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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.
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.
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.
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