Net Neutrality Fails in House

Yesterday, the House voted 269-152 to kill Rep. Markey's network neutrality amendment, and then proceeded to vote 321-101 to pass COPE, which makes it much, much easier to the telcos to get into the TV business. As Larry Lessig pointed out on Thursday, this is not good:

The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site — from the smallest blogger to Google — network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave.

I'm particular disappointed in the votes of my Representative, Melvin Watt. He voted for the Markey amendment, but also voted in favor of COPE. By the numbers, he's 1 for 2, but that doesn't mean he should get half-credit. Indeed, the only explanation I can find for voting this way is a rather shallow political calculation on his part. Watt can now claim that he sided with both sides — in effect, he voted for network neutrality before he voted against it.

If you really believe the argument for network neutrality, then it makes absolutely no sense to vote for COPE. The telcos would like you to believe that this is all about being able to compete with cable companies, but the implications go way beyond that. This bill uses TV as the wedge that undoes the fundamental principle that has enabled the internet to be what it is today: a democratic platform that encourages social, political, and commercial innovation. What COPE does is trade all that in for another way to get TV in your living room. That's not a good trade.