"English Banned in Chinese Writing"

For those who wonder whether governments can successfully regulate every part of the internet, just look at China. My friend Victor Mair, who teaches at Penn, has this post at Language Log. Presumably part of the reason for the ban is also to restrict discussions between Chinese and those who live outside of China. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if that is actually the real reason for the regulations.

Back in April, I wrote a blog entitled "A Ban on Roman Letter Acronyms?" In it, I discussed the proposal by the Chinese chairman of the International Federation of Translators, Huang Youyi, to purify Chinese of English expressions. At the time, no one (outside of Chinese rulership circles) ever thought that it would really happen. It seemed too preposterous and unworkable. No matter how much the language censors and purity zealots detested the look of English words and Roman letters in Chinese writing, they'd never be able to enforce such a ban.

Lo and behold, the news coming out of China the last few days is that the government has gotten serious and is really clamping down on the use of English words and expressions, Roman letter acronyms, and other contaminating elements, all in the interest of maintaining the purity of the mother tongue. The decree outlawing English has come forth from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), China's regulator of news, print media, and internet publications. . . .

What those pushing "net neutrality" are after

Fairly depressing that these liberal foundations have been so successful in pushing new regulations. Price regulations will probably lead to more government intervention in the future, and possibly the elimination of private companies involved in the internet. From the WSJ:

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney's agenda? "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. "But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."

A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist." . . .

Free Press has been funded by a network of liberal foundations that helped the lobby invent the purported problem that net neutrality is supposed to solve. They then fashioned a political strategy similar to the one employed by activists behind the political speech restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill. The methods of that earlier campaign were discussed in 2004 by Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a talk at the University of Southern California. Far from being the efforts of genuine grass-roots activists, Mr. Treglia noted, the campaign-finance reform lobby was controlled and funded by foundations like Pew.

"The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot," he told his audience. He noted that "If Congress thought this was a Pew effort, it'd be worthless." . . .

According to the WSJ, the regulations might be used to kill HULU.

One of Washington’s proposed conditions on the Comcast-NBC U deal will force the merged company to offer NBC’s shows to any Web competitor.

So what does that mean for Hulu, which has already locked up exclusive rights to NBC’s Web video?

A couple of possible answers: Perhaps Federal Communications Commission head Julius Genachowski is trying to put a fork in Hulu. . . .

Background: Each of Hulu’s three partners/owners–GE’s NBC, News Corp.’s Fox and Disney’s ABC–has agreed to mutual exclusivity pacts. If you want to watch one of their shows for free online, you can see them on the networks’ own sites, or via Hulu–either on the main site itself, or via other sites that are taking Hulu’s feed. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But one of the primary conditions Genachowski wants to place on FCC approval for the Comcast-NBC deal is that Web competitors will get access to NBC’s shows, . . . .

After losing a court case, the Obama administration tries to get around it by redefining what terms mean

The question is how far the FCC can go in redefining things.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski released details of a new plan to reclassify broadband services so that some common carrier rules required by telecom services would apply to broadband. The thought is that reclassifying broadband would put the FCC on firmer legal ground for establishing Net neutrality rules, which are supposed to keep the Internet open and free and protect consumers from companies trying to monkey with their Internet traffic.
The FCC is doing this because a month ago the agency's authority was called into question when a federal court ruled against the FCC for punishing Comcast for violating its Net neutrality principles. The court basically said that the FCC did not have the authority to give Comcast a slap on the wrist for slowing down BitTorrent traffic on its network. . . .
Does the FCC even have the legal authority to reclassify broadband services?
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the FCC's legal authority to reclassify communications services, according to the agency. In the Brand X case, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court affirmed the FCC's decision at the time to classify cable broadband as an unregulated information service. The majority in this case said that FCC had the technical expertise to determine the classification.
As a result, cable modem service remained unregulated. Soon after the decision, the FCC reclassified DSL service as an information service as well to put it on the same legal ground as cable. . . .
Does anyone disagree that the FCC has the legal authority to reclassify broadband services?
Yes, the telephone companies, namely AT&T and Verizon Communications, strongly disagree that the FCC has the authority to reclassify broadband.
"We believe this is without legal basis," said Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs for AT&T. "Congress has never given the FCC explicit authority to regulate the Internet under Title II. Simply because it desires to do so, or is concerned because a court has questioned its authority to do so, does not by itself confer legal authority." . . .
Thirteen companies, including Google, Amazon.com, and eBay, praised the FCC's reclassification proposal in a letter sent to Genachowski in support of his plan. . . .

Here is another interesting article on this topic:

there are very good reasons that making the change would prove a tough slog. In order to treat broadband Internet access as a Title II service, the FCC would need to navigate a minefield of legal obstacles established to avoid just this kind of regulatory landgrab.
For starters, nothing in the Communications Act gives the FCC authority to decide on its own what is and what is not a telecommunications service. Congress already made that decision. That broadband Internet is an unregulated "information service" is already long-settled law, law made concrete by the FCC itself.
Since the 1996 revisions that introduced the distinction, the agency under Democratic and Republican administrations alike has consistently and loudly argued that, at the very least, broadband Internet through the cable system is not, and never was meant to be, a telecommunications service. That was an argument the agency made to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005's Brand X case, when a Southern California ISP challenged the refusal of a local cable company to give it access to its equipment--access it compared to its legally sanctioned use of the local phone company's infrastructure.
The question in Brand X was not which title made more sense for broadband Internet. The question was where Congress put broadband when it passed the 1996 Act. The FCC argued successfully that the definition of information services included cable Internet service. Later, the agency decided that Internet access offered by traditional phone companies was also an information service under Title I, at least for DSL speeds. (Dial-up Internet is still treated as a telecommunications service under Title II.) . . .
There was no question in 1996 of bringing all that innovation under rules created to control the old AT&T. Rather, the debate was over how much of the old rules were still needed 11 years after the monopoly had been broken up. There was even serious consideration given to deregulating everything and disbanding the FCC, much as Congress had done with the airline industry and its former regulator, the Civil Aeronautics Board, or the railroad industry and the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission. . . .
Consider reaction to an alternative policy decision the FCC hasn't made but plausibly could make. Today, the agency enforces its decency rules--you know, swear words and wardrobe malfunctions--with enthusiasm against broadcast radio and television networks, but has never done so against cable television.
Suppose, armed with the "good reason" that America is sinking into a culture abyss, the FCC similarly decided to "reclassify" cable programming and started to hand out fines to nearly every show on HBO, Showtime, and Comedy Central? . . .

Question: if the FCC could impose rules dealing with content such as the words used, could they also impose the "Fairness" doctrine on websites?

The "Net Neutrality" Wars

Pricing regulations and the notion that the government can regulate how the firms operate don't make sense. The WSJ has this:

There's nothing neutral in the battle between AT&T Inc. and Google Inc. over the future of the Internet.

Google, the powerhouse of Silicon Valley, and AT&T, champion for the old-line phone industry, are marshaling political allies, lobbyists and—in AT&T's case—labor unions for a fight over proposed "net neutrality" rules that could affect tens of billions of dollars in investments needed to upgrade the U.S. broadband network, which lags in speed and affordability compared with some countries.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission made good on its promise to push new rules that would require Internet providers such as AT&T to deliver Web traffic without delay.

Broadly, that means cable and phone companies couldn't block or slow access to services from Google, Netflix or others that are a drain on their networks or could compete with their businesses.

But as the details of the new rules are hammered out in coming months, AT&T and Google are ramping up efforts to ensure the FCC doesn't impose rules that could hurt their profits or expansion plans.

Plenty of lobbyists have made their concerns about the FCC's proposal known to their political allies over the past few weeks. But AT&T lobbyists were particularly active, swarming Capitol Hill and state houses, prompting a bipartisan mix of governors, congressmen and senators to send worried letters to the FCC. Two big labor unions have taken out newspaper ads attacking the new rules.

"Google to date has gotten relatively a free pass that they're somehow promoting the public good on net neutrality as opposed to, what I see, is that they're trying to entrench their business model," said Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior regulatory lawyer in Washington. . . .

More regulations means that big changes are less likely to occur in the future.

McCain moves to block "net neutrality" rules

Google gets nailed by the regulatory regime it wanted to use against its competitors

This is a follow up on previous posts here. From the WSJ:

AT&T Inc. accused Google Inc. of blocking calls to Benedictine nuns, a congressman's campaign office and a myriad of small businesses in rural areas, in the latest escalation of the battle between the two over Internet network rules.

Google has acknowledged that Google Voice, its Internet call-forwarding service, blocks calls to some areas, mostly to what it says are adult chat or free conference call services. Google blocks calls in mostly rural areas where rates are higher and calls are more expensive to connect. Some companies, called "traffic pumpers," deliberately route calls through those costlier, mostly rural areas to increase revenue.

AT&T said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday that it compiled a list of well-known areas where "traffic pumpers" typically route traffic and then used Google's search engine to identify specific businesses, churches and others, including a convent of Benedictine nuns in Minnesota and the campaign office of Rep. Collin Peterson (D, Minn.), which could be getting blocked. AT&T employees then used the Google Voice service to try calling those numbers, but found the calls were blocked.

"We can now see the power of Internet-based applications providers to act as gatekeepers who can threaten the "free and open" Internet," AT&T wrote.

"Google Voice is a free web application that manages peoples' existing phone numbers and isn't subject to the regulations that govern traditional phone carriers," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "Our sole intention is to isolate and restrict numbers only associated with traffic pumping schemes, which would impact our ability to offer Google Voice for free." . .

The FCC is scheduled to unveil its proposed net neutrality rules next week. . . .

Government control of the internet

The WSJ headline runs: "U.S. as Traffic Cop in Web Fight: FCC Proposal on Bandwidth a Boon for Consumers and Silicon Valley, Blow to Telecoms." This will help Google, but it will hurt consumers and make the internet much less efficient. The government will make it so that heavy users won't be charged more for using the internet. Fortunately, there is some opposition.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a speech Monday, proposed putting teeth into current guidelines on so-called net neutrality by making them full-fledged rules, and extending them to wireless carriers.

"The bar needs to be set very high when it comes to additional government intervention," said USTelecom, the phone industry's lobbying group. Cable giant Comcast Corp. said it will "be incredibly important for the agency to review the data to determine whether there are actual and substantial problems that may require rules."

Large phone and video providers, including Comcast, Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., have argued the government shouldn't tell them how to manage their Internet networks. Wireless providers are worried that a surge in bandwidth-consuming applications such as video downloads could hobble their networks unless they are allowed to control the flow. . . .

UPDATE: From the Washington Post.

Republicans to Push Against Net Neutrality; FCC Says Start of Process
Senate Republicans moved Monday afternoon to prevent the FCC's proposed rules on net neutrality with an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would tie up funding at the agency for new regulatory mandates. Observers said, however, that the move was unlikely to be approved in the Democrat-majority Congress.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking member of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said in a release:

"We must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations. Where there have been a handful of questionable actions in the past on the part of a few companies, the Commission and the marketplace have responded swiftly," Hutchison said in the release.

"The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace. These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives," she said. Senators John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), David Vitter (R-La.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and John Thune (R-S.D. co-sponsored the amendment.

Rebecca Arbogast, head of technology policy research at Stifel Nicholas, said the move was a standard vehicle for Congress to block what regulatory agencies were trying to achieve in the executive branch or in a regulatory agency. "But the likelihood of it getting passed it pretty low. This is standard procedure and a time-honored tradition but the Republicans are in the minority." . . .

UPDATE: These regulations were clearly done to benefit Google. AT&T has tried to point out that if Google is going to offer telephone services it should also be treated like a telephone company. Google of course disagrees.

When your long-distance company connects your call to a telephone served by a different company, it pays a fee to terminate the call. This fee can range from almost nothing to as much as 7 cents a minute. The difference is set by a number of factors, including state regulatory regimes. In most cases, those access charges far exceed the actual cost of completing a long-distance call, and every telephone user pays higher bills because of these charges.

So why do these charges exist? Originally, they were to subsidize service in sparsely populated areas, and they are still defended by the largely rural phone companies that benefit from them, many of which have allies in Congress. (Those phone companies get a number of other subsidies, too.)

Meanwhile, some enterprising phone companies, aided by local regulators, have taken to encouraging entrepreneurs to set up businesses that attract lots of inbound calls. Those include the free conference calling services, free fax lines and telephone pornography. The phone companies rebate some of the high call termination fees they receive to the companies running these services.

Maybe the commission will decide that Google, since it is turning into a telephone company, will need to connect to those lines and pay the fees. Maybe it will agree with Google’s argument that its services are different enough to be exempt from the rules AT&T follows. But consumers would benefit most if the commission used this as another prod to do the difficult work of bringing some rationality to the way that long-distance calling is priced.

The WSJ has some specifics about how the telephone regulations seem to apply differently to Google.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the phone giant accused Google of violating rules designed to ensure phone companies connect all calls. AT&T also accused Google of violating "net neutrality" principles, which are designed to ensure consumers can use any legal Internet services they want.

Google Voice is an Internet call-forwarding system that allows consumers to sign up for a free phone number that, when called, simultaneously rings all of a consumer's other phones.

Google acknowledged it restricts outgoing calls to some phone numbers, including adult chat lines and conference-call centers, which charge higher access fees to carriers. Blocking such calls reduces Google's expenses for the service.

An FCC spokeswoman said the agency had received the letter and was reviewing it, but didn't have any comment about whether it might investigate

The FCC "cannot, through inaction or otherwise, give Google a special privilege to play by its own rules," AT&T said in the letter. . . .

FCC apparently doesn't believe that Apple can determine what applications run on its iPhone

There are so many new regulations coming down the pike. Apparently Apple can't tell the app developers even that they meet any particular guidelines.

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to propose a new so-called net neutrality rule Monday that could prevent telecommunications, cable and wireless companies from blocking Internet applications, according to sources at the agency.

Genachowski will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and services.

The guidelines in place today have been criticized by applications developers like Google and public interest groups for not going far enough to clarify what is defined as discriminatory behavior. Comcast is fighting in federal court an FCC ruling that it violated the guidelines by blocking a video application last year. AT&T and Verizon have said existing rules are sufficient, and more regulation is unnecessary. However, they have also said they wouldn't fight against an additional guideline that focuses on discriminatory behavior. . . .