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..."

Comments

Backwards into time...

[beheaderaswp]

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*.

Re:Backwards into time...

[RingDev]

"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..."

Incorrect, that is how it works now. With tiered services it would be:

Sure, your blog can be seen, but at a slower rate. If you want it to continue to perform at it's current rate or better, you need to pay more...

Sure, you can start a small business, but your services will be slower. If you want a better QoS you need to pay more...

The problem with teiring is that it doesn't actually fix any problem. If every company in the world signed up with every teiring opperator, we would still have the same limitations we have right now with a higher price tag for content providers and consumers. The other problem is that ANY non-teired provider will kill your higher teired service. So theoretically, not only will you have to pay the extortion fee to AT&T/SBC and the other back bone providers, you'll also need to pay the fee to all the local ISPs, dial ups, cable/DSL services, WiFi providers etc...

-Rick

Re:Backwards into time...

[colinrichardday]

Yes, but people aren't complaining about paying for more service from their own providers, they're worried about having to pay other providers so to not be choked off.

Re:Backwards into time...

[uglyduckling]

I am gung-ho about net neutrality, but how is what you just said any different than how things work now? I host my blog off of my 384Kbps-upload DSL. If my blog all of a sudden gets 4000 visitors per day, and I want all of them to be able to see it, I'll currently have to pay more to move it to a datacenter or get a better Internet connection, correct?

Read the article. The proposal is that the big ISPs will have two tiers/channels/whatever, one that is high speed and only available to paying customers, and the other for everybody else. Note that the paying customers not only pay for their hosting and bandwidth, but also pay the ISP serving the broadband/cable/cell connection to the end user for the right to have their content served over the faster channel.

Presumably the idea of getting 'too popular' is that the ISPs would not only have the option of limiting bandwidth in the last mile to each individual subscriber, but also ISPs may have limited bandwidth across the whole network allocated e.g. by IP block, effectively slowing access to that server down as it becomes more popular, which would obviously cause a drop in popularity/revenue for the online business providing content. At the moment the bottleneck would be with their own hosting, for which they would have to pay for more transfer (GB/month) and a faster pipe (GB/sec). If these proposals are successful they may also have to pay one or more ISPs to be put on the faster pipe through their network and at the subscriber end so that the end users can access the service at an acceptable speed.

The nasty side of this is that, again presumably, the ISPs would allocate a reasonable bandwidth to non-fasttrack traffic so that end users don't notice a slowdown in less popular, niche websites, otherwise customers would complain that 'the whole internet is slow'. The big players would naturally pay up immediately, so it's only the middle group who are too popular for their own good who would be stuck.

Re:Backwards into time...

[GuyverDH]

Don't forget the fact that if for some reason, your packets get routed to some other carriers network (ie cable cut, dug up, etc..) , that *extra* extortion money that you paid to get your packets there at a high rate of speed, are now secondary to this carrier that didn't get it's payola.

That's the biggest thing that the two tiered internet folks are forgetting...

With all the different networks, owned and operated by different companies, sometime, somewhere, packets flow through at least 2, if not 3, 4 or more different networks, before it reaches you.

So, instead of paying for
#1 Connection (your's to the ISP)
#2 Content (in the way of service charge payable to provider)
#3 Payola1 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#4 Payola2 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#5 Payola3 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#6 Payola4 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
etc....

Re:Backwards into time...

[uglyduckling]

Sorry - but here's the way it works. Your ISP says "We're going to a two-tier network and we're going to give you the option to get a better tier."

We say "go eat dirt" (or something analagous) and find another ISP. Been there, done that.

No...no... listen:- You're running a relatively popular website, say an e-commerce site, not up there with the big boys like Amazon but you're making money and you've given up your day job. The ISP providing connectivity for millions of users (say AOL) says "we're going to a two-tier network and we're going to give you the option to get a better tier." You can't find another ISP because it's not your ISP - it's your customer's ISP who's allocated so much bandwidth to your block of IPs and you won't get anymore unless you pay up.

Your options will be to pay up, or put up with the fact that millions of your customers find your website is ridiculously slow. As less people use your website it will speed up again, but your customers and potential customers have gone back to Amazon and have taken your site of their bookmarks list. Getting a better rack server or changing ISPs won't help because the artificial bottleneck is elsewhere and outside of your control unless you pay to move onto the priority tier.

REDACTED

[Stanistani]

REDACTED

This content is not on your Premium Plan.

Re:REDACTED

[CRC'99]

This strikes a good note with me at the moment... There's a fault with a section of the Southern Cross data cable that connects Australia to the US. This means it currently has limited access. Suddenly, my ISP lost *all* international connectivity. Interestingly enough, when I use a proxy of my ISPs upstream provider, I can get through to international sites.

This makes me think that there is already a two-tier internet - as this case obviously demonstrates. It seems that their wholesale traffic/customers aren't as important as its own. Nice way to wipe out tens of thousands of users off a network.

Food for thought.

Enough of the Editorializing Already

[Illbay]

We seem to have a "new class" of "article" light on content, and heavy on the ranting.

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?

Re:Enough of the Editorializing Already

[eln]

Editorializing in Slashdot articles is new? That cave you've been living in all this time must have been cramped.

The very concept of the two-tiered Internet destroys what the Internet has been for years, which is a tool for global collaboration. With a two-tiered Internet, the entire multi-billion-dollar network basically just becomes a vehicle to serve corporate advertising to the plebes, as the "lower tier" sites become slow and unreliable.

This is nothing but a money grab by access providers that will blow up in their faces. Most people use the Internet for social networking these days, and if those sites either essentially get shut down (by being part of the crappy lower tier) or are forced to charge users (because they have to pay exorbitant access charges to get on the upper tier), many people will simply drop offline, which will end up hurting these access providers in the long run.

Content neutrality among backbone providers must be maintained in order for the Internet to continue to be useful to the public. Segmentation will kill the Internet.

Re:Enough of the Editorializing Already

[Tackhead]

> Remember: Your right to "free speech" does NOT come with a corresponding right to be heard.

Yes it does -- every human being on the planet has a right to be heard every time they speak. Not just Americans! Every human being on the planet has this right.

NSA is out there, burning billions of dollars and quadrillions of exaflops of computing power, all in a valiant effort to defend your right to be heard. And you just knock 'em off like that. Such ingratitude!

Corporate Censorship

[Shadow Wrought]

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.

To Network Neutrality Opponents:

[Dachannien]

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.

What about international users?

[Pranjal]

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.

Re:The difference?

[ScentCone]

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).

Re:The devil's advocate case for the two-tier net

['nother poster]

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!

You ARE paying your ISP for the bandwidth already. That's that monthly "unlimited access" fee you pay to your ISP. Skype is paying their ISP, and the person on the other end is paying their ISP, if it's an IP to IP call. Everyone is already being paid for moving IP packets. If you are moving too many packets over your ISP, they should charge you, not Skype. Your ISP knows you want to use Skype, but will leave and go to another ISP if they raise your rates, so they extort money from Skype to be allowed to provide you a service you are already paying your ISP for, moving IP packets from your address to another and vice versa.

Re:The devil's advocate case for the two-tier net

[Skreems]

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?

It's unfair because I already paid for a certain quality of service on my end, and for all the bandwidth I use. If the telcos are having problems filling their end of the contract, they should raise prices to meet their actual costs, not try to extort money from the people on the other end of the connection. When I signed up for an account, I did so with the assumption that I was paying more than enough to cover the bandwidth they promised me, and that I would receive any and all data I chose to request at equal speed (at least as far as they can control). They are now trying to break that contract by delivering data that I request at less bandwidth than I am paying them for, unless the guy on the other end pays protection money.