The Stevens Bill

We've been watching the progress of the Snowe-Dorgan Net Neutrality amendment to the Stevens bill on communication technology. I thought it was something of a victory when the amendment achieved a tie in the Senate Commerce committee. That wasn't enough to win the day, of course, and the amendment didn't accompany the bill out of committee, but it demonstrated the tremendous momentum the issue has generated. On Thursday over at TPMCafe, Public Knowledge communications director Art Brodsky wrote a guest blog post essentially agreeing with that sentiment, but he took a closer look at what else the Stevens bill includes.

The movie companies got the right to set the rules for what consumers can do with over-the-air digital TV signals and the authority for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce Hollywood's business plans. The shorthand for this issue is the "broadcast flag," the name for the bits in the signal that will tell your electronics what your rights are. The bill, if it ever became law, would overturn a case brought by Public Knowledge, (my day-job employer), which beat back the FCC's broadcast-flag rule in court last year.

The record companies got the right to use the FCC to cripple the satellite and terrestrial digital radio businesses by curtailing consumers' ability to store music. It was unfortunate that neither of these items, the broadcast flag or its radio counterpart, was at all controversial when the Committee discussed the bill over the course of three days.

The telephone companies got the right to get into the video business quickly, without a requirement that they actually serve an entire franchising area and without pesky local oversight. The cable companies got the right to get out from pesky local oversight when their current franchises run out. The cellular companies, largely owned by the phone companies, got themselves exempted from state consumer protections. Such a deal for all -- consumers excepted.

It looks like the Stevens bill (which is also called "The Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006") is a monster. Brodsky speculates as to what effect the specter of Net Neutrality will do to the overall bill, but despite its title, it doesn't look like Congress or their Big Business pals are terribly interested in consumer choice.