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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."
Do you mean that under USC 31337 (1)(a)(c)(e) subsection (a)(g) which was superceded by USC 1337 (a)(s)(s) following the guidelines of pork barrel contributors to the aforementioned parties in limine to carrying forth judgement on this matter that someone has to play fairly? Well that makes a lot of sense now doesn't it. However, how long till lobbyists grease up the right pockets and allow the big boys to do as they always do... Monopolize. Strangely I just thought about AT&T's semi new VoIP offering... Aren't they cutting their own throats by offering an all inclusive $49.99 service (local and long distance svce)? I mean after all, if they didn't they would have to charge an average of about $60.00 per month per customer for LD only... I guess its better for them to shoo away companies like Vonage and keep all the money for themselves. Blah to Skype and purveyors of things big companies can't cash in on (sarcasm ... you know ;O)
Infiltrated dot Net
This is a hopeful first step, and it seems that politicians might have an eye for the value of the Internet after all.
<cynical>The only thing the politicians have an eye for is keeping their jobs come November.</cynical>
The voters are pissed off enough to really shake things up this year, and the politicians know it. Net neutrality had ridiculously broad support from an absurdly large number of organizations that frankly, I never thought I'd see on the same side of any argument. It made sense to approve this and not make a large number of angry people even angrier.
~Philly
Oh, god! Metered Bandwidth! What happens when I download a file just to find out it's corrupt and have to download it again? Why did it get corrupted? Was it my ISP or the server on the other end? If it's my ISP, am I entitled to a refund? If so, how do I prove it was my ISP?
More importantly, we'd all have to think about how much bandwidth we're using. To provide a financial disincentive for people to use file sharing software for illegal reasons, they'd have to charge for upstream bandwidth too (otherwise I'm only charged for the songs I actually download, which just means the wrong people get paid for them). This would also provide a financial disincentive for people to use file sharing software for legal purposes. (Didn't one of the network just start distributing some TV show via bittorrent?)
That also means I can't run my own web server because if I got slashdotted, I could go bankrupt. How much of the web's great content started as some guy making a web site in his spare time and publishing it simply because it was no additional cost to do so?
Truly such a thing would kill the Internet. I'd just call Quest, cancel my service, and go back to school to get a degree in something not computer related.
Because those people already pay for this?
The real problem is that in the US, you have oligopolies that are careful not to thread on each other's toes. Like Comcast/Cox -- you seldom if ever have the choice between the two, so it's not really competition.
Why should I pay $80 per month for a 0-4 Mbps up / 0-384 kbps down, when my friends in Norway pay $50 for a 8-20 Mbps up / 4-10 Mbps down? And in addition, I'll lose my service if I use "too much" bandwidth, or use it for any non-approved purpose, unlike them. Never mind that I don't get a full internet service in the first place, but blocked ports both ways.
Some kind of regulation is needed as long as there is no true competition.
Regards,
--
*Art
It seems to work as follows: for your monthly fee you get a download limit of say 3 Gb. a month. If you exceed this limit occasionally and by a small amout, your ISP will feel that it costs them more to send you an extra invoice than they could charge you. Try to download 30 GB. in a month and you will find your connection suspended:
(a) for the time it takes for your average use to drop below 3 Gb. a month or
(b) until you agree to pay for an enhanced subscription or even to pay per Gb.
In this way customers can cheerfully download Windows updates, or even the occasional Linux distribution without extra charge. Try to turn your PC into a TV however by downloading streamed videos all day (which is what the Telco's seem to be worried about), and you'll be asked to pay. This sounds fair and reasonable to me. And besides, all of this can be implemented using today's technologies, and it's very (cost) efficient from the ISP's point of view.
Companies being profit maximisers they will always try to charge you the most, but that's what a market is all about. That doesn't worry me, as long as there is competition. For Verizon e.g. the subscription varies by your maximum upload and download speed. The only thing they need to to is to introduce this system of banded download limits. If the Telco's really do need the extra cash to build and maintain the net infrastructure then this is how they might do it.
I'm not against paying for the bandwidth I consume, what I am against is having Telco's create a tiered Internet and charge according to the sender, the value and/or the content rather than the amount of information people are sending across their pipes.
It's interesting how they talk about "vast new regulations" when all the regulations would do is keep the status quo. It talks about how the US will fall behind other countries, even though those other countries have net neutrality. Their May 24th article complains about how difficult it will be to implement, even though it is already in place. If this group wasn't a serious threat, it would be a funny read.
Or the provider, whose board of directors has a preponderance of individuals with strong religous beliefs, suddenly deciding that they can't in all conscience operate a company that provides access to 'immoral' content and implements blocking for any site that serves porn, nudity, excessive violence, abortion-rights views, or any other opinion they disapprove of?
Loss of their common carrier status, and responsibility for all traffic that crosses their network?
Interesting! So maybe we could apply the same concept to QoS. If you shape bandwidth based on either source or destination, you lose your common carrier status and take responsibility for the content!
You might not even have to pass any new laws. Can they really argue that a common carrier can even use QoS to begin with? A common carrier is just that. Everybody is treated the same.