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Dueling Network Neutrality Commentary on NPR
cube farmer writes Wednesday National Public Radio featured a commentary by telecom representative Scott Cleland in opposition to Network Neutrality legislation. Thursday Craig Newmark, the Craig behind craigslist, countered that Network Neutrality is essential for consumers. Who made the stronger case?
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=vi ewfeature&id=1497
Lawmakers don't know enough technically to make a law that wouldn't have unforeseen and damaging consequences, even if they supported net neutrality.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
First, net neutrality is really a misnomer. It's really just special interest legislation, dressed up to sound less self-serving. Did you know Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are lobbying for net neutrality? If they're successful, they'll get a special, low-government-set price for the bandwidth they use, while everyone else -- consumers, businesses and government -- will have to pay a competitive price for bandwidth. [It] doesn't sound very neutral to me.
This guy deserves some sort of prize for shameless, bald-faced lying.
I blogged about this yesterday (http://lizawashere.typepad.com/liza_was_here/2006 /06/net_neutrality_.html), but in a nutshell, when a group of incredibly smart people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Gigi Sohn, Larry Lessig, Danny Wietzner, Susan Crawford, and others all agree...
AND they are joined by groups as diverse as Consumers Union, Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and MoveOn.org...
AND they're opposed by traditional telcos and cable companies...
Who do you think is right?
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
...was when the telcom shill tried to make it seem like neutrality would be harming the ISPs, when in truth it would only harm their ability to extort money from internet based services.
ISPs already get money for bandwidth usage from sites they host AND their CUSTOMERS. How much more can they go for with a straight face?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
It's one of the logical fallacies to present two sides to a question that has more than two answers. Federal regulation requiring net neutrality vs. Telcos charging certain users more. Other options could include, for example, telcos can charge what they want but lose their monopoly on providing service. They would have to provide access to the home for any competitor on their wires at a rate no higher than they charge to their own internet business.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Scott Cleland: Amazingly, the proponents of this radical change in policy don't even have any real evidence of a problem, only unsubstantiated assertions about hypothetical problems.
It's called a concern. If I hand some firecrackers and some matches to my 6-year-old and turn him loose, I don't have any real evidence of a problem, only unsubstatiated assertions about hypothetical problems.
I felt he had the more persuasive arguments, which is a shame since so many of them were utter bullocks. I feel like Craig should have answered more directly the issue of the backbone networks which are "privately" owned, but really represent a public trust.
Oh well, I guess I just need to resign myself to playing a rigged game.
One thing that has continually confused me in this debate is the idea that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo aren't already paying for their bandwidth. The telcos lay the wire, sell it to ISPs, and the ISPs sell bandwidth, plain and simple. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what the telcos WANT to do is find some way of charging the big companies MORE because they use bandwidth--but they already pay for it. It's not like Google is holding a gun to AT&T's head, here--Google has to pay for the hundreds upon hundreds of terabytes of traffic they generate. So what the hell is the problem? All network neutrality is saying is that you can't make someone pay more for their bandwidth if they happen to actually use it. Am I misunderstanding this? Where, in any of the amendments (the current being the Snow-Morgan) trying to force net neutrality into the telco bill, do they mention price fixing?
"Net neutrality proponents worry that telecom, wireless and cable companies might one day favor their own content and applications over others."
He says this, but nowhere does he say that the ISPs won't do it. Normally when I make arguments, I try to refute the opposition's points, especially when I myself bring them up. Then he goes on to try to scare his audience about Big Bad Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo supporting net neutrality and then making up something about them getting a cut-rate deal while consumers pay a "competitive" price. Wait, didn't he just say he's "net competition" proponent?
Besides, if anyone has questions about net neutrality, they should just ask a ninja about it.
I think Craig makes the strongest case.
But seriously does anyone believe that other guy when he says:
So, because google wants to be treated like everyone else, they are actually asking to be treated special?
And the boiler plate argument on the side is now that it is just some "fear" that we all have about the big bad telecoms... of course that fear isn't based on statements by their CEOs that it is their intention to start charging for lower latency as well as more bandwidth. I mean it is just a fear until they actually start doing it... even though they said they are going to do it. I mean how do you know someone is going to pull the trigger, until they actually do. And just because google and other companies have already said that the telecoms have approached them with these threats, I'm sure the telecoms where just kidding around. Those kidders.
Just wait, when the telecoms roll out their new hidden fees, they will just start calling it something else and tell us that all our "fears" where just irrational. And all that lack of choice we are left with is just "the market" and has nothing to do with their legitamite business practices.
I haven't heard Craig's yet but have no doubt that it will be brimming with all sincerity that Cleland's lacked (regardless whether he's right).
If the ISP's really believe they have the better argument then I suggest one of their CEO's step up to the plate and explain to us why. Leave the shilling to the lobbyists and their paid minions in DC to buy the laws.
Lastly, shame on NPR for letting the ISPs place a paid spokesmouth to argue their case!
I am very much in favor of net neutrality, but this may be opening pandora's box. Once the government is regulating something, it is extremely difficult to stop; the nasty tenticals of government meddling just expand. Furthermore, as another post mentions, our congressmen are not technical experts, and it will be difficult for them to draft a bill which doesn't have bad side effects. Especially with lobbyists trying to stick loopholes in the bill.
Furthermore, I am not convinced that a bill is necessary to maintain net neutrality. I for one will definitely vote with my dollars: as soon as some ISP keeps me from going to websites, I move to the next one. The only question is if there is enough competition for me to find somewhere else to go.
Qxe4
Is he saying that only those businesses lobbying for net neutrality will get it? Because here, he's saying "everyone else", including businesses, will have to pay "a competitive price" (whatever that means). Are Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo not businesses? What the hell is this idiot talking about?
I was of the impression that net neutrality had to do with, among other things, the idea that if it isn't "neutral", then, say, Comcast could partner with, say, Amazon, and give priority to Amazon traffic to the end-user. If said user tries to visit, say, Barnes & Noble, the site will be much slower than Amazon, because Barnes & Noble isn't partered with his ISP. (Same with game servers, VoIP providers, etc.)
This is more or less what he says here: Uh, who said anything about pricing? All I want is for the law to say "ISPs are not allowed to prioritize packets based on business agreements or partnerships or whatever else. The user pays for a 6 meg pipe and gets to send and receive whatever bits he wants, period."
You know.. sort of the way it is now.
Since I can't read Craig's argument, I can't say who "won", but from this, the guy is alternating between babbling and outright lying.
And of course, consider the question another way: "Two men debate net neutrality. One would stand to directly profit from preventing net neutrality, while to the other, it wouldn't make much of a difference. Who do you think is more honest and objective?"
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
I'm shocked that NPR aired this. I understand giving airing sides of an argument, but this is nothing but lies. I don't mean that I don't like it, or I disagree - I mean that factually this is nothing but lies. NPR needs to do a little bit of fact checking before airing something so inaccurate. Usually I like NPR, but this is abhorrent.
Worse yet, is that this isn't new: These guys are winning this battle because they are putting out so much misinformation.
Two things stuck out at me wrt Cleland's position.
While Cleland wants to make sure you know exactly who's behind "net neutrality" (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo), he's standing in front of the anonymous NetCompetition.org. That would be the US telcos, cable companies, lobbyists and trade groups. Surely they are the bastions of fairness, light, hope and the American Way.
Then there's the issue of painting the other camp as describing some unknown phantom:
Amazingly, the proponents of this radical change in policy don't even have any real evidence of a problem, only unsubstantiated assertions about hypothetical problems.
Then he lands several unsustantiated assertions himself (somewhat edited):
high cost to consumers, slower Internet, higher prices, less choice, less privacy, more government surveillance
Gee, no Global Warming and Avian Flu?
Well, Cleland claimed both that:
All else aside, if a law wouldn't limit their behavior, how would it limit their behavior? I only heard a few minutes of the interview on my way to work, but Cleland immediately lost based on logical faults alone.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
1. It does worsen your connection. Your side of the connection will be the same, but the service side will be diminished so overall your connection will be degraded. It's like construction around where you work won't affect your driveway, but it could add considerable time to your commute.
2. It does cost you more money. If the services you use are paying extortion they will pass the cost on to you. Additionally the telcos will shut down VoIP so one of the huge cost savings benefit of having broadband is gone.
3. As above, the companies that can benefit from the charge will pay the fee, but it will be passed on to the consumer.
Why should you care? Well your tax dollars paid for the bulk of the infrastructure the telcos are trying to steal. Additionally they were given huge government payouts to improve the infrastructure and they haven't. So in effect you will be paying more for getting less and told to like it.
The biggest threat of tiered internet is censorship. Removing the egalitarian nature of the internet will allow for huge scale censorship. Additionally, the censorship is not just limited to thoughts but to business. The leveling field that was the promise of the internet will be removed and small businesses will be censored from doing business thus the large companies will keep advantage. Innovation will be victim. Would you want to live in a world that couldn't have given us amazon, ebay or slashdot?
No they are probably not going to completely censor porn or anything but be assured the only porn you will have access to will be AT&T porn. It will be Potterville all over again.
My position on Net Neutrality is very simple. If someone provides Internet service to me, they are providing the service of routing my Internet packets to and from the Internet. Nothing else. If they have email service, or Usenet, or VoIP, it is on the Internet, and should be treated like any other Internet host. Nobody gets special treatment.
It's not fair to Internet-based companies to allow network providers to charge both consumers and producers when only the consumers have an account with them. Take the telephone system as an analogy. Similarly, it's been subsidized by the government, and is almost ubiquitous. When I make a long-distance call, it's charged at the same rate once it's outside a certain area. The person receiving the call doesn't get charged (because the caller paid for the call, and the recipient already pays for the physical connection). If network neutrality didn't exist, it would be like allowing each switching office that my call goes through to charge another fee, or rather if the phone company charged large companies to receive calls from consumers, even though the large company has already paid for phone service. The company may have to pay more for a high-volume connection, just as an Internet company pays more for a bigger pipe, and they might have to pay per-minute, just as many larger connections charge per byte, but once the connection is paid for, it's paid for.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Rather like asking, "If I am immune to nuclear explosions, why should I care if Iran gets the bomb?" The conditions posed in your query do not apply.
The sort of "tiered internet" desired by "big telecom" would worsen your connection if you weren't visiting their or their partner's sites. The whole idea is that your ISP - call them "VerEvilCast" - makes a deal with some content provider - call them "CMM" - to prioritize access to CMM.com over FauxNews.com. If you're a VerEvilCast customer who perfers FauxNews.com, this has a definite negative impact on your connection.
And if you're running a small website CMMSucks.com, wherein you detail the evil doings of CMM, it sucks to be you when VerEvilCast customers suddenly get slowed - or perhaps nonexistant - access to your site.
The reason this hasn't happened (much) to date is because of old regluation requiring telephone lines (including DSL) to be "common carriers", that take a neutral stance on content. The question now is whether this should be continued and expanded to cable, fiber, etc. ISPs, or whether big telecom and big media should be set free to capture the dollars, eyeballs, hearts, and minds of Americans by any means necessary (necessary to the bottom line, that is).
If VerEvilCast was one of a half-dozen providers available, and if consumers understood the basics of how the net works, then perhaps the vaunted "free market" could sort this out. Again, neither of these conditions apply.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
when a group of incredibly smart people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Gigi Sohn, Larry Lessig, Danny Wietzner, Susan Crawford, and others all agree...
AND they are joined by groups as diverse as Consumers Union, Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and MoveOn.org...
Not to mention that they speak of their own volition while Scott Cleland is getting paid for espousing his (the telcos?) so-called opinion.
Yeah, I was really bothered by it. Heard it while driving and was saying out loud 'lie... lie... wow, that's misleading... another lie... already happens...'
Ugh.
who thinks that Microsoft should pay for the traffic caused by millions of people downloading security patches for Windows?
I hope you're not insinuating that they are not paying. Because they do. They buy internet access, and thats how the files get to you, when you download them using the internet access you paid for. Both ends of this transaction are already paid for.
You know, you remind me of a roommate I had in college who asked me if he could put a webpage up on his windows 98 computer. I showed him microsoft's Personal Web Server, and he went about getting a website up on his computer. A few weeks later, he asked me why nobody could get to his website when his computer was turned off. You see, he thought the internet was this magical place where websites just floated free in the ether until someone wanted to visit them. He had no idea that the stuff he downloaded on the internet was coming from another computer uploading it somewhere else.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If creating a tiered internet: 1. does not worsen my connection *at all* 2. does not cost me *any* more money (assuming I am not benefiting from it), either directly or indirectly 3. is *entirely* paid for by people or companies that can benefit from it
And if you could shit gold bars, you'd be rich.
Let's break it down.
1. It does. If you have Verizon, and Google refuses to pay Verizon, and you like Google, your access to Google isn't as zippy as it would otherwise be - they've slowed it down.
2. Sure it will. Companies that have to pay these extortion fees will pass on their costs to you - more advertising on their sites instead of content, higher fees for their paid content and services, etc.
3. There is no benefit other than to the ISPs. "You can now pay us money to get the same service you used to get!" is not a benefit.
I agree with you about that approach, but if it's taken, we should be on our toes.
Remember that this is exactly what telecom "deregulation" was supposed to do -- but in the end, the old monopolies used dirty tricks like providing poor service and broken business protocols for competitors, so we're back where we were in the beginning. The monopolies were able to trick us out of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and also tricked us into giving up some of the anti-monopoly measures under the guise of introducing fake competition; they never delivered the open systems that were promised in return.
Mr. Cleland says...
They want Congress to pass a new law to ban that practice by regulating the price of broadband service and the way it's sold.
Technically true -- for the history of the Internet, this was enforced by agency regulation and not Congressional law. Now it's about to change, unless a law requires it to stay the same.
Now, net competition proponents, like me, believe that the best way to guard a free and open Internet is to maintain the free and open competition that exists today, not create a new government-monitored, socialized Internet.
"Maintain" is a falsity. "Socialized", yeah, the Internet had no government support in the past.
First, net neutrality is really a misnomer. It's really just special interest legislation, dressed up to sound less self-serving. Did you know Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are lobbying for net neutrality? If they're successful, they'll get a special, low-government-set price for the bandwidth they use, while everyone else -- consumers, businesses and government -- will have to pay a competitive price for bandwidth. [It] doesn't sound very neutral to me.
This paragraph implies that the above companies would get a special price mandated by the legislation, which is a lie.
Right now, you pay as a consumer to connect your PC to the Internet. You pay as a provider to connect to the Internet. These prices are (generally) based on bandwidth -- regardless of what you are doing with that bandwidth. Of course this works great for Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo -- they are the most popular. If prices suddenly doubled for them, maybe they wouldn't be able to afford the quality that makes them so popular.
Second, net neutrality would be a 180 degree reversal of the government's highly successful policy to promote competition and not regulate the Internet.
False. As stated above, "net neutrality" has been the status quo on the Internet, it just didn't need to be a law because no one was trying to change it.
Finally, net neutrality legislation would be a lousy trade off for consumers. The consumer benefits would be small, but the cost to consumers would be huge. Price regulation would destroy any economic incentive to innovate and invest in the private networks that make up the Internet. Over time, we would end up with a slower Internet and higher broadband prices and taxes for consumers, less broadband choice and slower broadband deployment to all Americans. And it would also mean less privacy for all Americans, as net neutrality would require more government monitoring and surveillance of Internet traffic.
Given that "net neutrality" is the current state of affairs, I'd say the Internet is doing pretty well from a business perspective.
Since virtually every paragraph in this commentary includes a misleading or false statement, I'll go with the other one, thanks. I hope most listeners knew enough to do the same.
for example, telcos can charge what they want but lose their monopoly on providing service. They would have to provide access to the home for any competitor on their wires at a rate no higher than they charge to their own internet business.
Extend this to alternative voice services providers, and you basicly end upsplitting off the local loop and turning it into a seperate business. A bit of regulation and oversight is required it seems, but for what I can tell, such a setup is doing wonders for competition in both telephony and internet access markets in Europe.
This however has little to do with network neutrality. Network neutrality in the context of the internet is about transport providers not creating barriers for content providers regardless of whom those content providers are. It has NOTHING to do with what a transport provider charges its end-user (please note that content providers are paying their own transport providers already and as a rule of thumb they are not customers of the ISP that you get your dsl/cable/dial-in connection from.
At best one can say that the kind of competition allowed by unbundling the local loop is likely to result in better alternatives, some of which may offer an 'open' internet.
Issue at hand is imho that transport services should by definition be content neutral. This is better for them and for the customer because it makes content purely a responsibility of the content provider, or in other words, doign away with network neutrality results in transport providers becomming (partially) responsible for the content they carry. I leave it to your imagination what the result of that will be.
For as far as the ISP argument goes.. yes, Google is making money thanks to your users, but realize you wouldn't have paying users without such content services, in other words, YOU ARE BEING PAYED FOR IT ALREADY by your own customers which you would not have without said content providers.
First, let's define "your connection". It is not just your connection to your isp, it is your connection to each website,mailserver, streaming audio server, etc. out there on the internet. Unless you only connect to web sites hosted at your ISP, that is.
/. and you pay MY ISP because I viewed it.
Second, internet economic structure: Google already pays for the bandwidth from their provider to Google. You already pay for the connection between you and your ISP. Part of your fees pay for your ISP's upstream connection. Part of Google's fees pay for their ISP's upstream connection. The backbone providers have peering agreements and pay each other fees based on the amount of traffic that goes between them.
The Telcos in their role as backbone providers and as your(the user's) ISP want to stop carrying traffic from you to google and back unless google pays them.
So, if google gets behind paying your ISP, you will not have access to google. Google may be able to pay the rate, but what about smaller companies, or non-commercial blogs, or non-profit orgs? The internet will become smaller.
So to answer your specific questions:
1. Your connection to everyone but your ISP and those big corporations that can handle accounting for and paying all end-point ISPs will not be available anymore.
I'd call that worse.
2. You continue to pay the same. Unless you generate traffic outside your ISP. Your project web site gets linked on
3. One way I can see for a web site to cover their new bandwidth costs is to charge you. See, the ads only cover their end of the connection now.
Don't think that Google/Yahoo and all the other major content providers are simply looking out for your best interests so that you can get your search results as fast as possible. Even a website that hasn't paid its protection racket money to the broadband providers will still be just as fast or faster than it is currently. Just as broadband providers realize it, the content providers also realize that this fight is about next-gen technologies that will require substantially more bandwidth. These companies would be foolish to not be considering forays into the internet-enabled TV or phone markets. We're already seeing actual competition to traditional landlines (Vonage/Skype/etc) and we're already seeing precursors to fully-fledged competition for the currently entrenched cable/satellite providers (Google video and iTMS video).
The argument that Ma Bell wants to censor my little blog is just as much of a red-herring as the argument that content providers want to use the network for free. In the end, net neutrality would be a benefit to the consumer, but it needs to be written correctly to ensure that classes of traffic can be prioritized above other classes of traffic while ensuring that no provider's traffic is prioritized above another's. Allowing TV/Voice/other-real-time-traffic to be prioritized above less time-sensative material makes a lot of sense. Allowing SBC TV traffic to be prioritized above Google TV traffic will mean consumers continue to have little to no choice of providers.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
The telcos/cable companies want a tiered internet so they can offer services, such as video on demand/ videoconferencing, which require large bandwidth and low latency. However, they need to improve the infrastructure to do this. They don't want to spend the money upgrading everything if they have to do all the expense of building the infrastructure and then someone else comes along and sells the services. So, they want a tiered internet so the other people who are taking full advantage of this new infrastructure have to pay more, too.
At first that doesn't sound unreasonable. The fear is that once they create a tiered internet, it's not clear how it really would work. Will the telco's charge rates that effectively shut everyone out from these services but themselves? Will anyone hoping to use the new faster internet (not really a new internet just high priority on an improved internet) need to negotiate with every company that provides a pipe in the country? Will the little guy get screwed? Will the rest of the internet slow down because there is now all this high priority traffic which dominates?
Personally, I don't think the companies controlling the pipes should be allowed to put content on them. It's like having the roads own by a trucking company. It gives them too much power to favor their own.
Here's my take on it: if you could guarantee a competitive marketplace, then yes, deregulation would work nicely, and the free market would keep everything in order. The only problem is that there cannot be a large competitive market for last-mile connectivity, due to physical constraints. How many physical options do you have for getting the broadband connection to your house? The phone line and the cable line. Let's even add broadband-over-powerline here, assuming it ever gets off the ground. Then you have satellite, if you consider it a competitor (I don't, because the necessarily long ping times make VoIP and other two-way realtime communication over it impossible). Finally, we can throw in distributed WiFi as a pipe dream (one that last-mile owners are, ironically, trying to quash via government intervention to pass laws against it). So that is a maximum of four, maybe five competitive last-mile providers to your house.
Four choices? Seems great! And due to vertical expansion, all of them will restrict access to Vonage in favor of their own VoIP solution. It's trivial for a handful of corporations to agree to fix prices under the table, and that's exactly what they will do, because you won't have any other options. What will you do, find a way to literally pipe in broadband via the plumbing? IP over Topsoil? Perhaps Data-Over-Natural-Gas will be developed.
Anyways, that's how I see it. Just like communism, laissez-faire capitalism may be a great theory, but runs into some nasty real-world snags in practice.
who thinks that Microsoft should pay for the traffic caused by millions of people downloading security patches for Windows?
I am absilutely sure that they are in fact paying whomever provides their connectivity (akamai in most cases I believe) for their bandwidth use. What is more, due to the capacity they need, they actually are paying a more expensive provider that can handle such bandwidth.
THe other side is payed for by the subscription fees that end-users pay to their ISP. Anything between MS' provider and your residential ISP is payed for by peering contracts between different transit providers.
So, it is all payed for already and there is no need to introduce any new fees or extra payments.
btw, no it really doesn't matter if it is MS or someone else, and using them in order to turn a logical argument into an emotional one is first of all pretty obvious and second it makes you look like someone who is pushing an agenda instead of trying to find out what is best/true etc.
I now think that the best solution is to get the regulating bodies out of the way so that competition can be employed. As soon as there's a competitive marketplace for last mile high speed connectivity, if the cableco restricts my access to vonage, there's lots of other choices. They'll lose market share and the benefits of network neutrality will be achieved without all of the heavy handed (and ineffective) government oversite.
I bet you don't live in a rural area, do ya?
Now I don't know what the regulations are on phone companies, but I can assure you: there is not enough profit to motivate these companies to lay fiber to every house in the country. There is problably plenty of profit to be had for say 50% of the homes - the ones in cities and large towns (I'm pulling all these numbers out of my ass, folks). But the folks in these less urban, small towns, and downright rural places need Water, Power, and Connectivity.
There is no way they're going to get a phone line unless it's required/regulated, because it just doesn't make financial sense to run water/power/phone line to some po-dunk town of 30 a hundred miles from anything. This is where capitalism falls down and regulation has to step in.
And that's probably a great arguement for non-neutrality. If that po-dunk town is on it's own subnet, make google and all the other big media providers pony up for the 2nd to last 100 miles these 30 folks need for their connectivity, thus distributing the cost to the big data providers. The only problem is that the network companies are also data providers, and can cut themselves a break.
If the bandwidth providers had never been allowed to also be content providers, I think this would be a non-issue.
I was disappointed with the argument for the anti-neutrality stance, and disappointed with Craig's rebuttal.
Here's why:
First, the anti-neutrality Scott Cleland. He says,
"Net neutrality proponents worry that telecom, wireless and cable companies might one day favor their own content and applications over others. They want Congress to pass a new law to ban that practice by regulating the price of broadband service and the way it's sold."
As I understand the Net Neutrality argument, no one wants Congress to regulate the price of broadband service. I think most people are quite content with paying a competitive price (that is, a price driven by competition, not regulation) for access to the internet, with the price varying depending on how big a pipe you want to rent. This is true whether you are a consumer, paying $50/month for cable internet access, or Google, paying who knows how much per month for the bandwidth they consume. I don't hear anyone clammoring for Congress to regulate these prices.
What people do want, however, is for Congress to make it illegal for any middle man in between the content provider's ISP and the content consumer's ISP to charge an extra toll, a toll that is certain to be levied based on A) content type and B) the size of the pocketbook of the sender.
Cleland goes on to say:
"Now, net competition proponents, like me, believe that the best way to guard a free and open Internet is to maintain the free and open competition that exists today, not create a new government-monitored, socialized Internet.
The thing is, I think most people do want an internet like it exists today - a free market system where the phone company sells bandwidth to ISP's who in turn re-sell it on either end of the fat pipes. We all pay for access to the fat pipes through the fees we pay for the little pipes on either end.
What we don't want is for the owners of the fat pipes to be able to tripple-dip - collecting fees from the sender's end of the pipe, the receiver's end of the pipe, and collecting a fee based on what kind of content is being sent and who sent or received it.
Cleland also says:
"Did you know Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are lobbying for net neutrality? If they're successful, they'll get a special, low-government-set price for the bandwidth they use, while everyone else -- consumers, businesses and government -- will have to pay a competitive price for bandwidth. [It] doesn't sound very neutral to me."
This is news to me. I have never heard that Microsoft, Google, or anyone else is looking for regulated prices for their access to the internet. I think they are quite content to pay competitive prices for access to the Internet. What they don't want to do is pay a competitive price for access to the internet and then have their data being tolled again by every middle man who own's a piece of copper or fiber between them and their consumers.
He further says:
"Finally, net neutrality legislation would be a lousy trade off for consumers. The consumer benefits would be small, but the cost to consumers would be huge. Price regulation would destroy any economic incentive to innovate and invest in the private networks that make up the Internet. Over time, we would end up with a slower Internet and higher broadband prices and taxes for consumers, less broadband choice and slower broadband deployment to all Americans. And it would also mean less privacy for all Americans, as net neutrality would require more government monitoring and surveillance of Internet traffic."
This is just plain crap. No one is saying that the backbone owners, the phone companies, can't charge ISPs whatever they want to or need to for access to the pipes. These costs get passed on to the ISPs customers based on how much bandwidth they want. There will constantly be a demand for higher and higher speeds. The phone company can, and
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
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Fox News's Bill: $0
The fallacy in this argument is believing that the market will favor the better service [read: content providers]. However, if there's one thing you can take away from corporate history, is that monopolies win 98% of the time. Rockerfeller, Gates, and Ford all employed their monopolies effectively. Historically it was only a more nimble competitor that tended to topple the bigger fish, but rarely (if ever) has anything gotten in the way of a successful monopoly.
Everyone keeps focusing on the big fish in this struggle, without realizing that it's the little fish that will get squashed. It's the ma and pop shops that will have to go belly up, because they don't have the deep pockets to fight an extra bill from the telco's. Corporations like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have enough money to keep their monetary losses to a minimum, but small time sites do not.
What we're essentially considering here, is whether the telco's have an arbitrary right to charge certain sites more. If this passes, how difficult would it be for well connected people to start censoring the internet this way? I'm not saying it will happen, but power like this often devolves towards abuse, and there are probably only 1 or 2 politicians with enough know-how to keep this abuse in check. I find it difficult to believe that any good can come from this (except for the telcos), as history has a definite pattern to favor the monopoly in question.
Extracts from TFA
.....and that is because the referee is having to interfere on the playing field when one team is starting to play dirty.....
"Now, net competition proponents, like me, believe that the best way to guard a free and open Internet is to maintain the free and open competition that exists today, not create a new government-monitored, socialized Internet. "
He's playing on the fear of being 'monitored', but the only monitoring by the government in this instance is the price of bandwidth.
"First, net neutrality is really a misnomer. It's really just special interest legislation, dressed up to sound less self-serving. "
U'm yes. It is special interest legislation aimed at the self-serving telco's. So?
"Did you know Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are lobbying for net neutrality? "
Yes, I did. That is because they are going to be hit hard by a non-neutral internet. Without a neutral internet, Telco's have free reign on charging Yahoo and Google whatever they like. However, the non-neutrality is likely to end up hurting the consumer through throttled bandwidth to Yahoo and Google, in the Telco's hope of consumers using their product. Yahoo and Google offer plenty of free services like web-mail, FlickR, Maps, Search etc, and the only reason they use high traffic, is because of the large number of consumers CHOOSING to use their services BECAUSE they are better!!
"If they're successful, they'll get a special, low-government-set price for the bandwidth they use, while everyone else -- consumers, businesses and government -- will have to pay a competitive price for bandwidth. [It] doesn't sound very neutral to me. "
Google / Yahoo wont get a 'special low government set price', they will just get the same rate that is commercially available to others - on the commercial market!!. The Telco's shouldn't be able to charge more for UDP packets (used for streaming) over TCP/IP packets! (web browsing). I can understand telco's tiered charging for MBps, which Google and Yahoo already pay a premium for. You think Googles internet connection is cheap?
"Second, net neutrality would be a 180 degree reversal of the government's highly successful policy to promote competition and not regulate the Internet. "
"Amazingly, the proponents of this radical change in policy don't even have any real evidence of a problem, only unsubstantiated assertions about hypothetical problems. "
That is because the Telco's haven't done the dirty on the consumer YET. This is a crime waiting to happen. The Telco's are clearly positioning themselves to commit extortion, they just haven't sent you your Internet bill:
Google Video charge: $50
Yahoo maps Charge: $80
"Large Unfriendly Telco" with heaps of popups and crap search tools $0.50c
(you saved $100 by using US!!)
"Finally, net neutrality legislation would be a lousy trade off for consumers. The consumer benefits would be small, but the cost to consumers would be huge. "
Now that is a threat if ever I've heard one.....
"Price regulation would destroy any economic incentive to innovate and invest in the private networks that make up the Internet. Over time, we would end up with a slower Internet and higher broadband prices and taxes for consumers, less broadband choice and slower broadband deployment to all Americans. "
It just gives the Telco's an excuse not to roll out services at the rate the consumer wants ($$$$). It is now clearly obvious the Telco's are trying to maximize profit per Mbps, not provide more Mbps!!!
"And it would also mean less privacy for all Americans, as net neutrality would require more government monitoring and surveillance of Internet traffic."
Fishing for an emotive response from the weak minded here.... The only surveillance (IN THIS CASE) would be for the Government to check the charging rates and that taxes are being paid, not the actual tr
How else would you find somebody to tell such a lie with a straight face? Only a paid lobbyist, or even an actual politician have the lying skills needed to achieve this without totally bursting out laughing and admitting its just a naked cash-grab.
Who did what now?
Net neutrality is right, because they already charge for a given bitrate.
Net neutrality is wrong, because the government shouldn't interfere with the free market.
But you know what? Neither of those answers have a goddamned thing to do with what the answer is going to be.
What's the answer going to be?
Net neutrality is wrong because it interferes with the ability to create artificial barriers to entry through contracts. You want to know what the end result will be? Follow the money. How can big content and big transport both make money off of net bias or net neutrality? The can both make money if they create bidirectional contracts that leave the little guys out.
Whazzat?
Suppose big transport says to Google, "We're not going to carry your video if you only pay for the pipes once." Maybe Google goes along at first. If they do, big transport will raise the price. They will keep raising the price until they find the point where Google is no longer willing to pay more. The find that by charging too much. At which point Google says no, and big transport turns off the switch.
Then what happens? Fourteen million screaming customers blow their stack. Big transport goes to Google and says, "OK, we'd like to renegotiate the price." To which Google responds, "Forget it - we see the light now. You are going to pay us for the right to carry our content, just like television." The box for a while, and eventually they wind up with a contract that says something along the lines of Google will pay PacBell $0.10 per megabyte for transport, and PacBell will pay Google $0.10 per megabyte for content.
Why do they come to this arrangement? Simple - anyone who's not big enough to play in PacBell and Google's league will either pay PacBell, or not be able to compete with Google. Everybody wins. Well, at least everyone who is in big content or big transport, and fuck everybody else, right? I mean, nobody else stepping up to the lobbying plate to pay for this legislation, so nobody else cares, right?
Right? Wrong? Big transport and big content are the guys with the guns.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I agree with your point almost entirely...especially in that content providers are the only reason anyone wants internet anyway, so they are already doing their part for the ecosystem.
;-)
I disagree with two points. Local loop competition has everything to do with network neutrality, because if we had real competition for every house's internet, then no one would have the ability to make ridiculous business decisions like a "tiered internet" or whatever bullshit they're trying to market this week because they would HAVE NO CUSTOMERS. If people had real options for getting internet, this wouldn't even be talked about because people would just switch to a service that didn't degrade their favorite content in favor of some proprietary bullshit.
Secondly, its "paid", not payed. Just FYI.
In addition to your points, I also want to make sure that everyone is clear: When you buy internet, whether you a content provider or consumer, you are paying for END to END connections...not for a connection to your ISP's gateway. Therefore, this ought to be illegal just based on contract violation...
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
Network polarity (the opposite of network neutrality, I guess) takes away bandwidth/latency from the common pool and gives it preferentially to a few. This is great if you have specific needs. However, by enforcing network neutrality, if you need improved bandwidth/latency, you have to increase the total so that everyone benefits, including yourself.
It's the old argument about splitting up the pie vs. baking a bigger one. Assholes favor carving up the current pie in their favor. Progressives favor making a bigger pie. It's that simple--you're either an asshole or a progressive on this one. Too bad the assholes run the country and have all the money (redundant, I suppose).
By the way, the FCC's numbers on broadband competition are bogus. A company only needs to have a single home available in a zip code to be counted as being available to the entire zip code. By real standards, on a home by home basis, there is almost no broadband competition right now. Which is why these assholes can even talk about this shit.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
I disagree with two points. Local loop competition has everything to do with network neutrality, because if we had real competition for every house's internet, then no one would have the ability to make ridiculous business decisions like a "tiered internet" or whatever bullshit they're trying to market this week because they would HAVE NO CUSTOMERS. If people had real options for getting internet, this wouldn't even be talked about because people would just switch to a service that didn't degrade their favorite content in favor of some proprietary bullshit.
I think I mentioned this aspect. I also believe AOL for example is still quite among us, just to name one company who always tries to favor its own content over that of others (less so now then in the beginning, but regardless, they still do, and they aren't exactly small). What I am trying to say here is that a substantial number of people will never know what they are missing, hence won't complain or switch.
This doesn't mean it doesn't matter for those people, it merely means they don't know that it matters.
A 'free market' only works when customers are informed and knowledgable enough to make choices, and in this particular case I think it is easy to see why most people are likely not (yet) knowledgable enough.
<sarcasm>Only the market can be right !</sarcasm>
I don't think there's even much need for sarcasm here. If there were an open market in consumer telco services, this wouldn't even be a big issue. But instead, decades of government-backed monopolies followed by a lot of lax anti-trust regulation have created a giant mess that has only the most tenuous relationship to a market economy.
If people had the choice between a dozen different broadband ISPs each with some reasonable slice of the market, this wouldn't be an issue. If one of the ISPs were dumb enough to try this sort of extortion, it wouldn't work: both their customers and the web sites they were shaking down would tell them to get lost. Instead, for a lot of people broadband choice comes down to deciding which user-hostile monopoly they want to give their business to, the telephone jerks or the cable jerks. From what I've seen, duopolies are nearly as bad as monopolies. And neither one is much like an open market.
http://www.internetofthefuture.org will cause Joe Sixpack (and congress) to say "oh I get it, they need more 'lanes', you know 'truck lanes', car lanes', diamond lanes', for all the new Internet media stuff that I want. Wow the telcos really do have a problem."
In reality it's ALL ones and zeros, so all this BS about 'lanes' is just that - you pay for how many ones and zeros you handle. And how can one zero be worth more then another (or one 1 for that matter).
Why would one 'type of 1' need a special 'lane'? can one '1' be distinguished from a different '1'?
No but big pocket companies can easily be differentiated between - so their 1's should cost more. What total crap.
This ad (seen by me running on /. yesterday) caused me to make a donation to the EFF.
just seeing it again today checking 'preview' for this post made me go donate some more money to the EFF.
If you care you might consider the same thing, and let your Representatives know how you feel and stress that it's a delivery system for 1's & 0's, not 'lanes' for differing traffic.
Its funny that when people talks about net neutrality, they are talking about the web.
There are plenty of ISPs around the globe throttling things like the edonkey network, bittorrent network, skype, vonage, etc...
They are filtering and throtling by application, and that to me is not net neutrality.
Also there are lots of people behind NATted ADSLs with five times less upstream bandwith that downstream bandwith, and without the ability (by contract) of running servers.
I would say that the Telcos are already exerting far too much control about what we do with the bandwith we buy.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
That's not what he's saying at all, he's say that after
1. paying ATT 29.95 a month for 768k DSL, and
2. I decide to use some of that bandwidth to say to google do this search for me and send the results to me over the internet,
3. Google sends it over the internet bandwidth that they have paid for,
4. Google should have to pay ATT to get the data over the last mile to me; ATT wants me to pay them for a months worth of two-way bandwidth, then wants google to come in and pay for one way again.
They literaly want to be paid for 3 ways when only 2 ways are possible. I can sympathise a bit when the bandwidth is going to vonage who is in reality a competitor, the reality is they should have known this would have happened before they got into the business.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds