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Small Cable Groups Seek To Break Net Neutrality
saikou writes "CNet's News.com has a story on the first cable companies openly going against Net Neutrality. As usual, request for equal treatment is labeled as 'special favors', and Google is used as an example of company that should pay for a fast connection to the end user." From the article: "'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
Google, et al. already pay for their bandwidth! This is just extortion to get their traffic in a higher priority QoS queue.
Trolling is a art,
> Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
Because the citizens paid for the telecom infrastructure.
switch off googles for cox and see what happens
Butt out, government, and stop regulating our industry (except when we want you to prevent people from building their own infrastructures, like community- and municipality-based WiFi networks.)
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.
They are Internet Terrorist who want more than they deserve. Its all about the money isnt it?
Sure, be my guest. Start charging extra for access to big name sites. Then watch your little consumer base get ticked off. And then, when we build a wireless mesh network and quit buying from you, don't come crying to me. All I'll give you is the finger.
Why charge the content providers? They are already getting their money for the use of the cable lines through their customers.
Buncha money grubbers, I tells ya.
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
OK, here's a question.
Let's suppose I order a cool Rubik Cube from eBay and they send it to me thru UPS.
Me = Client
ebay = Server
Rubik cube = data packet
Highway = Internet lines.
Of course, I'm asked for the money to pay the shipping and handling, right?
Right.
So why TF should ebay (or actually the original owner) have to pay for shipping and handling, TOO?
You do the fuckers a favor and let them have a monopoly on infrastructure and this is the thanks you get! Honestly, give them an inch and they kill and rape your family.
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
And the cable companies' franchise/exclusivity agreements with town/county governments are not special favors? Where I live, I have the "choice" of exactly one cable company. They cry for government regulation when it suits them, and decry it when it doesn't. Why should I be surprised?
So after years of "Get your unlimited broadband internet" they now realize that maybe there is a limit and want to charge Google.
That is fine if Google is your customer, if not you can't charge them.
Another option is to charge your customers (the people at home) for the usage of google.com. You could even provide them with a detailed bill.
200mb google video 30$
50mb youtube.com 5$
500mb pornlegends.com 50$
Or wait a second didn't we have the pay per bit 10 years ago and everybody switched to "All ways on internet" packages, promoted by the same bastards that now think that they are losing revenue?
What power has law where only money rules.
Yet Another Bad Analogy -
Oil Companies produce their product, deliver it to the customer and sell it.
ISPs take products from other companies and deliver it to the customer.
If I'm requesting more info from Google, Yahoo, etc, I should pay for a higher bandwidth line.
If Google, Yahoo, etc are transmitting more info, they should be paying for a higher bandwidth line (which they do already).
"Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?"
While the government doesn't really say what exactly to charge for gas, they do insist that prices are at least fair , just as net access should be. Besides, didn't the federal government give huge amounts to cable companies when they pledged to "build fiber optic to the home" back in the nineties? Or was that the telcos? I didn't get a reference to that, but I remember reading about it.
Is it just me, or does the title 'CEO' these days somehow imply criminal in addition to stupid?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The oil companies aren't charging different prices for what type of car/truck you drive or where it's being driven to or from. The oil companies charge by grade of gasoline, just as the cable and phone companies already charge for broadband tiers (speeds).
began the great surge in use of peer to peer networks...decentralizing everything from web search engines to cnn web casts...f*cking idiots...you can't control technology just to feed your greed...it finds a way around your greed.
I mean, after all, the beginning of the Internet, ARPANET, was developed by the Department of Defense. I guess it stands to reason that if Google should pay for using their lines, the ISPs should pay for using technology developed by the DoD.
I pay for Cable Company X to give me internet access, now they start slowing my access to Google, unless Google pays their higher fees. Am I not, as the user, getting screwed for my choice of Cable Company X? Now I get slowed access to the best search engine, and or other big sites (like Amazon, for example). Even if the cable companies paid for the infrastructue, am I, the user, not paying for the use of that structure? I sure won't be happy about paying for a deliberately slowed connection to my favorite sites.
we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that
Of course. And making the investment means you own the results. If the public wanted a say in the Internet, then they should have come up with the investment money to make it possible, instead of leaving it to the private sector.
Oh, wait.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sure.... the phone and cable companies put a lot of money into installing their lines and normally I'd say they should be free to do whatever they like with them. However, lets look where most of these lines are. Do the phone and cable companies own all of the land where their lines run? Hell no! They got an easements from the government and that gives the government some say in how these lines are used. If the cable and phone companies don't like that they can damn well buy all of the bloody land that their lines run through!
I'm waiting for my ISP (currently, BellSouth) to do this. I will take all of my business Net service (a decent amount... a lot more than a residential service) elsewhere. All it's going to take to kill this is for people to be aware, and for people to be willing to vote with their wallets. I know that I am. I'm even willing to pay more.
Welcome to capitalism. The government doesn't have the right to tell companies how to practice their business. The argument dismissing common carrier status went out the window when the government decided they had the right to phone tap anyone without any authorisation.
Common Carriers were supposed to be content agnostic -- meaning that all content (phone calls, faxes, anything passing over the phone line) would be treated equally and the contents would not be examined by the carrier. To deviate from this standard would mean that the carriers were responsible for the content carried by their network, including incriminating evidence that would make the carrier legally liable. The common carrier status protects the carrier as much as the individual subscribers.
But now with the willy-nilly wire taps, and complete lack of accountability in the government, carriers now believe they can do what they like with traffic on their networks and still not be accountable. And who would blame them for believing this?
So now you have carriers who feel like they control not only the networks but also the content on those networks in a responsibility free environment, and they will do what all corporations do: grab for da money. Why not charge extra for "premium" (read: basic utilities of the net) services? Sure, it's immoral. But it's also a capitalist society. We all know that the people who can afford broadband can also afford an extra 10$/mo to access stuff they used to access for free. And they're only there to feed the corporate beast anyway.
I can't fault these people for wanting to make more money. But if they think they can have their cake and eat it too, then they will be facing lots of lawsuits from individuals who's children have been exposed to goatse.cx because those same carriers (now content providers) didn't filter their content. The circle of life continues.
These companies already have a monopoly... If I want broadband service, I have no choice but to buy it from the company that has the lines into my building. If I am upset with their business practice (because, say, their former CEO and his family bilked the company and its investors out of millions of dollars), or with their pricing structure, I am not able to take my business elsewhere. My only recourse is to cancel my contract and go without the service.
It is in society's interest, I think, to have these monopolies, as the costs of laying down redundant networks for competing companies would be astronomical. However, if ISPs are to have these monopolies, then they have to accept regulation to prevent them abusing it.
Sadly, I'm not holding my breath - I predict net neutrality will go down in flames (or lobbying dollars) sooner rather than later.
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
The remarks indicated it's not only the nation's largest broadband players, both in the cable and the telecommunications sectors, that have voiced public opposition to what they refer to as unprecedented governmental regulation of the Internet. They've said repeatedly that without evidence of a problem, there's no need for new laws.
Net neutrality, also called network neutrality, is the philosophy that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize content and services--particularly video--that come across their pipes. Proponents have launched a campaign to enact detailed regulations barring such practices, and so far they've won over some congressional Democrats.
Network operators counter that they deserve the right to charge premium fees to bandwidth hogs in order to offset their vast investments in infrastructure and to ensure the quality and security of their products. Mediacom has made $1.7 billion in capital investments over the past decade, according to Commisso.
And so I return to my premise that it's time to nationalize the communications infrastructure in this country. Declare it an important national resource, vital to the safety and security of US citizens, and then take it away from these greedy pinheads. Create a department to oversee telecommunications infrastructure and force these companies to bid on maintenance contracts for the various regions of the country.
True, that means goverment oversight, and the government is an iffy proposition at best, but it's a damned sight better than allowing the telecoms to run amok and ramp up the prices for content we as customers want. In the end, they'd do well to listen to customers, before they don't have any.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
http://www.house.gov/
Go.. now... write your congressman. It takes 15 minutes to do.
"Representative XXXX,
I would like to write in support of the recent Net Neutrality bill brought to the house because XXXXX.
Thank you,
Your Name"
Keep it short. Keep it simple. And write one for every issue you care about. They do listen.
The government (DARPA) invented the internet--using public funds.
Federal law protects common carriers. In exchange for that legal protection, the public has every right to require "net neutrality." If the communications companies want to run their networks their own way, then they must give up all the legal protections they currently enjoy. They must become directly and fully responsible for the content of every message sent accross their networks. The RIAA is drooling.
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
Suppose I build a toll road to a shopping mall, and charge motorists $.25 for the use of the road. Then, a Walmart opens next to the mall. Suppose I'd go to Walmart saying: "You guys are making millions, and only because shoppers can drive in on my road. I want you to pay me for each visiting customer, else I will ask every motorist if they are going to visit you, and direct them to the 15km/h lane if they are.". I think they'd put me away, especially if Wal-mart had already paid for the right to build an on-ramp onto my highway. (Yes, a crap analogy like all analogoes are...)
All they are seeing is a succesful company they think they can milk for more profits.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
1. Wireless AP
2. Dedicated T1 (or T3)
3. 50 of by neighbors
Internet access with out the BS.
"'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
I think the taxpayer money that was spent on research and development of what became the Internet gives us, the American people, a right to say how that infrastructure should work.
As for why the government doesn't go after the oil companies, it's because their lobbyists pay the government more money than the telcos can.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Actually, they do tell oil companies how much to charge for gas: "whatever you change the other guy". Filling in lawn mower and Ford Ranger costs the same, per galon. You end up paying more for the Ranger, because it uses more. So I see nothing wrong with the government telling cable and phone companies the same thing, they can charge whatever they want per mmegabyte whether it's Google or C-list blog.
Aside from the end users getting the raw deal (as usual), I think it would be hilarious for these money-grabbing bastards to get a harsh lesson in just how dependant they are on these sites. Case in point: I personally do not know anyone, not one single person, that doesn't use one or more of Google's services in some way on a regular basis.
Not trying to say everyone does of course, but the amount of people that do is large enough that any ISP that attempts to mess with them like this faces a giant backlash and loss of business as I can't see Google giving in to this extortion.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
Ahem, no... A better analogy would be oil companies charging the places you visit while you were using the gas they sold you.
-- Disgustipated
In cell phones: reciever of the call usually also pays per minute
In landline phone: receiver of the call does not pay per minute
Snailmail analogy: sender pays per weight measure (the more the weight of the unit the lesser actually).
Currently on the net: receiver (server) pays per gigabyte (right?) (not exactly by linear scheme), initiator of internet transaction (client) pays lamp fee (in US) or per gigabyte (in Russia). What cable companies want is to charge more per gigabyte when a customer serves more gigabytes, right?
Please correct what I wrote about the net situation. My goal is to understand where cable companies stand compared to other telecom and other businesses in general
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said
My thought is, If you have a monoploy on high speed access, then Yes the government should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do! Forcing me to pay and Google to pay is accepting double payment. We (customers) pay for your infrustructure for the privilege to use it. If that isn't enough to cover your cost then you need to raise your prices. If you do and can't compete then you need to find a different way. Google doesn't choose to send it's data down your pipes, your customers choose to retrive it from Google's sites. If my provider (Cablevision) started charging Google I would drop them if I had another choice of high speed provider, but I don't.
Better, Faster, Cheaper. If you can't do it; someone else will. I've already been looking for another provider. Satellite & FiOS, but I can't get FiOS in my area or DSL. Only Cable. Stupid Cablevision doesn't offer the NFL Sunday Ticket. Once my Triple Play offer runs out, cable tv is gone and I'm going satellite. Cable internet will be gone as soon as FiOS arrives.
How would Commisso react if some large men with crowbars appeared and asked for revenue sharing if they did not want their infrastructure degraded? I am guessing they would be asking for intervention against such criminal conduct.
What's wrong with this picture --it's the 'mericun way:
1) we had a business plan and decided to get into a competitive field with well defined rules
2) we could make a bunch more money if we change or ignore the rules
3) pay off some congress critters and other other government wanks and wonks since it will be less than the extra profit -- who the heck has replaced Duke and Tom? surely they'll need lots of cash.
4) profit extortionately.
Now, what really ticks me off is that they knew the rules going in and decided to pursue that line of business anyway. The idea of a free market economy is that nobody told them they had to sink money into the venture. They tried and are either losing (or not winning enough!) and now they whine like a two year old who doesn't want to go to bed. Cowardice and idiocy have met and they seem to be forming a beautiful friendship.
Sure! Let them charge Google and the others. Then, wait for Google et al. to charge back the ISP for delivering the page to them! Why are the ISP devicing these creative schemes to make money? Are they in a recession? Are they loosing money?
I work for a small cable company, and I'd get skinned alive by my customers if I aggressively lowered the QoS of google et al. That said, I don't understand what this whole debate is about. It's only the peer-to-peer and big-file-http traffic that causes any sort of spike in our traffic. If we were to charge Google for their traffic, it wouldn't amount to anything next to, say, iFilm/YouTube/planet(quake/halflife/etc) or local companies' ftpds and httpds that their employees connect to from home. Presumably the former couldn't pay for a reliable connection, and assuredly the latter would jump ship.
Anyone who actually implements anything other than net neutrality is shooting themselves in the foot.
What we need is a consortium of a few software heavyweights like Adobe and Microsoft to change their licensing for Flash, PDF, and WMA to deny the right to transmit their formats unless there is a level playing field. The software industry could undermine the whole QOS discussion today if they wanted.
The government doesn't tell the ISPs what to charge for internet access. The ISPs are welcome to raise their prices if they feel like it. But if they do, they will have to face the reality of competition on a free market.
Network neutrality isn't about price fixing. Network neutrality is about making sure everybody who pays for an internet connection has an equal connection in terms of latency and priority.
And really, if AT&T started slowing down their customer's connections to Google, I think AT&T would take a lot more hurt from the customers switching providers than Google would take from the slow down.
Bad analogy anyway. The government isn't saying what they can charge, just that they have to charge everybody the same.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
The US government has been bought by big business these days, the FCC will do whatever they want.
What cable companies want is free access to stream video over the net, and to keep their monopoly while they do it.
All it takes is spending enough money in DC, and the desired legislation will magically appear in a must pass war spending bill.
If you support Net Neutrality then you should be making your case locally. If your existing cable company's cable franchise is up for renewal or if AT&T or Verizon are applying to operate a cable TV franchise in your town then you should be asking them about Net Neutrality.
If they won't address the issue then you should press your local officials to reject their application.
If the local cable application goes away then we need to make Net Neutrality part of the discussion when state or national franchise applications take place.
If your town disagrees with a company's business practice then you shouldn't do business with them.
I'm pushing these issues locally. You can see how at: http://www.redbanktv.org/
Someone needs to just come right out and say it. The telcos and cable providers want it both ways. They want their customers to keep right on paying for service, and they want Internet sites/businesses to reach those customers.
In other words, they want to sell the bandwidth that their customers already pay for twice, once to the customer and one to the sites that the customer visits.
They want to sell you as a "product" to vendors, and they want you to pay for the privilige of being sold.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Content providers are already paying for some level of bandwidth on their end.
Consumers are already paying for some level of bandwidth on their end.
Bandwidth purchasers should be able to use what they are paying for - period.
If the pipeline owners are not making enough money because people are using what they are paying for, then they need to raise their prices.
I don't have a problem with different tiers of service offerings. I have this already at home - there are two or three levels of speed I could pay my ISP for. I imagine Google has similar options.
The inconsistency here is that the pipeline owners charge for tiers of service, but they don't guarantee any level of service - it's "best effort". If they want to start charging for specific levels of service and holding people's feet to the fire, then it better go both ways. If I'm paying for the "gold" level of service I better get it.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Someone -should- go tell the Oil Companies how much they can charge for their damn gas. Europe pays more than we do for gas, but they have HUGE taxes on their fuel. Is it that much more expensive to ship it to the US?
More to the point, if something becomes part of the infrastructure of a nation, it's going to become under a centralized, governmental control. Can you imagine if there wasn't fedral regulation of highways, or automotive safety standards? Oh, hey..what if the government didn't bail out the airline industry?
Telecom is just the next valid target that will likely be more and more regulated, because it's something that the US has come to rely on as a backbone of it's daily life and infrastructure.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
From now, I as a consumer will not subscribe any services from any company that seeks to limit the internet or interfere with neutrality.
That will be my contribution to maintaining internet neutrality.
-Fiend-
Basically, what I'm saying is, I don't mind if the pipeline owners want to charge end users different rates for a spigot on their end of the pipe.
But once data is IN THE PIPELINE, all data should be routed equally.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
So where exactly is my $50 a month going???? I think maybe somone's getting greedy.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?' Some states do set a minimum as to what a gas station can charge. In an attempt to keep the little guys in business the state of Wisconsin has a 5% minimum that gas stations are required to charge over the wholesale price at which they purchase it at. In the city of Milwaukee this is a big issue because a lot of the little guys are more than willing to use gas as a loss leader to get you into their convenience store.
There are two groups to look at here.
a) End point service providers. This is your cable company, or your local baby bell. They get data from a backbone out to your house. They also get some business data on there too.
b) The serious infrastructure builders. These are the AT&T, MCI, etc companies (some of which are affiliated or have business operations in group A as well) Who spend lots of money to build out fiber lines and other things which are not part of the common carrier network but instead are backbone links which to some degree string together the internet.
Group B has put tons of cash into making the internet BBF (bigger better faster). At this point they are wanting to do what all companies do and maximize the return for their shareholders. None of them are talking about making it impossible to get to google, or wherever. What they are wanting to do is offer higher speed traffic paths to these large companies for a premium.
To correct one of the bad previous analogies...
I order a pizza. I have a choice between Pepperoni Hut and Pizza Schmizza.
I can order from either for the same price, but I know Pepperoni Hut gets the pizza to me faster.
Why? Because Pepperoni Hut gives it's driver $.50 to take the tollway and lop 5 minutes off the drive time.
Who will I consistently choose for my pizza services?
End result Pepperoni Hut takes a hit on profit margins to provide faster services. Or I pay $.50 more for hotter fresher pizza.
As I was mentioning to my liberal arch-nemesis here at my place of employment on the same debate. When the internet started growing (thank Al Gore of course) it did so because of e-commerce, it did so because companies started investing in it. Before that point you had two groups financing the internet, the military and colleges (think back to Milnet/Arapanet days) and neither of them had any distinct desire to make money off the business world. At that point (Companies investing) the liberal college Birkenstock and long hair hippie net crowd sold a piece of their souls to the corporate machine (The military machine kept on chugging along and didn't care as long as they stayed out of the military networks...)
Hear that at the door? It's the corporate machine knocking.. something about collecting a debt.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
So what happens to an ISP when the sites they host disappear from google, and their users no longer can access google. The sword cuts both ways, the ISP offers a useless service with out destinations like google.
Can you immagine what would happen. ISP starts whining for more money from the big content players and throttling their service. Big players just cut them out, suddenly they offer a worthless service...then who'd be crying foul.
So, while "they" don't explicitly set gasoline prices, it isn't like stations can charge whatever they want.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If the ISPs get to decide what to do with "their" infrastructure even if it was originally paid for by taxes, then we should get to decide what to do with our property, even if it's on the "right of way"!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The cable cos. have made the investment because the consumers demanded it. They demanded it because of the fact that services like Google were available through the network.
..and b.t.w. the Govt. already does tell the gas and oil companies what to charge (to a certain extent)
The Cable cos are already being paid for the infrastructure - by the end consumer, and the cable cos are piggy-backing on Google et all generating the value in having a connection int the first place. They should be paying Google!
Also, Google pays for it's bandwidth already. This sentiment of the cable cos absolutely stinks.
Geeze.
As usual, request for equal treatment is labeled as 'special favors'...
As a gay person, I get this crap all the time. This comes as no surprise to me. Same old same old. The people with privilege always consider anyone seeking equal treatment to be seeking "special rights". It's wrong, it's pathetic, it's obnoxious, it's mindlessly brain-dead, but it seems almost universal.
The same cable companies fight like hell to keep local franchising and other impediments to competition in place. I'd say that so long as they recieve these sorts of protections price regulation is necessary. If they are willing to go for an unregulated environment, then fine, they can be free to set their prices in what manner they want.
I'm waiting for my ISP (currently, BellSouth) to do this.
Don't wait for it, let them know beforehand.
Tell them *WHY* you think that double-dipping is wrong.
It starts out as pay to connect being to make money, but what happens when the company execs decide they don't like your viewpoint?
Net Neutrality is here for a reason. People already pay for their content. The internet providers are merely looking for a way to squeeze more cash out of a saturated market.
How are they going to enforce it? People aren't going to like it when all of a sudden they can't connect to Google, because Google won't pay. No, the small people/companies will be the first to go, so they can show it works. Joe Schmoe will suffer.
After all, Google spent all that money developing their search engine technology & infrastructure.
If "Cable provider x" has the highest rank in a search for "Cable provider x", then all those links to them are obviously using more of Google's resources, and they should pay Google accordingly, else they might drop a few pages in the search results.
Some government regulation is bad. Ensuring that the entire internet stays available to everyone connected to it is not. ISPs are salivating over the amount of money that Google is making, and they want a cut. But when you go "pay to play" like this then we will eventually end up with a segregated internet, and I think you'll actually see it hurt ISPs more than help.
What about companies who are big enough to get lots of traffic, but small enough not to be able to afford an extra net-extortion fee? Lowering the QoS on these guys would severely screw with a lot of the emerging technologies on the net, like VoIP and AJAX which rely on low-latency connections.
This basically means "Don't start a VoIP / SaaS company unless you have millions in VC to get a priority at all the major ISPs and compete with the big boys." There is no reason for it other than money grubbing, it will exponentially increase customer service incidents for both the ISP and the service provider at the remote end ("why doesn't this work? why is the internet so slow?") and all it will really do in the end is lock out the little guy (the big guys like Google, MSN and Apple can afford a few million a year no problem.)
Hopefully consumers will be aware enough not to pay the same amount for an intentionally degraded service. The most important thing about the internet is that it is basically the same no matter where you connect from; changing that will remove a lot of value for many of us.
1.) People that stay connected continually.
2.) People sharing files (big ones)
3.) People downloading bigger and bigger files, since hard drive space is el-cheapo.
4.) Myriads of video sites popping up everywhere.
So, rather than your little ISP eat it's own shit over your extravegant downloading habits, or jacking up your bill, they are trying to shunt this bandwidth hurt over to the major players who supply it. I know, it's bullshit. But, the only alternative I see, scary thought, ISP's being forced to go back to some sort of "pay for what you use" service, which works for major ISP's and backbones, but joe consumer whore won't swallow it because he would find out that his $40/month cable service really costs the cable company $80/month once you figure in his 30 gig/month porn downloading habit. I know a guy that works for a major cable internet provider, and I've got it on good authority that their CMTS is over subscribed, and their connection to the world in the are we live in is VERY overburdened, but they just can't seem to afford an upgrade.
Dunno, just my 2 cents.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
The phone companies need to realize that it wasn't their investment. It was the government grants, and my money, that created the Internet. And it certainly wasn't any cable provider.
Then, when things were just going good, they sent all the valuable work over to India and China, stealing a trillion dollars in sunk costs from this country and giving it to them.
It's about time they learned who's really boss in this Democracy.
What more is there to this?
Billions of dollars a year in extortion--I mean, revenue--for the telecommunications companies?
That's really all there is to it. They've figured out that they can't maintain the sort of growth that they've had over the past decade or so (because there's nowhere to expand to), so now they're trying to figure out ways to squeeze more money out of their existing customers. Because even if you don't realize it, everyone using the Internet is an indirect customer of the backbone providers. You pay your ISP, your ISP maybe pays another ISP, that ISP pays for a connection to the backbone. They get their tithe, it just goes via your local provider first.
And there's really no way to rake in the dough like making people pay for something twice. Here's what the backbone providers want: the source of the packets pays for access (a portion of which makes its way up the chain to them), the destination of the packets pays for access (also trickles up to them), and the source and the destination both pay directly for increased QoS if they don't want said packets to spend a few seconds in the purgatorial "low-rent buffer" on their way across the network.
It's just a protection racket, but without any of that messy kneecap-smashing business.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?' I rest my case.
I rest my case.
Oh, wait.
Heh. Has anyone asked Al Gore -- who was one of the folks instrumental in getting funding for internet R&D -- what he thinks of this issue? I'm guessing that he'd back net neutrality.
Not later, not after they have managed to buy enough govies. Right now.
Comcast:
http://www.comcast.com/Localization/Localize.ashx
Road runner:
http://www.timewarnercable.com/Localization/Corpo
Even if you aren't a customer, start calling them periodically and showing up on their call center bill.
It would behoove someone to make an app to provide times to call and numbers to call to keep the overall volume up so it shows up on managements radar.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
> Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
Genius PR move there, linking yourself with oil companies. I've been hearing both sides of the isle (it's an election year) calling for investigations of these oil companies for price fixing.
Keep digging, Commisso.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
These cable companies are being a bit shortsighted. This greed is going to come back to bite them in the ass. If they give up their Net Neutrality, all of the sudden they are going to have a responsibility for the traffic that goes across their network. This means the MPAA and RIAA will be lining up to sue them, they will have to put a stop to 'pirate' traffic and customers will leave them in droves. Many of the people I know only pay for high speed Internet because of 'illegal' activities.
Parents will start suing because little Johnny was looking at porn, terrorist victims will be suing because al-qaeda used the network, joe six-pack will sue because he got screwed on the time machine he bought on ebay, Grandma Johnson will sue because she sent all her money to Nigeria.
People do a lot of stupid stuff on the Internet. Giving up Common Carrier status could very well result in ISP's losing immunity for third party content and open Pandora's Box.
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Cable companies are simply looking for revenue growth. They probably feel it's easier to try and milk content providers than to raise rates on consumers. However, it's not the content providers causing the bandwidth use, but the end users who make the sites popular.
What I'm curious about is how telecom companies will decide which content providers have to pay for "special favors." Will they track the amount of content being accessed by users for each site or will they just charge sites belonging to companies with lots of money (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) without doing any real metering?
Given past practice, I'm betting the latter.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Probably blacklist is not the precise technical term, but I run a couple of servers (one of which logged 1.5 million visits last month), and if this company chooses to go through with breaking Net Neutrality, then I may simply have to redirect all traffic from their customers to a page informing them that my servers are unavailable to them as long as they stay with their current provider, and explaining why, with contact numbers for their provider, as well as alternative providers.
It's the other side of the coin, and you can bet that Google has some similar plan up it's sleeve. Imagine if every Google service was blocked to you if you were on this specific provider. Given Google's 50% market share, not only would there be a large exodus of customer's immediately, you can imagine that when a friend was over, and wanted to check his GMail, there would be a constant pressure to switch.
Is the only solution.
People writing new internet applications should encrypt all traffic, and make it look like a vpn, ssl or ssh. This way the ISPs will only have one source of information, the IP address.
That would make it more difficult to filter by application. And in the process the free internet would be saved. This would also kill the provisions for QoS in the IP protocol, but if the service providers are willing to use this provisions to highjack the internet, then I can live without them.
Also, the google people can write an application to go into their google bar called "google accelerator" or something like that, that intercepts requests to google and redirects them to a different proxy every hour.
Just make it imprac
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I think what the internet user's are saying and what i'm saying is we've given the telcos and cable comapnies big tax breaks as incentives to make an investment, and I don't think the Telcos and cable companies should be coming and telling us how we can use our public spectrums, simple as that,' I said during a slashdot discussion about issues faced by consumers like myself, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the radio companies what they should be charged for using the airwaves?'"
That's what they use to staff the Indian call center so that when your service is out they have someone to feed you disinformation.
// This is not a sig.
Yeah, this sucks, BUT
This was all caused by the slippery sloap of nationalization we've been sliding on... Those of you who propose to solve this problem with more nationalization will get what you deserve...
td
hard core geek-ware
Fine. Come getchyer cables off my goddamn rightaway!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe this is all a conspiracy architected by Google. If ISPs start limiting their traffic they will have a pretext to start buying up cable companies. Soon Google will control the whole Internet.
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Damn Google for spewing all their unwanted packets around the Internet and using up all of these telcos' customers' bandwidth! Why do they have to be so pushy, shoving their packets down their throats! They should pay extra for using so much bandwidth!
;)
Oh, wait, the telcos' customers are actually *asking* for that data, because it's what they want to use to search the Internet for stuff to look at/read/buy, etc. because that is what they pay the telcos a monthly fee for.
Yeah, go ahead and screw with what content your customers can get to, and watch your business go *poof* you ignorant asses.
By the way, my secret Anonymous Coward "word in the image" for this post was "gouging." It's not ironic, but it's the kind of thing most people call ironic, and it was, shall we say, humorously appropriate.
Considering that most of the sites that people want to connect to want net neutrality, the obvious thing is for Google, MSN, and all their friends to rate limit their responses to requests from customers of net neutrality opponents to dialup speeds and mention this fact on their pages. Charging sites to provide a fast connection to them only works if there's someone who's willing to pay. Especially if it's small network providers who are trying this scam, it would be easy for proponents of net neutrality to just wipe them out.
I don't get why companies in favor of government intervention don't generally act in ways that would be prohibited by the legislation they support, in order to demonstrate the need for it.
I think that the worst part of this problem is that if net neutrality ends, those that have access to Google at good speed will stop using other services, likewise, those with only good access to MSN will use only MSN. That puts us right back in the cable-company game where there is only one provider available, for all intents and purposes, and the only person who gets screwed is the consumer. Right now, I have one choice for cable network connection, no DSL, and no fiber(yet)... and I'm at the mercy of whatever that cable company wants to do (say make it very difficult to use a home router with my VoIP provider) or anything else.
That is not a neutrality issue, that ends up being the same mob-like business practices that cable companies have always had, but now the telcos are getting involved too.... all in the name of bending over the consumers.
I'd truly like to see metropolitan networks (wired and wireless) be managed by an independent company where any citizen user can choose where their traffic hits the network outside the MAN. That would allow Earthlink, Google, Yahoo, SBC, Comcast, Verizon... all of them would have access to provide me service, and anytime any of them screws around with my packets, I'll just switch providers, but it is the MAN that makes all those providers equal in relation to my packets and the services that they can provide. The independently managed MAN ensures that they cannot use mobster like practices with my packets... or at least comes closer to packet nirvana than anything else I can think of.
Anyone with other ideas?
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Take two transmission streams: Both have an average throughput of 10Mb/s. However, one stream is a file transfer and can handle a variance of 2 Mb/s from the average. The other is streaming media, and can not handle a variance of even 0.2 Mb/s. Does it cost the ISP more to deliver the streaming media than to deliver the file? (Faster lines, more expensive switches, maintenance, etc ?)
If it does cost more, then the ISPs do have a right to charge the customer more. The telecomms that provide lines to Google, et al would have a right to charge Google more. Does that make sense?
If the costs are the same, then the ISPs should go home and do a visual inspection of the interior of their colons.
Google isn't getting a free ride on "their" pipes. The ISPs are getting a free ride from google+amazon+slashdot+whatever by not being charged for the content that makes their expensive internet service useful. google+amazon+whoever should cut off access from any ISP that adopts non-neutral policies. The ISP will come begging to have it turned back on as their customers cacnel their service.
that this isn't just about money. It seems like this will work to control "undesirables" also. So civil rights and smaller blogs site will suffer the consequences of this. So, it's only natural that the government will go along. Saves having to write a bunch of laws like China has to do at the present time. There will be no solution until we can cut the wire and get away from established providers altogether. And that solution is at hand. It's only a matter of time.
What?
Not site, cite.
Would be where the NYC public library runs a research department with a call center. They pay verizon to provide this call center and all of the lines it requires for the service they provide. Billy working on his school project calls the NYC research center from Cave Junction, Oregon on his phone provided by SBC. Now both the library and Billy have paid for thier phone services in full to thier providers but SBC decides that unless the libary also pays them Billy must wait 4 days for his call to go through. In what way is the library obligated to pay SBS because Billy decided to give them a call? And why should Billy have to wait because SBC is greedy?
I can at least avoid doing business with a particular oil company if I especially don't like the @$$holes running it. But the cable company has a monopoly, and has to play by different rules than even the competition-challenged oil companies.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The exec who uttered that quote seems to be rather out of touch with current events.
I'm out of touch and even *I* know that numerous politicians have been calling for an investigation of the oil companies for price gouging/price fixing within the past few weeks.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You know, if Google started up their own broadband service at a competitive rate, I'd dump my current ISP in a moment over this.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IMHO, The Telos need more regulation.
Oh you want deregulated. Then you should only be allowed to provide local to end point transmission. See the power Co. deregulation. where anyone is alowed to put power on the grid and are payed for it. End users can select who they want to pay for power.
The Telco's are confused, there monopoly status makes them a public service and thus should be run as a nonprofit corporation.
Back bone lines should be provided in the same way out highways are provided. Many of the main backbones run along the highways.
We pay enouph taxes, lets stop paying taxes to people that do not work for us.
Monopoly Transmission and End point service need to be kept apart. Or better yet be replaced by community-, municipality-, Google- And other- based WiFi networks.
So far The FCC has been in bed with the Telco's... this has to stop. I am so looking forward to tha day when Google or some other champion steps up and offers all of us free WiFi. I would pay a free WiFi provider for broadband long before I would pay a monoply. I would even offer land use for the tower in turn for services.
BTW, I hear WiFi works better then DSL, its the FCC thats keeps WiFi broken.
I really don't understand what all the fuzz is about.
On the user side of the ISP:
Me pays $10/month for 56k (I can't get anything else) and get about 40k/40k (up/down)
An average user that can get broadband pays $20 for cable or DSL at 1024/128
An average slashdot reader that can get broadband pays $50-100 for it at 4096/512
on the other side of the ISP:
An average company with a decent webfarm pays about $1000-2000/month for 50M/50M fiber.
Outside the ISP:
The ISP pays AT&T and cronies a few $10000/month for a decent connection to the backbone.
On the other ISP:
Google pays also a few $10000/month for a decent connection of one of their datacenters (they have many) for either a connection to the ISP or directly connected to the backbone (AMS/IX, AT&T)
Once the bandwidth is filled, I can't download faster than 5kbyte/s, on cable/dsl you can't get more than 2 connections at 1mbit/s (and usually you can't use your full bandwidth due to 100:1 overbooking by the ISP). I paid for my 5kbyte/s, the DSL user paid for his 4Mbit/s, Google paid for their 5000Mbit/s and nobody can get more through the line. If they want to, they should could more bandwidth or multiple carriers (like a DSL, Cable and Sattelite line in a Linux box with NAT and line balancing to get 25Mbit/5Mbit). In any way the ISP's get their money, the backbone-owners get paid by the ISP, everybody is or should be happy because in a healthy business (the ones that people invest in and that don't go bankrupt) the end price of the product you sell is your total cost of the product including money you pay people + a percentage of the profit.
If they are not earning enough to cover costs, they should raise the price and see their customers go somewhere else where there's a good cash management or all raise their price if it is so that currently ISP's are losing money. But I don't think that happens because if they lose just $0.50/customer, that would constitute about a loss of different millions and thus there would be no ISP's anymore because they would all be bankrupt.
I think it is thus allowed (imho) that certain ISP's get money from for example Google for only a 10:1 overbooking for their services or a leased line between their routers but that shouldn't make competitors slower than they already are. It is wrong that because you CAN pay (eg. Microsoft) you could get a higher bandwidth on the same overbooked bandwidth than your competitors (eg. linux.org) or that you ban certain hosts from your network or make them annoyingly slow because they don't want to / can't pay.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I used to be a Mediacom customer in Iowa City, and had a good number of friends who worked at one of their local customer support centers.
This doesn't surprise me in the least.
That company is a bunch of crooks. I've been overbilled by them repeatedly. Their service is sub-sub-par (yes, worse than worse than average), and I heartily recommend anyone using them to switch to a combination of DSL & Satellite. I expect the Mediacom CEO to pickup the AT&T party line that no one needs more than a 1.5 Mbps internet connection.
Anyone heard of a provider openly advocating net neutrality? I want to switch to them.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Especially taking on Google.
Let's say Cable Company A wants to exhort Google and charge more (or else slower service). Google refuses. A begins to slow service. Google retaliates - and blocks all accesses coming from A. Customer can't get to Google....yell at Company A. Company says it's not our fault....Company B goes through fine.
Customers switch to Company B.
They're all a bunch of sleazy, greedy bastards, on both sides.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If Google did offer home broadband service, I would be on it in a heartbeat. Screw neo-AT&T and Comcast. Yeah - it would be neat if Google expanded that way. But I think that Google is too busy already. Having MS as an enemy tends to require a lot of focus, you know.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Google is huge.
Its a world-wide household name. I doubt this cable company is. Why doesn't google just roll over and crush them? A nice ad-campaign to educate the home-user on how their cable company is trying to extort money from them and lower their quality of service should either:
1)snap them back into line
2)put them out of business and become a PR nightmare for them.
Most of the time, customers who buy more of a product or service usually pay less per unit. So if "bulk buying" is appropriate for data, and I am pretty sure that the throughput of a network goes up faster than its price, then Google ought to pay less per packet than I do. Likewise, I am pretty sure that American Airlines pays less per quart for kerosene than I do. So shouldn't networks be offering big customers discounts, not trying to double-bill for traffic? Ah, but there's more money in the latter option.
It's a damn service! Not a commodity! If they want more money maybe they should have something worth paying for. We already pay more to "drive faster" in each faster lane of the internet (dialup vs. broadband), now we have to pay more based on the type of car, type/number of passengers, and the destination too? What's next? Higher prices for Jews? Separate lanes for black people? All they remember is the days of charging you based on each phone call you made. How much longer till we see a pay-per-packet scheme?
"Ya know, that's a nice packet right there. It'd be a shame if it were to not make it to its destination. Capice? But for you maybe we can work something out, some insurance to make sure it gets there A-OK."</italian accent>
Did you know that you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
I can pay more to get a faster connection to my house too.
Google pays much more to get even faster connections than I have.
It is just like postal stamps.
You pay for what gets sent to you, and it doesn't depend on who sends it.
Do they know that they might not be able to reach a portion of internet withouth their knowledge ?
Did you convey this information to them ?
What did they tell you ?
No i dont think you did that at all.
I do not think that any of your customers will be putting up with your 'such and such, google has to pay for their bandwidth' crap when they discover they are not able to reach google all the time.
Then theyll just move to another provider. So much for the better.
Read radical news here
Almost. This is not about narrow control of the backbone, though. It's about leveraging control over the last mile (as is evidenced by the strong support from small rural cable operators who have no control over the backbone).
Most of the broadband providers on the other side of the net-neutrality debate enjoy a localized monopoly (in some cases, explicitly granted by municipal governments and in some cases, a natural monopoly). In order not to be seen as directly abusing this monopoly (and potentially seeing competition in last-mile connectivity through revocation of franchise), they are not directly raising fees on their customers, but rather are extorting third parties for fees for services for which they have already been paid. They are trying to externalize an expense (bandwidth) for which they have already received revenue.
They have already leveraged a last mile connectivity monopoly (usually granted by municipal governments) to dominant local share in the broadband ISP market. Moreover, as you have raised, many are using a monopoly (often granted by municipal governments) over last mile connectivity to leverage share in other markets - VoIP, video streaming,...
As an American citizen, I have certain inalienable rights. Internet access is not one of them.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
That might be what happens, or more regulation could happen.
Don't make knee-jerk comments without thinking first. Because the answer could very well be "Actually, we're going to do that, and we're going to come down on your ass too."
This guy is potentially eating his own toes.
i am a soviet space shuttle
This isn't the same as the government setting a price for gas or oil. The cable companies, and other ISPs have already been paid, the end user, john doe sitting at home who pays his $49.95/month paid the carrier to get him to the Internet with a certain bandwidth. You can't turn around and now say that the content provider needs to pay too.
That would be like UPS charging the sender and receipient for shipping a package.
Not to carriers, we're already paying you to get to Google et al, you can't have your cake and eat it too!
The real problem with tiered pricing, for me, is that the ISP infrastructure, by and large, makes use of easements through public property which have been granted based on their providing a public utility service. As soon as they decide they can charge premiums, and are therefore no longer behaving as an equal access public utility, I'm gonna decide that they can pay me a monthly fee for the cables they have running across my property (it's a cable ISP, and they only have easements for "cable TV," and NOT for data or internet services).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Its not like the Gov't telling the gas companies what to charge, its more like:
The Car manufacturers making cars go faster or slower depending on where you get your gas.
And thats just messed up.
And its blatantly illegal.
Dimes
Exactly.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
WiFi won't cut it as a true last-mile option. There's not enough spectrum set aside at 2.4GHz for IEEE 802.11b/g's 11 channels to work - there's only 3 non-adjacent channels available: 1, 6 and 11. Too much spectrum overlap for dense cell layout. 802.11a up at 5GHz fixes this with 12 non-overlapping channels, but for now the technology is still somewhat more expensive. 802.11n with MIMO is a bit better.
But for true last mile access to large numbers of people, you need something like WiMax (IEEE 802.16), along with IEEE 802.22 (Wireless Region Area Networks) to serve as an edge-access backbone...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
If i had found out that i have been cut of any major site like google.
A few hours, if i learned that i was being cut of from other sites.
Read radical news here
I assume you are speaking of the U.S. by that statement. In that case, they really do not need to learn who is boss in "this Democracy", but rather who is boss in this "Representative Republic". And, from they way they are buying the representatives, it appears that they already know who is boss. :)
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Parent post stated things pretty well - i wonder why they hid behind the AC - please mod them up
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Not to be a troll, just Devils Advocate. What do you think would happen if Cox "blocked" Google. Do you think the vast majority of Cox users would care enough to switch?
Think of it the other way. What if Cox lowered Google's bandwidth, making them much slower than Cox's own offering to Cox's users, and asked Google for money for the priority. In response, Google flat out cuts off all of Cox's network from any response by their systems.
Now, if they did it to just Google? No, many would not switch. Some would, but most would find alternatives. However, if Cox did this to just Google, then Google probably would respond by suing them for something. Probably wouldn't be hard.
But let's say Cox tried to do it to all the major websites. Amazon, eBay, Google, just everybody you can think off whom lots of their customers would use. They could probably do this by claiming to boost traffic to their own services, and could charge for "increased priority" for other people's traffic. Same thing, but in a different form. Probably they could get away with it legally too.
Now say that all of those providers, or even just a lot of them, cut off Cox's network. How many of Cox's customers would switch now? Internet with no Google, Amazon, or eBay? Lots of their home users wouldn't see the point of having high speed internet access anymore at all.
It would be a suicidal move by Cox, and the important thing here is for the major providers to all realize that and to be willing to cut off whole ISPs if they start demanding payments for improved service. It'll be cheaper for them in the long run.
Do you think they have the ability to switch ?
Many of them no, but a larger and larger number of them are getting that ability. Also remember than some of these providers are national, not regional. They'd lose a lot of customers in a lot of markets. Big city markets mostly, where people can switch and where they're paying more for broadband than those people out in the country are paying. A majority of people can't switch, but the majority of *dollars* probably can.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
An interesting point I've seen made too rarely is that of politics and partisanship. Currently the ISPs are, by and large, impartial providers of information and as such have little value to any group pushing its agenda.
If they gain the power to block sources they dislike... and as the pro-net neutrality gang pointed out, a Canadian ISP has already prevented access to a site hostile to it... then ISPs suddenly become a very valuable thing to have in your pocket.
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
I think this was a bad analogy.
The oil companies can charge what they want for gas, the problem would be if they start charging us where we drive our cars after we filled the tank....
or maybe a worse:
Charging us for gas depending on what type of car we have.
But I said its the FCC that's keeps WiFi broken.
There is a lot more spectrum out there. Like you said you need something like WiMax (IEEE 802.16), along with IEEE 802.22 (Wireless Region Area Networks) to serve as an edge-access backbone...
So after all, we are on the same page. We just have different definitions of WiFi. My definition is what we should have. Not what Telco lobbied FCC tells us we want.
Packet radio can go over long distances. One spec I heard was 10 to 15 kilometers. With all the bandwidth needs of a Large City. DSL can't go that far and support comparable data rates on a single drop.
All that is needed to counter act this act of extortion would be to remind the ISP that If customers cannot access content on the web through their ISP consumers will switch or complain indecently to said ISP.
The action would be for all the major content providers to band together and to block out that ISP's address space from receiving any content. The question is can they band together or not.
--
Sig.com not found message halted!
Cable companies must negotiate with local municipalities to provide service to a designated area. Cable companies ask for a time-limited monopoly in an area in exchange for a specified level of service.
In my township, Cablevision gets a 5 year contract. That contract guarantees Cablevision a monopoly for that time period. The contract also guarantees that all subscribers will have access to high-speed data service, digital video service with High Definition programing, local broadcast feeds, and reasonably priced access for township schools.
It's time for local governments to enforce network neutrality in their agreements with cable companies. Either be net neutral, or prohibit them from servicing an area.
-ted
If the ISP's decided to change their method of service so drastically, could'nt the users file a class-action suit, because they are wandering so far from their TOS? How about the idea that removing net neutrfality, will mean that they will have to start monitering traffic, wouldn't that go against the no-liability idea of being an ISP?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
If they want to filter the traffic and charge based on the destination or content, I say let them.
However, if they do, they are now responsible for 100% of the illegal stuff that goes across their wires. Someone downloads kiddy porn? Arrest the CEO. Gambling? Arrest them. Drug purchases? Seize their assets. DDOS attack orginating or terminating on your network? You pay for lost time, damages, penalties.
When you're a transparent pipe it's resonable that you won't be liable for something you're not condoning or monitoring, like un-moderated bulletin boards. But if you want to filter the traffic so you can bill based on content or origin/destination you are no longer transparent. You are now liable for any bad stuff that you monitored and let go through.
It's as if a shipping company opened up every single package and was going to bill a higher price per pound for magazines than for books w/o pictures. If they were to see the magazines were kiddie porn, but since that was a higher profit shippment they put it back in the box and collect their fee. They'd sure as heck be criminally liable then.
Make this the rule for anyone who wants to filter, load level or restrict based on anything other than pure bandwidth or traffic from their customers. I think they'd learn very quickly that they have more to lose being responsible for every bit that they pass on than they'd evey gain by trying to extort Google.
The email issues alone would make them crack. Make them responsible for every virus, phishing or other fraudulent email sent by someone or received by someone on their system. If they filter too harshly and cause someone to lose a vital message, hold them liable.
Don't let them claim transparency AND try to bill based on content or origin/destination.
Letting providers compete and charge whatever they think is appropriate and whatever they think the market will bear. If they want to offer prioritized service, why should some random regulatory agency say that they're not allowed to? Regulation is not "neutrality", it's just the act of telling consenting parties to a transaction that they can't have what they both want. And don't give me any crap about "important infrastructure". The internet is a commercial entity, owned by the people who own the pipes and supported by the people who pay for the bandwidth. Anything truly critical should be on its own network.
ISPs without neutrality are not, IMHO ISPs. In the legal world, that's probably not as clear as it is to us in the technical world.
This could be clarified with a brand like those on CDs and DVDs. Ideally we'd legally redefine the term ISP to mean a provider that doesn't do this crap (preferably without throwing out the whole notion of QOS for jitter and delay sensitive flows), but since the term has been in common use for a long time I'm not hopeful about that.
The lack of the brand on the consumer's ISP could be announced prominently (in some unfilterable way) on sites that were being throttled (e.g. "For full functionality, switch from Verizon to Speakeasy (click here)").
This doesn't help the people who are only served by one content-filtering ISP, except to make the situation obvious to them.
It seems that there are several organizations already engaged in monitoring and reporting various aspects of internet performance. These organizations may be well positioned to deploy something like this.
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
Well there'd be no point, the oil companies sell OIL (that's why they're called oil companies) and sometimes oil derivatives (such as petroleum). Gas companies sell gas, perhaps he should have asked why the government don't go and tell the gas companies how much to charge for their damn gas, and the answer is that they do, or at least, they hand money out to consumers to help them cover a price spike.
Its a GREAT thing to say-- especially right now with gas prices! It only makes people more pissed off... "Do you want what is going on with gas to happen to your internet?"
Gas corps tend to move in packs than really compete. They should also not be allowed to own/control so gas stations, which only makes them worse.
In some states, like MN, we have laws that do restrict gas pricing to an extent already. They were designed to the big corps couldn't kill off the smaller gas stations.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
it's called regulation, and if it happens to the internet, then goodbye old internet, hello new internet. Back to our roots I guess. Nice way to devalue any kind of internet value is to break net neutrality
While high speed is nice, it is not necessary, the cable companies are neglecting the fact that dial-up still works just fine. Everything comes down at the same speed regardlesss of the source; slow.
P.S. the post flood protection interval is way too long on this site... fricking ridiculous. What is it like 10 minutes? Absurd.
Its been seven minutes and it won't let me make another post... FINE, I'll just change my IP address... what a crock...
Rocco B Commisso CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director at Mediacom Communications Corporation Cash Compensation (FY December 2004) Salary $800,000 Bonus $400,000 Latest FY other short-term comp. $56,723 Latest FY other long-term comp. n/a Latest FY long-term incentive payout $0 Total $1,256,723 Stock Options (FY December 2004) Number of options Market value exercised n/a n/a unexercised 7,992,710 n/a unexercisable 300,000 n/a Total 8,292,710 n/a
We sure as heck have long ago needed an oil BUYERS cartel, were we make an offer to the oil companies and not be stuck at the "pay us what we demand you stupid suckers" level. If the oil companies can form a SALES cartel, we could have-on a national or even regional level-an oil PURCHASERS cartel. Their oil is pretty much useless to them without people buying it and handing them some cash. The larger our purchasers cartel, the better we would be in a pricing negotiation scenario with them.
Transportation fuel is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity for modern life, whether you "personally" drive a car or not, you are still relying on it. As such, pricing needs to be either regulated with outside caps, or, we can form giant buyers cartels to level this market playing field a little better.
Google is a red herring thrown out by the telcos. This isn't about forcing Google to pay more, it's about forcing VoIP services to pay more which would effectively shut down any competition. Verizon (et al) had a lock on certain local phone markets that is now in peril because of VoIP. If they could extort fees from those services for the "right" to use thier networks forcing them to raise prices wihch would would effectively shut down the competition.
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?' :-) ).
Well, if the oil companies decided to charge SOME kinds of cars (ones where they had a financial relationship with the automaker) more for gas than others I suspect that WOULD be illegal (Can't quite decide under what law, though
Since TW Telecom is a part of Time Warner, does this mean they will charge extra for access to sites such as AOL? Or how about accessing a downloaded or streamed movie from Warner Brothers or HBO? Or how about streaming or downloading music from Time Warner artists?
Seems they'd be shooting themselves in the foot with their customers (which I am), and puts them in a possible legal situation if they charge extra for other site's services, and not for their own.
Wait a minute! Could I actually be glad that I'm with Time Warner? (washes mouth out with soap)
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
I figured it was an economic system -- orthogonal to the political structure. e.g. if the government/people own the means of production in a monarchy, it's a socialist monarchy...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
From TFA:
Politicians, he suggested, "don't know what it is, but they're afraid to be against Net neutrality because it sounds so wonderful, like Mom and apple pie."
Gee, it's nice to see that someone else finds the practice of "biased naming" to be so annoying! Goodness knows, someone in the content industry wouldn't find, oh, "Digital Rights Management" to a better example of something that is named with less obvious bias!
He probably also thinks that there's nothing wrong with the name "USA PATRIOT Act", either.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Cox wouldn't have customers very long if none of them could get to Google. This doesn't address the real goal of defeating net neutrality.
We should be talking about Pipes, not oil. IIRC, common carrier rules apply to the owners of pipes; they have to be neutral about who is allowed to buy for oil-width. If internet access had been defined as what it is -- a *communications medium, rather than an "information service" -- the same carrier rules would already apply to it. I think net neutrality people should focus their efforts on that. If it is an "information service" you would expect service's provider to be the source of the information I obtain through it. It is not that; when my sister sends me email she is the provider of whatever information is in it.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I know i would never have the nerve to try and extort Google....
:)
I really wouldn't care to see my company logo turned into a G choking an L in front of a few million people
the net is like the road, not like the electric company.
so the cable companies only want, say, GM cars on the
roads?
- like the cable and phone companies, have conveniently forgotten that their infrastructure is built on a right-of-way that belongs to the public! Oil companies, scum of the earth that they may be, fund their own infrastructure, at least.
Sounds like time for a letter-writing campaign to one's Congressman and Senator. I'll be writing mine this evening.
p.s.: letters are more effective then email!
Back in the early 90's amongst other businesses, my cousin owned a trailer park. The cable company refused to string a couple of miles of cable to provide it with service, so he set up his own little cable company, with really basic service at a fair price. Well, within 3 months the cable comapany managed to get their service to it and he couldn't compete.
Fortunately, he kept his costs low by using Satalite dishes he already owned (from his satalite business) and stringed the cable largely by himself, but it still cost him thousands of dollars.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'
Because, you worm, the oil companies are not (individualy) a MONOPOLY. Cable providers usually are. I have no choice at ALL what cable provider I go with. It's about wires: You can argue up and down that there's competition in the marketplace for phone and cable, but there's only one owner of the wires. And that owner is a monopoly feeding off the goodwill of the city that allows him to use our public space and our right of ways, specifically our underground piping, our telephone poles, etc.
We should dump the lot of you, let our contracts with you lapse and put you incompetent morons out of business. You can't just squeeze your customers like aphids unless they have an alternative -- for cable TV, they generally don't. They'd have to go to a whole different technology.
Dish people could pull this kind of crap and have somewhere to stand, because customers could leave them for another dish system. You have nothing. You're trying to milk more profits by specifically damaging the service your customers who have no choice.
We should be regulating the crap out of these people. They clearly have way too much money for press agents and business plans.
I know: Howsabout we let these jerks own the wires and do whatever they want, but force them, ala Baby Bells, to allow ANYONE to deliver content and connectivity on those coaxial wires? Then, all of a sudden, they'd give a sh-t about their customers, cause those customers could LEAVE.
We didn't do it in the first place because it's an administrative nightmare -- we trusted these jerks to behave. Well that trust was ill-founded, and now we should rip their business out from under them.
These companies would love to be able to do the same crap Ma Bell used to do. Ed Whitacre of SBC recently admitted trying to impose a tiered Internet on their customers would be economic suicide. They've admitted it's stupid, but they're still looking for ways to do it. Prepare some Darwin awards in case they actually try it!
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Cut 'em off. Lets see if YOU want to have the internet without Google and a handful of other vital sites/services. Any hits from that ISP would be directed to a site explaining how their ISP is full of asshole cockjockeys who are too greedy to do their jobs properly.
Perhaps give 'em some alternative ISPs for their region using DSLReports.com?
Basicly, what happens is that google pays money to ispa.
Then an end user pays money to ispb.
Then, ispa and ispb have aggreements so that based on the traffic flow between ispa and ispb, money changes hands in one direction or the other (I dont fully understand it but I think thats right).
Now ispb wants to charge google extra for "preferential treatment"???
This is not just a cash grab, its also a way to favor some stuff over others.
For example:
voip.isp.com over Skype/Vonage/etc
Microsoft over Google (because Microsoft is in bed with the media companies and cable companies and telcos)
Napster/wbmoviedownload.com/etc over P2P downloading/BitTorrent/etc
And so on
I suggest we boycot and/or write letters to any ISP that threatens to do this (and tell our friends to do the same).
Also, we should write to our government (at least those of us in countries where this is actually being talked about) and support/push for bills to force net neutrality on ISPs.
Thankfully no Australian ISP could ever do this (if they did, they would be out of business quick smart thanks to the great competition we have here)
>
> Let's say Cable Company A wants to exhort Google and charge more (or else slower service). Google refuses. A begins to slow service. Google retaliates - and blocks all accesses coming from A. Customer can't get to Google....yell at Company A. Company says it's not our fault....Company B goes through fine.
>
> Customers switch to Company B.
Actually, I think it would work like this:
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If an ISP tells me I have a certain speed connection then blocks bandwidth of the sites I want, how am I getting what I paid for? Will the ISP's even be required to tell the user, who is already paying to access content, what sites are being blocked? Can cable companies limit the bandwidth of certain cable stations so the picture isn't as good also?
When your users get tired of it. They'll start looking for sources that won't do that. That means I'll get to take customers away from you. Knock yourself out. Don't stick with net neutrality, I will. Let's see which method wins in the long run.
What the telcos are talking about is being able to charge people arbitrarily, by type of service and who's providing it.
If they're going to make the gas station analogy, they should carry it to its logical extension: why not have gas stations entering into "strategic partnerships" with Ford, so people who drive Chevys pay more? And have people who drive Toyotas pay even more -- after all, those are foreign cars. Why not let stations charge Democrats who drive Red cars more -- it is, after all, their business and their property, right? And seriously, why should UPS get away with paying the same price as anyone else for gasoline -- they're making a healthy profit off of their delivery business, after all, and there's no reason why our petroleum producers shouldn't have some of that cut, right?
I'd love to see oil execs trying that tack right now.
Tweet, tweet.
You forget that in both of those cases, the "end user" winds up paying more for the use of certain infrastructure, like transoceanic cables, satellite time, or airmail. Users also, with certain exceptions like flat-rate phone service (which still doesn't include overseas calling), pay per actual usage of the service (i.e., per-minute phone rates or postage stamps). And in the case of stamps, you can pay more to get better service (overnight, 1st class v. Parcel Post, etc.)
I'm not sure I understand, are you saying that I as an end user should pay more to be able to access Google?
FalconShould there be a Law?
They seem to be forgetting who initiates the connection. Their customers are paying their ISPs for the right to access sites. Google is paying their ISP for the right to be available on the Internet.
For a cable company to come along and say they should be able to charge everyone whose traffic passes through their pipes goes against the fundamental nature of the internet. The only result is that more money from consumers will work its way into the hands of ISPs. The costs of the infrastructure will be spread out to those that don't even use the infrastructure these charges are supposedly funding.
Your logic is faulty.
You are saying that because they can control one aspect of traffic (its "speed") then they can by definition control all other aspects (eg: its "content"). You are trying to conflate two completely different things.
It's like saying if a private company can set speed limits on a toll road they are liable if someone uses that road to transport a body aftering committing murder.
It's as if a shipping company opened up every single package and was going to bill a higher price per pound for magazines than for books w/o pictures. If they were to see the magazines were kiddie porn, but since that was a higher profit shippment they put it back in the box and collect their fee. They'd sure as heck be criminally liable then.
Right. Except these ISPs aren't trying to prioritise traffic based on its content, but based on its source and destination.
A correct version of your analogy would have shipping companies billing different rates for the same weight package depending upon who was shipping it.
I understand your concerns about this stuff. I don't really like either, but in one sense, I hope the telcoms try to rip off Google and other companies. Because, you know what will happen if they do? Google will roll out their nationwide wifi plans faster. The solution to these problems is always to go around them. The telcos will not be able to compete with wifi. I believe that in the next 5 years, most broadband connections will shift to wifi. It only makes sense actually. Once this happens, there will really be unlimited cometition. What's to stop me from putting a reciever up in my appartment complex and charging my neighbors to share my internet access? This is the model of the future and it's going to drive the prices DOWN. So relax.
Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll be setting up a home network with wifi plugged in and I've been thinking about setting it up for open access, however I think the service agreement that comes with ny cable access bars this. As I never did actually get any agreement with the service I may end up looking for any such agreement on my ISP's website.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Don't get me wrong, I am a major fan of free markets and capitalism... something we really don't have in this area in large part because of government regulations and municipal/regional monopolies that do much to lock out competition.
Being pro free trade capitalism most any governmental regulations on businesses get to me, so coming from that perspective I'm against more regulations. However all ISPs ultimately get their own access from backbone providers and they all are able to provide or get access to the backbones via government monopolies, whether it's cable, fiberoptics, or phonelines. These companies are given an ok from the government to operate a monoply. On top of that, none of the properties I own do I get paid for any cables or fiberoptics that crosses the property. Quite the contrary, I have to pay to gain access to what crosses my property without being credited for what crosses over (not that I own any real estate, I don't currently but I'm hoping to buy a house rsn).
FalconShould there be a Law?
And what's to prevent these "non-throttling" ISPs from changing their minds once they have enough business? Then what?
Competition. In a free market if one business doesn't provide acceptible service at an acceptible price then a competitor will. Given large enough of a market there will be someone who will provide a service, or product, at a descent price. Now, I don't particularly like governmental regulations but these cable and phone companies enjoy govern monopolies, so I don't think it's unreasonable for them to be regulated. But then, I keep thinking that once the government's foot is in the door, it pushs the door open wider, so where would regulations stop?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Forget Google getting the shaft, how about the telco slowing *you* down when you use Mozilla? Who would pay big bux for something like that, I wonder?
Do you realize that the majority of the operating costs of an ISP are in the personalle that you need to handle accounts and payments? Add to these astronomical costs the extra obligation to maintain wires and you'd see how much cheaper it would be for a company to run free municipal WiFi. Now, I never thought such a thing would happen for free without public financing, but then I thought about how life might look after the end of net neutrality, and realized that free Google WiFi would make perfect economic sense, especially in densely-populated, flat areas. "Owning" all those users is an instant goldmine when you can charge Yahoo for "fast lane" access, eBay for the right to make their Skype sound right, Doubleclick for the right to flood them with banners, etc. And not to be underestimated in all this is the fact that if Google owns the last mile, nobody else can yank their chain. What really works for this (hypothetical) Google-ISP is that they would not have to waste resources in shaking down ordinary Joes for money. They'd be shaking down the wealthy data sources instead, players like Vonage and iTunes. I can easily imagine them covering all their costs in this way, and who knows, cities like SF also seem prepared to sweeten the deal with some public money for the "quality of life" improvement that free, municipal WiFi brings to a city.
There might be some risks to Google, but I'd hate to be a telco trying to sell DSL to customers who can get Google WiFi for free. Can you imagine the deals they'd have to offer? I'm talking about cheap, uncapped bandwith, privacy guarantees, plus reliability. Otherwise, nobody would care enough to pay! And, contrary to initial appearances, maybe the customer (at least the urban customer that Google could easily reach) really would win!
If you do not ensure fair transactions capitalism does not function. Adam Smith, father of capitalism, recognized this himself.
Adam Smith liked neither corporations, especially big ones, nor government. The Betrayal of Adam Smith is an excert from "When Corporations Rule the World" on what the writer identifies as what the "corporate libertarians" get wrong about Smith.
FalconShould there be a Law?
So, what we have here is a big fat pity party where everyone and their grab ass brother is trying to get into the "screw the end user" game so they can make more money? Wow, they're all turning into the RIAA and the petroleum companies!
Yes. That's pretty much it. I think your oil company analogies are fundamentally flawed, as are all analogies drawn between electronic content distribution and distribution of a physical good: although oil is controlled in large part by a cartel, at the end of the day it is a nonrenewable resource. "Content" is not; I can copy Disney's Fantasia and give it to as many people as I want, and when I'm done, we all still have it. It's tough doing that with gasoline (though don't we all wish). Basically, DRM tries to make physical-goods distribution models work with strings of numbers, with mixed results. Or alternately, even if Disney decides to take their ball and go home, it's not as if "content" is in short supply, or is in any way a limited resource -- in fact, I would argue that the supply of content always exactly equals demand, no more and no less. People make content basically out of thin air when there is sufficent demand, and don't make it when there's not. The distribution companies have tried to create and perpetuate an artifical scarcity in order to maintain demand, and it's not working very well.
But this is all sort of unrelated to the issue at hand (tiered internet). The point here is simply one where the backbone providers and telcos/ISPs have turned loose a few MBAs to try and figure out how to increase revenue. Their solution is, in the absence of real competition, to try and extort people into paying for the same thing (transfer of bits from point A to B in a timely manner) two or three times. On the receiving end (direct payment to the end-user's ISP), the transmitting end (via however Google/Yahoo/etc. pays the bills, i.e. advertising), and in transit (by twisting Google's or the end-user's arm for increased QoS).
From a dirty business standpoint, it's like they took a look at the business model of the RIAA's member companies and decided they'd try to take it to a whole new level.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You know, you're right.
"Google says that if I route their traffic through your service they're going to go with another provider and we're not about to lose a multi-million dollar contract over you".
No man is an island, but pay internet backbones would be.
It's been a long time.
"How do I make users feel like they have broadband when my network is basically oversubscribed?"
QoS is a congestion control mechanism.
Maybe cable companies should be thinking about whether their back-haul and backbones can support the "high-speed" connections they are selling for "bargain" prices to consumers.
Methinks if google started charging the cable companies for their google indexed details, these extortionists would come to their senses very rapidly...something like a million dollars for cable companies pages to even appear in the google normal search results...
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Ok, but the idea that any monopoly will instantly generate competitors only applies in low cost-to-entry markets. In situations like this, where a single company literally owns all the last-mile connections in a city, how is competition ever going to happen? Random Startup can't just go to everyone's house and say "hey, I know you've already got service, but we'd like to string some extra wires into your house on the off chance that you'd like to change sometime down the road"
In general I agree where there's a low cost of entry into a market there won't be a monopoly and high cost of entry keeps out competition. However a few months back I read an article in "IEEE Spectrum" where a couple of friends who worked in the telecommunications industry quit their jobs and started a business in a low income neighborhood in NYC. They got a location to setup some servers then went into different apartment buildings and homes in the area and ran their own communications network. Bundling internet access, telephone service, and "cable tv" they were able to offer residents these services cheaply. From what I recall they were later asked to do the same thing in other areas.
FalconShould there be a Law?
how about all their network lines running across public land or even private land, with assistance from emminent domain? If I were a locate, state or federal official I'd start asking these asshats how much rent they plan on paying for the privledge of running their fiber on our land.
Since they brought up the oil company analogy, let's offer the telcos the same deal that the oil companies get. The oil companies are not told how much to charge for the damn gas, but they are regulated. They are told to what standards fuel is to be formulated, how it is to be labeled, and how it is to be sold.
So any driver can pull into a gas station in any part of the country, fill their tank with regular unleaded and know:
They are getting 87 octane fuel that will run in their car
The fuel has all required additives, etc.
The price includes all taxes
People buying gas are paying the same price regardless of the make of their car and how they choose to use their vehicle ("Ooh, Cadillac, add $0.40 per gallon." "Commercial vehicle, add $0.25").
Since the telcos want to be treated like the oil companies, let's offer them a similar deal. They can offer different octanes (dial up, dsl, cable, fiber) and they can charge whatever they want, but they will be regulated in other ways - namely that they are not to mess with the fundamental notion that a packet is a packet regarless of origin, destination or content.
DD
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
It's a valid analogy. Content is also how it's being prioritized. ISPs have already been busted for messing with VOIP traffic. P2P traffic is routinely blocked or throttled. The original linked article said:
"Net neutrality, also called network neutrality, is the philosophy that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize content and services--particularly video--that come across their pipes."
The ISPs attempting to leech profits intend to do so based on content as well as origin/destination. Once they make decisions based on content they should be liable for all the content.
I see no evidence in the article that ISPs are going to be looking at packet payloads (let alone entire sessions). Indeed, the technical requirements of doing so, alone, make the very suggestion ridiculous.
The ISPs attempting to leech profits intend to do so based on content as well as origin/destination. Once they make decisions based on content they should be liable for all the content.
Traffic is being prioritised based on source and destination IPs and, possibly, ports. That's not filtering based on content. There is no way you can meaningfully derive the content of any data transmission based on IPs and port numbers. All you can do is - very generally - determine the type of traffic it is, which is precisely what these ISPs want to do, so they can squeeze more money out of customers using more of one type of data than the other.
Again, the original analogy is broken. It is like trying to say that if toll roads base their toll charges on the source, destination and type of vehicle (which many of them do), they are liable for the goods being transported in those vehicles (which they most certainly are not).
I am no fan of discriminatory traffic shaping, however, there are some technical justifications and a hell of a lot of business justifications for doing so. Outside of irrational idealism, it's hard to see any arguments against it.
With that said, I think ISPs are vastly underestimating which service - theirs or Google's - consumers consider to be more important.
Let me explain how market forces work using your analogy.
If you charge $1m for a glass of water on an oasis in the desert, and people are willing to pay it, then you have (possibly) made a profit. Assuming the market is free and not subject to regulation, other firms will begin to set up shop next to you and charge $900k for a glass of water. Then, you'll be forced to lower your price to equal theirs; better for the person buying the water. Well, eventually enough firms will come in to where the price becomes what one would consider 'normal' (assuming no collusion). In fact, some firms might go out of business because they cannot compete as the price approaches the cost of production and firms are forced to compete on very thin margin and high volume.
The natural course of the economy should be left alone as things always work themselves out assuming a free market because a free market seeks equlibrirum. If you were to impose "anti-price gouging" or "fair price controls" there would be little or no incentive for firms to bring resources into the area, innovate, and foster competition which of course lowers prices. Why would firms then resist this? Because the chance for profit would be reduced and regulation compliance (expenses) would be increased.
Libertas in infinitum
Your understanding of laissez faire capitalism is correct.
However I must correct you on your "someone always gets screwed statement"
I have a marketing minor. Any marketing or business freshmen in college can tell you that in a truly free market (barring regulation/government intervention) a transaction ONLY takes place when both parties in the transaction precieve a benefit. In other words, if there is no benefit to one of the parties, they will not continue with the transaction.
Libertas in infinitum
Well, something is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it.
So, if someone has to sell their wedding ring to eat, and if people will only pay $100 for it, but the current owner initially paid $500, then that's just the nature of the market. If that person shopped around for buyers willing to pay more then perhaps a higher value could be attributed to the sale of that ring. Why should someone be expected to pay more than the market value for a given product? It doesn't make sense.
If you want to get emotional/philsophical about it, then I will say the REAL tragedy is the fact that a woman has to sell posessions in order to eat. The price of what she gets for those posessions is inconsequential. The question is, why is she in such financial strife to begin with? Poverty in the US is an individual behavior problem, not a social or economic one.
Libertas in infinitum