Slashdot Mirror
Companies Join Together to Maintain Open Internet
idontneedanickname writes "SiliconValley.com is carrying an article from The Mercury News about the lobbying efforts of companies such as Amazon.com, Microsoft and Walt Disney (yes, you read that right) to stop the FCC from "fundamentally altering the Internet. If that happens, they say, the Internet could evolve into a cable-TV-like system, where providers of high-speed Internet access could steer subscribers toward affiliated Internet sites. The network owners could also limit the types of devices that could be connected to their network, potentially stifling innovation." Printer friendly version of the article is online as well."
This doesn't happen already? And Microsoft - shessh - Don't some of their applications "STEER" users to their services, taking over what was formerly there? =) jay
that a big black monolith would land on their T1 lines and all there IMs would start spamming, "All these private subnets are yours except the Internet, attempt no meddling there."
The mentioned companies will acquire broadband infrastructure, and two years from now will be lobbying for the opposite goal.
3 cheers for the companies! Go capatalism? Uh... wait, where am I? Corporate pig-dogs! Marxist ideals rule here at /.! Back to your decadent western towers, and your filthy alluring women... plentiful food... mmm...
I guess this statement could sum up the situation.
"We work as a team, and we do it my way"
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Microsoft and Disney both see the advantages to un-tethered and relatively "free" (as in open road) access to the Internet for consumers. Cable companies, who are used to being able to "channel" information to passive users, do not, as it raises the bar on what they have to provide.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Many people might ridicule this - how much control can an ISP really have over their users? Sure, they might provide their own content, but users are smart enough to go their own way, right?
;)
I used to work for a large ISP and we found that a majority of our users thought their ISP connection would stop working if they changed their homepage to something other than us. That's how much power we had over our users - scary.
Kinda makes Microsoft look like the good guys - I feel a divide by zero error coming on!
Read reviews of shopping cart software
I believe that in due time, the Internet will grow to the level of public infrastructure, in the same way that we regard electricity and highways.
/Just an useless rant.
Only problem is, what kind of road (pun intended) are we going take to get there?
In the early days of paved roads, it was a mess until Uncle Sam wrote a bill saying that all Americans must have a smooth driving experience. When can we expect the same smooth packet delivery experience?
/.'s 10 Millionth
Amazon.com
Microsoft
Walt Disney
omg!! this is THE TRINITY OF EVIL!
If the FCC actually does put a crimp on the Internet, they can, of course, only regulate it INSIDE the U.S.
Which would mean, of course, that despite all our big talk about freedom we would be up there with China regarding the good old internet.
In Post-Soviet Russia, they still have real internet. =P
Just My Opinion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Tux, The Gnu, BSD Devil,
and now Mickey Mouse?
opensource heros
I hate to point this out, but this is pretty unrelated to the **AA fights against consumers. I wish this COULD be seen as a precedent to help there, as I don't want to be told when, where and how I can or can't listen to music I bought the rights to listen to, but this is a different matter. An important matter, to be certain, but different. If their suggested regulation were to go through, from the sound of the original post, then there would be nothing stopping, say, Cox from setting up their proxy to watch for people going to MSNBC.com and redirecting them automatically to their strategic partner CNN.com. (JUST a hypothetical example!) -V
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
I wish with every story the submitter or the editors would also put up the updated list of The Good Folks(TM) and The Evil Corporations(TM). It would make comment posting a whole lot simpler ;^)
It's quite simple... While these companies may be trying to kill their competiton, by killing off the "open" internet, they certainly are going to fight tooth-and-nail when it looks like someone else might beat them too it.
Think of the way Windows hadn't had any significant changes, until Apple went on full attack. Suddenly, Windows XP got a movie studio, and a new interface.
So, they may want the internet "closed" for their own purposes, but dammed if they'll let someone else do it!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Slashdot.org is carrying an article from me about the lobbying efforts of companies such as linux.org, gnu.org and fsf.org to stop Microsoft from "fundamentally altering the Internet. If that happens, they say, the Internet could evolve into a cable-TV-like system, where providers of operating systems could steer subscribers toward affiliated Internet sites. The OS owners could also limit the types of devices that could be connected to/installed into their OS, potentially stifling innovation."
:(
Oops. Too late
I get the sense that Disney wants to keep the Internet open because AOL Time Warner controls the pipes to a lot of homes, especially on the broadband market with both Road Runner and AOL Broadband. If the Internet evolves into another cable outlet (deities forbid) and the AOL channel steers people to Time Warner properties, what will happen to the Mickey Mouse stuff?
Disney also happens to own ESPN, and competition among sports web sites is huge.
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Disney wants to avoid a cable system-like internet? This from the company who is almost completely responsible for your cable bill going up every year (ESPNs fees go up 10-15% every year). I still dont see why. If its open they cant manage to force content upon users. But then again, they'd want to decrease any leverage the cable co's have so they can charge whatever they want.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Let's face it, WITHOUT regulation, these bozos can pull any shit they want and get away with it. Their worst NIGHTMARE is an FCC regulation MANDATING that users can connect any device they want to their cable/dsl connection and can run VPNs if they want to, for no extra charge.
I'm a girl too! See naked chicks in my journal!
The fact that the poster is surprised at the companies supporting this shows that they misunderstand the principles by which these companies operate. They have only one priciple -- to make money. Once you understand that, their behavior is clearly consistant. Their own freedom helps their bottom line, the freedom of others may hurt it.
The problem is that most of the laws are being passed as Super-DMCA at the state level. They have to force the FCC to change the federal law or it will be over before it starts. Ok, Comcast, Verizon, etc.. don't control your internet access over federal laws. However, with Michigan for example, they can say you can't put a Firewall/NAT device on your Internet connection and you can't connect several computers at once. Just as powerful a control.
Microsoft's software freedom of choice initiative meant that we would have less freedom to choose. Now M$ among others have an initiative for an open network. It must mean that we will have a closed network!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
...when Amazon, Microsoft and Walt Disney have to unite to defend freedom.
...just like electric charge. Microsoft is +10 AlwaysWinning(TM) Evil, while Amazon and Disney are both -5 OppressiveIP Evil. However note that by the Slashdot conventions, Microsoft is always twice as evil as any other company. Thus when Amazon, Disney and MS collaborate, all their evil cancels out and we can root for them.
;-)
Note that any branch of the government, the MPAA/RIAA etc. is -20 OppressiveIP Evil, twice as evil as MS, and so we can never root for them.
Next time RTFM
My other sig is also a
How much power?
You can block addresses, you can restrict ports and protocols.
Seems as though you have a lot of power.
79 channels and the most compelling thing on is Futbal Mehicanos (or something like that).
I think this it would be helpful to keep in mind that there are people and organizations out there -- both commercial and governmental -- that would like to see the Internet become more controllable. Just off the top of my head:
And so forth. Basically, there are many, many organizations who -- for reasons both noble and not -- wish to see this wild environment put under some sort of tighter control. Given the current political situation, where those with massive amounts of capital are able to shape these discussions, I would not be at all surprised to find the structure of I2 changed so that governments and large corporations have a much greater amount of control.
If there is a profit to be made in centralizing control of the internet I would imagine it will someday happen. If this can be combined with the "war on terrorism", such an outcome is almost guaranteed. The current distributed nature of the Internet can be changed or regulated. One need only look at China as an example of this, both pro and con.
The internet sees the FCC as an error and will route around it.
By the nature of their efforts thay are most probably subtle and secretive.
Example.
* The person who worked on the Xbox motherboard who laid out all the exposed solder/no-solder points close to each other for bypassing the bios.
http://www.remix.net/
These companies are just taking the high road because they can't take the low road because they don't have the resources monopolies.
Does anyone think for a minute that if MS owned a major cable network that they would care about innovation? The only thing they'd care about is first expanding subscribers and then slowly cranking down the subscriptions to limit them to MS Home Terminal Software users only.
Disney hate the cable companies from a TV perspective because they keep getting sodomozed on access fees to get their channels onto cable systems.
Amazon may actually care about innovation, but only because if everyone gets steered to another shopping site Amazon's "one click" "innovation" won't mean anything.
Move along. There's nothing to see here but a bunch of companies crowing because someone *else* has the ability to steer and lockout, not because they actually give a shit about a free, open and innovative internet.
How about being your own ISP? Co-ops are a possibility. Just lease a T1 with 9 or your neighbors and share it with a WiFi. A nice little whip antenna on your roof. The cost in the long run can be made cheaper than a cable modem. The only problem is someone has to run the show and fiddle with it, and keep enough subscribers in the pool.
Now when someone says you can't use a VPN or a Firewall, you can say take a hike. I'm the ISP-- The law is on my side.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
All they want is to insure that regulation doesn't work against THEM. Just like Disney has their own channel that shows only Disney shows and doesn't run anyone else's commercials, they don't want a regulated internet that forces them to do anything.
It's not about open anything - it's about oligopoly.
Let's look at the issues, shall we?
Content providers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting to their content, which makes them revenue.
Hardware manufacturers want to make sure that the FCC doesn't do something which allows cable or telephone companies to set up rules which prohibit people from connecting the hardware they sell to a consumer's home network.
This isn't about the internet -- it's about the ISPs. Yes, the ISPs are connected to the internet, but this is just a peripheral thing. The FCC couldn't stop you if you signed up with a foreign company to get access over satellite, [phone calls would go through them, but this way, to avoid that part of the loop].
As for the bit about companies prohibiting WiFi, it was probably against the TOS or AUP for the ISP.... Most residential accounts don't allow sharing of connections to multiple systems. This just means that the consumer should go with an ISP that doesn't place this restriction on their account. [I use Speakeasy, personally... and before that, I was paying more for a business class line, until CAIS went under, and the company that bought them out tried screwing me over by doubling my rates on me].
As with anything else, you are buying a service from someone -- they might have conditions on that service, and if you violate it, they have the right to refuse you service. [ie, the 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' thing at most fast food establishments... although, why they don't require pants or some other similar covering, I have no idea].
Part of the issue may come from downstream liability issues -- if you put up a mail server, and you don't secure it, and become a third party relay for a spammer, they might get backlisted....if you connect up an unsecured WiFi node, and someone spams through your connection, they might get blacklisted, just the same. Personally, I'm okay with the companies putting restrictions on accounts so that they can remain profitable. It keeps them from having to raise prices for everyone else... And if they can't stay competitive, I'm sure there's other folks that aren't bloated and scamming their users, and provide better service, who can do it.
What I have issue with is the way that the ILECs aren't allowing Covad and other CLECs access to their facilities (it took multiple tries to get a damned pair of copper for when I went from SDSL to ADSL, because the CO was 'at capacity'... I'm just not buying it).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Yay Amazon! Go Disney! Boooooo telecoms! I wonder who's gonna win? There's the snap... the telecoms try an end-around through state legislatures. Hollings (D-Disney) intercepts. Score!!! And the "voters" (ha-ha) go nuts!
Game results tonight on InterVision, 6:00, all channels.
The cable-TV industry has said there's no reason to adopt such rules, because it has no intention of discriminating against Web sites or limiting new technologies.
So, we're supposed to take their word for that, right?
This is just one more example of why companies are completely hypocritical and can never be taken at their word. If MS, Amazon.com, and Walt Disney were in the position of AOL/TimeWarner, they would take *exactly* the opposite position. Worse yet, if they switched positions with AOL/TimeWarner, then they would switch to *exactly* the opposite position.
Lessig has talked about his in "The Future of Ideas".
None of these companies have the public interest in mind. Only *their* interest. They can make useful allies in the same sense that mercenaries make useful allies: temporary, unloyal, and certainly not trustworthy.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
...it's called increasing shareholder value. That and obeying the law are the only responsibility corporations have. Corporations only take the public good as a secondary objective - if they believe in some instance that it will increase shareholder value they will say thay are doing something in the public good.
There is nothing wrong with this. We just have to remember that corporations are not people. They don't love your children and they are not obligated to "do the right thing." That's why we have markets - and when they fail or will take too long to take effect - government regulation.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
After all, I firmly believe that Microsoft's secret mission statement is, "To screw over the competition as well as the consumer by charging outrageous prices for value-removed products and marketing these to the extent that nobody has any choice but to suffer our wrath." I'm sure of this because two different people, who claim they don't know each other (but if you ask me, they look like identical twins and might in fact be the same person claiming to have two different names on the same day and during the same conversation) told me something like that a few years back, when I was an avid Microsoft supporter.
Obviously, these are merely my opinions and do not represent the opinions of any person or entity, including, but not limited to, my neighbors, my employer, my friends, my family, my fourth grade teacher Miss Focker, myself, or any other person or entity.
This post is satire and is copyright (c) 2003 by rice_burners_suck. All rights reserved, including, but not limited to, the right to read my own post, to print it out, to post it on /., to publish it in a local newspaper, or any other right, now known or later developed.
I just got done reading Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas." It explains pretty well what's going on right here.
Back when AT&T had a monopoly on both the phone lines and the devices that could and could not connect to them, there was nothing in the way of innovation. The network grew and evolved precisely the way AT&T desired, and everyone just assumed that they knew how best to evolve the network because they were the phone company for god's sake.
Then a few people on the inside came up with the idea that stupid, packet-switched networks would be much more efficient than "intelligent," connection-based networks. The intelligence built into each point of the system actually turned the whole into a rigid, inflexible system where a change in the operation at one point could cause unwanted effects throughout. The packet-switched network, on the other hand, would be robust and flexible because it was simple. Like today's (ideal) Internet, all the intelligence would be built into the systems at the "edge" of the network.
The Powers That Were recognized that this would be a better system. They also recognized that the system was more difficult to control. By building a packet-switched network, they would be creating their own biggest competitor.
Eventually, people started recognizing that AT&T was making decisions based on what was best for AT&T, not for the customers or the network. One of the critical points Lessig made was that, because nobody could install a new device onto the phone network without AT&T's express permission, nobody but AT&T bothered to research such devices. One of the saddest examples in the book was the lawsuit AT&T brought against a small company. It's only product was a small plastic clip that you could hook onto the handset to muffle ambient noise. However, it was being attached to AT&T's phone, and therefore was an illegal device that could not be installed on its network.
So when the monopoly was broken up, the scope of the phone company was limited. Customers were allowed to add whatever devices wouldn't disrupt the network for other users (think modems), and strict limits were placed on what the company could do. For example, they couldn't charge more for a call to an ISP than to a regular customer. So in a sense, the AT&T breakup is what allowed the Internet to overlay itself on top of the phone system.
The advantages of an open, equal-access Internet are obvious to everyone who doesn't own telecommunications infrastructure. Those companies are committing themselves to passing legislation like the new "Super DMCA" so that they can have absolute control over the networks they build out.
There are advantages to this, of course. Such regulations make it more likely that the money they invest in new infrastructure will return a good profit. Without that incentive, there is a lot of cable that would never be laid. On the other hand, when a programmer comes up with a really powerful new use for the Internet, companies which own the wires want to have veto power over that new innovation. If it doesn't serve their interests, they don't want to have to carry it. This ends up stifling overall innovation.
There are huge disadvantages to a truly stupid network, where no packet is ever analyzed and every spam has a clear path to your inbox. But even greater problems are inherent in a tightly controlled network where all things not forbidden are compulsory. But most of the problems of a free network can be limited by reworking the protocols used on the edge of the network. But if a cable Internet provider decides to limit you to ten minutes a month of streaming video so that you'll have an incentive to buy their TV package, there's nothing you can do short of switching providers.
As the AT&T breakup shows, regulation doesn't necessarily stifle innovation, and can actually help it to flourish. I'm fully in favor of limiting the sort of restric
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I don't believe them for a minute. I think they're just trying to get on the inside, to shape the eventual regulations. Having done that, they'll be the ones doing it. I bet that's what they're using their legal and lobby muscle for right now.
but isn't the Internet designed to route around this kind of stuff? I mean, if the FCC were to, someday in the future, try to "fundamentally alter the Internet", wouldn't folks just pull out the back up copies of today's Internet, and ignore what the FCC was trying to do? I once read a great quote about the Internet, which basically stated that "the Interenet interprets censorship as damage; and routes around it." It seems to me like neither the FCC nor the companies listed can do anything to fundamentally alter the Internet...
The network owners could also limit the types of devices that could be connected to their network, potentially stifling innovation.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like the Internet protocol that I know and love... I liken this situation to the start-up of AOL-like companies... lot's of people might describe the service as "internet-like", or the company as an "Interenet service provider"; however, it's not the Internet if it's running a proprietary protocol and doesn't use TCP/IP. Obviously, there are more details involved, but it seems like this article is a bit of hyperbole and sensationalism...