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House Committee Approves 'Net Neutrality' Bill
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the US House Judiciary Committee approved a bill yesterday that will prevent broadband providers from charging extra fees to websites for delivering their content to users." Ars's response is only guarded optimism, unfortunately. From the article: "The fate of the bill is not clear, as there are now two competing bills vying for the attention of the House floor. HR 5252, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, was overseen by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and is expected to be considered by full House. That bill is seen by some proponents of 'Net neutrality as being too weak, particularly after a Committee vote tossed aside an amendment put forth by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have enshrined the principle of network neutrality into US law. There is speculation that today's bill, HR 5417, could be proposed as an amendment to HR 5252."
on another link spilling this news over on Daily Tech that reads and i quote. [quote] Interestingly, the members of the committee that supported the bill said that they voted for the bill because existing competition to another bill that was already approved by a different committee. The decision to support the current bill they said, had nothing to do with actual concerns on the future of the Internet and what net neutrality is all about. [/quote]
existing competition? what competition? if they arent going to decided on these important issues then why the hell are they there in the first place? 3rd rate politics all the way will always reign until someone with some balls and backbone will let their common sense be heard and voted on, rather than dancing around the issue.
If Telco's really need more money (as they claim) to pay for the infrastructure they are maintaining (and expanding), they can always use (non-discriminatory) a pay-per-byte billing scheme instead of pay-per-byte-value.
Countdown to random Internet Libertarian telling us all how this is a horrible infringement on private enterprise in five, four, three, two...
Seriously, though, this is great. The Internet doesn't need to be run on a Mafia-style extortion plan, and it works best, in fact, when it doesn't. This is one of those times when government can do something right.
We all sit here and sigh with relief that the law is being used to ensure our beloved internet remains net-neutral, and yet - do we really understand the issues or just have a superfical knowledge from the media and fear based upon that?
And do we properly understand the consequences of State involement in this issue?
We applaud, from our fear, that the State will step in and ensure the net is kept neutral.
What we do we do if the State later steps in - as it will, now it has begun - and enacts bills which we detest and shudder at?
In both cases - those we applaude and those we detest - the choice has been taken out of our hands, the decision has been made by the State and will so be the same for everyone.
The solution to these matters lies properly in our own hands.
If you object, GET OUT THERE AND DO SOMETHING.
Make sure people know - convince them not to buy from a net-biased provider.
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else - they have what they want. Those who don't care can buy from who they like - they have what they want.
Don't use or applaud the use of the State to achieve your own ends and impose them upon everyone, because it will come back to bite you when the State is used to impose upon YOU.
Let people make their own individual choices with the money they pay.
it may be. IT/Net crowd should push the law people to see things the right way. Google, microsoft, ibm, and others should spend money to get support in the congress, just like the telcos do. This is the only way.
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The telecoms have resorted to blatantly socialist rhetoric lately. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are "da Man" who is trying to keep the people down by "making them pay the whole bill."
WTF?! Google, Microsoft and Yahoo probably pay more per month than all broadband users in the US combined for their bandwidth. The telecoms are just trying to avoid an ugly truth: $15 DSL that is 50% the speed of a several hundred dollar T1 is not a viable business. What we need is metered bandwidth.
Metered bandwidth would be good for several reasons. First of all, it would in the long run reduce the cost of providing extremely fast service to most people because they don't use that much bandwidth. Most broadband users could easily get by on 5GB/month for $10-$15, then $0.25-$0.50/GB downstream after that. Second, it would provide a financial disincentive for people to use file sharing software for illegal reasons, thus providing the "social solution" to the "social problem" of how to handle mass copyright infringement without DRM or legislation. Third, it would distribute the costs of funding network development fairly.
If 1% of a broadband service's users are using up to 40% of the bandwidth (which Comcast has said is their problem), that's a lot of people paying to subsidize the costs of 1% enjoying the "full benefits" of the network. Why shouldn't that 1% pay for downloading 50GB,100GB (or in one guy's case, 600GB) of data?
I don't want to subsidize the infrastructure with my taxes anymore, and I don't want to pay the same rate for my ~5GB-10GB/month of bandwidth use as someone who uses 100GB+. I also don't want the government telling private businesses that they cannot reserve part of their networks for their own services. As long as they are providing you with the QoS that they advertise and contractually agree to provide you, why do you care if Verizon keeps 80% of the network for their IP TV service? If we get up to 10mbps as the standard rate, and they keep 40mbps for themselves, is that 10mbps any slower? Of course not. Your piece of the pie just keeps becoming more and more in real numbers as their network expands.
Your pay per byte scheme will never fly. Would you be willing to pay for bytes transferred per say, Windows Updates? How about if you were running a small business with 100 machines? Let Machines = M Updates (in megabytes) = U T = Times a Month: 100M x 5U x 4T ... Would you like to pay for Microsoft's additional bandwidth use? What about companies sending java ads, etc. The pay per byte would definitely not fly. As for companies acting under the guise of needing infrastructure work, I say have them justify the expenditures before trying to pass it off to the consumer.
Infiltrated dot Net
I predict this leads to wider adoption of usage caps and bandwidth charges on broadband services. If they can't charge the site owners, they'll start charging the users.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
The next time you get surprised by Congress' tone deafness, remember that they can get all worked up about a colleage getting raided, but not about a 80 year old couple getting raided under obviously horrendously false pretenses. They don't care about serving the public. Their approval ratings, both parties, are starting to approach single digits. If there was ever a time that it should be obvious that we live under the rule of an unaccountable, bifactional ruling party it would be now.
They don't need to do anything to your connection to see what your google searches are, except sniff the first few packets, since google doesn't offer an encrypted page (though they do with gmail.) You just watch the outgoing TCP until there's the beginning of a URL, and you snarf the URL out.
As an alternative, they could be doing transparent web proxying in order to reduce their traffic load, and they could have a super crappy/overloaded proxy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The inability to "block impair, discriminate or interfere with anyone's services or applications or content," makes the following illegal:
- QoS
- NAT
- Virus Scanning
- Spam filtering
- Traffic Shaping
- Pop-up blocking
- Port Blocking
This means the traffic on the Internet will now be even more dominated by malware and scumbags then ever before. This is a good thing?
----- Refactoring is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
Because when I think "things that are efficient and unbiased", I think "US government regulations".
You are the one who doesn't understand Libertarianism. Here is the party platform on monopolies. You can't just go redefining Libertarianism to mean whatever you want it to mean. That is one of my big beefs with Libertarians, whenever you call them on an issue, they waffle and say, "Oh, but that's not what we believe!" Either you are a Libertarian according to what the Libertarian party says, or you are a roll-your-own Anarcho-capitalist, and I would have a lot more respect for you if you would just call yourself that instead of co-opting a word that already has a defined meaning counter to what you profess to believe.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This bill and bills like it are a horrible idea. The power and success of the Internet is that it's lightly regulated and robustly competitive, especially for hosting services.
The internet's success comes from the fact that network operators are given special privileges to act like common carriers and with it are required to act as impartial carriers of data. They are now trying to form a cartel and bypass that requirement of impartiality.
If some ISP wants to charge extra or restrict access to some Internet application how do you think their customers will behave?
Given that their customers are other network carriers in this instance who want to do the same thing to gouge money from the successful, I suspect they'll agree to collude and form a cartel.
Either way the individual customers and overall market should decide prices and services NOT the Federal Government.
The federal government should not decide prices, but if network operators want all of the privileges afforded to common carriers, they should have to impartially carry data like common carriers, not charge extra for not intentionally slowing things down for people who aren't even their direct customers.
An analogy might be, what if the law said only one package shipping companies could operate in a given geographic region, to avoid confusion (only one phone and one cable company is given access to the last mile public right of ways in most places). So one company took over for each state. All fine and good. They agree to impartially carry the packages in return for immunity to prosecution for accidentally transporting drugs or guns or child porn, since they just move anything without looking. They all agree to carry one another's packages, some paying the other a small fee, but basically it all working out. Then the company in California decides, hey, why don't we make sure packages coming from Ford motors are delayed in our shipping room an extra week unless they pay us an additional fee. Its not like they can stop using us, we're 18 customers away from them. The market can't respond effectively through so many intermediaries. They are no longer behaving impartially, so why shouldn't they be held accountable for what they are shipping? And what about the other shippers? Will they cancel their relationships with this one, or will they make a deal and all start doing the same as a way to get more money? My bet is the latter.
I'm all for the free market working things out, but this is nowhere near a free market situation at this point. When anyone can string up lines on the telephone poles and run wires to all the houses, then we'll be getting close. Most end users have no choice, or very little choice. They can go with the monopoly cable company or the monopoly phone company, both of whom only bundle their service with their other service. Hell, it is cheaper for me to buy cable TV + cable internet than it is to just buy cable internet. That doesn't exactly sound like something the free market would produce?
If you want the Feds to give everyone the same access everywhere and for the same price (such as was done with phone, mail, and electrical service) then you penalize the rational consumers and promote things like urban sprawl and government sponsored (universal access) monopolies.
The government is already enforcing monopolies on cable and telephone lines, which are the only "last mile" connection available to most users. Claiming then, that you should not regulate the behaviors of those monopolies is just plain foolish.
> Free trade means if I am a telecom provider and I risk my hard earned capital to provide Internet access services then I should be free to set my own prices and service terms.
:-) Even so, you forget what I already told you: it's bad for business to ignore angry mobs, or to engage in anti-customer activities. They don't soon forgive you for them. Your best hope is that everyone forgets about your support of it.
:-)
... Not very appropriate, though. Even if you get some telecom dollars, I doubt you'll get voted in, and how could they recall you then?
Your argument fails *right* there. The telecoms did ***NOT*** risk their own capital, hard-earned or otherwise. They built the infrastructure on huge government grants, rights-of-way, etc. We're still waiting to see most of the improvement.
> If you live in any relatively urban part of the US you will have at least two if not more choices for Internet access. If some or both providers try to charge extra or degrade your service then the providers need to offer some compelling reason to stick with them or another competitor will take your business.
Hah! Nope. I'm too far away for DSL, and I'm smack in the middle of one of the largest urban areas in the country. That leaves me with... cable. And the cable company screwed with us. They're blacklisted. I wouldn't have any connection at all without the government sponsoring city-wide wifi. Screw the libertarians, I like it.
> If you happen live in a rural area that can only support one service provider, then you've made your choice by living there.
Ummm, yeah. Here in this place I call "the real world" moving is a total pain in the ass and besides, we don't run from fights. Company wants to screw with me? I screw back. Legally. People come to me for technical advice. Want a laptop? Hell no, you don't want a Vaio, get a ThinkPad instead. And anything else I happen to think of to let customers know how badly certain companies like Sony suck ass.
Allowing data-discrimination is an anti-competetive act. If you know anything at all about real world economics, you will understand why customers are hostile to business practices like these. Such things cannot simply be written off or offset with larger marketing budgets. In the real world, people hold grudges, like the really big one I have against Sony for their business practices.
Judges also understand something about sanctions. In theory (if not always practice), sanctions are meant to act as deterrants, such that anyone aware of the sanctions would find it an unacceptable risk to run afoul of them. In other words, those who are sanctioned are meant to serve as examples--a metaphorical "head on a pike" that lets others know that you mean business.
If the telecoms have ANY sense whatsoever, they will realize that the huge public outcry over such things as Net Neutrality, the Sony rootkit, the Do Not Call list, etc. are BRIGHT RED FLAGS for any intelligent business. In theory, if there are in fact any intelligent businesses out there, they should realize that consumer-hostile actions (or plans) are going to get met with this level of resistance. If it takes an angry mob to wake them up, that is what they will get.
On a related note, if you saw who all supported Net Neutrality: the Christian Coalition, the ACLU, the Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.org, etc., etc., etc. you might realize that you are doing your political campaign far more harm than good by posting that. Of course, you might be hoping for campaign funding from the telecoms
As it is now, everytime I hear libertarian banter, I can't help but picture them as real world (and I use that term loosely) Ferengi. Profit is not a right. I want to see an end to exploitation, not to become the one exploiting others. Following the Rules of Acquisition is a good way to get people pissed at you, especially women
Heh. My captcha is "recall"