Protecting Internet Freedom Will Close the Digital Divide. Period. End of Story.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski took questions about the recently-released National Broadband Plan (NBP) on YouTube Monday. One question posed to the chairman was about whether the plan would close the digital divide and be beneficial to low-income communities and people of color anxious to get online.
Chairman Genachowski’s response was absolutely right that this plan, along with the FCC’s other efforts to promote universal broadband Internet access and protect Internet freedom, will benefit everyone, especially those excluded from today’s market.
Watch his response:
One of the primary arguments made by the Digital Divide Astroturf Squad (Internet Innovation Alliance, Broadband Opportunity Coalition, Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, etc.) is that curbing companies’ ability to discriminate against people online will hurt innovation and make them less likely to expand access to their services. The tragic flaw in this argument is that if these companies could be trusted, there would be no digital divide.
The problem of the digital divide, once a matter of mere digital ignorance, is fast becoming one of digital access and representation. We have greedy, discriminating telecom interests to thank for this evolution. People know that a digital and connected future exists; they can’t realize it because they are priced or mapped out of the market.
The National Broadband Plan and rules that explicitly protect the rights of consumers online are steps toward solving the problems of digital access and representation. With full and equal access to this platform, entrepreneurs can create venture after venture with the assurance that their commitment and the quality of their ideas will determine their success, not back room deals between their competitors and ISPs that tilt the scale against them. With full and equal access to this platform, young people of color can participate in the revolutionary acts of self-expression and self-definition without fear that their voices and images will be stamped out by forces seeking to make them invisible. This is what closing the digital divide is all about.
Equality and opportunity are core democratic and American values. These values are important in the digital world of tomorrow as they were in the analog world of yesterday. Let’s protect and live up to them.
One Love. One II.
This post originally appeared on the Save The Internet blog.
No Internet Poll Taxes
My friend and colleague James Rucker wrote a piece on Huffington Post asking a simple question: Why are Some Civil Rights Groups and Leaders on the Wrong Side of Net Neutrality? I left a comment, and this post elaborates on the points I made there.
Participation, Inclusion, Equality
Democratic systems flourish when people participate. Having a voice changes people’s relationship with that system and the system’s relationship with the people.
When everyone can’t participate, the system no longer reflects the values and perspectives of the people it impacts. Barriers to entry create divisions, inequality and unfairness.
El Dorado
The Internet was designed as an egalitarian utopia: the El Dorado of the “good ideas win” ethos. Anyone with access to the net could connect with anyone else. Every idea had an equal opportunity to succeed.
When the Internet was taken hostage by telecommunications companies, they threatened this order. They limited participation online by pricing most low-income communities out of the market, creating the Digital Divide. This practice of exclusion reduced the diversity of thought online. It put the Internet on an identical path to becoming an echo chamber of pale, stale, male attitudes.
Next Stop: Poll Taxes
The redlining was round one, but the next round is more sinister. Telecoms are now considering crushing freedom of expression online by creating Jim Crow-esque poll taxes on content they consider unfit for higher-speed, higher-quality Internet connections. This assault on the freedom by private interests is as wrong now as it has ever been.
This should raise specific concern within the civil rights community. Civil rights organizations fought and won the war against poll taxes over 40 years ago. It’s alarming that they are willing to open the door for this type of discrimination in the 21st century. It’s up to us, the membership, the foot-soldiers of these organizations and of this 21st century civil rights movement, to take a stand against this disgusting discrimination.
Protecting Internet Freedom by ensuring Net Neutrality
The FCC is considering creating rules to protect Internet Freedom. Learn more about the process at Save The Internet. I testified at a hearing in December to voice my strong support of protecting Internet Freedom.
You can join the fight by demanding that Congress work alongside the FCC to protect Internet Freedom and outlaw discrimination by telecom companies.
One Love. One II.
Open Gates – My FCC Testimony
On Tuesday, December 15, 2009, I testified at an FCC workshop entitled “Speech, Democratic Engagement and the Open Internet.” Video of the hearing is embedded below and available on YouTube. The moderator introduces me at 58:27, and my roughly 6 minute remarks begin at 59:07. The Q&A that begins at 1:26:18 (My answers are at 1:28:00-1:29:29 and 1:41:20-1:43:31).
My message was that an open internet is necessary for the political participation of all people of all shapes, sizes, races and income in the future. My full opening statement with references is below.
One Love. One II.
Civil rights groups must support Net Neutrality
Civil rights are fundamentally about protecting fairness, equality, and freedom for all people. Net neutrality is about protecting fairness, equality and freedom for all online data. From a values perspective, these two concepts are functionally equivalent.
Values aren’t everything
Unfortunately, these shared values are not convincing enough for some civil rights organizations. The Broadband Opportunity Coalition (which, ironically, has no website) consists of the National Urban League, the Asian American Justice Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Council of La Raza, and other groups that argue for fairness and equality every day.
Well, every day they’re not talking about net neutrality. On their off days, they “question” the impact of net neutrality in letters to the FCC:
If the history of civil rights in America teaches us anything, it is that facially neutral laws and regulations are not always applied neutrally to the constituencies we represent. We certainly don’t want that to happen to Internet regulation too, and we’re very concerned that, despite your very best intentions, some aspects of net neutrality might not turn out to be neutral as applied to our constituencies.
They don’t come out and say it, but this is setting the table for their rejection of fair content distribution online.
Neutral networks lead to empowered communities
The truth is network neutrality is critical to ensuring equal access to the Internet, its content, and the empowerment that comes with that. Without network neutrality protection, ISPs and telecom companies will have free reign to discriminate against the distribution of content created by minority producers. This will make the Internet just like other mass media channels in which the authentic voices of people of color have been marginalized.
Fairness, equality, and freedom must be protected on and offline.
The SuperSpade 