Slashdot Mirror
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."
Welcome our new profit-driven corporate overlords.
Oops.
That's not a new development.
Nothing to see here.
If a chair is thrown in a forest, and there are no witnesses, did Ballmer still do it?
As the U.S. Congress argues the pros and cons of network neutrality
I can hear the auction house sounds from here.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
imagine what the slashdot effect would be once they started limiting bandwith down on some of these sites, even worse than it is now
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces -- Murphy's Law of Poker
I had my staff send me several spare Internets in case the big telcos broke this one. I've plenty of them stored in the basement now so if anyone needs one, I'll Fedex it over for a reasonable price.
See, there's no reason to worry!
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.
As long as our fine congress has as strong a grasp of how the Internet works as Senator Ted Stevens how can they fail to make the right decision?
"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially."
Personally I think 5 days is pretty good to transfer an entire Internet to your personal office. I however have lower expectations than our esteemed Senator.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
There were two questions asked and a total of six statements from the two men. Not to mention the fact that the only response to the question "wouldn't companies have to pay a premium to get their content to end-users" was "Bellsouth has promised not to do that." No mention of the policies of the other 4 major ISPs, and no mention of the possible conflicts of interest that tiered pricing would bring about. It would have been nice if the pro-neutrality guy had raised these issues- and had some backbone. (All he does is blather a little about dark fiber.) Or, barring that, if the interview/debate had been longer, so we could get more of a sense of the depth of this issue.
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
South Korea temporarily lifts decision to block VoIP services
r ticle=37448&archive=true
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&a
Where do you stand?
I'm standing on your false dichotomy, hope the boot in your face doesn't hurt too bad.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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?
Well, ideally we'd get the third option:
1. Have all the pipes owned by a neutral, non-profit or closely-regulated third party (or worst-case the government itself in the form of local municipalities or even states).
2. Then, all service providers for any web content can compete in an equal, thriving space. This is very similar to how most roads work in the US (government owned), and almost exactly how the deregulated electricity market in Texas works (TXU Electric Deliver owns the lines, anyone may sell services on them).
3. Profit for competing businesses and consumers???
Barring that, and assuming that the lines remain owned by private companies despite many of them having been granted monopolies (or duopolies in terms of cable/phone) to build and maintain them, then there is no possible way for the free market to work out something already limited by the government.
Thus, government-mandated Net Neutrality is the best we can get, and I'll live with it.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
less regulation is not neccesarily better. just like less government is not neccesarily better. neither is the more version of either of those sentances.
Telecommunications companies have government sanctioned monopolies because they taxpayers paid for the communications lines and the companies agreed to follow Common Carrier rules to be allwoed to operate those lines and install them (on behave of the people, with the people's money)
The VOLUNTARILY subjected themselves to a higher level of regulation.
Force them to honor the terms of their sanctioned monopolies and stop screwing the consumer
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I give up.
At some point in the future, I may write one final document about why I am for net neutrality, put it on the Internet, and send it to my congresscritters.
But for now, it just hurts my head to even try to begin to understand how anyone continues to be fooled. I don't understand how anyone can believe this bullshit:
Or this bullshit:
Maybe South Park has the answer. Maybe we've all buried our heads in sand...
But really, how can any thinking person not see that these are complete and absolute fucking lies? If they're not going to filter, degrade, or impair any service, why wouldn't they be FOR net neutrality? Or at least neutral -- why would they care if there's a regulation forcing them to do what they're already promising they'll do? Simple: Because they're either outright lying about their intentions, or you need to read between the lines: "Not filtered or degraded" doesn't necessarily mean "As fast as anyone else". And "degraded" compared to what? Whatever the fuck they want.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not a communist plot. This is the simple truth: Without net neutrality, the Internet as we know it will be gone, and the American Internet will be as bad or worse than the Chinese "Internet".
But I give up. I really don't think there's anything more I can do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Seems to be the same with lots of things. Deregulate and a few behemoths buy up everything, and you're left with no real choice.
I don't know how to keep things from doing this. Market forces favor oligarchies forming in anything with nonzero barriers to entry, and supplying bits takes money.
I was hopeful that municipal internet would provide a bit of competition, but the established players are determined to prevent that. Competition is well and good until it might hit their bottom line.
Man, you really need that seminar!
This just in -- competition doesn't exist.
Those who compete either join up with other small companies to better compete with the large conglomerates or get absorbed by those conglomerates.
See AT&T, Verizon, Bell South, etc.
I would love to believe in the free market, but its a load of ____. Sometimes a competitor comes up who tries to stay independant, usually for personal pride reasons rather than monetary ones. If you study some historical economics, you'll realize this is actually how things work.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Going to the government isn't wanting a single person to fix the problems. Remember, our government represents the PEOPLE and is made up of representatives that the PEOPLE elect. We have placed power in both the Federal government, which deals with national issues, and in the State government, which focus on issues in the state. In issues like this, the Federal government, which is made of the PEOPLE, has the power to standup for the PEOPLE. It's not collectivist government, it's representative government.
Space for rent, inquire within
De-regulation is a good thing for consumers how? Yes, let's stop regulation of trusts and unsafe labor conditions and minimum wage and so forth. What kind of ivy-league masterbatory economics course did you step out of?
Less regulation does not, for the last accursed fucking time, give people more choices. I could be wrong, of course, about the... self-congratulatory ideas about economics and business. I could be totally wrong, and hell, when the telcom boys charge popular sites with little revenue and mass appeal a fuckton of money just because they are popular websites (like, oh, this one called slashdot ), so we are forced to see content driven by shitloads of ads and corporate sponsorships that get rid of any controversial, meaningful content, in the end, us consumers will REALLY benefit, we'll be in a better place and much happier for it... somehow....
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
They'd pay a bunch of money to their ISP, get a contract with a Service Level Agreement, and have an external service monitor check their web site response times to make sure that the higher speed they paid for is what they get. Then, lo and behold, they end up not getting what they paid for. Why? Because implementing QOS/Differv across the Internet will not result in consistant higher speeds. After all, each and every piece of equipment on the Internet will need to have a compatible configuration for QOS/Diffserv to work with any consistancy. And, the last mile will make more of a difference that the backbone (the ones youtube most likely paid for higher speeds). The last mile is where traffic is most variable, and fan-out occurs, and where the mapping between Diffserv and QoS will decide whose packets go into which queue. So without getting ALL local ISPs on board with compatible configurations, its unlikey that youtube's ISP will get consistant improvement for youtube.
Even more interesting is that without net neutrality, ISPs will be buried under a mountain of regs dwarfing any legislation. That's because already people are talking about making sure 911 VOIP calls get top priority. If the internet is kept neutral, ISPs can legitmately claim that there's no way to prioritize VOIP 911 calls, so government regulation would be pointless. Once the QoS/Diffserv genie is out of the bottle, they'll have to admit thay can prioritize 911 calls. At that point, there'll be no way to stop government regulation of QoS/Diffserv. After, what politician wants to be know as the one that stopped 911 calls? During a terrorist crisis?
People thinking that being against net neutrality will reduce government regulation have it completely backwards. Without net neutrality, ISPs face a regulation juggernaught out of their worst nightmare. Net neutrality is actually the only chance to limit further government regulation.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran