Congress fails to pass net neutrality bill
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress adjourned Friday without passing a much-debated broadband bill or strengthening network neutrality rules. The wide-ranging broadband bill would have streamlined the franchising process that telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. need to go through to offer Internet Protocol-based television service in competition with cable TV. But advocates of net neutrality rules pressed Congress to hold on to the broadband bill unless it included a provision prohibiting broadband providers from blocking or slowing competing Internet content. Congress' failure to pass the broadband bill "shows the power of the issue with net neutrality," said Jim McGann, spokesman for the It's Our Net Coalition, a group calling for a net neutrality law. "Some lawmakers ignored net neutrality at their peril." Democrats take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives when Congress reconvenes in January, and the prospects for a wide-ranging broadband bill may be diminished. Republicans have generally pushed for the bill, while many Democrats raised objections based on concerns about the lack of net neutrality rules and about provisions that they said would allow the telecom providers to skip poor areas with their new television services. The House version of the broadband bill would have required VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) providers to offer customers enhanced 911 emergency dialing service, and it would have allowed municipal governments to offer broadband data and video services. The Senate version would have permanently extended a tax moratorium on Internet-only taxes such as access taxes. Net neutrality advocates will continue to press Congress to pass a law protecting open access on the Internet, McGann said, although he declined to speculate on its chances in the new Congress. "We're going to, as much as we can, educate members about the issue," he said. The broadband bill will also lose a major champion in Congress next year. Verizon, one of the large broadband providers pushing for streamlined video franchising rules, will refocus its efforts on state legislation next year, a company spokesman said. Verizon is also watching the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which may also act on broadband regulations, said David Fish, a Verizon spokesman. "The federal campaign raised the issue to a higher visibility," Fish said. "We've made big strides toward video choice this year, and expect continued progress in 2007." Beyond the broadband bill, some tech groups said Congress' post-election lame-duck session produced mixed results. In its final days, Congress approved an extension of a R&D (research and development) tax credit, which allows U.S. companies to get a tax break of up to 10 percent of R&D spending. The credit expired in 2005, and many tech groups called on Congress to reinstate it so that the U.S. could stay competitive with other countries offering R&D tax breaks. Congress approved an extension through the end of 2007, even though some tech groups want the tax credit to be made permanent. Congress also approved an expansion that could add US$1 billion to $2 billion to the program, which has cost about $7 billion a year. Tech groups applauded the extension of the R&D tax credit, as well as Congress' decision to extend permanent normal trade relations to Vietnam. The R&D tax credit action was "long overdue," said William Archey, president and chief executive officer of AeA, a tech trade group. But groups representing large tech vendors complained that Congress failed to increase the 65,000-person limit for H-1B visas, the program used to hire highly skilled foreign workers. Congress also failed to make changes to the U.S. patent system, although many large tech companies want improvements in the quality of patents and a weaker patent enforcement system. By failing to act on H-1Bs, patents and a fiscal year 2007 budget, Congress "ultimately failed to make the grade,â Phil Bond, president and chief executive officer of the Information Technology Association of America, said in a statement. Tech worker groups have opposed expansion of the H-1B cap above the current 65,000 visas a year, saying many U.S. tech workers remain out of work. Small inventors have opposed many changes to the patent system, including a tech-backed proposal to make it tougher for investors to get court injunctions against accused patent infringers.
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Comcast's response yesterday to its public thrashing by the FCC may have had a second, more important, purpose: A prominent Congressman has introduced legislation paving the way for a ban on Internet throttling.
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Congress is poised to extend a ban on taxing Internet access, a move that would please Internet service providers but possibly cost states millions of dollars in lost revenue. -washingtonpost.com
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Congress must pass legislation to protect the nation's electricity grid if it wants to avoid repeats of the devastating outages that rolled across eight states last year, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Saturday.
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Thanks House grunts Silicon Justice The most lackadaisical US Congress in modern history actually got off its keister and passed some legislation before it waddled off last week.â¦
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Congress failed yesterday in its attempt to get legislation implementing the Sept. 11 commission&#39;s terror-fighting recommendations to President Bush, but Republican leaders said they would try to press the effort later this year.
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(InfoWorld) - Three Republican U.S. senators on Thursday called on Congress to pass a permanent Internet tax ban before a moratorium expires Nov. 1. The current Internet tax moratorium, which Congress has extended twice since 1998, bans taxes on Internet access, as well as other taxes unique to the Internet. It's important for Congress to pass a permanent ban soon before state and local governments begin to tax Internet access, said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. Those who wonder what impact Internet taxes could have should look to U.S. telephone and mobile phone bills, where taxes are up to 20 percent of the cost, McCain said. "We cannot allow that to happen to the Internet -- likely the most popular invention since the light bulb," McCain said at a press conference. Several senators, many of them former state governors, have opposed a permanent extension of the tax ban. Earlier this year, Senators Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, introduced a bill that would narrow the moratorium's definition of Internet access and extend the ban for four years. That bill would close what supporters have called a loophole allowing telecom providers to argue that voice and other services bundled with Internet service shouldn't be taxed. In addition, nine states that were allowed to maintain their Internet taxes would lose a total of up to $120 million a year under a House of Representatives version of the moratorium extension, The National Governors Association has argued. The House version of the moratorium bill strips these states' exemptions. If Congress makes the ban permanent, nothing would stop Internet providers from trying to expand the number of untaxed services, David Quam, director of federal relations for The National Governors Association, said in June. "The temporary provision keeps everyone honest," Quam said then. But Senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, argued Thursday that a permanent ban is needed. If there's a problem with bundled services, that can be worked out in the bill, he said. The Internet is "critically important to interstate and global commerce," Sununu said. "It makes no sense to have a national and global communications and business network to be subject to taxes by every state, city, and county in the country." The news conference came a day after the American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance, an advocacy group, sent letters to Congress calling on lawmakers to extend the tax ban. New Internet taxes would hurt telecommuters and home-based businesses, the group said. Supporters of a permanent ban say it will help more U.S. residents connect to the Internet, a policy goal of many lawmakers. Asked if they would support another temporary tax ban, the three Republicans rejected that option. "If it's the right thing to do, we ought to make it permanent," said Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican.
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The drive to pass a $136 billion corporate tax bill hit a roadblock in the Senate on Friday when lawmakers upset about tobacco regulation, new overtime rules and combat pay employed delaying tactics to keep the measure from coming up for a vote.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress still needs to deal with network neutrality, and supporters in Congress are willing to block any legislation favored by broadband providers until the issue is resolved, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday. "Network neutrality is a large, unresolved debate," said Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, speaking at the State of the 'Net Conference in Washington, D.C. "It's [the Internet's] open and accessible policy that has enabled it to be a platform of innovation." A net neutrality law, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors,Â stalled in Congress in 2006, and large broadband providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, opposed efforts to pass a law. But net neutrality advocates -- many of them part of the Democratic majority that now controls both houses of Congress -- would block any legislation requested by the large broadband providers until a net neutrality compromise is hammered out, Boucher predicted. Last year, AT&T and Verizon pushed for a new law that would streamline the franchising process they must go through to offer television over IP service in competition with cable TV. But this year, the large broadband providers have largely backed off on their lobbying efforts, and Boucher suggested that's because Democrats will demand a net neutrality law as a trade-off for any legislation that benefits providers. Boucher supports a net neutrality law, but he called for compromise. Congress should not pass a net neutrality law with "unintended consequences" that hurt the development of the Internet, he said. "I don't want to do anything ... that has the effect of hobbling innovation inside the network," he added. Other speakers at the conference, sponsored by the bipartisan Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, suggested a net neutrality law would hurt efforts to increase broadband adoption in the U.S. A net neutrality law would limit broadband providers' options for providing new services, said George Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, a free-market-focused think tank. "We should exercise discipline," Ford said. "We rarely do that with communications policy." Other speakers argued there's little evidence of broadband providers blocking competitors' Web content, a scenario net neutrality advocates want to prevent. "Economic change and technological change need room to breathe," said Christopher Yoo, a tech law professor at Vanderbilt University. If broadband providers eventually take action that harms customers and competition, then Congress should pass a law, Yoo said. Yoo and David Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argued that broadband providers need the ability to block Internet content such as spam and to shut down Web applications that hog bandwidth. Providers should also be allowed to prioritize Web applications such as video or voice, allowing customers to have a high quality of service, Farber said. "If you try to get quality of service for everyone, you don't get quality of service," Farber said. But Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School, said providers should only block Web content in the most extreme circumstances. The difference between "good blocking" and "bad blocking" depends on the user's perspective, he said. "Blocking should be highly suspect," Wu added. "We say good blocking is good and bad blocking is bad, but so does the Chinese government. They're making bad decisions at the center [of the network]."
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A cash-flow problem in a federal program is hindering the ability of many schools and libraries to pay for Internet service.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has weighed in on network neutrality, and has come down on the side of caution in a debate that goes to the heart of Internet technology.
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Proposed law could prevent the government from offering broadband access.
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WASHINGTON - A cash-flow problem in a federal program is hindering the ability of many schools and libraries to pay for Internet service.
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Two lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing Web content from competitors.Reps. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act Wednesday. The bill says it is U.S. policy to &quot;guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degredation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.&quot;The bill would also require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to open a proceeding on broadband services and consumer rights. The FCC would be required to investigate whether broadband providers have adhered to its August 2005 policy that providers should refrain from blocking or interfering with Web content.&quot;The open architecture nature of the Internet ... has ensured the Internet&#39;s place as the greatest level playing field ever created,&quot; Markey said as he introduced the bill. &quot;The goal of this bipartisan legislation is to assure consumers, content providers, and high-tech innovators that the historic, open architecture nature of the Internet will be preserved and fostered. [The bill] is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers.&quot;A group of advocacy groups, as well as Google and Amazon.com, praised the bill, saying it is needed as recent news report have suggested Comcast is slowing its customer access to high-bandwidth applications such as BitTorrent. Comcast on Tuesday filed a document with the FCC defending&#160;its practice of engaging in &quot;network management.&quot;Petitions by advocacy group Free Press and online video distributor Vuze to have the FCC prohibit Comcast&#39;s traffic throttling &quot;raise important issues about the ability of broadband network operators to engage in reasonable network management to ensure that their customers can enjoy a positive broadband experience,&quot; Comcast said in its FCC filing. &quot;Network management is best left to the sound, good-faith judgment of the engineers and proprietors who run and own the networks and who are best able to remedy customer service issues promptly, rather than to regulation.&quot;The FCC has no prohibitions against Comcast&#39;s behavior, the company argued. &quot;Free Press mistakenly relies on the [2005 FCC] Internet Policy Statement as creating rules the commission can enforce,&quot; Comcast said.But representatives of the Open Internet Coalition, including Free Press and Public Knowledge, praised the new Markey legislation, saying it would remove doubt about U.S. policy on blocking or slowing Web content.In the last six months, Comcast and other broadband and mobile-phone providers have repeatedly tried to block content on their networks, said Markham Erickson, the Open Internet Coalition&#39;s executive director. Erickson called Comcast&#39;s Tuesday FCC filing &quot;remarkable.&quot;&quot;It appears to declare war on Internet users, policy makers, and even the FCC,&quot; he said. &quot;It essentially says that the FCC has no legal ability to protect consumers from discriminatory behavior.&quot;The Comcast filing called Free Press&#39; complaints about its network management &quot;inflammatory hyperbole.&quot; Asked about Erickson&#39;s comments on the filing, Comcast spokeswoman Sean Fitzmaurice denied that the company was saying the FCC had no authority to regulate net neutrality.The Markey bill is not as specific as past net neutrality bills that failed in a Republican-controlled Congress in 2006, but it would set a standard in federal law, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. &quot;It&#39;s the right bill at the right time,&quot; she said.Without prohibitions against blocking or slowing Web content, broadband providers could sign deals with some content providers and shut out new Internet-based companies, added Richard Whitt, Google&#39;s Washington telecom and media counsel.&quot;Keeping the on-ramps to the Web free of undue discrimination is not about Google, it&#39;s about the next Google,&quot; Whitt said.Comcast declined to comment on the Markey bill. But Hands Off the Internet, an advocacy group with members including broadband providers AT&amp;T and Qwest, said it could support an FCC study of net neutrality.&quot;There&#39;s no question that a reasoned examination of the facts will demonstrate the folly of net neutrality,&quot; the group said in a statement, &quot;However, we are concerned that an effort to seek public input is intended to be a stalking horse for federal Internet regulation. The continued push by special interests to regulate Internet neutrality undercuts the best hope Net users have for faster, more affordable broadband.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Google has formed a political action committee to exert pressure on the U.S. Congress and promote legislation that benefits the company. The group, called Google NetPAC, saw the light on Thursday, when Google registered it with the U.S. Federal Election Commission, a Google spokesman confirmed via e-mail. "Google NetPAC will support officeholders and candidates who share Google's goal of preserving and promoting the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication, and innovation," the spokesman wrote. A key legislative and regulatoryÂ concern for Google is net neutrality. Its executives favor a law to force broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast to give all traffic on their networks the same quality of service and speed. In addition to Google, other Internet companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon.com support net neutrality andÂ want Congress to prohibit broadband providersÂ from blocking or degrading Web content and services from potential competitors. Opponents, which include broadband providers and network equipment vendors like Cisco Systems and Qualcomm, say a net neutrality law will let Internet companies like Google continue toÂ ride for "free"Â on broadband networks. Such a law will prevent broadband providers from charging Web companies new fees for higher speeds and a better quality of service, money needed to build faster networks for new bandwidth-intensive services like Internet TV, net neutrality opponents say. If companies like Google don't pay extra, then broadband providers will have to increase fees to consumers, they say. Other regulatory and legislative issues that are likely of concern for Google include Internet privacy, stock-option accounting, law-enforcement access to search engine records and copyright protection. Google also hired former Republican senators Dan Coats and Connie Mack as outside lobbyists, the Google spokesman confirmed. "We've hired outside firms from across the political spectrum that offer effective expertise to communicate our policy messages," he wrote. Other high-tech companies with political action committees include Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com, eBay and AOL's parent company Time Warner.
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Congress moved toward reinstating a ban on Internet-access taxes after the Senate on Wednesday tweaked a measure it had previously passed with hopes the House of Representative would take it up.
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By Henry J. Waters III, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.  Jun. 11--It's perfect gridlock. Congress won't pass the immigration reform bill presented by George W. Bush, and the president vows to veto any of the versions Congress seems barely able to pass. So the stalemate continues.