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Hardware Firms Go Against Crowd on Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Some of the largest hardware firms in the world, like Cisco and 3M, have sent a letter to U.S. policymakers asking them not to be too hasty on mandated net neutrality laws." From the News.com article: "'It is premature to attempt to enact some sort of network neutrality principles into law now,' says the letter, which was signed by 34 companies and sent to House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. 'Legislating in the absence of real understanding of the issue risks both solving the wrong problem and hobbling the rapidly developing new technologies and business models of the Internet with rigid, potentially stultifying rules.'"
If the US wishes to regulate content within the US, then so be it. Legally, they can decide what goes on inside their borders. But the internet is a global network; regulation across national borders has never really worked. Off-shore banking, anybody? Are we going to see off-shore datacenters (aka Sealand) but on a grand scale?
No doubt the hardware companies have a vested interest in this and speak from a biased perspective. However, while most /. readers are well informed on such issues, most members of Congress aren't.
.xxx domain will increase porn on the internet and make it easier for kids to view porn. They can't grasp the simple concept that currently there is plenty of porn that is easy to access, and a .xxx domain will actually help filter that content away from kids.
There are the same folks who seem to believe a
Do we expect these guys to understand and make a good decision regarding the future of the internet? With that it mind, I echo this message. Don't rush into a decision. Perhaps if they take their time one of two favorable outcomes will emerge.
1 - Logic and reason will win out and good legislation will emerge.
2 - Congress will release they have no fucking clue and just leave it all alone.
I'm hoping for the latter over the former.
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When I worked at Cisco, the big plan in many of the product groups was to move the intelligence away from the edge of the network as a way to keep Cisco routers from being commoditized.
People like Rep. Sensenbrenner in Congress who advocate totalitarian controls over your internet use or a private business that can't legally tell you what to do except through a contract you signed with them? Quite frankly with the way that Congress is these days, I wouldn't trust them to regulate our local parking meters, let alone our section of the Internet.
As far as anti-competitive behavior, like the Madison River issue, goes, there are existing federal legal mechanisms for handling them. It's not anti-competitive for Verizon to only sell 25% of their network. It's their loss if their customers want to pay for better access, but can't get it because Verizon is reserving too much of its network for its own service.
The problem is, as always, government regulation at every level. There are enormous government-imposed costs on starting your own broadband or television service. The best way to create a competitive market is genuine deregulation, like ending all taxes and regulations on the construction and development of local private networks. All of them. Toss that spawn of satan out with the bathwater and be done with it.
Now let me ask y'all this. If Sensenbrenner gets his way, raise your hand all of you who want the government to be your ISP via municipal services. That's a straight ticket to getting no sympathy from the court when your privacy rights are screwed by the government.
Network neutrality and Qos don't contradict each other... as long as the customer and not the content provider is paying the bill.
Each ISP can tell his customers "for extra 10$ you get priorized network access"... the market will show him if someone is willing to pay. But when they try to charge the content providers (Google, ect.) it's nothing else than an extortion.
Its not merely comparable, but with the increasing popularity of VoIP, it is the exact same thing.
Which is, of course, why the telcos are so eager to find any excuse to get rid of it. They've always wanted to be free to leverage their monopoly on the wires to control everything that attached to them, and every business that relied on them, which is why they were subjected to common carrier laws and broken up to prevent in the first place.
Now they're re-merging and looking for ways to render common carrier controls irrelevant; by comparison to what is being sought here, Microsoft's market distorting power was small change. The kind of dominance the colluding telcos would exercise would be more analogous to the old Standard Oil monopoly.
At least, theoretically speaking. Charge the end-user on a per-bandwidth-consumed basis. Voila. People who want to stream movies or torrent huge files will pay a premium. The rest of us who just web browse, check email, play networked games, and occasionally view a video clip...we pay the same (or less) than we do now. This way nobody's bandwidth is artificially limited. The only limit is how much you want to buy.
ISPs could give people an initial "bucket" of bytes in exchange for a base monthly charge. No charge until that bucket is exhausted, after which they start paying. Basically, have it work like cell phone plans. Would this be annoying? Sure, a little. Would it be more fair? Probably.
1) when does the revolution begin?
2) what form should it take?
Should it be:
The thing that makes people squeamish is that information shouldn't obey capitalistic control since it doesn't meet the analogy correctly. There is something far better that frees information and ensures those that produce it are payed appropriately. Here the only long term successful choice seems to be something like a tax system where people choose where the money goes but should have access to it all. That is, they aren't LEGALLY prevented from accessing it, sharing it, telling someone else about it, singing it, dancing it, whatever. Then tack on any sane laws addressing privacy concerns (selling med records) or claiming work is your own when it isn't, if possible.
Very interesting and knowledgeable comment. Perhaps you can answer a question I've always had:
To my mind, the only reason the telcos have any ability to even fight this fight is their government-sanctioned monopoly on the last mile. Basically as long as most consumers and small businesses have to start their traffic on telco copper, the telcos can restrict their access to all the other "backbone" providers. If that monopoly were broken, then a consumer could in choose whether they wanted a net-neutral ISP or a paid-content ISP. The market can dictate who ends up connected to what kind of "backbone"/peering arrangement. Many consumers might well opt for the paid-content ISP, since it would basically be a TV+phone+internet bundle, while businesses and geeks and those visiting Wikipedia would go for net-neutral service. And that's not even mentioning the myriad other benefits breaking that monopoly would have: true competition between all ISPs, lowered cost of local service, and no stupid games like forbidding bandwidth-sharing. The beginning and the end of this problem is the government-granted monopoly the telcos have on last-mile connectivity.
So I say cut the following deal: back off on enforcing network neutrality, but use regulation to open the last mile to all comers, including wireless mesh, broadand over electrical, etc. With that resolve, the market can resolve how bandwidth should be apportioned.
Does this make any sense?
Every gigabyte they send has a cost, they may have a large connection (or three) but they also pay for the traffic going over that link.
You're also forgetting that what the telecoms are proposing here isn't just looking at how much, but also where it's going. so now, they'll pay for an OC-12, by the gig AND a fee to make sure their customers get a good connection.
It's the third part they're objecting to. They already pay large amounts of cash for everything going in and out of their datacenter, why should they pay _more_ for guaranteed priority?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!