Introduction from moderator:
I finished this document yesterday. CPSR leadership is now talking
about officially adopting it; I'll hear from them by Tuesday. Because
the very last paragraph promotes it as a CPSR document and it hasn't
received official blessing, I'm not yet ready to send it to the media,
politicians, etc. But you are free to use the information for
whatever campaigns or research you are working on.
Let me know about newspapers, organizations, and other places where
this could go. Also contact me about receiving hard-copies. I'm now
working on a shorter and snappier 700-word version that could be an
op-ed piece.
Without Craig Johnson's help, I could not have completed this, because
the technical and legal subtleties are so fine-grained. Several other
people helped with comments too, thanks to everybody.
Andy
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U.S. Telecommunications Bill Fails to Serve the Public Interest
25 October 1995
A bill that will change the way we use telephones, television, and
electronic networks is currently being considered by the U.S.
Congress. The bill claims to promote industry growth, competition,
and technological progress, but may well simply end up reducing
diversity and public debate. It also sets precedents that we expect
to be mirrored in other countries. So non-U.S. residents also have
good reason to be concerned with the outcome of this bill.
There are four major problems in the bill:
1. It allows oligopolies to form that control the information we
receive on radio, television, newspapers, and electronic
networks.
2. It allows gaps to widen between segments of society (rich and
poor, educated and uneducated).
3. It censors public discussion on electronic networks.
4. It lets rates rise too fast and too much.
This paper will examine each of these problems, after some
introductory background. We may still have time to make significant
changes.
Why is the telecom bill important?
Electronic media are not just another industry like shipping or
manufacturing. They deal with the very stuff our minds are made
of: the information we use to take political positions, the
choices we have in educating ourselves, the cultural resources
through which we define ourselves. The struggle over electronic
media is a struggle for our thoughts and actions.
Electronic media cover a range of giant industries, including
radio, broadcast and cable TV, telephone companies, wireless
communications and satellites, computer networks, and traditional
news and publishing companies that are moving online. The
category even touches on financial institutions and electrical
utilities.
The industries involved are eager to loosen restrictions on their
behavior. They have poured large sums of money into influencing
Congress, and lobbied intensively for the current versions of the
bill: the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of
1995 in the Senate (S. 652) and the Communications Act of 1995 in
the House (H.R. 1555). Unfortunately for the public, in removing
these restrictions the telecom bill also removes historic
protection for diversity of opinion and reasonable rates.
The intent of the bill
The stated purpose of telecom reform is to increase technology in
homes and institutions. While we definitely support an expansion
of electronic networking (the information infrastructure or
information superhighway, as it is often called) we ask, "What
will it be used for?"
Many broadcasting and telecommunications companies seem to view
their customers purely as consumers of entertainment or
information. But we want individuals and institutions to generate
content as well as receive it.
We want to see advances in telecom improve public debate on
important issues, provide a wealth of culture, and increase our
links with one another. If Congress takes its role seriously in
managing communications as a public resource, industry growth is
quite compatible with universal service and providing an
infrastructure for democracy. But currently, we see this bill
restricting options and opportunities. Let us look at the
problems.
Problem 1. The bill allows oligopolies to form that control the
information we receive on radio, television, newspapers, and
electronic networks.
The wave of highly-publicized mergers (along with less sensational
but still important takeovers) that have reduced the number of
people in control of broadcasting will continue after this bill is
passed. Although the bill prohibits mergers between telephone
companies and cable TV companies, the House version contains many
exceptions, waivers, and exemptions that erode this protection
against monopolies. For instance, mergers are permitted in
communities with less than 50,000 population, and the two types of
company are permitted to share some transmission facilities.
Local telephone companies are allowed to enter the long-distance
market too soon, before competition is likely to enter their
traditional local market. Local telephone users may end up
bearing the costs of expansion.
The bill allows cooperation between companies that should be
competitors, assuming that abuses will be stopped by anti-trust
laws that are not adequate or appropriate for this kind of
oversight.
In a direct blow to diversity, the bill raises the percentage of
national audience that a single person or company can reach from
25% to 35%. A larger foreign ownership of broadcast media is also
permitted. Limits are removed on the number of radio stations
that an individual can own. The bill makes it easier for
broadcasters to keep their licenses indefinitely, without the
hearings that are currently held. Finally, it gives existing
broadcasters a large amount of unused television spectrum, instead
of opening up the spectrum in an auction.
Problem 2. The bill allows gaps to widen between segments of society
(rich and poor, educated and uneducated).
The 1934 communications act guaranteed universal service, meaning
that everyone in the country could get telephone service at
reasonable rates. The new bill contains protections for rural
areas and the disabled, but leaves loopholes in the universal
service guarantee. Some of the advanced information services
could well become available only to affluent people or to
institutions in privileged areas.
Moreover, while there are some sections supporting access for
schools and public agencies, these are vague and need stronger
guarantees. Public libraries, the traditional place where all
members of the public can get information, are given special rates
in the Senate bill but not the House.
Problem 3. The bill censors public discussion on electronic networks.
Both houses of Congress have inserted sections in the bill
criminalizing a broad range of information under the claim that it
harms children. These clauses of the bill, while supposedly aimed
at pornography, have such vague language ("indecency" and "sexual
or excretory activities") that they could be used to censor
literary classics and public health information.
Given the open nature of networks such as the Internet,
restrictions on sending material that children might look at ends
up keeping everyone from speaking freely. The fear of being
caught in the law's net will force many networks to shut down.
Thus, the free flow of views we now have on the information
highway could be replaced by a controlled set of ideas dished out
by corporate broadcasters and monitored by prosecutors all over
the country.
By approving censorship, the Senate rejected a petition signed by
107,000 Internet users. The House voted overwhelmingly to reject
government censorship, but sections imposing it were inserted into
the bill almost at the last minute as part of a complicated
amendment.
We do not dismiss the concerns of parents who want to shield their
children from inappropriate material. The whole point is that
each parent defines what is "inappropriate" differently. There
are more flexible and effective ways to screen what children see,
than to have the government impose censorship on everybody.
Problem 4. The bill lets rates rise too fast and too much.
Cable TV rates for upper tier services (those offered for extra
cost) are deregulated in the bill before there is adequate
assurance of competition to keep the rates down. Cable operators
are also effectively allowed to deregulate any services they
choose by moving them from the basic tier to the upper tier. This
would reverse the consumer protections passed in 1992.
In other media, states can let rates for services rise with little
justification. Both the Department of Justice and the FCC are
severely restricted in their traditional powers to review
competition and rates.
As mentioned under Problem 2, rates are not regulated for advanced
information services. These services could end up costing far
more than necessary, just as cable TV companies now charge
premiums for popular channels. Loopholes allow companies that own
media (cables and phone lines) to charge artificially high rates
to others who wish to lease them, or restrict the people leasing
them to ineffective competitors.
What we want
Our communications channels are a public resource. As the telecom
bill prepares to go into conference committee, we call on Congress
to safeguard the public interest.
* Promote diversity of programming by requiring carriers to
provide services to other companies at reasonable rates.
* Protect the free marketplace of ideas by preventing yet larger
media monopolies and oligopolies. Keep regulatory safeguards in
place until proof of true competition emerges. If telephone
companies and cable companies merge in sparsely-populated areas
that lack competition, continue price regulation.
* Do not raise the limits on the percentage of markets owned by
one firm or on foreign ownership.
* Keep the requirements for interconnection and interoperability
(the ability of different services to use each others lines and
identical protocols) so that users anywhere can reach each
other. Ensure that users can keep telephone numbers when
switching companies.
* Reject censorship, which is a big step backward and is totally
unacceptable. Leave it up to parents make their own choices.
Strip out the provisions on "Obscene or harassing use" and
"Protection of Minors."
* Ensure equitable access by all segments of the population,
including rural areas, low-income areas, and the disabled. Make
the Federal-State Joint Board overseeing universal service a
permanent institution.
* Maintain reasonable rates for enhanced cable services as well as
basic service, either through robust competition or through
continued regulation.
* Make telephone companies return to consumers some of the savings
achieved through greater efficiencies.
* Preserve preferential access for public, education, and government
organizations.
* In exchange for the extra television spectrum that broadcasters
can profit from, require extra services such as public interest
programming or more diversity in programming.
What to do now
Legislators have to hear from you. They need to know that this
bill will not slide quietly through Congress, but that the eyes of
the public are on them.
Write to your own legislators, to the people on the joint
committee, and to President Clinton. Make the points listed in
the "What we want" section of this paper. If the bill is not
substantially changed in the right direction, write to President
Clinton and ask for a veto.
Familiarize yourself with how your representatives voted, and tell
your friends and colleagues about it. Let them know that this
bill will affect them, and ask them to write too. Contact your
local newspaper and ask them to cover the bill.
Key legislators
These are the Senators and Representatives on the conference
committee that is merging the Senate and House telecom bills. If
you live in one of their states, write to the legislator and
strongly indicate that censorship is unconstitutional and will be
ineffective in protecting children. Also write to Senator Robert
Dole and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who have a great deal
of power to influence the committee, and to President Clinton, who
has said he might veto the bill.
Senate:
Conrad Burns (R, Montana)
J. James Exon (D, Nebraska)
Wendell Ford (D, Kentucky)
Slade Gorton (R, Washington)
Ernest Hollings (D, South Carolina)
Daniel Inouye (D, Hawaii)
Trent Lott (R, Mississippi)
John McCain (R, Arizona)
Larry Pressler (R, South Dakota)
John D. Rockefeller IV (D, West Virginia)
Ted Stevens (R, Alabama)
House:
Bob Barr (R, Georgia)
Joe Barton (R, Texas)
Howard L. Berman (D, California)
Thomas J. Bliley (R, Virginia)
Rick Boucher (D, Virginia)
Sherrod Brown (D, Ohio)
John Bryant (D, Texas)
Steve E. Buyer (R, Indiana)
John Conyers (D, Michigan)
John D. Dingell (D, Michigan)
Anna G. Eshoo (D, California)
Jack Fields (R, Texas)
Michael Flanagan (R, Illinois)
Daniel Frisa (R, New York)
Elton Gallegly (R, California)
Bob Goodlatte (R, Virginia)
Bart Gordon (D, Tennessee)
J. Dennis Hastert (R, Illlinois)
Martin Hoke (R, Ohio)
Henry Hyde (R, Illinois)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D, Texas)
Scott L. Klug (R, Wisconsin)
Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D, Arkansas)
Edward Markey (D, Massachusetts)
Carlos J. Moorehead (R, California)
Mike Oxley (R, Ohio)
Bill Paxon (R, New York)
Bobby L. Rush (D, Illinois)
Robert Scott (D, Virginia)
Dan Schaefer (R, Colorado)
Patricia Schroeder (D, Colorado)
Cliff Stearns (R, Florida)
Rick White (R, Washington)
For more information
If you are not online, information is hard to get. The
traditional media find this issue boring, so they don't report on
it. Write your local radio stations and newspapers and tell them
the bill has serious consequences for the public and should be
covered. One fine article in print is "The Robber Barons of the
Information Highway" by Joshua Wolf Shenk, which appeared in the
Washington Monthly in June 1995.
If you are online, you can read some World Wide Web pages and join
several mailing lists that distribute information and discuss the
telecom bill. To get on one of the lists below, send mail to the
address shown and include the information in the required format.
Capitalized words should be written exactly as shown here;
lowercase words should be replaced with your full name.
Cyber Rights--discussion of civil liberties and rights on
electronic networks.
mail to: •••@••.•••
Put in body of message: SUBSCRIBE CYBER-RIGHTS your name
Telecommunications Policy Roundtable Forum--discussion of
telecommunications issues from a public-interest standpoint.
mail to: •••@••.•••
Put in body of message: SUBSCRIBE ROUNDTABLE your name
Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) Billwatch--announcements
about bills and actions to take.
mail to: •••@••.•••
Put in Subject line of message: SUBSCRIBE VTW-ANNOUNCE your name
Telecomreg--discussion of technical, legal, and policy issues in
telecommunications.
mail to: •••@••.•••
Put in body of message: SUBSCRIBE TELECOMREG your name
com-priv--discussion about commercial use of the Internet.
mail to: •••@••.•••
Request to be added to the mailing list (mail is read by a
person)
The Center for Media Education offers a Web page about the bill
at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~cme/bill.html
The CPSR Cyber Rights group provides several documents on our ftp
site. Look particularly at ACLU-Censorship-Challenge,
AllComMed-PEG-campaign, Clinton-Telecom-Position,
Cox-Wyden-Protection, Shenk-Telecommunications-Bills,
Telecom-Post-on-Bills, and Valovic-re-Telecommunications-Bill.
ftp://jasper.ora.com/pub/andyo/cyber-rights/CYBER-RIGHTS/Re-Legislation
The Benton Foundation maintains a general page about the bill at:
http://cdinet.com/cgi-bin/lite/Benton/Goingon/HR1555.html
and other pages about one issue, TV spectrum allocation, at:
http://www.cdinet.com/benton/Catalog/Working13/working13.html
http://cdinet.com/cgi-bin/lite/Benton/Goingon/spectrumalloc.html
The Clinton administration has placed statements on the bill at:
http://ntiaunix2.ntia.doc.gov:70/0/congress/1555sap.html
http://ntiaunix2.ntia.doc.gov:70/0/congress/s652pos.txt
http://ntiaunix2.ntia.doc.gov:70/0/congress/lis652.txt
Analyses from Ralph Nader and the Taxpayer Assets Project are at:
http://www.essential.org/tap/telecom/telecom.html
The Campaign for Broadcast Competition offers a page about TV
spectrum allocation at:
http://campaign.com/
Many organizations and individuals have Web pages about
censorship; one up-to-date page at the time of this writing is:
http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/free-speech
Industry has not had much to say online about the bill. Two
opposing viewpoints from Regional Bell Operating Companies and
LDDS WorldCom, a long-distance telephone company:
http://www.bell.com/1025.html
http://www.iquest.net/cgi-bin/gate2?|33cC9kkP://WWW.WgykEy.COM/COlPOltk/PlEeelEy.9kMy3x3SMKkG
The Center for Media Education has made several fine analyses of
the bill available by electronic mail. Write to •••@••.••• and
put one of the following words in the subject line to get a
position papers on the subject shown:
alert call to action with summaries of issues
clinton President's critique of House bill
own industry concentration
rates rates, industry concentration, related issues
spectrum spectrum give-away
update frequently-changing news
Redistributing this document
This paper may be freely distributed if kept in its entirety. A
special short version is available which lacks contact information
for legislators and pointers to further information. (The short
version is intended for distribution to the media and political
figures.)
You can obtain the paper as a text file (so you can email it to
friends or post it on appropriate bulletin boards and newsgroups)
and as a PostScript file (so you can print and distribute it in
hard-copy form). Contact Andy Oram at •••@••.••• or
617-641-1261 (during U.S. East Coast business hours) to obtain
either of these formats. On the Web, the paper is at:
http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/telecom.html
This paper was written by Andy Oram with help from members of
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and other people
in the public interest community. Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility has been in educating the public and the
government for 12 years in the socially safe and beneficial use of
computers and related technologies. Special thanks goes to Craig
Johnson of Transnational Data Reporting Service, Inc. for his
expert analysis of the bill. Copyright is held by Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility.
~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~
Posted by Andrew Oram - •••@••.••• - Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR)
You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages for non-commercial use,
pursuant to any redistribution restrictions included in individual messages.
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