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.
Creativity, innovation, a couple billion dollars in Google stock and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight.
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."
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).
"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!
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'.
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
Wow, you still haven't figured it out. Or maybe you're just one of those really worthwhile people who just pretend to not get it so you can troll on Slashdot.
The Chinese government wants things censored. Google wants to offer their services to the sixth of the world's population that is China. If Google at any time does not comply with the Chinese government's censorship, they'll simply be removed from China, and those billion people will have no access to Google, save by tunneling through the government's firewalls to other nations' Google servers.
However, Google chose to comply so that most of Google is still open to China. Additionally, things that are censored are very notably pointed out to those who use Google - if "democracy" is censored by the government, Google will tell the user that it is. This allows a great flow of information, and importantly, it can show the Chinese what their government doesn't want them to see - or at least point them in the right direction.
If it really bothers you that much that Google is helping in the struggle to save your eroding rights, why don't you just move to a country where people are not granted those freedoms?
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
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
You sir are an idiot.
Here's a search for Rusty Shackleford. Jawa report is on the first page.
Here's a search for jawa report. Jawa report comes up on the first page.
Here's a search for Jawa Report on GOOGLE NEWS. Second listing.
Here's a search for New Media Journal First listing.
Here's a search for MichNews. It's the first listing.
This is extremely difficult to pull off when you are not in the Google Index.
You have no clue what you are talking about, you are just rehashing some point of view that was fed to you. You did no research on the topic and took your prefered source as truth. The index was not purged, their content just has not been included in some sub-topic aggregation. That's FAR from a "censors mentality."
And since when were blogs and Op-Ed pieces considered news. They are most certainly related, but not the same.
Journalism is slowly being mistaken for Reporting because of the forces exerted by the advertising model. Get your facts straight before you start bringing completely unrelated topics into a discussion about how we are ALL GOING TO GET FUCKED if this goes through. Conservative and Liberal alike.
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.
Riiight... and when your upstream ISP, which is ultimately a large telecom, decides to re-prioritize Google's traffic, or block VOIP because it cuts into their business, what will you 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. --
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?
--
make install -not war
Of course, there's also the fact that the satellite connection is only the first hop. The Satellite ISPs still need to connect to the net backbone via wired links, and that means that somewhere upstream they are connecting to one of the big telcos.
\/\/oobie
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
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!