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Why The Net Should Stay Neutral
Dino wrote to mention a BBC opinion piece on why tiered Internet setups are a bad idea. From the article: "What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road. This issue just the latest round of a long-running debate about how much government - of whatever type, in whatever country - should be involved in the growth and development of the internet."
Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic. The more traffic on the roads, the more you pay, and the less traffic, the less you pay. Sounds a lot like what the ISPs want to do.
The net should be Lawful Neutral :)
The government should have no control over the internet.
If anyone should have any control I would hope it would the the universities atlest.
"We must just hope that the US government recognises that this is the case, and sets a good example to the rest of the world."
Hopefully it won't come across as sarcasm.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Public utuilities are normally regulated. The reasons for that are well established. Companies in the utility markets are not generally are not cherry pick the most profitable customers. Instead for being allowed to operate they are also required to serve the public interest in other matters. That's why you have the public access channel on cable TV , the public alert systems on radio, why rural communities have electricity, and why the power company cant simply shut off the juice to the old/infirm without certain procedures. Some of those Odious fees on your phone bill pay for things like universal 911 connectivity.
We generally strived to avoid two tierer public power or phone service in their early days. Of course deregulation did take place in the phone arena eventually did make sense but only after ubiquitous access had been achieved and was affordable.
So we have to be careful about two tiered proposals for the internet. It might be okay but it should be scrutinized from a public policy perspective not a bussiness perspective.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband. Some people pay for it themselves, others have dial-up, and others choose to not have any internet access.
A major problem with this line of thinking is that after they establish that everyone has a right to use the internet at max speed, the next thing on the list will be the huge social injustice caused by not everyone having a tax payer supplied computer.
We can expect the US Government not to meddle with the 'net as much as they didn't mess with wikipedia entries...
/ 29/1732238
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01
Demented But Determined.
"After all, once we get away from the idea that the pipes just move bits around without really caring what data is being transmitted, it's a small step to discriminating against some forms of content and then targeting specific sites, services or users."
What if all the big ISPs start charging $0.10/min for VOIP? Or $1.00/mb from "long-distance" sites? Where does it end?non-US countries?
What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road.
The problem with your analogy is that there is some New Business-man reading that and saying. "Hey! That's a fucking GREAT idea! (If I weren't a opportunist monkey, I might have thought of it myself!)"
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It would seem to me that shortly after some big corporation tries to segregate the Net, if there is
any marginal advantage to the bandwidth carrying their segregated service, somebody will devise a way
to tunnel other services through the "premium" bandwidth. If I can send you bits, I can code my data
into those bits, steganographically if necessary, but there's no way the channel can stop me from
sending whatever I want.
So I say, bring it on. We'll have fun writing ironic tools like IPOV -- IP tunneling over Voice Channels -- betcha we can send up to 56K bits/sec on a 3 kHz analog voice link.
I'm going to take a step back and look at this purely from a consumers standpoint. I'm already paying comcast my $45+ a month to have a "blazing fast" connection so I can stream music and videos. Most news and video providing sites offer their streaming services for free, charging only for higher quality content. I fear if these sites must pay a premium to offer the same service they are currently providing free, that they cost will be passed down to the consumer.
This will undoubtedly usher in a wide variety of subscriber fee based sites and services. I'm not looking forward to shelling out another $20+ a month to view streaming content on the handful of sites I like to visit.
On a side thought, how would this affect Internet2?
I have heard for years about the "Digital Divide" that separates those with computer/internet access and those without. To offer multi level internet access would actually physically impose such a divide and make the internet a place for wealthy elitists. The low end internet would get worse and worse as companies wouldn't want to advertise to the people that don't have enough cash to get the higher level internet in the first place, thus you would get less content.
To regulate the internet is to regulate the library. Sure we can have a private internet, but to regulate the public internet is no different than regulating public libraries. The internet is all about information, nothing more nothing less. The internet is most profitable when it is filled with diverse information. How are we supposed to tell China to be a free and open society if we close and restrict the internet?
I think the problem is that the companies that want more money out of the internet have a mis-conception about the internet. It's a useful tool for me at home, but I can live without it when the cost exceeds affordability. I could have a gigabit line but I can't afford it, and when my broadband cost exceed my budget, I'll drop it and go to dialup, and if that is too costly, then I'll use regular mail. They think that if they are charging google, then the multi-billion dollar company will just give them money, but they miss that the source of the money is ultimately individuals using a service. That's why I switched from Compuserve to Prodigy, then Prodigy to a dialup bbs while out of work then to a Dialup provider for internet, up to isdn, then to DSL, then cable, then dsl, and now cable. It's all about what consumers are able to pay ultimately, not what the companies want to make in revenue.
This is the same reason why I don't buy CD's, I know that at the same $14.99 that they have been charging for the last 15 years, that they are making obscene amounts of money. So I don't buy CD's and I just listen to the radio. But they see that change in my spending and decide I must be pirating music because no one is allowed to change habits in their worldview. Their marketing machine says that once a customer always a customer. So if you aren't buying from them, you must be stealing. This is the same worldview that the telecom networks that built the backbone of the net have, if they want more money from the system, they should just ask for it and people should give it to them. They think they are entitled to it.
So let's all just cancel our internet access for a month. No one use the internet at all for anything.
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
The internet is more like a road, yes there are libraries on this road, as well as banks and commerce sites. I completly agree that the government should stay out of libraries, though it has to regulate banking and commerce to fight fraud. The argument is concerning regulation of the roads. Should we stop traffic and check who is riding and what you are carrying, we can generally agree no. Should the road builders be able to setup toll bridges on roads already constructed generally not. Should a private company be able to build express ways they charge extra for?? This is the debate... I don't know the answer but its not so clear to say the government has no place.
To all you libertarians who think government shouldn't regulate the banks or commerce either if it didn't people would just group together to form a "union" and pay dues to that union this union would then write laws and enforce those laws to attempt to protect its members.. Do you know what we call this...?? Government...
To Paraphrase Zoe:
"Maybe you're not remembering some of [their] previous plans?"
- Two levels of bandwidth available" broadband and, presumably, superbroadband
- One level of bandwidth to your house but with complex limits on the bandwidth from your provider to the rest of the world based on protocol, destination etc.
The first I have no problem with: it's the same difference we have now between broadband and dialup. The second I find a lot more troubling. For example supposing my ISP is owned by a competitor to Google will I suddenly find google a lot more expensive to connect to? This would be more like paying to have your house connected to the road system and then being told that to be allowed to drive your Rover on it will cost twice as much as your neighbour pays to drive his Ford.I'd also wonder how feasible it will be to actually technically implement protocol limits since they would have to allow encrypted connections (at least https if nothing else) and you can pretty much piggyback any protocol on the back of another if the financial motivation was enough to overcome the pain factor.
Why should government stay out of libraries?
I don't want to go to a private library and ask for a book that they don't have because their religious sponsors don't condone the contents. No thanks. Give me a government run library which has no limitation on the topics and have to bend over backwards for special interests (read money and relgion).
Just because the US goverment is the most corrupt in the world, doesn't mean that it doesn't work fine in other countries.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Language is only as useful as the AGREED upon use and meaning of it is applied. It is that which enables communication.
To see this from a matter of communication lines that can carry whatever transmission they might carry...
What happens when some party tries to restrict a language? Another party breaks the rules in order to advance beyond the limitations of the restrictions.
And of course you have those who play the markeing game in effort to distort the meaning so as to dishonestly gain market share (thanks to customers that don't have the time or interest to sort out the crap)....
This idea of two roads, one a well maintained super highway and the other one of being a hillbilly dirt back road is rather limiting....
Third world countries are not having to deal with such petty bickering between telcos and land lines....
Instead they are developing wireless communication lines which really come down to technology less costly to create and maintain/replace than land lines. Technology is certainly either advanced enough or quickly getting there that such petty bickering should be or will become a moot issue.
With such the only needed agreed upon issue is that of connectivity. I pay a phone bill or a cable bill, etc...What I am paying for should be the access to communication and how well the company I go thru services me and costs shouild be the only competitive issue here.
If I want multimedia band width then I would figure to pay more than what is consider basic VOIP (which is replacing analog) but currently I'm paying maybe more for such reduced service (bell south phone and internet dial up).
"Tesco and Waitrose" is like Walmart and ... oh, that screws up my analogy, Walmart doesn't have any significant competitors ;).
Oh no... it's the future.
I seem to remember back when Napster was hitting its stride really well, analyst were saying that ISPs were going to reap the rewards because Napster was that golden application that was going to magically get everyone to sign up for high-speed Internet. Well, people did sign up in droves to use Napster, but as it turns out, ISPs wanted customers...but NOT the customers that actually used what they paid for. Yes, taking their cue from the insurance industry, ISPs want to sell every single person on the face of the earth an Internet connection, but they don't want everyone to actually use it, just pay for it.
And now they want the customer's to not only not use it, but they want the content providers to pay them as well!
It must be nice to have a business where everyone pays you, but you don't let them actually use your service! Now wait a minute, what exactly are we paying them for?
I work at a small WISP and it's brought up constantly to filter out traffic. I always say, we sold this person high-speed internet...and this is what they want to do with it, why should we filter it?
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
In an unregulated world you could then go next door to the unregulated competitor and get your material instead. It's in your regulated world that allows those with influence to control what everyone else gets to see and do.
If there is a market for bandwidth, then let the market solve this problem. Unfortunately, too many people on BOTH sides of the issue don't want the market involved.
Charging Google for their bandwidth usage is as silly as a State Department of Roads sending Walmart a bill for their customer's highway usage. That's because Google isn't the the user of the bandwidth.
Way back in the beginning of internet time, if things had coalesced so that individual users paid for their individual bandwidth use, there wouls be no problem today. There have been attempts to do this since, but the users have gotten too used to the flat fee structure to give it up. People now expect that their $29.95 ISP fee entitles them to unlimited bandwidth.
But what about the next level up? What about charging ISPs for their bandwidth usage? Many are also bandwidth providers themselves. If the rates for one router get too high, just route around it. You'll have actual competition between routes, backbones and networks, so prices would tend towards an equilibrium. Charge too much and see your customers drop away.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I agree. I am not sure that people who are against free markets look around much. My favourite example is China. It was a serious backwater under Mao who tried to make everyone equal and have his own nanny state with the disasterous Cultural Revolution (I'm leaving the deeper issues of power and the sharing of it in the Communist Party aside, as it only complicates this point and is only germane to the cause, not the results, of the Cultural Revolution). Under Deng Xiaoping, they opened up markets. The more freedom - and less regulation - they introduce to markets, the better off the Chinese people are. It isn't speculation - it is fact backed up by data.
Unless we think that America is some other universe that does not live under the same economic laws as the rest of the world, how can anyone think regulation actually improves the lot of anyone? I understand the logic behind that thought (it is a bit counter-intuitive that the best thing you can do for the people is sometimes nothing), but look actual world experience.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I think small government is a good thing. I think regulation usually ends up reducing freedom. If we look at the internet, the more regulation you have the less free it is. I accept that we DO need government, because anarchy simply does not exist and if there were no government people would form clans and tribes. Ultimately there always will be a form of government.
The debate is, should the FEDERAL government own the internet. This is the debate, should the United States Federal Government own and control the internet and all the information on it. If we use the roads metaphor, we libertarian minded folks are worried about over regulation of the public roads. If there is going to be a private internet, that is fine, I think corporations should have the ability to create private internets and charge extra. I'm concerned about the public internet.
The way we should be framing this debate, is, how can we maximize freedom, profitability, and integrity of technology. I think most of us all agree that a free internet is a profitable internet, and having technology of high integrity maintains this. I agree, the internet is a road, but how do we debate this to groups of people who see the internet as something else?
Then the "owners" of that infrastructure start yelling, "It's mine, mine, all mine. I'm a greedy little miser."
t m
Wow, I couldn't have said it better . It all about the money .
This proves the Telcos motives => http://www.newnetworks.com/Scandalreslease13006.h
I think a Co-op is needed, basically all ppl that want internet services get together and
start funding locally controlled metro LAN's .
It could be part Fiber, part Wireless, and part Ethernet .
It would not be controlled by any government, but instead by the community of users
with online voting on issues as to its deployment .
Ppl that have expertise in the field could donate their time for credits of usage .
Cost of implementing and maintaining and growing would be public knowledge, and it
would be a zero profit entity except for any ppl that actually became employees of it .
Offer internships to college students to work on it, and help make it happen .
A grass roots effort, but with over sight by experts that work in the are of expertise .
I have setup ppl with Wifi that share it with their neighbors securely .
I have setup ethernet in dorm rooms and apartments .
I worked for a company that implemented the first stages of Internet2 in public schools .
The dark fiber between cities could be purchased by the Co-op and thus cities start to
bridge the cost of long haul carriers .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Currently, Universities run the libraries, not the government. You can either go to a book store like Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a University library. There are public libraries but there are not run by the federal government, they are run by the state and local government.
Just because the US goverment is the most corrupt in the world, doesn't mean that it doesn't work fine in other countries.
Just to correct this statement. That is not how the world actually works. It's actually a bit more simple, America IS the world, and controls every government in the world, because all governments are connected. If you think that your government, most likely somewhere in Europe, is not sitting down and shaking hands with people from our government, you are wrong. Unless you are in North Korea, Russia, China, then you most likely are an American and don't know it yet.
I do not think it is the governments job to tell these guys that they can't have a two tiered internet. I think that they should be making sure that other ISPs are able to compete! In many parts, people can only choose between one or maybe two ISPs. If people could choose, they would dump those that won't provide them with a decent speed from their favorite search engine or whatnot, and give their personal information to the government.
Bill Thompson is wrong and so is Robert X. Cringley. Yes, I said Cringley is wrong. Here's why: This is EXACTLY what we need. Bellsouth and the other idiots should be allowed to do with "their networks" what they please. Sure, in the short term we'll suffer a little bit more.
/. readers' bills may be due to VOIP. But the average person is still spending huge amounts. I'm not talking about internet either just phone. And have you called them lately? THE PHONE COMPANY IS BACK! Somewhere in the early to mid '90s, Bellsouth suddenly "got nice". Everyone that dealt with customers was suddenly happy, helpful, NICE. Not any more. The old attitude is back. Bellsouth survived the breakup and survived WELL.
But think about the long term.
Will Google, Microsoft and the others pay Bellsouth's extortion? NO! Google is already building their own network and toying with ISPeeing in San Francisco. This attempted extortion would result in the "The Internet 2.0". A REPLACEMENT FOR BELLSOUTH. It's already started here in Lafayette too.
Going up against the big boys like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! or Amazon is stupid. Taking them all on? All well as your CUSTOMERS? That's just SUICIDE.
Bellsouth is long over due for a smack down. Remember the phone company pre-breakup? Is your phone bill really less today? Ok,
But it's time for a change now. A change that can not happen as long as there's nothing better. Why am I posting this from a Bellsouth DSL account? Because there's nothing better. I've tried Cox. Cable might be great where you live. But my first 2 WEEKS with cable had more outages than TWO YEARS of Bellsouth. Add to that less speed and DNS Servers not being able to resolve the websites that I surf daily, and you quickly learn to take it from Bellsouth and almost like it. And where is Fiber? Maybe next year.
Anyway what's the big deal? Bellsouth is already blocking port 25. In the name of "Stopping spam". And after over a year of that and TWENTY THOUSAND ADDITIONAL unsolicited messages in my Bellsouth email account, I still use my own mail server and GMail to send mail. In the short term we'll all be annoyed, but we'll hack through it anyway. In the long term, we'll get Internet without surcharges for not having TV or phone. I see a market for proxy servers and tunneling routers popping up soon!
So we need this. It'll be for the better in the long run. And anyway. You'll never stop it. The phone companies hold all the governments phone lines. And therefore, THEIR BALLS. Resistance is futile!
Anonymous Coward eyes the enormous coil of Cat5e cable and thinks about making a massively huge bulk order of solar powered WiFi/ethernet switches.
Nice post. Uhm, for a monkey, I mean. ;)
qz
... to me, anyway.
There's a conflict here between private companies, who should be allowed to structure their pricing and services any way they like, and the public good, which seems best served by undifferentiated transport. The author of the article believes that regulation is the right approach, that the government should tell ISPs how they can and cannot structure their business. I'm not so libertarian as to deny that government regulation is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to see it as a solution of last resort.
In this case, I don't think it's necessary at all. It seems to me that we already have this notion of a "common carrier", which is a carrier of information who is not responsible for the nature of the information transported. If we simply establish the rule that ISPs that attempt to favor one sort of traffic over another lose their common carrier status and become liable for the content that flows across their networks, I really doubt that many will want to take that route. Non-common carrier ISPs will be a target for copyright lawsuits, defamation lawsuits, criminal charges for child pornography, etc. Any ISP that wants to provide preferential access to specific content had better carefully control *all* the content.
Problem solved, IMO.
If only the world were that simple...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I doubt you are opposed to market regulation, but you may differ with the article's author about *how much* market regulation is a Good Thing. Without regulation how are externalities figured into the costs? Without regulation, how is the market protected from destruction via monopolies and cartels? Without regulation, how is outright banditry to be prevented?These represent "social value". So I expect you fundamentally agree with each other, with a minor dispute about where to draw certain lines.
It's also worth remembering that the tele-communication industry is just about as far from a "free market" as any economic activity could be. So the debate is not only parochial, it is irrelevant.
for the fact that the gov has allowed, and even encouraged, monopolies. For tiers to work and be fair, the gov. needs to disallow ALL monopolies. Right now, all network providers have some sort of monopoly that is killing true competition.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If one private library didn't have what you want, you could go to a competitor. If there was none that did, and you think there are a lot of people that would go to one that did, start your own. Freedom. And the US government is certainly not the most corrupt.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic.
Closer. But the premium lanes are still doing "best effort" delivery.
Here's one closer yet:
Think of what they're building as a multi-lane highway - with railroad tracks down the lanes. Each house gets a multi-lane driveway with a couple sidings running up the lanes.
Driveway/sidings come in several standard lane counts. Theaters, arenas, and factories have very wide ones, houses narrower ones (but still plenty wide), businesses, restaurants, and so on have something in between. The wider the driveway, the more you pay (in taxes or "driveway rent" to the "road company").
You can runs trains, cars, motorcycles, trolleys, people-movers, delivery busses, computerized delivery carts, you-name-it, on the pavement or the rails.
There's a fancy computerized signaling system telling every car which lanes it can use. Lots of switches tied in with it (and signaling BACK from the trains and such), so rail vehicles can be switched around as easily as cars make lane changes.
You've got two ways to use the road:
- You can pay a small toll and schedule a non-stop run or a scheduled stream of them (if there's capacity for it). The computers controlling the signaling system moves all the other traffic out of your way when it's your slot. If you got your reservation your trip is guaranteed. No stops, no traffic jams (for you), limited number and duration of red lights, getting you to your destination when promised.
- You can pay nothing (besides your flat-rate driveway rental) and use it like a regular road. Usually you get through. Sometimes there's a traffic jam and it takes a long while, or you have to make a detour. Once in a while it's so bad you give up and go back home. Big point: You have to guess how long the trip will take, and whether it's possible.
With this road in place you call a restaurant to cater your big party: The restaurant schedules a set of reserved road slots, cooks up the courses in his central professional kitchen, puts each on a little automated cart, and the cart brings it to your house: fresh, piping hot, and just in time to be served. Course after course, just on time, guaranteed to make it.
Meanwhile, the lane the caterer's carts were using is being used by lots of other traffic, mostly flat-rate, take-your-chances-with-traffic-jams traffic, whenever there wasn't a scheduled cart/train/bus/limousine/whatever using it.
THAT's the combined system.
What's the alternative?
You build a road AND a railroad. Separately. Each with its own infrastructure. This costs a LOT more than building one system, so its total capacity is smaller for a given investment. But even worse: Cars only get to use the road, trains only get to use the railroad - cars can't run down the rails when there are no trains in sight. So much of the capacity is unused.
Maybe you rented a siding from the railroad company. If so, you only get their trains. You don't get catered parties unless you buy them from the railroad company. Your local restaurant might try that stunt using waters on motorcycles - but he can't guarantee the main course won't be caught in a traffic jam while the soup gets cold. Some shippers might use trains to haul containers cross-country and transfer them to truck beds - but once they're on the trucks they're back in the traffic jams.
THAT's the "no favorites" scenario some posters keep whining for.
The problem is that some internet services, like streaming audio and video or VoIP, REQUIRE guaranteed bandwidth, limits on packet latency, and/or delivery reliability ("Quality of Service" (QoS)). Others (like file transfer) don't - "best effort" is good enough. If you want to serve both on the same net and do a good job of it, you have to give some packets preference over others.
If some packets ar
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Verizon would scream bloody murder if you messed with their tax breaks. Remove all those incentives? They'll practically stop upgrading or expanding their networks.
Not only did we fund still paying for it on a regular basis.
If you truly want to have a "free" market, cut out any and all incentives from the (federal, state, local) government. Lets see how well the market works then.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Well what about the converse? That public library refuses to carry certain religious books because they are about religion and unless they can carry every single possible religion out there, with every single book; than technically they can't carry any of them.
"non-US countries"
As opposed to all those other US-countries?
net*split*
On a more serious note, I think the Internet is fine as it is. Would you not agree that as it is, the internet is a very succesful thing? Why make such radical changes to it that could shake it up?
Oh, whoops, this is capitalism.
"Previous attempts to set up a two-tier net have failed"
Does this say anything to anyone else? Yeah yeah, it's probably like people saying to the Wright brothers, "Previous attempts at flying have failed," but this is something of a totally different scope and I think that failure is imminent.
The internet itself is a revolutionary public communications system. It is my opinion that the internet is far greater than the postal service or the telephone service. Not so much from a technical standpoint, but the fact is, so much of it is user-created and comes at little expense. It's a public form of communication, and it should be left as it is for the good of the people.
What if IPV6 was adopted to its' fullest potential? Wouldn't/couldn't that have an impact IF the networks were open to all? ISP's (a so-called on-ramp) in my mind only came about because of scarcity of addresses and the use of NAT! What if phone service was considered the only pre-requisite to internet access ('ala, common carrier)? If everything that could be accessed via its' own unique IPadd was internet aware then that would surely disintegrate the integrators (ISP's)
Just a tought....
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
... it ends with the USA losing its technological edge
The Raven
Do you think the slave trade should be started up again?
There is certainly plenty of both supply and demand, enough to make the market in slaves viable.
Ditto the market in sex slaves.
Ditto the market in child sex slaves.
If you don't believe these markets should exist, you do believe in market regulation. It's just a question of how much regulation you want.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
If the networks you're using aren't what is your ideal image of it, create your own. - I'm pretty sure nations like China will soon introduce their own version of the Internet. They're not too happy about the idea that the US still dominates it.
This tiering idea has many good aspects, if you have a certain corporate stand to look at it. Of course, we would then have these corporation owned networks, as well the good old Internet.
I think we already have a tiered system, alternative root nameservers and such, but they lack recognition from ISPs. It would be interesting to create this type of a system and gain public interest towards it. Gradually operators may want to start to support that network of rootservers as well. - I think there are many misconceptions about this issue. It is like intranet, very large intranet. Like when Google now plans their own version of the Internet, to cut bandwidth costs.
Globally, I do not see this tiered system to cause any threat to this system we now have. - Let us consider this free service, and the rest will be content-delivery channels for corporations - or whatever they want to with them.
I have a 3G phone. It can do IP, and run Java.
I never use these facilities.
Because it's in a "walled garden". You want to send data to my phone you have to pay big bucks.
Thus the content is junk, high priced sports clips, stupidly expensive music videos, and pretty much nothing else, not even proper emaill.
The big money in mobile phones is ring tones. Think that one though, long ago you used to be able to buy sets of sound effects for your PC, and you could set the noises to be FX from Star Trek, and have windows opening sound like the doors, etc.
That's the future of the tiered internet, where DRM will charge you $10 to download the opening music of windows. There won't be anything else.
The dream scenario for telcos is a sort of balkanisation. For tiering to work you've got to have cross ISP tariffs, like we did with copper line telephone calls.
Then they charge each other, plus a service fee for colleting the money on "our" behalf. Any ISP that doesn't charge finds that it has to pay other telcos to carry traffic, so all have to follow.
The RIAA and MPAA will love it, since of course high prices = high quality downloads. So will Apple, that's why they've remained silent. Also why the BBC article cited will be the last. There only difference between the BBC and the PR department of Apple is that Apple's PR statements are bounded by advertising laws.
In ancy case, avoid 3G phones, trust me on this.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
Very nice.
Now you have your liberflame off your chest perhaps you will take the trouble to read the article or if thats too much work my essay which is slightly shorter.
The issue here is not government introducing regulations to impose a two tier Internet, the issue is whether the government will allow large carriers to leverage their defacto local monopolies to extract rents from third parties in return for access to their subscribers.
'Kenny boy' Lay and his friends at Enron managed to defraud California out of about $15 billion when they persuaded Cheney to tell the regulators to look the other way. The carriers probably thought they could get the same deal.
As I point out in the essay I do not think it is exactly likely that Congress are going to support the carriers over Google. Legislation is mostly written by 20 year old staffers who spend most of their research time using Google. Thy can be expected to explain to the legislators that allowing this sort of thing would not be a smart move.
Two tier pricing could well make sense if the settlements bought a lot of extra bandwidth for a short time. It would be nice to have home videoconferencing that is actually worth something. But what the carriers are demanding at this point is money for what their subscribers are already paying for which ain't going to fly.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I agree in part, but you must be careful how you define a free market. A market ceases to be free if any one entity (or a close-knit group) effectively has control of the market. This is true whether that entity is a government or a business. The role of government is not to take control of markets but merely to prevent anyone else from taking too much control. This is the purpose of regulation.
In situations where some level of monopoly is difficult to avoid, such as utilities, the government itself provides the counter-balance to the commercial entity by limiting the actions that the company can take. This is not perfect since it depends on intelligent regulation by the government, but it is better that having a powerful company with little or no check on that power.
Ignore for a second the fact that it's mainly the Telcos who are pushing for non-neturality... Imagine that you're the cable company and you're considering whether to invest a lot of money in taking your broadband internet service from 5 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s. If you do so, one of the main things your subscribers will do is watch high-quality video, including pay-per-view, over the Internet and they will stop buying your own pay-per-view service and may even cut back on their cable TV service. So, the total cost is the price of the roll-out plus the resulting drop in your video revenue. Will you do it?
The answer depend on whether you can get enough new revenue from the service to pay for that total cost. If you are limited to getting the revenue from your subscribers, will that affect your decision? After all, the more you charge, the fewer people will want the higher-speed service.
Telephone companies are in the same boat as cable providers -- they want to use the network to roll-out television as well.
Also recognize that video is much less tolerant of network problems than web-browsing -- if you miss a video packet, the video quality diminishes. If you miss an HTTP packet, it'll get retransmitted and you won't even notice. There has to be some way of distinguishing who gets the higher quality. If it's free, then everybody will mark their traffic as high priority and nobody will get priority.
Just because the US goverment is the most corrupt in the world, doesn't mean that it doesn't work fine in other countries.
Troll much? But seriously you havn't traveled much have you?
Sorry, this is just ignorant.
Government funded projects are just things that we need that we pay for collectively, without using the market. The rest of the stuff we need we leave up to each individual to decide to fund.
The reason that every advanced society splits its spending like this is because markets fail to provide some things that we need at all, provide others inadequately, while working very well to provide a decent supply of many other things. The state has to coerce us to pay for many things we need, because if it didn't, we wouldn't get them. It's no argument to say that we should leave everything up to the market, because market failure is a reality -- it is a reality because the very same reasons that make markets wonderful at providing some things we need, makes them hopeless at providing others. If we left everything up to individual consumption decisions (the market), life would be nasty, brutish and short.
That's what the guy in TFA means when he calls himself a "market socialist". He's also right.
Anyone who doesn't understand market failure has no place in a discussion about the organization of modern society. Sadly, that set includes most Libertarians.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
I just can't farthom a life devoid of internet - now that I have got used to it. And it would be a big injustice if one or a few of the people decide how the internet needs to be controlled. Definitely what ever be the USA's point of view, it pales against what is really at stake here.
For one, any body who controls internet will be controlling this powerful news medium. And the US has been guilty of spreading rumours to further its needs in the international arena in the past.
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Why do they get to charge anyone twice?? As a consumer, I pay money to have a subscription. That guarantees, to some extent, up and down speed. Same for anyone. There is, in a nutshell, no real distinction from providers and consumers - that is the beauty of the internet. Google, etc., pay huge fees on their end to some server farm(s) who then pay it to network owners. From the perspective of the network owners, they are consumers with very large accounts. But nothing more. Presumably indirectly, since they (probably) pay indirectly through server farms. So to me this is total BS because basically they are just adding another layer of payment. It seems like a total ripoff!!
I guess I can see that being as there are several separate networks, they have to talk to eachother, and so you could, to some extent, say that google is getting a free ride. But even there, it is total lies because the consumer who requests google is paying - and should that not be enough? Do the various large networks not charge fees already to carry eachother's traffic (e.g., in case "3" where they are acting purely as a transmission line because neither the content provider or the content receiver is directly their subscriber)?
Could someone please explain to me what this new "non-neutrality fee" would pay for??? I see no way around this being a way that they are basically making up a way to charge more money for something they ALREADY get paid directly or indirectly to do.
Tesco has a growing virtual monopoly in the UK - read about it on the link.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I read a long article about this not too long ago - http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673
I thought he made a good point of why having a "stupid" internet has been good for everyone. Many of the services we have now may never have developed had big business gotten complete control of the net. And think about all those little extra charges you pay on your phone bill. I don't watch TV, but I think it's similar with cable. Now imagine the the dozens of things you'll be charged for just to browse for a few hours. There is a lot of demand for internet services. They aren't going to charge lightly.
Public libraries are funded by municipal governments through tax dolars, university libraries are funded by the universities (and their corporate sponsors), religious schools have libraries that they fund. Each type of library is free to buy or not buy whatever books they want. Governments may not want books critical of their policies, religious schools may not want books with sexual content, univerisities may keep out books that their corporate sponsors don't like.
If the government regulated libraries, then all libraries, regardless of their funding, would have to comply with the same government regulations.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
An easier answer is to end government protection of cable and telco companies by opening up the public servitude to more than a single telco and a single cable company. This eliminates the monopoly abuse problem and removes the need for most regulations. The incumbents are still beholden to the public for the protection granted in the past and should be held to the promisses they made to gain that protection, even as new companies build around them to provide better service.
No further control is required to provide the public with firs rate service.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
To choose a less depressing example: stealing candy from babies is certainly a crime and ought to be forbidden in a decent society, but to make such a law would not naturally be understood as a bid to regulate trade in lollipops.
It should stay neutral because otherwise you get get a real zap whenever you plug in an RJ45...
Is Verizon asking for double tier pricing because they are so incompetent that they can't make money off millions of Internet subscribers or because they are looking to recover costs from other operations ie subsidizing US Government ordered wire taps?
If the US Government wire taps are becoming such a burden, then Uncle Sugar needs to start ponying up.
It's similar to the tiered health care system as well (USA as an example)
The government provides some basic services to get buy, but you should pay for more to get more.
Compare to Canada where a single health tier exists. It essentially splits the cost of health care across everyone.
Roads are just the same. They provide a basic service, and if you want something a bit more, you should be willing to pay. How is it different from a toll highway? You _could_ save money and take other roads but you want to use a toll route, and you help paying for that road. The only difference is that the lanes that you're paying for (or not paying for) are right beside the other ones you're driving on.
There's nothing wrong with this! The only thing to watch is that the services provided free from the government don't degrade and always meet a minimum level. As soon as you can't even get some basic medical services or things everyone needs included, then you have problems.
Now taking this back to networked services... If the minimum level of broadband is reasonable for many (lets think 16KB/s ISDN is fair for a single user or small house with 2-3 people) and this is what they need, why provide them a 6Mbit/s cable pipe?A tiered system is not bad, as long as the minimum level is reasonable to those who use it. Many houses I visit use the Internet to check their mail, occasionally transfer a file to the office, and do online banking- none of which would make too much of a difference to have 6Mbit or a half-Mbit. So why should everyone pay for 3Mbit when there are TONS of users who only use half?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
And here, I was thinking we were slowly moving toward free internet for all.
This seems sound reasoning to me. As a libertarian, I'm loath to rely on regulatory solutions. Can anyone think or a reason why we couldn't just start encrypting all our packets, or why regulation would be a better solution?
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Incite and flee.
On the other hand, they may be somewhat delusional as to the real value of what they purport to be intending to provide. Fast access to the net is not a necessity for home users. In truth, neither a land phone line nor a cable connection with or without broadband is a real necessity. When my last marriage fell apart, I was on a shoestring for about 18 months. To be sure I had power, water and food, I dumped the cable. Had to dump the phone in favor of a cell with pay as you go cards. Tried to save the phone but Sprint wouldn't negotiate a payment plan so I could retire the whopping long-distance charge my ex had quietly run up. I found that I did not really miss the tube and that the cell was more reliable and cheaper. I'll always be grateful to Sprint's "customer service" reps for being such intransigent, "all or nothing" assholes.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Basically it's a balancing act. The US lawmakers want to decide if more money is to be had from the telcos or from the content providers. The balance in the long term is for the content providers. Specially if they are international content providers.
Has anyone stopped to think what would happen if that idea suddenly became law, and it was adopted all over the world? Well, the German telcos, for example, would tax Google to allow a moderately good access. And then the French, and the Chinese, the Zambian, you name it. Everybody would partake into Google profits, and then Yahoo, and Amazon, Ebay, etc. The US would be taxed from foreign telcos. Of course that would be a two-way street, but the balance I think would be bad for the US, as it has so many content providers.
I don't think US lawmakers would find the idea of US companies' profits being siphoned away to China, for example (think about how much the chinese could charge, if rates are by user) at all funny. So I don't think this is going to become law, ever.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You seem to have failed to note the difference between regulated markets and communism. Fact is, there are no totally free markets, even in the U.S. The debate is over where to draw the line. Nobody is calling for a moritorium on regulation, and frankly I'm surprised there are people over the age of 14 who openly proclaim they believe totally elimination of regulation is honestly a panacea.
// This is not a sig.
FACT: Any Government regulation of a free market is socialism.
I challenge you to show me one nation that is not a market socialist: namely, show me one nation that doesn't regulate its markets.
Go ahead. Show me.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you discredit Libertarianism. Have a nice day.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What competitor ? We are talking about libraries here, not bookstores. Libraries aren't business ventures and don't have competition in the "free market" sense.
If, on the other hand, you were talking about going to a nearby bookstore to buy the book that the library doesn't have, you can do that right now. So what is the problem ?
Actually, what the library regulations do is allow even people who can't afford to buy books to read them. Removing public libraries would lead to even more widespread ignorance and ignorance has always quickly lead to tyranny since it removes all obstacles from its path. So if you don't want everything in your life to be regulated by some obsessive-compulsive nutcase dictator, support public libraries - once they go, nothing can save you anymore.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In fact, technology is only one small part of business. American firms do well mostly because they have access to capital and freedom to use it----whereas, in many other places, capital is scarce and regulation abounds.
Everytime I sign up for an unlimited service, I end up paying more than for a limited service. Let them charge per bit per mile and make it dirt cheap. Then companies that want to hog bandwidth with streaming video can pay a premium, while I can check my email and download patches for a lot less than my current DSL bill. Quit being a bunch of reactionaries, and pay your fair share. You'll probably find out you're being overcharged currently. Of course the overhead is a pain in the ass with this solution, but it's a simple example to illustrate my point, and to show you reactionaries that you're thinking about the problem the wrong way.
Vote for Pedro
That video - that's some messed up stuff.
In those areas where you have more than one vendor, you already have tiered level access. Telewest, BT and other last mile Internet access suppliers provide a range of download rates from 64 Kbits (ISDN), 512 Mbits (ADSL) to 6 Mbits (cable), with each having a different monthly rate (15 pounds to 40 pounds).
Some people just want to read their E-mail once a week, while others are playing online multiplayer games every minute they aren't at work. Forcing one set of users to subsidize another isn't fair, nor is charging someone to use services they never use.
The real issue is the fact that once you have already paid for a permanent broadband connection, the ISP is going to try and bill you a different rate based on the application layer content of TCP/IP packets.
If the ISP does this, then someone could easily spam your computer with junk packets containing the relevant application data headers, and hit you with an expensive bill.
If ISP's want to charge extra for certain services, then they should offer them as optional services using their servers.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I say outlaw 55mph speed limits. You ought to be able to go at least 70 or so on some of the 55mph roads here, and about 90 on the 70mph interstates.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Really, I was just soapboxing for a minute there.
I can't think of any other reason why practially everything he writes these days seems to make frontpage. His column is consistently either ill-informed, or alternatively just rehashes the news, which has been reported everywhere else on the 'net about 1 month earlier.
Hahahaha ... you're joking, right? I can't believe there are people out there still dumb enough to believe in free markets. There are very few goods for which unregulated markets will work - because of inelasticities in demand, supply, etc., almost every market out there is regulated, to various degrees.
...
... okay fantasy man ...
Remember the times when markets were free and things were great? When kids worked as soon as they could, when there was no product liability, when monopolies eventually came to dominate many industries?
And what about advertising? That is REALLY so free market. Let's manipulate the psychology of consumers to get them to purchase things they don't even need. Because even if its artificially generated demand, hell, its still demand.
I wish medicine and health care in US was even MORE free market. Then we could forfeit our entire life savings at the moment we contracted any kind of disease.
And those poor Europeans, with their long vacations, free education, paternity/materinity leave, affordable medicine, and reasonable income distributions would envy us even more
yea
That argument is exactly why there is such a thing as public services. We don't want Tesco roads, where you can only drive if you have a Tesco loyalty card etc. Such things as roads, power supply, telephone lines (and internet), water supply etc should be public services, paid over the tax.
we'll just build another Fidonet or some sub-signal private network within the ubernet. You can't keep us down when we're the ones that maintain the technology. Foolish fat-cats.
You havn't checked out the big unions latly have you? But seriously whenever people band together to protect themselves they form a government of a kind. Its just that as a government or union or corperation gets larger it generally gets out of the hands of the individual and becomes an entity in itself.. Your cells were once individuals life forms that banded together for protection. They do stand a better chance of survival even now, but you don't give a damn about them and would gladly throw a good percentage of them to the wolves to save yourself. Your government would do the same, though statistically you stand a better chance of survival with them than you would in an anarchist society.
Definitely flamebait, I agree with the mods on this.
However, even as flamebait, people should at least get most of their facts correct.
AFAIK, Europe has had HDTV (As in PAL Plus) for around 8 years now, with rather a large amount of channels actually broadcasting it.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Only 45 more stacks of Runecloth and the Net will then be of 'Friendly' faction to me!!
And they said zombies weren't real!
Am I to assume that you are "[not] a deep thinker" who is making a "ridiculous statement"?
Most likely you just assume the free market is the holy provider of all goodness, global joy and fluffy kittens, because that's the overriding ethos (or propaganda? depending on how you look at it) espoused in the west.
All this rather ignores the fact that (a) the world quite patently isn't all joyful and full of fluffy kittens, and (b) even if it was, we quite patently DO NOT have a free market system in operation, anywhere!
Don't assume I'm bashing the free market and/or supporting market socialism. I wouldn't claim to know the best solution. But, I would say that it's an issue that requires "deep thinking", which you display none of, only unquestioning acceptance of the "free market rules" line, which has never been backed up with decent supporting evidence by it's proponents.
why not build into the tcp/ip protocol packets marked voip and streaming get priority. No need to pay extra for it. All the other packets out there would just be on a best effort basis.
Applications that handle streaming and voip would create these packets with the signature on it identifying that it was this kind of packet.
It's just built into every router/switch onto the internet. It would require a major upgrade for it. But that would work.
Now what would stop say a p2p client from spoofing it's packets to say they are voip packets? That's where it gets tricky because then all of a sudden you have all these clients saying they are voip packets just so that they get priority. And of course all the routers and switches will automatically push them through ahead of the other packets that are for best efforts only.
My Gawd WTF...