Here was what was supposed to happen: With telco-friendly Republican Congress members swept out of the way, Democrats would usher in legislation enshrining Network Neutrality principles and give the FCC the power to enforce them.
Here’s what happened (is happening) instead: The most powerful Net Neutrality supporters (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton) are kicked upstairs while cable-and-Hollywood-friendly Democrats are killing Network Neutrality legislation in committees.
Meanwhile, both telecom and cable companies are emboldened by the legislation’s quiet death, the deafening sound of non-action covered up nicely by the economic crisis, and both industries are soothed by interim FCC commissioner Michael
Joe Barton
The Democrat rope-a-dope strategy of the last few years is coming back around to kill Net Neutrality. The initial plan was simply to let Republicans have enough rope to hang themselves. Congressional Democrats ignored calls for investigations and impeachment of members of the Bush Administration because doing so allowed them to drop all blame square on their opponents’ shoulders for everything without putting themselves under undue scrutiny. A few years of doing absolutely nothing was tantamount to lying low while Republicans destroyed themselves so Democrats could take over…and continue to do nothing.
Henry Waxman
It’s a genius plan until people start watching and learning about the new bosses and start understanding how much they look like the old bosses. The Internet Freedom and Preservation Act of 2006, 2007, 2008? All killed by assassins with supposedly opposing goals.
The Senate version is suspicously stuck in a committee of formerly staunch proponents. The the committee supervision of net neutrality opponent Joe Barton (R-TX) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), who represents West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Dianne Feinstein
We’re not surprised by Barton, a Texas Republican attempt to sneak in “reasonable network management” provisions into the economic stimulus package as Waxman looked the other way.
So what’s going on with our supposed neutral net champions? The answer lies in the other industries opposed to net neutrality, namely the Entertainment industry, the principals of which happen to live in Waxman’s and Feinstein’s districts and donate heavily to their campaigns. Feinstein’s donors include Time Warner and Disney as well, but also Qualcomm and GE (which owns NBC).
In the earlier days of the Net Neutrality debate, the argument centered on very technical issues lost on the general public and focused heavily on telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T, and some on Comcast. (Though Ted Stevens famously issued a afraid people will cancel their cable TV subscriptions. TimeWarner, a maker of films and television content as well as a cable Internet and TV provider, is toeing the line with cited lack of complaints of abuse as the reason why they’ve backed off. Even former neutral net proponent John Conyers (D-MI) suddenly thinks it’s a non-issue. It’d be nice if we could look at
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