From the “They Really Said It” File
One of the best parts of my job is I get to skim through countless blog posts about all sorts of telecom topics and see what people are thinking. But occasionally I stumble upon a post so truly hysterical that I smile for a week. This is one of those days. Apparently, the Future of Music Coalition is organizing musicians to file comments on the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on net neutrality. Acts are pouring out of the “Where Are They Now” file in droves just to take them up on it.
R.E.M. suggests what an Internet without NN would be like, describing how tough the music industry used to be:
These were the days of Xerox copies and homemade fanzines, self-addressed stamped envelopes, carbon sheets in triplicate, brother typewriters and desk calendars,” said the band. “From the standpoint of communication, they were good only in that one had nothing with which to compare them.
Today, just like every band in the second decade of this millennium, R.E.M. is armed to the hilt with the latest of the requisite Web-based tools, which makes communication with fans not only easy but also fast. It’s a structure dependent on bandwidth, website hits, downloads, Twitter accounts, blogs, fansites, RSS feeds, Facebook and Myspace pages, apps, You Tube channels, Feedjit, and HTML newsletters.
After walking to school in snow four feet deep, uphill, both ways, R.E.M. apparently had time to make hit records – something they have failed to do since the advent of the Net. Maybe they should go back to the manila envelopes and carbon paper. They made good music back then.
Update: After the back and forth in the comments below, Tim tweeted me to say that, “If my goal is to defeat net neutrality, then I just took a big step backwards.” Well sure, because we all know that rock stars are above reproach on questions of telecom law. After all, it was only after Michael Stipe turned down the job that Obama felt the need to pull up second tier candidate Julius Genachowski.
“They made good music back then.”
No. No they really didn’t.
… or perhaps you should just admit that your group (Arts + Labs) was set up to support the interests of corporations like AT&T, Verizon and Vicaom over the real producers of creative content.
Turk has every right to comment on REM’s pro Net Neutrality stance. But don’t expect anyone — and especially the independent musicians and new media creatives that you pretend to represent — to take his word over the word of someone like Micheal Stipe.
I went to an REM show last year. They sold out Madison Square Gardens (a venue with a cpacity of more than 20,000) and nearly every other arena on their tour.
Turk’s snarky post doesn’t seem to hold water in the real world I inhabit. But hey, don’t let that stop you from attacking one of the more prominent leaders among the people you allegedly represent.
Tim Karr
How many of the people that filled Madison Square Garden were there to see current day R.E.M. versus the R.E.M. of the 80s and early 90s? I would fork over money to go see The Rolling Stones today, but that doesn’t have anything to do with my fondness for any of their recent works. I don’t think most people could even identify an R.E.M. tune made since 1994.
My snark has more to do with the fact that R.E.M. is playing up the prominence of the Net to their music today, despite most of their notoriety coming from prior to the widespread adoption of the web. It’s great that they can use it to keep in touch with fans, but they built that fan base long before there was a ‘net to use. I know this because I was a fan going back to Fables of the Reconstruction. I have been unimpressed with any recent offerings, but that’s simply a matter of personal taste. I don’t expect anyone to take my word “over” R.E.M.’s. I put my thoughts out there simply to illustrate the absurdity of suggesting the Net is responsible for any R.E.M. success. It’s my contention that they rose to prominence as a rock band when they focused on making music, rather than commentary.
As for any Arts & Labs involvement in this post, I just have to laugh. That accusation holds as much water as your shoddily researched attack on Larry Downes as an AT&T consultant. I take no compensation for anything I write here. I contribute because I believe what I am saying and Digital Society gives me a platform (as does my personal blog.) I appreciate the platform Digital Society provides, but if it didn’t exist, I’d be saying the same thing elsewhere.
I missed the part where having a “hit” record has any bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of one’s stance toward Net Neutrality. Shall we just let Miley Cyrus determine the FCC’s policy, then?
Nor is having a “hit” record much of an indication of music quality. But, in any event, R.E.M.’s been doing just fine for themselves in the Internet age — if you don’t like Up, Reveal, Around the Sun, R.E.M. Live, Accelerate, and/or Live at the Olympia, fine. Your dubious taste in music has no bearing on this debate.
But, matters of taste aside, this type of random ad hominem attack on Stipe et al (“What do you know about net neutrality? Your new music sucks!“) calls into question your judgment on these and other matters. Simply put, it’s hard to take you seriously.
I’m sure that REM and a lot of other politically engaged musical groups (with massive followings btw) would appreciate your view that they should just shut up. Does Arts+Labs share your view?
I hope they come here to read your non-paid-for analysis on a site that was paid for by Art+Labs.
I didn’t say they should shut up. I said it is my personal opinion that they make better music than commentary. They’re entitled to whatever views they want to hold. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them.
It is the duty of all free people to question those in authority – or, in the case of R.E.M., those of questionable authority.
As for Arts & Labs, I don’t really know their feelings on the matter. I have not been asked to moderate my comments so as not to offend them and I have never been told what to write.
Does Free Press ever question your insufficient research when you post your screeds?
Now that’s a well argued criticism. Thanks Kevin.
I haven’t been a fan since they released Shiny Happy People. Their earlier work had passion and soul. The current stuff, to me, is exactly what’s reflected in their filing – they’re phoning it in.
Their whole argument seems to be “Back in the day, being a rock star was hard work. Thanks to the Internet, it’s hardly any work at all now.” Since their popularity stems from the time when they did work hard, their suggestion that musicians can’t succeed without net neutrality falls a bit flat. They did perfectly well without an Internet, let alone net neutrality.
Is Stipe’s suggestion that music will somehow cease to get made or played absent net neutrality? It’s simply absurd.
You’re funny. Your original post was so well researched that you really got me on that. And it’s not a screed. No sir.
My points are these: Art+Labs, which funds this site, represents AT&T, Verizon and Viacom’s interest. It pretends to be “pro-culture” but will consistently come down on the side of industry and against the creative community.
Your post — on a site funded and condoned by Art+Labs — is evidence of that. You attack one of the leaders of the musical community for having an opinion on Net Neutrality. You then suggest that REM and other groups like them should just make music and keep their opinions to themselves.
But REM is not alone, the Future of Music Coalition includes hundreds of musical groups that have taken a stand in support of Net Neutrality. One of them — OK Go — owes its success almost entirely to an open and neutral Internet, and they have written as much in a great New York Times editorial.
I suppose they should just shut up, too.
My other point is that I’m glad you’re writing about this in this way. It helps make my argument that the creative community must support Net Neutrality. I’m happy to report that many of them do.
This has nothing to do with R.E.M. or whether you like their music. The point of this exercise is to help artists tell the their own stories to the FCC about how they use the internet.
Clearly, there are many divergent points of view on any policy issue. But in this instance, it’s about preserving creators’ right to access a legitimate digital marketplace on their own terms, without the bottlenecks and gatekeepers that have made it so difficult for a majority musicians to even have a crack at reaching potential audiences.
One thing I personally take issue with is that the acts who are submitting comments are from the “Where Are They Now” file. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Hold Steady? Antibalas? Erin McKeown? These artists are the epitome of successful, contemporary and thoughtful musicians with devoted fanbases. And they rely on the open internet to conduct every aspect of their business.Sonic aesthetics and stadiums aside, them’s the facts.
No matter how many times you claim otherwise, I never said anyone should keep their opinions to themselves. That you continue to level that charge despite its fallacy indicates you are either dishonest or simply not wanting a serious discussion. I welcome discussion and debate on this issue because the facts are on my side.
Speaking of facts, your organization, Free Press, repeats ad nauseum the charge that “the Internet always lived under these principles” until Brand X and the subsequent reclassification of broadband as an information service. You rely on the definition of “common carrier” to make that claim. Yet, you have failed to adequately explain how that assertion holds water when cable, at the time of Brand X, had a 60% market share in broadband, and common carrier never applied to it. Your “First Amendment of the Internet”, is a sham.
The fact is we have de facto net neutrality now, absent any action by government. You are pushing for new regulations, applied arbitrarily, with little evidence of any actual harms. The two cases you can point two – Madison River and Comcast – were dealt with using either existing laws or public pressure. In both cases, there was no net neutrality law, and yet each was addressed. Why, then, do we need new regulations? Oh, that’s right. The evil corporations want to provide better service to customers by providing managed services and edge caching to interested customers in exactly the same way Google is currently exploring with BT. This consumer-friendly service is a practice that would be outlawed under the rules your “consumer group” condones.
The Future of Music Coalition is well intentioned. I have no doubt that they believe what they write. That OK Go believe they are a product of the type of regulation you propose indicates they are not terribly well versed in Internet regulation. Their career was made entirely after the Brand X decision and its fallout. So they, technically, owe their livelihood to the Internet we have now, not the Internet you want.
Casey –
I appreciate your comments and you are exactly right. There are many divergent views on any policy issue and this one is no different. What I, and many others, would like to see is evidence that either a) the regulatory regime or b) the balance between content and access providers is actually broken. To date, I have seen neither.
Did record labels have too much power over artists, arguably yes. I have heard the horror stories from both destitute musicians and very wealthy rock stars. Can artists now reach a larger audience with less effort than ever before? Certainly. Is it possible that bands can reach a level of stardom unknown before the Internet without a record deal with a label? Absolutely.
None of that on its own is sufficient rationalization for imposing regulations – in some cases where none have ever before existed – on the very businesses that have made that possible. Absent a compelling case that the type of network restrictions being suggested have any bearing on the music business or anything else, for that matter, I will remain opposed.
I’m not so convinced that you have your history lesson down, Turk.
Net Neutrality is referred to as the “First Amendment of the Internet” for good reason. The Internet we know and love today came out of its previous regulatory incarnation as a common carrier. But the moment that broadband was re-classified, the door to meddling ISPs was opened.
In this world of de facto Net Neutrality (as you call it), we have seen Comcast block the legal file sharing application, Bit Torrent. We saw AT&T censor the lyrics to a Pearl Jam song. Clearly they have proven that given the option to censor and block content, they are happy to do it. These companies have even outlined plans to their shareholders based on their ability to violate Net Neutrality and take more control over users’ clicks. Companies of course have a right to make profits, but we also have the right to regulate them in a way that protects the public interest. And the public interest is firmly on the side of Net Neutrality rules.
As a musician myself, I know how impossible it would be to succeed without Net Neutrality. But it’s not just about my ability to reach fans and book shows without the nightmarish structure of the old-guard recording industry. This is also about protecting the creativity that comes from collaborative projects (those that work a lot better with a service like Bit Torrent) or my access to the inspiration that comes from other artists who are using new tools in new ways to create sights and sounds.
And as for the businesses that make this possible? They sure aren’t AT&T and Verizon. They are the Googles and Ebays and ReverbNations and CD Babys.
You need to get over this myth that the Internet exists in a regulation-free zone. I think maybe you are just secretly sad that Arts+Labs has put out ZERO hit records. Come over to the fun side, Turk. Net Neutrality is where the creative community really is.
The courts have never deemed ISP’s as common carriers. So since we are handing out history lessons here…
Can somebody explain to me what will happen to REM if this net neutrality regulation is not passed? Are you suggesting that ISP’s are actually going to block their music from crossing their networks? You keep throwing around vague, sinister scenarios where musicians suddenly lose the ability to distribute content on the internet, but I’d like to know, specifically, what you think will happen.
Hi Jon.
That one is pretty easy.
Comcast blocked file sharing via BitTorrent and other applications. Musicians use BitTorrent and other file sharing applications to control and profit from the distribution of their own materials. It takes away the middleman role once occupied by labels and creates a new world where musicians have near complete control over their creations.
They would suffer in a world where their ISP can throttle and block the tools that they need to run successful online businesses.
This isn’t just a “solution in search of a problem.” It happened. Net Neutrality rules would prevent it from happening again, keeping control over the Internet in the hands of those who use it.
Candace –
Nick is absolutely right. ISPs were never considered common carrier, the phone lines used to connect to them were. The service you accessed over those phones was always an information service. It was the cable industry moving those services away from dial up that broke the grip of government regulation and fueled the explosive growth of broadband. Had cable been regulated as the phone company was, under the same “what if” theories net neut fans employ, you could easily argue that we’d all still be on slow dial up.
With regard to the AT&T/Pearl Jam issue, that was acknowledged freely by AT&T as a mistake made during a live broadcast. Unless you are arguing that the government can now tell me what I can and cannot air on my own website, that’s not a net neutrality violation. I’m not aware of anyone who would claim that AT&T, even had it been done on purpose, is not free to control their own content.
The “public interest” as you call it gets complicated rather quickly when the discussion turns to what can and cannot be done with private networks. Since there is no “Internet” outside a collection of interconnection standards and agreements, it’s not quite as cut and dry as you would have us believe. If you want to get into a discussion of ratepayer subsidized networks versus networks funded by private capital, we can do that. If you want to suggest that companies have some obligation to a higher cause that is both vague and undefined, so the government can simply take their property or force them to use it in a way that runs contrary to their own interests, we can go down that road, too. The history of “takings” and government abuse is long and distinguished. However, to suggest you are on the side of public interest, only because you claim to be, is to pretend that a substantial backload of case law is unavailable to help you navigate the issue.
Your argument that net neutrality has any connection to record labels is also disingenuous. You argue it’s impossible to succeed without net neutrality, but net neutrality has no impact on whether there are or aren’t any record labels. Both could exist quite easily without the other.
Finally, the suggestion that AT&T and Verizon don’t make this possible is simply laughable. There are two parts to any Internet transaction – content and access. I recognize a need for both. Your claim is that only one is needed. That is easy enough to demonstrate as completely false. Without the network that was built by telecom and cable companies, you would be unable to access content. Without companies like eBay, Google, etc, there would be precious little to find on the Internet. That alone is one of the key points of contention that I and many others have with so-called “net neutrality” laws. There is nothing neutral about them. They assume, as you do, that all innovation takes place at the edge and none takes place at the core.
I’m also not sure why you and Tim continue to make this assumption that my position on the issue has anything to do with Arts & Labs. As I have stated, I am not compensated by Arts and Labs for anything I say in this space. In fact, if you’d like to visit my personal blog, you can find my thoughts on this topic as posted for the past five years. As my wife will attest, that blog has never made me a dime either. :-)
Nick,
The courts did deem ISPs as common carriers, to use your terminology. Or to be more precise, the FCC long regulated dial-up internet access as a common carrier service, although its regs did not reach ISPs such as Earthlink, etc.
The problem arose when network owners like cable companies and telcos started acting as ISPs too, meaning that they owned the networks *and* provided the enhanced services/information services (like e-mail, website hosting, what have you) that ride over those networks.
At that point, the FCC decided to regulate the such “facilities-based” providers’ services as information services, while still recognizing the undeniable telecommunications component undergirding the offering.
In Brand X, the Supreme Court said that the FCC’s decision in that regard was reasonable enough. It did not say in Brand X that it was inevitable, or that the FCC couldn’t have used its discretion to come out the other way.
Yes, it happened. And Comcast, almost immediately, bowed to public pressure to apply different standards to regulate traffic across the network. They acknowledged that throttling based on protocol was not a workable solution and they began looking at other alternatives. Have they ever throttled iTunes? You hold up OK Go as a model of artists endangered by a web without your regulations. Yet their distribution model is one that allows monetization of an artists content. If this was about blocking access to artists because they don’t have a record label, why isn’t iTunes being blocked?
Hi Jon,
I’ll try, but this is by no means a comprehensive attempt. One concern is not necessarily that network owners will outright block specific artists (though they could), but that they will prioritize content owned by, affiliated with, or paying premiums to the network owner
Your response to that may be “so what,” on any number of levels, and I don’t have time to discuss all of those points now. Some people would like to think, however, that the Internet enables us to get away from control by gatekeeepers and, to some extent, makes for a more democratic (small “d,” of course) marketplace of ideas. I.e., one in which Digital Society’s content can be just as easily accessible as the Wall Street Journal’s.
As I said, there’s too much to unpack here at the moment, at least for my feeble brain, and I may just need to go and disappear from the thread. But I don’t think the sinister scenarios you ask about are either all that sinister nor all that far-fetched.
BitTorrent was still usable, not entirely blocked, but yes, Comcast used a very clumsy, ill-advised mechanism to throttle/shape/address congestion under some circumstances. Contrary to the claims that they did it to get a competitive advantage for their own content, it was not aimed at specific kinds of content. But yeah, it was a poor choice and they should have stopped. And they did. In fact, they worked closely with BitTorrent, who said they understood what Comcast was trying to do and were happy to work with them to address it better.
So, with the new net neutrality rules, if Comcast was caught doing that, they would be forced to stop. Without the new net neutrality rules, if Comcast was caught doing that….well, they stopped.
Problem solved. If it happens again, the FTC and/or FCC have tools to address any harmful or anti-competitive behavior. Chairman Genachowski has said they believe they have the tools they need to address any problems.
So, this is purely prophylactic regulation. (Don’t take my word for it. That’s what Eric Schmidt has said).
While I appreciate and share an interest in preventing genuinely harmful or anti-competitive behavior on the internet – and I would oppose any ISP who actually tried to block lawful content that REM wanted to distribute and a user wanted to access – it seems to me that the net neutrality rules go well beyond that. In fact, you appear to want to actually prevent REM (or any other musician) from being able to access (voluntarily!) enhanced services that both the content provider AND user would want.
So, how do you reconcile regulations *prohibiting* musicians and users from having access to voluntary & harmless services with the idea that net neutrality is about internet freedom?
(For the record, I have no strong opinions about REM, so I’ll leave that to you guys to battle out. Perhaps we should put out an NPRM to decide that matter.)
Matt,
I appreciate your response. And your concerns. So, what if prioritization was with the user’s consent? What if *I* wanted to stream a Netflix movie in HD and guarantee quality (and NetFlix wanted to be able to do that)? Or what if *I* wanted to play XBox Live (online) and have no problems with lag (and XBox wanted to be able to provide that)? (I do!) Is prioritization still unacceptable? If so, doesn’t that make the FCC a gatekeeper getting in between the edges to prevent users and content providers from connecting in ways that help both of them?
Matt,
All we can go on today is by way of today’s regulations, no? And Title II of the Communications Act does not deem ISP’s as common carriers. You can’t regulate realities of today based on the infrastructure of yesterday. That doesn’t make any sense.
“Musicians use BitTorrent and other file sharing applications to control and profit from the distribution of their own materials.”
Reductio ad absurdium… Name for me one successful musician who is using BitTorrent to profit from the distribution of their own materials. And Timbo, earning a little extra beer money doesn’t count. I’m talking meaningful revenue.
Count me as agnostic on NN, but you’re sure not going to convince anybody of your position with such trite and demonstrably false nonsensical arguments. BitTorrent CAN be used for this I suppose, but it’s overwhelmingly and indisputably used to STEAL creators content (movies, games, songs, music, tv shows, etc.)
Incidentally, your persuasiveness as the great defender of creators rights is further challenged by your founders’ nut job anti-capitalist views (e.g. “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”) Yeah, I can just see those creators wanting to earn some serious Benjies for their hard work doing backflips for THAT kind of system!
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