Republicans Defeat Net Neutrality Proposal

LiquidEdge writes "A Republican controlled committee has defeated a bill that would have guaranteed fair access and stopped companies like AT&T and Verizon from charging high-bandwidth sites for allowing their customers to have priority access to them."

Comments

good....?

[joe 155]

Is this not a good thing... letting people who are on faster connections have priority seems like it will drive companies to provide a better service faster and might also reduce the cost of slower connections... or am I wrong?

Re:good....?

[Cyber Akuma]

Pretty much.

EVERYTHING is starting to have extra charges towards it and even extra charges on those extra charges. You need to pay for absolutely every possible tiny thing. And thanks to all the modern companies bribing officials left and right, unless the mass "sheeple" actually get off their couches and do something about it there is little we can do to stop it. Eventually only the extremely rich will be getting the same level of "service" that normal people are getting now in just about everything. Welcome to the modern dark-ages: kings, nobles, and pheasants all over again.

Re:good....?

[philipmather]

That would be a sensible theory wouldn't it, one suspects however that it'll create a tiered system that costs the end user more.

Think about this; would something like slashdot be able to work? Obstensibly /. would pay more to provide a better service or those that use are the type of people who'd pay for a faster connection. Would you then really want a fast site with lots of links to slower sites?

Would you then host all your images and shared web services with a "fast" provider and embed them into your sites hosted on "slow" providers. You'd then have a market for providing lots of "fast" images for embeding into your "slow" personal page. Lot's of technical implications to think about there, smells like someones "wealth creation" plan to me.

Re:good....?

[ezavada]

All Amazon, Google, Yahoo! et al need to do is agree not to cave in to the telcos demands for more money (they *are* presumably paying for their own connectivity, yes?) and sit it out

This would be great. But let's not forget that one of the et.al's in this case is Microsoft, who seems determined to do everything possible to defeat Google at the search game. They have gobs of cash and as a convicted monopolist have a proven history of being willing to do unethical things to get ahead. Maybe they'll decide they dislike the telecos syphoning off money more than they dislike Google being king of the search engines, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it.

Re:good....?

[MORB]

In the words of Patrick Le Lay, the asshole CEO of the crappy, highly commercial french TV network TF1 (translated from this article):

"TF1's job is basically to help Coca-cola, for instance, sell its product. For an advertisement message to be perceived, the brain of the viewer must be available.
Our shows' vocation is to make it available, that is, entertain and relax it to prepare it between two messages. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available humain brain time."

Re:good....?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Is this not a good thing...?

I think the jury's still out on that. Those who are making the case that this is (or would be) a bad thing are doing so based only on historical precedent.

Ever since the development of Strowger's automated (as opposed to operator-driven) call switching, an underlying principle of telecommunications (long since codified into law) was the ideal that the switching system should not make routing decisions based on the content of the call. (It's considered fair-play for a carrier to, for example, route a over a satellite circuit vs. an undersea cable based on whether it is a FAX/DATA call, but not based on wether it's a business vs. personal call.) This is the fundamental basis behind the concept of network neutrality.

One could argue that without some concept of network neutrality, we can't really say we even have a telecommunication system. I'm not sure there's a good example of a system akin to what the Republicans are proposing here, which is a system where public rights-of-way are privatized into a handful of companies with monopoly control. The closest I can come-up with off-hand would be what was done in the era of the railroad tycoons. Not a perfect match, since in that age the railroads did not lead into every home, nor was the economy as dependent on them as ours is today in the Internet.

...letting people who are on faster connections have priority seems like it will drive companies to provide a better service faster and might also reduce the cost of slower connections... or am I wrong?

My opinion only, but yes, you're wrong. ;-)

The fear is that these companies will be driven by the interests of their shareholders, rather than the interests of the society. The two points of contention seem to be:

• The Carriers are dependent on public rights-of-way to build their networks, so it's not really fair for them to benefit more from that right-of-way than I do simply because they are in a position to use more of it than I. If we are in support of private ownership, I should be able to sell my private citizens portion of that right-of-way to the highest bidder in the same way that the Carriers are demanding to be allowed to do. (Not really fesible, but that's why we have things like Regulation.
• The Carriers are exploiting a natural monopoly and network effects to further their business model. If spectrum were limitless and if running fiber across long distances did not create an effective barrier-to-entry for new market participants, then the Carriers arguments about letting the markets decide might have some validity. But market forces are always distorted under monopoly conditions.

History (both railroad and telecommunications) tells us that when a single entity is in control of the network, evolution of that network proceeds slowly, and only in a way as to increase control and profitibility. Let us not forget; between automatic switching (circa 1890's) and the 1984 breakup of AT&T, the two big telephone company innovations were DTMF dialing and the lighted dial Princess Phone(TM)

The railroads fell only when an alternate infrastructure (the Interstate highway system and, to a lesser extent, commercial aviation) was built along side the existing network infrastructure. The Internet, as we commonly know it today, took-off as a result of the break-up of the Bell System monopoly and legislated network-neutrality. Prior to the 1997 Telecommunication Reform act, the Carriers were prohibited from offering data services (like AOL or CompuServe did) specifically to prevent them from favoring one provider over another. AOL, CompuServe, Earthlink, and the like, using modems and the fact that the telephone companies were required to carry these calls even though it prectically bankrupted many of them, were the impetus behind the

Re:good....?

[rhendershot]

No it's not a good thing. It's the complete commercialization of the internet and the death of the internet as we know it. It culminates in your inability to access most sites at any respectable latency or speed unless you belong to this inner group. If your ISP or the site you visit doesn't play along, well dude, yur outta luck.

hmmmm, it might be a dampener on kdpr0n and spam sites tho

oh what the 43ll, let'r rip ;)

QoS

[jaundicebaby]

Is this similiar to how people compain that Comcast has a lower QoS for VOIP packets and this law says that is OK because they can prioritize how their own network functions?

It may not make sense but it already happens

[Mille Mots]

Does it seem redundant to make both the sender and the recipient pay for the same bandwidth?

If you think about it, you might come to the conclusion that this already happens in other domains.

Compare to cable television, for instance. If you subscribe to CATV, you are paying for the bandwidth (all those channels) to access the content, while at the same time, the CATV company is paying (slightly less) to carry those channels, and the network (CNN, Fox, TLC, SF, etc.) are charging advertisers for sending that content to you.

If you don't have subscription television service, the advertiser alone is bearing the cost of assaulting your eyes with their commercials.

This is analagous, I think, to a Tier {1,2} ISP charging for priority access. If you want the CATV equivalent (millions of channels, digital content, high speed), you're going to pay for it. So is the content provider on the other end of the session (after all, they need a connection to the Internet as well). If you are happy with over-the-air quality (quality, quantity and speed of delivery...not so much), you don't pay.

Essentially, the chains would look like:

CATV subscriber (-$) -> CATV provider (-$) -> Network ($$$) <- Advertiser (-$)

-or-

Local ISP customer (-$) -> Local ISP (-$) -> Backbone provider ($$$) <- Content provider (-$)

--
Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should do a thing.

Re:I'm glad, believe it or not.

[forgotten_my_nick]

I don't they want it to work the way though. They will see the site you are requesting something from as a site that should be paying them access or they intentionally slow them down. Also while you are talking A to B you still go through other sites. If they implemented the same rules your packets would be intentionally slowed down as they have nothing to do with the place you are routing though.

This is a bad thing.

Bellsouth lobby investment pays off

[HangingChad]

That big lobbying office Bellsouth employs in DC finally paid off. Republicans are truly the best party money can buy. Since they might be sensing they're in trouble this fall, it's possible they'll be shoveling out the no bid contracts and business favors hand over fist this summer before they get the big boot. Doll out as many favors as possible to keep the money rolling in.

And some of you support these dirtbags.

not to worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, those practices will assure an end to their businesses. Low cost unlicensed spectrum wireless is going to replace cable and dsl. (think 802.11g mesh networks) Google has a lot of interest in this and I'm pretty sure they'll make their own network if we see troll-like toll practices.

I, for one, want to see companies attempt to charge for their networks. I think it will force the issue and hasten the deployment of mesh networks and WiMax.

But that's not true..

[Newer Guy]

The Republicans want to regulate the PEOPLE to death!

They want to insert themselves into what we read, what we see on TV or listen to on the radio, our private discussions and/or proceedures between us and our medical care givers and lawyers.

They want to bug our telephone conversations, look at what books we buy or borrow from the library (and also decide what books the library can loan us!), monitor our banking transactions, monitor whate we go (via GPS in our cell phones), issue us a national ID card ("Your PAPERS, pleeeasse!") and on and on ad nauseum!

Finally, let's not forget that they want to be able to jail us without charge and/or access to a lawyer.....

Seems to me that the only ones that they want to deregulate are big corporations...the rest of us are already feeling the crush of their black leather boot on our throats!

Um...

[spiritraveller]

I wouldn't equate predictability with "making sense".

It hardly makes sense to allow an ISP to charge other companies to allow their companies to access the other company's website, when the ISP's customers are already paying for that privilege.

It only makes sense in that it is predictable that Republicans would go for this.

Republicans always vote for big businesses above small businesses and individuals. After all, that's where their bread is buttered. But in any substantive sense, it doesn't make sense at all.

Re:Let me be the first

[hrbrmstr]

First, your statement could have been said if they ruled for Google, AOL, Yahoo!, etc.

Second, you're saying that Democrats aren't in the back-pocket of corporations either? Clueless or naive?

If we geeks could get enough of a lobby (and if Google couldn't buy the vote, who can?) together to fund large campaign donations to buy votes we like, maybe we'd have a chance at nixing crap like this and the Patriot Act and get some patent reform and...and...and...

But, there has been too much money over too much time creating too much counter influence.

Perhaps it would be simpler if they just setup two blind donation bins for all votes (for/against). Let the morons vote and then whichever side of the argument wins, all who voted get to split the money (for their campaigns) on that side, with the rest going to pay down the national debt. Over time, the politicians would have to start picking the correct side or face no campaign funding.

Re:What AT&T has said

[maxume]

Don't buy AT&T stock, the chairman doesn't understand his own business. As long as there is one isp and one backbone who think that having customers is better than revenue sharing, there will be more than one isp and backbone who think that. There doesn't need to be a network neutrality law, the situation is already covered by price-fixing laws.

Google owns lots of dark fiber. They will route around damaged carriers, if it gets that far. Here's one of many articles:

http://news.com.com/Google%20wants%20dark%20fiber/ 2100-1034_3-5537392.html

I don't think they want to build out their own network, but it is probably a cheap hedge against paid transport.

As far as your airplane analogy goes, FAA or not, planes still crash. The deregulators aren't worried about passenger settlements and what not, they figure that people won't fly on crappy airlines. Airlines are in the business of selling seats. Crashing is going to make that difficult to do. Therefore, airlines will attempt not too crash. It is probably a better trade off to have a burdensome FAA provide the safety, as less people die, but there would be safe ways to fly, FAA or not.

I'm curious what happens if Google fights back?

[edremy]

Let's say Verizon decides to try this with Google. It seems to me that Google could just turn around and say "For Quality of Service reasons, we are implementing a scheme where you need to pay for priority access to Google resources. All searches from verizon.com addresses must pay $1 per search or they will be dumped in a queue that may take 30+ minutes to respond."

Next, Google puts up a page that Verizon DSL customers see if they try to access any Google resources at all which says something like "Verizon is deliberatly degrading your connection to our pages. We cannot assure reasonable response to any requests you may have. Please contact Verizon DSL customer service at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you find you cannot access Google, or alternatively switch to provider Y ".

Now imagine that Google teams up with Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and a few other biggies to do the same. (I assume MS would pay, seeing it as a chance to overtake Google) How long do you think Verizon could stand up to this? Nobody gives a damn who carries the packets, but take away their eBay access and people will scream bloody murder

I think republicans didn't understand

[erroneus]

From what I have read, they seem to think that the solution is for companies to buy bigger data pipes. That's not what this net neutrality is about! As I understand it, it's preventing what amounts to "data access surcharges" from being applied in lieu of not having your service downgraded.

Simply buying a bigger pipe isn't going to do anything as far as I can tell when some other party is artificially decreasing the performance of the service you provide because you don't pay the troll! They can do nothing to improve your potential service based on what you currently have... they can only degrade your service and allow you to pay to have the roadblocks removed.

Re:Wow

[stefanPryor]

I think a lot of people live such miserable uninteristing lives (no offense intended) that they are looking for anything which seems new to continually distract themselves from their own life. News corporations are able to make much more money targeting this HUGE audience, than actually producing useful information. That is not to say that the market for useful information does not exist, in fact it is probably presently undervalued. As useful information becomes more and more valuable, I think we will see more and more individuals/institutions becoming interested in producing it.

Re:You make it sound like neutrality is a good thi

[Anonymous Coward]

They are blocking the Federal government from enacting regulation that would seriously impede the actions of private companies

And generally that would be a good thing. But note the word "generally", aka not always.

With certain markets, especially markets with only a small number of "players" that require huge investment for new entrys thus making it unlikely that other groups will be able to break into the market if the current players are overcharging/underperforming, strict regulation is not only nice but necessary.

A good example would be the UK and British Telecom.

Until circa the mid 80's BT was the government controlled monopoly on telecoms in the UK, it was then privatised (aka put on the stock market) as a single entity and it's legal monopoly "removed"

Problem was because it was so established and the only company with infrastructure in place (paid for in large portion by tax payers before it was sold off) it pretty much still kept that monopoly in fact if not in law for another 15 odd years. During all that time the British have been overpaying by a huge amount for a subpar and out of date services

This is now slowly changing, why? because the telecoms regulator finally grew some balls and actually started to regulate the industry or more accurately BT, to create a fair playing field where other companies can come in and compete with BT.

In around 5 years the UK has gone from about 99% pay by the minute dial up connections to the internet to majority now using broadband (which has jumped from max of 512kbs to 24mb in same period) and call charges slashed by, at least for me, 80%. And BT has fought these changes every inch of the way because each one was brought about regulation that allowed other companys into the market and to compeat

Regulation in a truly free and open market is a bad thing

Regulation in a market that is not truly open and free (and telecoms is one of these and always will be) is a very good thing, actually would go so far as to say it is absolutely necessary and anyone who thinks "market forces" alone is enough probably also thinks Santa Claus is real.

As to this particular scenario, I find it laughable that anyone could not see something wrong with it, from what I understand it is akin to

Jonny is with telco X and pays a service charge of $20 per month and makes (and pays for) about $40 in calls per month

Jane is with telco Y and pays a service charge of $20 per month and makes (and pays for) about $200 in calls per month

Jonny calls Jane: Cost of call £0.03 per min to Jonny, Jane also pays £0.03 to receive the call (already nuts at this point as clear double charging for same service)

But because Jane is a high usage person (aka telco already makes more off her) unless she up's her basic service charge to $40 per month she will get routed though a crappy, static filled line

Hello? How can anyone not see something wrong with this?

End user already pays for his bandwidth
Transmitter (google,itunes so forth) already pay for theirs to the end user (double charging for same service)

How can anyone justify charging google and other websites more on top of that because they are "popular"? They already pay though the nose for their popularity in bandwidth charges

In a truly free and open market no company would contemplate something like this as it would be corporate suicide, that the telco's think they can is the clearest case in the world that telecoms is not an open market and that regulation is needed.

Re:Wow - BIASED?

[MightyMartian]

Because the Republicans on ./ are feeling really guilty due to the fact that it's pretty clear that a majority of Congress has been bought by the Telcos, so rather than admit that the folks they think are such keen politicians are really prostitutes, they'll attack the piece and the ./ editorial.

In short they're shooting the messenger rather than phoning up their Congressman and saying "Hey, you goddamn whore!"

Biased?

[lymond01]

Funny...I read the article and I saw this:

Democrats but forward a suggestion to protect certain companies from those that control the access to the internet. Block AT&T from giving Microsoft.com 50% of its bandwidth, for example, while all of AT&Ts smaller customers share the other 50%.

Republicans block suggestion, stating it is bad for the economy to stifle competition and cronyism. If MS wants to pay for that much bandwidth, let them. Otherwise AT&T isn't making the profits it might.

My conclusion: What the Republicans have done is essentially deregulated the Internet and allowed big business to take over. If you don't include clauses like the one the Democrats suggested, companies will think, "How can I make more money?" and you'll get ideas like, "I can throttle bandwidth to all but the highest bidders, regardless of how much the consumers pay to get like service between content providers!"

If "stifling the economy" means throwing consumer rights in the toilet and flushing twice, I'm very excited about the 2006 Republican sweep in the congressional elections (not).

Re:Oh, good...

[tybio]

Google does not pay nearly what you think for bandwidth. Lets take this down to the two basic sides of Google's buisness.

The first aspect is what everyone knows and seems to love. The web content index/search ability. This is a standard web service, but if you look closely it is also one of the most image/bloat free sites on the net. None of the google offerings are more then fancy style sheets with content, all in all...cheeper then dirt to send to a user, just compare the size vs an Amazon page.

The second side of the monster is what people don't see. The crawler that is sucking data at levels that are not to be believed. With the addition of google media and the move in the last few months to start downloading every audio file it comes across, they basicly have a copy of most of the internet at any given time.

Now, expensive bandwidth is server ---> Client. Cheep bandwidth is Client ---> Server. Google pays less, FAR less then we do because a vast majority of their bandwidth is in the form of a client. Another factor to take into account is that client traffic (often called "Eyeballs" in the industry) are the measure of peering balance. If I had to guess, I'd say that Google is getting darn near free transit from many places.

Not sure if I'm making sense here, but I just want to let people know that the assumption that Google is paying a ton for their net is off base. I think the true numbers would shock people.

Re:Wow

[JeffSh]

I'd just like to point out that the refutation of regulation law actually flies contrary to what a dictatorship is.

A dictatorship would be a government entity that tells its constituents what they can and can't do.. this bill would've, in essence, been dictating to the telecomms that they can't charge different rates to different people.

which, in a free market economy, is unreasonable..

Re:RTFA

[moeinvt]

Sure, they're on the side of Yahoo!, Amazon & Google NOW, but do you think they're going to take a stand and refuse to participate in the new tiered internet? When the bidding war for express "delivery" of content starts, they'll steamroll Google and Yahoo! with their hordes of cash. Having the best search engine won't matter anymore. Having an "adequate" search engine that works the fastest will be enough to rule the market, and MS will make SURE that nobody will be able to have their content "delivered" at higher speed.

Re:Wow

[HybridJeff]

Coming from an outsider (Canadian). Whenever I watch American news it appears to me to have more of a right wing bais than anything.