Thursday, April 24, 2014

F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 6:41 AM
Subject: re: F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>


To the Editor:
   As long as our FCC demurs to call the internet a "Common Carrier", our courts will demur to  constrain it as such. This is not cause for despair; this is not the time to concede defeat. Rather, our FCC must repair its own mistake in not calling the internet a Common Carrier years ago. 
    The argument is clear enough. The Internet is necessary infrastructure for business in 2014 just as the railroads were a hundred years ago. Just as it was undesirable  then for every farmer and oilman to build his own rail line to the market then, it is undesirable for every business to have to build its own internet. The remedy is already established law. Once the Internet is declared a Common Carrier, service providers--although free to set their rates--will be obliged to offer the same rates to all customers. 
   The precedent is time-honored. It just requires that the FCC do its job for the People, even when that might irk some big political donors.
Barry Haskell Levine




F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic

By APRIL 23, 2014
    Photo
    The proposed rules, drafted by Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and his staff, would allow Internet service providers to charge companies different rates for faster connection speeds. CreditDaniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

    WASHINGTON — The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and pipes to consumers looks all but dead.
    The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday that it would propose new rules that allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers.
    The proposed changes would affect what is known as net neutrality — the idea that no providers of legal Internet content should face discrimination in providing offerings to consumers, and that users should have equal access to see any legal content they choose.
    The proposal comes three months after a federal appeals court struck down, for the second time, agency rules intended to guarantee a free and open Internet.
     tTom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, defended the agency’s plans late Wednesday, saying speculation that the F.C.C. was “gutting the open Internet rule” is “flat out wrong.” Rather, he said, the new rules will provide for net neutrality along the lines of the appeals court’s decision.
    Still, the regulations could radically reshape how Internet content is delivered to consumers. For example, if a gaming company cannot afford the fast track to players, customers could lose interest and its product could fail.
    The rules are also likely to eventually raise prices as the likes of Disney and Netflix pass on to customers whatever they pay for the speedier lanes, which are the digital equivalent of an uncongested car pool lane on a busy freeway.
    Consumer groups immediately attacked the proposal, saying that not only would costs rise, but also that big, rich companies with the money to pay large fees to Internet service providers would be favored over small start-ups with innovative business models — stifling the birth of the next Facebook or Twitter.
    “If it goes forward, this capitulation will represent Washington at its worst,” said Todd O’Boyle, program director of Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. “Americans were promised, and deserve, an Internet that is free of toll roads, fast lanes and censorship — corporate or governmental.”
    If the new rules deliver anything less, he added, “that would be a betrayal.”
    Mr. Wheeler rebuffed such criticism. “There is no ‘turnaround in policy,’ ” he said in a statement. “The same rules will apply to all Internet content. As with the original open Internet rules, and consistent with the court’s decision, behavior that harms consumers or competition will not be permitted.”
    Broadband companies have pushed for the right to build special lanes. Verizon said during appeals court arguments that if it could make those kinds of deals, it would.
    Under the proposal, broadband providers would have to disclose how they treat all Internet traffic and on what terms they offer more rapid lanes, and would be required to act “in a commercially reasonable manner,” agency officials said. That standard would be fleshed out as the agency seeks public comment.
    The proposed rules would also require Internet service providers to disclose whether in assigning faster lanes, they have favored their affiliated companies that provide content. That could have significant implications for Comcast, the nation’s largest provider of high-speed Internet service, because it owns NBCUniversal.
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    Also, Comcast is asking for government permission to take over Time Warner Cable, the third-largest broadband provider, and opponents of the merger say that expanding its reach as a broadband company will give Comcast more incentive to favor its own content over that of unaffiliated programmers.
    Mr. Wheeler has signaled for months that the federal appeals court decision striking down the earlier rules could force the commission to loosen its definitions of what constitutes an open Internet.
    Those earlier rules effectively barred Internet service providers from making deals with services like Amazon or Netflix to allow those companies to pay to stream their products to viewers through a faster, express lane on the web. The court said that because the Internet is not considered a utility under federal law, it was not subject to that sort of regulation.
    Opponents of the new proposed rules said they appeared to be full of holes, particularly in seeking to impose the “commercially reasonable” standard.
    “The very essence of a ‘commercial reasonableness’ standard is discrimination,” Michael Weinberg, a vice president at Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, said in a statement. “And the core of net neutrality is nondiscrimination.”
    Mr. Weinberg added that the commission and courts had acknowledged that it could be commercially reasonable for a broadband provider to charge a content company higher rates for access to consumers because that company’s service was competitively threatening.
    “This standard allows Internet service providers to impose a new price of entry for innovation on the Internet,” he said.
    Consumers can pay Internet service providers for a higher-speed Internet connection. But whatever speed they choose, under the new rules, they might get some content faster, depending on what the content provider has paid for.
    The fight over net neutrality has gone on for at least a decade, and is likely to continue at least until the F.C.C. settles on new rules. Each of the last two times the agency has written rules, one of the Internet service providers has taken it to court to have the rules invalidated.
    If anything, lobbying over the details of the new net neutrality standard is likely to increase now that the federal court has provided a framework for the F.C.C. to work from as it fills in the specifics of its regulatory authority.
    The proposed rules, drafted by Mr. Wheeler and his staff, will be circulated to the agency’s other four commissioners beginning on Thursday and will be released for public comment on May 15. They are likely to be put to a vote by the full commission by the end of the year.
    News of the F.C.C. proposal was first reported online by The Wall Street Journal.

    Monday, April 21, 2014

    An Evolutionary Family Drama

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
    Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 8:45 AM
    Subject: re: An Evolutionary Family Drama
    To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

    To the Editor:

        Although the biology is clear, the history is a hopeless muddle " Before the dams cut them off, he said, the alewives arrived each spring as “slash and burn” predators on the planktonic life in the lake. " can't be right. Since the dam, there are no anodramous alewives in Rogers lake. And before the dam, there was no Rogers lake; it was just Mill Brook.
    Barry Haskell Levine


    Jeb Bush’s Rush to Make Money May Be Hurdle



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 8:21 AM
    Subject: re: Jeb Bush’s Rush to Make Money May Be Hurdle
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:  
        WalMart is a far more reputable concern than was InnoVida. It has made payroll consistently for X years and hasn't been found guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.  But the impulse that put Hillary Clinton on the board of one and Jeb Bush on the board of the other is the same. Neither brought relevant experience to the job. But as the wife of the governor and the brother of the president respectively, the were seen to bring influence worth more than their salaries.
       This is exactly the cozy relationship of wealth to power that is corrupting our republic. The Bush and Clinton families have done very well for themselves. It's time that they enjoyed that as private citizens.
    Barry Haskell Levine


    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/politics/jeb-bushs-rush-to-make-money-may-be-hurdle.html?_r=0

    Monday, April 14, 2014

    vistas

    the End of the World?
    every moment of our lives
    we begin again

    Three Expensive Milliseconds


    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
    Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 6:37 AM
    Subject: re: Three Expensive Milliseconds
    To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

    To the Editor:
      To argue whether the financial sector is --on the one hand--"allocating capital to its most productive uses" or--on the other--"financial wheeling and dealing, while getting little or nothing in return" is unhelpfully over-simple. The market does both, and it is not always clear which dollar is doing the one, and which the other.
       We can, however shape the incentive structure so that more of the market is allocating capital to its most productive use, and just a casino rigged for the insider.  A transaction fee on each asset purchased or sold will amortize towards zero for the long-term investor who is actually driving innovation and production in our society, while falling most heavily on the speculator who is in and out of the market in milliseconds.  To run the American exchanges without such a fee while the rest of the world's markets already have one is to tilt our market towards speculation and away from investment.
    Barry Haskell Levine


    Tuesday, April 8, 2014

    prisoner-in-israel-is-linked-to-talks



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 8:24 AM
    Subject: re: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/world/middleeast/prisoner-in-israel-is-linked-to-talks.html
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:
       If the American Revolution had failed, any of our Founding Fathers who wasn't hanged would have been imprisoned as what we now call a "terrorist". More recently, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin had later careers as statesmen, but earlier careers in political violence. Even Nelson Mandela, before he was a secular saint and a president was imprisoned as a violent criminal. 
       If Marwan Barghouti is the man who can legitimately speak for the Palestinian People, he is the many the Israelis must deal with. And if he has to run his campaign from prison, Eugene Debs has shown us that that needn't stop him.
    Barry Haskell Levine



    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/world/middleeast/prisoner-in-israel-is-linked-to-talks.html

    Saturday, April 5, 2014

    Delays in Effort to Refocus C.I.A. From Drone War



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 6:45 PM
    Subject: re: Delays in Effort to Refocus C.I.A. From Drone War
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:
         According to our treaty obligations (the "supreme law of the land") agents, officers and contractors of our C.I.A. using deadly force are "unlawful combatants" and those they kill are murder victims. That's as true when they use drones as when they use poisons or garrotes. If we are paying them to commit what may be war crimes, we deserve to be a diplomatic pariah among the nations.
    Barry Haskell Levine


    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/world/delays-in-effort-to-refocus-cia-from-drone-war.html?_r=0

    A Peace Process in Which Process Has Come to Outweigh Peace



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 7:56 AM
    Subject: re: A Peace Process in Which Process Has Come to Outweigh Peace
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:
      To blandly accept that "Mr. Netanyahu is hamstrung by deep divisions in his governing coalition and his own Likud Party" is to elevate politics above governance. There are parties lined up to join any coalition to vote for peace. Netanyahu could replace any ally that balks two for one.  But Netanyahu doesn't have the spine to risk the coalition in hand for the Peace he says he wants. That would require a leader.
    Barry Haskell Levine


    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/05/world/middleeast/mideast.html?_r=0

    Friday, April 4, 2014

    Senate Panel Votes to Reveal Report on C.I.A. Interrogations



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:15 AM
    Subject: re: Senate Panel Votes to Reveal Report on C.I.A. Interrogations
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:
      Five and a half years after Americans voted for CHANGE, the Obama administration is still coordinating the cover-up of Bush-era crimes. I paid for the Panetta review, and I want to read it now.  Who says I the voter am not sovereign here?
    Barry Haskell Levine


    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/us/politics/senate-panel-approves-release-of-cia-interrogation-report.html

    Wednesday, April 2, 2014

    Holder, in New York City, Calls Terror Trials Safe



    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: barry levine 
    Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:20 AM
    Subject: re: Holder, in New York City, Calls Terror Trials Safe
    To: "letters@nytimes.com"


    To the Editor:
      The trial and conviction of abu Ghaith are a triumph for our system of justice. The machinery constructed two hundred years ago has proven itself again able to deal with the challenges of the 21st century.  But given such marvelous tools, we must ask again why president Obama preferred to assert a new power in the extra-judicial slaying of al-Awlaki. 
        The same charges that were made against abu Ghaith could have been laid to al-Awlaki. Yes, to arrest him would have been inconvenient. But one's right to due process of law takes no legal account of convenience. And if al-Awlaki had been killed while resisting arrest, we would have no constitutional crisis.
       But president Obama has asserted this new executive power of life and death, unconstrained by the courts or by law at all. If  he can have al-Awlaki killed, it is no longer clear that he couldn't have any of us killed. 
       So let's celebrate the abu Ghaith conviction. But let's acknowledge in the same breath that our rule of law is teetering. 
    Barry Haskell Levine


    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/nyregion/terror-trial-proves-civilian-courts-are-safe-holder-says-in-visit-to-manhattan.html?_r=0