Olbermann: Net Neutrality Imperiled as Congress, FCC, President Hide

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 06:34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S5Q8oWkBUk   Posted on YouTube: August 06, 2010 By YouTube Member: firedoglake Views on YouTube: 107   Posted on DU: August 06, 2010 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 872

 
MSNBC Countdown w/ KEITH OLBERMANN - 5 August 2010: Keith reports on the latest in the Verizon/Google negotiations and the FCC reaction. Interview with Josh Silver of Free Press, a non-partisan public interest group that focuses on tech and free speech.

SILVER: "What most Americans don't know is that Net Neutrality is THE game changer for the future of ALL media - soon, with increasing speeds, television, radio, phone service, emerging technologies, all of it delivered with a high-speed Internet connection, so the rules of the road, set by government and obeyed by companies like Verizon and Comcast and AT&T, that is going to fundamentally shape the Internet.

So far, for the last five years, Google was on the side of the public and other Internet companies, in favor of Net Neutrality, Verizon, Comcast, NBC were against it. Then, this big announcement this week, Google and Verizon cutting a deal, in the context of what you mentioned, an amazing debacle of government, where you actually have a Federal Communications Commission that has no authority over the Internet, thanks to a bad decision by the Bush-era FCC. So only time will tell, but the good news is there is an easy solution, the leader of the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman enachowski could solve this with an up-or-down vote."

OLBERMANN: "But if the FCC is not in charge of oversight from a governmental point of view, is anybody in charge of it? Is the Federal Trade Commission in charge of it? Anaconda Wire? Who's in charge?"

SILVER: "Nobody. This is the problem, and it really shows just how badly money has corrupted the government. I mean we've got a situation where the phone companies spend... they're second only to the pharmaceutical companies in Washington spending. They've got the majority of the U.S. Congress on their side on this issue and they know it. So, they're running the table. The Federal Communications Commission's the only agency who can regulate on this. And so far, the chairman, Obama's appointee, has sat on his hands since that court decision last April. The only thing that's going to work is if people across the country understand the gravity and importance of this issue and start to get involved.

- snip -

The problem is, as I said, it's important to know, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, most of the leadership in the Congress right now, they're good on this issue. They support Net Neutrality and they support consumers, but, you know, the rest of the Congress is not good. 74 Democrats came out against Net Neutrality and against the FCC reclassifying...

- snip -

...things can and will have to change, because the President has come out as a big supporter of Net Neutrality, as has the FCC chairman."

OLBERMANN: "All right, sketch out, briefly, the worst-case scenario if nothing happens."

SILVER: "So, the worst-case scenario is this: We've only got about another year where anything is going to happen in Washington, then the 2012 elections are on the horizon and it's going to be gridlock in Washington. The worst-case scenario is the FCC chairman continues to sit on his hands, the President of the United States continues to be silent, the Congress continues to threaten that FCC chairman, and tell him not to do anything, and in that environment, the deal that's being cut by Google and Verizon, which would allow toll roads on the Internet and would completely take a pass on wireless, and let anything, "Wild West of Wireless," that would become the defacto law, and essentially we'd have industry self-regulating in the exact same way they did with the oil industry and the same way they did with the big banks, and we saw what that gets us."

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Comments at this Video:

"47f0

8 minutes ago
There's a dirty secret the TelCos don't want you to know - they horribly oversell their bandwidth. Then they call providers, like Amazon, "hogs", for the strange practice of actually using the bandwidth they paid for. The TelCo's want to charge the providers for bandwidth, charge the consumers for bandwidth, call them "hogs" if they actually use that bandwidth, then charge an additional premium to give certain traffic "priority" handling. Screw the TelCos."

and...

qerguil
1 hour ago
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[Hissyspit]

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3. Our Corporate Masters will not be denied. eom