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Two-Tier Internet & The End of Freedom of Speech
Max Fomitchev writes "The proposed Two-Tier Internet bill threatens not only to raise prices on goods and services served online but also to seriously hamper free speech on Internet by allowing telecom providers choking user pages and blogs not associated with major content providers. What a perfect way of censorship..."
QUOTE:
"While Net Neutrality bill sounds like overkill, two-tier Internet bill is ought to be stopped too. If it passes freedom of speech would be seriously hampered, startups and small businesses will take a hit and we will pay higher prices for online advertising as well as goods and services delivered or sold over Internet. Do we really want that? I think not."
His conclusions in the article are dead on correct. Though I disagree with his opinion on net-neutrality.
The beauty of the internet, in my opinion, is it's ability to link people together while allowing an even playing field for small business. These have been the greatest social and economic impact points of the new technology era. Sadly, once it becomes tiered it also becomes discriminatory based on economic factors.
Sure, your blog can be seen, but if it get's too popular you'll have to pay more...
Sure, you can start a small business, but if it get's too busy you'll have to pay more...
The idea that no one "owns" the net itself should be inviolate. I already am charged for the bandwidth that comes off my servers because of the cost incurred by my ISP for upstream bandwidth.
A tiered internet would be the same as keeping the peasants out of libraries. It's a huge step *backwards*.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
REDACTED
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You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Only the government can "censor" anyone. ISPs routinely "censor" content, and have no restrictions on doing so.
Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.
Else why don't I have my own late-night talk show on a major network?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Since many a blogger rails hardest against corporations and their associated ilk, it makes sense for them tot ry and limit it. What is in the interest of business is a society whose information comes from marketers.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Blogger with crap beard rants incoherently about Freedom.
Film at 11.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
telcos argue that they want to curb proliferation of online video and other types of data-hungry streaming that allegedly taxes their networks they think imposing traffic fees on content providers would be a fair solution. So ISP's (not TELCO's since not all ISP's are necessarily TELCO's) want to impose sort of a private highway fee for passing bandwidth through their networks... Its surprising to see which one of these clowns will be the first to stick it to the next one. Since all networks rely on another one to pass their information through their pipes (peering), I wonder how long before one de-peers with another and breaks the Internet again (see: Who broke *.org).
I wonder what idiotic government officials while having their pockets greased will do their emails no longer come in but instead they receive a hostage notification from their provider: Dear Mr. President, under subsection 1(a)(b)(c)(d)(e) of the Draconian Telecommunications Act, we cannot deliver today's messages. Please pay the sum of a) bandwidth b) tax fees c) attorney fees d) greaser fees in order to release your messages.
Infiltrated dot Net
There are quite a few people out there - not just representatives of the telecommunications industry - under the impression that "Government Intervention Is Bad", hence we should all oppose network neutrality legislation. But this bill underscores the fact that government intervention by itself isn't necessarily bad - it's how government intervenes that determines whether the right or wrong thing is being done.
So let's all drop this nonsense about claiming that the government shouldn't be intervening in how the Internet works, and get back to the core of the matter - which is whether the telecommunications industry should be allowed to leverage its oligopoly position in the broadband ISP market to extract profit from content providers that don't even connect to them directly, and whether the industry should be allowed to discriminate based on traffic type and content, rather than pricing by bandwidth consumption alone.
Put the fear of god in them. Do not let them take this lightly. For this is YOUR ass on the plate.
Read radical news here
Unless you have not heard, Verizon, AT&T, Bell South and other telecommunications giants are lobbying Congress to establish a legal basis for charging website owners for traffic with the help of two-tier Internet.
Sweet. So as long as we haven't heard about it, they're not actually doing it??? Then WTH is Slashdot doing, posting this crap and ruining the Internet for all of us?
Just some opinions. He does not even mention recent blow to foes of Internet neutrality.
Too sads one of the administrators is Max Fomichev's fanboy.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You'd think the telecos would have more pressing things to be worried about. Perhaps the perception the public has of them no longer matters to the machine.
1. From a "free speech" point of view, how is this any different than than your local newspaper's editorial policy? Some newspapers just won't print some kinds of content, even if the author is willing to pay for the service.
2. Does this form of content limitation take away any of the rights you had before the dawn of email? Back in the day, we wrote pen & paper letters because it was the only option. Today, although letters are (probably) more secure, because they are not subject to the kind of keyword data mining that can be conducted on electronic communications, we seem stuck on email. Do we need to be?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I never understand why ISPs just want to charge more. Do they really just want to earn more money? Or do they really have a problem with current plans?
The whole thing is really a tradeoff - lower prices for targeted, sponsored content. It's like TV - you can pay for commercial-free content, or be cheap about it and be forced to watch commercials.
What happens if I happen to access a US server? Will my ISP be charged extra for the services offered by the website? If yes I think all US centric websites are screwed. The content will just move to international waters like most US MNC's who are incorporated in tax free zones. The internet does not revolve around the US you know.
then ...
Because 2 mean the same thing. Same goes for "having a brain does not guarantee that you might be allowed to think" too.
If you do not protect your rights, there are always people who will not hesitate to reap you off of them.
Read radical news here
So, is there some sort of online petition against this? Emails or lists of Congress people who support and oppose this?
I mean, we all know Congress is working soooo hard for us....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Sorry, but a rambling and unsubstantiated opinion piece, and a short one at that, hardly qualifies as a call for action.
Commerce in action ensures that bandwidth providers will want to be paid more, and bandwidth consumers will want to pay less.
Will prices go up for popular stuff? Probably, but this is hardly news or even unexpected.
Will ISPs and their upchannel bandwidth suppliers charge more for increased badnwidth consumption? Sure, but this is hardly new or unexpected either.
Really folks, this is old news and has been discussed in a much more sensible fashion elsewhere. If you really care about providing really, really cheap Internet access to all, get busy and revive the old FreeNet movement. Or start throwing money at your elected representatives to influence their votes.
Three Squirrels
They would piss off their customers. They may provide premium content - such as streaming video - from privileged 'partner' sites. And non-partner sites offering similar high bandwidth content may become less popular because the quality won't be as good.
But no ISP is going to stop providing access to any content. And certainly not low bandwidth stuff like news and opinion sites.
I really wish the government could just let well enough alone instead of completely fucking up the economy by way of fucking up the internet.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Why is it assumed that the internet is the common property of all mankind? Certainly the infrastructure owned by governments around the world is held to one standard, but why do we assume that verizon, quest, etc somehow "owe" us? The internet is a commercial entity. Laying all that fiber was paid for (mostly) by companies expecting a reasonable ROI. The way to voice your opinion is with your wallet. Cancel your service.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
So with this what's the difference between the USA and China? We are supposed to have Freedom of Speech, but I guess not.
The difference is that in China, you've got the central government blocking/filtering (and arresting/jailing) based on the content of the communication. What you say triggers their actions.
In the case being discussed, the content of your blog (your speech) or the content of some streaming media spooling off of a small company's server (as opposed to, say, AOL's or Google's) have nothing to do with it. Censorship isn't even part of the discussion. What's being talked about is who pays for the bandwidth being used. That's it. Period. If Google wants to make billions of dollars by being the go-to search engine for millions of Verizon's customers, then Verizon has every reason to place a premium on that gigantic peering arrangement.
If a little mom-and-pop web site starts getting a ton of traffic from a Slashdotting, do you really think that their monthly costs don't go up? Who should pay for that... the ISP providing their pipe? How are they causing the Slashdotting? But it's the ISP's resources that have to suddently carry all of that traffic, and that comes at the expense of other capacity. This isn't about censorship, it's about the economic realities of the fact that huge IP pipes aren't a natural occuring resource - they're mostly built and run by private companies. You can talk all you want, about anything you want. But why should you be able to dictate to some other ISP how much of your traffic they should have to carry, and at what price?
If you don't like the price they charge, you change carriers. If you don't like any of the prices available (meaning, you don't like the market), then become your own carrier (and see just how willing you are to maintain an artificial pricing scheme when "one way" traffic on certain peering connections account for the vast majority of your day's work and financial costs).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
you've always been able to say whatever you wanted to as long as you were willing and able to pay the price. Challenge the King? Die. Challenge the Empire? Die. This time all they want is cold hard cash. I'd say the price of speech has gotten cheaper.
[signature]
I don't know about you, but I am HIGHLY suspicious of the government's ability to do anything sensical when it comes to technology, and I can think of nothing worse than a law being passed to correct some theoretical problem that DOESN'T CURRENTLY EXIST and might never exist.
What would happen if Congress tried to pass some Net Neutrality Law? Since there isn't any kind of ACTUAL problem now, I'm sure the bill would undoubtedly screw stuff up through the law of unintended consequences.
Congress would insert all kinds of special provisions that would benefit some group at the expense of others, all kinds of new technology would become illegal, and lawsuits would proliferate. Who knows what would happen, the point is that when congress acts on technology (eg. the DMCA) they are likely to create a huge mess and things better be PRETTY DAMN bad before Congress can do more good than harm.
That's it. I'm sending in the ninjas.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
This isn't about price per volume. The NN legislation (SFAIK) does not limit a provider's ability to charge what ever they like for volume. The legislation is designed to prevent the re-ordering of packets based on a tiered service plan.
For example, I get 75gigs of transfer on my site for $15/month. For every 5gig block above that I have to cough up another $5. So if I transfer 4 gigs, it's $15. 60 gigs, still $15. 100 gigs, $40. 500 gigs, $440.
For example, the NN legislation would prevent my provider from saying that in addition to my bandwidth costs I would have to pay $25/month for a 'QoS' guarantee or face 10% more timeouts for my customers and 150% page load times.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
originally, television was supposed to serve the public as well. The government allowed companies to "rent" airspace for programming and in exchange promised to provide a public service in the form of news. We all know how that turned out. Now it looks like the companies are going to repeat the same thing with the internet, and because they control access, there is little anyone can do to stop them.
Fool me once...shame on you, fool me twice...won't be fooled again (our president)
I believe Michael Douglas said it best in the flick Wall Street... "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works... It's never enough for Wall Street." Corporations will milk consumers for everything they got, for as long as they can, for as much as they can get away with. With Jr. and Dick in the White House, that's a lot.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I've got to say, I have trouble with charging content providers even once, so I completely agree with this criticism of the proposed "revenue enhancing" technologys for the megacorps.
I used to post commentary to Salon's TableTalk until they changed their revenue policy to charge people who posted stuff for the right to post. People who posted stuff? They're a magazine. It seems absurd to charge writers but not subscribers. So I left. Obviously it didn't bring the empire down, but my point was to say "look, I'm not going to pay two ways: one by providing content and another by providing money to have that content delivered". People come to the site to read posts, and they charge advertisers for that. Getting readers is enough payment for me.
Similarly here, I think it's amazing that if you have a web site that is full of content, the internet has no mechanism to make sure you are economically rewarded. The promise of micropayments for having put up very elaborate sites full of information was never carried through because the big portal sites realized they could just take all that money for themselves--why pass it through? No one cares that it's my or your commentary that people are getting out of their browser. They just thank AOL or MSN or Google for finding it for them. And we who provide the myriad little details, blogs, maps, lists, and other things that make up the real fabric of the internet are not only not rewarded but are charged.
So when you talk about double-charging for that privilege, not single-charging, at some point I have to say everyone should go read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged , in which something very similar occurs, and what amount to "content providers" eventually say "enough is enough". Ayn Rand is controversial for her overall broad philosophy of Objectivism, which lots of people don't buy into wholesale. But I'm not advancing Objectivism here. I'm just saying the basic premise of the book, that sometimes enough is enough, is worth considering. The book is an interesting read regardless of your position on her larger scale philosophies.
And I'm all for creating reasonable fees on the Internet. I just don't think authors and other content providers should be charged for doing so. That's the very definition of not reasonable. Sort of like having kids charge their parents for raising them. Or charging teachers for the privilege of teaching. If no one reads the content someone provides, the cost of that content approaches zero since it's just a few bytes on an unused disk. If lots of people read them, then by definition the content contributes a lot to the world, and the world should contribute by each consumer chipping in, not by each consumer contributing to the content provider's eventual bankruptcy (or in less severe cases just negatively contributing to their financial success).
Also, I like Jesse Ventura's "government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves". The big portal companies are already capable of a great many sins; the mere presence of money enables that. What the law needs to protect are the individual content providers, who are not capable of protecting themselves because often they are denied (or made to work unreasonably hard for) any revenue stream from their efforts. If there's a need for a law, it's to protect the little guy, not to enable the big one.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Freedom of speech is violated when there are legal consequences from government for saying what you think. This is not that. We had freedom of speech before the internet even existed, I don't see how we're losing it with a tiered system. Don't misunderstand, I don't agree with or like the "tiered" internet approach, but this hyperbolic language about what is and is not a loss of basic human rights is not conductive to the debate. It trivializes TRUE abuses and suspensions of human rights, and clouds the issue in people's minds. When people don't understand what something is, they can't make intelligent decisions about it.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I got an email (genuine, not spam) from EBay this morning encouraging users to write to congress about this. It links you to this page: http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/takeaction/?campaign _id=neutrality1
ISPs have a small, but measurable desire to keep their own customers happy through means such as not blocking off all their favorite sites. I doubt they'll spend much time trying to squeeze blood from turnips before realizing the futility of it.
It is the providers ISP that carries the burden in your case, so they are well in their rights to charge for the bandwidth. It is not OK for MY ISP to charge me and the content provider for the same bandwidth. If I am a bandwidth hog, my ISP should charge me because I'm their customer. This is just a way to extort money from a company for services that have already been paid for. Those millions of Verison customers causing the peering issue you mention are already paying for the privilige of getting the bits delivered.
Mod me troll if you will. But we already have a 2-tiered legal system in the US, so why not a 2-tiered internet? Makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Apologies if I'm sounding too cynical, but when I see articles like this and the one on whistle-blowers today it's hard to remain very optimisitc about our future.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
The difference is that most Chinese citizens realize they have limited freedoms. Most Americans, on the other hand, don't understand that yet. They'll spout on and on about their supposed freedom and liberty, while at the same time actively watching it be slowly eroded. Sometimes they're even happy to see it go, especially when told it'll bring them "national security".
Some moderators need to read moderation guidelines
Is it POSSIBLE to disagree with net neutrality and not get modded down?!?!?!?
My post is fair, reasonable, logical, and not hysterical. If you disagree with someone, then you post a reply; you don't mod them down or mark something as a troll when it isn't.
There's nothing wrong with paying more for better service, for example a connection to a bigger pipe. That being said, this isn't what's happening. Rather, it's that you would be forced to pay for a transit-party (between you, your own ISP, and the client connecting to your site) to not degrade the regular connection. The problem is, that the connection has already been paid for. On the end of the client... to their ISP by them. If they don't want to pay for a higher-speed connection, then with dial-up or low-speed they will get overall lower performance. Fair enough
On your end, you have bandwidth and pipe limits imposed by your ISP. If you want more, you pay for the bigger package. Again, it depends on what service contract you choose.
What should not happen, is that the client's ISP will bill you (after the client is already paying for service) not to choke off your access. This also applies to the midpoints in the connection, and somebody has already footed the bill.
It's double-dipping, and it's extortion. It also strays far from the concept of an ISP being somewhat of a common carrier, and shows blatently that the can (and will abuse the ability to) monitor and/or restrict specific traffic.
If this passes it will be a dark day for the internet indeed... but if it does my hopes are that the first ones to try it will be hammered so mercilessly (lost customers, complaints, legislation, and banner ads everywhere proclaiming to existing customers that their ISP is evil) that the idea will quickly lose it's appeal.
That being said, perhaps we can create a master-pool of ISP's that use said service. In that case we could create something similiar to an anti-spam list wherein customers will get a memo stating "connections to this site will suffer extremely slowness and loss of quality because your ISP 'ASSHATINTERNETCO' is limiting your connection. Click here [link] for more information". I'd be happy to pop those up on my site, and it's easy enough with SHTML, etc.
Anyone in?
The pro-freedom approach would be to let fiber owners (telcoms) charge whomever and whatever they want to use the lines that THEY OWN. If these telcos start charging content providers, the cost may be shifted to users, but new companies would start laying more fiber to grab some of the profits, and the increased competition would bring prices back down in the long run. Plus, there'd be a lot more line capacity out there, which would not happen with "net neutrality".
If it were up to this guy, bookstores couldn't charge different prices for different books--that would amount to abridging "freedom to read" by his logic.
Freedom of speech means you can speak freely. It DOES NOT mean that you are entitled to be provided with the means (internet, microphone, megaphone) to speak.
Also: at the 3rd paragraph, this guy admits he's a socialist, so his credibility to talk about freedom is GONE.
Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.
What the article is saying -- and what it's hard to argue against in practical terms, rather than the abstract principle you're invoking -- is that we currently have the ability to publish affordably, and it's a good thing. If you assume that free speech is not only a *right*, but has *value* to society (if for no other reason than allowing good ideas and dialogue to emerge), it's easy to see we're in a positive state of affairs. Anybody with access to a computer and the ability to sign up for cheap hosting or a free blogger account can publish to a wide audience. This is a new and pretty fantastic state of affairs, and not only that, it's *fair*. The telcos aren't somehow getting ripped off in the status quo -- they set rates for providing bandwidth and are paid for it.
The telco proposal would not, as you point out, violate anyone's "right to free speech." It would, however, violate one principle on which the law is written: that not only should people be safe from redaction or retribution from their government for discussing ideas, a society that allows and cultivates free speech and exchange of ideas reaps benefits closed societies don't.
And whether the society becomes more closed by economic means or state authority doesn't make much difference.
Tweet, tweet.
1. Charge users pay for internet access
2. Charge content providers for hosting
3. Charge content providers for hosting (?)
4. ???
5. Destroy universe?
Is it censorship to not have the best access to the front page of the news paper, the best storefront, the best story placement in a newscast? Do these physical universe examples apply to the Internet?
Is the two tier setup meaning that currently available sites would continue with the current level of bandwidth, and only certain people would get better bandwidth service if they pay for it? or would the quality of their service decrease? If it decreases, how is this different from having a low bandwidth server like geocities? or getting slashdotted?
Is the 2nd tier Internet 2?
It probably is not fair to be marginalized. But is this censorship?
Is the lack of a free ride censorship?
I am so confused
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Let's not forget that the Internet, and computers in general, have all been developed almost exclusively at public expense for most of their lifetimes, and by all rights should remain in the public sector.
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/ stories/14253975.htm
"As Andrew L Shapiro, a contributing editor of the Nation, wrote in July, 1995: ``You probably didn't notice, but the Internet was sold a few months ago. Well, sort of. The US Federal Government has been gradually transferring the backbone of the US portion of the global computer network to companies such as IBM and MCI as part of a larger plan to privatize cyberspace. But the crucial step was taken on April 30, 1995, when the National Science Foundation shut down its part of the Internet, which began in the 1970s as a Defence Department communications tool. That left the corporate giants in charge....''
The telecommunication infrastructure was largely created at Government initiative for about 30 years, including both hardware and software, then handed over to private corporations in 1995. It is true that so-called `private' corporations (meaning, profit is privatized, though cost and risk are largely socialized) were often instrumental in R&D, but typically under Government contract. The basic ideas came from the public sector, as did the funding. That includes the Web, designed at CERN, but in the US the public contribution was overwhelming, as in the case of computers and electronics generally, in fact most of high tech. The system was run by the Pentagon, later the National Science Foundation (NSF). The real question should be the opposite: Why should private corporations be granted a huge gift by the public (which is unaware that it has done so)."
http://www.hinduonnet.com/businessline/2000/07/25
In 2001 when the .bomb was causing router companies (there were like 4 startups + the big 2) to drop like flies I proposed to a friend that we do a router company. He thought I was nuts until I told him I wanted to make a core router that could crack each and every packet and make routing/QoS choices based on what is in the packet. He ask why and I said "So INSERT TELCO HERE can charge Yahoo more to make sure that their packet is favored over Google." He said, "Naw the net is neutral. They government would never let them do that." I wish I had started that company now.
-Sean (http://www.beastproject.org/)
The difference is the forced discrimination provided by Capitalism. It's existed for years quietly, and now that the Internet has balanced the playing field somewhat (far from even) everyone that has a stake in the previous monopoly cries out. RIAA, MPAA, Telephone Provides, TV and Cable (Not much from book publishers, but when people start using smart scanning and text inputs we will more). Everyone that attempts to control the flow of Media.
Key Word: Control.
Key way to get control: Money.
Now isn't that a surprise?
- Kal`Goblez
Well this is no different than turning public easements of land in to private property and charging your neighbor a fee for the electricity that flows over the wires on your easement. Some things are public domain for a reason. Did you know that if you wanted to open a public service like a water company or an electric company you could run the wires to any home you wanted via easements? Whats the reason for removing Internet easments? What about Roads? What about other public property? The Internet is ours not theirs. let's kick AT&T and Verizon off the Internet! Sounds stupid but they have no problems saying the same thing about you.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Okay, I'm curious about this.
I thought originally the point of the tiered Internet was to make sure that when you made phone calls through Skype, which genuinely consume a lot of bandwidth, or when you're downloading video, that extra money was paid to help pay throughout the whole net for the extra bandwidth.
In other words, let's say I send a phone call through Skype's servers. I'm not paying any more to my telco or cableco for them to do this. I'm just paying Skype and Skype is paying their own ISP, not my local ISP, even though my local ISP is carrying all the extra traffic load. This is especially galling for the Telco because this used to be revenue at $ 0.05 a minute and now it's not giving them one thin dime, even though they are providing the bandwidth for it to happen!
This seems like it is in fact inequitable. If my local ISP was a small business it might well have trouble affording the bandwidth being used, and you might have some sympathy for them. But the Evil Telcos have taken away all that business, and so now we have the Evil Telcos suffering, and few feel sorry for an Evil Telco.
Now, what's strange is that the promotional materials for the two-tier Internet say that Google, Microsoft and others should be paying. But at least in terms of the services they are best known for, there should be no need for them to pay. Surely everyone realizes that Google's search, email and Earth, and Microsoft's various web sites, consume "fair" amounts of bandwidth. There is no reason in the world for Google, or your local blog (unless it's high-bandwidth video-based) to have to pay extra for a service we are all paying for equitably. In other words, the "Tier 2" QOS, which I would expect would be similar to what we have now, would be more than ample for their needs.
If there is a two-tier Internet, where video and telephony applications are on the top tier and web sites, email and most other services are on the bottom, it really doesn't seem unfair to me. In fact, it might vastly improve the quality of the top-tier applications to the point where we would be a great deal happier with them than we are now. Surely this is not so bad?
But then why are Google and craigslist afraid of this? Craigslist is about the lowest bandwidth site in the history of mankind and a two-tier model should not have even the slightest impact on their business.
If you would be willing to pay a bit more for an Internet phone call (say $40 a month instead of $30) to get better quality audio and video, then you might actually want the two-tier Internet to work.
Or perhaps Two-Tier doesn't work as I imagine? If you know, please clue me in. It seems like it could be a fair arrangement that would serve everyone well if it's as I've described.
D
When the telcos/cablecos can charge higher rates to other content or service providers than their own competing departments, and/or reduce the performance of those competitors over the Net, those Net operators will choke the competition out of existence.
That divide and conquer tactic has been the favorite telco strategy since forever. Remember what happened to competing DSL providers? Say goodbye to independent content/service providers.
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make install -not war
Reading the referenced article, I dont see any indication that there's a "Two-Tiered Internet" bill in Congress right now. All it said was that the lobbyists are trying to get one to happen, not that they had succeeded. And I havent seen any other good indication that any such thing has occurred. Had it happened, im sure the EFF would have already jumped on that like white on rice.
/. but also in the community (requires + 5 resistance to sunlight). Get out, and spread the word about how our elected representation is robbing us of our rights, and handing them over to the big corporations for the highest bid.
Bottom line is we just need to stay sharp. Pound the hell out of your Congressman/Senator's Door/Phone/Email and tell them what you expect to be done. They work for *YOU* afterall, not for the big corporations (or at least thats the way its *supposed* to be, not always the way it works these days).
If they violate your trust, and keep their own agenda, then FIRE THEM. Vote them out. If a suitable candidate cant be found, dont vote for that office. Believe me, the statistics will show if a group strongly opposes one or more candidates when they see that X number came to the polls on election day, and of those X number, theres a big difference in how many people actually voted for either of the corrupt candidates, and how many didnt.
It will send a message.
In the meantime, make some noise, and not just here on
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
U.S. people! Blow your Congrssmans' ear off!!
Why don't we just let Dick Cheney do it?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Everyone get out your trusty multiplexer Bulletin Board Systems are going to be making comeback... 4bit graphics because of 2bit companies!
Freedom of speech is freedom from the government controlling what is said. It is NOT freedom from all entities to control what is said in all situations. In fact a big part of freedom of speech is the freedom to do just that. A newspaper nor anyone else can not be forced to transmit speech by another. There is a big difference between China's government controlling speech and a US company choosing to to transmit speech by another.
That being said, it is important for the internet to include access to all sites. Companies providing access should not make access content dependent except under extreem circumstances (Phishing, child porn, etc.) Internet providers should be required to provide access to all sites while individual sites should have the right to restrict speech as they see fit.
I just got this letter from our favorite, Rick Santorum:
Dear Mr. Zhrodague:
Thank[sic] for contacting me regarding a tiered Internet system. I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views.
As you may know, on March 2, 2006, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon introduced S. 2360, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006. This bill would prohibit the interfering with, blocking, degrading, altering, modifying or changing traffic on the Internet. S. 2360 would also prohibit the creating of a priority lane (tiered Internet system) where content providers can buy quicker access to customers, leaving those who do not pay the fee in the slow lane. The Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 aims to ensure that network operators can continue to protect subscribers against unwanted spam, spyware, viruses, pornography and other programs. S. 2360 also provides provisions to help network operators respond to emergencies and court-ordered law enforcement needs.
S. 2360 has been referred to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation. As I am not a member of this committee, I will not have the opportunity to vote on this bill in its current form. However, should this bill come before the full Senate for a vote, I will be sure to keep your views in mind.
Thank you again for contacting me. If I can be of further assistance on this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to call on me again.
Sincerely,
Rick Santorum
United States Senate
I got a mail from MoveON.org, and made a few phone calls to those here in PA. I made sure to leave them my name and address. I beg all slashdot readers to call their senators and congresspeople, and voice your opinion. If that still doesn't work, I'll be standing next to you as we storm the Capital en masse.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
If you deduct those last two words from the title of your post, you'd have a effective plan of action.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
and here is the link:
h tml
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/opinion/28sun3.
IMO, the New York Times says it better, but, hey, that's just me.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I can almost gaurentee that this will pass. Reason being is that one can't hamper online speech as much as they can speech in reality.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
"Net Neutrality" is an attempt by the Telcos to shift their problem to the backs of content providers and end users, leaving nothing but profit for them.
Let's take an example. Verizon and Google seem to be popular. Let's say Google is hosted with AT&T. So now we have Verizon's customers using their bandwidth to access Google on AT&T's network, and not getting any money for it. This in and of itself is false. The customers pay for the access, and if they didn't use it for Google then they would use it elsewhere. Since AT&T is the funnel for the traffic from all other ISPs, they charge Google a large amount. It seems like everyone got their money -- AT&T from Google and Verizon from its customers.
If there were an imbalance it would be up to the ISPs to negotiate between themselves. The content providers pay their bandwidth fees to provide the content and the users pay their fees to get access to everything any content provider (from blogs to Amazon) wish to offer.
I had trouble coming up with an imbalance in this equation, but let's say that somehow the user's bandwidth usage to access Google's content drives Verizon's finances into the red, while AT&T is making a mint. In this case I would say that Verizon needs to negotiate some sort of equalization payment from AT&T that would sound like Verizon to AT&T: "Pay me some relief for all this traffic or I will block access to your network from mine".
The advantage here is that the ISP's problem remains their problem, and doesn't move to any scapegoat(s). There is no tiered network, since the costs would be balanced on a monthly/quaterly/yearly/what-have-you basis.
The US Government is pissing about with this kind of thing because it doesnt have anything better to do. The solution is to get it distracted with something else - how about lobbying to have it start a war with some distance third-world country, or two? ..... what was that?
How are you supposed to get out of poverty when education, transportation, day-care, and now egalitarian speech are too expensive for your budget?
I like that quotation: "While Net Neutrality bill sounds like overkill, two-tier Internet bill is ought to be stopped too."
"is ought to be stopped too"? Nice grammar, Max.
*What* bill? I understand that Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov/) isn't always up-to-date, but, really, if there's any "bill" to be stopped, there oughta be an S. or H.R. reference number.
"Hi, I wanted to let Representative Foo know that I oppose the 'Two-Tier Internet bill' and hope she will, too."
"I see. What bill number is that?"
"Uh, I dunno. Max is ought to should said but didn't."
Here's a follow-on idea: charge users from tiered-supportive ISPs to access your site (or just add a surcharge if you are already selling them something). Explain that you are doing this because you have to pay off their ISP. Nothing educates faster than a hit in the wallet... /t
#!/usr/bin/english
Google pays for terrabytes of data transfer from their servers, $random_blog pays for a few gigs from theirs; the upstream data transfer is covered. The users all pay their ISPs for access to these servers; the downstream transfer is covered. It seems to me that Verzion's customers (as in your example) are already paying for access to Google's data via Verzion's network and that Google are already paying to transfer that data from their network to Verzion's. Who is compensated by this extra charge that is not currently (other than the ISPs being paid twice in your model)?
Too many people on the net? Don't want to spend valuable time and money switching to IPv6? Tired of those pirating commies sucking up your bandwidth to download pornography? Then alienate your customers off the internet! Yes, that's right. With the new Two-Tier Internet bill, you can block whatever content you wish from the prying eyes of the paying public! Anti-Rogers sites, anti-Bell sites, all gone! And with fewer people on the internet, you won't even need IPv6! So long, comrade! This is America, the land of the free! The Internet will be exactly like television, and now with the Two-Tiered Internet Bill, you can make sure that those cheapskate commies stay off those Anti-Bush sites for good! Vote for the Two-Tiered Internet Bill today! After all, the rich only get richer!
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Why did the framers of the Constitution feel the need for the Bill of Rights? No laws where being violated so they could have left it all open and take this course of action (or inaction). Fixing the right to council, free association, etc after they've been "violated" is of little use who got stuck with it.
Other places have neutrality laws and while they aren't aren't "uptopian" they aren't screwed up either. If these telcos want to act as a common carrier and get that protection and benefit then they need to figure out if this is the buisness they want to be in.
There is a big difference between China's government controlling speech and a US company choosing to to transmit speech by another.
...Except when that company has been granted special rights and geographical monopoly enforced by the police for acting as an agent of the government. Our tax dollars fund them. Our police arrest their competition. Our laws exempt them from prosecution for certain crimes. And now, the only thing they were asked in return (to carry data impartially) they want to stop doing. Fine. But make sure they pay back the money with which we subsidized their infrastructure. Make sure the public right of ways are opened to any and all competitors. Make sure they are prosecuted for any libel, threats, child porn, etc. they transmit and publish. Otherwise, it is government censorship, just using a third party.
Podcasting of content, wether text, audio or video, to a podcatcher with sufficient storage capacity gets around all these problems with alacrity.
They are trying to make the internet a synchronous 'live' feed mostly by exploiting the over capacity, purchased for pennies on the dollar, from the bankruptcy of GlobalCrossing and others who laid untold miles of fibre underground and it remains mostly 'dark'.
The advent of TCP/IP freed us from having to rely on a disruptable, synchronous streaming content delivery system. "'Ma' Bell" couldn't see it and neither can the "Baby Bells" see it now.
Buying into the argument that content needs constant, 'instant' delivery, just like broadcasting is, is at the heart of the problem.
Podcasting/catching can use asynchronous delivery.
As far as I'm concerned, its a win for the podcasters and, since capacity of the catching platforms is growing exponentially, its a win for the podcatchers.
MSBPodcast.com
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I think this also plays into the wet dreams of rightist freaks and liberal loons alike: total informational omniscience. The only way to prevent incessant violations of privacy will be to use distributed random chained proxies with multiple layers of encryption. The government will likely respond by attempting to bully providers out of existance until the courts rule that despite having nothing to hide, that nothing still belongs to the people and not the government.
By then, new encryption and spread-out transmission techniques will be in place and we will be in endless escalation of hiding simple emails full of soup recipees under 16384 bit quadruple key encryption systems.
The multi-tiered net will be left to carry a minor amount of non-encrypted old style traffic and most people will migrate to the encrypted side and the providers can either go out of business as new providers step up to accept and serve the public's desires or they can change their outlook and un-throttle the traffic they can't tell the origin or destination or content of, but suspect is such they should be able to charge more for.
ISPs will pop up who exist just to exchange information with others of their kind which is simply middle-men to mix up the traffic and keep anyone but the sender and receiver from knowing whether it is a text message or a video or music. No one will have any idea where anything is going.
If this is what the government and the telcos want, an endlessly escalating war of encryption and deception, us against them, we will give it to them. We the people will not be denied our websurfing, emailing, video watching and music listening, nor allow ourselves to be farked over and financially raped to fill their pockets or satiate their greed for power and ego.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Google pays for terrabytes of data transfer from their servers, $random_blog pays for a few gigs from theirs; the upstream data transfer is covered. The users all pay their ISPs for access to these servers; the downstream transfer is covered. It seems to me that Verzion's customers (as in your example) are already paying for access to Google's data via Verzion's network and that Google are already paying to transfer that data from their network to Verzion's. Who is compensated by this extra charge that is not currently (other than the ISPs being paid twice in your model)?
There aren't too many situations where an average ISP is directly peered right into the "destination" network. For example, I'm at home right now, plugged into my local cable provider's network. If I trace a route to eBay, I'm wandering off through my local provider's few hops, then I spend some time rattling around Level3, and then I'm off into the eBay plumbing. Level3 has to provide peering both to eBay and to my cable provider. If my cable company and eBay BOTH want to use that route and have everything appear quick for both parties, then Level3 has to be persuaded to fine tune for just that scenario. That costs money, and pretending that the "cloud" is just one big, magical place where all packets are equal is crazy. Engineers have to screw with this stuff constantly, and the relationships between the heavy traffic magnets and the intermmediate carriers is entirely a matter of mutual interest... or not, if it's not covering the costs correctly.
I pay my ISP to get my home cable modem connected to their network, and for them to do their best to negotiate peering arrangements that give me what feels like good general access to the larger net. But - shocking! - I don't appear to have a 10-hop route to web sites in Korea. Damn it, that's not fair! Congress had better act quickly! Or, gee... maybe my provider isn't feeling the market pressure to barter/pay for peering to that trans-Pacific network. And if everyone on my cable provider's network was suddenly banging away at a network in Taiwan, they'd have to pay more money to spruce up that route. Or not, if they're not worried about keeping those customers.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Maybe the relevance of your results are dependent on what you're searching for? In my experience, I often find *useful* results on technically oriented blogs. So, at least in my case, Google including blogs has been a boon.
In the case being discussed, the content of your blog (your speech) or the content of some streaming media spooling off of a small company's server (as opposed to, say, AOL's or Google's) have nothing to do with it. Censorship isn't even part of the discussion. What's being talked about is who pays for the bandwidth being used. That's it.
So it is alright for them to charge quadruple to black people? How about increasing prices five orders of magnitude for anyone not a member of the republican party? After all the end user can always switch ISPs. it's not like police are arresting people who try to set up their own ISP using the same public right of ways... oh wait, yes they are.
Censoring based upon content or speaker is still censorship.
If a little mom-and-pop web site starts getting a ton of traffic from a Slashdotting, do you really think that their monthly costs don't go up? Who should pay for that... the ISP providing their pipe? How are they causing the Slashdotting?
People pay for bandwidth in both directions so, both parties are paying for it in this case, as it should be. The site is uploading more, so they pay more. The end users are downloading more, so they pay for that, if they are not doing it in lieu of other traffic. You're mistaking the fact that most end users buy a surplus for them not having to pay. This is incorrect.
This isn't about censorship, it's about the economic realities of the fact that huge IP pipes aren't a natural occuring resource - they're mostly built and run by private companies.
Please. This is about finding more sources of revenue and ways to differentiate in the market. ISPs and other network providers should charge what it costs for data impartially, regardless of how rich or poor or how dependent upon network service the originator of the packet is. Anything else voids their common carrier status. A packet is a packet. Charging more to not artificially slow down one and not for another because you know your customer's customer's customer really needs them to go through in a timely fashion is just extortion.
But why should you be able to dictate to some other ISP how much of your traffic they should have to carry, and at what price?
Because in exchange for that impartial service my tax dollars subsidize their pipes. Because in exchange for that impartial service we give them immunity for prosecution for all the libel, death threats, and child porn they transmit and publish. Because in exchange for that impartial service the police arrest anyone who tries to compete with them, granting them a geographical monopoly.
If you don't like the price they charge, you change carriers.
I'd be happy to, but it is illegal for another carrier to run lines to my house.
then become your own carrier
See above.
Arguing that the free market will sort it out makes absolutely no sense in a market with government enforced monopolies, where the ISPs are subsidized with tax dollars and special laws. Would you like proof. It costs me less money to buy cable TV and cable internet as a package than it does to just buy cable Internet. I cannot buy a DSL line without also buying an expensive and unneeded phone line. In a free market, that neither would be the case because competition would force companies to offer what users want. That has not happened over the last 5+ years this has been the case.
Surely the ISP's part of the internet is a private network. They can - should they choose - decide on any arbitrary means to allow other people's packets through. They do already to a minor extent - many of them will block spam. They don't have a two tier internet because until recently there hasn't been any perceived need.
I received a letter from the Ebay CEO today that talked about this very issue (text below). It asked that we fill out a form and the data would be forwarded to itsournet.org who would generate letters and mail them to our representatives. Ebay Email Text: Net Neutrality and the eBay Community: A Call to Action Dear XXXXXXXXXXX, As you know, I almost never reach out to you personally with a request to get involved in a debate in the U.S. Congress. However, today I feel I must. Right now, the telephone and cable companies in control of Internet access are trying to use their enormous political muscle to dramatically change the Internet. It might be hard to believe, but lawmakers in Washington are seriously debating whether consumers should be free to use the Internet as they want in the future. The phone and cable companies now control more than 95% of all Internet access. These large corporations are spending millions of dollars to promote legislation that would divide the Internet into a two-tiered system. The top tier would be a "Pay-to-Play" high-speed toll-road restricted to only the largest companies that can afford to pay high fees for preferential access to the Net. The bottom tier -- the slow lane -- would be what is left for everyone else. If the fast lane is the information "super-highway," the slow lane will operate more like a dirt road. Today's Internet is an incredible open marketplace for goods, services, information and ideas. We can't give that up. A two lane system will restrict innovation because start-ups and small companies -- the companies that can't afford the high fees -- will be unable to succeed, and we'll lose out on the jobs, creativity and inspiration that come with them. The power belongs with Internet users, not the big phone and cable companies. Let's use that power to send as many messages as possible to our elected officials in Washington. Please join me by clicking here (http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/takeaction/?campaig n_id=neutrality1) right now to send a message to your representatives in Congress before it is too late. You can make the difference.
Thank you for reading this note. I hope you'll make your voice heard today.
Sincerely,
Meg Whitman
President and CEO
eBay Inc.
Sorry wrongo to you! These companies think they are entitled to a two tiered internet by law since the marketplace would probably not support it. They need legislation to force this scheme onto the public. They are more than entitled to institute it otherwise and let the marketplace decide, they just cannot use the law to extort money from individuals and companies for their private purposes.
Precisely the point I was going to make...
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
People can just go and host their web sites overseas. I'm sure the European or Australian ISPs will be happy to take over all the new business.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I'd be happy to, but it is illegal for another carrier to run lines to my house.
Then you're talking about it in the wrong venue. This is a discussion about federal legislation, and that has nothing to do with you local zoning rules. Talk to the people who are in charge of your local rights of way... your town council, county planning commissions, etc. The feds in no way make it "illegal" to compete with a carrier. I have four ISPs with fiber, coax, and other forms of copper to pick from (more, if you count wireless providers) - already run right to the curb in my neighborhood. Why? Because it's not illegal, and because the local voters and their elected representatives/commissioners listened to those business interests and allowed those (mostly large) companies to pull their lines through, provided they covered all install costs (including new poles as needed, all street repair, etc).
Don't muddy up a conversation about the merits of a silly, prospective federal act when your real frustration is about your inability to get your local zoning and utility commission people to wake up and allow businesses to compete for your network dollars.
So it is alright for them to charge quadruple to black people?
If you're trying to actually make any sort of rhetorical headway, here, you might consider pulling your head out of your ass. Looking at your IP traffic and noticing that a substantial part of your overhead is going into packets to/from a particular third party's network (say, eBay), or that certain kinds of traffic involve longer handshakes/keep-alives, or require more round trips because of regular losses in some router upstream... that's exactly the sort of thing that causes an ISP to evaluate with whom, and in what way, and on what grounds, they set up peering relationships.
You pay your typical residential ISP to get you onto their network, not to provide any particular, exact flavor of peering to any specific other network in a particular way. I think that misconception (that ISPs are obligated in some way to perfectly optimize every route) is at the heart of a lot of the confusion on this subject.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Won't this for the moment just happen in the US? When that happens and we see the shit in the fan won't people (in the US) kick off because of other internet users around the world not being under these new rules. Plus wouldn't it for the moment also create a 3 tier system? 2 for the US and the original one for the rest of the world?
Jonathanjk.com
So you're really just protecting these capitalists from themselves? How generous! Me, I would let the market teach them a harsh lesson (if that is, indeed, what would result) at which time your point is made regardless and in a much more effective manner.
On the other hand, if you're wrong, isn't the market the best place to hash it out?
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
have a heart, alright? these poor guys need to be billionaires... and *you* exist to make it happen, not ask questions.
All right then, please complete your thought. You just need to explain who will invest in new infrastructure and services if you (or someone just as brilliant and compassionate as you) is wisely determining the prices for packet handling, and the salaries of all of the people who make it happen. Yes, a centrally managed, fixed-price government telecom run by career cubicle-jockeys that can't be fired, but who all make exactly the same pay... that would truly end up producing a wonderous, high performance network for all!
Or, we'd actually still be using rotary-dial phones.
Give the witless class-baiting and uninformed socialist fantasies a rest. The only reason you even have a broadband network on which to write your little rant is because private companies risked money to build it out into what it is today.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
hen you're talking about it in the wrong venue. This is a discussion about federal legislation, and that has nothing to do with you local zoning rules.
Ahh, but the local and state governments enforce the monopoly and the federal government then provides special privileges, both of which together make the actions of these ISPs de facto censorship. I don't care which part of the government is responsible for which act, only the end result, which I notice you don't deny.
If you're trying to actually make any sort of rhetorical headway, here, you might consider pulling your head out of your ass.
You think ad hominem attacks are going to make me consider your arguments more seriously?
Looking at your IP traffic and noticing that a substantial part of your overhead is going into packets to/from a particular third party's network (say, eBay), or that certain kinds of traffic involve longer handshakes/keep-alives, or require more round trips because of regular losses in some router upstream...
They aren't banning price discrimination based upon traffic characteristics, just upon the originator. If they want to negotiate traffic characteristics into their peering contracts, nothing is stopping them, but handling it differently depending upon whether they get a kickback from someone who is not even their customer, well that is just extortion. You're very mistaken about this. They are not doing what you claim, they are looking for who has the money (Google, MS, eBay) and going after those who have more need, not those with particular traffic types. Don't try to josh me, we sell them the tools they're using to try to bill QoS.
You pay your typical residential ISP to get you onto their network, not to provide any particular, exact flavor of peering to any specific other network in a particular way.
No. I pay them to impartially transmit and receive whatever data I decide, without regard for who it is to or from or what is in the packet. That is what a common carrier is obligated to do.
Has anyone else noticed that the ISP that were listed as lobbying for the two tiered internet are also the same ISPs that cooperated with the government's NSA data s(h)ifting scheme?
Telcos: Can we examine packets and charge according to content?
Government: Sure.
Time passes.
Government: Since you are already inspecting for content, here's a list of keywords. Send us the name of anyone transmitting these. Oh, by the way, block all the packets containing pictures of naughty bits. To protect the children.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This is just so lame, content providers already pay for bandwidth they use where they have their servers located, And us internet users already pay for the bandwidth we use. I hope all the major content providers will lobby together and bring up a case from their point of view. I don't see why the content providers has to be pay twice for their content.
http://iesucks.org
Ahh, but the local and state governments enforce the monopoly and the federal government then provides special privileges
Are you not actually reading what I'm typing? That must be it. There is no monopoly unless your local people cause it to be so. You can complain all you want about it, hopefully in the interests of getting different policy-setters into your local decision-making positions. Which "special privileges" are you referring to? The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth. They are the exact opposite of a monopoly, and you have only your locally elected people to blame for a less competitive environment. And that means it's the voters you have to blame, and that means you and your persuasive skills. Which brings us to:
You think ad hominem attacks are going to make me consider your arguments more seriously?
No, I think your previous implication that anyone, like me, that thinks it's OK to adjust prices based on what you're actually having to do to carry traffic to/from thousands of networks is also comfortable being a racist is... exactly an ad hominem attack, and worthy of that response. Did you> really think that playing the race card was helping to make your argument seem more rational?
but handling it differently depending upon whether they get a kickback from someone who is not even their customer, well that is just extortion
I don't think you're really understanding what "extortion" means. Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective. It's already being done every day. My ISP has a peering relationship with Google. It's direct... from my home cable modem to Google's network is four hops. Do you think it's free for my ISP to set that up? Knowing them, it's probably a bartering arrangement, or Google is actually subsidizing the infrastructure already, because it's in their interests to do so. Google is not a customer of my ISP, but they have overlapping financial interests (in the form of me, who brings business to each of them).
No. I pay them to impartially transmit and receive whatever data I decide, without regard for who it is to or from or what is in the packet. That is what a common carrier is obligated to do.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean? You know, the ones that take into account the presence of a FedEx depot in the area when deciding what rate to charge a local business for large volume pickups? Or, a common carrier like the US Postal Service? You know, the ones that look at the type of shipments you're making and - while not directly adjusting the price - dedicate hugely more resources in the way of people and infrastructure to woo people away from other carriers in competitive markets? Common carriers don't discriminate on packages (or packets), but they'll still make large concessions and adapt their operations around the demands of the market (including individual large-volume businesses).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'd love to put together a petition to help blow this up a bit more and send a message to the right people. Who'd be the best person to send the comments to?
--SuperBug
1. This is basically "shutting off" the Internet. You Americans will be locked in one huge pay-per-view pen the day after this passes.
2. The second day after this passes and e.g. China will announce that they will uphold net neutrality no matter what, NYSE will drop 20%. Internet traffic starts flowing around the US.
3. After China sells off its huge stockpile of US currency it's sitting on, dollar collapses to 40% of its current value.
4. Profit!? Dont think so.
It is the providers ISP that carries the burden in your case, so they are well in their rights to charge for the bandwidth.
Lets see:
1. You rent a connection (and rackspace) at some hosting center. You pay per bandwidth.
2. Your hosting provider in turn pays whomever provides him with a connection, they also pay per bandwidth. This is basicly true for all the networks you pass (tho there are often special deals in place to cover this).
3. Your ISP (for your home connection) pays for its bandwidth use to whomever provides its uplink, and you as a customer pay your ISP for a connection with a certain amount of bandwidth.
Tell me again, who is not being payed and who has a legitimate claim for compensation?
Freedom of speech is freedom from the government controlling what is said. It is NOT freedom from all entities to control what is said in all situations.
The intention of freedom of speech is to ensure that any opinion that might have any kind of relevance can be voiced and heard. Since it is not upto the government to decide what is relevant, they are specifically limited in suppressing freedom of speech. That in no way means that it should be allowed to have huge entities (telcos) do the suppressing instead. You still end up not forfilling the purpose of 'freedom of speech' in that case.
Companies limiting what people can say while on their job is an entirely different matter from companies trying to restrict who can publish their own work and get it seen been people. The first is perfectly fine and within their good rights, the later is definitely not fine, and if as you sugegst current law doesn't cover that properly, then current law is incorrect/incomplete because to achieve the purpose of freedom of speech it is absolutely required that this area is covered.
What you describe sounds a heck of a lot like extortion. "Pay us what we ask or else [insert something undesirable here]"
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
At first thought it seemed like "Net Neutrality" was a great idea to stop those greedy phone companies from gouging customers they didn't like.
The more I think about it, the more I realize I still haven't seen every facet of this problem.
First: Everyone accepts that a company with a "Phat Pipe" will pay more if they go over a certain bandwidth limitation. Don't they already do this to the heaviest users? If not, why not? I would assume that when you get a Real Pipe into your business (say, OC-3 or above) that you pay an extreme premium.
So, is there some reason that they are not charging for high-bandwidth sites?
Now, there is one other issue that I would have a huge problem with. Are they asking to charge companies based on what services they wish to provide rather than simply the bandwidth they use? For instance, would they charge a Voip company more just because they were competing with them in the voice offering dept? That would be completely wrong/evil.
Finally, I was listening to a proponent of "Net Neutrality" today talking about how the phone companies are trying to "Double Charge" us by charging the consumer of a service as well as the provider of a service. Could their case be so bad that they have to come up with BS like that??? Everybody pays to connect to the net, everybody is a provider and everybody is a consumer. This is absolutely a non-issue and made me think that they really must not have a case.
I'll re-scan this thread to see if I can get answers to my questions, but anyone with input (or even an opinion) please reply and give me a hand.
Thanks
your ISP is being currently being blocked because they're trying to extort higher fees from us.
Feel free to complain to or change your ISP.
(When will BellSouth, AT&T and Verizon realize they are *NOT* content generators?)
...Hey, lets get our townships, counties, and other municipalities to charge the ISPs for usage of local land to run their lines. AFter all, why should I let them run their lines accross my property and not get a cut of the profits. :)
That's exactly what it is -- extortion to protect the infrastructure providers efforts to branch out into (and dominate) various content businesses (VoIP, Video-on-Demand, etc.)
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/5699/tieredinte rnet9sm.png
... raise prices if you need money, kind of common practice for a long time
b) The government, net benefits everyone and extending networks is expensive, this also makes sense
Alright, obviously this means ISPs get more money.... That is fine, they argue they need it to spread the net to other people. However why is this money coming from content providers rather than
a) the users of the internet
Now their choice of charging content providers causes a variety of problems
1) The less money you have, the less of a voice you have (This will basically remove all of the low budget companies from the net). - Quieting the voices of the poor has been shown to have reprecussions throughout history - A perfect market would have all businesses with equal footing, this gives an unneeded advantage to the big boys
2) This causes a VERY large problem for smaller ISPs, note that it is the few giants that are pushing this. The smaller ISPs will get gouged by the big boys, maybe they can't afford to pay AT&T which holds lets say Google. Without google the ISPs will be left on masse. Effectively the ISPs are charging the content providers, turning around and charging the customers for acess to this content (twice or more).
3) Fragmentation of the internet. Currently the net is all in one big blob minus a few exceptions (Chinese not getting acess to some sites. Now, this would happen throught the net, ISPs would not be able to pay for ALL the content on the net (Imagine if each page was a penny). It would be much like TV... most of the time you get fox but only some people have MTV... and fewer still have Playboy or hustler. It would be the same idea... worsened still by things like search engines, they would be hella expensive so it's likely that an ISP would just pick one. I'm sure they could make a deal with say Yahoo for yahoo to pay them to host their search engine. This would kill choice on the internet.
I order a product from Amazon.com. I pay fedex $10 for 3-day delivery. What right does fedex have to ever ask Amazon.com for money? This is akin to suggesting to Amazon.com that if they don't toss them some money they will intentionally delay my package by several days. I paid you to deliver the package, you agreed to do it by a set time, you have no right to go to amazon.com about it (if even just because i, as the customer, have no control whether amazon.com agrees to pay it or not). They could make the exact same argument:
1. Amazon.com is making money off of their delivery "network" and doesn't pay them a dime for it.
2. It is not the same price to deliver a package to NY as it is to an igloo in canada.
Point 2 is completely valid. Which is why if you choose to live in an igloo in the middle of nowhere you have to pay more for shipping to your location. How does the problem get fixed by double charging for shipping? Basically you are just attempting to push your extra costs onto everyone except the guy living in the igloo, and abusing the fact that Amazon.com depends on you to do business.
If a site passes the paid for limit the isp will shut them down. If the client is downloading too much than the ISP needs to deal with that. Everyone in the middle is paid for their piece of the pie.
This is a simple attempt to extort money through near-monopoly of the last mile. After all, how many options does the average end-user really have? Two? If they're lucky?
Does that really make any sense to you? You act as though accepting users $$ every month to provide a service is a terrible burden those poor ISP's must bear. If anything I would think you would be grateful that this 3rd party has created a value for your product, which entices people to buy your product, at no cost in development to you.
If there is no content why would people be buying these pipes to begin with?
You pay your typical residential ISP to get you onto their network
Are you high? I pay my provider for access to eBay, Google, email, etc. Why would I pay this much money to sit on my ISP's network all day if it wasn't connected to the others? That's just a stupid thing to say.
not to provide any particular, exact flavor of peering to any specific other network in a particular way
Again. That's actually EXACTLY their job. I have no use for their network if it isn't hooked up to the others, and reasonably fast.
This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard for this tierd internet idea. Get it through your skull that the network needs the information more than the information needs the network. You shouldn't get to charge the other end, because without the other end you would have nothing to sell to begin with. They are the ones providing you an ability to charge people to access their content for FREE.
Net Neutrality... The only piece of legislation that has the support of BOTH MoveOn AND the Christian Coalition!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Nope, since the standard and expected purpose of getting onto an ISP's network is to enable the end user to reach the Internet content of his choice. If this is not the case (e.g. if I pay Verizon for a 1.5 Mbps connection, but only get a 128 kbps connection to Google because Google gets its bandwidth from another ISP and didn't give Verizon a double-dip payment), then my ISP is violating what is generally known as the "implied warranty of merchantability" (to offer something for sale is to assert that it is suitable for its normal and customary use).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
ehehehehehe.
But im afraid there wont be any piece of "congressman" left after cheney does his thing.
Read radical news here
Doh well, but this thing is already at hand now. Theres no time for blowing, or pumpkins.
Read radical news here
I thought it was generally acknowledged that the government paid - in the form of tax breaks, or land grabs - for most of the ISP's pipes. If not directly paying for fibre in the ground, they are providing a service to the ISPs that is much more valuable.
"If you don't like any of the prices available (meaning, you don't like the market), then become your own carrier"
This statement alone proves just how ungrounded from reality you are. Its not like an even playing field where one can just 'roll their own' telco. Im beginning to think the only "free market" you have any experience with is in a textbook.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Really, I don't think federal legislation should require multiple overlapping fibre networks to acheive freedom and competition here. Indeed, the whole point of common carrier regulation in the telephone industry is to avoid requiring that while still stopping control of the wires from being leveraged into control of what was done over the wires.
The logic with internet service is the same. It is socially undesirable to have dozens of different cable providers trying to run fiber on polls or underground through the same neighborhoods, much as it would be (though not nearly as dramatically) to have competing road networks.
There is no reason for federal policy to present locals with two bad options.
I have many broadband ISPs to choose from, though most of them use the cable that belongs to the telco. Well, all of them, as far as I know, except the wireless and the local cable monopoly.
People are competing for my network dollars now, even though they aren't, for the most part, competing for the right to physically run cable to my house.
It is not economically feasible to run pipes to everyone. Most places in the US have such an arrangement (tax subsidies/etc). Once the pipes are in place however the carriers want to start abusing the situation. Since possession is 9/10-ths, for the most part they get their way.
It is disingenuous to imply that anyone could go out tomorrow and just recreate much of this infrastructure with private funds.
The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth.
Understand your situation is unique, not the norm. I have lived in several major cities, and several different urban areas in the last few years. The most I have ever seen in any place at once is 2. The phone carrier (about whom you had no choice), and the cable operator (who you also had no choice about). Most places I have lived had just one choice.
ou have only your locally elected people to blame for a less competitive environment
To be fair, it has more to do with population density than elected officials. When your local government subsidizes pipe because it is uneconomical for a company to do it, it is not reasonable that the company then gets a monopoly over it. Through lobbying, and because it is prohibitively expensive to lay down extra lines, most companies have managed to get a monopoly in any given area.
Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective.
This logic is flawed. Without their content no one would want your pipes. It seems to me equally fair that the ISP should have to pay Google for helping it's customers find what they want on the network. Google is providing your customers incentive to buy your product at no cost to you. How is that fair? If all these terrible content production companies were not creating content, no one would want your network.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean?
Exactly like UPS. UPS does not get to double charge everyone. One side pays the price, they deliver the product. UPS does not get to collect my $10 shipping fee, then tell Amazon that if they do not also pay them they will intentionally delay the delivery of my package. If it costs more to deliver my package to me in one place than another, UPS will charge me more, not go to Amazon.
You suffer from the delusion that Google is the local ISP's customer. They are not. The user requesting the information is your customer, and he is already paying you for that service. Google owes you nothing.
If your customers want Google to be tiered then that is between you and the customers. It is in your best interest to give your customers better access to the content they want, not visa-versa.
The reason ISP's want this is for the opposite reason. It gives them bundling control many of them are traditionally used to having. Bundling phone service for example. Either Vonage pays us to provide phone service to our customers (and we make money by leveraging one product for another), or we drop you and get someone else (or themselves) to do it.
It is never in the customers best interest to be told what is best for them based on who gives the carrier the most amount of money. The only reason they can get away with this is because most of them do have a monopoly in any given area so the customers can't choose something less draconian. If this were not the case I would agree that market forces would work this out.
This is not an issue of your rights online. It is a battle between two enormous business groups: Internet providers and content providers. Neither of them has your interests at heart! Both groups are primarily motivated by maximizing their own profits. They are using you and manipulating you in order to try to further their business goals.
I don't love my ISP any more than the next guy, but let me make a brief counter to all the propaganda from Google and Ebay and MSN about the "greedy" ISPs (of course, Google etc. are just in business to extend love and butterflies and puppies throughout the world).
The way people pay for and get charged for the Internet has changed over time. It used to be that many of us had to pay by the minute, or even by the byte. That has mostly disappeared, but we still pay more for better service. Not everyone has the same options for Internet access, and even if they do have the same options not everyone can afford the same access. Internet access is a business, and a relatively new one. Business models are evolving and there is no guarantee that today's model is the perfectly optimal, best possible way that people could pay for Internet access.
It might be that if ISPs could get some money from content providers, they would charge their customers less. Of course, they would not do this out of the goodness of their hearts (they have no hearts!), but rather for the same business reasons that they stopped their per-minute and per-byte charges. ISPs exist in a competitive business environment like other companies and ultimately they need to satisfy their customers.
It might even be that in the future, Internet access could be free. It would effectively be subsidized by the big content companies, which ultimately get their income from ads. Free access to Internet content could be supported by advertising. It has worked with other media and it's possible it could work for the net too. But the only way it can happen is if ISPs, which bear the cost of end-user access, are able to get some of the revenues from the companies that are offering the ads.
That's really what this battle is all about. I don't know how it will come out, but I do know that when good ol' Meg from Ebay suddenly wants me to write my congresswoman about an issue that, coincidentally, would protect the huge profits Meg is earning, her motive is not to benefit me. Meg doesn't actually ask my opinion all that often. She's not on the phone wishing me happy birthday or asking how's the family. No, her interests are not mine. She is looking to protect her company's profits and she is trying to influence me and use me in this political battle against Comcast and other ISPs.
From what I've read here, the big carriers (and ISPs) are getting hit with charges for sites that become "popular". "Popular" == "more bandwidth" and on the net, bandwidth is money.
So, it's really just a matter of bandwidth. There are plenty of technical solutions to that, namely proxies.
Granted, a lot of network stuff these days is "active" or generated on the fly, but the bandwidth-heavy stuff just isn't. You don't want to cache, say, someone's Amazon shopping cart while they're buying something, but that page has a lot of standard Amazon graphics on it, which can be cached and should be cached since images (taking a leap here) make up most of the data on a web page. Anything that is popular, most streaming data, images, audio, should all be cached by proxies at the ISP level. Keep the bandwidth local.
Hell, even if particular (ahem, 'slashdotted') sites were to maintain cacheing servers at ISPs, that would probably help considerably. Maybe slashdot could lead the charge, and host slashdot proxy servers at the ISPs that make up the majority of traffic to the site?
I just have this "dirty" feeling about this, like the problem got tossed to the moneymen, and this is their solution. If all you have is a hammer...
A popular web site should not have to pay the bandwidth charges, the costs should be borne by the people who are using the service. There just doesn't happen to be any convenient and low overhead way to do that right now. But that is how things should be structured.
For some reason, none of the micropayment schemes have ever caught on. But they will some day, and then popular web sites can pay the bandwidth charges from that.
http://www.ricoact.com/
It is disingenuous to imply that anyone could go out tomorrow and just recreate much of this infrastructure with private funds.
In many areas, true. That's what makes this a regional issue, and not a federal one. I've got plenty of providers to choose from, and I don't want another layer of government oversight/rules impacting something that's changing way, way faster than they can digest it.
It seems to me equally fair that the ISP should have to pay Google for helping it's customers find what they want on the network.
Where have you been? Portals and ISPs have been striking mutually useful deals for years now. Mixed results, since many of the deals were half-baked. But look at what Google's doing with WiFi... there isn't, and won't be, some solid wall between the content and infrastructure worlds.
Exactly like UPS. UPS does not get to double charge everyone
Nope, just consumers. Of course they're not getting two payments, per se. But when you drop off a package at a UPS retail affiliate for a shipment, that box, which travels a different shipping "network" route than a large shipper's single bulk pickup, is priced completely differently. Two identical businesses shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates because of the relative mix of the destination demographics (say, the ratio of apartments to single family homes over the course of a month's deliveries).
There is considerable variation in how a carrier treats a customer, including (speaking of freight) things like the way that customer's customers make use of the carrier's services.
You suffer from the delusion that Google is the local ISP's customer.
No, read my comment. I'm more interested in the third party pipes that have to have relationships with all of the parties involved. But some ISPs are also, more or less, backbone providers (in as much as they put out the cash/sweat to do the heavy-duty peering).
If this were not the case I would agree that market forces would work this out.
But in some cases, it is more market-driven. It depends on the local history and other factors. That's what makes a federal act along these lines such an over-reaching, slippery, and unwise thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Once there's law in place to regulate the telco monopoly, it better be tightly written, because they are the Perfect Masters at dodging and subverting regulations and the law could easily backfire.
To address only one point:
>If you don't like the price they charge, you change carriers.
Now that's not quite right, because the issue here is someone like SBC charging Google for access to SBC customers *after* the customers have paid their monthly bills and *after* Google has paid or bartered for its bandwidth, but it does scratch at an important point.
If the market were competitive we wouldn't need to worry about this.
If Zombie Bellco and CableCrud got together and decided that they'd QoS Amazon into oblivion unless they got protection money, then fed-up customers would solve the whole problem by switching to another provider. If they could. They can't. Why do you think municipal wifi terrifies the incumbents so much? Because they know they have a monopoly/duopoly and they want to abuse it.
Monopolies need to be regulated because competition doesn't work on them. An unregulated monopoly is a thing of horror, kind of like a government without checks and balances.
On a regional level I can't do anything about the tiering AT&T does to Google if the tiering isn't occuring locally. Any local rules created can easily be side-stepped by just moving where the tiering is located (geographically).
I've got plenty of providers to choose from
But I and most of America don't. I already have to buy a phone line I don't want if I buy DSL. I know for a fact they love to bundle. Not mandating this seperation is a slippery slope.
there isn't, and won't be, some solid wall between the content and infrastructure worlds
Who is implying there should be? If BellSouth wanted to go create Boogle tomorrow to compete with google I'd say more power to them. Where I get muddy is when they abuse their control over the last mile to my home to shove their product down my throat regardless if I want it. If their product is good it will handle itself. If it is not good, they would like a tiered internet infrastructure to allow them to alter the balance.
Two identical businesses shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates
Different site ISP's I have worked with have had often wildly different prices/offerings. Again, if the poor ISP can't make any money why are they there in the first place?
shipping exactly the same items in the same quantities can wind up paying wildly different rates because of the relative mix of the destination demographics
Except in this case only one person is paying. The end-customer is already paying the ISP for the delivery service. It's akin to saying Amazon just has to get the package to UPS. I already pay UPS monthly to deliver packages to my door. UPS shouldn't get to charge Amazon the full price of delivering a package to my door, and then charge me a monthly fee for delivering packages to my door.
That would never work in an open market. It will only work here, again, because most people don't have a choice.
I'm more interested in the third party pipes that have to have relationships with all of the parties involved. But some ISPs are also, more or less, backbone providers
Maybe I just missed something. I worked for a VoIP provider for a while. We had several connections with several providers to improve our QOS. We paid all of them for every connection. I never met a provider who would let me connect and move data across their network for free. In fact they would meter the data and give us better deals the more data we pushed to them. Who are these carriers giving away network access?
If the poor last-mile ISP's really can't make any money with any of this, why are they fighting sharing the wire so hard? Their actions imply to me they are actually making a great deal of money.
You make a good point in that this has been going on for years (to a certain degree) between different groups. Obviously Google had no problem setting up infrastructure to improve their connectivity to a given ISP. Google spent money on their 1/2 to improve delivery of their content (selfish). The ISP spent their 1/2 of the money to improve Google's quality to their customers, creating cheaper connections for them, and more incentive for a customer to buy their service (selfish). Google only balked when the ISP then said "we also think you should pay us directly to do this".
Say what?
Google should have to pay the customers ISP to improve the ISP's value to the customer? Only a monopoly with a long history of government subsidies could imagine such a thing being rational.
Are you not actually reading what I'm typing? That must be it. There is no monopoly unless your local people cause it to be so.
Assuming this is true (which it isn't as several people have pointed out) it doesn't matter. It is still the government which is just as constrained by the constitution as the federal government. It is the state and federal courts that have not done their job and stopped the unconstitutional action.
Which "special privileges" are you referring to?
Eminent domain right of ways, 200 billion dollars in federal subsidy just for "last mile" connections in the most recent few years, and immunity to prosecution for many crimes, supposedly in exchange for impartially carrying data.
The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth.
I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US during the last decade. I live right next to one of the largest hubs of the internet now. I've never had a choice of more than one cable company offering bundled with their service and one phone company offering bundled with their service. Theoretically the law requires the phone company to allow competition on their lines, but realistically it is not enforced and the one time I tried to get such a service the company I was working with gave up, because they did not have enough money to fight the necessary court battles since the authorities would not enforce the laws. If you actually have competition where you are, great, but the vast majority of the US does not and in light of that we cannot expect competitive pressures to act to solve this issue.
No, I think your previous implication that anyone, like me, that thinks it's OK to adjust prices based on what you're actually having to do to carry traffic to/from thousands of networks is also comfortable being a racist is... exactly an ad hominem attack
No, its called an analogy. You draw a parallel between two things to demonstrate why since one is agreed to be wrong, the other is also wrong. You demonstrated no way in which these are not parallel, and thus have failed to address the point at all.
I don't think you're really understanding what "extortion" means. Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective.
Recognizing that your customers paid you to deliver the traffic, but you can threaten the content provides with intentionally breaking their service and not their competitors is exactly extortion. If the postal system decided to start slowing down mail between Netflix and their customers, unless Netflix paid an additional fee (already having paid postage), then that is extortion. Gee, you'd hate to have Blockbuster take over because their mail goes through faster, wouldn't you? People will start going to them if it takes three weeks to turn around a DVD instead of a few days. The shipping is already paid for. The postal system isn't recognizing that DVDs are more fragile, or need to cost more to ship. Otherwise; Blockbuster would suffer equally. They're recognizing that they can hurt a company and the company is vulnerable to extortion. The same goes for these ISPs. Google traffic is no different than other traffic. They can already charge different prices for different traffic. No. They just noticed Google is vulnerable to extortion.
Google is not a customer of my ISP...
True, the end users are the customers and so are the peering networks. The customers paid for the traffic. The peers paid (or bartered) for the traffic. This is just double charging because they can because the market cannot act effectively with dozens of intermediary customers.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean?
Yes. They can discriminate based up