, others who can afford it simply can't get
it because it's not offered in their areas. In one
example, residents of a Philadelphia housing project
couldn't get online unless they also paid for Verizon's
costly digital phone service. It's a similar story in
parts of New Mexico, Wisconsin, and other areas where
the infrastructure for high speed Internet simply
doesn't exist yet. To date, service providers haven't
received any explicit push to make it happen.

What's the big deal with Google?

Google was right about at least one thing in yesterday's
rebuttal of its proposal with Verizon: It's been one of
the leading corporate voices on net neutrality over the
past five years. In a debate that's often polarized
between big bank telecommunications companies and open
Internet activists, Google's brought much-needed
credibility to the idea that the Internet should remain
free from interference from service providers. Not to
mention that the company's got a considerable amount of
clout. Not convinced? Try to imagine a day without
Gmail, Google's search engine, or even YouTube. At last
check, the company was worth more than $23.6 billion,
and was named by CNN as one of the 10 most valuable
companies in the US.

Google's also played a key role in the legislative
process. In the past they've encouraged their users to
send letters to Congress in favor of net neutrality, and
the company's CEO Eric Schmidt has written publicly that
without net neutrality, the Internet is facing a
"serious threat."

When Google and Verizon made the pre-emptive move to
announce their own plan-which favored keeping service
providers from interfering with some user traffic, but
left the door open to wireless interference-it in effect
set the standard for any net neutrality negotiations to
come. Already, AT&T has called Google and Verizon's plan
a "reasonable framework", and when word of the plan came
out, the FCC abruptly halted its negotiations with
several other big players on the Web. And because the
FCC's been busy trying to reinstate its authority to
oversee the Internet in the first place, its hands are
basically tied.

For more on Google's changing positions, see Matthew
Lasar's account on Law & Disorder.

(2)
A Paper Trail of Betrayal: Google's Net Neutrality Collapse
By Matthew Lasar
ars technica
August 11, 2010
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/08/a-paper-trail-of-betrayal-googles-net-neutrality-collapse.ars

Like the rest of the technology world, we're wondering
why Google has chosen to ally itself with Verizon,
issuing a set of joint net neutrality recommendations
that critics charge would significantly weaken the
Federal Communications Commission's ability to protect
the open Internet.

The whole approach just seemed so at odds with Google's
past fiery statements on the issue. Maybe we misread the
search engine giant's previous statements, we worried.
Until this month, wasn't Google one of net neutrality's
biggest advocates?

So this morning we re-read three Google documents again-
filings with the FCC going back to 2007, shortly after
Google's Eric Schmidt first asked the public to "take
action to protect Internet freedom."

Comparing "Google Then" with "Google Now," the
differences seem pretty stark. Google Then raised strong
objections to three major points in the Google/Verizon
statement that Google Now endorses. 1. Rules versus
principles

The core of the Google/Verizon proposal is that ISPs
would adhere to a set of "principles"-a non-
discrimination principle prominent among them:

    In providing broadband Internet access service, a
    provider would be prohibited from engaging in undue
    discrimination against any lawful Internet content,
    application, or service in a manner that causes
    meaningful harm to competition or to users.
    Prioritization of Internet traffic would be presumed
    inconsistent with the non-discrimination standard,
    but the presumption could be rebutted.

But when it comes to enforcing this ban against what the
Google/Verizon announcement called "bad actors," the
plan recommends that the FCC do so through "case-by-case
adjudication" rather than pre-existing, detailed rules.

The Commission "would have no rulemaking authority with
respect to those provisions," the proposal continues.
"Parties would be encouraged to use nongovernmental
dispute resolution processes established by independent,
widely-recognized Internet community governance
initiatives, and the FCC would be directed to give
appropriate deference to decisions or advisory opinions
of such groups."

That's what Google Now suggests, but three years ago
Google Then protested the agency's lack of solid, clear
regulations against packet discrimination.

"This Commission to date has decided that no regulatory
rules are necessary to address concerns about packet
discrimination," Google wrote in 2007. "Instead, the
agency promises to stand watch, and react only when
provoked by 'bad acts.' Of course, without knowing what
kinds of market behavior would trigger the FCC's
involvement-or whether the FCC even possesses the
requisite legal authority to remedy the situation-the
rest of us are left with serious misgivings that this
approach will prove effective at preserving an open and
generative Internet."

Google warned that this approach had a variety of
"downsides"-"broad 'principles' without consistent,
enforceable rules risk a significant chilling effect on
innovators who rely upon regulatory clarity to assure
the existence of Internet platforms without artificial
barriers," the firm's lawyers charged at the time.

They're not saying it anymore. 2. Priority access

As already noted, the Google/Verizon manifesto includes
language against prioritizing online data, but with
significant exceptions. "Prioritization of Internet
traffic would be presumed inconsistent with the non-
discrimination standard, but the presumption could be
rebutted," the statement explains [our italics].

The plan also lists various reasonable network
management practices that it defines as "technically
sound." These include efforts to "to ensure service
quality to a subscriber," and "to prioritize general
classes or types of Internet traffic, based on latency;
or otherwise to manage the daily operation of its
network."

Lastly, the proposal recommends creating a whole
category of "additional or differentiated services" that
"would have to be distinguishable in scope and purpose
from broadband Internet access service, but could make
use of or access Internet content, applications or
services and could include traffic prioritization."

It is unclear yet what the "additional services" would
be, but Google Then could not have been more suspicious
of these ideas. The company conceded in 2007 that two
types of prioritization schemes could be
justified-"differentiating based on the type of
applications and/or the quantity of bandwidth purchased
by the consumer."

Beyond those, however, Google strongly objected to
prioritizing quality of service (QoS) network management
systems designed to deliver predictable packet flow.

"Simply put, QoS appears to be unnecessary," the company
wrote, "the proverbial solution in search of a problem.
As expert researchers and engineers have determined
after years of analysis, there is no network problem
allegedly solved by prioritization that cannot also be
solved by additional bandwidth."

QoS, Google charged, would function as a disincentive
for ISPs to further build out their networks. It
wouldn't even deliver promised results, unless the big
ISPs agreed to complex, standardized end-to-end
prioritization agreements.

Broadband providers using the technique, the company
warned, "have the incentives and the means to create a
closed private network that consigns Internet content
and applications to a relatively slow, bandwidth-starved
portion of the broadband connection. Obviously it will
be increasingly difficult for providers of Internet-
based applications such as video content to compete
effectively against the broadband providers in this kind
of 'two-tiered' broadband network."

As for those "additional and differentiated services,"
as recently as April of this year, Google took exception
to a similar proposal coming from the FCC (which by now
had recommended rules)-to create a "managed services"
category exempt from the agency's net neutrality
proposals.

"If a last-mile broadband provider dedicates only a
small slice of its broadband capacity to the open
Internet while reserving the vast majority of the
network's capacity for proprietary 'specialized'
services, the public interest would be compromised,"
Google told the FCC in January.

This idea should be subject to further study, the
company advised in April. Perhaps a Notice of Inquiry
should be launched.

"In the interim, however, such services should not
receive a 'free pass' around the Communications Act,"
Google wrote. "Designating any particular offering as a
'managed' or 'specialized' service cannot cause it
automatically to fall outside of the Commission's
oversight and authority."

That was mere months ago, yet this week, Google
explicitly laid the groundwork for all of these ideas to
get written into US law. 3. Wireless exemption

Finally, there can be no question as to what Google Then
would have thought of Google/Verizon's proposal to
exempt wireless broadband providers from any non-
discrimination principles. Indeed, BusinessWeek even ran
a Google-focused piece in September 2009 called "Will
Net Neutrality Go Wireless?"

But according to this week's proposal:

    Because of the unique technical and operational
    characteristics of wireless networks, and the
    competitive and still-developing nature of wireless
    broadband services, only the transparency principle
    would apply to wireless broadband at this time.

What's all this about the "unique" character of wireless
networks? Rob Frieden, a respected Penn State telecoms
scholar, noted this week that "the rationale for
exempting wireless does not pass the smell test... The
technical and operational aspects of wireless strongly
necessitate the non-discrimination requirement."

Back in April, Google agreed. It strongly lobbied
against this idea and the logic behind it. Wireless
companies (like Verizon) that seek a nondiscrimination
exemption based on the allegedly "competitive nature" of
the wireless sector, "fail to acknowledge some relevant
facts," the company wrote.

The number of mobile wireless subscribers may be
increasing, but "the number of service providers
actually is contracting," with AT&T and Verizon
controlling over 60 percent of the national wireless
market. "Further, these two providers' wireless, video,
voice, and data offerings are substantially vertically
integrated with-and their motivations to discriminate
are tied to-their affiliates' wireline networks," Google
added.

It went on:

    More importantly, wireless broadband access
    providers do not acknowledge the wireless industry's
    record of dubious practices-a list that continues to
    grow. For example, the cable industry notes that
    "providers of wireless Internet access unabashedly
    engage in outright blocking." Deep packet inspection
    "has been deployed far and wide" by various wireless
    last mile network operators. Further, the
    contractual terms imposed by major wireless carriers
    purport to prohibit the use of peer-to-peer
    applications, Web broadcasts, server or host
    applications, tethering, and the use of wireless as
    a substitute for wired broadband. Nonetheless,
    wireless network operators' practices are not
    transparent, the government to date has declined to
    exercise its rightful oversight authority, and
    effective enforcement mechanisms to address abuses
    do not exist.

Wireless Internet companies "in particular fail" to
honor the philosophy inherent in the FCC's proposed
nondiscrimination rule, the firm charged.

"Notwithstanding any technical differences between
wireline and wireless networks that may justify
different application of the reasonable network
management exception on a case-by-case basis," Google
Then insisted, "the record is clear that all last-mile
broadband network providers have common incentives to
discriminate in the absence of an effective and
enforceable rule protecting consumers and competitors."

But between April and August, the wireless market
apparently became "competitive." As for the wireless
industry's bad acts, so long as those are disclosed,
Google has made its peace with them. That was then

We have every confidence that Google Now will insist
that its present stance represents a solid extension of
the company's call for an open Internet.

"It is imperative that we find ways to protect the
future openness of the Internet and encourage the rapid
deployment of broadband," Google and Verizon declared in
their statement announcement.

But the sheer volume of earlier commentary penned by
Google that runs contrary to its newest recommendations
isn't going to disappear down the memory hole.

Advocates of net neutrality will look at these documents
and charge betrayal. Opponents will cheer a powerful
company coming to its senses. Scholars will have to
decide whether this week saw one of the most remarkable
volte-faces in telecommunications policy history.

_____________________________________________

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