Slashdot Mirror
Net Neutrality or Not?
Reverse Gear writes "CNN has two commentaries about net neutrality with quite opposing viewpoints. Craig Newmark discusses how the legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would efficiently remove net neutrality, while Mike McCurry writes about how the big companies should pay their fair share for the physical upgrade of the internet. From Newmark's commentary: 'Telecommunication companies already control the pipes that carry the Internet into your home. Now they want control which sites you visit and how you experience them. They would provide privileged access for themselves and their preferred partners while charging other businesses for varying levels of service.'"
To those that hate government intervention on principle, I'm not big on it either. However, in this situation, we'd end up worse off with the few network providers with an iron grip on who gets to see what. It's just a matter of who gets control.
They've got more in common with Tony Soprano than any business visionary. "That's a nice website, it'd be a shame if no one saw it. Telcos and cable companies are tripping over each other on the way to congress and the courts to try to each other from entering their markets. They'r threated by civic minded citizens in townships sick of listening to telcos tell them how great the network connectivity they get will be, and how they're doing them favors, but they'll just have to wait a few more years to get fiber out there.
It's a simple money grab, they see the cash Google and them make and they want to wet their beak. Right now the content providers have been outlobbied. They haven't been out-argued, just out-lobbied. Being a monopoly is great work if you can get it. You don't have to worry about competition, just the occasional complaints from the people that don't much like that they pay more.
I agree with your point, but one nitpick... A "monopoly" is a single company dominating an industry. An "oligopoly" is when a small number of companies have the share that same level of control. With the deregulation that occured in 1996 and resulting mass consolidation, things are rapidly becoming an oligopoly.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
according to savetheinternet.com, Hands Off The Internet is an astroturf group set up by the telephone and cable companies, so Mike McCurry from the opposing viewpoint is just a corporate shill.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The proper response to tiering is a TCP/IP death penalty. Basically "if they tier, don't peer". If $FUCKTARDCORP wants to make a tiered intarweb, source-route around their asses. If they screw up the last mile, find another ISP. This is a battle that should be fought in routing protocols and markets, not in Crapitol Hell.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Currently ISP'S are Common Carriers. They recieve legal protection because of this. If they start blocking or regulating traffic they will put themselves into a defacto position where they have to police said traffic. If they are blocking traffic from websites that didnt cough up they will be in a position of liability for not blocking P2P traffic or emails between terrorists. The above being said what the heck was going on in congress ? Did the braincell they collectively timeshare have the day off when they passed this ? I mean my god lets say the phone company decided variable rate pricing was a good idea ahh youre a wealthy bank want to call your customers its going to cost you.
In it, Geoff points out that for a very long time, telecommunication companies were monopolies or in some cases oligopolies (a few companies controling the market). They owned everything from the handset on one end to the handset on the other end and any feature like "call waiting" or "answering machines" had to be bought from them.
Depending on what part of the world you lived in, from the 70s to the 90s, these companies were forced to change from market monopolies to competative markets of differentiated goods. This is almost always a very rough transition to make and many companies, in any industry, often go bankrupt before they can make the structural, political, technical and cultural changes need to survive in such markets. The telecommunication industry is no different.
While the telecommunication companies are still trying to deal with competing in a differentiated market, e.g. the 80's slogan from AT&T "they are making second class phones!", to the huge number of options on cell phones, Geoff points out that they are really facing an even harder transition. They are having to go from a competative market of differentiated goods to a market of commodities. Even companies that are used to competative markets have a hard time successfully transitioning to commoditiy markets, again, they require even more changes to the organization. People just want to push packets.
Telecommunication companies thought they could create differentiated products like "video on demand" where everyone would get their TV, movies and music from the telecommunication companies. Instead, P2P systems have taken care of those needs, with the result of people not wanting huge downloads from a central company, but rather they will download from other "end users". But, even TV shows and Movies are just the tip of the iceberg. People are generating their own content and are bypassing the both the traditional media companies and the telecommuncation companies. They are creating pictures of their kids, and porn, They are creating blogs and small business websites. New features of the net are not added by the big companies under careful regulation, but spring forth from millions of places. The amount of data that is being passed around that has nothing to do with the big companies is mind boggling, and it is just going to get bigger.
People don't want content from the ISPs, they want packets pushed around, and that means a commodity market for packet delivery. Telecommunication companies that can adapt to a commodity market will survive. Ones that can't will talk about how they need to charge people for their "enhanced content".
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
We can still voice our opinion to the people that make these decisions. Check these out to find out how to contact your Senator.
It's Our Net - Contact A Senator
Save The Internet - Sign The Petition
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally on the side of net neutrality and keeping the fucking telecoms from getting paid twice for selling the same bandwidth -- I just thing that, rhetorically, thumping the "keep net neutrality" meme over and over is going to confuse the issue. Because it's not really about keeping the net neutral -- it's much simpler than that.
The problem is that companies like AT&T are claiming that Google is getting a "free ride" because Google's data goes over AT&T's pipes, but Google isn't explicitly paying AT&T. The problem with this argument is that AT&T's bandwidth IS getting paid for, just not by Google. And Google IS paying for bandwidth, it's just not paying AT&T for it. Google pays its ISP, that ISP pays another ISP, and so on along the chain, somewhere in which sits AT&T.
AT&T gets paid; the problem is they want Google to not only pay its own ISP to send data into the Internet, AT&T also wants Google to pay AT&T to "insure that your data gets high-priority treatment." This is unnecessary and statements like McCurry's that claim it's important to ensure the future of the "creaky Internet" are horseshit.
The mantra is this: The telecoms want to get paid twice for selling the same bandwidth. When someone wants to get paid twice for selling the same thing, that's usually called fraud in the real world. Ever seen "The Producers"?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased