Senate Bill To Prohibit Extra Charges For Internet

xoip writes "A report in the The New York Times states that 'Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, will introduce new legislation today that would prohibit Internet network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring some content providers over others.'"

Comments

It's a shame

[jcostantino]

What a shame that laws need to be created to keep companies from acting like greedy assholes.

Re:It's a shame

[Divide By Zero]

Companies ARE greedy assholes. A corporation is a legal construct with the rights of a person and none of the morality, a construct whose sole purpose is to make money.

The shame is how often they get away with screwing over real people by having deep pockets to buy legislators and outlast plaintiffs in court. I haven't read the bill, but I'm glad somebody with some power is looking at this critically.

Re:It's a shame

[lbrandy]

What a shame that laws need to be created to keep companies from acting like greedy assholes.

Allow me to welcome you to humanity. You must be new here.

Guess what else we have laws to prevent? Theft! Fraud! Beating! Murder! Rape! Isn't it sad that we, as a species, actually need to have laws that enforce all these things. Man, what a horrible creature we are.

Re:It's a shame

[ROOK*CA]

a construct whose sole purpose is to make money

Pretty much the same are you're run of the mill Gen X'er, huh?

Re:It's a shame

[josecanuc]

Laws don't prevent anything from happening. They just give us a method of recourse that fits within our societal structure (rule of law). If murder is illegal, a law doesn't stop someone from dying when shot in the face. But does allow a regular structure for dealing with someone who commits murder.

A case can be made that laws can have a deterrent effect, but it still doesn't change the fact that a law (words on paper) has zero physical power over anyone in real time.

Re:It's a shame

[zxnos]

A corporation is a legal construct with the rights of a person and none of the morality, a construct whose sole purpose is to make money.

eh? my wife has a corporation and i have a corporation so we can safely run our home businesses. the idea behind it, the sole reason in my eyes, is that should i get sued for some reason i dont lose my car, house, watch, cat, dog, retirement savings, etc. and people will sue for anything. ever heard of the 'shotgun approach'? if it wasnt for people suing for the smallest things we might not need such a construct.

the problem is morally bankrupt people. capitalism, socialism, communism all fail becuase of bad people.

Re:It's a shame

[Kadin2048]

Sure, but in this case the corporation is solely controlled by you, so it's limited by your morality. (Assumedly.) The corporation -- the legal construct itself -- doesn't have any sense of morality, or anything else.

It's when corporations are so big that they're not really controlled by a single individual that their true amorality becomes obvious. Everyone has a very slightly different idea of what is right and wrong, so unless you have one person who is in a position to pull the plug and say "no, that's wrong -- stop," it will basically do anything that's profitable. Unless the action is so grievously immoral that everyone involved in the company's operation can agree that it's wrong. But that rarely happens.

It's really just semantics whether it's the people or the legal construct that are amoral; the point is that the construct gives people the framework necessary to comfortably check their morality at the door.

That said, I don't have a problem with it -- I think that corporations are a useful barometer in society of our incentive structure. When you start to see corporations doing sick things, it's time to revisit your incentive and punishment systems and decide how to fix the basic problem: why is doing bad things more profitable than doing good things?

So while I'm not normally a fan of big government, I could support a piece of legislation like this, because it fixes the playing field to produce fewer undesirable outcomes. That's the right of a capitalist democracy; if you can't do that, what's the point in even having a government.

Re:It's a shame

[Valdrax]

I'm pointing out that free markets can't solve the problem. You're pointing out that free markets didn't create the problem. You're right, but you haven't disproved what I said with that. You've just played the old card of "your side was wrong too."

Now, for the audience, please explain how a free market can solve this problem now that it's been created if given a chance. We don't live in blank slate world where the free market could've somehow avoided the problem of physical exclusivity in the first place, so you're going to have to explain how it can fix the world we do have.

Don't forget to account for the difference in costs between the established monopoly and free market competitors in gaining new customers (assuming of course that the monopoly pursues its rational self-interest and denies the competitors access to its infrastructure).

Re:It's a shame

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Except you didn't read the contract you signed with your pipeline, which probably had a clause in it that said what they were really agreeing to was up to 600 gallons/hour of water in and up to 75/hour out...at least that's how the cable companies do it with their broadband subscriptions, so you or I can't sue them because we couldn't hit the max advertised download speed during peak time. I'm not saying this is a "good" practice, just that your metaphor is a bit flawed.

Re:It's a shame

[causality]

I think the point was that instead of screwing us, a large company took an action that could threaten other large companies and was smacked down.

As opposed to taking an action that could threaten our rights (i.e. those of the general public, the DMCA being a great example) etc., because when companies do this they are rarely if ever smacked down.

Re:It's a shame

[lynx_user_abroad]

[T]he cable companies own the fiber.

Yes they do. But they do not generally own the complete right-of-way where the fiber lies. That's the part the carriers want to gloss-over.

Proponents of network neutrality should remember that fiber (copper, cable, wireless packets, etc) are being run across right-of-way (poles, roadsides, or spectrum) which belong to the public. The public, therefore, should demand a right to a portion of the bandwidth that right-of-way makes available, or the public should exercise it's right to terminate those carrier access rights.

The carriers are (as of right now successfully) arguing that the "public access" portion of that bandwidth is just 56Kbps. They argue this on the basis that only voiceband connectivity is provided-for under Universal Service Fees funding.

So, do you want to pay a Universal Service Fee tax in order to fund broadband deployment out to every farm in Nebraska, or are you willing to cede everything above 56Kbps to the whims of the carrier shareholders?

Your choice.

Re:It's a shame

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Well, that may be true of some folks, but, it is a very GOOD thing to do, if you want to work in the US, and keep more of your hard earned $$'s.

Uh, yeah, that's the very definition of being morally bankrupt. Taking something (working in the United States with a government-supported fiat currency, infrastructure, and economy) and not being willing to pay for it. But yes- from the point of view of greed being good, I completely agree.

For example, an "S" corporation, which I have formed, allows you to write off a ton of things used in the course of your business. Also, you can more easily contract to other corporations rather than just try to 1099 with them. They feel much more cozy about a corp to corp contract....not as easily sued for not paying benefits, etc.

Funny, I'd call that second a major downside- that it allows other corporations to take advantage of you...

Also, you can keep from paying the insipid FICA and medicare on all of your earnings. You pay yourself a small, 'reasonable' salary....and you pay employement taxes on them...grant it you do have to pay both halves...employer ane employee, but, only on what you pay yourself as salary. The rest of the money is just taxed normally to you as if falls through the corporation to you in the end....

Yep. Thus removing the money the government needs to protect you from such things as foreign invasion.

Say your billing for $75/hr...that's approx. $140,400/yr. the corp collects on you. So, pay yourself a salary of maybe $35K...employment taxes only apply to that $35K.

Yep, thus freeloading off of other taxpayers for the rest of your taxes.

This is simplified of course...but, you look at that, and all the things you can write off...it adds up in a big way. And if you are incorporated, is all perfectly legal...just keep good records, and be honest. It is really about the only way today in the US, that you can earn decent money, and not have to pay it all back in the legislated wealth redistribution system...managed by the IRS.

Yep- you get to take advantage of all the benefits of that "legislated wealth redistribution system" for things like roads, not having to worry about Mexican Hordes invading and knocking down your house, etc, without paying for your fair share of it. Can you say "Freeloader"? I agree it's completely legal- that's not the point. The point is that becoming a corporation allows you to avoid your responsibility as a citizen of the United States- not just for lawsuits, but for a lot of other stuff as well.

I guess you could point out that you didn't ask to live here and be a citizen- many people didn't, they were just born here- but once you start using public infrastructure to earn money, heck, once you start relying on the value of a stable money supply to earn money, society has a right to request payment for that service. We do so through taxes.

So I guess, in conclusion, I'd like to say thank you for proving my point- that incorporating just allows people to skip out on being personally responsible for what they do.

RE

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Because you know when the gov't gets involved... It can't get screwed up...

Pay For Play

[ExE122]

As soon as I read the headline I thought of the payola scandals of radio in the 50's. Its the same idea with this only instead of the radio, we're talking internet.

I really like Wyden's beliefs on fair competition in the internet. Back in 2004, he put a ban on unfair internet taxes. IMO This legislation looks like it will help out a lot of smaller companies compete with the big corporations who would gladly try to team up with ISPs monopolize e-commerce.

I wonder how this legislation would apply to AOL's proposed email tax (I gotta watch out what I say, my comments on that were met harshly).

I personally hope this makes it through congress. The internet is a free service, as is the radio, and I believe it should have some sense of neutrality. I'm very interested to hear how this bill will hold up. I'm sure if we keep a close eye on it, we'll be finding out a lot about where some of our senators are getting their "funding" from.

Re:Pay For Play

[mrchaotica]

Let me explain to you how the Internet works: I subscribe to an ISP, and I pay a monthly fee to connect. The host I'm trying to connect to also subscribes to an ISP, and pays a monthly fee to connect. Now, here's the complicated part: our ISPs have an agreement with each other (called a "peering agreement") that they'll accept connections and transfer packets between their two networks, for free. That's a fundamental mechanism of the Internet, and in fact what makes it an "internetwork" instead of just a "network."

Now that you understand that, I'll explain what's going on here with Bellsouth et al.: They're trying to (effectively) end the peering agreement by charging both ends of the connection, instead of just their own subscribers. The net result is that everyone gets charged twice for the same service. If you can't see how that's unfair, and more importantly, harmful to the design of the Internet itself, you must not be paying attention.

Makes me glad I voted for him

[PIPBoy3000]

The kicker, of course is this:

The bill more squarely confronts the concerns of consumer groups than a broader bill proposed last summer by Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, which would prevent Internet service providers from blocking access, but would largely leave network operators to manage their own networks, including potentially charging content providers for a premium service.

That bill has won support from 16 Republican senators.

This very much seems like a Republican/Democrat stand-off. Are you pro-business or pro-consumer?

Fantastic!

[vslashg]

This is really good news, because it gives us an actual target for our energies about this issue. Most readers here understand why an anti-competitive tiered Internet is such a bad idea. We've all bitched about it on previous postings of this issue.

Please, please, if you're an American citizen and care about this issue, call, email, write, or telegram your senators in support of this bill. We need them to know they have constituents who care about keeping the Internet a powerful communications tool for all.

Certainly such an important issue is worth the effort?

Re:Fantastic!

[conJunk]

i'm not usually an 'email-your-congress-critter' sort, but your pleas were heard. here's the text of the emails i sent to my (CA) senators:

Hi. I'm writing about Sen. Ron Wyden's Internet Non-Discrimination Act, which I've read is expected to be introduced today. I support this measure in the strongest possible terms. Prohibiting service providers from engaging in pay-to-play shemes with content providers is the only sensible course. Computer technology has at its core an idealized notion of equality and accessibility, and allowing companies to add increased charges for the deliver of certain content is not only anti competitive, but locks many users out of equal use of the internet. If pay-to-play schemes like those Sen. Wyden's bill aims to prohibit had been in place in 2000, the internet certainly would not be where it is today, and companies like Amazon and Google, which are now household names, may have never been able to get off the ground.

Good

[shoptroll]

Good that Washington is taking quick action on this. Well quick action isn't necessary the right term, but at least someone is trying to get the legislation down sooner than later.

Honestly, I don't see a good reason for the telcos to be doing this. It just seems to me that they are trying to find ways to profit while they lose business (internet being a more prevalent communication medium than your standard telephone). If you're late to the party, that's your problem.

Telco companies seem to be trying to undermine the very principles of the internet lately. With having the FCC ruling last year that allowed them to not share their lines, and now seeing this, I've become very wary of anything the telecommunications industry is trying to do lately.

Re:Good

[drinkypoo]

With having the FCC ruling last year that allowed them to not share their lines, and now seeing this, I've become very wary of anything the telecommunications industry is trying to do lately.

This is all because the telcos are on a sinking ship. Wired communications (for anything other than long-haul, high-bandwidth) are on their way out. The simple fact is that some bigass high-gain omni antennas (which can be built cheaply if you're on a small budget) are a fuck of a lot cheaper than a bunch of poles with bundles of copper wire on them or, god forbid, a bunch of poles with fiber on them, and a bunch of equipment to split that fiber out to subscribers.

By the time the cable companies have gotten fiber to the door, you'll be able to get just as much bandwidth as they'll give you wirelessly. Sure the fiber can handle more traffic, but it's not like they're going to let you saturate it anyway. You'll have a higher equipment cost, but a lower recurring cost, given that the wireless system both costs less to build, and costs less to maintain.

We the people built the majority of the telephone infrastructure through subsidies. That's one of my two objections to all this. The other is that in many areas they currently have a monopoly on internet access, so it's not possible to go to another provider. Hell, in a lot of places, you can't even get satellite due to having a hill in the way. Regardless, wired communications are going to be restricted to high-demand before much longer.

Bribed?

[TubeSteak]

Did this guy not get his bribe?

My guess is that the TelCos either didn't have time to write up 'model' legislation for some Senator to introduce, or they realized that the country isn't ready yet... and this Democrat from Oregon just fuxxored their long term plans.

Listen to see what your Senator says about this Bill. Then you'll know whose interests he's looking out for.

I wonder

[GmAz]

I wonder what else is attached to this bill. This will probably pass, but what other things are tacked into it in the small print.

Say goodbye to QoS on the Internet

[cfulmer]

TCP/IP has a native capacity to distinguish between different types of traffic so network routers can treat different packets differently. This is a good thing -- some applications are much more real-time intensive than other applications.

Unfortunately, the Quality of Service flags are generally ignored on the public Internet. The reason why isn't particularly hard to discern: there's no way to agree on what should have priority and what shouldn't. If everybody used it in the current environment, then every content provider would flag its own traffic as being high-priority. And, as a result, nothing would be high priority since it's a relative concept.

Money is the way to separate the wheat from the chaff: if your content actually depends on a high QoS, then you should pay for that. If your content doesn't, then there's no reason to.

mod parent up please!!!!!

[porkThreeWays]

Everyone, please understand how extremely easy it is to contact your senator to voice your opinion regarding this. http://www.senate.gov/

In the upper right hand corner is a "Senator search". Click the state you live in and your two senators websites will be listed. Most (if not all) of the senators are available via email. Voice your opinion in a calm professional manner.

Too many people sit back and watch democracy happen around them. If every single person who read this story voiced their opinion about it to their senator (whether they agree or disagree), there would be tens of thousands of emails (as oppossed to maybe a couple hundred).

It's just to easy to voice your opinion to your senator these days. You would be throwing away a huge opportunity if you didn't.

Diffserv and Intserv

[jd]

Differentiated Services (the ability to route packets differently according to type of service) and Integrated Services (the ability to group packets together according to the relationships between types of service) are theoretically unaffected by this. As most QoS is done through Diffserv/Intserv classification and not by source or destination, it follows QoS should be unaffected.

• HTB, HFSC, SFSC, CBQ, etc, predominantly use the type of service and not the endpoints as the basis for packet classification. You can specify endpoints, and the LARTC HOWTO has examples on how to do this, but it's not an exceptionally useful application of the technology.
  
• RED, GREEN, BLUE, BLACK and the other packet-dropping schemes either use type of service or select packets at random. It makes no sense to drop packets more for one source than another, except as a DoS jamming scheme.
  
• ECN, FECN and BECN use endpoints to cap excessive streams and are only impacted in that the law would prohibit anti-competitive abuse of these algorithms.
  
• It might make buying RSVP'ed bandwidth illegal, but RSVP doesn't scale over the Internet and should only be used on local networks anyway. Besides which, RSVP is probably the least-known of all QoS technologies.
  
• If backbone providers kick up too much of a fuss, intermediate providers will likely switch to a mesh-based Internet, which could kill off the backbone entirely. The backbone will only endure so long as it can provide better service for less money than a mesh would. With copious amounts of dark fiber around for relatively little money, repressive ISPs are a short-term threat to America but a long-term threat to themselves.
  

Personally, I would not do this through the specific legislation suggested. Crippling the Internet by holding IP traffic hostage is clearly bad for the economy. The Supreme Court has already ruled the Government can seize property via Eminent Domain on economic grounds. If one or two States were to seize the pipelines and routers of beligerant backbone providers and sell them at discount to ones that are more open, the arguments would tone down rapidly.

Is this gross interference? Sure. But so is any law, and at least this wouldn't be a sustainable thing. A law, once in the books, is much harder to get rid of, once it becomes a detriment. Is it totally evil, satanic and everything anti Free Market? Sure. But it would be a one-time correction to an abberition in the Free Market that threatens the Free Market over a much longer term and in a much more insidious manner.

In the end, it comes down to this: Cthulhu or Lawyers. It seems very clear to me which is going to be worse for the country.

It's All Relative

[gidds]

AIUI, these companies aren't proposing any absolute increase in speed -- they're simply going to give your bits better treatment than those who don't pay.

Play it out. The first person to pay for this will get a substantial speed increase, and no-one else will notice any different. Great so far. But what happens when a substantial number of others join in? It all has to come from the same pipes, so they'll see a smaller increase -- and it'll be at the expense of others. Not only from the remainder who aren't paying the premium, but also from the existing premium payers.

By that point, people will be paying the premium not so much for extra speed, but to avoid the rapidly-declining non-premium service. Ultimately, everyone will be forced to pay the premium, just to get exactly the same service they have now.

In other words, the only people to benefit from this are the ISPs. Ka-ching! Everyone else is paying more and getting nothing for it. Not quite a 'tragedy of the commons' scenario, but with the same sort of inevitability.

I don't like the idea of legislating around problems, but maybe this one deserves it. (Telecoms generally seems to benefit from the odd bit of red tape -- look at the state of the mobile phone markets in the unregulated US and the regulated UK, for example.) I think we need some way to nip this one in the bud, and unless anyone has any better ideas...?

Re:Ah, Somalia

[Valdrax]

Telecommunication is the one of the only industries to profit significantly due to the ability of wireless providers to establish locally protected towers that don't need lots of unprotected infrastructure (i.e. wires) to communicate between them. Power is also generated locally for the towers due to the lack of ability to create an infrastructure for power transmission.

The money exchange system that you're talking of is hawala, the same system that has been under severe scrutiny for its use by terrorists due to its complete lack of accountability and traceability. It also typically charges a 4-5% transaction fee for transfers. That's good bit more than my bank charges, by the way. As for the markets, well as long as Mogadishu has access to goods, I guess the rest of the country doesn't matter much, huh?

You choose to focus on the success stories where obviously a free market does work well. Congratulations! I haven't argued that government intervention always produces the best result, which is the typical black-and-white straw man argument that free market fundies and other minarchists love to believe that those of us who are not "one of the body" fervently believe.

By only focusing on the successes, you miss out on the lack of a water infrastructure and of sewage treatment. You miss out on the thuggery and rule of violence both on checkpoints on the roads (where only those who can afford bodyguards can pass unmolested by khat-chewing thugs) and on the high seas (where piracy and kidnapping is rampant). You miss out on the toxic waste being dumped off-shore. You miss out on the looting and destruction of their industry to be sold off as scrap metal. You miss out on the fact that only 15% of Somalia's kids go to school as compared to over 75% back when they were under the cruel hand of a dictator.

You miss out on the fact that the vast majority of Somalis cannot afford the $3 for a clinic visit under the country's completely private healthcare system. This is one of many reasons that the life expetancy there is only 48 years, ranking it 203 out 225 nations. This isn't aided by the lack of a sustainable agricultural system that is wholly dependent on each year's rainfall.

A few successes in a pure lawless state are praiseworthy, but they do not mean that failures have not occured or that the people are better off without laws.

Re:This is BAD legislation

[Valdrax]

Let's be blunt here. This is the government telling companies they can't try and be competitive, they can't make deals to offer premium services. This curtails competitive behavior.

I'll be equally blunt. Competitive with who?

Telecoms want to do this. Cable companies want to do this. Cell phone companies are mostly owned by the same telecom companies who all love the idea. That's pretty much the entire forseeable broadband market outside of municipal WiFi projects. Every middleman gatekeeper to the internet loves this idea because it lets them charge both producer and consumer. This also gives them extremely powerful leverage to pick what kind of services should thrive and which should die. Let me give you a hint on the latter -- 3rd party VoIP is the big thing that they all hate. Even cable companies are getting in on the anti-competitive action.

This is a raw power grab by an infrastructure monopoly, the purest form of anti-competitive deformation of the market for voice services. This all about turning a competitive market into one ruled by back-room collusion with companies that are willing to do business with the thugs setting up checkpoints on the information superhighway. Maybe you want to use iTunes to download some music but maybe someone like Bell Canada decides to buy a music service and would prefer for you to use their service instead. Therefore, they simply don't prioritize iTunes traffic like they do their own music site. Oh, it's not deprioritizing, it's just not giving highway access for competitors, forcing them to stick to surface streets instead.

Allowing this allows eyes on the internet to be monopolized, which they currently can't be. If you allow companies to treat their customers as a resource to sell to preferred partners, then the customers are the ones who lose out.

Used to agree with this thinking, don't anymore

[snowwrestler]

Even the most successful and important companies are run by a leader or core group of leaders with vision, charisma, will, etc. These people determine the direction of the company as a whole and thus dictate the company's ethics and morality. That's why I think it is wrong, in a practical sense, to say that companies have no morals. They have the morals of their leaders.

Consider the near-demise of the bond trading company Salomon Smith Barney in the nineties. When it was led by risk-loving, gambling ex-trader John Guttfreund, the employees gambled with the company by skirting (and crossing) the moral and legal limits imposed on it. It was caught and was nearly wiped out by the Justice Department. When Warren Buffett took over the reins it became an upstanding and moral company almost overnight, and remained so under the leadership of the man Buffett hand-picked to lead afterward.

Likewise there are numerous examples of companies that act very morally, for example Patagonia, Ben and Jerries, or Malden Mills. They enact the morals and ethics of their founders and leaders.

In this respect I do agree with you that companies make excellent barometers--they can be powerful mechanisms for amplifying the decisions and morals of those the people lead them, yet they are susceptible to public influence. They can therefore serve as mirrors of their customers and the public who are aware of them.

The problem is that they are not instantaneous mirrors. In fact there is a pretty significant delay in corrections. Stories like Enron IMO do not illustrate a failure of the system, but rather illustrate the system working properly--just slowly. After all, the executives did get caught and the company suffered (essentially) a death penalty. However there was a pretty significant delay between the immoral acts and the societal response.

One of the toughest things for humans to deal with cognitively is a delay between action and effect. In one psych study people were given the task of adjusting a thermostat to keep a steady temperature in a refrigerator as it was opened and closed. They did not have too much trouble with it until lag was secretly introducing into the system. This created chaotic oscillations as the participants continually over-compensated. More revealing, none were able to correctly deduce that there was a uniform delay at work. To them it simply seemed like the system was acting erratically and unpredictably. Thus so can the oscillations seem between morally right and immoral corporate behavior.

The solution to some is legislation, in part because it is thought to be a fast and sure way to solve a problem the market does not seem to be able to (at least not yet). However legislation is its own messy system of delays and is neither fast nor sure. No bill passes without extensive compromise and complexity, and no meaningful legislation is implemented effectively without first passing through many rounds of interpretation and litigation.

Legislation also is inflexible in that it is a permanent solution. It can only be replaced or revised except through the same tortuous process that produced it in the first place.

Re:Does this make IPv6 illegal?

[kobaz]

A company can charge you by the packet no matter which protocol you use, they just have to look at the packet counter for your account once a month and send you a bill.