Tuesday, February 25, 2014

And Then There Were Five, Part 2

This post will discuss the implications of the Comcast purchase of Time Warner for the internet. But first, please read Part 1, which focuses on cable television.

The Comcast-Time Warner merger is particularly troubling for those of us who get a lot of our news and information from the internet. The internet was developed at taxpayer expense through government-sponsored research and development, but was given away to private interests in one of the largest examples of corporate welfare in US history. Because of their near monopoly status, internet service providers (ISPs) have no real incentive to upgrade their transmission lines. The result is similar to that of our dysfunctional health care system. We pay the highest prices, yet we are one of the most backward of the developed countries. In a 2013 study of 16 countries by Open Signal, our average download time was faster than only the Philippines. Yet the New America Foundation found that the average cost of “triple play” (phone, TV and internet) service in nine US cities in 2013 was $90, compared to an average of $35 for faster service in 15 cities in Europe and Asia.

In January, the US Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's net neutrality policy, stating that it did not have the constitutional authority to regulate an information service. Net neutrality is the policy that requires internet service providers to transmit all signals at the same speed and for the same price. Without net neutrality, ISPs can slow down the service of competitors and other disfavored sources, then charge them a fee if they want faster service, the cost of which would be passed on to consumers. According to Craig Aaron of Free Press, “(T)heir long-term plan is to take a free and open internet and turn it into something like cable TV, where they pick the channels and they speed them up and slow them down based on who pays the most.”


Comcast is formally committed to net neutrality until the end of 2017 as a condition of the NBC purchase, but not after that. However, both Comcast and Verizon have already been charged with slowing down some internet services, such as Netflix. But this is difficult to prove because the connections through which internet traffic flows, so-called “peering” links, are considered proprietary information and are kept secret.

To add to the confusion, it was announced on February 23 that Comcast and Netflix have reached an agreement in which Netflix will pay an unspecified amount for faster internet service. This violates the principle of net neutrality and would appear to be a tacit admission that Comcast has been slowing down Netflix's signal. In fact, it suggests that Comcast has been deliberately creating customer dissatisfaction in order to use it as a bargaining chip to extort money from Netflix. It also implies that Comcast has not lived up to the agreement it made with the Justice Department when it purchased NBC. But, hey, what's a little cheating between golfing buddies, right?

After the Court of Appeals rejected the FCC's attempt to enforce net neutrality, the FCC announced it would not appeal the court's decision, but proposed a new net neutrality rule that differs from the old one only in that it cites a different paragraph of the Communications Act as its authority. However, critics pointed out that the Court had already implied that the new rule is unconstitutional when it said that they don't have the authority to regulate an information service. The fact that the FCC appears to be ignoring the text of the Court ruling suggests to some that they may only want to give the appearance of defending net neutrality.

The problem, according to internet experts, is that the Bush-era FCC classified broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” The FCC only has the authority to impose neutrality on a telecommunications service, or common carrier, the best example of which is the telephone. In other words, to preserve net neutrality, they must reclassify the internet as a telecommunications service (as advocated by this petition).

Classifying the internet as a common carrier would appear to make sense. Back in the '90s, the internet was referred to as the “information superhighway,” a metaphor than has fallen out of favor. But access to the internet may be as important to society as access to the George Washington Bridge. Unlike television, the internet could be argued to be essential to participation in society, as it is often necessary to interact with businesses, the government and other citizens. However, reclassifying the internet as a vital resource is considered a radical step for the FCC to take. It might require an act of Congress, which seems hopeless given the political power of Comcast and the other ISPs.

Even more troubling than violations of net neutrality is the potential power of ISPs to block access to certain messages altogether. Internet censorship is the ultimate violation of net neutrality. The alleged threat of pornography was used to justify internet censorship,until the Communications Decency Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1997. (This battle is still being fought in Britain, which has an opt-in “porn filter.”) The Edward Snowden revelations have been suggested as an excuse for government to require ISPs to censor the internet in the name of national security—a slippery slope given the government's runaway tendency to classify documents as “top secret.” Given the extent to which ISPs have cooperated with the NSA, is it far-fetched to suppose that they might voluntarily comply with government requests to block certain websites or content categories?

The Comcast-Time Warner merger reminds us of how easily our access to news and entertainment can be manipulated or taken away. One of the major fault lines in media research is the debate over how much people's attitudes are influenced by media exposure. Are we active audiences who counterargue against media messages with which we disagree, or are we mindless consumers of media propaganda? In fact, we are both. The problem is that talking back to the media requires a level of attention and effort that is difficult to sustain, especially when we were expecting to relax and be entertained.

The problem is complicated by a well-established cognitive bias, the third person effect—the tendency for people to believe that they are personally less affected by media messages than other people are. For example, in a room of 50 people, everyone thinks that he or she is less influenced by advertising than the other 49. This virtually guarantees that we will underestimate how much the media affect our thoughts. More troublesome is the fact that, although we don't have to believe what the media tell us, most of us can't know, and therefore can't think about, what they don't tell us. (What are they telling us, for example, about the Comcast-Time Warner merger?)

What is at stake here could be nothing less than the contents of our consciousness.

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