Battle Lines Drawn Over Net Neutrality

InfoWorldMike writes "As the U.S. Congress argues the pros and cons of network neutrality, many companies doing business on the Internet say their very futures may be at stake. Net neutrality supporters want new laws prohibiting Internet providers from blocking or degrading traffic from their competitors' networks. Determining the full effects of Net neutrality can be difficult, however, in part because the concept is hard to define precisely. Most of the debate has taken place inside the Washington Beltway, where lawmakers and outsiders have proposed several different versions. InfoWorld has a Special Report up exploring the issue with a debate between experts Bill McCloskey and Jon Taplin and some of the news that has captured the issue as it developed."

Comments

slashdot effect

[stocke2]

imagine what the slashdot effect would be once they started limiting bandwith down on some of these sites, even worse than it is now

Common Carrier Status

[grylnsmn]

In my opinion, many advocates have been going about this fight the wrong way. The telecoms are spending a lot of money to fram this debate as a fight over the infrastructure (and the idea of limited bandwidth). Currently, we're losing that debate, both due to funds, but also due to poor communication.

However, if we frame this in reference to the existing concept of common carriers, we should go a lot farther. Quite simply, the telecoms want to control what is sent over their networks. If they want to care about what data is passed over their network, then they need to take full responsibility for that data. If someone is transporting child pornography, then the carrier should be liable, because they are intimately involved with monitoring the data being passed back and forth (how else would they be enforcing their charges against big sites?).

We already have laws on the books that provide common carrier protections for some companies in exchange for certain guarantees. By framing the debate in terms of common carrier status, we should be able to force a similar exchange.

Re:Common Carrier Status

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Quite simply, the telecoms want to control what is sent over their networks. If they want to care about what data is passed over their network, then they need to take full responsibility for that data.

Actually, this is not really correct. Telecos already charge different prices for ensuring the quality of different kinds of traffic. What they want to do now is not look at the content, per se, but at the people who can be extorted from. For example, they don't want to charge more for porn. What they want to do is charge someone who is not one of their customers an added fee for not intentionally degrading the service of someone who is their customer. They don't want to degrade traffic to search engines. They want to threaten to degrade traffic to each individual search engine unless they pay up. Give us a million bucks or we'll make your site so slow for a huge bunch of people that are our customers that they all go to a competitor. Since end users have no choice (because of government enforced geographical monopolies) there is no free market to correct this.

Why NN is important.

[DAldredge]

South Korea temporarily lifts decision to block VoIP services

SEOUL -- The decision to block South Korea-based U.S. military community members from making phone calls via the Internet has been put on hold.

The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communications and Dacom, the Internet service provider that serves about 12,000 base customers, agreed late Thursday to a U.S. Forces Korea request to suspend Saturday's deadline to begin blocking the service.

Dacom and the two other major ISPs, Korea Telecom and Hanaro, want to ban U.S.-based voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, companies that are not in compliance with the country's Telecommunications Business Act.

South Korea agreed to "suspend their decision to block these services pending the results of further discussions with USFK," according to a military news statement released late Friday.

USFK commander Gen. B.B. Bell "expressed his appreciation for the suspension and noted his desire to seek a solution that does not disadvantage U.S. servicemembers and families serving far from home," according to the release. USFK said it will keep people informed of developments.

The issue came to light Thursday when base Internet customers received notices stating they would no longer be able to use some of the most popular VoIP companies, including Vonage, AT&T CallVantage and Lingo.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service contracts on-base Internet service through a company called SSRT, which in turn buys its Internet time from Dacom.

More: http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&ar ticle=37448&archive=true

Organizations against

[MobyDisk]

I am curious about the organizations that oppose network neutrality. The article has a list which seems to match the list on a fake grassroots site run by telecoms.

Is the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation really a group representing Black Americans? If so, why would stand aganist network neutrality? Their web site doesn't list Network Neutrality as an issue anywhere that I can find.

How about the National Association of Manufacturers?Net neutrality isn't on their list of key issues either, but a search reveals a misguided report showing how they don't want network neutrality because it would stifle companies from laying new fiber. I can see manufacturers not liking that, but since network neutrality has nothing to do with laying of fiber, I only assume that someone there is misinformed.

The whole list of supporters seems this way. Is anyone here a member of one of these organizations who can shed some light on the views of these organizations?