Genachowski Open to Net Neutrality Self-Regulation—With FCC Backstop
LOS ANGELES -- FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday he’s open to self-regulation on net neutrality -- with a commission “backstop” -- and to work with industry to ensure forbearance in the broadband reclassification he proposes can’t be undone. Wholesale unbundling and rate regulation in the six sections of Title II Genachowski seeks to impose on broadband transport are “off the table,” he said in a Q-and-A with NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow at the cable show. “We're going to rely on competitive markets,” Genachowski said.
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On McSlarrow’s description of industry concern forbearance from the other parts of Title II could be undone by a future FCC, Genachowski responded, “You've described a problem for which I am sure there is a solution.” Should “all the stakeholders [who] are concerned about this operate in good faith, focus constructively on solutions, tackle this the way that the people who are here doing business at the show tackle business issues,” he continued, “we can do that here, too."
"A lot of progress has been made” in efforts toward having engineers in a mostly self-regulatory model deal with net neutrality, Genachowski said. McSlarrow asked him about conversations in recent months, with self-regulation the goal and “where 99 percent of the solutions are dealt with by engineers.” In response, Genachowski said, “I'm open to processes of the sort you described that involve engineers and outside parties as long as there’s an FCC backstop and a way to bring a complaint and have this addressed.”
Such a system would “ultimately minimize the need for government involvement if consumers have a clear idea upfront what is going on, have an ability to complain at first to the companies” and engineers have an understanding of what constitutes sound network management practices, Genachowski said. “I think a lot of problems can be overwhelmingly resolved before government has to get involved.” He described what he calls his third-way proposal, unveiled last week, as “a narrow and tailored approach, an alternative legal foundation, that has barriers against regulatory creep, regulatory overreach, which I think is important to guard against. … Does it involve a massive restructuring of the way broadband does business? No.”
The question on the table for the chairman: “How do we get back to a solid legal foundation that lets the agency do what it needs to do around broadband that we previously articulated and not more,” Genachowski said. Last month’s Comcast decision “created a problem, not one that I desired,” he said. “We would have been happy to see a different decision, we would have been happy to have continued to have operated under the same legal foundation” the commission had previously, he continued. After McSlarrow asked him about the “elephant in the room” while showing a slide of the animal with “Title II” emblazoned on its hide, Genachowski said, “we didn’t let the elephant out of the cage.” Of regulation post-Comcast, he said, “nothing that’s happened in the past few weeks since the decision came down changes one iota the policy goals and outcomes that the commission and I have been clearly articulating for the last few months now.”
The issue of net neutrality “isn’t about Google,” Genachowski said when asked about application of the rules to content providers at the edge of networks. “This issue is about the next Google, the next eBay, the next Amazon. It’s about speakers who don’t want to be censored on the Internet, who are speaking lawfully and want to have a chance to reach their audience.” That focus “is where I've said it’s been for a long time,” he said. “But [I'm] more than happy to keep on discussing these issues” and his “door is open” to that, Genachowski said.
Last Friday’s order letting pay-TV companies encrypt HD movies for 90 days or before they're released by studios on Blu-ray or DVD, whichever comes first, (CD May 10 p7) balances the need for an open Internet and protecting intellectual property, Genachowski said. “This particular order is a concrete example and in a meaningful way of us balancing goals that I actually think are quite compatible and that we need to serve,” he said. The goal is to “preserve the freedom, the openness of the Internet” in “a way that applies to lawful content and that protects intellectual property in a meaningful way,” he added.
With TVs in more homes than broadband is, “it would be desirable for consumers to have an easy, integrated way to navigate their pay TV, the video over the Internet, other video that they bought,” Genachowski said. “What can we do to unleash competition to have this platform be as innovative as other platforms that we've seen? The cable industry “has been very constructive in this” and it’s an area where “I'm also hopeful where if we can solve the Rubik’s cube it can be a win-win to provide better services for consumers which in turn will … lead to more subscribers” for cable operators. The future, he said, “is going to be not appliances but applications.”