FCC Anti-Comcast Decision is Pro-Business, Pro-Competition and Pro-Growth

amp160The FCC Rulingamp160Going forward what precedent does the action set Does it make the FCC the goto government body for all things Internet Resurrect Net Neutrality Will Comcast sue What about Cox39s blocking sorry couldn39t resist or ATampampT39s decision to engage in network management cough cough in its wireless network Will this trigger metered pricing And is this a oneoff of token consequence or does it play with bigger broader themes of the dayFCC ProConsumer Is ProBusinessAt the top what is explicit here is that the FCC has accepted jurisdiction to rulemake with regards to the Internet While it is likely that Comcast will appeal amp8211 that39s its modus operandi amp8211 there is close consensus among experts that the decision will be upheld While Commissioner Deborah Tate argued for the FCC to play the role of mediatorarbitrator in her dissent it would have been toothless without taking on oversight Public Knowledge39s president Gigi Sohn party to the FCC complaint said quotThis is the first time that the FCC granted a policy change in response to public interest groups that wasn39t mandated by Congressquot Can it be because aligning with Cable and Telecoms would have been bad economics Marvin Ammori of Free Press which partnered with Public Knowledge believes so quotThis is definitely a probusiness decision for innovation and for competitionquotWhile House minority leader John Boehner would have us believe that the decision will quothijack the evolution of the Internetquot he starts with a flawed premise That this is a level playing field In fact we are lagging behind the rest of developed countries when it comes to broadband access speed and value Less than fifty percent of US households have highspeed access And those that do must contend with a duopoly where consumers cannot choose to leave one service for another Individual states are enacting legislation to support competition This Monday Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law a 40M incentive fund that will see thirtyyear bonds issued to bring broadband to unserved communities across the commonwealthTo those of us who are vexed that inertia is the default because both parties are wedded to the annual political teat of the Cable and Telecom industries 2007 donations 14M from Verizon 171M from ATampampT 89M from Comcast 41M from Cox often against their own longterm strategic interests Tech President39s Andrew Rasiej offers a palliative quotTo stop the influence of money from the cable and telecom industries in defining the rules that will govern our conversion from the 20th century economy to the 21st is to fight for more transparency I have been advocating with Commissioners Copps and Adelstein that they should consider revising the requirements of holding a license from the federal government whereby the burden of transparency rests with the license holder themselves rather than with the public after the factquot Rasiej does not ignore the as yet untapped economic opportunity quotWe must elect a visionary new set of leaders who understand the economic incentive to end the stranglehold we have been living under the last ten to fifteen years as the rest of the world has passed us by Until the world of 20th century scarcity model business recognizes that the quotmedia ecologyquot has dramatically changed to one where abundance model entirely new forms of value are created and traded we will continue to see silly stories like the recent one about Scrabble Just look at the recording industry or the newspaper industry and I can rest my casequotDon39t take a policy wonk39s word on the matter Vuze CEO Gilles Bianrosa his Comcast petition was rolled into the Public KnowledgeFree Press complaint by the FCC uses P2P filesharing technology to offer legal content on behalf of 300 content partners including PBS and Showtime quotEvery large and small content owner that I can think of is trying to figure out how to reach an ever more elusive audience especially younger generations Every studio and TV network is experimenting in this space Trying to impair innovative technologies such as P2P hurts the ability for content owners to increase their reach online The best way to fight piracy is by outperforming it with a better user experiencequotWhat of the argument forwarded by analysts including Sanford Bernstein that tiered pricing will emerge as a result of this order Gigi Sohn characterizes this as a quotfalse choicequot between blocking and metering and a scare tactic She is authoritative quotWe39ve not seen it in any of the countries that are now leading usquotRegarding a recent CNET piece on an emerging technology by Lawrence Roberts the father of ArpaDarpaNet packetswitching used by Universities to detect P2P traffic flows and suppress them he offers quotIf the goal is to curb piracy I would encourage Universities to use the quotcarrotquot ie provide compelling alternative access to content in addition to the quotstickquot ie filtering Bigger takeaway Mr Roberts based the marketplace need for his invention on a false premise Gigi Sohn refutes the oftcited statistic that five to eight percent of users are throttling fifty percent of an ISP39s capacity Looking into the future she predicts quotToday39s bandwidth hog is tomorrow39s user The right answer is to build out their networksquotFor those who bemoan the growth of DVRs filesharing is coming up in your rear view mirror A fall 2007 study by PC Pitstop held that Bittorrentapplications are installed on over thirteen percent of all PC desktops BitTorrent president Ashwin Navin predicts this figure will balloon to eighty percent in three years BitTorrent was one of those outliers that was able to strike deals with ISPs It partnered with Comcast back in the spring and has since been embraced by Warner Brothers Paramount and MySpace TV Navin is eager to move into online gaming P2P will offer a ninety to ninetyfive percent reduction in the server power needed for distribution Moving past the frame of Piracy King Navin walks his talk quotConversation wins over litigationquotBut not all the time In the same news cycle two seemingly unrelated stories crossed the wires Online crossword puzzle Scrabulouswas sued by Hasbro39s Scrabble July 24 disabled on Facebook the following Tuesday reborn as Wordscraper less than two days later Redlasso an elegant and intuitive online broadcast content tool a video clipper for the rest of us was likewise ceaseanddesisted by Hulu JV partners NBCUniversal and Fox It immediately quotsuspendedquot operations except for its enterprise clients including XM Satellite Radio What of those who continue to flout the FCC39s ruling amp8211 including ATampampT and Cox Ammori is clear quotquotWe will be vigilant amp8211 not only we amp8211 it will be the publicquot Certainly he can count on mobilizing the 165 million who contacted the FCC during the Comcast hearing processThis watershed ruling which doesn39t negate the need for Congressional passage of Net Neutrality laws should be read as a call to arms amp8211 in both invention and to transparency Just as the solution to our energy crisis is to create an economy around greencollar jobs and be the leader in alternative energy technology should never be deployed at the expense of consumer choice If you are moving in a restrictive manner because your bottom line seems to dictate it any wins will be shortlived

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FCC Anti-Comcast Decision is Pro-Business, Pro-Competition and Pro-Growth

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Jerry Weinstein

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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