Slashdot Mirror
Eric Schmidt on Net Neutrality
GillBates0 writes "Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has written an open letter to the Google user community asking them to speak out on the issue of net neutrality. The official Google Blog has a blurb on this as well. From the letter: 'In the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill, and one that may come up for a key vote in the Senate in the next few weeks, would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet ... Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.'"
They lay their cables on public property, with the consent of the government, on the condition that they provide a public service to all people equally... and now they're being ALLOWED to violate that? How can Congress justify that? Obviously they're is getting some cheddar for it, but don't they usually PRETEND they aren't?
Either way, it's still a crap piece of legislation.
Please someone tell me, have we, as Net Neutrality camp, been able to buy any congressman ?
We HAD to, because that is the way it works. No congressman gives a shit about the taxpayers' opinion. They will be as much happy as they can be even if they end their politics career by voting for telcos, as they will have received a huge lump of cash from them by then.
So if anyone has insight as to if google, microsoft, ebay, yahoo and any others have been able to buy any congressman, please tell me
Read radical news here
Creativity, innovation, a couple billion dollars in Google stock and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
In places like this....where everyone agrees...and noone with power visits...
this isn't a troll and I'm not an American but is the net neutrality a good thing? does it mean that they can't srcew people over... or is this one of those things where the name of the bill is actually the opposite of what it will do
What side should I support... even though I can do nothing about it
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
After all, I think they owe Eric one. Or perhaps Eric should save that favor ask for the safe return of Jack Bauer.....
Now if only they linked this to the front page. Google should leverage its net presence to spread the word to the ignorant masses.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Clearly only China/Google should have the power to dictate what people can and can't see on the internet.
It's short and contains links and phone numbers which can be used to speak out to congress which is going to be way more effective than bitching on Slashdot.
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Tell me, if there's any difference between the Chinese and the US government, or any other government? It's all about control and money isn't it?
... In Washingtonpost. To quote the first few lines Congress is about to cast a historic vote on the future of the Internet. It will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open technology fostering innovation, economic growth and democratic communication, or instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies that can put toll booths at every on-ramp and exit on the information superhighway.
At the center of the debate is the most important public policy you've probably never heard of: "network neutrality."
This is the company that has made a name for itself by removing right-wing blogs for "hate speech" from its index. Seems to me that it's precisely the darling of the net neutrality side that is guilty of making the ugly side of the argument, making it harder in some way to access content, a reality. It's not censorship, but it is a censor's mentality. Google has done the same with Google News like when they barred professional journalist and blogger Michelle Malkin (don't like her, but she is a published mainstream media journalist) from Google News for "not meeting editorial standards," but saw fit to allow StormFront to get indexed for a while.
Where is Google's pledge to make their fibre networks open to the public on a neutral basis? They bought up a lot of dark fibre a while ago. Where is their pledge to let people use it at fair, non-discriminatory rates for whatever protocols they want?
Speak out, they'll probably start tracking all my phone calls...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Most importantly, what's the bill # and which way do I tell my reps to vote?
I did a quick look around the links and could not find it.
Soccer Goal Plans
I am not for breaking up net neutrality, but his statement "Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight." is sort of hypocritical to what he is fighting for. If he were truely for a free market, then the cable companies could do whatever they wanted with their product. (But then again, local gov'ts have created monopolies for cable/internet providers by only leasing the public right away to certain groups, limiting competition).
Google taking up a fight against Internet censorship...how delightfully hypocritical, considering that they're helping the Chinese government in their efforts to suppress information.
Maybe Eric should consider sending an open letter to the journalists that they've helped put behind bars in China...assuming they actually -put- people behind bars. If they're anything like the Americans, they're probably being tortured to death in an "undisclosed location."
"Net Neutrality" is used to describe the notion that the network should be neutral and unbiased to all all traffic. That is, an ISP should not be partial towards or throttle traffic just because it may not be in their best interests to forward it.
As usual, the Wikipedia entry on Net Neutrality is pretty informative. The opening line reads: "Network neutrality is the ideal that network designs and operators should not discriminate between network applications." which sums up the issue pretty neatly.
Hence "Net Neutrality" is a _good_ thing, but it is confusing when people refer to the "Net Neutrality Bill" because what the bill actually proposes is the opposite, which often seems to be the case nowadays...kinda like Doublespeak.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I live in a 3rd world African country where 60% of the population has never owned a Telephone and never even heard of the Internet (our Minister of Communications being one of them). Laws are written at the whim of our monopoly telecoms provider and anything and everything that can be done to increase profit and decrease expense IS done. A law like this being passed in the US would almost certainly be copied here, which would be a bad thing for me. So I ask this of all Americans, with tears in my baby blue eyes, please dont let your government screw you over again. Stop them, before they stop me!
Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
While not forgetting about the importance of this bill..
lets also remind Mr. Schmidt of the wonderful things they are doing in 'free and open' China.
I was going to mod you down as troll for such a tunnel vision comment, but I'll reply.
Who cares if he's doing it for the sake of his company also? Even if he's doing it solely for his company, hats off to him for using his weight with Google to try to do something good.
I had told you so in this post: Dad, What Was Internet?
fuvoo: watch something
So if anyone has insight as to if google, microsoft, ebay, yahoo and any others have been able to buy any congressman, please tell me
Do you think buying Congressmen would violate Google's "Do no evil" ethos?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The telcos want the tariffs relaxed so that they can provide content (think: radio & tv) over copper strand. The cable companies want tariffs tightened so that they can provide telephony over coaxial connection.
Strange thing is, no matter which one wins they're going to need to be able to provide a certain QoS for whatever they're adding to the current status-quo. The telcos will need to be able to guarantee a certain minimum bandwidth to provide a/v content. Similarly for the cable companies providing telephone service. The money in either case would seem to be arrayed against us (the consumers).
Okay, if what I've asserted above is true, is there any way to implement the kind of QoS the ISP's will need without shafting consumers? Perhaps rather than "net neutrality", a properly managed "zoned" internet could be made to work?
Just askin'.
As might google do join in internet censorship practices in china, this net neutrality thing affects ALL of us.
Like it or not, google is our ally in that matter.
We, if we rather not see slashdot 'screened' by some butthole telco, we should all join in on the attempt.
Not only slashdot, of course, ANY and ALL things we hold dear on the net.
Apparently many of you havent read the article that was linked. Craigslist is already being blocked by some butthole isp. Why ? to bolster their own classifieds list of course.
These are AGAINST free market rules, and anti-trust practices.
So stop blabbering, join in, for OURSELVES
Read radical news here
When I'm paying for my connection I want to be the one who determines what I see and don't' see. I want to be the one who determines which packets get QoS priority and which ones don't. I want anyone who has essentially monopoly rights to serve me to simply provide a neutral service for me to use as I see fit! Any questions?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is it naive to think that we shouldn't need to buy a vote? It's not like even though a govt official might get paid to pass this, that it won't affect them. Say they pass a tiered internet bill, but Google still refuses to pay the extortion fees. How long will it be before DC gets pissed off that they can't get google in at faster than 1kb/s? Don't they see that?
I heard google was buying up all sorts of surplus network capacity.
If the cable companies start to choke off access maybe google would simply provide access to their own network.
With google office, gmail etc all running nice and fast, it could be very competative against those who would restrict network performance.
Maybe google is just setting up to be the "saviour of the internet", and lock people in, perhaps even better than MS.
It's like what DRM does to consumers, only this time to content providers.
Slashdot is a friendly crowd in terms of google's view that NetNeutrality is important.
So lets say your the one of those friendlies reading this posting. You're sitting there thinking to yourself yeah I like this idea of Net Neutrality, and I think congress should support Net Neutrality. Now ask yourself this, did your write your congressman? .
If your answer is yes stop reading this post now.
So why haven't you? Sure it'd be best to write a real letter, and bravo if you decide to do that. But if, like me, you're just too damned lazy, submit and electronic carbon copy one that's linked from the article. It's really not that hard, and these things really do work if enough people submit them. Just ask the Parents Television Council, the nice people who convinced the FCC to fine any broadcaster who doesn't conform to their censorship standards. They did that by setting up a nice simple website to send electronic complaints to the FCC with a few clicks.
Write your damned congressman!
-Mark
Nah. Congressmen are like lawyers: You've got to have some if you don't want to get screwed by your competitions. Lawyer's aren't evil per se, they're just amoral and bloodsucking.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Google is nothing more than a moden-day telco. Between GMail and GTalk and google "dark fiber" they are becoming the modern day telco.
What are you waiting for ? How many bucks will it cost to phone your congressman ?
Just blow his/her ear of NOW, put some sense into him/her.
It is the time to act, not for such and such crap, but for the thing that made it POSSIBLE for us all to be here, FREE on the net today.
Grab the phone, and "let the freedom ring" over their ears.
Read radical news here
As with any other concept which took a nose dive from good to bad, this one also will need a nose dive before it can be fixed for good. Right now, Internet is only a couple of decades old, last few years of which, it has experienced a boom in the number of users.
:)
Most of the internet users are far away off from the slashdot crown when it comes to education and thinking. They are just ignorant cliskers, who buy things, chat with friends and nowadays, use VOIP to cut down their phone bills. They do not know net neutrality from Adam. But when AT&T, Verizon and their cousins start to throttle VOIP bandwidth, their call quality will suffer; or their IM's will get slower, google searches will take forever to load, take your pick. Which is when they will realize something is not up-n-up and start making noise. And after this point, some idiotic government officials, who has a brain cell left behind, working, who want to get re-elected, will listen to the PEOPLE, not google or vonage or anyone else.
Right now, all that net neutrality stakeholders can do is to open up their corporate coffers and pony up some donations to this year's election campaign to some targeted house representatives to block AT&T pact.
Long live the network - as long as you can
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
...would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.
This has already happened, in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. The local cable company blocks port 25 (both directions) and port 80 (inbound). Since I host my personal web page and my personal email address on my own server, I can't use their internet service. The only reason I have unrestricted residential internet access at all is a Canadian law that forces the phone company to allow competing ISPs to offer DSL internet on phone company lines. I subscribe to a smaller ISP that offers unrestricted internet access over DSL.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
If google cant, microsoft can and should have bought some congressman.
Read radical news here
Maybe we just need to produce a lot of pins with a catchy slogan like "The net wants to be neutral".
Don't think he has been "bought" but a bill supporting Net Neutrality is being pushed by Democratic representative from... surprise, surprise... Massachusetts. Here is his work on Net Neutrality.
Unfortunately, yes, it is naive. Especially with modern election system, where who has the money gets advertising and publicity and wins.
After they win, they NEED to either earn this money, or pay it back to their 'supporters'. So with the situation at hand, this is a purchased congressmanship. That will naturally lead to taking sides with whoever pays.
I suspect they would care if google paid or paid not the exthortion fees. Noone can dare block google. Their users would kill them.
But the rest of the net, aside from google, microsoft, us, 'the people' would be affected and would have nothing to do.
Read radical news here
Just suppose the following.
1: I surf over to Google to get a video.
2: Google refuses to pay my ISP's extortion rate for delivering their packets to me in a timely manner.
3: Although I'm doing nothing else on the Internet at the time, my Google download runs at 1/10th (or worse) of my download bandwidth that I'm promised and pay for.
4: I sue my BB provider for not providing the service level (download speeds) they've promised me.
5: PROFIT???
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No matter how you feel about them, the [other] telcos aren't just targeting them with this bill.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It was a little blurb of an editorial, and plenty of people never read the editorials, but it managed to get the point across very clearly, spelling out why this is bad for Internet users, and urging them to contact their representatives.
So, no, it's not just here. Mainstream citizens care about their Internet and will fight against those who would take it away. Remember the Great Modem Tax Scare? It wasn't geeks spreading that myth, it was average citizens. I had to explain to more than one relative that this wasn't true.
I've had more than one non-geek ask me about "this whole net-neutrality thing." I tell them it's a real issue, and suggest that if they want the Internet to remain free, they should do something about it, like write their representatives.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Giancarlo from Cisco has a letter in the WSJ where he says it is basically way to early to regulate a problem that we might not even have ...
Would you want Google as your new ISP, instead of your telco, cableco, AOLco, MSNco? All things considered, I very well might. Lack of net neutrality could easily push me over to them if they were available at an acceptable speed and competitive price.
And yes Google, we know you're reading this!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Would you? Because that's essentially what you are asking these people to do, to let others use their property to espouse views they don't agree with. Is it censorship? Sure. Is it bad? Only if private property is bad. Censorship and freedom of speech are two different but related issues.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> Is it naive to think that we shouldn't need to buy a vote?
Are you joking?
JoloK
Plus the page has quotes from Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-lee.
If those guys are saying a tiered internet is bad, then it is bad. I mean these are two of the biggest people behind what has become the modern internet. Their vision was correct. I would say then that their vision of the bad that can come of tiered internet services might well be correct too.
Also sorry, I just can't argue for "Net Neutrality", I much prefer to argue AGAINST a tiered internet. I think Net Neutrality is hard to understand, but everyone can understand different pricing tiers for different internet service and wonder why theri intenet content would need to be paid for twice, because everyone has already paid thier ISP.
If this goes through it will mean a lot.
Now companies will realize that NOTHING can stop them from doing whatever is profitable. Insurance companies will raise prices 5x, gas prices will go up, hell, everything will go up.
Why should the government restrict companies from doing things like this? Its a win-win situation. More taxes and bribes for the government, more revenue and less expenses for the companies.
I hope you guys and girls like double penetration, because its about to happen. With no lube. When is going to be the time to step up and show them where the REAL power lies?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Not really.
Buying a Congressman is how the game is played. Its what you do with your congressman that determines if its evil or not.
Could a workaround to this problem be some sort of P2P proxy setup...
Basically everyone (or a bunch of people) run proxies (servers/clients) on their network. Using magical P2P technology when someone tries to access a web page, for example google from bell south, their client connects to a proxy server on a network that DOES NOT throttle google.
It would take some messing around, but if this were implemented then there would be no way to control access unless EVERYONE was throttled.
I have not really designed or put too much thought into this solution yet, but perhaps I should.
Thoughts?
Speed limits?
Since when are speed limits set by 1) corporate interests, and 2) in order to make money or control a market?
So isn't that a terrible analogy also?
What have you got to say about satellite internet? No lines on public property.
What will this do to the playing field for US companies and citizens in the global perspective of the internet?
Was this law modeled on AOL prior 1995?
CEOs are often afflicted with Genetic Goitrous Cretinism (mental retardation) yet are allowed to lobby for senseless policy like this.
Bottom line: Come up with a way for people to pay for what they use, right down to the end user. High speed internet companies have been engaged in assinine billing techniques for a while now, and it's time for it to stop. Why don't they tier that instead? If you are one of those pensioners who checks their e-mail and surfs a few sites (1 gb/month or less) you pay $4.99/month. Average teenager, myspace whore, sends pictures of yourself to everybody, downloads music (10gb/month) you pay $19.99/month. User who downloads tons of porn, music, habitually downloads crap that takes all night, has a couple of servers at home with 3 or 4 terabytes of software and music..YOU ARE THE FUCKER who should be paying $89.99-$149.99/month for your crap. Or more. Pay for what you use!
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
You have all seen the commercials scaring people and saying that rates will go up and service will die if net neutrality ever happens please call your congressman at .. bla bla bla.
Its amazing what a few good commercials can do.
http://saveie6.com/
I think it all boils down to IPTV. They want to offer video (TV) service over their new deployments of FIOS, i.e. Verizon, and they do not want to compete with others offering video content. Just like VOIP problem they have now. If others want to offer video they have to pay an additional fee to the ILEC making their product more expensive. Just like competitive DSL carriers were faced with. Cheaper and better service but with the additional ILEC tax it does not work fairly.
With the future being on-demand & downloaded video to a DVR, they do not want the low barrier of entry that the current internet offers.
Power, within the Beltway in Washington, D.C., sits on a foundation of votes.
Cynics confuse the impact of outside money and power with the effect of direct voter expressions of preference. Congressional Representatives are swayed by everyone who contacts them, with an agenda. Everyone who contacts them has an agenda. Those who are not elected into the system gain influence with money and power. The money and power are used to generate more votes at election time.
On most bills, Representatives get precious little idea of what their voters want. Often, a few dozen emails can be a landslide.
Money and power have precious little effect on an angry voter, and every Congressman knows it.
A few thousand communications from voting constituents, clearly stating their opinion, is a tremendous expression of voter sympathies.
I vote, and I sent my Representative an email.
If you are a U.S. citizen, won't you do it too, please?
All is paradox. Retired lawyer, so this is just one more layman's opinion.
Quite simply, I'm having issues trying to locate the exact text of this bill (Eric should've linked it or at least mentioned the bastard in his open letter).
Of the bill I found (HR5273), quoted below is Section 4, subsection a) and b), which apparently deal with specific restrictions.
My interest in finding the text of the bill is that I'm not going to send idiotic notes to my congressman if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. One of those "I'd like to read the damn thing for myself instead of letting other people tell me what to say" things.
I think Steven Ballmer has said everything that needs to be said about Eric Schmidt.
It's a good thing that microsoft has cleaned up it's act then. Oh, wait...
competition moves at the speed of light.That might be true in an open and free marketplace. It does not apply in markets where the suppliers are cartels or monopolies. Many markets have natural monopolies because the cost of entry is so very high, and I believe telecommunications is one of them.
I cannot imagine that you or I could build a network and successfully compete against the existing providers, regardless of how they treat their customers.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Does anyone know if a list of supporters of this bill exist? Urging Congress is great. Voting with your pocketbook is better. If the providers behind this knew they would lose a significant portion of their subscribers unless they backed out of supporting this legislation, perhaps they'd take a second look at their stance on the issue. It's not worth giving subscribers these awesome pipes to sites if there are no subscribers to actually give them to.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Unfortunately the prevailing ideas of Globalism in Western politics are completely inline with non-neutrality. One author (John Ralston Saul) quite succinctly and accurately defines Globalism as the viewing of all things through the prism of economics. Therefore, the Net must be owned, controlled, and bandwidth sold to foster "economic growth". So whether we like it or not, unless there is a major shift away from the Globalist ideas, eventually a law like this will pass and the internet will be privately owned.
On the plus side, we will all get the joy of working with the underground, "black market", internet that would no-doubt arise. Because surely once the pipes are privatised they will begin to restrict the flow of unwanted information.
nobody said they were blind! Just dishonost and dumb!
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Through intention or error technology companies, media pundits, and scholars have overly narrowed the recent public debate by misidentifying the potential points of origin of Internet bias. Rather than expressing opinions of public interest regarding the future of the Internet as a global network, the discussion battles back and forth between two markedly corporate perspectives on physical network infrastructure and ignores issues concerning the utilization and neutrality of the Internet as an emergent system and larger whole.
Incumbent upon any desire to protect the ideal of net neutrality is the assumption that we currently possess a neutral system we might care to protect. This is not a valid supposition. As a first measure, I suggest that the debate on net neutrality be widened to include not only the physical network questions as it has in the past, but also the related concerns of unfair influence over the Internet including the meta and virtual entities that are Cyberspace and the World Wide Web. The only way to responsibly execute reform or regulation in this arena must be preceded by a comprehensive understanding of the interconnectedness of the competing issues. Targeting the physical elements for legislation without examining the virtual or the broader context and consequences, could be far more disastrous than even a hands-off approach.
But how exactly is the Internet no longer neutral? Why is this expansion or redefinition of terms necessary? From the standpoint of Economic Theory, Metcalfe's Law tells us the value of a network is roughly equal to the square of the number of members of the system and Reed's Law parallels this statement for utility. When linked with network externalities (i.e. when you buy a fax machine, other fax owners benefit because they can now fax you) sites or services with many members can be transformed into powerful competitive (or anti-competitive) weapons. The vast networks of information, users, and sites, created by several web services providers are thus an in-ignorable source of inefficiencies of scale and conflicts of interest.
A capitalist, corporate driven Internet (such as we have now) cannot be as unbiased and democratic as trends such as the "blogosphere" and media representation would have it appear. Cyberspace, the meta-realm emergent from the physical "network," is highly polarized, highly prejudicial, and highly subject to the influence of powerful, unchecked, unregulated, and at times even legally protected corporations. These corporations are the very members of the "High Tech Broadband Coalition" that first advocated neutrality legislation in its current form: Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other major application, content, platform, and services providers. Of course they favor these laws! However, the virtual realm of cyberspace is dependent upon, not separate from, the physical network and should not be treated as such.
Google, arguably the most powerful entity on the World Wide Web, provides clear evidence of the current presence of partiality. A first illustration is the company's regulation of "acceptable" content for their index. Google's practice of excluding sites that do not conform to their guidelines is without question inconsistent with their professed corporate culture of doing no evil and mission of indexing the world's information. If a site were merely black flagged and sent to the bottom of the listings Google's apologetic arguments suggesting a greater good to society by influencing the organization and presentation of information on a global scale might be worth discussion. However, they do not do this; they remove content entirely from their index. This is irresponsible and a behavior they may only practice because of their commanding corporate status and extremely high power level relative to those they effectually regulate. Ironically, Google gained this position of supremacy and authority because of the prior neutral democratic nature of the Internet they now repress and because of their reputation of integ
...more at 11
The net neutrality message being peddled is - the Internet that we've always known must be saved through regulation. Forced access to content must prevail, or we'll all suffer. But that argument is based on the regulated world where we used to be - the public switch telephone network, which has one hundred years of copper wiring subsidize through rate-of-return, natutral monopoly regulation. We're not there anymore, dudes. We're working with light - unregulated and unsubsidized (no profits from the regulated side can subsidize the unregulated side, fiber, etc.). Thus, it's the phone companies' private risk they're staking; their own movie theaters they're putting up. The governmnet ain't constructing the next Internet. The new model will look more like a "movie theaters model", and unaffiliated content providers - the Googles, etc. - will rightly have to pay for access to those essentially private screens. It's different from where we were. But that was essentially from the point of view of a publicly owned utility. The medium being the message - we say/treatthings differently when public or private. I think we should accept that this next private phase is upon us, and know that it will be checked by the onslaught of new technology - also privately borne - that bypasses them.
This whole net neuterality debate is centered around what the US congress wants to do right now, but how will this debate affect those living outside of the US? Since the US houses so many data centres, will US telco's be able to extort money from non-US consumers (either directly or indirectly) by restricting access to data stored on US soil even if the destination is, say, in Canada? It seems like any move to restrict traffic on the internet will never be limited to just one nation (except for China of course, which is a special case).
Hell is other people
Are you 100% sure you replied to the right thread? GP was ranting about google censoring right wing blogs. I agree with you about the monopolies, etc. but way to make a complete non-sequiter.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Will it work? I don't know. Sure beats moaning about it to people who can't vote on the bill.
The big telco's and cable companies have been dumbing down our understanding of broadband. Their offerings are legacy broadband. Real broadband is gigabit and has equal speeds bi-directionally, so any subscriber can be a content/service provider.
/ docs/Gigabit-WP.pdf
The US is headed toward becoming a third world telecommunications country. Other countries are putting in the gigabit broadband. I have used the analogy of animal power versus engine power. An innovator who knows only animal power (i.e., where one horsepower is a fundamental limit, and you have to figure out how to get two horses to generate double the energy) will not think of innovations that are relevant to engine power.
Take a look at http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/ccip
The key to becoming a first world telecommunications power is net neutrality. As for the opponents' claim that web providers are trying to "stick the consumer with the bill for the next Internet," perhaps it is on target but spun the wrong way. End user ownership of the last mile is one way of ensuring that no content/application/service provider can monopolize the Internet and exploit users. The other way is to require bandwidth providers to be common carriers, a.k.a net neutrality.
i think they're trying to combat spam. You know, against bots sending e-mails and hosting webpages without your consent.
I believe port blocking is good, AS LONG AS you can call them and have your ports activated.
I think it's a safe bet that pretty much everyone except the big telcos doesn't want the big telcos running the show. But I'm a little concerned about the unintended consequences this bill might have, if put into law.
The bill says QoS has to be applied equally, regardless of source or destination. I can envision a national company who subscribes to FooCo's Internet service and pays extra to get their packets delivered at a higher priority, to speed up their VPN, VoIP, web conferencing, etc. Would this bill make that unlawful?
The bill says providers cannot block customers from sending content. Wouldn't that mean blocking a spammer from sending spam would be unlawful? Sure, you (and I) might call that "security", but I doubt the spammers will agree. Does it then get get tied up in courts or committees? You can just *bet* the spammers will use this law to their advantage if they possibly can.
And who knows what next neat idea might actually become unlawful this way.
I worry about unintended consequences almost as much as I worry about the big telcos trying to screw everyone.
"You can't do just one thing." -- Campbell's Law of Everything
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
...but considering all the posts here, I was thinking this was supposed to be an anti-network neutrality bill. I took 5 minutes of my life to read through it, and other than a couple points which seem a little ambiguous to me (4b2 and 4b5A), it looks as though this bill was written to (try to) enforce network neutrality, not the opposite. Now maybe I've misread something, or perhaps I skipped a line by accident, but I can't see how this is a bad thing.
Someone else already linked to it, but I'll do so again with the hopes that before you make a reactionary post, you've read it for yourself.
Get your congresscritters to support an amendment like that, and watch the bill get shot down in flames by the very people who are currently funding it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Here's what the telephone and cable companies should do. If my telephone company wants to deliver television to me, they need to do it without using the bandwidth that I'm contracting them to provide on my DSL and internet connection. If that means that they need to build a private network just for their content, then that's what they should do.
I belive this is HR 5252 (Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006) if anybody cares to write their congressperson regarding it. Additionally, you should mention your support of HR 5273 (Net Netrality Act).
-- yawn. --
On the other hand, the founders of Google have an enormous pile of money. There's nothing stopping them from financing a few ISP start-ups offering neutral networks (if the bill does pass). They could even run them as not-for-profit entities or co-operatives, undercut the entrenched telcos and force them out of business. I'd be very interested in an ISP that was run as a co-operative and was backed by Google-money, as long as it remains independent of Google.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First off, there is an assumption here that the government is entitled to control public resources by default, and regulate people who use them by implication. That's a huge assumption and it's not true.
Second off, there is the assumption here that telcos are doing some evil deed that needs to be stopped. That is also a huge assumption. They financed the lines, not Google. If Google thinks they have a better plan, then lay some phone lines and do it. God only knows Google has the money.
Third off, there is the assumption that market forces on their own are "untrustworthy" to stop such scheems. Nonsense. After Compaq reverse engineered the IBM bios and freed the x86 architecture, did we need the government to step in and forbid IBM from making the IBM PS/2 to try and bypass the open x86 interface. Hell no, the IBM PS/2 was a flop and they lost a billion dollars as the market told them to go to hell. Same here. I would love nothing more than to see the telcos try this and have their ass kicked in the marketplace to only be come eternally irrelavent.
Then again, maybe the telco's know this, so this is just a reverse psycology play for the phone co's to get the government to regulate them into doing something that they could never do on their own.
Fourth off, there is no understanding here of how monopolies work, only a herd mentality. The rail road regulations didn't stop the abuses of the railroad barrons, they only just raised the regulatory costs of getting into the rail business which consolidated their power. It is not a cooncidence that the passanger rail business in the USA is stagnent to this day.
In sum, net neutrality is anything but "neutral" and it just plain sucks.
That's retarded. Are you saying that we should charge by amount of bandwidth used now? That'd be devolution for ISP pricings. Most ISPs (the one I work for, at least) offer tiered plans based on amount of bandwith they cap the service at. QoS plans can't really control the speed that the customer gets, they can only place an upper limit on it. Also, would there be any way for a customer to verify that they are actually being charged for the amount of bandwidth they use? Back in the dialup days it wasn't too hard to calculate, because you knew how long you were on and that the max speed that you could go at was theoretically 56k. Now, how many average people would be able to calculate their bandwidth usage over a month when the cable is ALWAYS on? What if someone got rooted or started throwing out virus or worm activity? They'd be being charged for stuff they don't know is happening on their computer. We get enough calls about those types of problems when we DON'T charge by traffic.
I don't know why this issue is presented as complicated. Google already pays a huge bundle for its Internet connections. It's invested in its own infrastructure, and has to pay for interconnection at its gateways to the rest of the Net. Those gateway companies are paying for their further connections with Google's money, so on across the Net. Just like everyone else.
That is the distributed magic of the Net that defined its growth and resiliency. Google is already paying AT&T, through a series of proxies. AT&T can't just violate its agreements to carry the traffic of the proxy that's directly connected to it just because it wants to doublecharge Google, just because AT&T thinks Google can afford it.
Unless AT&T changes the laws to let it doublecharge. Which of course it will. After over a century of crooks, why does anyone bother arguing with these telcos about whether their "business innovations" are fair? They're always scams, cons and theft. This latest one is among the most blatant. Why be nice and call it "Net Neutrality" when the telcos call it "Net Doublecharge" in their "marketing" offices?
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make install -not war
ANYTHING about the internet. For most of them, the internet is probably AOL. For some of them that may be more literate, they still have don't know as much as many slashdotters know, or have the knowledge that slashdotters wish they had when voting on this bill.
Won't *SOMEONE* think of the Paper children????
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I was thinking about this as well. IMHO (IANAL), a non-neutral net kind of kills any "common carrier" safe harbour status.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I hope and hope that a Neutral Net not controlled by the Telcos will be legislated by Congress, but I am not optimistic. Our government is bought and paid for by mega-corporations who buy bills that benefit them, and hurt us, the citizens/consumers. This is exactly what the Telcos are doing, and I'm afraid they will succeed. Just look at the Bankruptcy Laws that were passed recently for an example of a pro-big business and anti-citizen/consumer bill. The Congressmen and Senators need our votes, but they need BIG campaign money more. The only glimmer of hope that I see is that we've got some mega-corps on our side for once (Google, Microsoft, etc.), and we've got some grassroots opposition, but I feel in my gut that still won't be enough. Monopolies provide BIG Campaign Contributions. I'm guessing the internet has about 6 months to a year of life left before its totally ruined. The internet ... it was nice while it lasted ...
The idea is for us to have one "wire" coming into our home. The wire will be "sold" based on the available bandwidth, in certain chunks with absolute QOS for that amount (using router technology already in existence for VoIP, etc).
The problem is exactly like what happened in the 90's with ELECTRICITY. Enron "oversold" some lines, causing them to go down. If that happens with this proposed network structure, there will be a sudden bidding war for space on the surviving connections because all of the traffic still needs to travel somewhere but there's not bandwidth for all of it. In addition, the providers won't invest in new bandwidth because that will drop the overall "value" of a bandwidth "frame" or unit (unless demand is skyrocketing). The market forces basically guarantee that all lines will be filled almost to capacity at all times.
So, like the utility business, they will try to put a regulating body into place. However, learning from Enron, the big telcoms are going to stack it with "their" people. Therefore this regulating body must be totally neutral and totally about getting as much bandwidth to the people as possible, taxing the PROVIDERS (telcos/cable companies) who use the wires in order to make sure everyone has everything they need at the lowest possible cost.
Members of the body would have to prove their nutrality ahead of time by showing:
a. They are not immediately or indirectly related by blood to any employee of any of the providers (to a certain point, ie: 3 generations, by law across 3 degrees)
b. They do not own stock in any of the companies
c. a. and b. qualify also for any company that has, is or will contract(ed)(s) with the provider for any purpose
d. Anyone who lies will have their right hand chopped off and will be publically humilliated in a stockade.
The problem is the utility paradox, as I like to call it. It's a flaw in the capitalist system based on human desire. It would be pretty easy to open the utility business up to everyone, but you'll have a huge web of wires from 123818 different companies overhead. Company 1 only runs to house A on your block, etc. And gradually market forces whittle it down to the people who are making money, with Company 2 saying "well, we only got 10 people signed up in the city, it's not worth going in there). Which is where we're at now. The problem is that someone OWNS the wire going into our house, rather than "we" owning it. But because of deregulation, they have to let anyone use it.
The problem is that these companies are settled in and there is a huge war between the party line cable providers and the star topology telcos at the local (to the end) level. The cable companies are ahead because their loop/party line is way cheaper to implement within a city. BUT, as bandwidth requirements skyrocket, they are going to run out fast. The star topology telcos have a huge infrastructure in place but it's all outdated and they need to raise money to build a new network. Otherwise, they are going to lose out in the short term to the better positioned cable providers and eventually the cable providers will buy them up to shut them down.
The trump card of the telcos is twofold:
#1, they have a monopoly on long hauls. The industry consolidation has converged what used to be 12-15 long haul "tier one" providers into about 5 (V, E, M, A, U). Pretty much every long haul line in America and translantic is owned by a telco. I think Cox (a large privately held cable provider) is trying to put a network into place, but it's held together by leased lines from the telco, which would be affected by the new tariffs.
#2, they have WIRELESS, which is going to be a big part of local access. Where I'm from, most people don't have a land telephone line; they use a cellular. Wireless still needs long hauls for long distance though...
So, the telcos need to raise money to boost their failing high-profit local business. How to do that? Leverage their trump card with a government imposed corporate tar
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Amazon, Ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask, YouTube, Myspace would speak out and rally up their supporters and fanboys...
The difference is that with the US government at least *somebody* is making a buck off of it. The Chinese government just does this shit for fun.
It's a very dark ride.
That's what at the heart of this. All those MPAA/RIAA bastards want deep bandwidth disounts or they will continue to sue everyone in creation
doncha know?
What is this "equal access" crap? Is he saying that my access to the internet is equal to google's? Obviously that is impossible. I send my packets out, google sends some of them back. The various routers and networks along the way drop a few of them, and send a few of them along. Hopefully, everything works right and my messages gets through, but this is by nature an unreliable medium. Why are people expecting it to be a level playing field when nothing else in the world is like that?
The internet will become tiered and fragmented. I believe that it is the nature of humans to thirst for knowledge, and this thirst will always maintain a route of comunication from one corner of the globe to the other. It won't be the telco's that will keep it up, it's us.
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
This typical fear-mongering among the telcos using the "scarcity" mentality as a way to extract more money out of the same resources. Rather than addressing congestion by building additional capacity to meet demand, it's far more profitable to divide the current capacity into smaller and smaller chunks for resale to consumers. The telcos don't have to actually "do" anything, just come up with artificial schemes to partition customer's current access.
It similar to what the entertainment industry is doing with music. They cannot sustain phenomenal growth that the switch to CD's in the 80's/90's generated, so to generate the same revenue from a relatively flat inventory, they need to figure out new ways to divide a "song" up, so they can sell the same song to you repeatedly.
With DRM, they can artificially DIVIDE your song collection once by device (requiring a new sale for each device you want to listen from), *and* 2nd, in "time". No longer is your purchase of a song a one time event, but you will be able to repurchase, the same song, each time you want to listen to it!
This method is being pioneered by the computer software industry: you don't buy programs, you "license" them, with terms subject to change anytime the licensor wants to change them. Don't like it? Too bad, some people are saying that shrink-wrap license agreements "are" binding (as though this is a done matter, but for those that believe it's a "done deal", it is.
What a great system. If you don't want to produce more of something to make more money, just get the government to help you enforce new "partitioning" schemes so you can bring in new sales of the same old product in perpetuity.
Seems like this is the quickest way, not to encourage "growth", but encourage gouging and tricks to allow you to earn more money off of less and less product. Capitolism at its finest [sic].
-l
I'm ranting, I like what the internet has going for it right now, even with the huge amount of garbage, it still feels alive. I'm not really keen on letting it go private.
Storm
Even if a net neutrality bill is passed, who's to say any telco will even comply? Even if they get caught and even found guilty, what's a million dollar fine when you effectively cut off your competition for a few years?
Before its too late.
Apparently telcos have bought many congressmen, as we can see from the utterly STUPID replies the congressmen are giving to their constituents.
There is no time to waste. We have LOADS of cash in our camp. It is time that it came into action.
Playing honest, as the enemy (for they really are now enemies of the people) does not, will lead to ruin for freedom of the WHOLE WORLD.
This is not a matter of conservative or liberal, this is not a matter of democrat or republican.
This is something that has been going on for over 5000 years of human history - some minority abusing power to provide them with gains in EXPENSE OF the people.
Read radical news here
it's true, there is a growing problem of network congestion in the major providers networks. it's true that content is getting more bandwidth intensive. what the telcos aren't speaking up about is that the reason this is a problem is that they intentionally oversell their capacity. ie when they sell 500 6mb dsl lines in your neighborhood they most certainly do not maintain a 3 gigabit link to the dslam. these companies are having their markers called in! they have made promises to you that they had no intention of keeping, and now facing the high cost of upgrading their networks to the promised capacity are looking for a sneaky (and in this case: Profitable!) way out. it's a whole lot cheaper to fill a campaign chest than run more fiber.
...Moreover, the changes that telephone and
cable companies would like to implement consist of large amounts of
bandwidth that a typical small business website would be extremely
unlikely to use....
Say goodbye to the American dream and hello to the American reality, where huge monopolies can extort as much money as they like from their customers and where small companies seldom are able to grow their businesses to any real size before one of the giants kill them or buy them out (Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo etc all do this), no matter how good they are.
This bill ensures that the same giant companies that currently dominate the network will dominate it in future. It also now ensure that they can charge even more than they currently do and that small ISP's will not be able to offer any decent streaming services and that those big companies who do offer streaming services will now charge for it whereas they weren't charging before (Google, YouTube and Yahoo will be ecstatic about this, their customers less so). So in fact, prioces will go up, or did the nice friendly Congressman think that those big ISPs will just foot the bills themselves without passing it on, with interest? (He must be one pretty stupid if he did).
Thank god this only applies to the USA, where the so called freedom to compete damaged the ability of mobile phone networks to be accepted nationally (CDMA, vs GSM etc) and where real News reporting disappeared in the rush to earn more money (while groveling and selling their souls to the highest bidder).
I think the point is the Telco's want to charge Google (or whoever) for bandwidth to deliver content to their users. But then - what is their user paying for in the first place? They are paying to be able to access Google etc.
It is fairly obvious that Telcos will start a two-tier service when Google inevitably refuse to pay. Rate 1 (cheaper) will give you slow access to non-paying sites. Rate 2 (more expensive) will give you access to paying sites. Effectively in the UK the broadband providers solved the problem of congested networks from heavy traffic by giving bandwidth allowances, and people pay more for an 'unlimited' connection. The result of this is that users who use more, pay more.
Google would suffer from the proposed changes in the U.S. due to the vast amount of content they deliver (albeit in small doses). Sites which deliver video-over-broadband would suffer for delivering large amounts of content in small doses. God-only-knows what'll happen to the binary newsgroup providers.
The point though is that the users of the system are paying for the service they receive. Why should they have to pay more to access certain websites? They are paying for a connection to the internet, why should the Telco decide who they can or can't communicate with?
If you aren't far left by the age of 18 you have no heart. If you aren't far right by 30 you have no brain.
Already have toolbooths on both ends: I pay for access to the internet. Even those students who have "free" access on campus do, except their payment comes out of tuition and/or university endowment. Individual and larger group (student, business, hotspot, etc)access money goes to an ISP, which in turn pays for its lines, or backbone. Google/Red Hat/etc pay for hosting access. So when I go to Google, which I am paying to do, and run a search, which they are paying to send me the results of, that's tollbooths on both ends.
In essence the data-transfer is being double-billed. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. If the telcos aren't charging enough to cover their expenses, then apparently as national, fortune 500 companies, they haven't quite mastered things like income - expense = profit. They should raise their rates across the board. If someone finds a way to provider cheaper, faster internet, and the telcos lose revenue because of it then they're victims of the marketplace, sucks to be them.
This whole thing is a false scarcity argument. Is there any reason a telco or access provider cannot string 100 10Gbs fiber lines at a time, aside from cost (and they are not that expensive)? Is there an electron or photon shortage I didn't hear about? The technical response is "well the routers only have so much capacity at any given point." Sure, and the response to that is simply "make more points." Increasing the number of nodes and hence possible paths from A to B eliminates the choke point issue on single routers/centers, while it improves the net's response to things like outages and those pesky thermonuclear attacks.
"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable." -- Mark Twain
First off, there is an assumption here that the government is entitled to control public resources by default, and regulate people who use them by implication. That's a huge assumption and it's not true.
/. may lack in learned economic opinion, it may make up for in technical understanding of the telcom and Internet marketplaces.
You only need to make that assumption if you ignore the existing reality. The U.S. telecom market was built and is currently shaped by heavy government regulation. The government entitlement to do so is sort of moot at this point. A telecom "free-market" is not one of the options on the table.
Second off, there is the assumption here that telcos are doing some evil deed that needs to be stopped. That is also a huge assumption.
This is incorrect. The telecoms need not do anything particularly "evil"; they just need to behave as any business would. Assuming that they will do what they can to maximize profit is very reasonable in a capitalist society.
They financed the lines, not Google. If Google thinks they have a better plan, then lay some phone lines and do it. God only knows Google has the money.
This ignores the part public money and government power has had in building the telecom networks. Given corporate taxation, Google Inc. probably did not contribute much to building these networks, but the general population sure has. Google's money will only get them so far, at many points they will be running into government regulation which blocks them from entering the market.
Third off, there is the assumption that market forces on their own are "untrustworthy" to stop such scheems. . . . Same here. I would love nothing more than to see the telcos try this and have their ass kicked in the marketplace to only be come eternally irrelavent.
When we are talking about cartels and monopolies, market forces are already hugely distorted. SBC and Verizon did not end up buying AT&T and MCI because they kicked their ass in the market. They ended up eating their lunch because they succeeded in using regulation enter the long distance market, while leveraging their physical monopolies to restrict competition in the local service and DSL markets. The telcos know that you'd be hard pressed to get anywhere on the Internet without crossing their networks as some point. At least in my area, market forces have been insufficient to get me competitive choice in DSL, or even options competitive with those available in more "socialist" economies.
Fourth off, there is no understanding here of how monopolies work, only a herd mentality. The rail road regulations didn't stop the abuses of the railroad barrons, they only just raised the regulatory costs of getting into the rail business which consolidated their power. It is not a cooncidence that the passanger rail business in the USA is stagnent to this day.
There certainly are lots of arm-chair economists. Some seem to follow particular economic ideologies almost like a religion. What
In sum, net neutrality is anything but "neutral" and it just plain sucks.
Well, that depends on who you are. Net neutrality attempts to make/keep the Internet neutral. It sucks for the major carriers, but it is good for companies which would like to offer Internet services. A tiered Internet would help telecoms, but could more or less shut down VoIP start-ups and any new service the telecoms don't really like.
Net neutrality is really about defining what the Internet is, more than it is telling the telecoms what to do. The current "best-effort" Internet creates a level playing field for all sorts of companies in all types of services. The telecoms are threatened by this because they cannot control when some yahoo designs a new service which undercuts one of their monopoly revenue streams. A tiered Internet would allow them to artificially raise barriers to entry to markets on the Internet. The telecom and cable markets are not free as it is. Net neutrality prevents these government protected companies from exerting control over the much more free market of the Internet.
Would be phone service. Say I have a single line from teleco "A", A mail order company I want to do business with has, say, 250 lines with teleco "B". I pay $35/m for my residential service and the company pays $20/m each line($5000/m) for commercial service - with all that "residential service" and "commercial service" entails (QoS). Now I call the company's 800 number and order 5 gizmos (1 for me and 4 for gifts). The phone call goes from my house through teleco "A" via teleco "C" to teleco "B" to the company order taker. Teleco's "A", "B", "C" (and "D", "E", etc.) have agreements in place to equitably manage the traffic and and the associated costs (called "peering"). What the big ISP's (and in this case, teleco "C") want to do is to get a cut of the revenue that the company generated when I placed my order (mostly because the company is very successful and rolling in money). If the company refuses to pay, teleco "C" could block any traffic attempting to connect to the company. In that case all I would get would be a busy signal and the company's buisness would tank. On the street, this is called "extortion", and is generally considered to be a crime (folks who like to break legs and burn things down notwithstanding).
Look Out Above!
This method is being pioneered by the computer software industry: you don't buy programs, you "license" them, with terms subject to change anytime the licensor wants to change them. Don't like it? Too bad, some people are saying that shrink-wrap license agreements "are" binding (as though this is a done matter, but for those that believe it's a "done deal", it is.
While there are legitimate criticisms to be made of the software licensing system, there are differences between songs, videos, and broadband access, comapared to software, that make this particular comparison a poor one.
A song doesn't inherently require patches in order to work properly, or upgrades to expand its relevancy to the ever-changing musical landscape. Nor do they inherently require technical support to keep working when you change to a new media player or platform. Nothing about the raw digital transcription of a song prevents us from copying it, backing it up, or playing it on any number of different devices.
A broadband pipe is built to support a particular throughput. The division of that throughput is being monetized in a way similar to the content industry, despite the fact that X million bits has no inherent value to the user. It's the source, the producer of those bits (which could legitimately be the media publishesr, in fact) that provides the value. Yet, you can pay a little for a trickle of data, pay more for a good stream of it, or really shell out for nearly limitless access.
The support issues are inherent in software. But the content and access companies are and want to artificially create similar limitations on media and access, so that they can charge customers to provide a way around them. Free market ideologies would dictate that if people are willing to pay for it, the providers of these services are justified in charging for it. But in the case of the access providers, their service is becoming more akin to a necessary utility like electricity than to an entertainment luxury like music/movies.
In light of all that, I think the media publishing companies' tactics are more nefarious than the software companies, and broadband access companies' tactics are more nefarious still than that. The software companies are capitalizing on pre-existing limitations of technology. I'm fine with that, because surmounting or circumventing these limitations often takes a much larger investment on their part. But the media publishers and access providers are actually re-creating limitations that technology has already solved, for the express purpose of getting back the monetization they lost when the market evolved to a new level with that technology.
Humans: 0, Car Analogies: 68295
70e808a22cb027cde4a6abddf6435d55
(Hint: it isn't the expensive option)