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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 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'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.
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
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.
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.
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.
And not only are they suggesting to be big and bad, every telco on this planet that had a chance to be big and bad turned big and bad. Maybe they forgot why AT&T was split, why any telco market that is in fact competitive has required substantial government interference to make it such.
If the telcos want to take away this fear of them wanting to turn 'big and bad', they have a lot of precedents to overcome.
Or.. what a bunch of idiots to believe people would forget that easily.
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.
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 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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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
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
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
This is the biggest flat-out fucking lie in the piece. There is no evidence, statements, legislation, or anything else to support this. Big fucking red herring. "Don't hate us...hate these other big companies".
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
<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.