We have some sympathetic FCC commissioners to talk to. They have already twice tried to make this happen by simple rule-making. This is not a case where we are railing against a smug and intractable House majority. On February 19th, the FCC opened up a docket for public comments. They WANT to hear what YOU have to say about all this. We have a window of 30 days to do this and we need to jump all over it.

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My guest today is progressive political activist and frequent OpEdNews contributor, PEN. Welcome back to OpEdNews, PEN. 

Joan Brunwasser: Today we're going to talk about net neutrality. I'm not sure that I've ever had the issue explained to me clearly. Would you like to take a crack at it?

PEN: Hello again, Joan.  As usual, you are right on top of the most critical and timely issues.  We consider this the mother of all policy actions, because unless the internet is truly free to carry our communications on a level playing field, as it was intended, all other advocacy actions are in danger of being restricted.  What the big telecom corporations want to do is discriminate on the internet against content, in the first instance based on how much the content providers can pay, but it also encompasses the threat of discrimination based on the political nature of that content.  The fight for net neutrality is to stop them from doing that.

JB: Other than the almighty profit motive, who could oppose the need for net neutrality? It seems like something we can all agree on and then work together to achieve. Am I missing something basic here? 

PEN: One of our participants in this action made the point that the big cable TV companies, who also provide internet connections to many people, want to change the internet according to their model, where THEY control what channels you have access to through their systems, and there is a huge financial hurdle you have to pay them to have access to their subscribers through one of "their" channels.  So, without an enforcement of the principle of net neutrality, they could demand toll fees from you as a web site creator not to slow down your connections to people who want to visit your site.  And if permitted to do that, it's a short hop to having them block those connections altogether on a political basis.

JB: Are you talking about censorship? How does that figure in here? 

PEN: This is not some hypothetical danger.  In 2008 we were working with Shirley Golub, the ONLY person to ever challenge Nancy Pelosi in her own primary.  And we had a hard-hitting TV spot that regular TV stations were running, but Comcast refused to run this PAID ad, and never did.  This is the same Comcast that is seeking approval to buy up Time Warner to consolidate everything even more.  They are the last people we can trust with our internet freedom.

JB: This is troubling, PEN. Speaking of Comcast, how does the proposed merger feed into the net neutrality issue? Isn't bigger better for all of us, at least in this case?

PEN: If that were the operating principle, we'd all be better off with a Bigg[er] Brother (as in 1984).  Apart from the issue of whether corporate power, concentrated in fewer and fewer hands itself, is something to fear, the issue here is REGULATION.  The FCC has jurisdiction over this and has tried twice to promulgate rules for keeping the internet open.  The appeals court in the DC circuit last month struck down these rules, BUT it was only on the technical question of whether the internet service providers were classified as "common carriers."  This is a term of legal art which might make our own eyes glaze over, but what it simply means is that if the internet is considered an essential utility, then the FCC has to power to regulate it to keep it open and free.  And the good news is that even the appeals court conceded that the FCC as an administrative agency has the UNILATERAL discretion to reclassify internet service providers as common carriers, as they should have been all along.  And if the FCC does so, the people win.

JB: Okay, that's pretty straight-forward. So, the logical next question is,  what can we do to insure that the FCC does its duty and upholds net neutrality? 

PEN: Please understand we have some sympathetic FCC commissioners to talk to.  They have already twice tried to make this happen by simple rule-making.  This is not a case where we are railing against a smug and intractable House majority.  On February 19th, the FCC opened up a docket for public comments.  They are inviting you to have an influence on their next decision.  They WANT to hear what YOU have to say about all this.  We have a window of 30 days to do this and we need to jump all over it.

JB: That is good news. So, how do we go about being good citizens, PEN? Spell out what we need to do and how to do it.

We've created a special server process to navigate the FCC submission site for you.  All you need to do is simply submit our  one-click action page and your personal comments will get sent directly and verbatim to the FCC gateway on this issue.

For those who would like the individualized FCC link here is that as well.

But for the second link, you have to already know which issue you are speaking out on, and the key point to make is that we are asking the FCC to "reclassify internet service providers as common carriers."

JB: Simple enough, but what does "reclassify[ing] internet service providers as common carriers" mean? I want to make sure that we know what we're doing as well as why. 

PEN: In the archaic legal jargon, a common carrier is one who transports people or freight.  And there is a principle in law that such a one cannot discriminate against one customer versus another, because this is an essential public service.  In the modern context of the internet, our "freight" - as in our downloads - is clearly a parallel situation.  The FCC has already embraced this principle in other communication contexts, and the fact that the internet service providers are not already so classified stands as an oversight, one which, again, the FCC can simply correct, and court has already told them they have the power to make it happen.  Our mission is to tell them how important this is to us and to demand that they do so.

JB: This sounds like a case of the big cable companies bullying both the competition and their client base. Is it connected at all to the fact that the the cable companies have gotten huge subsidies over the years to lay down an infrastructure that would reach every corner of the country? I understand that, in fact, that infrastructure is very far from being completed and, as a country, that we are falling farther and farther behind other industrial nations. What's with that?

PEN: That of course is yet another reason why the classification issue is right and proper.  We, the people PAID for the creation of the internet, starting with DARPA [ed. note: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Dept. of Defense and charged with the development of new technologies for military purposes], and as you point out, with generous subsidies to these companies who now want to use what we have given them for their own private, selfish profit and control.  And yes, this is also a peculiarly American problem, as other countries have recognized the strategic national importance of giving their citizens the cheapest, fastest internet service possible, and are already miles ahead of us while we have greedy telecom providers trying to squeeze the last nickel out of us by slowing our service down, and then using that booty to buy political influence to keep us in the Dark Ages, comparatively.  And as we have already discussed, they are using those same windfall profits to try to buy other systems to extend their monopoly even further.

JB: Throw out a figure here, PEN, if you can. I recall that we're talking about billions of taxpayer dollars that have been given to the cable companies for services that they, in fact, haven't even provided, in terms of expanded and improved infrastructure.  

PEN: To focus just for a second on quality of service, let's talk about Comcast in particular.  Their fastest current service is 305 Mbps for $320 a month, that's to you as a subscriber.  In Hong Kong, you can get faster 500 Mbps for $25 a month.  And that's just one example.   Here are a lot more.

JB: Yikes! That's a pretty stark example of how and why we're falling behind. What about the actual number of taxpayer dollars pocketed by these "enterprising entrepreneurs"?  Am I misremembering or have we become so jaded that a billion here, a billion there, isn't real money?  

PEN: Your memory is quite sound.  In 2012, for example, this very same FCC provided $115 million dollars to subsidize rural internet connections .  And all together, the Connect America Fund has a budget of 4.5 billion dollars a year. 

JB: So, what has all that money gotten for us, besides for serious slippage in our former competitive edge?

PEN: What it's gotten us is a handful of corporate oligarchs who think they are the sphincter of all US communications, and are only interested in squeezing us as much as they can get away with.  But we have an incredible opportunity here.  The FCC is an independent regulatory agency, currently composed of a reasonable group of commissioners.  They are not up for election.  They are not swayed by campaign contributions to buy ads on these same telecom networks.  They WILL listen to us.  They are ASKING for your comments.  Will you speak out now?  The next thirty days on the FCC public input docket will determine the future of the internet in America for all time.

JB: Anything to add before we wrap this up?

PEN: Over 100,000 people recently petitioned the White House to do this unilaterally.  President Obama responded by saying that, while he strongly supported the issue, the FCC was an independent agency empowered to make the call here.  That is precisely our own point.  And when the FCC solicits public comment on what they should do, it means that we, the people, have the power to tell them what we want them to do, as it should be in a true democracy.  The people on our own participant list have already been responsible for 5,000 submissions.  We need everybody who cares about the future of the internet as a viable political forum to jump all over this.

JB: Okay, PEN, we're jumping! Net neutrality is a biggie that affects all of us, now and going forward. Thanks once again for being on top of this and putting out user-friendly action alerts that anyone can do, quickly and easily.  

If people want the free bumper sticker they can go here .

JB: Good to know, sign me up!

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The People Lobby website

previous interviews with PEN:

The People Lobby Nails Down The Senate Finance Committee On The Trans Pacific Partnership 1/19/14

Use This Innovative Action Page Link and Stop the Trans Pacific Partnership 1/5/2014

The Worst Trade Deal Ever, And What You Can Do To Stop It 12/11/2013

The PEN: Save the Bees Before We All Starve 8/10/2013

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.