IPcentral Weblog
  The DACA Blog
  Institutions
     
  Tanks
     
  Blogs
     
  Mags
     

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

 
How Many Times Has Michael "Dr. Doom" Copps Forecast an Internet Apocalypse?
(previous | next)
 

How many times can FCC Commissioner Michael Copps declare the Internet dead? Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher bombastically bellowing sermons warning of the impending End Times, Commissioner Copps has made a hobby out of declaring the Internet dead and buried unless drastic steps are taken right now to save cyberspace! The problem is, he's being saying this for the past decade and yet, despite generally laissez-faire policy in this arena, the Internet is still very much alive and well.

His biggest beef, of course, is Net Neutrality regulation--or the current lack thereof. He fears that without such a "Mother, May I" regulatory regime in place, the whole cyber-world is heading for eternal damnation. Echoing the fears of other Internet hyper-pessimists, Copps concocts grand conspiracy stories of nefarious corporate schemers hell-bent on quashing our digital liberties and foreclosing all Internet freedom.

Way back in 2003, for example, Comm. Copps delivered a doozy of a sermon at the New America Foundation entitled, "The Beginning of the End of the Internet." In the speech, Copps lamented that the "Internet may be dying" and only immediate action by regulators can save the day. Copps laid on the sky-is-falling rhetoric fairly thick: "I think we are teetering on a precipice . . . we could be on the cusp of inflicting terrible damage on the Internet. If we embrace closed networks, if we turn a blind eye to discrimination, if we abandon the end-to-end principle and decide to empower only a few, we will have inflicted upon one of history's most dynamic and potentially liberating technologies shackles that make a mockery of all the good things that might have been."

But that's hardly the only such fire-and-brimstone sermon that Rev. Comm. Copps has delivered about the death of the Internet.

In one speech after another over the past decade, he has cast our future in lugubrious, foreboding terms. At risk of making my PFF colleague Adam Marcus suicidal, I asked him to download, compile, and search through every speech and official statement that Michael Copps has delivered since 2001 [they're all here], and then tabulate how many times he uttered various terms of gloom and doom. Here are the results:

Term Speeches Statements Total
Discriminate(s)/ Discrimination 40 174 214
End of 13 77 90
Threat 11 79 90
Monopoly 16 64 80
Closed 30 45 75
Dangerous 12 37 49
Damage 7 24 31
Dark 12 15 27
Gatekeeper 6 16 22
Dead 10 11 21
Death 8 12 20
Impede 2 17 19
Bottleneck 5 13 18
Dying 5 9 14
Catastrophe 1 7 8
Retard 2 4 6
Kill 1 2 3
Thwart 1 2 3
Precipice 1 0 1

Who knew the end was so near?! Of course, it isn't really. Again, the problem for Commissioner Copps and the other cyber-worry warts is that the cyber-sky is most definitely not falling. There's more innovation across all layers of the Net than ever before. In fact, despite the recent economic downturn, the digital sector has been a rare bright spot. Pick just about any metric (devices, applications, broadband speeds, etc.) and you'll see great improvements over the past decade. Could some metrics be even better? Sure. But can we at least agree that, contra Copps, the sky isn't even close to falling?

On the other hand, if Commissioner Copps feels the need to persist with the "Net is Dying" meme, I'd at least encourage him to broaden his vocabulary a bit. I mean, there are plenty of other good terms from which to choose, as John Cleese once taught us.

posted by Adam Thierer @ 1:33 PM | Net Neutrality , The FCC

Share |

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly | Email a Comment | Post a Comment(2)

Comments

What Every person Ought To Know With Regards To The bag Marketing

Posted by: adidas adizero a171 S??? at June 16, 2014 4:58 AM

No apocalypse still!

Posted by: Dave at November 19, 2015 9:36 AM

Post a Comment:





 
Blog Main
RSS Feed  
Recent Posts
  EFF-PFF Amicus Brief in Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court Videogame Violence Case
New OECD Study Finds That Improved IPR Protections Benefit Developing Countries
Hubris, Cowardice, File-sharing, and TechDirt
iPhones, DRM, and Doom-Mongers
"Rogue Archivist" Carl Malamud On How to Fix Gov2.0
Coping with Information Overload: Thoughts on Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers
How Many Times Has Michael "Dr. Doom" Copps Forecast an Internet Apocalypse?
Google / Verizon Proposal May Be Important Compromise, But Regulatory Trajectory Concerns Many
Two Schools of Internet Pessimism
GAO: Wireless Prices Plummeting; Public Knowledge: We Must Regulate!
Archives by Month
  September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
  - (see all)
Archives by Topic
  - A La Carte
- Add category
- Advertising & Marketing
- Antitrust & Competition Policy
- Appleplectics
- Books & Book Reviews
- Broadband
- Cable
- Campaign Finance Law
- Capitalism
- Capitol Hill
- China
- Commons
- Communications
- Copyright
- Cutting the Video Cord
- Cyber-Security
- DACA
- Digital Americas
- Digital Europe
- Digital Europe 2006
- Digital TV
- E-commerce
- e-Government & Transparency
- Economics
- Education
- Electricity
- Energy
- Events
- Exaflood
- Free Speech
- Gambling
- General
- Generic Rant
- Global Innovation
- Googlephobia
- Googlephobia
- Human Capital
- Innovation
- Intermediary Deputization & Section 230
- Internet
- Internet Governance
- Internet TV
- Interoperability
- IP
- Local Franchising
- Mass Media
- Media Regulation
- Monetary Policy
- Municipal Ownership
- Net Neutrality
- Neutrality
- Non-PFF Podcasts
- Ongoing Series
- Online Safety & Parental Controls
- Open Source
- PFF
- PFF Podcasts
- Philosophy / Cyber-Libertarianism
- Privacy
- Privacy Solutions
- Regulation
- Search
- Security
- Software
- Space
- Spectrum
- Sports
- State Policy
- Supreme Court
- Taxes
- The FCC
- The FTC
- The News Frontier
- Think Tanks
- Trade
- Trademark
- Universal Service
- Video Games & Virtual Worlds
- VoIP
- What We're Reading
- Wireless
- Wireline
Archives by Author
PFF Blogosphere Archives
We welcome comments by email - look for a link to the author's email address in the byline of each post. Please let us know if we may publish your remarks.
 










The Progress & Freedom Foundation