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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.
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.
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?
"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
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.
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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!
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 ? Do you think they have the ability to switch ?
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed other than RoadRunner. I cannot get DSL, and have only one provider. What happens tomorrow if they decide to throttle back Gmail, and throttle up Hotmail ??
This is something that needs more press.
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"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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.
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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.
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.
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/
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.
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
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.
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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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We live in a political era where you have to show you are electable. "Electable" means being willin to say anything to win, and to say it in a way that shows no twinge of self-consciousness, much less shame. Politicians that show any kind of discomfort when lying and posturing are considered "stiff".
In other words if you don't show sufficient hypocrisy, you aren't considered credible.
We don't want visionaries, we want politicians who talk about how they have a vision. Actual vision is a sure route to ridicule. Mike Royko labelled Jerry Brown "Governor Moonbeam" because given California's size and propensity for natural disasers, Brown thought the state should have its own emergency communication satellite. In 1978 the idea was visionary, which in political terms equals "kook". Twenty years later it was reality.
Al Gore saw the potential of allowing the Internet to become a piece of national infrastructure for commerce, not just some obscure academic/military network. That took vision. Therefore, it's sure proof that politically speaking he's a kook.
No we don't want actual visionaries in office, any more than we want actual conservatives or actual religious people or actual war heroes. Content distracts the label on the box. No, what we want politicians who are resolute in their rhetoric but biddable to the will of their masters.
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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.
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