"Freedom Is Not Given, It's Taken" The Anarchives Volume 3 Issue 6 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- CRTechnocraCy / / \ \ ---|--/----\--|--- Telecomm Legislation \/ \/ and the /\______/\ Demise of Democracy -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ Today I told it to the 'Man'. I stared down the regulatory authorites, and the members of the powerful telecomm companies, and laid a critique stating that they were enacting anti-democratic practicies. As well I informed the 'authorities', that if they did not respect the public interest, the public interest would not respect them, to the possible extent of direct action. The following is a written transcript of a presentation made for the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) on Wednesday February 28 1996 on the subject of universal affordable access, specifically access to local telephone services. -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ Good morning, my name is Jesse Hirsh, I represent an Internet company called Local GlobalAccess Inc. As we continue to propel ourselves into the Information Age, access becomes the defining characteristic of the shape and form of the Information society. As our name implies, we are concerned with access, of all types, and at all levels. We are interested in participating and ensuring, that universal access to information technology exists and enables all members of our society to benefit from their implementation. I also represent the Toronto Information Highway Working Group, which is itself a member of the Alliance for a Connected Canada, a nation-wide alliance of public interest groups who are all determined to ensure that the public interest remains an essential part of any emerging Information Infrastructure. Looking around the room, I also note that I seem to be the youngest person here by at least 10 years. So I also feel I should say I represent the 'youth', for in ending my preface, I warn the Commission and the parties to this hearing that I'm now going to present an argument that may seem outrageous to present company, but I assure you that among my peers, I represent the norm. My concern is democracy. As Steve Forbes buys the American Presidency, I ask where is democracy? I grew up in a sheltered environment, educated in the isolated institution of the university, where my teachers led me to believe that I lived in a democracy. In participating in this CRTC hearing, I hoped to be involved in a democratic decision-making process, an opportunity to receive a first-hand education in the real world. What I've experienced so far has been disillusionment at best, outrage as the norm. In this morning's opening remarks, the commissioner stated that the purpose of this hearing was to, "allow the public to participate." As I look around in this room however, I do not see the public, but a collection of technical experts who are themselves members of a technical elite. I intended to participate in this process, as a means of exercising my democratic rights. However I have since been bombarded with over 12 pounds of documents, 400 pages of faxes, which almost burnt out my fax machine, outside of the responsibility of researching background documents. Out of all these documents, I was only able to understand a third of it, as much of it was encoded in telecommunications legalese, technical jargon, and archaic pricing indicators. As a student of communications I was barely able to extract any sense from this sea of submissions. I can only guess the trouble a 'layperson' would have trying to participate in this 'public' process. In fact my effort put into understanding these documents has almost raised me to the level of technical elite. If this isn't actually a public process, is it then a democratic one? I fear that the actions taken as a result of this hearing will enable the subversion of our democratic rights, as they are supplanted and replaced with consumer rights. Clearly an anti-democratic action. Democratic rights are inherent and unlimited. You always have them, and you can always exercise them, at least in a democracy. Consumer rights on the other hand are not inherent and they are limited. They are based upon the pay-per-use model, as your rights are determined in relation to your participation in the economic marketplace. Thus the more you pay the more you play. Consumer rights are inherently unequal, as we live in an inherently inequal economic system. Consumer rights subvert democratic rights by introducing a quantitative factor, achieving a finite definition of our entitled rights, and limiting the extent to which we may exercise them. The underlying agenda of these current CRTC hearings, is to introduce a new rate for local telecommunication services. The telephone companies are proposing to introduce a local rate restructuring based upon the pay-per-use model. Universal access to the technology will exist, but the use of the technology will be limited. Democracy depends upon free and open access to information, which becomes severely limited, if not negated by proposed pay-per-use pricing structures. The Commission in a previous decision, stated that local rate-rebalancing was an essential step in enabling full competition among the local telephone market. Similarly the phone-companies are stating that pay-per-use is also an integral part of local competition. With the recent American Telecommunications Act, the United States has effectively opened up the local phone markets for competition. Robert E. Allen, Chairman and C.E.O. of AT&T after the passing of the bill said, "The fast lane has opened up", referring to the accelerated market activity that will accompany competition. President Bill Clinton said, "This bill protects consumers against monopolies." Unfortunately it does not protect _citizens_ from monopolies. The U$ Telecommunications legislation removes regulation, and introduces double-speak 'competition', freeing monopolies to compete with each other across areas of local and long-distance markets. The double-speak comes in the fact that you need billions of dollars to compete in the first place. I mean hey, I'd love to have a telephone company, but nobody's going to give me the billions of dollars necessary to sucessfully operate it. The telecommunications industry is inherently a monopoly. Theoretically, we should only have _one_ wire connected to our home. Traditionaly, telecomm monopolies have been held in check by public institutions. However as agents of the private sector, privatize what remains of our slashed public institutions, and free-trade dismantles our national tariffs, regulation of telecom monopolies becomes technically impossible. In a knee-jerk reaction, monopolies are de-regulated to encourage competition. However what we are witnessing is not a competition among equals, or even a competition amongst oligopolies. Rather we see the battle of monopolies, a competition to become the new monopoly. Competition among the telecommunications industry translates directly into concentration of the industry. In the short time since the US Telecomm legislation was passed, NYNEX and Bell Atlantic have announced mergers, and US West has enacted a $US 5.8 Billion dollar merger with Continental Cablevision, a major US cable company. It's no wonder that telecomm competition is referred to as 'the waltz of elephants'. In the Canadian context, the national monopoly Stentor, consistently practices anti-competitive behaviour. I say this from the perspective of a young man who has been involved in operating an Internet company. We were operating in the Internet industry months before the phone companies decided to make their entrace to the market. Due to their 'publicly supported' monopoly, they have been able to quickly attain a dominant position in the market, fuelled by their conglomerate cross-subsidization, in tandem with vast marketing and human resources. In the wake of their entry, the Internet Industry has seen a flash of mergers and acquisitions in which a market once populated by numerous small players, increasingly becoming a market dominated by conglomerates. As a small business, we can barely hope to survive amidst such an uncompetitive environment. Over the last few days before this current hearing, I had been debating with myself whether or not to attend, as I felt that my actions and remarks here would be futile. The CRTC has consistently demonstrated their position as being in the 'back pocket of the phone companies'. In the rare exception where the CRTC has ruled against the dominant telecomm interest, their decisions have been overturned by the Federal Cabinet. Similarly the other 'public' body that has a mandate to deal with these issues, the Information Highway Advisory Council, is also dominated by telecomm interest, with 28 of it's 30 members drawn from the private sector. I decided to make my presentation to the Commission this morning, because I was not going to be the one to negate my democratic rights. The onus is on the Commission to prove my fears otherwise, and demonstrate that not only is this a public and democratic process but that all Canadian interests are taken into consideration. The Commission needs to realize that the technological changes we are currently undergoing affect us all equally. If we as a nation, wish to enter the next millenium with a stable and equitable society, we must include all Canadians views in the decisions that will form our Information Infrastructure. I offer warning to the Commission, that if it persists in ignoring the interests of the public, and continues to grant concessions to the cartel of powerful telecomm interests, the increasing frutstrations of an alienated citizenry could blow up in all of our faces. Here again I explicitly refer to my own experiences with the technology, and the success I've had with my peers, in using the technology for our own purposes. We are witnessing a phenomenon in which the younger members of our society are making dramatic gains in the use and implementation of information technology. It is not unreasonable to suggest that if the established authorities, in this case the CRTC, do not meet the interests of the public (i.e. do not meet the democratic interests), the public will take the technology into their own hands. If you (the CRTC) enact barriers that deter our inherent democratic rights, we will go around or through those barriers as a means of reclaiming our democracy. Thank You. The Commission responded by trying to defend the role of the individuals working within the CRTC, however I quickly responded by saying that I did not place any blame on the individuals within the organization, but the organization itself, and the context in which it operates. I recognize that within the context of diminishing public funds, the CRTC is inherently limited, and therefore also the avenues of possible action. I sympathized with the shared feeling of futility. The feeling that change within the system is futile... http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ ___ ___ ___ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /:/ / /::\ / /::\ / /:/ / /:/\:\ / /:/\:\ / /::\ / /:/ /::\ / /:/ \:\ /__/:/\:\ /__/:/ /:/\:\ /__/:/ \__\:\ \__\/ \:\ \ \:\/:/__\/ \ \:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \ \::/ \ \:\ /:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \:\/:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ \ \::/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ -------------------------------------------------------------- To receive the Anarchives via email send a note to Majordomo@lglobal.com with the message in the body: subscribe anarchives To get off the list, send to the same address but write: unsubscribe anarchives Also check out: http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/