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Net Neutrality Voted Down in U.S. House Committee
Ana10g writes "Business Week provides a look at the recent vote by the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, in which the FCC would have been given the power to prohibit discrimination of Internet traffic. The battlefield seems to be centered around which group has the better funded lobbyists, with companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and many others competing against the well funded Telecommunications lobbysts. The committee voted the amendment down, 34 to 22."
I certainly am not suprised that the house reps are supporting the telecoms.
The proposal, by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would have given the Federal Communications Commission the power to prohibit discrimination when it comes to sending traffic over the Internet. Couldn't this, technically, also eliminate QoS/fair queue'ing and general firewall rules?
The above is most likely humour. Slashdot foot icon goes here.
So long as we're clear: it's just big companies with lots of money fighting each other for the right to make money off of us. God for-fucking-bid the "battlefield" should in anyway involve some kind of consideration of what might be best for the human constitutents the congresscritters are elected to serve.
Times like this, I wonder if nationalization of communication industry may be net plus for the economy. I mean, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are the sort of enterprises that people actually *LIKE* (yeah, yeah evil MS, but what do people buy?). SBC ("AT&T" whatever) and Verizon!? They can rot in hell (and I sure hope they do for God/gods sake). Comcast and all them cable companies, too. Rot in fucking hell.
Ed Markey involved with telecom lobbyists? Say it ain't so!
The idea of giving the FCC more control over things they probably shouldn't control doesn't make me happy, but missing a chance to explicitly prohibit a tiered Internet is kind of a bummer... Oh well, in cases like this consumer always gets screwed one way or another, it's just a question of who's doing the screwing...
As an aside, doesn't the whole "tiered Internet" concept that the telco's are trying to float violate the concept of "common carrier"? Anyone know?
It would depend on the wording of the bill, and given that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon know something about traffic over the internet, I would assume that the bill would be written well enough to get around those problems.
Albuquerque PC
Like that recent 'you must have a secure access point' bill in some county? Seeing that requires the AP owners to have a firewall and a sign that says "We're not liable", not something that in any way actually secures the connection, you can be pretty damned sure that the bill isn't the slightest bit well-written. Unless that was intended as funny...
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Shouldn't be which group has the most voters? And I mean in the country, not in Congress.
with companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and many others competing against the well funded Telecommunications lobbysts.
Ah, yes. Your monopoly profits at work -- ON BOTH SIDES!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Unless that was intended as funny"
*lol* can see it now: breakdown of votes for new amendment was:
60% funny
20% troll
20% overrated
goddamn mods
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
During that week, any requests for pages from those sites from the telecom's network would respond with a warning page saying
Content providers' sites are one of the few reasons that Verizon and at&t can sell anything. Without sites like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, Verizon and at&t's pipes are pretty much worthless. The content providers really should make this clear to Verizon and at&t.
Albuquerque PC
The shame is that we (the voters) don't stand up and say "ENOUGH!" Is it because we don't think what we want is right, or is it because we expect political special interests to win despite what we, the voters want?
The game is rigged, sure enough, just as long as we sit down, shut up, and don't vote. I don't care if you disagree with me, I just want you to vote.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
OMG!!1! We're on the same side as Microsoft!?!?! WTF?!?!?!11?!?//
I don't understand how telecos are going to throttle packets.
It sounds as if the telecos are going to throttle the entire internet, especially the bigger content providers. Then only "paid", higher tiered content providers will be delivered with "premium" speeds? All the while the premium bandwith will be reserved for the telecos digital television over DSL and such.
But how is a teleco operating one of the net backbones going to know what exactly is inside a packet, if the packet is coming from a paid tier source, and where it's destination is without opening it up and examining it? That sounds like a rather ominious intrusion.
This is a step towards an extortion economy. I've heard of right wingers playing Twister before but the logic behind that post makes a Pretzel look straight as a pencil.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If they ask questions and vote their interests, Congress will respond to their interests.
If they spend their time watching TV and vote based on what they see in expensive TV campaign ads then Congress will respond to whoever donates money.
Heh...umm, don't look now but the FCC regulates the internet.
I don't think the net neutrality question---or, rather, questions---are so straightforward as some here make them appear. The topic, however, is extremely important: what connection do you want to have in 5 years---a 10-Mb/s one or a 1-Gb/s one?
-- Stanislav Shalunov
You know... if everyone is forced to deliver all net content unfettered, there's no competition on quality, whereas is they aren't required to, different carriers will be able to compete on how unrestricted their net access is... thereby helping consumers by driving prices... um... sideways or something.
This space available.
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet
not sure how much it will do now...but worth a shot?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
The thing is, without the neutrality bill, the telecom could slow down the traffic of that download or email to nearly zero before building extra capacity to handle both the priority and nonpriority services.
Please stop the hurting and put these poor creatures out of their misery.
;-)
Welcome to a lifetime of Secret Service surveillance.
Along the same lines, individual users and bloggers could join this coalition and blacklist any ISPs that are known to degrade or give preferential service to certain sites. Users attempting to hit a page would get a standardized page directing them to savetheinternet.com or some such location w/instructions on how to complain to their ISP.
Users may not miss one or two sites, but when enough sites do this, if the coalation for a free Internet is large enough, maybe the ISP's own customers will start to complain.
Would blacklisting ISPs that do not respect Net Neutrality in the same way that ISPs with open email relays are blacklisted work if enough content providers/blogs/online services/etc. banded together? I could see the argument that this would cut into your marketshare, but better to do it now with hopes of establishing Net Nuetrality than to wait until the net is balkanized and marketshare gets cut anyway.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's time for the general strike. Thing is, it has to be coordinated so that there's a critical mass all at once or it won't work.
The battlefield seems to be centered around which group has the better funded lobbyists
Gee, I would *never* have thought! I mean, like, in this day and age, I would expect that buying off politicians was *impossible!*
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The parent to this post is an idiot.
The FCC is desperately needed to regulate the internet. The FCC needs to ensure a level playing field when it comes to net traffic, whether that traffic is for google or microsoft, or my own server. I don't want to access my mail at dial-up speeds because the provider between me and it decides to that their uncompressed HD content is more important then my 5k file. I don't want my connection to time out to an independant site because verizon decided to shift all their traffic onto "the internet" thus freeing up some of their private lines to save maintanance costs.
Ensuring that the net stays neutral keeps the net more like a town hall and less like disney land. Allowing the telecoms to start charging prices ensures that they only peolpe who can truely serve content are those that have the money, not neccassarily the ones with the best content.
I'm not a fan of regulation, but it's better that the FCC does it then the telecoms.
First, yes it would. Thanks god I live in a slightly more sane country (only by a bit unfortunately). Otherwise I would have lost one of my primary pieces of daily bread. Been doing QoS for 7+ years now.
Second, Amazon, MSFT and Co should have acted long ago when the Baby Bells and Bell Wannabies killed off the peering points circa Y2K. Instead of that, they went into a direct relationship with the Baby Bells and Bell Wannabies. As a result they simply do not have a leg to stand on regarding any such issues. They are already in contractual agreement with the ATT, Verizon, Level3, etc and if one of these decides to alter the contract there is little they could do.
To put things in a perspective - in the US traffic from access goes across the telco backbone and goes to Amazon and the like via a private link. In this environment the content provider is at the mercy of the telco. In Europe the traffic goes from access across the telco backbone after that traverses a well maintained non-profit peering point like Lynx and hits the content provider after that. Technically, you can do QoS in both cases. Practically, while you can there is no way you can guarantee any QoS because you do not control the entire route. The Bells understood this more than 5 years ago and killed the US peering points like MAE by maintaining the infrastructure as bad as they could (they also owned most of them) and forcing everyone to go private. From there on the question of net neutrality is utterly pointless.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Do you even know what you're talking about, parent, or did you read "FCC regulation" and "internet" in the same sentance, and come to the conclusion that the big bad FCC is trying to regulate things, even though they already have been for a very long time, and this particular regulation is in fact a very needed one? This getting voted down is actually a Bad Thing(tm)
The higher tiered content providers will register a set of source IP's they want to send the data to be accelerated from. They can even ask that only data being sent from a given set of ports from those IP addresses be accelerated.
..will be routed around. At least for the rest of the world that doesn't cripple itself. It could really suck for US internet customers and businesses for a long time unfortunately, if the major copper and fiber owners manage to roll this out.
This may very well mean those content providers and other businesses will move operations outside the USA. Hopefully, this might (not sure on this) make it difficult for US-based major telecoms and ISPs to discriminate against foreign traffic because of international treaties and agreements.
Combined with restrictive IP laws and high taxes, this could add significantly to pressure forcing innovative technologies and the corporations behind them to base themselves outside US control.
As Princess Leia said about a possible future powergrab..
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Once more, it seems (relatively) short-term profits win out over longer-term strategies that would benefit everyone in many ways, including even themselves, and to a much greater degree over time than this self-defeating quick cash grab.
Seems they never learned the old adage about not crapping in ones' own nest.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
In the words of our infamous veep: "Go fuck yourself". Now whaddaya say we go hunting next weekend and you stand in front of me? Kay? ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
How would a general strike effect anything? We, at least most of us, are not working for the telecoms, so we would have little influence on their running. Do you mean that we should stop using the Internet?
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Another interesting question I think needs to be asked - if the United States validates AT&T Chairman's belief that those are 'his pipes' (forgetting its only the last mile,) how long before China decides that those are 'their pipes' and ditto for every connected country in the world.
Doesn't it stand to reason that anyone providing last mile connectivity or even backbone suddenly declare themselves worthy of charging these tolls? So instead of Google/Yahoo/etc paying just SBC/Verizon/AT&T - now they're expected to pay every telco the world over to ensure they're competitive globally vs. local competition?
Very dangerous precedent could potentially be set. (And FYI - Congresspeople are not completely oblivious to phone calls and snail mail. If it adds up on them they take that very seriously particularly if you are a constituent. Sending an e-mail though is completely useless (I know...)
SOME Congresspeople are not completely oblivous to constituent outreach. Some are deeply entrenched in gerrymandered districts and couldn't give a rats ass if you all died a fiery death.
But not all! Find one that thinks his seat might be in danger and flood his office with calls and you've got yourself your own personal demagogue.
Cynicism aside, what's the right thing to do in this situation?
On the one hand, in seems like the people who own the pipes should be able to do whatever they want with them. If we say they can't prioritize traffic of people that pay them good money to do it, aren't we violating their right to property?
On the other hand, if they start charging individual sites they could potentially hamper the economy, which would be against the public good. The problem is something like if all the roads in the country were privately owned and had toll booths everywhere...
Maybe the answer is that bandwidth should become a public utility. The companies who own it should be granted a monopoly, but then should be severely regulated along the lines power is. Its obvious that internet connectivity is as important to the public good as water and power. We need uniform access to these services across the country. Any part of the country that doesn't have access because its not profitable for verizon to provide it, simply can't economically develop. Also, realistically speaking, this would be *vastly* easier to do than power.
I'm sure that the existing bandwidth providers would have to be pulled into this kicking and screaming... but frankly the exact same thing happened with power providers. Originally, power companies didn't want to be forced to do things like run lines out to rural areas. This was unfortunate, because electric lighting is pretty important in agriculture. Eventually, when it was evident that the interest of the power companies came so strongly in conflict with the public interest, the regulations we have today were set up.
I don't know if this is necessary for bandwidth. It hasn't really come up so far, primarily because its a new thing, and because it didn't take them that long to make the internet accessible from pretty much everywhere in the country, by some means or another. Of course, that's just my anecdotal impression. Are there some places where its impossible to get a T1 line at a reasonable price? Are even businesses stuck with satellite in many places? If that's the case, it would be a strong argument to regulate the ISPs in some ways.
However, as far as I know aside from just generally failing to get home broadband to work on their first try, the ISPs seem to have done a pretty good job of getting everyone internet access. I think they must be somewhat aware of what could happen to them in terms of regulation if they abuse the public good too much. I'm sure they will follow a very fine line, but I'm happy to wait to see if they cross it before I consider regulation a good option. As a rule, its best to do nothing if you can. However, prioritized traffic is probably something we have to stop, depending on how strong the prioritization is. If they insure a certain level of quality for all traffic, it probably won't be an issue... but I suspect that they won't if they can get away with it.
isn't this being implemented now? networks already have qos in place and they charge different rates for best effort, guaranteeed, bursting traffic, etc.
but in any case, good thing i don't live in the usa. lately, there have been lots of crazy laws being made. it's the most exciting drama show on earth.
but seriously, i hope that other countries will not get into this (this issue in particular.) right now, networks are being interconnected and not passing through usa anymore. i just hope that major providers will just diversify their systems to be hosted in major traffic points outside the usa for better traffic. they can use anycast.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I wonder how the committee voted on this.
Would it be so hard for the reporter to include that in the story?
The official site of the committee hides their voting record on matters like this very well.
I couldn't find it... Would it be that hard to have a quick link on the main page?
http://energycommerce.house.gov/
Business as usual within the beltway.
Surely, this would prevent suppliers from offering me services that require high bandwidth for a short time. For example, a 10x normal speed connection with QoS for the purpose of watching HDTV video on Demand. If they offered this speed to the VoD suppliers for a cut of the download fee, they'd surely have to offer this speed to all services for free.
Please remain on your side of the pond.
We don't need the FCC regulating the Internet. Not for "neutrality" or any other excuse someone can think of.
Yeah, we need to allow the telcos, for example, to ban VOIP traffic so they can keep their prices artificially high. We also need to let the ISP for company X, restrict traffic for company X's competitor, Y. While we're at it, let's chuck out *all* antitrust legislation and allow the free market to sort everything out.
In most big technical companies, it's tough enough to get your *management* to understand the critical technical issues. (If you work in a small startup, there's a good chance that some of the main players do understand, but if you're big enough to have VC-funded management and an HR department, it's pretty likely that have the management aren't technical enough.) Getting *Congresscritters* to understand anything technical is much tougher, and the FCC are a variable set of political hacks, ranging from occasional people who are outstandingly good to other people who are more concerned about regulating TV coverage of Janet Jackson's boobs.
The MoveOn.org petition-distributors don't understand the real issues, so the things they're telling the Democrat Congresscritters aren't helping their ignorance any. Some of the big customers understand some of the real issues. The telecom company managers have demonstrated that while they may understand some of the issues, they'd rather do a bone-headed arrogant "It's Our Money" regulatory play than try to talk technology to the public.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Reps and Dems are in this together, so all you gotta do is vote for some alterna... oh.
Hmmm...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
10mb or 1Gb doesn't matter, as long as someone else dictates at what speeds you may go where.
I don't care if I got 1GB speed when accessing a port 80 (http) server, when at the same time I get 50kbit for streaming content, P2P or secure copy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From a comment on Groklaw:
i d=2006042600285164&title=Net+Neutrality+is+equal+t o+Freedom+of+Speech...!&type=article&order=&hidean onymous=0&pid=434496#c434501
Note that the "children" comments that followed this comment covered much detail regarding some specifics to part of what was in the quotes taken from the comment below - to see those comments and children of those comments go to:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&s
"Verizon and the TelCo PAC say they need to be paid for the upgrades to fiber that they are making? Well, one union lineman that works for Verizon told me that as the TELCOs install more fiber to the house, they will end up saving HUGE amounts of money, as the TELCOs will more longer need to pay for the expensive labor that is required today to maintain the copper lines (corrosion, lightning damage due to copper getting hit then equipment blowing up), as copper costs them. The Union for Telco workers is looking at fiber optics to the business or house as the biggest pink slip creator ever in the history of the Telephone Industry. Copper costs the Telephone Companies in both labor (maintance) and equipment (Fiber equipment lasts longer and does not suffer from electrical surges that are caused by every lighting storm that happens in the US ever day. Fiber does not corrode, does not conduct lighting, and is even cheaper to produce with a lower cost per foot to buy than copper... FIber is just glass! Cheap to produce and cheap to maintain... all splices to fiber lines are perfect every time. A splice to a copper line is a future failure point due to the corrosion that can then occur at that point or break in the line.
The Telephone and cable industry does NOT need to charge more! They don't need the right to OWN the internet and charge fees to those who USE is (other than the customer side where a customer can choose the speed they want and pay the fee for it's use)! The Telephone Companies and Cable Companies are looking for their own monopoly again (only this time in restricting free speech, freedom of commerce, and to restrict and own the freedoms of competition with their own a third party tax OR TOLL BOOTH ON THE PUBLIC INTERNET where the fees then become a barrier to it's use!
IF the Republicans pass this bill through it will cause masses of internet users to vote them out of office in the next election. The US internet user wants their internet access on every side to remain free! This is an attack by an industry on the Freedoms of Internet Access and by doing this it is a direct attack on the Freedoms of Speech! What are YOU going to do about this TODAY?"
Google's Quote of the Day two days ago hit the nail on the head:
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams
Perhaps we should lobby against those who voted against this. We already know where their interests are. Hit them at the next election.
What we need is a (near) completley deregulated internet, and privacy on our home computers. If ATT and SBC start filtering Google and Amazon, then maybe ppl will sign up with companies like Speakeasy and other local providers.
"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. [...] It's what drives men mad, being methodical." G.K.Chesterton
When you think of Google, Amazon, Ebay etc. ... their whole business depends on telecommunication, so that what it's worth to them to have their data sent is basically their entire profit margin, which is non-zero. So ... at the moment they are enjoying a benefit which is known as "consumer surplus". Consumer surplus is the area between a demand curve and a given (fixed) price (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_surplus).
Any marketeer knows that to get the maximum amount of money out of a market, you have to deal with each consumer individually, and price your goods to exactly what he's willing to pay. You can do that if his negotiation position is completely transparant to you, i.e. if you know his demand curve.
Now that extreme is too bothersome, so what do you do? You segment the market into sections that have approximately the same willingness to pay. For each segment you then negotiate a price close to the minimum willingness to pay for that segment. You won't get all the revenue you would have if you were able to charge each consumer the maximum price they're willing to pay, but you're getting close.
The trick is to identify the segments in the first place, and to gain a strong negotiating position. Identifying your customers is the basic step to figuring out their willingness to pay, and of late we have seen Cisco routers that do exactly that. So that's one hole plugged.
The second issue is to gain a strong negotiating position. That's all taken care of because the telecom companies have ensured that all electronic traffic must pass through their infrastructure.
The only remaining problem was that it wasn't legal for them to bluntly start pricing each individual customer what they would pay. Now with the removal of "net-neutrality" this is taken care of as well. Telecom companies can simply induce unacceptable delays as follows:
- (1) allocate reserved bandwidth channels on their infrastructure for customers that are prepared to pay more (got to provide superior service if we're going to charge more, right?)
- (2) route traffic in those channels with priority over existing infrastructure
- (3) watch natural traffic growth of priority traffic squeeze the performance of the non-priority traffic
- (4) politely but firmly negotiate large price increases with large customers such as Google, Ebay, Amazon who can't live with the now much reduced performance of their services
All legal, all neat. Telcos increase their profits at the expense of the (large corporate) users of telecoms facilities. Of course it won't stop there. Individual consumers and small businesses are next. Not satisfied with your Internet performance? (hehehe) Subscribe to our Deluxe service!
If you think I'm making any of this up, then see Cisco's pitch of its routers that can identify traffic here http://www.corecom.com/ftpdir/pub/corecom/iprev-bi lling.ppt. as powerpoint and here as html: http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:dt-ljUr4k5QJ:w ww.corecom.com/ftpdir/pub/corecom/iprev-billing.pp t+cisco+routers+identify+traffic+tiered+charge&hl= en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=8
The only cloud in the sky is the fact that the Telecoms companies don't create value in this way. They simply take away consumer surplus. Gi
>I sometimes wonder if it isn't just time to move to another country.
Ain't no other country want your lazy ass, and even if it did; name any that ain't already as corrupt and bought out as america is.
Ain't no where to run to, so you might as well bite that pillow.
I propose we geeks of the world unite to form a new internet, that requires a great deal of technical know-how to perform the same functions as the current one does.
Hope you plan on financing and laying down the fiber; I'm sure as shit not gonna.
Won't much matter--the ISPs on the Wall of Shame could just block it, and they'll have the FCC behind them thanks to the generosity of their lobbyists.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Ya know, I think making the net non-neutral in this case, inherently, is not a bad thing. I honestly would not be upset at all if the isp or carriers directed me to specific content if I subscribed to their service IF (and this is a big if) they did not possess local monopolies. As such, my only choice where I live for broadband is timewarner/road runner. Thus, if this bill passes, I'm subject to whatever content timewarner decides to push to me instead of me having a choice. Again, I don't think on the face of it this is a bad thing, but the current infrastucture makes it a bad thing. Remove local monopolies first before this is considered.
Fascinating. One question though: How do you know when your Karma has gone down to -4 or -5? Karma hasn't been a numerical value for YEARS.
Here's how: you steal your material from the distant past.
Also see this article on that very comment.
YHL. HAND.
qntm.org
I wonder if anyone has pointed out to these astute members of Congress that without net neutrality it would be possible for well-funded opponents to pay for much better access of their campaign websites to voters? Also, moving beyond the Googles, Amazons and Yahoos, does all this mean that superchurches will have better access to me than my local Methodist church, that the Havards and Stanfords will have better access to my college-bound children than the nearby small four-year liberal arts college, that it will be easier to buy a ticket to a Broadway show than one to a local production by the hometown theater company? The net should be regulated in a manner similar to a common carrier. To expect the telcos and cable operators to play fair is like expecting someone who cheats at cards to play fair. Telcos and cable operators have routinely stacked the deck in the past. I expect them to continue to do so.
Responsibility for holding the net's grounds lies now in u.s. citizens. You people should blow the ears off your senators.
Read radical news here
companies like google, microsoft and amazon should simply setup their servers to have every goverment related ip address be blessed with an ultra low bandwith version of their service. The monkeys in congress would quickly figure out why net neutrality is so important...
On the other side, there are a bunch of businesses who claim they can make money, which boosts the economy and creates jobs.
I'm all for net neutrality ... but, frankly, unless the geeks have a good economic case to make, I don't see why congress should listen to us.
Even if the legislation had been approved, the wording from the article seems a little sketchy in terms of what it would actually accomplish. Giving the FCC "The Power" to enforce a net neutrality policy doesn't mean that they actually WILL. Have we already lost? If the telecoms have managed to twist the debate into a question of FCC power as opposed to a fundamental discussion on net neutrality, we've definitely been weakened. If my interpretation is correct, this would just shift the question from a corrupt legislature to a corrupt government agency.
The coalition against the Telcos is wide, and strong, and is both from the liberal and conservative end of the political spectrum. The only ones who really want this are the Telcos, the Cable providers, and their lobby firms, AND who they have paid off in Washington.
s p
...and since this is an "old" article - more have signed on since it was published.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
Coalition Sounds Off on Net Neutrality Legislation - 04.24.06
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1953085,00.a
"Vint Cerf, so-called "father" of the Internet, is among the big names and organizations that have come together to create the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which hosted a national conference call today.
Other members of the Coalition include Gun Owners of America, Craigslist.com, Public Knowledge, MoveOn.org, the American Library Association, Afro-Netizen.com, the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, and Free Press."
Call to all geeks... "if you are a geek, then do something about it"!
March on Washington. "We want freedom, kick them out"!
I respectfully disagree. I'm inclined toward free market capitalism, but the model just doesn't work when public funding has entered the equation and there are institutionalized monopolies in that market. Your independent ISPs STILL have to go through networks owned by the big Telcos or cable companies. If the Internet is fully "de-regulated" as you suggest, those companies will be able to slow down the service you get from the little guys, and/or make it more expensive. Consumers will definitely gravitate toward whoever provides the best service for the money. "De-regulation" is a nice buzz word, but when the consumer is locked into a market where a monopoly dictates availability and price of the service, "free market" capitalism is broken.
Interestingly, the word "committee" does not appear in the US Constitution (neither does the word "party" in the context of political party). I highly doubt the designers envisioned a bunch of committees having a stranglehold on the entire operation of the legislative branch of the government (nor but two rigidly disciplined political parties, disguising the fact that they are Tweedledum and Tweedledee, having unassailable joint rule of the entire nation for an eternity).
Actually, no, net neutrality would not eliminate QoS, fair queueing or firewalls. The Telcos wouldn't be able to discriminate between customers, but they could still give interactive and video conferencing packets a higher priority than bulk file transfers.
Basically, net neutrality is what we have now, just codified into law.
Here's what Congressman Boucher, a supporter of net neutrality, said about QoS:
Net neutrality may have lost in the House, but it's not too late to stop this. If you're a US citizen, call your senators. Now.
--b9
Call your senator.
Tell them what you think this bill will do. And mostly why you won't vote for the again or contribuite to their campaigns.
(It is the only thing you can do, unless you are a freelance lobbyist that wants to work pro-bono for slashdotters.)
Here is their contact information.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/ senators_cfm.cfm
The more I read about this the more I wish congress would not pass it with the net neutrality provisions. You see, we currently do NOT have any law that states providers must not give preferential treatment to packets. What we do have is a set of FCC guidelines which strongly suggest this.
Yes, that's right. Nothing currently prevents a provider from not having net neutrality. Yet for the most part they all do although I hear Comcast already throttles non-HTTP traffic to make sure HTTP traffic has priority. The real question is if a net neutrality law (which we have not had) is really desirable. So far we've gotten along without one. Why pass one now?
If we were to pass a law, who enforces it? I suppose the FCC. That's great. Then we'd have a bunch of government bureaucrats deciding what an internet provider can and can't do. That'll help ensure innovation. Just look at the government's track record.
Rick Boucher may sincerely believe that the federal government must be the nanny watching out for the big evil internet providers. Maybe he doesn't realize that while this may ensure continued competition in the internet content market that this is going to stifle competition in the internet service provider market.
This net neutrality thing smacks of socialism. A few telcos float the idea that they might think about prioritizing traffic based on contracts (which is as of now currently within their rights to do) and the socialists in congress immediately try to pass a provision to codify net neutrality into law.
My take on this is that the internet is still young. Let's see what happens! See what happens if ISPs start prioritizing traffic. There may be advantages to it. Or there may not be. If it really turns out to be bunk I assure you that people will switch ISPs and/or complain loudly. Let's keep the government out of it for now.
We don't spend anywhere near 100% of our GDP you liberal tool. We spend less now in terms of our GDP then we did in the 80's. Get the facts straight. Of course, you're a liberal, so facts and results don't matter to you. It's all about intentions.
1. To begin with, I'm a libertarian.
2. Learn to read with comprehension: I said that the TOTAL OF COSTS that WOULD have been imposed by implementing THE SUM OF GOOD INTENTIONS would have to exceed 100% of GDP at all times - not that this is the case today. That is, what politicians and moochers at public teat would LIKE to see bought at taxpayers' expense simply has to be greater than available resources. And this is the case with "net neutrality" bullshit: they want to force telcos not to discriminate traffic at all and then expect that other things will not worsen, that is, the internet will either become overused because companies without enough profit will simply see no business sense to invest into expanding bandwidth and infrastructure, which will ultimately require subsidizing it from taxes, which again costs you somewhere else. But the proponents of "net neutrality" are either freeloaders or greedy fools.
3. Re supposedly lower fraction of GDP taken over by all combined levels of govt, I would like to see your source - because none of my sources has indicated smth like that. Even during Reagan times that fraction just more or less stopped growing, not fell. Clinton was of no help. Bush certainly is no fiscal conservative either!
Geez, what's the matter with people today, just shouting and not paying any attention to details. Politics has become pure shouting match it seems.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Everybody pays for their bandwidth already-- the price of connectivity is pegged to how much traffic you generate. If Google, Amazon, et al. create more traffic, they buy more bandwidth to carry it. Payment scales with use right now. There's no such thing as more or less profitable traffic, for a telco-- traffic is traffic-- and there's no reason there should be.
This is not about making payment scale with use. This is a shakedown.
The analogy you draw to the California energy companies is surprisingly apt-- that was a shakedown, too.
You must have been paid to produce this crap.
savetheinternet.com = political guerilla marketing
Geez, get better copywriters for crying out loud, that site is rubbish.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Thats fine, if they want to play games like this then get out your RFC template and write a new standard they cant block easily or legally.
Just a wild @$$ idea, bitp2p. The new spec outlines a new DNS tag, say BD. Much like MX records this can point to multiple servers weighted. Each server supplies the information to connect to a p2p network running its own DNS and encrypted data transfer. Since the users on this p2p network would be connected to various ISP's each will have its own advantages and disadvantages. The client software would send a page request over this p2p network and the clients will begin feeding based on whomever answers first but will stripe the data much like a bittorent tranfer. So 30 clients could each provide you with 2k of the transfer in encrypted form (which its a DMCA violation to decrypt) since the data is coming in encrypted and from many differnet locations the ISP's cant legally decrypt it nor would decrypting it do them much good unless they decrypted everything to your IP.
Now lets see Google and MS begin working on this together in an effort to show the Telcos that nomatter how many politicians they purchase, we will not be stifled!
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
Neutrality of the network keeps your right to QoS. Basically the telcos want to ban/limit/block what you can route on your connection at there perogative. Net neutrality means that they can't do that.
Telcos don't want you doing VoIP since that competes against there products. They don't want you doing IPtv since they think they own the network that can do such.
When i buy internet i don't buy "comcast" i buy comcasts network access to the internet. Net neutrality agreement was meant to enforce that "open access" in the most simplest form. Because the law failed comcast can now deny/filter/block data as they see fit or throttle sites to my connection as well as from my connections (because i'm hosting data)..
net neutrality has nothing to do with how you utilize the bandwidth/service YOU buy, its how the parent you are buying it from will CONTROL the service you buy by limiting what you can do with it.
Could this be related to the past reports of Google buying up massive amounts of dark fibre?
Yes, there are sound economic reasons to differentiate between various kinds of traffic - QoS is one of them for instance, buying USAGE of bandwidth (not top bandwidth) in bulk is another.
I think the impossibility of buying end-to-end bandwidth in bulk or "retail", with different latency, bandwidth and reliability in the current model is the reason the truly massive internet TV is still not here (I'm talking smth on the scale competitive to regular TV networks).
Check standard economics - bandwidth is a wide-area resource like many other resources.
Telcos have this rule of thumb - the link can be only two of the following three: cheap, reliable, high-capacity. Honestly, it's true, it's not conspiracy or smth.
The current internet model deluded the greedy fools into thinking you can have all three if you only force someone to offer it through "proper" legislation.
The result is that your IP service alternates depending on traffic between either cheap and high-capacity, but without guaranteed QoS, and cheap and reliable but without really high bandwidth.
When you pay the ISP here that me with various top bandwidth available (e.g. I have a choice between 160/320/1280/3270 kbps), but that obviously comes without end-to-end QoS. Which, honestly, I find more and more irritating. I would be more than happy to pay small amount of money for selected, QoS guaranteed access to e.g. selected internet TV stations, while the rest of my traffic would be regular service like we have now - no guarantee that IP packet will arrive, no info about latency, but it's OK for mail or Web.
What we have now is the worst of both worlds of commercial, profit maximizing and traffic discrimination, but with lousy quality and reliability of public good. That's what you get when you try to stuff various services that could live with different tradeoffs re latency, bandwidth, reliability and cost into a single standardized traffic without QoS.
ATM was supposed to solve this problem (it had built-in QoS), but it fell through.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
If Slashdot members in each community where Verizon is applying to get a cable TV franchise would speak up about Net Neutrality at their local town council meetings then we have a chance at kicking a leg out from under the telcos.
The legislation that will allow for national cable TV franchises will not be passed into law for at least a year (if at all). That gives us time to approach small towns and tell them to make Verizon put provisions into their cable TV franchise agreement for Net Neutrality.
I know it sounds like a crazy and far fetched idea but it can work.
All we need is a few key towns to stick up for Net Neutrality and we will have the precedent needed at the national level.
Verizon needs to roll out their TV service as fast as they can. Holding them up at the local level is, in my opinion, the best way to protect Net Neutrality.
Check out what we are doing in my town: www.redbanktv.org
Thanks -- Tom
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
The point of fiber is to be transparent to light with little dissipation. That's not the same thing as being conductive. Actually, the amount of dissipation grows with the conductivity of the medium, so being electrically conductive is bad if you want to pass light with little dissipation. This is because light is an electromagnetic wave, so in a conductive medium it drives currents that heat the medium, taking energy away from the wave itself. Optical fibers are typically made of some sort of glass (perhaps some are made of plastics) and air, both of which are good electrical insulators.
There may be fibers with, say, a conducting sheath or something. I'm not saying lightning might not be a problem for some reason, I'm only saying that a material that's good at passing light is generally not good at passing electricity.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
He who controls the spice, controls the universe!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
While, I thought your comment was well crafted, I am slashdot user. I wonder how an exchange using a Star Wars quote would have gone in another context, say Iraq on O'Reilly (of course, you can't have a sensiable conversation on there, so why bother).
"Great warrior. Wars not make one great."
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Really though, what can these big companies do now?
Would it be possible/profitable for them to enter into the telecoms market themselves to safeguard their business? Can Microsoft buy Verizon?
Uh, both Google and P2P users already pay for bandwidth.
// This is not a sig.
This is not just about politicians being on the payroll at telcos. This is a matter of collusion at the highest levels of big business that has gone unchecked by the justice department and the courts. They may be in competition with one another, but if they are the only 3 telcos in town (as is true in many urban areas) then it really doesn't matter. You can't just get pissed and cancel service with one, because the other has the same restrictions.
(a) commercial entities are profit maximisers
(b) commercial companies are in charge of our telecommunication networks
(c) therefore we have to sit tight and watch them charge whatever they like for the use of their telecommunication networks
More to the point: if I follow your thinking, we have no moral right whatsoever to either protest or act against any measure they come up with to charge for their services. In fact, they should be allowed to charge whatever they like to whomever they like.
Now all this sounds reasonable. After all, what are free markets for? (Well I do seem to hear strange rumblings about putative "price gouging" with gasoline. Now how can that be? Gasoline markets are free, aren't they? Charge whatever the market will bear. Surely nothing that Government should stick its nose in, right?) But here is the rub: the market in which the Telcos work isn't free, and hasn't ever been free.
Why not?
(a) all companies like water, electricity, and telecoms are network-based. You can't just sell someone water, electricity, or communication out of thin air (well ... lets not drag cellular phones / WiFi into it here, we're talking fixed lines). You need to have a network in place first. And that's expensive. Very expensive. In fact ... it's an entry barrier. And supposing you start offering network services, your (bigger) competitors can usually crush you by reducing their tarifs where your network overlaps their, and recoup this loss elsewhere.
(b)regulations (lots of regulations you have to comply with, not everyone can start his own phone company tomorrow
(c) telephone was a great big monopoly until the forced split of AT&T into "baby bells", but now the de facto monopolies have reappeared (Verizon and AT&T)
I think this can be summed up as saying: the market for telecommunication is not free, and should not be confused with a free market, and should therefore not be treated as one.
Further considering the fact that
- the fact that telecommunication is absolutely vital to modern society
- that the current situation is that Telcos are required by law (well by FTC) to provide neutral access to their network
- it is now technically feasible for Telcos to collect enough information from their networks to render all their users completely transparant
In summary I think we can see that
- the negotiating field between Telcos and their clients is anything but level (no competition)
- Telcos have a unilateral information information advantage over their clients
- therefore the market that we will see emerge is totally skewed
- as a result the prices we will see at market equilibrium will be sorely inflated
- therefore the question is justified whether it makes sense to lift the current neutrality requirement on todays monopolists. I personally think it isn't.
I'm not against free markets. In fact I'm in favour of them. What I'm against is people mistakenly applying free-market arguments to a market that isn't free, and on top of that to a very important market.
{ - Generic Guy - }
And you'll get it. Really, I think you will. If your ISP doesn't give you the rate you want, somebody else will step up to the plate and sell it to you. ISPs already compete with each other on bandwidth, and I'm certain that the instant they start throttling one site ads will appear on TV showing a sad middle-age couple watching a picture of a new grandchild come in line by line next to a smiling couple sharing a video-chat with theirs.
You may not like the price at which they want to sell it to you, but the price is a function of how much you're willing to pay. Always. This net non-neutrality bit is a way for them to raise prices; they're just trying to do it with a finer grain than just jacking up your rates.
They think they can charge Google, and then Google will charge you, but since Google is free that's just not gonna happen. They think of that as Google's problem. And when it's Google's problem... well, Google is pretty good at solving problems. Anything from a parallel backbone to an ad campaign to convince users to switch to less pricey ISPs.
The internet routes around damage. Even brain damage on the part of ISPs.
(None of this applies if you find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere with only one ISP who has a contract with the town. Those guys are kinda hosed.)
In fact, we send them BACK to Congress more often than the Soviet politburo
Now that's an eye-opening stat. (and yes, I know its the LA City beat, but the numbers are verified on a ton of other sites/news services. And its a pretty easy fact to fact check)
As you have pointed out the ISPs currently have peering agreement contracts which already ensure network neutrality. So why do we need congress to pass a law to do it? I should point out (in case you didn't gather it from my last post) that the proposed law isn't removing an already existing net neutrality law but is actually creating a new law for net neutrality where one didn't exist before.
The large ones that are calling for tollbooths are not going to get them simply because no one is going to want to peer with them if they are throttling traffic. The current system of peering agreements works well and will continue to work well.
Also, your truck parking analogy is flawed. Or maybe it's halfway reasonable but you don't understand what really prevents someone from parking a truck in front of my driveway. You see, the roads are public land and so the rules of the road are defined by the public (i.e. the government).
The net is not public land. Sure, the wires are indeed running through public land but this is a local issue and not a federal issue. The worst part of this bill has nothing to do with net neutrality but rather the portions which dictate the federal government decides who gets to operate cable companies on local land.
<p style=cynical> You see, both the democrats and the republicans took money from all kinds of lobbyists. The main purpose of this bill is to remove control from localities of local cable contracts. I believe this was something the republicans introduced. However, the democrats have now gone off on this tirade of saving net neutrality and so they want to codify the net neutrality rules as law. Believe me, the cable companies won't care because they still win as they don't have to deal with those pesky localities when running cables through their land. The net neutrality issue is a smoke screen to get people worked up about what amounts to a meaningless issue. The real issue here is the removal of more state and local rights and the addition of more socialist federal government bureaucracy. <p>
These companies (and Google in particular) have been buying quite a bit of dark fiber. Maybe tell light it up, and start selling bandwidth to ISPs, or setup their own wireless ISPs.
When you get fucked by the middle man, and you have plenty of money, the best response is to cut the middle man out.
Google seems to plan ahead. I'm guessing that even if they loose this current "neutrality" battle with the telecos, they'll have an alternate system in place. Of course, they'd prefer it if everyone could "neutrally" access their service, but I'm guessing that smaller providers like Speakeasy, Wide Open West, and the smatter of medium ISPs and wireless ISPs out there will get the option of buying bandwidth from a coallition of internet companies.....
These guys have more than enough money to build such a thing, and some of these companies have already started to purchase the necessary fiber lines.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Uh, both Google and P2P users already pay for bandwidth.
Uh, they don't.
They pay more like for AVAILABILITY of bandwidth, limited at the top.
So they OVERUSE it, FREELOAD by using more than other users, say, granma whose only purpose of having DSL modem is accessing webmail page. Who incidentally simply don't mind up to a point thanks to consumer's psychology of flat rate.
It's all fine and dandy as long as we talk not much bandwidth. But this keeps down applications that carry really, really huge bandwidth. Flat-rate consumers who use below average do not mind paying more for bandwidth that they did not use and that is subsequently abused by P2Pers and Googles being freeloaders. That's it, however, they don't want to subsidize more than that. So they don't. So high-bandwidth applications like massive internet TV can't get the foot in the door.
You either troll or deliberately try to conflate various qualities of bandwidth together purposefully: used bandwidth or potential bandwidth?
With QoS or without it? What latency, what band, what cost, what reliability?
I suspect you're like trivial P2Per (hey, me too, I'm just not lying about it) who typically wants his habit subsidized and simply doesn't mind Google doing the same.
Who's bad party - TELCOS! ME WANNA OVERUSE CAPACITY FOR FREE, WAAAA!
Sure, telcos are selfish, cynical bastards. They definitely are.
But all this brainless shouting seems designed to conceal that shouters are selfish, cynical bastards, too - just this time you want to be on the freeloading side.
Uh, uh, uh. Hiding something behind the Uh?
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Doesn't this all really come back to Big Brother?
A. Google doesn't release records to Big Brother.
B. ISP's don't have authority to give the gov't Google's records.
soo....
C. The Gov't gets closer to giving ISP's the power to inspect customers packets by shooting down Net Neutrality.
D. Big Brother get's what it wanted all along because instead of going to Google, they now go to their buddies down at AT&T and Verizon for EVERYTHING they need.
Of course this is all in the name of National Security, so we are all to accept this as good for 'everyone' and wave our flags and eat apple pie. The shift of power is going to be huge in the next few years if the Reps keep this crap up.
That's horseshit. Show me the clause in any ISP agreement that defines "overuse." If I buy unlimited access, which is exactly what the majors have been hawking for years now, the company selling it to me hardly has cause to complain if I use it more than they'd prefer. Hope is not a business plan.
// This is not a sig.
There is currently NO network neutrality law. NONE. It does not exist. The whole "savetheinternet.com" website is BULL SHIT. What keeps the net neutral is the peering agreements between ISPs. That is all. There are also some FCC guidlines (note: NOT laws) that encourage neutral peering agreements.
What's really happening here is that a bunch of socialists want the federal government to be the nanny of the internet. They want to pass a law making network neutrality mandatory so that the federal government can have oversight. This increases the feds ability to control the internet.
Peering agreements are working FINE. The private sector has and can deal with this issue without government intervention. This is the same "save the children" crap we see all the time. Writing a network neutrality law won't save the internet. What it will do is put control into the federal government's hands so the next round of lobbyists can lobby for exceptions to the neutrality law. This is the next move by the telcos. They _want_ the net neutrality law but want to make you think they don't. A net neutrality law that they can get an exception to means that while their competitors won't have an exception, they will. That means they'll get government sponsored competitive advantage.
By keeping the status quo (no net neutrality law, only guidelines) we keep the government out of it and the private companies will work out what is best for themselves. Currently the best thing for an internet company to do is peer with everyone they can because not doing so means they'll have displeased customers when "_____.com" doesn't work.
But you go right ahead, continue to be deluded into thinking that we must "save the internet" by giving the federal government more control over it. Because you know more federal government control has always improved things.
The bill wasn't about net neutrality. The bill was primarily about creating federal cable/telco franchises and removing control from the localities. In order to drum up support FOR this abomination of a bill some legislators decided to add "Net Neutrality" provisions to it. Basically you get fucked up the ass (federal cable/telco franchises) but they give you a little vaseline (codifying into law the concept of net neutrality).
Note that net neutrality is NOT the current law. There is no law governing net neutrality. Hear that? It's all currently based on peering agreements which work well because the federal government is NOT involved. Get your head out of your ass!
Essentially, anyone who wants this bill to pass is saying "Please use vaseline while you fuck me up the ass".
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
>On the one hand, in seems like the people who own the pipes should be able to do whatever they want with them
Remember, in _Citizen of the Galaxy_, a judge gives the hero a lecture about property rights? He said the bigger something is, the less any one man actually owns it.
Umm, the bill isn't to allow the telecomm companies to screw the people, it's to prevent them from doing so.
Rest assured they would find the way of doing precisely that. They have money = brains of lawyers and economists that can figure out how to do it.
You're not going to painstakingly study every detail of telecom law and systematically sue the telecoms if they do smth wrong, are you?
They will study every detail and design their solutions around the idiocies of lawmakers who most of the time don't EVEN READ the laws they vote on. In most cases the talking dog sez senator votes yea, senator votes yea. There were some mixups, where they mistakenly voted opposite to intent of talking dogs. Apparently many lawmakers can't even understand their own dogs.
Yes, it might be you will prevent some abuse, though in most cases that abuse is just a figment of imagination of a twat not understanding detailed interests and detailed actions of dominant oligopolists, who don't rape pets and steal candy from babies not because they have warm hearts, but because such particular actions don't make sense for them. But at the cost of introducing other market distortions and costs.
Gawd, I hate this time of arrogant, loud and brainless good intentions. And I thought we were done with it. Silly me.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
>cheaper to produce with a lower cost per foot to buy than copper... FIber is just glass!
Glass produced to purity standards and manufacturing tolerances that were impossible until the last century.
A fact that the general public does not realize that if oil wasn't so high that the government is now taking action against the Big Oil companies (who have anally raped consumers at the gas pump while raking in record profits), the government would be taking action against Big Telecom (which has been leaving dirty messages in our voice mail like a drunken Pat O'Brien).
Given that the House Committee on Energy & Commerce has done little to stop Big Oil from buttf*cking us, it is more than certain that they will allow Big Telecom to do the same.
Big Telecom's arguments for wanting to make the Internet it's b*tch.
First, they tell us that they "want to provide more services to consumers" and "are woking hard to bring it to consumers." For those who were not born yesterday, this is BS. The telecom industry generally says these things because they are also trying to take over the entire cable industry, not just part of it which they already own. They don't want a slice of pie, they want to whole thing.
Secondly, they tell us that they "want to help the government apprehend online predators". It sounds like a noble objective, but what Big Telecom doesn't tell the goverment is that this goal is at the bottom of thier list of things to do, which probably looks like this:
When I was in the kindergarden and first grade, AT&T and some energy gave the school these fliers to pass out to children to teach children about energy conservation and tell children about some of the technology that is out there that AT&T used to help others especially the disabled and the deaf. In retrospect, this is nothing more than corporate propoganda. If you have children who come home with this sort of materal, file a complaint against the school board for allowing major corporations to sell out your children!
Generally, Big Telecom does not report any records of predators who work for Big Telecom. They also won't report anyone who works for any government agency in order to influence the government, at the right price no less. They will also hide any evidence that they themselves are engaging in these illict acts. Industries often use altrusism to coverup any corruption they are currently engaging in (see Big Tobacco).
Finaly, Big telecom also tells us that they "want to pr
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Venezuela?
Kidding aside, your statement should have said, "name a country that is not more corrupt and bougth out than America is." I'm not just spouting blind patriotism, America is one of the least corrupt countries. That may be changing though.
Yes, rise up my Fremen brethren! Let us make our own network, forever vanquishing the power of the House of Telco.
I'm *not* stuck in the middle of nowhere. However I have but two choices - 144K IDSL via a 3rd party (COVAD) or Comcast. As it happens I have both because one is used for hosting but probably not for much longer. FIOS is a pipedream but it's coming in areas near me. SAT is a joke since 500+ms Ping kills my gaming and THEY throttle like mad anyway.
So, while you may think there's competition out in the world it doesn't seem to be occuring anywhere near me. I'd bet that lots of others are in the same boat too. I live in a populated suburb of Washington D.C. so it's not some backwater.
P.S. GTE aka Verizon "promised" me DSL multiple times. I actually signed up for it three times but they could never get me a connection. In the end they couldn't provide but COVAD did and GTE still screwed around and dragged their feet providing the circuit. Felt good to dump them for Vonage! 2 days after the switch they called me up to offer me something but before starting the woman asked, rather smugly, if I was a Verizon customer. When I said no you'd have thought I kicked her puppy. I've not heard back from them since!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
A general strike affects everything, even more so than voting. It cuts across all sectors of commerce. The point is to fix our entire system of government and not just attempt to hire one person in the hopes that he'll slap band-aids on a leaking dike.
In any case, from what I've heard there's not much support in the Senate for net neutrality, either, and if you think Senators are more likely than Representatives to switch their positions based on public opinion when Senate races require a lot more money from special interests to run, you're probably way too naive about the political process in this country. Unless Microsoft decides they care enough about this issue to outbribe the telecomms (err, sorry "out-lobby"), there's about 0 chance of this passing.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Unfortunately, there are a significant amount of telcom-financed Dems who will just as happily whore out your rights to the highest bidder.
This is NOT a Republican/Democrat issue. This is a campaign-finance/bribery issue.
Remember; Clinton enthusiastically supported and signed the DMCA.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
You can look up how your representative voted, and they provide phone numbers to their offices so you can thank them or berate them (depending how they voted).
Please, people, pick up the phones. I'm calling during my lunch break to chew out the asshole I voted for for not supporting net neutrality.
No, you talk horseshit. And I can prove it:
n ications1b.pdf
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.commu
("Internet pricing and the history of communications" by Andrew Odlyzko)
In short, in earliest, old days of yore AOL (9600 bps phone modems were fun, I'm telling you. not. these days 38400 bps was broadband technology) and pretty much every ISP tried to get users to pay for bandwidth used or time spent on net.
It DIDN'T WORK. The users stubbornly wanted flat rate and that's it, even if they were not using it all, agreeing to systematically pay more than if they went with typical "phone bill" model. Come to think of it, it's crazy. And so the businesses went with it: customers demanded flat rate, they got it.
The standard economics has it that way:
"Although flat-rate continues to be the predominant form in which Internet access is sold, that form of pricing is unviable. Flat-rate pricing encourages waste and requires 20 percent of users who account for 80 percent of the traffic to be subsidized by other users and other forms of revenue. Furthermore, flat-rate pricing is incompatible with quality-differentiated services."
Something not entirely clearly understood in consumers' psychology makes us massively insist on flat rate for internet, though we still have little problem with traditional model of charging per minute for phone calls. It should be pretty obvious, shouldn't it? Flat rate, not paying for bandwidth used but only for available is exclusively an artifact of consumer's psyche. From standard economic viewpoint that works for water, electricity, phone calls and legal services, flat rate is wasteful and non-optimal.
P2P and Google and the like are the ones who gorge on that bandwidth, paid for by guys who for some crazy Freudian reasons are willing to pay for more bandwidth than they actually use. Economically, it's like allowing your phone company to bill you for using phone by other people. That said, there are such things out there: like people who buy gym membership cards and use them less than they intended (which is exactly what gym owners count on, thus being able to oversell their resources).
Now, Odlyzko has shown very convincingly why for complicated reasons peculiar to internet this is not the case for internet. Still, it doesn't have to mean that "stratifying" or "segmenting" the internet services could not help in its development. At worst we will fall back to the flat-rate, no-QoS, no bulk discounts model.
Suppose you go to gas stations and you are forced to buy only one type of gasoline that is subsidized and poor quality. Happy with the picture? So far we have been putting up with exactly such situation on the internet. Well, I for one am sick of it. Why not try smth new? OHMYGOD THE TELCOS ARE GONNA EAT MY ASS!
You're all a bunch of panicky sheep, pussies.
My God, what is it with you people! The net grows exponentially dumb these days! This is supposed to be the place for people knowing a thing or two about technology, economics and the world in general?! Is it contagious knuckledraggia epidemics? WTF?!
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
It simply doesn't make sense to run war on your customers. All of you here got into paranoid mode. Probably because the broadly defined lefties are getting desperate: they're running out of real problems, so they try to invent imaginary ones and scare us all with them.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
I really can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. We can agree that it's bad if the telcos achieve a monopoly. But does this laissez faire move on Congress' part help, hinder, or neither? If the markets work, then I feel hands off is best. I think the markets are working currently. Even that Whitacre character of SBC has conceded that forcing discriminatory service on customers would be economic suicide.
If the market doesn't work, then it seems to me Congress' best move is whatever is required to allow the market to function. It may be as simple as a requiring a little daylight, so the telcos cannot hide things and customers can inform themselves. That's how sales tax is done in the US on everything except gas. A store must mark items with the price _before_ taxes are added, so that when we get to the cash register, we see exactly how heavily we are being taxed. A bad law has many edges and unintended consequences. Think "chilling effects". It would be the height of irony if we passed a law intended to preserve net neutrality, but which had the opposite effect by perhaps unwittingly raising the barriers so high there is no competition because only the biggest can afford to comply with all the regulations. Think SOX.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Levelling the Internet
Why can't you just
Get it through your head
It's over, it's over now
Yes, you heard me clearly now
I said it's over, it's over now
I'm not really over you
You might say that
I can't take it
I can't take it
Lord, I swear I just
Can't take it no more
(Go away) go away
(Far away) so far away
It's too late to turn back now
And it don't matter anyhow
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Raw Story is in danger. Your right to read news stories and writing that disrupt the government/Big Media symbiosis is under attack. And you probably don't even know it.
There has been so much going on lately, what with plans to nuke Iran and the rolling mutiny among the top brass that you may well have missed another growing menace to all that we have built here.
The Internet phenomenon - the dizzying evolution from Netscape to Yahoo to Google to the new world of blogs and wikis - is the result of an essential structural attribute of the medium: the content-neutrality of the pipes we use to connect to it. It is the natural tendency of the powerful to silence and hinder anything that threatens their dominance, but the phone companies could not stop AOL, AOL could not stop Yahoo, and Yahoo could not stop Google, because the folks who owned the pipes used to carry all those ones and zeroes to and from your computer were not permitted to discriminate against bits they didn't like. (The concept of the "common carrier" dates back at least to the earliest regulation of railroads more than a hundred years ago.) That level field has also resulted in the current flowering of our participatory democracy. But that flower is about to pruned or even torn out by the roots.
The Orwellian "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006," sponsored by Congressman Joe Barton (R, Texas), will, if it becomes law, allow your Internet provider to charge you extra to read this column. It will allow your provider to block this column entirely. Congressman Ed Markey (D, Mass), who sponsored a defeated amendment that would have explicitly preserved neutrality, explains:
That bill took a big step toward being enacted into law last week.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
They are all worth collectively hundreds of billions of dollars. Granted to set up a nationwide ISP is not cheap, but they could do it without question since the only alternative is to give in to the telcos and play russian roulette with their companies' futures.
But look at it like this...if all of the companies that use the web as a means to generate revenue just bit the bullet and formed their own ISP, sure they would have to shell out many billions of dollars, but in return they would be the ONLY ISP in the US that would offer completely neutral access to any website, and probably charge less for doing so. I dont know about the rest of you but if I were a telco consumer pissed about my web access being throttled to my favorite sites and there was another option available to me that allowed me to A) access the sites that I want and B) was cheaper or at least the same price, I would switch.
Just think of all the consumers that would just cancel their current internet access arrangement with their telco and switch...the telcos would lose EVERY internet customer they ever had. The service is better and its the same price or cheaper than what I was paying before. More for less (or at least the same as what I was paying before)...the only true way to catch the eye of the average North Amercian consumer. Plus from the web companies' standpoint, they would now be turning in MASSIVE revenue from this new venture...they essentially just stole every internet customer in the United States so Im sure the initial cost of setting up that ISP would be offset in a reasonable amount of time.
I mean the telcos have to see this coming...these companies are worth BILLIONS...and you are trying to take that away from them. Are you crazy?!?!? Because its not like they are directly attacking small business here where literally almost all of them would have to ban together in order to compete on this monsterous finanacial level. Really there only needs to be about 10 or 15 large tech companies to make this viable.
The telcos are still trying to play this Business in the 1990's game by using the traditional tactics to ensure that your industry is well looked after by the powers that be in government. They fail to realize that they may own the pipes...but those pipes would be worthless without the content that flows through them. And just think...once this supermassive ISP is up and running and serving web connections, whats next, VOIP and IPTV, why not, they have the backbone to do it. These would be the only remaining revenue streams that the telcos/cable companies would have left if they arent serving up internet connections, and since they no longer have any internet customers Im sure the marketing geniuses at this new supermassive ISP would be able to think of some way to offer some discounted "package deals" for people wanting phone and television as well as their internet.
The internet is free and the telcos will find that out whether they like it or not.
Now it makes better sense why Google was buying up all that dark fibre optic lines a year or two back. Why fight with legislation what you can fight with tech?
Now, if only all entrepreneurs could afford that sort of thing, haha.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Dude, you're insane. You talk about market forces like they're some quirk that businesses need to circumvent. Moreover, you're failing to distinguish between the subject at hand -- namely equality of packets, and schemes for buying volume. Capping bandwidth and offering levels of service to users is totally different than what everyone else here is talking about.
And one more thing: you're also snotty and rude. Reading one mathematician's paper doesn't make you an expert. His opinions have value, but they're not "proof," they're an argument -- one which you weild like an eleven-year old with an AK-47. I'm done with this "conversation." Fact is, it would take me too long to iterate over the basic factual errors you make to even get to the core of what you're saying (e.g. You can easily get flat phone rates, you can pay a lawyer on retainer, and depending on where you live, flat water rates are also available).
So the final word is yours. Take it and spew some more of the bilious crap you've been spewing. Better yet, put that "panicky pussies" bit in your business plan and see how it flies. Just don't have the nerve to tell us Google doesn't pay out the ass for bandwidth.
// This is not a sig.
...basic and rudimentary. That's what makes it flexible. Making it smart and dandy would have killed it, just like overcomplication and elitism killed ATM. Bastardizing the network is precisely the best thing that can happen to the network. That's what it is built for: ruthless exploitation.
Regarding the existing networks for voice and video - they're held by incumbents. Moving to internet TV, radio/ podcasting / whatevercasting is more important for economic and political than technological reasons. And it's not going to be more TV, it's going to be something different, at the expense of existing MSM, bless their hopefully fiery deaths.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
You are short-sighted. You are willing to re-engineer the internet for better television. I prefer to imagine all of the innovative things that could come from providing increased bandwidth for all applications and allowing the users at the networks ends do whatever the heck they want with that bandwidth. The Internet 2 has brought an incredible amount of value to Universities and government agencies. It will be an enormous benefit to the economy when home-users, large businesses, and small businesses all have similar high-speed internet. It is sad that the only thing some people want is yet another way to distribute television.
Thank god I bought up some Axlotl tanks during the .com bust. I'll be selling delicious, delicious Amal in no time.
If they could squeeze small ISPs and consumers they would have already bloody done that.
You assume - correctly - that in future they will have no sentiments towards whoever from whom they can squeeze their profits.
Why assume this is the case now or it was in the past?
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
My point was that you should write your Rep and say this issue decides your vote in the next election. The House has not killed the amendment yet and Reps are theoretically more afraid of the electorate than Senators anyway. It is at least worth a shot. I would call my Rep but he wrote the amendment, so it would be pointless.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Indeed...
And on the Internet he who controls the peering controls the Internet.
A large ISP or Telco without a good peering manager is like a guild vessel whose navigator has had its Spice withdrawn.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The easiest way to keep the Telephone/Cable companies from getting a tiered internet is to keep the government the hell out of it. Don't pass any bills which supplant local control with federal control. Don't pass any bills which supplant peering agreements (simple contract law) with federal laws.
In short, congress should keep its hands off the internet! Seriously, it should just stay the hell away from it. As soon as congress starts passing laws regulating what can and cannot be done it's all over. The first step will be a net neutrality law that will be championed by some as a victory for the internet. Of course, it won't be because it will either have riders or will be attached as a rider to a bill that is not at all a victory for the internet. The next step is for companies to start lobbying for exceptions to the law.
It's analogous to our tax code. As a congress critter you can add more taxes so you have a bone to throw to the lobbyists in the form of tax breaks. Anytime we try to "tax the rich" we wind up screwing the middle class one way or another. The federal government needs to get out of this socialist mindset. It's not just the Democrats either. The Republicans are getting real bad about this; I believe they introduced this whole federalization of the telephone and cable companies in the first place.
The only way I see this happening is if we all take part in policing ourselves. This will remove the need for the government nanny. This is currently how the Internet works. Everyone makes a gentleman's agreement to peer with one another. Occasionally you have little spats about how one company's traffic is worth more than another's and sometimes a peering agreement is terminated. After a few days it's all back up though because no one can afford to lose that business.
To put my points of view into perspective, I am an avid sailboat racer (no, I don't own my own boat but I do crew on one). Sailboat racing is a gentleman's sport. There are a set of well defined rules but there are no referees to enforce them. If someone fouls you then you protest them (which is actually done by flying a red flag and yelling the word "PROTEST"). The protested party can then do one of two things. If he realizes he screwed up he can do two complete turns as a penalty to acknowledge your protest. When you have seen him complete his second turn you may elect to take down your red flag (if you can still see him). If he thinks you are totally wrong he can ignore you and arrange to meet you in the protest room after the race (often times days after the race). Perhaps after the race but before the protest meeting he has a chat with you. And perhaps he consults a rulebook or someone else to see if he really was in the wrong so he can just withdraw and save face.
If the race isn't particularly important or if there is a question on whether he truly fouled you then perhaps you don't protest him at all. Perhaps you give him some slack. You might meet him in the bar after the race and say, hey, you fouled me out there buddy, don't do it again.
This works well because pretty much everyone knows everyone. The point I'm making here is that smaller groups of people can much more effectively police themselves. In the internet provider case it's a reasonable number of companies all in it for themselves and highly concerned about maintaining at least a working relationship with their peers. This is what capitalism is supposed to be. A gentleman's agreement to do the best for yourself while maintaining your relationships with others.
The internet is this form of capitalism. The more socialism we impose on it, the more screwed up it's going to get just like nearly everything else in this country. You make one little socialist change and someone finds a way to take advantage of it. So you make another one, and someone takes advantage of that. Then another, and another. Pretty soon you're more locked down than China because for the socialist system to wor
Not the AC, but I just wanted to point out that it's simply not possible for people to expect employees to police their managers. Sure, at some level some boss orders a guy to stick his hand in a running machine, this can be dealt with. But above that, how many Enron employees could have been expected to know that their maintenance schedule in power generation plants across California was carefully crafted to make sure too many separate plants were taken offline for maintenance?
At some point, you eventually reach a place where the only way to continue is to use the powers of government to compel evidence. What's needed at this point is to get rid of the "corporate veil" so that the "evil people" are dealt with by the criminal system (rather than the civil tort system), so that the government's involvement isn't wasted on some lawyer a 50% cut of the settlement.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I would call my Rep but he wrote the amendment, so it would be pointless.
Call or write to him anyway.
It is as important to encourage good actions by politicians as it is to discourage bad actions. Letting him know that he has grass roots support is important, and allows him to demonstrate that support to colleagues.
Also, a letter/message supporting a politician probably receives more notice than one opposing for two reasons -
1. it is much easier to get people to complain than to support
2. The natural human tendency for people to believe people who agree with them.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
If you get rid of Bush, who replaces him?
Is that your idea of an improvement?
--
There's always another windmill.
Rogers in Canada, for example, throttles BitTorrent traffic by detecting how many hosts you're connecting to. It's also screwing up iTMS. Fortunately, there's a known workaround (using well-known VoIP ports), because I don't think they're ready to handle thousands of screaming Vonage customers affected by this shit policy...
-Stu
He's entertaining sometimes, but his worlview is pretty moronic. The best way to some up heinlein is that he's a fascist who thinks that humor is immoral.
Also, the physical size of something is not the limiting factor in property rights... the issue is a bit more complicted than that.