Net Neutrality Tops Lawmakers’ Concerns to CCIA
Net neutrality was Tuesday’s hot topic in tech policy on and off the Hill. Lawmakers addressed the Computer and Communications Industry Association annual caucus, then took part in a House Telecom Subcommittee hearing on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. (See separate report in this issue.) Electronic surveillance, broadband expansion and intellectual property also came up at the CCIA meeting. The FCC and Justice Department stirred the most heat among lawmakers.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Internet service providers are undermining the legal structure devised to help them flourish starting in the 1990s, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Wyden’s successful legislation to protect ISPs from a “tidal wave of lawsuits” over third-party content and shield Internet businesses from multiple taxes was “built on the proposition of neutral [network] treatment,” he said. ISPs can “milk profit like there’s no tomorrow” with consolidation in providers, yet seem not to realize that by arguing against neutrality they risk a “regulatory pounding,” Wyden said. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said “less markets and more policy” is the wrong answer. The Bush administration is guilty of weak antitrust enforcement in Internet access, he said.
Wyden voiced doubt of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act overhaul anytime soon. “This is going to have to be a longer-term exercise to figure out where that line really is” between telecom companies acting as “good corporate citizens” and becoming an “adjunct agency” of the government, he said. Wyden and Intelligence Committee members backed “modernizing” FISA to take the Internet into account, a process in which Vice President Dick Cheney’s “policy shop” has interfered, he said. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., however, called a FISA revamp the “least of the issues” that the Senate faces, since the law is clear on getting orders for surveillance. “That plane is going to be landing pretty soon.”
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., took digs at the FCC in otherwise breezy remarks. After describing his amazement at monkey-cognition research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Dorgan said the FCC was “like a cheerleader and a pep squad all wrapped into one big noise machine” in support of industry consolidation. Net-neutrality legislation advocates “simply want to reimpose those nondiscrimination rules” lost when the FCC deemed the Internet an information service, Dorgan said.
Asked if the government should create “Internet3” -- a next-generation network like the university-built Internet2 - - Dorgan said the government first must decide which ends to pursue. “We've been through a period where regulation was a four-letter word,” and the FCC remains in “constant internal conflict,” he said. Chairman Kevin Martin is “running down some blind alleys in public policy,” Dorgan said.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said she is “going to build a bonfire” over extending broadband to 95 percent of the U.S., through her Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act (HR-5846). The bill would require a free service tier and ban “obscene and indecent material” (CD April 18 p3). “It really irks me” that the U.S. ranks 15th in broadband penetration, and that the FCC measures penetration by ZIP code, she said. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a co-sponsor of Eshoo’s bill, said large companies are “sitting on bandwidth” to protect their businesses, keeping access prices artificially high.
Eshoo sees no “low-hanging fruit” on H-1B visa reform, a top priority for high tech, that would allow comprehensive legislation in 2008, she said. She encouraged CCIA to consult the Hispanic Caucus for support. Eshoo and other lawmakers recently asked the House administrator to enroll the entire body in the Energy Star program for data-center efficiency, she said.