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How Washington Will Shape the Internet
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, 'The most potent force shaping the future of the Internet is neither Mountain View's Googleplex nor the Microsoft campus in Redmond. It's rather a small army of Gucci-shod lobbyists on Washington's K Street and the powerful legislators whose favor they curry.' The article examines several pieces of legislation and lobbying initiatives which are poised to affect you and your rights online. Topics covered include Net Neutrality, fiber to the home, the Universal Service Fund, codecs, and WiFi bandwidth usage." From the article: "After years of benign neglect, the Federal government is finally involved in the Internet — big time. And the decisions being made over the next few months will impact not just the future of the Web, but that of mass media and consumer electronics as well. Yet it's safe to say that far more Americans have heard about flag burning than the laws that may soon reshape cyberspace."
.....we won't see ONE permissive regulation. We'll see MANY restrictive regulations. If lawmaking comes to the internet, I for one am looking forward to the next big thing.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
I don't think it's too cynical to say that's probably intentional. Flag burning seems to be one of those hot-button issues that conservative politicians trot out when they want to (a) drum up votes or (b) distract people from other issues. (Liberals have their own hot-button issues, though these days the conservatives seem to be punching them just fine from the other side.)
but the US implying laws on internet usage will not completely change the internet. The rest of the world won't just follow along, and you'll find hi-tech companies moving to companies that are more forgiving to their line of business.
I interned for a congressman last year. My former boss is in charge of a lot of the tech stuff coming out, but I can tell you that most congressmen could not care less about most tech. For example, I heard a congressman ranting about how consumers don't have a right to choice in telco providers. I have also seen that many policies are nothing more than clunky attempts to maintain the status quo of regulation in an era of never before seen change. It is nice to see government trying hard to catch up with the times, but the minority of uber-users, hackers, and /.ers need to watch out to maintain what we love doing. I do not see any major problems (like China's level of Internet control) coming, but there are issues that could prove quite annoying at least. The most important thing that we can do is vote. Early and often. :)
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Any technology vulnerable to governmental and corporate interference is insufficiently advanced.
Can you please give me an example of a technology NOT vulnerable to governmental interference? It's nice to drop out one liners like that, except when they have no cover whatsoever. If government wants to get involved and regulate a tech field, chance are it will. On my side, I'd rather see a split internet then face regulations imposed by the US on a global network.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
This article was broad, but shallow. It buys into and repeats a whole lot of common misconceptions. For example, it phrases the net neutrality debate as wanting to charge different prices for "complex" and "simple" data, using VoIP and e-mail as examples. This is completely wrong. This is about charging money to people who are not your network peers for not intentionally slowing down traffic from particular, wealthy, people, groups, or organizations despite the fact that that traffic is otherwise identical to other traffic. Networks 5 peers away want to extort money from google for not intentionally crippling traffic to them and not to MSN search or Yahoo.
They also parrot the whole DRM as an anti-piracy measure. Everyone knows it fails miserably in that area. It is a content access control, so they can use differential pricing using regions and so they can charge you for the same content for different locations and devices. Anyone can point a camcorder at a TV screen and then upload it to the Web or make DVDs. Then, the masses can download it or buy it. What they can't do is easily move music they paid for from their Creative player to their iPod, car stereo, and CD player.
It is pretty sad that marketing dollars can speak loudly enough that even supposed technically competent reporters just spew out the same crap that they have heard over and over again. What ever happened to critical thinking and investigation?
"After years of benign neglect, the Federal government is finally involved in the Internet -- big time."
Then != than you morons.
Its a very worrying time (as someone who makes his lving doing web-related stuff) when it comes to the net and government regulation. Its frought on all sides with peril - government letting corporations do whatever they want can be just as dangerous as governments coming in and dictating what goes on. There is a narrow path on which government can walk and not hurt innovation and consumers. I dont think they'll be able to pull it off.
What astounds me is how bad google, MS, etc. are at lobbying. It seems like google and MS should be winning and not losing (as my current perception leads me to believe).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Yet it's safe to say that far more Americans have heard about flag burning than the laws that may soon reshape cyberspace.
/. writup this week. It is truly shocking that more Americans have heard about an issue that has existed many times longer longer than the word "cyberspace" than the recent goings on in congress related to the latter.
Congratulations, this is the single most useless comment in a
Yes, more people should be aware of and care about this, but this is a ridiculous way to word it. Also in the news, more people have opinions on school choice than IPv6 adoption. Shocking!
Back to the issue at hand. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that our elected representatives will have a say in this any more than any other issue. The reshaping of the internet will be done SOLELY by Microsoft, AT&T/SBC, Verizon, Google, Cisco, Amazon, Hollywood, and the usual suspects. They will be writing the laws and casting the votes. There is no reason to even pretend otherwise anymore. Sure they will be be doing this via proxy with the elected representatives, but those reps (almost without exception) have no clue what they are talking about and just repeat the talking points given to them by their corporate masters. These issues will be determined exclusively by how money and favors are allocated.
I know as Americans it feels better to pretend that corruption and corporate ownership are the exceptions in government, but to do so hurts as a nation. EVERY person currently in congress has been bought and sold to a special interest or company (no expections, don't even try to parade your favorite one out and claim them to be virtuous and pure, you are wrong). When it comes down to it, they will ALL vote they way they are told and the opinion of the voters matters not one bit.
Finkployd
Soon, the internet will be rendered a privilage in which you need a license to access. We've seen it happen with roads, its only a matter of time before it happens to the net. Also prepare for internet taxes.
Honestly, I don't understand how a conservative government can increase the size of government this much, and ask for internet regulations, I mean it does not follow the philosophy at all. Am I the only libertarian here?
When law making comes to the internet, another internet will be invented, just not anytime soon. My advice is, start the planning stages for the next internet, and then when there is the will to bring it forward, bring it forward. Let's just admit once and for all that it must have been Al Gore who gave us the internet, he did not invent it, but he handed it so us. Before that, the masses didnt know what the internet is, and the masses won't know what the next internet us when us geeks invent or find it, hey we mmight already have it.
You don't vote someone out. You vote someone else in.
So, who do we have to vote in? (That are actually any better, that is.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Really...the anything goes wild wild west anarchy internet is a *complete total threat to governments all over the planet and large corporations*. Everything about the current and past model is a threat to them. It's a threat to their rule, (they call it governing but it really is rule-technofuedalism) a threat to their money(your money is their money by default), the way they want power over you politically or economically, etc. All of it. So..apply occam's razor and some extrapolation-what do you think will happen? What this article says-and more.
It is about inevitable they will slice it up into something that looks like a combo of your cellphone bill and cable TV bill. You'll be seeing a large number of "nets" and be forced into "subscribing" to one or another-think a lot of different closed up walled garden type AOL experiences. And be paying through the nose to go outside that area-or be denied totally. And they'll be completely happy if 95% get herded into their control more, they'll pick off the other 5% at their leisure and when it suits their purposes. No one is completely leet enough to avoid it if they get a notion to mess up your day. No one.
You can vote as much as you want, I'll tell you this. If you are a consumer, you only have the right to consume. Thus the label consumer, because you consume and consume. Your opinions do not matter, if your opinions mattered the politicians would be meeting with you and asking you for your opinions.
If you really worked for a politician like you say, you'd know that the average voter has little to no influence on what deals are made between leaders. If you want in, then get in, join the club, work for the company, invest! If you want, start an investment club.
Just talking about politics will change absolutely nothing. Politicians do not care about our opinions. The have experts to tell them what to care about, they have pollsters to tell them what our opinions are, and they can shape our opinions when they don't like what our opinions are. In the end, it's ultimately just about money. You can buy influence, you can buy politicians, you can buy just about any favor. It's about favors.
Teleco companies are VERY VERY powerful, they have infinite leverage over any politician. The telecos know everything, and had these abilities before the whole NSA wiretap scandal, so what politician is going to challenge the big telcos, or big oil? I wouldnt, you wouldnt, and a politician wouldnt for the same reasons we wont.
The best thing you can do is work with these big powerful corporate entities, and try to make policies which in a give and take fashion, where you make deals. If you expect to be a politician, it's a dirty business, it's a VERY dirty business, but ultimately it is a business, and the way to be successful is to do business with big business.
If you actually think you can be involved in politics, and that Google has more influence than telephone and oil companies, you are insane. The hardware companies have more influence than the software companies. The phone companies have more influence than the hardware companies. The energy companies have influence over ALL companies.
If you were smart, take an economics class and see how society is organized.
Not at all. The market has three components. The core is an oligopoly with only a couple of major players. They get paid either way. The end user edge is a bunch of local or regional monopolies or oligopolies with millions of users. The content provider edge is a bunch of local or regional oligopolies that rarely overlap with the end user edge.
As I understand it, traffic billing from one backbone to another is based on the balance of incoming versus outgoing connections. Making an outgoing connection costs money, while receiving a connection gets money back. The theory is that the content provider is not the one benefitting from the content. With advertising, that's not always the case, but it certainly makes sense from a network utilization perspective that the party that causes the traffic to be introduced into the network should pay for it.
If two networks are fairly comparable in terms of how many outbound requests they spew into the other network, they set up an unmetered peering agreement in which the two parties don't bother keeping up with who makes more requests. It's just easier that way. If the two networks are imbalanced, the larger (generally more backbone-ish) network generally gets more requests from the smaller one than it sends to it, and thus, the other network ends up having to enter into a metered peering agreement.
Now the problem is this: most content providers do not introduce a large amount of traffic into the backbones. With the exception of outbound email, almost all content providers return data in response to a request. Thus, ISPs with a higher percentage of content providers tend to have more favorable peering arrangements, while ISPs with a higher percentage of end users tend to have less favorable peering arrangements, since they generally produce the vast majority of requests. The ISPs that have a greater percentage of end users don't like this arrangement.
The solution proposed by largely end-user ISPs is that they should be able to charge the content providers themselves for preferential access to their users, and that companies that didn't pay would get lower speed access. You will note that those content providers are not customers of those ISPs. They are customers of a different ISP that peers with a backbone provider, which in turn peers with those ISPs. You should quickly see why this is silly.
A more fair solution would be for both ends of the communication to pay equally, as both are equal parties in the communication. In such a scheme, an ISP pays if either endpoint of a connection is within their network. This money is paid to the first backbone. Because the backbones are all considered somewhat equal and all pass traffic for each other, no additional transfers are needed. In effect, this would work the same way as the internet does now, only the backbone providers would get paid in part by both ends.
The net effect of such a design would be that content providers would pay more of their fair share of the cost of operating the backbones, while end users would pay a less disproportionately large share of the cost. The most important part of my suggestion here, however, is that ISPs should only be allowed to bill their customers and peers, not the customers and peers of other ISPs. In other words, I am in favor of net neutrality laws, albeit laws that are more carefully crafted not only to prevent the end user ISPs from following through on their threat but also to reduce the disparity between the proportion of costs paid by end users and those paid by content providers.
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