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U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality
tygerstripes writes "A recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives has led to a rejection of the principle of Net Neutrality from the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act), in spite of massive lobbying from prominent businesses. According to the BBC, the bill '...aims to make it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around America by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national system overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'. However, according to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, 'telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway... This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the internet.'"
When I opened up this Slashdot article in Internet Explorer, the headline read "U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality" but when I opened it up in Firefox it read "Wealthy Old White Men Reject Yet Another Form Of Equality."
In it's raw form, the internet is a communications device. You section it off--and you're going to piss people off. The more people you piss off, the more hackers you'll spawn. I for one hope that these "toll" lanes are violated right off the bat by the best and brightest of the Ukraine & Russia.
My work here is dung.
I realize that "net neutrality" is conventional wisdom among geeks, but I remain very skeptical. To summarize:
1)bandwidth is already plentiful; we're talking about hypothetical harms here. (For the record, I actually downgraded my broadband a few months ago, with absolutely no complaints).
2)companies already pay for ISP's and webhosting; tiered service is not anything new. Anyway, webhosting costs have been decreasing in price. I find it highly unlikely that this downward trend won't continue across the board.
3)The thing I find strange is that if anything, tiered pricing, by passing on costs to distributors, could ultimately benefit consumers by lowering subscription costs. Tiered pricing could increase flexibility. I really am not sure. But that should be for private industry to decide. Even if legislators were relatively well-informed and up-to-date, the pace of technology change tends to outstrip that of legislative oversight; this legislation will probably be obsolete on the day it is passed.
4)So what if SBC decides to implement a tiered system of bandwidth! Consumers just stop renewing their contracts if they hate it enough. That's much better than making courts and legislators do a lot of hairsplitting about what legislative intent was/should be.
5)I worry less about tiered service than I do about ISPs blocking p2p traffic. Then again, I see no need to enact legislation merely to keep certain ports open.
6)as an independent content producer (and soon a distributor), I want the Net environment to be as unregulated as possible (even from laws that purport to ensure acess). If some ISPs are going to charge for tiered service, either they better offer substantial benefits to customers or people will abandon them in droves.
7)what concerns me more is restrictive Terms of Service and EULAs. If ISPs offer twice the bandwidth for half the cost, that is great. But if the saving comes with all sorts of extra provisions on TOS, then the battle has been lost.
8)There is a certain arrogance to the notion that consumers can't be trusted to act in their self-interest but require government's "help" to be protected.
9)I think the harm being addressed here is that consumers and businesses need more alternatives for obtaining net access. They shouldn't be in a market where they only have one ISP to choose from. To use myself as an example, the only way I can obtain DSL access in my apartment complex is by getting SBC phone service first. SBC could double the prices of a landline, and I'd have no choice but to swallow it. Then again, I could easily switch to a wireless phone carrier that includes wireless Net service. Or if worse comes to worse, I could obtain satellite. But government regulation would introduce an element of uncertainty and legal wrangling that could deter the offering of new services. For the record, I had a legal dispute with SBC, so I ended up going with a local company for DSL (although I still had to pay for a landline). It's still possible even in the day of semi-monopolies to withhold support from the incumbent ISP.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I assume we're talking here about ISPs discriminating in favour of their own paid subscription services, as opposed to the backbone operators doing the same. Now the ISP's infrastructure is private, and there seems to be a competition among ISPs. Will they all practice packet discrimination? I doubt it.
You can say that this breaks the "spirit of the internet", but some packet discrimination is essential when routers have to choose which packets to forward first, especially when some traffic should be low-latency, other high-bandwidth, other low-priority. I agree that the best solution is for the end-users to pay for their traffic, not the solution provider, but again -- it's the ISP's infrastructure and they can choose their own business model.
and yet, here is a case where the government has decided NOT to add additional regulation, and just hear the hue and cry! Ultimately, if I or you, or ABC Giant Corporation(tm) pays for the infrastructure and owns the equiptment, don't they have the right to charge as they see fit for access? If I run a dry-cleaner can't I charge more for same-day service? Isn't reasonable that I might charge a frequent customer less, or I might charge more to clean your sequined tube-top? (sissy). The Cato Institue explains a more libertarian perspective on things
"The regulatory regime envisioned by Net neutrality mandates would also open the door to a great deal of potential "gaming" of the regulatory system and allow firms to use the regulatory system to hobble competitors. Worse yet, it would encourage more FCC regulation of the Internet and broadband markets in general."
Is it just me, or are a lot of people asking the government to regulate our businesses?
Kadko- *sigh* 156hrs and it looks like the work of a 12yr old
Switch ISPs to who!? As the bill notes, most US citizens, if they can get broadband at all, are limited to one or two choices... either the local cable monopoly or the local telephone monopoly. We already know AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast were heavily in favor of a tiered Internet, so if your telephone is provided by AT&T and Verizon and your cable by Comcast you are shit out of luck. Welcome your new broadband overlords and prepare to only browse their Premium Content Providers at more than 20KB/sec. If you're lucky enough to have Covad in your CO then you have some more choices for now like Speakeasy, but it's not clear whether they will be able to continue to resell those last mile circuits anymore. Also, say goodbye to Vonage as well. I was debating whether to get a traditional telephone line from AT&T when I move or switch to VOIP with Vonage, but this decision cements my choice back to the traditional POTS line. Vonage will be pushed out of business within 2 years by QoS issues.
I'd much prefer government regulation of the Internet than corporate regulation of the Internet, which is what the access providers are angling for. Verizon is my ISP, and they have been quite explicit in stating that they think Google should pay them every time I access Google. I can't say this any more plainly:
THAT'S WHAT I'M PAYING THEM FOR!
I'd rather go back to dial-up than watch them extort content providers.
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
How would that make any difference? At some point, those packets are likely to ride over one of the big telco's backbones. At that point it will be subject to QOS.
Using the smaller ISP does not avoid the issue...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Word. May god have mercy on us indeed.
I agree 100% There was an article in the latest Maximum PC by Tom Halfhill, and he was against net neutrality with the argument that high bandwidth content providers should pay more.. along the lines that 'google hogs the internet' so they should pay more, and that 'ma and pa' couldn't get fair net usage because google were hogging the BW... what what the F*&K do you think 'ma & pa' were accessing... Google!
The providers dont hog the bandwidth, it's the millions of users that are accessing it. If my content provider starts to charge me more for access to google, or slows traffic to google, in favour of their search engine, then thats gonna get me pissed.
Advocates for this tierd charging argue that its like private roads / toll roads; well it already is! I pay a fee to my ISP for the piece of road to the Internet backbone... ! I like to think of the Internet backbone as a state highway... free, and everyone gets treated the same. I pay for the private road bit, to get from my house to that highway.
This is googles opportunity to roll out googlenet... bring it on. I have faith that they will be our 'saviours' with low cost fixed fee (if not free) net access.
Or may god have mercy on my CPU core.
You said: "Why isn't it reasonable that if a company is making money by using someone else's resources- they should have to pay for it?"
and
"www.kadko.com"
So I went and ordered $4,000 worth of Polymeric Silazane Finish. Verizon (my ISP) will shortly be sending you a bill for, y'know, making money off of their network. Does that seem reasonable?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Your analogy doesn't apply to the tiered internet model. In fact, your analogy better describes the internet we use today. The "gas tax" is a pretty fair way of explaining how we would pay extra for faster speed (such as a high-performance V12 supercar) or higher bandwidth (trucks)- such as it is we get charged a lot more to have a T3 line than a DSL line.
The analogy would be better suited if you were to tax the destinations which cause the higher traffic; it would be akin to making you pay for your gas tax, and then turning around and forcing your destination to pay for your gas tax as well. And if the destination refused, the government would lower the speed limit to all roads leading toward that destination.
Simply stated, the telcos are just being greedy, and want to extort more money from existing customers. They don't seem to be struggling, nor do they appear to be innovating much as of late, so I don't see why the government needs to interfere and bail them out.
Sigs are for losers