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ISPs Race to Create Two-Tiered Internet

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the guess-which-tier-you'll-be-on dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The ISP race toward a two-tiered Internet is picking up speed. This article from Michael Geist points to a wide range of examples involving packet preferencing, content blocking, traffic shaping, and public musings about premium charges for faster content downloads. ISPs are now reducing access to peer-to-peer applications, blocking Skype, and, scariest of all, lobbying Congress to let them do it."

40 of 612 comments (clear)

  1. Two word solution! by dada21 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    De. Regulate.

    Real deregulation has nothing to do with Congress making laws, changing laws or getting rid of a few old regulations that actually don't affect communications. True deregulation means getting rid of ALL laws that affect communication, including ones that were set up over a hundred years ago that we still have to follow.

    In my opinion, the interstate commerce "clause" in the Constitution was not intended to control communications, set up an FCC, or regulate costs or services. It was intended to prevent taxation and tariffs (exactly the problem we have today!) I'll grudgingly accept the argument for the regulation up to maybe 1995, but after that, we saw an unregulated quantity of computers magically connect without major subsidies (I'll grant you that ARPA was originally tax paid, but how big did it get during the government years?). The fact that so many people got online without excessive regulations aimed at driving the Internet leads me to believe that the best form of our beloved Internet IS anarchy (not chaos).

    Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...

    My speech is free to go where I sent it. For Congress to say that 2 or 5 or 10 big companies know better than thousands of little ones is typical nannyism. Who knows best? The People. We choose ISps that meet our needs. The system works. Some ISPs go under. Some combine into one ISP. Some fall apart into seperate smaller ISPs. This is how the free market works. We're going to see more free WiFi ISPs (my small town has 3!). We're going to see faster cell phone bandwidth (my EDGE network gets 150kbps downloads). We're going to see less reliance on the phone companies and the cable companies. This isn't happening because of regulation.

    As to the two-tiered Internet, I'm all in support of the system if it isn't regulated. Without regulations, the ISPs must compete with one another. This means that the two-tier system could actually be of benefit to the end users. I have customers with offices all over the country who have to maintain expensive T1 lines. With a two-tier system that gives customers on the same network preferential treatment, I think we'll see lowered costs for corporate WANs, meaning lower prices for consumers of those corporations' products. Every dollar saved is some money passed on to the consumer.

    Yet these two tiered systems can, overnight, become a mess if Congress decides to set rules and restrictions and requirements. Instead of promoting more bandwidth between same-network customers, regulations will push less bandwidth for different-network customers. If the little guy is pushed out (as regulations tend to do), the big guys won't have any reason to stay competitive. It isn't AOL versus MSN versus Comcast versus SBC that lowers prices and raises bandwidth. It is the thousands of smaller ISPs that are like mosquitos, constantly biting the big elephants and causing them to make changes to their service. For years I used Speakeasy and converted dozens of my customers. I still prefer Speakeasy, but they've been cut off in my market -- by SBC and Comcast that lobbied my local government and state government. REGULATION killed off Speakeasy in my area -- deregulation gave me years of amazing performance and price.

    Don't believe the hype -- anarchy in communications has led us to a smaller world and a brighter future. Regulations have led us to 90 years of excise taxes on our phone bills that won't go away, even if the reason for the taxes is antiquated or ancient. Yes, we're still paying taxes on our phone bill that were set up in 1898 and for World War I costs. And you continue to support those leeches by voting for them?

    1. Re:Two word solution! by peragrin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your idea of two-tier internet and the ISP's are completely different.

      Your new two-tiered ISP charges you 1.99 per download from itunes, plus the cost of the music, but if you download from their sponsered service they only charge you for the music.

      Think Cell phone bills. The data charges on Cell phones are stupid high. They charge you per byte, plus minutes while online. Try downloading a ringtone sold by sprint on a verizion phone. It doesn't work. Not because the song isn't compatible but because they will put up money road blocks into the way to force you to pay.

      I am sorry But I want the internet my way. Not the way some company wants to force me to pay Dollars extra for things they get for literaly pennies.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Two word solution! by Caspian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is a complete load of bollocks.

      Complete deregulation in the telecom field wouldn't lead to "thousands of little companies". It'd lead to one company.

      With no regulations whatsoever, telecom companies would be free to merger and reverse-merger and acquisition themselves into a recreation of Ma Bell. Shit, they're already halfway there.

      From what I've heard (I'm too young to remember it directly), things weren't too bad under the Ma Bell monopoly the first time around. Ah, but times have changed. It's 2005, and quaint, antiquated notions like "the customer is always right" have gone completely out the window. You know the old Saturday Night Live line, "We're the phone company, we don't have to care"? Substitute "a Fortune 500 company" for "the phone company". I could tell you horror story after horror story of how I've gotten jerked around by existing ISPs and telcos. Once they congeal back into a single monopolistic entity (as they were before), this will only get worse.

      And you free market religionists will be to blame.

      In the absence of regulations, things turn into a monopoly. No, "the system" doesn't work. It doesn't work because Joe Sixpack is ignorant, and the telcos like it that way. Capitalism, like democracy, assumes a well-educated and informed populace, and we do not have that.

      --
      With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
    3. Re:Two word solution! by aeoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every dollar saved is some money passed on to the consumer.

      You're wrong about that and you know it. Most saved dollars in fact do NOT pass onto the consumer! At best, they pass onto the shareholders or are reinvested into business, but more likely they are used for golden handshakes and exorbitant executive salaries and benefits (such as special loans, stocks and other such things).

    4. Re:Two word solution! by Caspian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, let me put it even more simply: Contrary to what libertarian dreamers like yourself would like to believe, in the absence of controls on the powerful, the powerful get more powerful (and the powerless get more powerless.)

      This concept seems so ludicrously obvious, yet you completely don't understand it.

      Even as things presently stand, the advances made by "the little guy" (E.g.: The rising influence (for better or worse) of bloggers) are the exception and not the rule. They are like those "human interest" stories you see on the evening news where a firefighter saved a precious cat named Muffins from a raging fire. Awww, how nice. Meanwhile, AIDS is still killing millions in Africa, and people are still being blown up in Iraq.

      Loony Libertarian "to make the powerful less powerful, we'll remove all restrictions on them!!111" thought would only make the situation worse. It amazes me to think that there are those who cannot comprehend this.

      Since when do you reduce the power of an entity by removing all restrictions on them!?

      And please, spare me the lecture about how "with no regulations, barriers to entry in the [X] market would be lowered". It doesn't fucking matter. Little companies could enter the telco market-- they'd just fold inside of a year, since no one can compete with the marketshare and "mindshare" of the established carriers.

      I'm starting to think that the entire libertarian/Libertarian movement/party was secretly funded by Fortune 500 companies seeking to grow their influence through eradicating all checks and balances on their nearly-limitless power.

      --
      With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
    5. Re:Two word solution! by rainman_bc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Complete deregulation in the telecom field wouldn't lead to "thousands of little companies". It'd lead to one company.

      I agree totally. There's a natural tendancy for companies to consolidate, when growth cannot be achieved without consolidation. Economists theorize that in a normal environment, businesses consolidate, raise their prices, and when those prices rise, the incentive for new business to start is better and those businesses will be competitive.

      They expand on that theory to point out that when economies of scale are reached, the barrier to entry is too high, and big fish will swallow the little fish because of it.

      I'd like to draw attention to Fido and Clearnet in Canada.

      At one time we only had two Cell providers in Wester Canada - Telus and Rogers and they hosed us on the rates. It was an oligopoly, where the incentive to keep rates high was better than the incentive to compete. So two new cell providers came to play: Fido and Clearnet. Fido offered amazing rates that were highly competitive - 200 mins for $20/mo. So did Clearnet - unlimited incoming calls for $29/mo. And they did this without a 3 year contract. All of which was unheard of before.

      Telus bought clearnet, Rogers bought Fido.

      Do you think they bought those cell carriers to compete, or to increase margins?

      The barrier to entry for the cell market is very high now. We probably won't see a new cell providor in Canada for a long time now, and rates will stay where they are.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    6. Re:Two word solution! by _LORAX_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It has been shown time and time again that competition in physical goods works as expected, but not in services like internet access or phone markets. The problem arises because there are very few ways to get a foothold on the requisite "last mile" or radio spectrum in order to compete. Without being able to come in and "set up shop" without being subserviant to the companies that you are competing against there is no REAL competition.

    7. Re:Two word solution! by dada21 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wal*mart increased my ma-and-pa store services sold almost 500%. They sold paintball markers and skateboards like we did, but when customers had problems, guess who Wal*mart sent them to? Us. We probably made US$100,000 one year on Wal*Mart referrals.

      Blockbuster's rental of DVDs and CDs and videos caused a huge increase in the amount of DVD players and VCRs sold. This brought jobs to retail employees. Ma and pa video rental stores eventually bounced back in my area and now we are back to having 3 or 4 for every Blockbuster, especially in porn and import rentals.

      How again did either of these two companies cause pain in the market? They made some things more efficient, and created new markets to support. Sounds good to me.

    8. Re:Two word solution! by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Interesting
      From what I've heard (I'm too young to remember it directly), things weren't too bad under the Ma Bell monopoly the first time around

      I actually remember it. There was a certain degree of predictability that we don't have anymore. They owned the whole system, from the lond distance system to the CO to the jack in your living room, so any trouble was definitely their problem and indeed they fixed things quickly. But there was a dark side. To make a bastardized reference to the Ben Franklin quote, the AT&T monopoly essentially guaranteed safety at the price of freedom. Local residential service was very cheap because it was subsidized by long distance. The old days were a time when you didn't talk to out of state relatives but a couple times a year, and then for not very long. And forget calling overseas. The only people who could afford to regularly use long distance were businesses, and they only did when they had to. Starting in the 50's and exploding in the 60's and 70's, the old AT&T service pricing more and more reflected a country that no longer existed. We were no longer a country of insular agrarian communities with no need or desire for outside communication. People no longer lived worked and died in the same place they were born. They moved around, sometimes going great distances. Also, TV came along and brought the outside world closer. By the late 70's, AT&T was a company with the most advanced 20th century equipment, but with a largely 19th century business model. MCI suing for access was just the inevitable first step in the explosion of the "information age". Widespread, global communication had reached a point where it was not only possible, but it was easy (at least from a technical standpoint). The problem was that the next step, communication becoming inexpensive, was thoroughly and completely blocked by a behemoth monopoly that had no reason to change its way of doing business. You think Ma Bell would have rolled out DSL for cheap? I remember even back in 1995 Pacific Bell was reluctant to field DSL because it was afraid to lose all that revenue from locked-in T1 and ISDN customers. Large incumbent monopolies are famous for not exploiting emerging markets until competitors force them into it. No, the AT&T monopoly was tolerable for the first 80 years or so, but by 1984 it's time had definitely passed.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    9. Re:Two word solution! by antarctican · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was de-regulation that caused every hamburger chain to combine into one.

      It was de-regulation that caused every big box consumer store to combine into one.

      It was de-regulation that caused every candy bar company to combine into one.

      Apples and oranges. That argument applies to businesses where entities, offices, etc are separate. Telecommunications is completely different; there is one set of phone lines running through a neighbourhood, there is one set of cable lines running through a neighbourhood.

      Do you really think a municipality would allow every company that wants to come along to put up more wires? Do you really think residents would want dozens of different wires running through their streets? Do you really think it would be economically viable for a company to wire up a neighbourhood if they only had one or two customers in an area?

      It's an economic factor why there's only one set of telephone and cable wires in a city. And as another poster said, if there was pure deregulation, what would force the owners of those wires to let anyone else use them? They would be the gatekeeper for that telephone network or cable company, they would dictate what goes down those wires and how much you pay, and the consumer would have very little choice.

      This is why regulation is needed, because it's not like a burger joint where someone can just put up a new franchise next door - a new player can't simply lay down a new set of wires.

      The infrastructure in this case should be a public asset that is there to facilitate commerce and competition, allowing any players to enter, like our public road system. All companies can use the roads in an equal manner.

      And that's what a one-tier internet does, allow anyone to enter the game because they have the same access to the market as anyone else. A two-tier would force all the small players on the wider internet out of business because they would have to pay a toll to reach the consumers.

      You like real life analogies? It's like each neighbourhood being able to set up a toll on the roads in their area dictating that all red cars need to pay $5 to pass, after those roads were already paid for by taxpayers. I as a consumer already paid for a road to the internet, paying for my DSL or cable, I should be able to pick what colour car I drive down that road, not have that dictated to me.

    10. Re:Two word solution! by IAmTheDave · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I am sorry But I want the internet my way. Not the way some company wants to force me to pay Dollars extra for things they get for literaly pennies.

      This isn't even "my way" - it's quite simply the connection itself. I am paying not for the service, but for the connection to the internet. Currently, the ISP passes my traffic back and forth to my computer/router. Serivces are provided by the connected server that is passing traffic back to my computer.

      This is DIRECTLY akin to saying that phone companies want to provide better phone quality if you call another user on their network. Have Verizon and call someone on Cavalier? Well, we can't guarentee a connection, we can't promise you won't be booted off the line for a Verizon->Verizon connection, and we can't help the static unless you get the other party to switch to Verizon.

      This, directly, stifles competition, especially at the small business level. It's sickening. And it will become law.

      --
      Excuse my speling.
      Making The Bar Project
    11. Re:Two word solution! by hswerdfe · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey Wow

      wouldn't it be Great if an Infrastructure based industry like Telecom, Roads, Internet.
      worked the same as a commodity based industry like, pc's, or cloths.

      I know lets pretend the economics of one apply blindly to the other...

      --
      --meh--
    12. Re:Two word solution! by dada21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, I sold my 1600 square foot home (worth over US$250,000) and bought a US$40,000 trailer with over 1600 square feet. Why? US$210,000 that I now have in my pocket to spend on vacations, business trips, and new ways to make me money. Some of my neighbors are friends of mine who sold their US$500,000 for 2200 square foot trailers. Why? The same reason -- we took advantage of the housing bubble (caused by regulations, mind you).

      If you think living in a trailer is trashy, I applaud you -- it is why I can continue to live in housing that costs me less than US$3000 per year (including property taxes) and pocket the US$2000 a month in mortgage to spend on other things I like.

      In the next 3 years I'll move at least 60 people with similar lives as mine into my community -- and we'll all live high on the hog getting rid of the 38% overhead of living in a "house." In fact, I've been able to cut my work hours almost in HALF and have more money in my pocket at year's end.

      Don't knock it just because you want to keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses are in debt and live beyond their means and will have to both work until they're 65 to pay off their excesses. Me? My family loves life and has smiles on our face when we go shopping with cash in our pocket. It seems like everyone else we see has a frown and wonders if that plastic card will say "denied" at the register.

    13. Re:Two word solution! by DonChron · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The "market" doesn't exist without laws and regulations - ie. liability law, contract law, etc. Sure, you need buyers and sellers, but the framework in which they operate is defined largely by laws.

      To pretend that people can vote with their feet and just embrace alternate ISP's is ludicrous. Businesses can do this - I can buy a T1 from plenty of providers. Consumers generally can't because Congress repealed the unbundling of local loop services. Unbundling was one of the key provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and this specific regulation successfully promoted competition. Look at the huge growth in small, DSL and dial-up ISP's in the late 1990's. But the re-bundling of local loop and telecom services allows ILEC's who own the (publicly subsidized, monopoly-fueled) phone lines to kick out their competitors. Bye Covad. Bye SpeakEasy.

      Since the telecoms killed the regulations *allowing* competition in the baby bells' wiring closets, and all the major telecom providers are merging from a fear of being too small, your small-ISP options are going to evaporate (assuming they're not already gone). That leaves the cable companies, who are rapidly consolidating, and the bigger, post-merger, debt-and-infrastructure-heavy, incumbent telecom providers to choose from. Unfortunately, they all have the same business plan now: milk the infrastructure and perpetuate monopolies and oligopolies, just like the pre-Internet days.

      I live in a dense suburb of a major American city. If I want broadband, I can get it from Verizon, Comcast or RCN. Or I can pay a 100% monthly premium for a slower-than-cable SDSL connection from an independant DSL provider. Maybe I'll pay extra because I have some applications which benefit from unfiltered ports, and better upstream bandwidth, but I doubt it. And can I really expect my non-technical friends and family to do the same? For a principle, which almost never gives them any benefits?

      Public Interest Research Group has some good analysis of the consumer-unfriendly results of telecom mergers.

      http://www.pirg.org/consumer/media/reports.htm

      When someone tells you "The Market will determine the optimal solution for consumers," they usually mean "The monopolies created by deregulation will be very profitable and the consumers get what they deserve." If it's a corporate spokesperson, they're buying (and writing) the legislation to re-shape the market. Why do you think these guys try to block all municipal ISP programs? They're allergic to competition. Look at SBC - they've built or bought all the infrastructure they care to build and now it's time to raise the prices and cut service levels. They could never do this with a truly competitive telecom market.

      Why wouldn't you try to get your elected representatives to oppose such legislation? What other avenues are left? Start your own telecom business and compete with Verizon or SBC for those lucrative local phone customers? Not likely - the barriers to entry are too high. Sure, there's lots of dark fiber out there, but there's no excess capacity in the last-mile, local-loop side of things.

      -Don

      PS - What, exactly, is the ideology that takes the SBC chairman's statements about preparing to gouge consumers and turns that into "Consumers win! Everybody wins!"?

    14. Re:Two word solution! by Comboman · · Score: 5, Informative
      Telus bought clearnet, Rogers bought Fido. Do you think they bought those cell carriers to compete, or to increase margins?

      I don't know about Fido & Rogers, but Telus was a mostly western company and Clearnet mostly eastern. After the merge, they had solid national coverage. It seems more like a fast and cheap way for Telus to expand into eastern Canada rather than getting rid of a rival.

      The barrier to entry for the cell market is very high now. We probably won't see a new cell providor in Canada for a long time now, and rates will stay where they are.

      Is that why Virgin Mobile just started up this year? With lower rates than everyone else?

      The thing that really stops major competition in the cellphone world is not cost-of-entry for new providers, it's things like service-provider locks on phones and non-transferable phone numbers. I doesn't matter how many providers there are if you can't easily switch from one to the other.

      --
      Support Right To Repair Legislation.
  2. Go time by panxerox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If there was ever a time for slashdots to be active politically it is now, this is a wake up call that the Internet as we know it is in jeopardy. What this new ISP movement really is all about is to remold the Internet into what Gore invisioned originally, that is a wholly owned and controlled network primary based on cable technology.

    Favoring content delivery over customer participation, the original concept for the "information super highway" was basically a one way street from the providers to the customers with the consumers having very little control. The Internet is not what he and the corps envisioned and they are pissed that they can't generate decent income streams from it (at least the majority of corps the innovators like google are able to but being an innovator is to hard for most corps).

    As for liability the isps had better think about this real hard before they leap into content control, I'm sure the lawyers are licking their chops as the possibility for massive waves of lawsuits dance in their heads. From the article

    "The network neutrality principle has served ISPs, Internet companies, and Internet users well. It has enabled ISPs to plausibly argue that they function much like common carriers and that they should therefore be exempt from liability for the content that passes through their systems. "

    --
    "It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
  3. Let me guess... by IAAP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ISPs are going to submit it to Congress as the "Keep the Children Safe from Porn and Stop Content Theives."

  4. Well... by aug24 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...something's blocking access to the story. (Millions of other slashdotters most likely.)

    Justin.

    --
    You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
  5. Mirror by winkydink · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.networkmirror.com/AQGdtdGeemUeo3VD/www. michaelgeist.ca/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%2 6task%3Dview%26id%3D1040.html

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  6. Re:Vote with your money by Jeff+Mahoney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of ISPs have caught on to customers talking with their feet and now lock in subscribers.

  7. Circumventing ISP filtering by CCMCornell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How do the ISP's block or attenuate traffic speeds for certain services? Do they actually look at the contents of packets or is it simply by port? If by port, can't many applications like p2p's be set to use non-standard ports? For a few years now on Time Warner Cable/Road Runner, I've noticed that sometimes default settings for P2P's yield very slow results and sometimes no connection to the tracker/server and connections to very few peers. I've simply changed those port settings. I guess some applications can't be changed either because of lack of customization in the program or a required standard port.

    1. Re:Circumventing ISP filtering by wfeick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not so much that they will select specific things to block, but rather they'll select specific things to be given preferred access.

      In the router world, this is referred to as ToS (Type of Service) or QoS (Quality of Service). They are slightly different, but for the purpose of this conversation let's just say there is a single byte in every IP header that can be used to differentiate different kinds of traffic.

      Routers also have the ability to have multiple outbound queues on a single hardware interface. You can configure a priority queue such that its packets are sent before any packets in the non-priority queue.

      1. Force the byte to be 0 for any traffic coming in from a customer's site so they can't declare any traffic to be priority.
      2. Set up an access control list (ACL) that matches traffic going to or from the service provider's audio server, video on demand server, etc. and sets the byte to 1.
      3. Throughout your network, you configure priority queues that ensure your priority traffic gets transmitted first.

      Given all this, the ISP can reduce the bandwidth of their backbone (or avoid increasing it as demand grows) and their pay-for-content services will work just fine but anyone else's services will suck.

      The ISP can then go after other companies that are trying to sell content to their users. If Apple wishes to have priority access to the ISP's customers, they must pay a fee to have an ACL set up which flags their traffic as priority. Ditto for anyone selling a real-time stock market feed, video-on-demand, etc.

      The ISP can then also target you as a customer. If you want to be able to receive any of this priority content, you'll have to pay an additional monthly fee to do so.

      Personally, I don't like the idea of being charged differently based on who I'm talking to. It's like the post office or Fedex charging you more for a letter you're sending to your attorney because they know that must be important, but less for your letter to your mother. It's like when a truck enters a toll highway, they look inside to see what is being moved. If it's just a moving van full of personal belongings, the fee is low. But if it's a load of consumer electronics headed for sale they'll charge a higher fee.

      I'd rather see this be done based on the level of service you're requesting. If you want low jitter, low latency access to the network, it costs more per Mbit than it does for high jitter, high latency access. Whether you have a voice call to your grandmother or your attorney, it shouldn't matter. Whether you're viewing a movie from the ISP's server of HBO's server, it shouldn't matter.

      Unfortunately, the ISPs want to go the way of the cellular providers, to maximize their profits by charging you additional fees for anything they can get away with.

  8. Yay!! by JWW · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yay! They're trying to gain more of our business by limiting what we can do no the intenet and making things suck.

    As a "consumer" that exactly what I look for. I wouldn't want the greedy telcos to have to actually price stuff based on a competitive market.

    I look forward to a few years from now when Japan and other countries in Asia will have cheap, and abundant bandwith (at least 100Mb/s, probably wireless to boot) and I'll still have a 1.5Mb/s DSL line and be paying MORE for it. Yeah, that'll be great.

    If the telco's succeed in this we (US internet users) will be relegated to a second class status on the net.

    And that doesn't even take into account the chokehold they'll have on innovation in the IT sector. Then we'll get passed there too.

    Don't get me wrong its not a US and them internet, the net is a global endeavor. It just that in the future being from the US I'd like to participate in it and not get blown past because increasing our bandwidth has take a back seat to Telco profits.

    1. Re:Yay!! by JWW · · Score: 4, Funny

      Could worse grammar and speling I had in that last sentance?

      Sorry about that. Grammar Nazis need not reply, I know that was horrible.

    2. Re:Yay!! by clambake · · Score: 4, Informative

      look forward to a few years from now when Japan and other countries in Asia will have cheap, and abundant bandwith (at least 100Mb/s, probably wireless to boot) and I'll still have a 1.5Mb/s DSL line and be paying MORE for it. Yeah, that'll be great.

      Sooo, you are saying, in a few years, you think places like Japan will have LOWER internet speeds than it does now? I had 112 Mbit fiber to my home when I was in Tokyo LAST year... Of course, if cost an ungodly $40 a month and installation was nearly $100 (with only a measly 80% "special price" reduction, I had to pay close to $20! The horrors!) ;)

  9. It has already started: by acoustix · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.michaelgeist.ca."

    See, they're blocking me already!!!!

    -Nick

    --
    "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
  10. rigged election by mapmaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, most people have either one or two choices for broadband internet service - the cable company and if thy're lucky also the phone company. It's hard to vote with your wallet when there's only one candidate running for office.

  11. I think it's fantastic in a way by rainman_bc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just in a way. I'm all for freedom of speech.

    I think this plan will backfire on ISP's. They presently do not filter content, so they are held excempt from liability of the content. Plenty of court cases have backed that.

    However if they are filtering content, controlling what an end user can and cannot access, then won't the courts hold them accountable for this behaviour?

    This will be a splippery slope, one where a few ISPs will get burned from it.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    1. Re:I think it's fantastic in a way by dr_dank · · Score: 4, Insightful

      However if they are filtering content, controlling what an end user can and cannot access, then won't the courts hold them accountable for this behaviour?

      Yes, you're referring to common carrier status. As long as the legislature is bought and paid for, I'm sure this loophole will be closed before long where they can filter and divert packets that threaten their revenue but wash their hands of responsibility for copyright infringement and kiddie pr0n.

      As it stands now, common carrier says that they either let data ride on their network without discrimination or they become accountable for everything that comes across it.

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
  12. Give in. We're screwed. by kid-noodle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not to be cynical - but we're essentially screwed here.

    Nobody else will give a damn. AOL are the most popular ISP in the world, and we all know they suck - doesn't matter. Vote with your wallet, fine. Nobody else will. They'll believe the hype - the megacorps will win, they will be convinced that this means they get a safer, faster internet. They'll be pleased.

    Even then, it won't matter - your escape options will vanish, because every major ISP will do exactly the same thing.

    We're losing the internet to the Bad Guys, the battle is half over already, and on balance, they're winning it. I have no idea what the solution is - we're under attack from the politicians on both national and international levels, the corporations on a global scale... I don't see us winning this fight. Best we can hope for is a draw.

    --
    fortune -o
  13. Define the "Internet" and then sue by rcpitt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If someone sells me access to "the Internet" and blocks ports defined in RFCs then it isn't "the Internet" it is something else.

    Back when AOL and Compuserve were BBSs (networks unto themselves with minimal/no connection to other services) their customers demanded access to Internet E-mail and got it; eventually bundled in as opposed to for extra charge.

    The ISPs will have to realize that there are ways to circumvent their blockages and all it takes is one person to come up with it and the whole world knows.

    How about "port knocking" as a data transport? I hesitate to list some of the other methods our group of gurus has discussed over the past few years, but you can be assured that there are lots, and the black hats have been using them for some time now.

    How about someone providing a service that tunnels other traffic via an unblocked port? Unencrypted there would be not much extra overhead - encrypted it would be proof against almost any blocking since the tunnel service provider can use any port they want and the ISP can't block them all or what's the use of calling it a network. Port 80 sounds like a good choice.

    And if the ISP blocks the service's address block, how about something that does a shared-bandwidth service such as bittorrent does now?

    Pretty soon the ISPs will get it through their thick skulls that blocking ports isn't the way - providing lower latency for similar service (to that provided by someone farther away by net) or making partnerships (franchises, etc.) with the data/service/application providers is really the only way to differentiate.

    Using the routers is easy - but it will not prevail.

    --
    Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
    and didn't get it
    1. Re:Define the "Internet" and then sue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Port 80 sounds like a good choice.

      Try port 443. ISPs may send your outgoing port 80 to a transparent proxy, and such a proxy could simply drop traffic it doesn't understand, crippling port tunneling without affecting web surfing. Typical port 443 traffic is already encrypted, so if they block any of it they risk all their users complaining.

      You're right in putting the legal solutions ahead of the technical solutions for this one, though. If someone is selling lemons their customers should be talking to a lawyer, not a mechanic.

  14. Barriers to entry by klubar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're missing the piece about barriers to entry.

    Where the entry cost is low, competition works well (joe's computer shop, asmet's sweatshirt shop, even beverages). Where barriers to entry are very high (telecom, drugs, automobiles) regulation is needed to prevent monopoly powers.

    1. Re:Barriers to entry by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Where was google on the map 10 years ago?
      I could start a search engine company tomorrow. It's not expensive. The tricky bit is coming up with an original and effective way of searching, but money isn't the object. A search engine company is not an ISP, not a provider of infrastructure.

      I'd find starting a telecommunications network, with its own infrastructure, of any useful kind pretty close to impossible. So, unless you're actually Bill Gates et al, would you.

      And trust me, I'd love to do that. I'd love to just start a mobile phone company. I mean, I have some great ideas about how mobile phones should work. I can pretty much work out how the things could be funded too so the business makes a profit. But, you know what? It's a little expensive. I need a huge amount of money up front, before I can get it back from the customers.

      Creating a website, and writing a program to crawl the Internet is cheap.

      Building towers every few miles, and linking them with some form of high-bandwidth telecommunications link, is phenominally expensive. Out of the range of the vast majority of us.

      That's mobile phones. Of course, if we're talking land-based telecommunications (copper, fiber optic), then competition actually makes the costs more expensive. Let's suppose I decide I'm going to compete against BellSouth in my city. With my own infrastructure, because, remember, you're proposing total deregulation.

      Suppose I get half their old customers. Does this mean:

      1. BellSouth's costs just halved, meaning they can charge their existing customers the same amount.

      2. BellSouth's costs, for maintaining a network that still covers the same area but with half the number of paying customers, just, for the most part, stayed about the same?

      Not difficult to answer that one, and it's actually part of what made early AT&T leaders actually support the notion of monopolies in telecommunications to begin with.

      Can you see me actually getting half of BellSouth's customers? I'd have to build out a network that costs as much to maintain as their's does for the same group of potential customers, yet survive on a fraction of that group. I'd have to be nuts to even try.

      Here's what happens if you deregulate:

      Competition dies completely. Companies work out that it's in their best interests to combine, for two reasons: The first is, as in the infrastructure example above, it's cheaper to build and maintain one network than two. Two companies mean supporting two networks for the same group of potential customers. The second is that control over the market means control over the customer - as long as the product isn't unusable, the customer will pay through the nose and no market will open for exceptionally expensive alternatives that might otherwise eventually come down in price once enough people move to it and compete.

      Most of us want regulation. We want the big guys to play fair. We either want competition, or we want services that are reasonably priced, high quality, flexible, and non-discriminatory. What we don't want are monopolies that kill any chance of real competition and force us to use an inferior product. We know that BellSouth doesn't need to come to our doors with guns to put us in a position that we can only use their internet service, it just has to own its own wires, and not make any exceptionally stupid errors.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  15. Mod parent up by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Man, I don't usually chime in to get the moderators attention, but this is possibly the most salient point made. There really is very little choice here. It's like telling somebody that if they don't like their cable TV service, choose a different cable provider. Oos - there are no others, unless you're willing to move to a different house that's served by a different company. In an era of consolidation by companies with large, varied interests, the "choice" is quickly leaving the table as a possibility. It's going to become opt in or opt out. And opting out is just cutting off your nose if you have any need for those services. The internet has become almost as necessary as a phone to most people, and for good reason.

    In a way, I hope it does go to hell in a handbasket. Then maybe something will happen.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  16. Re:hmmm... why lobby congress? by Tony · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a free market right?

    No. There's no such thing as a "free" (as in "freedom") market.

    Big companies lobby congress (and the President) because it *isn't* a free market. There are two ways of controlling a market: either be the biggest and baddest and have real teeth (like Microsoft, or the old Ma Bell) so that others in the industry *have* to do what you say or face your wrath; or get congress to give you teeth.

    That's what the MPAA/RIAA/BSA/etc have done with bills such as the DMCA, and are attempting to do with the new Analog Hole bill. That's what "service providers" are trying to do with this lobbying effort.

    Once they have this advantage over the rest of the telecom industry, they will use this advantage to keep their superior market position. Simple as that.

    Considering the development of the internet was funded in a big way by our US tax dollars, the thought of corporations moving in and fucking us over out of greed kinda gets my dander up a bit.

    Not only that, but in many areas, there *is* no choice for broadband. What happens when you have Cox on one side, and SBC on the other, and that's your only choice? When two companies will fuck you over equally, and they "own" the infrastructure (partially paid for by tax dollars), what choice do you really have? What kind of "free" market is that?

    "Free market" is a myth for naive slogan-spouting arm-chair economists. I was taught the whole "free market" ideal back in high school, right along with the concepts of how our government works.

    Both turned out to be lies.

    But, no, I'm not cynical.

    --
    Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
  17. All I'm going to say is.... by scronline · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is what happens when all you care about is the cheapest price. Go to smaller independants and this kind of thing wouldn't be happening. More often than not the service is better from independant ISPs as well as they don't practice this kind of B.S. For that matter, you'd be surprised, prices may very well be the same or even lower. But really, if you're ISP is blocking something you need/want, is a mear $3 a month more really that much more to pay?

    America is getting what it deserves in so many ways right now it's not even funny. When you reward behavior like this, you get MORE behavior like this. We are responsible for it because we allow it to happen.

    My suggestion would be....get away from the telco ISP and be happy with real quality of service.

  18. To whomever downmodded the parent by Caspian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can moderate the truth (-1, Flamebait) or (-1, Troll) all you want, but it will still be the truth. I stand behind my words. Not all ideas are equally valid. Libertarianism is idealistic nonsense. It assumes that consumers are all informed, make sensible decisions, and care about quality (or even price, to a point). It assumes that companies won't collude together to fix prices; it assumes competition is perfect and "by the books". It conveniently disregards such concepts as pre-existing mindshare (who'd buy phone service from Joe-Bob's Discount Long Distance if AT&T or Sprint already serves the area, and then some?), FUD, and barrier to entry. It's a pure form of idealistic free-market religionism, cut from the same cloth as the Pollyannas who constantly chirp about how America is "the land of opportunity" and anyone who really works hard and has a can-do attitude can make it rich here.

    Just because libertarianism/Libertarianism is currently in vogue on SlashDot doesn't make it a good idea, and just because I'm pointing out similarities between a religious belief in obviously contradictory ideas and an economic belief in obviously contradictory ideas doesn't make me a troll. (Or wrong.)

    --
    With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
  19. Re:No More Common Carrier by KingPrad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well the unspoken assumption you're making is that the law won't be changed to cover them. I assume the concept of "common carrier" will be abolished or twisted to cover whatever these companies want to do. When these companies and industries start moving in some obviously illegal direction, you can bet they are already working on subverting the legal controls. Many of the laws governing corporate behavior are becoming little more than a document of current business standards, subject to change with the companies' interests.

    --
    Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
  20. What really pisses me off... by Anita+Coney · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is that the ISPs want it both ways. By that I mean they want to be considered nothing but common carriers. So when someone wants to sue for defamation or copyright infringement, they can escape liability because all they do is transfer bits. But now they also want absolute control over those bits, in addition to the near absolute immunity.

    They won't be able to have it both ways. Unless Congress gives them some sort of statutory immunity, which I doubt will happen, expect the lawsuits to start from the RIAA, the MPAA, anti-pornography nuts, etc.

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.