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.'"

Comments

How Peculiar

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:How Peculiar

[l2718]

Unfortunately, this won't work that easily -- perhaps that's why the ISPs want to charge the service providers and not the end-users: it's easy to lie about the protocol/content of the packet, but it's very hard to lie about the source and destination address.

Indeed, people are going to be pissed off -- which is why I expect some ISPs to stay away from packet discrimination. People who care about it will simply flock there. The market is a better solution than hackers.

Re:How Peculiar

[dr_dank]

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."

Where did you find the euphemism killer Firefox extension? Does it also change bathroom tissue into toilet paper?

Re:How Peculiar

[MooUK]

They rejected an amendment to a bill, and passed the unamended bill. The bill makes it possible for ISPs et al to ignore the entire idea of net neutrality, amongst other thing. The amendment was intended to enforce net neutrality.

At least, I think that's right.

Re:How Peculiar

[Killshot]

Why should they have to pay twice?

For example, google pays the telcoms a huge amount of money every month for the bandwidth it uses. The people who use google pay the telcoms for their internet service.

Now you say google should have to pay again for something they already pay for

How many times does it have to be paid?

Re:How Peculiar

[TheGavster]

The way the internet works, you have an ISP, Amazon.com has an ISP (probably more than one), and between those networks are a number of other service providers. At each link, the side that is generating more traffic pays a fee proportional to the difference. For example, you generate traffic on your link to your ISP, but you don't pass traffic for your ISP, so you pay for the traffic you pass. The same goes on Amazon's end; they aren't in the business of forwarding traffic, so they pay a hefty fee. Your ISP probably does pass nearly as much traffic for other ISPs as it sends out for it's customers, so it pays something for its links as well. You see, everyone pays already. You pay, Amazon.com pays, and all the ISPs in the middle (with the exception of Tier-1 ISPs that pass and generate traffic equally) pay. What the concept of 'tiered pricing' does is make Amazon.com pay all of the ISPs in between - except they're *already* being compensated for their services. All the charges for passing Amazon.com's traffic already trickles down to their bandwidth bill.

A car analogy is cliche, but suppose UPS is delivering a package to you from Amazon. Amazon pays UPS to deliver it, and passes that cost on to you. Now, to get to your house, the UPS truck has to go down a toll road. So they pay the toll, because they knew it was coming and added it into the bill they charged Amazon. If this toll road was operating under these new 'tiered services', however, they would also send a bill to Amazon.com for shipping a package down their road. That's not right; they already got their toll.

Re:How Peculiar

[KDR_11k]

It's basically extortion. Imagine a state of the US would decide that any traffic using its roads or airspace has to pay duty on anything transported because "they are making money using our ressources".

ISPs get their money for letting people access the net. Those people are paying because the net obviously offers content they want. Now the ISPs want to charge not only their users but also those people who offer the content the users are paying for.

Imagine UPS charging your customers for receiving the packages you paid them to deliver.

Re:How Peculiar

[TopShelf]

Basically, the telecoms want to send a few boys in black suits and hats over to Google. "Those are some nice packets you're streaming across the backbone there... It'd be a shame if anything happened to them..."

Re:How Peculiar

[iamwahoo2]

A certain amount of regulation is necessary in all of those industries to maintain certain standards and architectures. And I do not see how you can imply that telecom companies are not being paid for use of their lines. I have to pay for internet access. Do you?

They are already being paid for internet access. The question is should they be allowed to provide teired access at different prices. Teiring will be a process that gives internet traffic higher or lower priority based on who pays. Furthermore, what are the limitation of tiering? Should Verizon be allowed to slow Google down to the point that it is unuseable? Should they be allowed to just plain block Google? or redirect their traffic to Yahoo? Afterall, by your reasoning, it is their network.

The answer to these questions is the internet protocol itself. The internet is defined by the protocol. The architecture for the internet just happens to be one of network neutral. Since teiring changes the protocol for handling internet traffic, it is considered re-engineering of the internet. Therefore, what Verizon would be selling their customers is not internet access. Rather it is access to some other network altogether and they should not be allowed to sell it as "internet".

The supporters of network neutrality made a fatal error, IMO. That is selling this an idealogical issue pitting the big bad telecom against the little guy versus selling this as the purely technical issue that it is.

Re:How Peculiar

[Haeleth]

It's strange how much we detest government regulation in televsion, radio and voice services, but suddenly we're begging for in on the internet.

It's strange how much we detest government-imposed taxes, but suddenly we're begging to allow corporations to impose their own private tax burdens on people who don't even do business with them.

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? When send my customers packages, I have to pay UPS to deliver them. This isn't any different.

Actually, people are already paying to receive data. So this is like UPS saying "we're going to carry on charging you to send packages, but now we're going to charge your customers to receive them as well!"

Well, actually it's not very like anything to do with UPS at all. It's more like a sales tax being imposed both in the seller's state and in the buyer's state and in every state the package travels through in between. I'm sure you'd complain loudly about that if the state governments tried to do it. I'm not quite sure why you don't have any problem with corporations doing the same thing.

Re:How Peculiar

[Embedded2004]

I've always thought of this the other way around.

The ISPs are making money by providing access to Google et al. Shouldn't they be paying Google to have access to their networks?

No one would sign up for an ISP without access to the major websites. So google is providing value to that ISP and the ISP should pay for it. Not the other way around.

Re:How Peculiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Why should Google or the end user have to pay again for the service? What happens when the traffic travels across two or more backbones to get to its destination? Should the entity have to pay three or four times? What happens when someone like Google pays this extortion fee to have their traffic moved at a decent rate, but then the traffic moves across a backbone that they didn't pay. Are they then paying this fee for nothing?

Re:How Peculiar

[hoborocks]

Well, it's not quite as black and white as you paint it.

It's strange how much we detest government regulation in televsion, radio and voice services, but suddenly we're begging for in on the internet.

Actually, this is the way it's been for years. The FCC recently (last year, I believe) turned over regulations that were keeping this sort of thing from happening. We're not endorsing new regulations, we're just asking to go back to the previous ones - they were there for a REASON.

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? When send my customers packages, I have to pay UPS to deliver them. This isn't any different.

Google, et. al. already DO pay. They pay to access the Internet. What could happen is that they will have to pay more, based on the fact that many users use their service (which is already covered plenty by the internet access they pay for), or will have to pay protection/racketeering money to the ISPs to keep their competitors from outpaying them and, in effect, out-accessing them. BellSouth,among many many others, wants to be able to differentially prioritize customers based on how much extra money they pay them - giving the people with $ a huge advantage and the people without, well...they're SOL since their packets will be pushed to the back of the line.

In short, nothing like UPS at all. You aren't prevented from getting your package to your customers if you decide to use USPS instead.

With the increase of bandwidth consumption by sites like google video and youtube, someone is eventually going to have to pay to upgrade the infrastructure. Why not charge the companies that are making money off of it? (as opposed to me, who is only wasting money on it)

Two Hundred Billion Dollars were set aside for this purpose EXACTLY . To charge people TWICE is just a ridiculous way of getting more money.

--------------------

This users' post is hard evidence that the telcos and cable companies have been working a vigorous disinformation campaign. No-one knows exactly what the whole issue is about, and many of the shills hired by those companies promote the idea that EMTs won't be able to get patient information over the Internet if "neutrality" is passed. This completely glosses over the ACTUAL definition of Net Neutrality, and defines it in a very dumbed-down way that unites the masses against the issue. It makes me physically ill...

Public Knowledge is working for you, the consumer. Head over there, get informed, and let's do something about this!

Re:How Peculiar

[sharkey]

Toilet paper? TOILET PAPER?!? Well, la-dee-da, Mr. Frenchman! Bet you got yerself a fancy-schmancy ga-rage too.

Re:How Peculiar

[JWW]

How many times does it have to be paid?

Answers from various sources:

RIAA: Everytime you listen to it.
MPAA: Everytime you wacth it.
Telcos: Every time every bit crosses our wires.

Which reminds me. I the old days, you could get internet access based on your timed usage amount. The market quickly figured out that set rates for bandwidth were better, much better.

This idea of tiered service is so bogus its just confounding that they are wanting to try it. The only thing a "large pipe" carrier will need to do to win in the marketplace in _not_ charge extra to carry the data. God help (or rather not help, let them go to hell) the telcos if Google starts using its dark fiber to get into the market as an internet backbone carrier.

Re:How Peculiar

[bigpat]

The market is a better solution than hackers.

I agree, but the big telecoms are aiming to destroy the free market with quality of service and end to end discrimination.

Do you not get it? There are but a handful of long haul carriers left and they are all on board with triple billing their customers for content. These companies at one time or another owe their ability to exist from the power of government to seize people's property and legally maintain their cables on public rights of way, yet they want to have final say over ever packet that goes over their network without considering the benefit of the public. The public has the right and obligation to regulate public rights of way and this is all that this was.

Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, seek to serepticiously undermine competition at every step along the way and my fellow libertarians seem caught up in the idea that it is somehow still a free market even when the marketplace itself is by invitation only.

And I said they seek to triple bill customers... it could be far worse, with every telco along the way seeking further kickbacks along the way to promptly deliver each packet. This is as if UPS, Fedex, Airborne express all suddenly started to demand greater payments along the route for prompt delivery, not just by weight, but based on the source and destination of the packet. If you live in a good neighborhood you get charged more, if they think your company can afford it, you get charged more. And everyone else gets purposefully shitty service.

Welcome to the free market, as long as you don't define "free" and "market" in old speak.

Re:How Peculiar

[stinerman]

Per the bill (in its current form), there is still a $500,000 fine for anyone who goes against the FCC's broadband policy statement. Basically you'll have to complain if you think your ISP isn't living up to that statement, and the FCC will investigate. Who knows how effective this will be.

Also, do remember that the Senate has to consider this. Perhaps they could slip neutrality legislation into the bill. Call your senators!

Re:How Peculiar

[TapeCutter]

Excellent explaination, even the car analogy made sense.

"...and all the ISPs in the middle (with the exception of Tier-1 ISPs that pass and generate traffic equally) pay."

I can't imagine the double toll principle making it's way into international telecomms treaties. If tolls start springing up in the US is there any reason why the rest of the planet could not bypass these tolls by subscribing to Tier-1 ISPs based in say the EU or Canada. (As I understand it all the dozen or so "master DNS tables" are housed in US institutions but are unofficially mirrored around the world).

In other words how hard would it be for the EU to contain the "fragmentation" to mainland USA and shift "the interenet" to Europe?

Re:How Peculiar

[Digital Vomit]

How many times does it have to be paid?

"How much you got?"

don't get Congress involved please!

[rjnagle]

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.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[DigDuality]

I just love the attitude here who think this is a prime example of "small government" and pro-business and are cheering on this loss. The skepticism of government, this isn't a "government idea". This started from the ground up. This hurts every industry online. Every online content provider, every online retailer, every financial institution with online services, every insurance company running online apps for quoting (business's run off these websites, most insurance companies did away with software applications), every open source project that barely has the funds to function anyway, every independent blogger, even the big media..from fox to the bbc, every activist group is effected by this..from the KKK to the NRA to the Green Party to the Socialist Party, from PETA to the Christian Coaltion, from GLAAD and the Rainbow Coalition, the NAACP, the ACLU, the Libertarian Party, every charity organization that has set up online donations, every file trading service, every university, every public and private school in the US, every government department offering interactivity via the internet, every online application from Google spreadsheet, to Windows One Care, from Flickr to You Tube, this is a loss to EVERYONE. Every individual, every corporation. Every political group, every religious group that reaches out online, this is the begining of the end for individuals to have voice through blogs and websites. How one cannot see that is beyond me.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[vishbar]

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.

The Internet has reached the point where it is, essentially, as much of a necessity of modern Western society as the telephone. Therefore, if EVERY telco implements a tiered bandwidth system, there won't be anyone to turn to after they cancel the contract...leaving the consumer high-and-dry without an ISP.

I wouldn't have any problems with a tiered bandwidth system if I didn't think it would be abused by the telecom corporations. However, the purpose of a business is to make money--no more, no less. I don't think they can be trusted to maintain a free and open communications medium such as the 'Net.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[oliverthered]

Or as with most things capatilist the customer will be offered a limited choice of low quality products.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you left out one big point. Net Neutrality is not about stopping ISP for charging different amount for different levels of bandwidth. It is about stopping the ISP from charging content providers for different kinds of content.

It would be as if the phone company charged you one rate for calls where you discussed your family and a different rate if you discussed computers.

In general it is the difference between telephones (where you pay to be connected to someone else) and cable (where you pay for a kind of content) Net Neutrality would guarantee that the Net stay a communication tool and not just a form of entertainment.

Also it is only in the contexts of common carrier status. If an ISP want to take responsibility for the content that it is delivering then it can not get the government protection of common carrier, and jump into the wild.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[Professor_UNIX]

2)companies already pay for ISP's [Buy Snacky Smores. Snacky Smores are the most nutritious and delicious smore supplement available on the market today. Snacky Smores! This inline advertisement presented to you by AT&T Yahoo DSL] 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. I agree, I doubt anything will come of this whole thing. Companies like Google will have to foot the bill to get their data to us, but I'm sure the entrenched telco monopolies will leave individual websites or smaller sites like Slashdot alone and not interfere with their traffic in any way.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[w33t]

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).

I would replace "already" with "currently". And YOU downgraded your broadband, would you still have no complaints if your were downgraded by your ISP?

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.

It would be likely that the price would continue to fall - unless some kind of artificial system were put into place so that the telecoms could start increasing the price for "extranet-access" and a "media connection". Currently, you host a website, someone in Japan can browse to it. "media connection" is just called "bandwidth" currently.

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.

Just like if people hate spam so much they would just stop opening it. Sorry, not a great example. But you do realise that for many there is little other choice than SBC. Additionally, if I decide to go with another DSL provider they will still have to traverse SBC's network - and without nuetrality SBC can charge that ISP what they wish for access to "their" section of the internet

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. Tiered service and blocking types of traffic are essentially the same thing - except tiered services is much more a hammer than a chisel. How can you less worried about the superset problem?

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.

Microsoft:"as an independent software producer, I want trade to be as unregulated as possible (even from laws that purport free trade)."

A little regulation is neccessary sometimes - I don't like the idea, I think we have too many laws as is. But bandwidth is gold. The internet only operates as it currently does because of neutrality. Remember the internet.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[thebdj]

1) Yes bandwidth is plentiful, and the idea is that ISPs want to charge content providers for the bandwidth. Verizon, Comcast, or whoever want to be able to charge Google for me downloading content from their sites. The idea is stupid because I am already paying for the bandwidth, and this basically amounts to double dipping. They are wanting to get paid twice for the bandwidth.

2) Yes, they pay for their bandwidth and hosting (if they do not host on their own, and most smart and big companies do) from the ISP they get their services through. We are talking about double, triple, quadruple billing companies just so they can have guaranteed access to customers.

3) You are joking right? If you transfer the cost to the content providers, you will be lucky to see any cost drops in user services. Why? Because most telecoms are already having trouble with old business models. They will continue to charge current rates, which honestly may be reaching their minimums sooner rather then later. It will actually probably mean in increase in services we currently pay for online too. If the content providers are paying the ISPs extra money, they will need more money to cover their cost and this ultimately comes from the consumers.

4) Yes, because so many people ISP hop. You know that the reason many people never switch services is because of e-mail addresses? It is similar to the reason people would never leave cell phone companies until after the government said you have to allow people to take their numbers with them. Once this happened, people began becoming cell phone company hoppers and the wars for customers began anew, because now people can change at the end of their contract and have nothing to hold them there.

5) If service providers create a tiered system, where they decide who and what gets the traffic, then your P2P will be shot to hell. Most cable companies will start finding ways to block or increase the cost for VoIP providers to their customers. Remember, most these companies are owned by larger corporations with a variety of interests that conflict with consumer interests. A tiered internet is basically going to turn into a bidding war for what content providers can pay the ISPs the most money. It will kill the concept of a free internet by giving the people with money a means to ensure they are the most accessible and usable sites.

6) I hate government regulation, but before this bill amendment there were regulations in place that helped to ensure this would stay free. I really have a hard time seeing how the concept of net neutrality is ever a bad thing, but I welcome someone to give me an example.

7) What extra bandwidth? What half the cost? Has anyone but a telecom said they will offer you more bandwidth with lower costs if they can spread the charges around? I really do not believe most of what Verizon, AT&T or any of the other companies tell me. Besides, your ToS and EULA are probably already much more restrictive then you realize...including the ability to shut off your connection for abusing the bandwidth, hosting a server (in many contracts for home users), or for using P2P networking, even if you are not breaking the bandwidth abuse.

8) No. The problem is they do not trust the telecoms to self-regulate. Seriously, the telecom industry has to be one of the most untrusted industries, right up there with the oil companies. We have a group that charges mysterious fees (look at your phone bill) and has no real competition. VoIP is hardly competition, since it has its own array of problems and deficiencies.

9) This problem boils down to a lack of competition in most areas. In some cases, the monopolies over the phone lines are locally approved, while in other cases it is just a lack of companies willing to setup their own userbase for DSL services. This could also relate to a name recognition problem. I mean it is sort of hard to compete against Telecos and cable companies for recognition...I mean in some areas t

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

My dad and step-mother live in a small town 120 miles from the nearest large metropolitan area in BellSouth territory. Here are there choices for high speed internet:
The local cable company
There is no 2nd choice. His 2nd choice is dialup. So suppose the cable company decideds to implement tiered bandwidth and my dad doesn't like it. He has no choice because going back to dialup is not a choice.

I suspect that a rather large number of Americans are in exactly the same position as my father. They have one choice for high speed internet where they live, so going with someone else isn't an option.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[BVis]

But suppose all the telcos banded together to do this, to set limits and impose tolls -- wouldn't that be a virtual monopoly? More importantly, wouldn't that be collusion, possibly prosecuteable under the RICO racketeering statutes? Perhaps there's more than one way to fight this.

#1, proving the collusion and prosecuting under RICO would be hellaciously difficult and expensive to do (the telcos have deep deep deep pockets, in other words, their lawyers can beat up your lawyers) and #2 what exactly is the government going to do even IF they are found guilty? Fine them? It's not like they can shut them down or put anyone in jail. Even a government-mandated plan for correcting the issue is basically unenforceable; it's a return to the days of "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

The only chance we have of this not destroying the Internet as we know it is to keep it from happening in the first place.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[starm_]

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.

This is the crucial part. Yeah if there were plenty of competitors and plenty of parallel alternative routes owned by different people to get from point A to point B on the internet, we wouldn't have anything to worry about as competition would take care of the problem.

However, is this ever going to happen? Is this even cost effective? I mean, duplicating the net infrastructure in order to ensure a minimum level of competition would cost _billions_. Sometimes, because of these kinds of cost, it's better to have a single semi-monopolistic infrastructure that is well regulated and neutral and that acts as a kind of common good. This reduces the costs of having the competition.

Sometimes market competition just isn't effective. Consider the roads and the highways. Would we save money by privatising the road system and ensuring that there are competing alternatives to go everywhere? The cost for the redundant infrastructure would be phenomenaly high.

I'm not saying that neutrality is a great solution, just that it's the best we have. I'm all for the invisible hand wherever the free market can work, I'm just not sure this is a place where it can.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[plaisted]

Here's the problem with charging content providers for faster access to consumers: The price a service provider charges the consumers is limited by market forces. There may not be a lot of different choices for internet access in a lot of places, but consumers still have the choice to cancel their DSL/Cable and use dial-up, the library, Wi-fi hotspots, or whatever to access the internet if the rates get outrageous.

However, when service providers start charging content providers, there is no market to limit the prices they charge to what is reasonable. They have a monopoly on the consumers that access the internet through them. So if Comcast starts to charge Google to send data to Comcast's customers, Google can't choose another service provider to get to those consumers.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[Eivind]

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).

If this was universally true, then paying extra to have your traffic prioritized would make no sense -- on a non-full network all packets arrive in a timely manner. The fact that Telecom considers selling this, and thinks they'll get buyers, tells me that either you're wrong. Or they're considering purposefully delaying "non-prioritized" traffic. It's a simple matter to configure a router so that f.ex. voIP is only usable with high priority. This represents a step backwards from todays situation. Furthermore, earning money from selling "high priority" gives them an incentive to ensure that non-prioritized traffic moves more sluggishly.

4)So what if SBC decides to implement a tiered system of bandwidth! Consumers just stop renewing their contracts if they hate it enough.

Many consumers will have little/no choise. Internet is today an utility, going without is as unthinkable to many as going without telephone. Many consumers are on 12-month contracts and cannot get out on short notice. Many consumers have only one, or only a small handful of broadband-providers available.

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.

That is naive. And I hope you see it. More likely they'll have some high-profile agreements with some high-desirability content-producers essentially as marketing. People will *prefer* using that ISP, because by them you can get the newest Disney-shite or whatever at "guaranteed high speed". Those people will get sluggish access to for example your content, unless you bend over and pay what is demanded. If you *do* bend over and pay, you're back to status quo -- your traffic has the same priority as that from Disney.

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.

Perhaps it's arrogant. But I'd take a wager that 9 out of 10 broadband-subscribers couldn't even tell you what "net neutrality " means. How can they choose intelligently when they don't even know there's a choise to be made ?

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.

Agreed. They shouldn't be. But many are. My mothers choises for broadband just last month went up from zero to 1. Any "choise" she has is illusoric at best. (in *principle* she could go back to metered dial-up access at $1/hour, but that's not much of a choise...)

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[jefu]

While I find the notion of adding more laws to the internet a difficult one, I don't find your comments all that persuasive.

Since I'm in an area with a single DSL provider (with Comcast also in the broadband market), I pay quite a bit (don't ask) for DSL and I have to buy a landline (an expensive one at that) as well. I find the notion that my DSL provider will be allowed to (essentially) raise their prices arbitrarily on either specific applications or bandwidth uncongenial. Since the content providers also pay for access, I suspect the network folks are making out quite all right.

I also wonder if this would make content something that the net folks could charge for differentially. For example, suppose Foo-Mart (a huge corporation) both buy preferential access for itself and at the same time, buy far less preferential access for Bar-Mart (another huge corporation). Or could they be in favor of a political candidate and opposed to another and charge one political website more than the other? Or perhaps they're opposed to abortion (or gay marriage, or ...) so they charge those websites more.

Allowing the corporations to make any decisions that favor one network content provider (or protocol, or ...) over another is likely to lead to them making all kinds of decisions that many of us would find troubling.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[dsginter]

I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this:

"We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable."

The straw man here is that the providers *do* pay for their side of the bandwidth. It just boils down to the fact that the telecoms would rather implement greed instead of pragmatism as a solution.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[BVis]

1 ISPs will deliberately throttle bandwidth for websites that don't pay up. I doubt this makes sense. In a competitive market, an ISP who deliberately slows down websites will lose customers.

Which part of "no consumer choice" don't you understand? Let me make this simple: Your choices are the cable company (legislated monopoly) or the phone company (practical monopoly, eg they own the wires. In theory you can get DSL from another provider, but your Baby Bell owns the CO. Posession is nine tenths of the law, and if they want to make it nearly impossible to get service from someone else, they can.)

Also, Americans don't take their business elsewhere due to rotten service. They just don't. Americans buy based on price, period, especially with something they don't understand like Internet service. Look at movie theaters: Lousy seats, lousy sound, overpriced popcorn, surly workers, rude audiences. Sure, maybe the theater down the street is a little better, but you don't see them switching. Why? Because the first theater is fifty cents cheaper.

2 ISPs will offer faster access to websites that pay for it, thus forcing websites into a zero sum competition and allowing the ISPs to reap monopoly rents. Well, fast access to consumers is certainly valuable to websites but there is no room for zerosum competition here. Websites will not pay to be "faster than the competition" beyond a certain point (once everyone is reasonably fast, there are better things to compete on).

Like what? Quality? Nobody competes on quality anymore. What this means is the big guys crush the little guys by suffocating them, just like everything else. They'll buy up all the QoS they can because they have the deep pockets. After all, why compete when you can eliminate the competition?

And I don't believe any company has a monopoly on fibre,

Not yet they don't.

so websites can always move if they feel they are paying too much.

You've never worked for a company that runs an enterprise-level web site, have you. These contracts are negotiated in terms of years, and moving the site is likely to be far more expensive than just ponying up the premium. Besides, the problem isn't with your bandwidth provider, it's with your customers' providers. You're getting the bandwidth you're paying for, but your customers are at the mercy of their provider in terms of whose packets get through unimpeded.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[HoboMaster]

Do you realized that nothing has changed? This isn't the government deregulatingthe telecom industry. There were no limits in the frst place! The telecom companies haven't implemented a tiered system yet, what makes people think it's suddenly going to happen now? It's not like they passed a bill allowing tiered pricing, they just didn't pass a bill prohibiting it. There's a BIG difference there.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[Doches]

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).

Bandwidth is plentiful at the moment because the Internet is over-provisioned. Remember the 90's, when everyone and their dog was laying fiber across the country? Remember what happened right after all those cables got laid? So basically, we're working with an Internet that's been set up to handle far more traffic than is actually generated. Right now, that's a good thing, but the telecoms aren't increasing the capacity of the Internet at anything near the rate that the demand for that capacity is growing. In 10-20 years, we'll be right back where we were 10 years ago, and those 'toll lanes' are going to really mean something.

Sounds great, yea?

So in 15 years AT&T will be making money hand over fist by providing premium services at a higher cost. Then they'll realize that in order to maintain the quality of those premium services, they're going to have to lay a new cable between New York and Dallas. What kind of traffic do you think is going to be routed over that cable? Over every bit of capacity added to the internet starting today?

This isn't going to be a problem right now. This is going to be a problem in 20 years, which is why it's so important that we stop it now, and why it's so hard to explain to the average person why you can't pay more for more reliable internet service.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[astroroach]

Sometimes, just sometimes, there is need for regulation.

Let's examine this point-by-point:

(1) The harm is not hypothetical. There are numerous incidents of ISPs blocking or degrading traffic of competing services. And, although I'm happy you have all the bandwidth you want, that's likely to change. Available bandwidth will be reduced as telcos move into the IPTV business. One or two high defintion channels will eat the majority of the capacity to your home.

(2) You said it yourself - companies already pay for ISPs. Why should they have to pay again?

(3) Tiered pricing will lower subscription costs? Do you really believe that? Do you think the telcos just want move their source of income from consumers to content providers? No, they want both to pay. You say tiered pricing should be for private industry to decide. Should private industry be allowed to determine who I connect to, or how well a providers service will work? Network neutrality is not giving control of the Internet to the government; it's keeping control in the hands of consumers. Net neutrality simply returns things to the status quo before a flawed decision by the FCC removed the protection that has been in place since its beginning. This principle has endured through decades of amazing technological change. It will NOT "be obsolete on the day it was passed."

(4) Don't renew my contract if I hate it? Only 53% of Americans have at least two choices in broadband providers - the rest have one or none, and both the telcos and cable companies have stated their intentions. There is no choice except to do without, and in today's world that's not a reasonable option.

(5) Banning the blocking or restricting of applications ISPs don't like, such as P2P, VOIP, streaming video from sites they don't own, etc. is part of net neutrality. ISPs should act as common carriers, not gatekeepers. CONSUMERS should decide how they want to use the bandwith they pay for, not ISPs.

(6) I understand the concern about regulation, but this simply writes into law the principles that have made the Internet a driving force for innovation. It corrects a flawed policy decision of the FCC.

(7) The battle has been lost. Sure, you're provided a ton of bandwidth, but God forbid you actually want to USE the bandwidth you've paid for. Verizon's EULA's are particularly amusing.

(8) Arrogance to think that regulation is sometimes necessary? How's this for arrogance? Edward Whitacre of AT&T: "Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" Well, Ed - they ain't YOUR pipes. We, your customers are paying for them.

(9) Here we agree. Net neutrality would not be an issue if there were true competion because consumers would not stand for it. However, in the real world, most people do not have the option to choose another carrier. AT&T and others understand this, and are trying to use this to their advantage.

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[pseudochaotic]

Waitm so, he believes that google just happens to have an insane amount of bandwidth... for free?

Does he also believe in Santa Claus?

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[level_headed_midwest]

And if anybody else wants to get into the game, such as a fiber or wireless provider, the telco and cable co sue. It happened here in Columbia, MO when the University of Missouri paid for and laid a big 160Mbit fiber loop from the campus to the backbone server a couple of miles away and was going to sell excess bandwidth to the residents to The local telephone monopoly, CenturyTel, sued them for "unfair competition" (sic) and won. They also made the university quit selling DSL to off-campus students, staff, and faculty. I guess $2M in contributions goes a long way in a town of 85,000...

Re:don't get Congress involved please!

[teh_chrizzle]

I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this: "We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable." the issue here is that they sell you a service labeled 3mbit/second, but they do no thav ehte capacity to provide that. now that consumers are actually using the 3mbit they are already paying for, the tecos are having to upgrade their capacity to deliver the service THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY SAID THEY ARE PROVIDING. that means that they have to add more infrastructure, but can't raise prices. if you ask me: it sucks to be them. they should have been honest about their service at the beginning, or made sure their infrasturcture was up to par before they started selling it. either way, i don't really see how that is my problem.

Rejected

[OSS_ilation]

I'd try and make a pithy, Slashdot-worthy sarcastic comment, but my ISP doesn't allow that unless I upgrade to the Crusty Cynic Power User Package for an additional $9.95 a month.

Re:Rejected

[AviLazar]

/emo

/wrist

Huh?

[Tyrsenus]

Why can't I view this article?

Oh wait...

Public vs. private infrastructure

[l2718]

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.

Re:Public vs. private infrastructure

[l2718]

If there is a compelling public interest, the government can legitimately restrict that choice. That's the case in many domains, and arguably, it should be the case here

At another thread someone has claimed that the situation is a near-monopoly (only one or two broadband providers in each area). In that case there's certainly a need for government regulation to prevent a monopoly extracting rents for the use of their infrastructure. Perhaps because I'm a city person I thought there was more competition. Probably rural areas will be harder-hit.

Re:Public vs. private infrastructure

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Now the ISP's infrastructure is private, and there seems to be a competition among ISPs

What is your definition of an ISP? My definition is a company that provides internet connectivity to residential customers - like Verizon and Comcast.

These companies like to claim that all their "investments" in infrastructure are private - but that is a load of bullshit. They all rely on government granted right of way to string their wires around, thus they are all public utilities. In many cases they also rely on public subsidies of one form or another - tax breaks, etc. They are also almost always monopoly or duopoloy markets. All are reasons for regulation because either way, they are not free markets to begin with.

US = Fuxx0red

[Lord_Dweomer]

Ok, so rather than whine about how our government is corrupt and quickly ruining life in America...I want to talk about solutions.

The telcos will begin the tiered internet pricing, and in the end the price hike will inevitably cost the consumer more.

What I want to know is, how can I get around their speed throttling for sites that do not pay up? I am not that savvy when it comes to coding my own scripts, but are there any tools that will help make things stay the same usage wise (if not price wise)?

Also, can someone clearly list some bullet points of how this will ultimately affect the end user? I'd like to share them with my family and explain to my Republican father how his boys have ruined our countries future.

Re:US = Fuxx0red

[iamhassi]

"Also, can someone clearly list some bullet points of how this will ultimately affect the end user?

did you RTFA? It's pretty clear, otherwise Save The Internet dumbs it down for ya a bit.

Re:US = Fuxx0red

[Lumpy]

Solutions? simple do what we did in the early to mid 80's.

have lots of linux and BSD machines at key locations creating the "freebie-net" that relay information. Typically if you plop servers at universities you get around most of the BS but ploping a server physically near google, yahoo, etc.. you get to route around these "slow lanes" the telcos create.

Encrypted tunnels from University to University will thwart the best telco attempts to try and detect any subverting of the throttling lanes and you use the grid of freebie-net servers to do your web access.

Now getting a very large group of geeks to cooperate for such a task for free, that is a completely different story.

Re:US = Fuxx0red

[RandomPrecision]

Now getting a very large group of geeks to cooperate for such a task for free, that is a completely different story.

1. Submit it to Slashdot.
2. ?????
3. Er, don't profit.

Re:US = Fuxx0red

[evilviper]

What I want to know is, how can I get around their speed throttling for sites that do not pay up?

1. Get an 802.11 card and the best antenna you can find/afford.
2. Read up on radiowave propogation in the 2.4GHz frequencies.
3. Plot out a map of repeaters to get the signal to/from your house to/from the nearest big city.
4. Attempt to secure the necessary land rights.
5. Start collecting donations for the project.
6. Get to work buying and installing the equipment.
7. Ping.

.
I'm currently in a pretty good spot, myself. I've got line-of-sight to several mountain tops, all of which should have line-of-sight to this edge of the Los Angeles Megalopolis... If (I knew for a fact) there was a thriving 802.11 network accessible down there, I would start working on it right now. I'm already ideally positioned (high up, top of a fairly impressive hill) to be a relay for a couple cities and about a hundred thousand people or so.

In fact, if someone else would be interested in providing the funds, I'd be happy to volunteer myself for the task of setting-up a line of repeaters from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. There are numerous mountains and valleys in-between, which could be well utilized to get line-of-sight between repeaters most of the way. At ~150 miles, it shouldn't even require many of them.

It's pretty exciting to think that any technically savvy person could (basically sell their house) fairly easily buy all the equipment, and setup a wireless network across connecting all the major cities in the US, west of the rockies. The plains seem a far greater challenge, requiring very serious and expensive masts in lieu of mountains.

Yeah, I know, I've gone WAY off topic now.

Silly people!

[k98sven]

Of course that wouldn't pass. The Federal Communications Commission doesn't exist to provide government regulation of the communications sector in order to protect consumer interests. That would be patently ridiculous because the USA is a free-market economy, which means you can just run your own copper wire to your neighbor's house and start your own network if you're not happy with the one that exists. And if you don't get a permit to dig you can always use a pair of tin cans and a string.

No people, the Federal Communications Commission exists to censor those communications from swearwords and nudity, which is obviously a much more important thing for government to be doing.

thanks for illustrating the point

[m874t232]

They shouldn't be in a market where they only have one ISP to choose from.

Yeah, but we can't legislate additional wires or ISPs into existence. We can, however, legislate that the wires and ISPs exist are used equitably and in a way that protects people from arbitrary pricing and restrictions.

so I ended up going with a local company for DSL

The fact that you have that choice is itself a consequence of a legal framework that gives you that choice. Completely unregulated, your phone company would be the only DSL provider, and they'd charge monopoly prices (actually, completely unregulated, you'd be on a 19.2kbps dial-up line, if you're lucky).

So, legislation like this works, and you have just given another example of that.

encrypt everything

[Thaelon]

Couldn't you just encrypt all traffic?

Then they wouldn't have any way to know how to filter it would they?

Maybe by port number.....but they wouldn't be able to parse packets for "google" and slow those down.

My TCP/IP knowledge is rusty...but maybe you can't encrypt the destination port.......yet.

As for this:

Representative Fred Upton, head of the House telecommunications subcommittee, said competition could mean people save $30 to $40 each month on their net access fees.

It's utter bullshit. The ISPs won't lower the bills the end users, they'll just pocket the profits from prioritizing provider content.

Look for a technological workaround to this problem soon.

I thought all /.ers were libertarians...

[Greased Monkey]

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?

Re:I thought all /.ers were libertarians...

[Boronx]

If you have a handful, or only one company controlling how you can use the internet, it's not a free market.

Re:I thought all /.ers were libertarians...

[keyne9]

Is it just me, or are a lot of people asking the government to regulate our businesses?

If you mean, "prevent the wholesale slaughter of small businesses," then you might be correct.

Re:I thought all /.ers were libertarians...

[Kazrael]

The problem is that we, the people, paid for the network infrastructure through government subsidies. This wouldn't be too bad if other companies were allowed to piggyback on top of this infrastructure. Let's say Google says, "Screw paying ISPs, let's set up our own Internet infrastructure". Well, they have to start from the ground up and are not allowed to piggyback on the infrastructure paid for with US Tax dollars. This sets them way, way back on money and time, as well as slows down their ability to provide more, better content.
First off, the subsidized network that I have already paid for should not require 60$ a month for access. Second, there is no way in hell it should be able to be manipulated into a toll booth. What happens when a company like Amazon says, "OK, Fine. We'll pay, but we can only afford to pay 2 of the 3 large Telcos."? So I have Comcast, but Amazon paid for fast access through Verizon and Southwest? My content still gets slow as hell once it hit's Comcast, if they don't "accidentally" drop packets.

Comcast: 60$ A Month for low level broadband in Arlington, TX
I-net Infrastructure: Gazillion dollars by US Tax payers
Seeing greedy Telcos bend over the content providers you've already paid access too: Priceless.

Re:I thought all /.ers were libertarians...

[SillyNickName4me]

You are absolutely correct! Free markets work best... free

You are confused about what 'free market' means.

A free market is free from anti-competitive influences, not 'free' as in everyone can always do whatever they want.

A free market almost always requires a certain level of regulation to keep out specific anti-competitive influences.

It's not theirs to regulate

[s0abas]

The biggest problem I have with this bill is that the lines aren't the telco's to regulate in the first place. Here's the sequence of events in the form of a chat log:

Telcos: Hey congress, we want to build fiber to have a faster internet for the future. Would you please pay for it?
Congress: Sure! That sounds like a swell idea. Here's some money!
Telcos: (Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
Telcos: (More Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
Telcos: (Even More Later) Congress we ran out of money! Can we have some more?
Congress: Sure! Just finish the daggone thing already!
Telcos: Congress! WTF! We want to be able to charge people more for using these lines you paid for with taxpayer dollars!
Congress: FINE JUST GO AWAY

Re:It's not theirs to regulate

[woodsrunner]

great skit, but you forgot:

telcos: how about you let us really leverage our monopoly...
Congress: we couldn't do that, it just wouldn't be fair...
telcos: remember how we let you spy on everyone, you should see what we have on you....
Congress: FINE JUST GO AWAY

Re:Another blow to the people

[paulyche]

When the war is held to be illegal people are talking about a supposed violation of international, not domestic, law.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,108915 8,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/36611 34.stm

You know - illegal in a greater global sense. After all, no country is an island...
No wait.. ...well you get the picture.

Re:What's to stop them from downthrottling too?

[Professor_UNIX]

I think people will quickly wise up and switch ISPs if that happens.

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.

Re:Where do we see the voting record?

[l2718]

Here's the roll call for this bill. You can also get the full record of the bill (H.R. 5252), in particular see what happened to particular amendments.

I'm Not Complaining For Naught

[eldavojohn]

Wait, didn't it say that the house rejected the bill. Wouldn't that mean that the tolls will not be in place? Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I thought for once The House stopped something that it should. Can someone clear me up on this. Am I backwards or are you complaining about a situation that isn't going to come to light since they rejected it?

The issue here is simply that instead of having something like 30,000 local franchise boards vying for your moneys, there will be an FCC commission dictating what will be the lowest price for you to access certain things on the internet.

If you read the article, this means that users will not have competing services (like how capitalism is supposed to work).

What was struck down was a proposal to make an amendment that would prevent providers for charging more for certain kinds of media & sites being accessed by users. What they wanted to protect you from is a scenario like you stream a lot of videos so you will now pay more than your neighbor who does not stream a lot of videos. The proposal for you to be paying an equal amount has been rejected & now you will begin to see ISPs opening up a salvo of charges to people who are simply accessing large amounts of information or visiting particular sites. It's up to your ISP to essentially decide what is tolled and what isn't now. May god have mercy on us all--because the Slashdot crowd is probably one that demands high bandwidth (if you're anything like me).

Re:I'm Not Complaining For Naught

[russ1337]

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.

Re:I'm Not Complaining For Naught

[Adkron]

Wow, that sucks. Thanks for the info. Now I have to go write my congressman and tell him I'm not voting for him again if he voted for this, and then I need to find the house voting records.

Re:I'm Not Complaining For Naught

[Cornelius the Great]

"The state highways are not free - those that are not toll roads are allocated a proportion of gas taxes, related to measured use of the road. Guess what? That means heavier users (like say, trucking companies, the equivalent of Google on the internet) pay... wait for it; MORE!"

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.

It's simple...

[Lurker187]

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.

End result of 'toll lanes' most likely to be

[MECC]

Large media conglomerates going for the throats of providers.

Why? Because a large media provider will pay extra so their video and other content will get faster downloads. Like for example Disney paying TimeWarner. Then, however, to Disney's surprise, the speed of their media on the Internet only improves a little - very little.

Why? Because in order for the so-called 'toll lanes' or 'fast lanes' to actually make any real difference, each and every piece of equipment in between the provider and the consumer will have to have a compatible configuration - each and every switch, firewall, and router. Ultimately the end ISP has the most ability to impact how much prioritization will improve performance. So, Disney shells out millions to TW, only to find out they got snake oil. Large contracts like that don't get negotiated without SLAs, all of which have rebate clauses. Which will inevitably get enforced. In court.

Each time a packet crosses to another providers network, the treatment of prioritization setting in the packet will change, if respected at all. Who could possibly believe that AT&T will treat Verizon's IP priority settings exactly the same as their own. So, the likelyhood that telcos will be at eachother's throats is a possibility as well. Run a traceroute and see how many providers the takes to get to google, apple, or Disney. Then think about how well those providers will be at deploying effective prioritization amongst themselves. Not very well will be the answer.

Its kind of like locking a bunch of cannibals together in a room with no food. All the better.

Soooo...

[Mr.Scamp]

So when google lights up all that dark fiber and goes into the ISP business, will I be able to tell Verizon to stuff their toll lanes or will Verizon still be able to stick their fingers in the pie due to Interconnects?

Not a solution

[why-is-it]

Indeed, people are going to be pissed off -- which is why I expect some ISPs to stay away from packet discrimination.

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...

Re:Not a solution

[FireFury03]

At that point it will be subject to QOS.

I think it's important to differentiate between protocol based prioritisation and toll based prioritisation.

The ISP I use does traffic prioritisation based on protocol. This is a Good Thing and should be encouraged - it means that RTP traffic, for example, gets higher priority than BitTorrent. This is great since RTP gets pretty unusable more than a few hundred milliseconds of latency jitter, but BitTorrent won't care. (Yes, I'm aware that many people complain that they want to be able to shift enough BitTorrent traffic over their 15ukp DSL connection to destroy the usability of everyone else's connections).

On the other hand, I'm paying for the internet connection so prioritising traffic based on whether the remote party are paying protection money to my ISP is a very Bad Thing - I already paid for the connection, the remote party already paid for theirs, why the hell should my ISP be demanding more cash from them and penalising me if they don't pay?

Of course, protocol based QoS is fraught with problems because you can't trust the end user to set the ToS flags correctly so you have to identify the protocol by fingerprinting instead. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it's very worthwhile.

Re:Not a solution

[BigCheese]

I was reading the other day that QoS doesn't work all that well. It's easier and cheaper to make the pipes bigger on the long hauls. I'd cite the source but I can't seem to find it.

Extensive use of QoS will require much more powerful routers with more complex routing software. That's a good recipe for trouble. If QoS generates enough problems they will lose money on the whole deal.

Re:Not a solution

[why-is-it]

I think it's important to differentiate between protocol based prioritisation and toll based prioritisation.

Do you think that backbone routers will make that distinction?

Routers can do QOS based on protocol and source/destination IP address. It's just another set of statements in the config IIRC. My guess is that the telcos will implement MPLS, so the relevant provider can slap their own QOS labels on the packets when it reaches their network, regardless of whether the packet had a QOS bit set in the first place.

Re:Not a solution

[dbitch]

But, and here's the question I've been struggling with over the last few days, what happens when the connection is encrypted? HTTPS or SSH or SSL or TLS? What can you route on? Source and dest IP only, I would think. Maybe that will be the lowest on the pole - "if your connection is encrypted, it gets the lowest service, since we can't tell what is going over that connection." Seems that's a good way to keep Joe Sixpack from using encryption - "hey, my stuff is running slowly. Guess I won't use that encryption stuff." Not that he uses it anyway. Maybe that's the next step in the bill - "in order to enforce this bill, we must require that all communications be unencrypted." Kind of a scary thought, no?

Re:Not a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why they want tiers is this:

You (consumers) pay for your bandwidth. The ISP sells bandwidth but it oversells it because they know that not everyone will be online downloading a 1.7 Gig file at the same time. So it's economical for them to offer low low prices on the bandwidth they sell to us (consumers).

Now that people are doing bandwidth hogging things like downloading movies from big commercial websites, and now that the Last mile ISP's want to bring you bandwidth hogging stuff like IPTV, they have a dilemma. They've oversubscribed their pipes. There is a growing need to move more data; they'll either need to pass that price on to us, the consumer, or someone else.

They've chosen someone else, the big commercial bandwidth providers.

There's a reason why this is so: sites like google and yahoo wouldn't make a single solitary dime of profit if people didn't visit their site. The ISP's don't want us (consumers) to go away by raising our prices, so they charge the commercial companies on the other end of the pipe, either by making them pay a dollar figure for priority access to us (the consumer) or by limiting the bandwidth available over the last mile.

We (consumers) are driving this change with our internet usage patterns. The network infrastructure if evolving; let it do it's thing without legislation.

The market will find the path of least resistance one way or another.

Re:Not a solution

[FireFury03]

Do you think that backbone routers will make that distinction?

That's not what I meant - I meant when talking about QoS traffic shaping it's important to make a distinction between the types - protocol classification is good, toll classification is bad - just telling everyone that QoS is a bad thing and should be banned is a terrible idea because ISPs who are *improving* the service by using protocol classification will be unfairly labelled as evil.

Re:Not a solution

[FireFury03]

But, and here's the question I've been struggling with over the last few days, what happens when the connection is encrypted? HTTPS or SSH or SSL or TLS? What can you route on? Source and dest IP only, I would think. Maybe that will be the lowest on the pole - "if your connection is encrypted, it gets the lowest service, since we can't tell what is going over that connection."

This is indeed one of the problems of protocol fingerprinting - about the only thing you can tell is that it's an SSL session, or a TLS session, etc. Although you can make a guess that an SSL session on port 443/tcp is probably HTTPS that doesn't stop someone doing some other SSL based protocol on that port.

SSH is a little easier - if it's an interactive session then the packet sizes will be reasonably small. If the packet sizes are large then it's probably SCP or some other high-bandwidth protocol and should probably be considered a bulk transfer anyway.

Things get worse with protocols like ESP - you get no access to things like port numbers and very limited access to protocol attributes.

Encryption and obfuscation is a big problem - some people think that it's a good idea to work around their ISP's traffic shaping by encrypting or obfuscating traffic. These people do not understand the economies of running a shared network and make things bad for everyone (themselves included). It's not possible to provide uncontended connectivity to each end user at a sensible price. As soon as you start contending for the bandwidth you have to do some prioritisation to prevent high bandiwdth protocols ruining the quality of service for everyone else. People who work around the ISP's traffic shaping end up causing the ISP to either buy more upstream bandwidth (which they have to pass on as a cost to their customers) or invest in more rigorous fingerprinting systems, whcih again result in higher charges.

Maybe that's the next step in the bill - "in order to enforce this bill, we must require that all communications be unencrypted." Kind of a scary thought, no?

I think that's very unlikely - it would mean the death of internet banking, shopping, etc. There's no way the banks would accept liability for confidential data being sent unencrypted.

Re:Not a solution

[staeiou]

Net neutrality still allows you to prioritize protocols over one another. The bill says that if you prioritize one user's service over another, it has to be done universally for all users of that service. SSH traffic over BitTorrent? Legal under Net Neutrality. Fortune 500 SSH traffic over the rest of our SSH traffic? Illegal under Net Neutrality.

Re:Not a solution

[h4rm0ny]

I think that's very unlikely - it would mean the death of internet banking, shopping, etc. There's no way the banks would accept liability for confidential data being sent unencrypted.

What you'll actually see is encrypted communications either being treated as the lowest of the low priority or entirely banned unless you are paying the prohibitive rate for the encryption service. The public, after all, have no need of encryption amongst themselves! Only businesses will be able to pay the fees to provide these connections.

The first principle is simple - where you have power over someone, such as providing them a needed product, then you squeeze them for every penny they have. The second principle is equally straigtforward - where possible, create barriers to entry to prevent people doing things for themselves.

Re:Not a solution

[dgatwood]

Why do you think that Cisco was one of the only major tech companies to come out against net neutrality?

:-)

Re:Not a solution

[kintin]

On the other hand, I'm paying for the internet connection so prioritising traffic based on whether the remote party are paying protection money to my ISP is a very Bad Thing - I already paid for the connection, the remote party already paid for theirs, why the hell should my ISP be demanding more cash from them and penalising me if they don't pay?

This is basically it. I pay $50/mo. for 3M/800K and I expect full pipe. Of course, in my ToS agreement, it's explained that they cannot guarantee that service will be available all the time, so I don't expect 99.999% uptime or anything (as a side note, I would like to not reboot my DSL modem every 10 hours), but nowhere in my ToS does it say that if I use 'too much' of what I pay for my connection will degrade. So if I BitTorrent all day and max out my connection, I assume that my ISP doesn't have shit for brains and oversold their bandwidth. Fundamentally, then, it's not my fault if _your_ connection (RTP) degrades because I'm using _my_ connection (BitTorrent), it's _our_ ISPs.

At this point, there's no basis (legal or moral) to really be upset with me for using the service I pay for. This is what the ISPs are trying to do, make their product more valuable by increasing the scarcity... like DeBeers and Diamonds.

If you want to see the Internet become something like a newspaper full of classified ads, make sure the people who make money from the bandwidth are in control. I mean, can you imagine calling someone on the phone and having to sit through a radio ad before you got through to your grandma? Or plugging in your lamp and having to sit through a holographic presentation of why this margarita mix is better than that one? This doesn't happen because these services are REGULATED, so everyone's guaranteed phone service and everyone's guaranteed electricity... unless you're ridiculous and you live in the Grand Canyon or something.

What it comes down to is this: Do you want your Internet service to be like electricity, or like cable? Hell, I'd pay $70 a month for DSL if it meant they didn't have to oversell bandwidth, but all that would happen is some Executive would get a new car.

Re:Not a solution

[Wellspring]

Maybe that's the next step in the bill - "in order to enforce this bill, we must require that all communications be unencrypted." Kind of a scary thought, no?

I think that's very unlikely - it would mean the death of internet banking, shopping, etc. There's no way the banks would accept liability for confidential data being sent unencrypted.

There's another possibility. You could limit the use of public networks to a manageable number of allowed applications, then set up tiered pricing and QoS rules for each. Any unauthorized traffic would be against the TOS of the network and would be blocked, perhaps even prosecuted as unauthorized access.

If a new application is written, it could go through a QA process with the carriers, who would then certify the application as being permitted on the network and set up appropriate pricing / QoS rules (which would be negotiated). Unregulated protocols would still be permissible-- they just wouldn't be able to communicate upstream on the main Internet.

Sound scary? That was basically the de-facto situation in wireless wide area networks. I worked a few years ago with some BREW developers, who found that every bug fix required a whole new QA review (which took months) before being deployable. The gatekeepers had every reason to hold something up, and no incentive to move something forward. And if the product was going to be rolled out to fewer than ten thousand handsets, they didn't want to hear from you. The other carriers weren't as bad (and true IP coverage has made things infinitely easier since then) but not by much. Mobitex, for example, was a nightmare to get something approved on. Don't think it couldn't happen on the internet-- it certainly can.

In a free market, of course, this wouldn't be allowed to come about (note that the highly competitive carriers in wireless didn't go with this model in the long term). But with high barriers to entry on wired backbones, it isn't like some new provider will pop up out of nowhere if AT&T decides that that's how their network will run. It's in the carriers' interest to become the OPEC of network access.

Look at my previous posts. I'm normally a fan of our Congress's pro-market policies. But it appears that they dropped the ball here because they either don't realize where this is going or are trusting the Phone Company far more than someone who has actually worked with them would.

Here We Go Again...

[nbannerman]

Just how long before the European ISPs (BT, I'm pointing the finger at you) see this going on, and decide that they'd like a piece of the action.

Or on the other hand, how long before US ISPs start making phone calls to non-US content providers? I can see just how that'd play out.

Verizon : Hey BBC, your good friends at Verizon are supplying 30 million customers with your content. BBC : Your point being? Verizon : Well, that is some nice content you've got there, be a shame if something happened to it...

Scary stuff. I've argued against a tiered internet before, because 'the public' will always go where they can get their information the quickest. Note I said quickest, *not* the most factually correct. Big Brother doesn't need to watch you if Big Brother can control your information before it even reaches you.

Re:What's to stop them from downthrottling too?

[elrous0]

there's nothing to stop them except that their paying customers will be pissed if they get slow service

Sadly, most people probably wouldn't even notice. I know for a fact that some major companies are already doing some downthrottling, and apparently not enough people are noticing to even call them on it.

I recently had an experience myself where I canceled my unlimited long-distance service with Bellsouth and the same day they downthrottled my 3 Mbps account to 1.5 Mbps speed (probably a measure aimed at those dumping them for VoIP service, to make VoIP look bad). Being a geek, I noticed right away and called them on it. They explained that they must have "made a mistake" (yeah, a "mistake" that just happened to have occurred on the exact same day I cancelled my long-distance plan with them) and returned me to 3 Mbps with curious ease.

Now, if a big company like Bellsouth has the balls to do something so brazen, it must mean that they KNOW that most of their customers will never notice. And that was MUCH more obvious than site-specific down-throttling.

-Eric

Where can I buy stock

[Conficio]

By the way, we already have tiered Internet service. My ISP does not allow me to invite 200 friends to a party or mail 1000 buddies to let them know of important political developments (like Net Neutrality) - It has a "spam prevention" filter that throttles after 50 e-mails in less than an hour. It also does not allow me to run my own mail server or web server or ftp or any other protocol they can think off.

I'm not sure if Congress can do much about it w/o unacceptable collateral damage. At best I'd expect them to protect consumers by requiring disclosure and stop the false advertising, saying I get "Internet service" if in fact I merely buy web-page access and one way download of other services.

However, let the market get things right. I have $10,000 waiting to buy new stock in Google-ISP (or any other company) that starts a business delivering net neutral Internet service to consumers. Even if I do not benefit from the service area. If we want a better service, we need to provide the capital to compete with the guys that are trying to box us in. Another way is raising the capital for local Telco cooperatives and make sure in your community is competition that delivers net neutral service. Also, all telcos need licensing from the communities (but this whole bill is about to do away with this, isn't it?). So your local town/county governing body would be the one to lobby in order to make sure these licenses do include net-neutrality provisions.

Just my five cents

K

My Congressman's explanation

[wazzzup]

I emailed my (Republican) Congressman about this and this was his response for the curious. I disagree with much of what he said but perhaps there are some discussion points here.

Dear Chris :

Thank you for contacting me regarding recent interest group proposals for so-called "net neutrality." It is good to hear from you.

This year, Congress will reauthorize the 1996 Telecommunications Act. One of the key criticisms of that act (and the original 1934 version for that matter) is that, despite supposedly benevolent intentions, Congress essentially picked winners and losers in the various sectors of the telecommunications industry instead of allowing a free marketplace in which competition would lead to new technology, better service, and lower prices for consumers. As a result, many industry experts have concluded that governmental regulation has impeded the emergence of new technology and better applications. Perhaps the biggest example of America's stifled telecommunications progress is that the United States, despite being the world's economic powerhouse, is currently ranked 16 th for Internet broadband deployment. In anticipation of the reauthorization, I believe we must honestly examine and reflect upon the many government regulations already on the books and carefully consider the pros and cons of any newly-proposed regulations before endorsing proposals that may simply sound good on the surface.

One of the issues that Congress will address is the concept known as "net neutrality." Certain interest groups and press editorialists proclaim that Congress should mandate that cable and telephone industry broadband operators offer control of their networks equally to any and all Internet traffic. In fact, several major software and e-commerce firms have already formed a lobbyist organization called the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators (CBUI) to petition the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do just that. In the name of preserving "network neutrality" and Internet "openness," CBUI members argue that the FCC must adopt preemptive "nondiscrimination safeguards" to ensure Internet users open and unfettered access to online content and services in the future. Despite the rhetoric however, there is currently no evidence that broadband operators are going out of their way to block access to any widely used websites or similar online services. In fact, any significant discriminatory behavior on the part of broadband service providers ( BSPs ) would generally be financially counterproductive considering that BSPs make more money by carrying more traffic. On the rare occasion that a BSP may actively regulate traffic or impose differential pricing schemes on their network, it would likely be for rather sensible reasons. Network owners may want to discourage the use of certain devices on their networks to avoid system crashes, interference, or signal theft. They may want to price services differently to avoid network congestion and/or conserve bandwidth. They may want to exclusively partner with other firms to help them reach new customers and ultimately create superior services. And perhaps they may very well direct users towards some content before others because it helps them make the necessary money to recoup the huge investment required to create and build out broadband networks. Outlawing the ability of network owners to favor certain content kills a major financial incentive for entrepreneurs to invent and build new networks in the first place. Ultimately, in the absence of clear harm, government typically does not regulate in the preemptive fashion that CBUI members are requesting.

Please be aware that the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Efficiency Act of 2006. Among other points, the act empowers the FCC

Re:My Congressman's explanation

[Lord_Dweomer]

"despite the rhetoric however, there is currently no evidence that broadband operators are going out of their way to block access to any widely used websites or similar online services. "

Right, nobody blocked VoIP at all...

"In fact, any significant discriminatory behavior on the part of broadband service providers ( BSPs ) would generally be financially counterproductive considering that BSPs make more money by carrying more traffic. On the rare occasion that a BSP may actively regulate traffic or impose differential pricing schemes on their network, it would likely be for rather sensible reasons. Network owners may want to discourage the use of certain devices on their networks to avoid system crashes, interference, or signal theft. They may want to price services differently to avoid network congestion and/or conserve bandwidth. They may want to exclusively partner with other firms to help them reach new customers and ultimately create superior services. And perhaps they may very well direct users towards some content before others because it helps them make the necessary money to recoup the huge investment required to create and build out broadband networks. "

Emphasis mine on what is by far the scariest statements I have seen to date on this topic.

Re:My Congressman's explanation

[VP]

My explanation:

2004 election donations
2005-2006 donations

I guess AT&T has further payments to make for this year's election, to at least match 2004...

Re:What's to stop them from downthrottling too?

[Siward]

In my area of the country, we have Charter "High Speed" "Internet" and Verizon as a choice. Yeah, the free market is sure going to be great for my little neck of the woods.

This is terrible because the average person isn't informed enough to make the so-called free market work here. Companies being able to limit your access (even if it is only a slightly longer time to access) to the last vestige of true free speech is not a good thing, and cannot -- in my mind -- lead to good things.

Bell is back and better than ever!

[Optikschmoptik]

I'm not old enough to remember the old AT&T monopoly days, and that might be the problem with a lot of voting constituents. I do remember what my mom told me about those times. It's hard to imagine that, back then, The Phone Company was basically able to give you the finger and get away with it. What could you do? Pretty much nothing, you might as well be asking the IRS for a sales tax refund. That's how monopolies work.

For the past fifteen years or so (don't know the exact dates, but since the courts broke up the old AT&T), there's been competition in both different service types and different companies offering the same solutions. But they've slowly consolidated, and now the monopolistic entity is back. It's more of a cartel now; and they have no incentive to go out of their way for you. Live in Idaho and don't like that you can't access Google without waiting ten minutes for the page to load? "Sorry. Try Verizon speedsearch!, with the all the info you need on your favorite music, videos, games, and sports-and-news!" It's the same as if you flip on the cable TV and veg. It doesn't matter to them. They make money on both. The difference is now, there are even fewer laws regulating who gets access to communication and information.

We can't imagine that the internet could just be taken away like that. But what's stopping them? We do technically own the pipes, but congress just proved to us that it's really only a meaningless technicality in their opinion. So the telco/cable cartel gets carte-blanche control. The CEO of SBC has even refered to them casually as "[his] pipes." In all but official title, it looks like he's right.

Re:Damn you Nancy

[woodsrunner]

Screw that. You want the internet to turn into a tollway? She's making a huge understatement when she says, "This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the internet" and no one in their right mind would think otherwise. This is going to allow the death star of AT&T to focus it's destructive forces at all that is good and innovative about the internet.

Say good bye to VoIP, P2P, and porn not produced by AT&T and say hello to higher rates for an even poorer grade of broadband.

The internet infrastructure in the US was provided primarily by tax dollars. Tax dollars, I might add that were given to the telcos in exchange for them to provide the american public with true broadband. The telcos kept the money (billions of dollars) without coming through with the goods and now are going to have the ability to charge us even more for second rate service that is not only slower but now will be incredibly watered down.

In a few years you'll be nostalgic for the great service once offered by AOL dialup.

China

[woodsrunner]

China has been trying this with their great firewall of China, but it looks like the US is going to be outdoing them with a million points of censorship.

Re:What's to stop them from downthrottling too?

[jandrese]

Wait, you're saying that cities that deploy free Wireless ethernet are going to set up tiering on the same system? It wouldn't be free then would it? How in the world would a private business be able to tier it any less? If anything, I'd expect the private businesses in this area to embrace tiering, because with the shared medium of wireless ethernet getting priority on your packets can be a big thing and these small companies are going to need money any way they can get it.

You'll be getting an invoice

[Mateo_LeFou]

Hi; how ya doin'? Thanks for coming by.

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?

Hey, how many times do *we* pay?

[ianscot]

Why should they have to pay twice?...How many times does it have to be paid?

Given that the lines here are in place partly because of government spending, I've already paid for this bandwidth once, in the form of my taxes. When we start seeing advanced rate plans that charge me more for the same access I have now, are we not paying again when we already invested in this access before?

(It doesn't surprise me at all that this would happen in the House. The Republican Party hears two voices right now: massive corporate interests and the "social right," to which they need to pander to get elected. They don't think anyone else even belongs at the table when decisions are made.)

The Roll Call Is Here

[Bimo_Dude]

House Roll Call for H.R. 5252

My Representative voted in favor of this. I already sent him a letter to let him know that I am not happy with his action. I'll be sending a letter to my senator later today demanding that he vote against this (not that it'll make a difference, but one can hope).

Holy crap.

[TomatoMan]

Let's just add a little emphasis here... it's amazing how slippery you can be with vague qualifications slipped into your rhetoric.

Despite the rhetoric however, there is currently no evidence that broadband operators are going out of their way to block access to any widely used websites or similar online services. In fact, any significant discriminatory behavior on the part of broadband service providers ( BSPs ) would generally be financially counterproductive considering that BSPs make more money by carrying more traffic. On the rare occasion that a BSP may actively regulate traffic or impose differential pricing schemes on their network, it would likely be for rather sensible reasons. Network owners may want to discourage the use of certain devices on their networks to avoid system crashes, interference, or signal theft...

...and so forth. Yes, that's very slippery of you indeed, Representative Boehner. You're a capable politician.

Instead of being so preoccupied with maximizing consumer welfare within the confines of existing systems, "net neutrality" proponents would be better served to put more thought and energy into how future alternative networks may be created.

In other words, "If you don't like it, go make another internet; this one's ours."

Oooh! The Magical Free Market Fairy Will Fix It!

[spun]

Boo the fuck hoo for the backbone providers, who built most of their backbones with my tax dollars. Or didn't you know that? The bastards run their lines over our public property, with money from our pockets, then charge us for the privilege of using what should be our lines, then charge us again in the form of extra charges to content providers outside their network. Net neutrality was the way things used to be, when the greedy bastards signed the effing contracts that let them get their cushy government sponsored monopoluies, and now they want to reneg on the deal. Fuck them and fuck the free market that lets wealth get concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Adam Smith, get your damn invisible hand out of my back pocket!

Re:What's to stop them from downthrottling too?

[Qzukk]

How can you compete with something that's free?

By providing a service thats worth it, obviously. If the "free" service is crap, sell service that isn't. If the residents are happy playing with crap, then curse the corporations before you as you attempt to use marketing to educate the public instead of turning them into the mindless sheep who are happy with the crap that corporations and governments sell them.

Of course, it also means that if the city is charging Google to allow its residents to access google, and google is refusing to pay, you won't be able to charge google, otherwise your service would be just as crappy, AND you'll be charging for it.

Re:Peculiar?

[russellh]

Toll lanes on the information superhighway... wow... the big problem here is that the people who shape and pass these bills actually use terms like "information superhighway".

They're not talking about information driving along on the broadband highway. They're making an analogy to the construction of the highway system as a public good. It's a perfect analogy as far as analogies go. Do you want wal-mart or comcast to own the roads you drive on? Do you want to have to pay a special fee if you wish to drive to Target instead of Wal-Mart when Wal-Mart owns the road? You cannot own the road, you cannot use a toll or control of a road to shut out competition, and you cannot get special access or priorities on the road based on your market capitalization. The net should be the same way.

Re:Oooh! The Magical Free Market Fairy Will Fix It

[RandomPrecision]

Would that be the laissez-fairy?

It's a great extension...

[sean.peters]

AcronymKillerFox is a great extension... but I didn't understand your reference about turning bathroom tissue into bathroom tissue.

Sean

[rimshot]

DemocracyNow.org

[Draracle]

Today's broadcast has a good interview on this subject. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/0 9/1427218

You can check that out here.

[XorNand]

C-SPAN has an interactive map that shows you how your reps voted on this issue. The first vote was to send the bill back to committee to reconsider the net neutrality issues. A vote of "yes" means that your rep was concerned about net neutrality. It failed horribly, mainly along party lines (surprised?)

The second vote was whether to pass the bill as-is, which passed by a 3 to 1 margin. A vote of "yes" means that your rep didn't think net neutrality was all that important. However, it's not quite as damning as the first vote since the passage of the bill does make certain markets (cable TV) more competitive.

God I'd love to see the GOPs stranglehold on both houses broken this November. I'm not a Democrat, but it's amazing how dangerously one-sided the federal goverment has become over the past six years.