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Net Neutrality Being Examined by FTC
elrendermeister writes to tell us Computerworld Security is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission has formed an Internet Access Task Force to evaluate the validity of claims that large broadband providers should be able to limit or block web content from competitors. From the article: "Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras on Monday also called on lawmakers to be cautious about passing a Net neutrality law, which could prohibit broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from giving their own Internet content top priority, or from charging Web sites additional fees for faster service. [...] 'While I am sounding cautionary notes about new legislation, let me make clear that if broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority,' she said. 'But I have to say, thus far, proponents of Net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the market is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge.'"
Just because the behavior isn't there now doesn't mean that we should put off neutrality legislation until it becomes a problem. The easiest solution to any problem is to fix it now before it becomes a problem.
What?
The two main anticompetitive problems with "lack of net neutrality" are that in many places people have a restricted choice of broadband suppliers, and that an ISP may say "up to 4 megabits!" when connections with servers which haven't paid for premium access cannot hope to reach that top speed. My opinion on the first problem is, it's self-resolving, since we're beginning to see some good competition between broadband providers. The second problem, on the other hand, is IMO a legitimate concern, and that while I disagree with "net neutrality" legislation, if an ISP advertises its top speed at a level reachable only by "premium" server connections then that should be considered fraud.
"Net neutrality" will be pass, as lawmakers would not want to appear "not-neutral". On the other hand if the bill was called, "internet expedited service" bill, lawmakers will feel whole lot differently about it.
Just my 2 cents and hunch
Aren't the anti-competitive practices that Ms Majoras asking for currently illegal? In which case, the FTC/FCC already have taken care of it?
In other words, her argument is pretty much like this: "We don't need new rules because no one is doing things that would break those rules. Even though breaking those rules isn't currently allowed under existing rules."
This whole Net Neutrality debate confuses me.
I know the basics and the concept of a 'Tiered Internet' but what I don't get is how people are so outraged about tiered internet when such a system exists for cable tv.
No one is outraged that the basic package of cable doesn't include X and Y channel but when the same issue is raised against the internet they yell out 'DON'T BLOCKS MY GOOGLES!!'
In some places the only Cable TV company is the same as the only ISP in an area so the debate over local monopolies doesnt hold either.
Since when did the FTC all the sudden start taking this anti-legislation stance? So they will only legislate issues after-the-fact? Let Comcast, Verizon, AT&T bully the market, then we will see if we decide to do anything about it . . . right!
The thing that net neutrality proponents are proposing is resistance to current talks of creating a tiered internet:
"In essence, network neutrality regulations proposed by Senators Snowe and Dorgan[4] and Representative Markey bar ISPs from offering Quality of Service enhancements for a fee.
--From Wikipedia
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
Ummm... Yay?
...but I really do hope that if Net Neutrality passes, that Google creates a nationwide free wireless network to combat it. Now I'm not saying that one monopoly is better than the other, I just like watching cable companies get F****d.
For me, the depressing part is "If broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority." I'm a free-market libertarian type much of the time, and my first thought on Net Neutrality is to exactly that: let them try breaking it and seeing if it the market wants it.
But the FTC's version of "not hesitating" is to establish a blue-ribbon panel to look into setting up a commission to investigate the idea of setting up a web site to solicit people's opinions. Even if I trust the FTC to be acting in good faith, I worry that the cable/telco providers would have somewhere between one and five years to stomp certain web sites to death before the FTC is able to act on their "existing authority".
I mean, how long has Microsoft been in antitrust litigation?
Every time I see some ministry talking head say things like, "if there's a crime we'll prosecute!"
1. Crime? what crime? You mean rapid delivery of internet service is a crime?
2. Crime? What crime? The boss says put it on the back burner...
3. Crime? No it's "market forces" delivering "better" service.
And then there's the "swift" justice delivered in Microsoft's Monopoly conviction. A conviction is cold comfort if you're one of the guys they ran out of business.
Oh yeah, they are on the case...
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Well, I've never had a problem like this, and I'm in Europe. If the site's down, the site's down. If you're finding you can't get to certain websites that you know are up, maybe it's a problem closer to home - your ISP, your computer, your connection, for instance.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
The issue is filtering by source, not content.
You mean limit or block by source or site or site affilation, not content.
Or you mean content in web format.
In my opinion, the solution is simple.
Any carrier that wants to restrict access loses their common carrier status. The providers are probably right to say they have the right to control their own networks. However, the minute they start controlling content, they should take responsibility for it. Common carrier status is all about not being responsible for/controlling what goes over the wires.
I'm willing to bet if the FCC said "go ahead, but you lose common carrier status" none of us would ever hear another word about this.
I suppose something can't fail if it doesn't exist. "The market" only exists if there's a real choice of options, and when it comes to the U.S. version of broadband internet, "the market" has never existed on a meaningful scale. The choice is between either DSL from the bell-affiliated telco (which itself is most likely a monopoly) or cable from the likes of Comcast (or some other similar monopolistic cable TV company) or no higher speed access at all, with some places not even having both DSL or cable to choose from. That is not "the market" in the sense that Chairwoman Majoras would like to seem to be talking about.
If the comments of Chariwoman Majoras are to be believed, we should soon see the government investigating behavior itself has allowed. That would be rather interesting, and I'd tune in to see the feds stumble over their tongues trying to legitimately explain why having so few real choices in paid TV service/broadband service/land line phone service benefits me. I'd like to see why the companies that provide these services are so damn sacred that their acts can't even be challenged. I want to know why it is that government-funded and supported companies are allowed to even think that they have the right to tell me what sources of information I can and cannot seek. That, more than anything, is how I view the debate.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
Hey Government!
If there must be a Tiered Internet (and I fear we won't have a choice), then:
Oh yes; the DMCA will become a big part of this.
The quality of the Free Market is not measured by how easy it is for Corporations to regulate the market.
The quality of the Free Market is a matter of the diversity of choices that are available to consumers.
I have no problem with a Tiered Internet that gives us more choices;
I have a problem with anything that allows Corporations to reduce the number of choices;
especially, if they gain control of the regulatory agencies.
Here comes the New FCC.
{ return clarity; }
Did you read my post? Maybe in the UK, there you probably have got many competing ISPs so they can't do that for the fear of losing marketshare.
While I am sounding cautionary notes about new legislation, let me make clear that if broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority,' she said. 'But I have to say, thus far, proponents of Net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the market is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge.'
This is the internet equivalent of:
We're going to take away your civil liberties, and if you want them back the burden of proof that they've been violated is on you.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Don't be too hasty! Last I knew, the bills that were actually likely to pass through Congress sucked :-(
See http://www.savetheinternet.com/ for more details. That said, I do want one of the *good* bills to get through, and this is kinda hopeful to me, since I was afraid that all the good ones were dead...
That sounds like BS. When DSL got started, the telcos dragged their butts flogging old IDSN and extra data telephone lines, both high margin and low investment cash cows. Along came Rythms and others providing first rate DSL services, then the Bells didn't like shared access on their premise. So they "tripped" over the power cords and other such tricks aimed at putting them out of business.
Ever notice when using a long distance provider that is not the same as your ISP or phone line? One might be surprised to learn the line operater is at fault in why your long distance is unstable.
There needs to be a fair access law on rate limiting and the like or they will do it again. This time, AOL/Time Warner might notch down google video, while MSN might slow down Linux/UNIX downloads... kidding right? It has happened before. And I am sure professional lobbiests are working over corrupted politicians right as we speak.
Much the same as TV advertisments screem at you while the show is mute and no one touched the volume.
Fair access is fair access, and putting some serious teeth in the law is what is needed or big corp greed will decide what is usuable by you and I and what is not. Anyone who does not believe in this type of law is in the pocket of big business and is not really carring much about the consumer.
And allow governemtns to profit from the convictions, so they will pursue violators.
Why do we have to wait until we're actually screwed, then through years of hearings about possible remedies, followed by half-assed fixes and coupons for new services we don't want, while the lawyers are paid in real millions of dollars? Why not just preempt it from happening in the first place?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Okay, before I even bother with listening to arguments for or against 'net neutrality', or a 'tiered internet', or even more such nonsense on either side:
What, exactly, *is* the 'Internet'?
Seriously. Is it just a collection of computers? A specific network protocol? Are we going to get into the last mile issue? Are the users part of the 'Internet' (sic)? What about the copper/fiber/colocation facilities? Peering points? Are private agreements part of the Internet or not?
Like 'world peace' I doubt we could get a common agreement on just what is and is not 'the Internet'. Without that, this entire debate is nothing but drivel. It's like arguing about whether or not Invisible Pink Unicorns might have blue eyes.
And what, exactly, do people mean by 'neutrality'? It's realllllly, realllly easy to spout off nonsense that uses words like 'neutrality' and 'equality' and 'opportunity' and 'freedom' to get people all riled up without getting a firm definition of what, exactly, does the speaker mean by that. The classic line is, I believe, from 'Animal Farm' -- "Some animals are more equal than others."
(Oddly, the current 'freedom' people have on the Internet may be due to exactly the lack of definition of what is 'the Internet'. With a hard definition, we could start excluding 'non-Internet' things from 'the Internet'. So, regardless of which side of the illusionary 'net neutrality' issue people are on, in trying to define the issue one way or the other, both sides will have to define 'The Internet'. As soon as that happens, then the exclusion will begin. (i.e. if the 'net neutrality' (sic) proponents have their way, then differing levels of service become 'non-Internet'. Let the purge of the heretics begin!)
Both the telephone company and the cable company normally have monopoly status granted by various goverment entities. That in itself should put limits on what they can do, especially in the case of taking a free medium like the internet and putting their own restrictions on it for profit. To do so is a misuse of their goverment granted monopoly power. It is true, in some locations the two do compete with each other to some extent, mainly internet service; but in that case, it is still a goverment sanctioned duopoly, which isn't much better then a monopoly.
There are no other realistic alternatives to broadband interenet access in most areas other then the phone company and the cable company, and in many cases only one is available. Satelite isn't competive because the technololy isn't cost effective for mass broadband internet. And some municipalities even block people from setting up their own wireless network to compete with the goverment sanctioned monopolies.
Goverment sanctioned monopolies should have restrictions on them that work for the good of people whom goverments supposedly serve. Of course, the goverments really serves the corporations, and the people only get a fair shake if they rise up in protest.
This ad space for rent.
Yeah, because the FTC has so aggressively reined in the telcos when they've acted anticompetitively.
--
make install -not war
"I just question the starting assumption that government regulation, rather than the market itself under existing laws, will provide the best solution to a problem," she said.
Yeah, tell me again how that worked with Enron and de-regulating electricity...
Apparently it's a series of tubes.
Or so I hear.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Man, that poor guy really got screwed by that. It proves the point, really.
It's like the fable of the blind men and the elephant. Except the blind men have all gone to talk to their congresscritter and told him different things about the white elephant that is the 'Internet': "It is like a snake!" "It is like a tree!" "It is like a rope!" etc. The congresscritter tries to figure out how to reconcile all these different things people are shouting him into a something that could be put down on paper -- he *has* to define what the elephant is, somehow, so he can define what it is not, to pass laws against people selling what they claim to be an elephant when it isn't. (i.e. if a tiered service is NOT 'Teh Internet', then a provider shouldn't be able to claim they are providing internet service if all they provide is a tiered service.)
So he tried to come up with something, a "series of tubes", and each of the blind men, individually, are now sneering/laughing at him, each self-satisfied and smug in the knowledge that he and he alone has a clear picture of what the white elephant really is and knows what the best definition of the elephant is, and that the congresscritter was just too dumb to listen. Whereas the problem is that the congresscritter probably tried to listen to too many blind men individually, rather than forcing the blind men to come up with an agreement on what the white elephant is among themselves first.
Thus the blind compound their blindness with foolishness and arrogance.
The FCC is waiting for someone to explain it to them!? Yikes! And these are the same people that make the regulations? Am I missing something? They don't actually think about the issues themselves? They just sit back and watch while the opposing sides duke it out? Did it never cross their minds that telcos might a different amount of lobbying power than ordinary citizens? Is this really how the system works? Come on, no way! I can't believe it's come down to that. Nope, no way.
In the UK things have gone crazy, to the extent that our local supermarket is offering low cost 8M broadband packages.
However, the people who go for these services wouldn't be able to tell if their service provider prioritises commercial content.
In fact, I think I'd find it tricky to figure out how to write a test that could detect a non-neutral connection.
You could argue that if the customer couldn't tell the difference, what is the problem. ... etc).
The content provider who pays most will get the highest priority.
The problem is that once this becomes established as common practice, then the networks will become more and more biased towards commercial content, and the prices the ISPs can charge the content providers will go up and up (pay $x for level 1 priority, $xx for level 2 priority
In the UK, several of the ISPs are fighting a price war, offering broadband packages at cut price rates.
The one or two service providers who do cater for the more technically savy user still have to compete with the low cost service providers.
If the low cost providers use the money they get from charging content providers to cut their end user prices even lower, then all of the service providers will have to start charging content providers, just to stay competitive.
From my perspective as a tech-savvy end-user, "the internet" is the whole of the accessable IP address space.
The point of an "Internet Service Provider" is to give me an IP address and the ability to exchange IP packets to any other IP address, at the rate advertised by my ISP (possibly limited by the rate advertised by *their* ISP), with reasonable uptime, latency and frequency of dropped/delayed packets.
That's it.
Now, if you're a large business things get more complicated. You want to have much tighter definitions of what those "reasonable" values are, for instance. But the overall concept is basically the same--you want to be able to exchange IP packets with other IP addresses.
There has been so many letter and emails thrown out about so many things that falls on deaf ears in the U.S. (or even state and local fits in this group as well) Beauracracy that they can say whatever they want. The letters that would have gotten to HIM have been lost somewhere. Maybe not even lost, just flat out ignored. If there aren't greenbacks accompanying a letter, they could care less.
I know for a FACT that the FTC was informed about many things that were concerns about the SBC/AT&T and MCI/Verizon mergers. I know that the FCC was informed with letters about the whole data vs. voice and phone line issues. Because of the FCC ruling now Comcast has gotten into the VoIP market (and doing a horrible job of it I might add...)
So here's the question, data lines are being used for Voice, voice lines are being used for data. Why can't this still be under telecommunications. After all, that's kind of what we're doing. BAAAAAAAAAAAH
I'm really wishing Bush never made it into office. It's going to take decades to fix this mess he's caused. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in my lifetime the U.S. ends up in another civil war/rebellion at the rate we're going.
This is all about VOIP, folks. Telcos try to stop VoIP it's plain and simple. It's not Google or Yahoo who's the target here, not even Youtube. Those companies won't be screwed much if their traffic was deprioritized by a little. VoIP on the other hand becomes unusable the second you deprioritize its realtime traffic. So telcos think they can keep their cell, landline and voip customers to themselves by deprioritizing traffic of other VoIP companies or making them pay through the nose (thereby making their rates less competitive).
That's nice.
What do you mean by 'reasonable'? That's realllly vague to go into legistlated laws and regulations. Reasonable by whose standards?
Is that reasonable "latency and frequency of dropped/delayed packets" the same per application/connection/user? I mean, data connections can take a lot more latency/drops/delay than say, a voice connection. Or do you intend to have different standards or 'reasonable' per application type? Is it 'reasonable' if someone's P2P file sharing application degrades the performance of your VoIP session because it's flooding the network? Is it the ISP's problem if other users are interfering with your 'reasonable' use of the network? What happens when people have conflicting ideas of 'reasonable'?
I suspect the ISPs might view 'tiered services' as 'reasonable'. Some people might not. Who decides? How do you get this in law?
And by the way, do you mean IPv4 addresses or IPv6 addresses? What about what comes after IPv6? Who gets to decide what an "IP Address" is, BTW?
You've got the start of a *technical* definition, but the issue here is bigger than just technology. It's also the business side, and the social side -- how people, as a group, globally, are going to come to some concensus on what the Internet means to them.
The real question is: "Do you want a revolution?".
I dare you to give them fuckers the golden ticket,
I fuckin dare you!
Thats scary outlook man. I've got discounted connection, yes, but there was not a word about not being able to access major .coms, but only selected once and of course ISP's donated and syndicated portals.
I have a friend who works with a large telco, also a large backhaul provider, and they would love to deprioritize skype.
It's obvious the telcos want to protect their phone line revenues, which would exactly be illegal monopolistic behavior (use one monopoly to protect/extend another).
"But I [Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras] have to say, thus far, proponents of Net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the government is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge."
"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue." - Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged
'But I have to say, thus far, proponents of Net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the market is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge.'
To what mailing/emailing address does one direct such arguments?
The minute we start to allow companies that provide access to the internet to filter the content and the providers of content that it will allow the users of said service (who often, thanks to sweetheart deals, brute force in the market, and exclusivity in geographical areas) with no alternative but to view only censored and "approved" material, or forgoe all interaction on the greatest medium of shared information in the world. That is not a choice, that is not what the ideals that the internet designers and creators had in mind when they created it. In fact, some of them are even against the idea of paid access, speaking in favor of a library-card-like system where the access is a free privilege. While most people, myself included, are willing to concede on pay for access services, many, myself included loathe the idea of censorship of the information we could have access to (or not have access too as the case may be). I am extremely paranoid of government ideas to do this, even moreso when it is proposed to be run by businessmen and companies that have long since given up any shred of decency and public interest in favor of making the board and large-quantity share-holders pockets fat. I do not want my right to access information freely curbed by the government or any profit-driven interest group.
-- "You must be the change you desire to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi --
And what civil liberty is that?
No, really, I want to know.
Yeah, she's bought but this isn't a civil liberty issue.
neutrality is good, neutrality is bad...I was under the impression that Net Neutrality meant that ISPs were to treat packets neutrally, and that Net Neutrality was what we wanted to have.
At that point, they're just another AOL. They're not a real ISP anymore. ISP's charge the consumer for access. There are many models for this - by time (minute, hour, etc.), by bandwidth (KB, MB, GB, etc.) that offer viable models. What isn't viable is saying, "Oh, you can't look at that...it's not on our network."
This isn't allowed by phone companies. Since when does Bell South get to tell you that you can't call a Verizon customer? It's simply unaccepable. I fail to see why this is being permitted with ISP's.
What do you mean, I can't look at that newspaper site in India, or China or Japan or Africa? Why not? Why can I only look at sites you happen to host?
Frankly, due to the peering agreements between ISPs, it doesn't cost them any more for you to look at a site in Indonesia than it does for you to look at a site in Indiana. It's totally and patently ludicrous. I cannot beleive that anyone is actually buying in to this inane bull$%it.
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
What the Telco's want to do is to sell video content - provide VDSL service at a loss and make it up in profit on the video content. If Google has the same access to the consumers as the Telco's, they can put a lot of pressure on the Telco's prices, hence profits.
Turns out there is another thing limiting the Telcos attempts at marketing video - most localities already have cable companies paying franchise fees for providing video service - and the franchise regulations either prohibit competition or require the competitor to wire the entire locality to prevent cherry picking. The telco's have succceeded in getting a few states to overturn the franchise laws and are working on congress to overturn the laws nationwide - a big eff'ing mistake IMBO.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Not enough, folks. The threat is far worse.
.... Due to an unfortunate error, our protocols were insufficiently secured. Data has become available to unknown parties."
So far what I have seen is "people will be angry" arguments. However, modern business absolutely depends on the Net as it currently exists.
Not all, but many, posts liken the effects to websites being "slower". I think it could get even worse. Try "Page Not Found". Say for 3 second intervals a page gets "modded down", then TimesOut. Ivan Pavlov wrote a postcard from the grave. It says that we're now SO fast at recognizing page load errors that most people never try a second time "just to see if it's a glitch". Poof. Then people begin to think "oh, pity. That site doesn't exist anymore". Watch Site's traffic go through the floor in a month flat.
Now take businesses. Remember all the hype about thin clients, remote sites, "who needs an app on their PC?" I log into my Accounting server all day. My office is on one ISP. Accounting is on another. I don't want to BEGIN to think what would happen if bickering ISP's began playing hell with business data!! "We keep a temporary cache of data to allow you the best service possible. We monitor our cache to streamline our exciting enhanced content opportunities.
Think I'm joking? Front page of Today's Boston Globe:
"Glitch reveals too much on Education Dept. website...
Nancy Newark, a Boston Lawyer, just wanted to change the phone number listed on the federal government website where she manages her student loans. But when she clicked 'update' on Monday Night, she saw someone else's SS#, D.O.Birth, and other personal info. She clicked three more times, each time getting a new person's information - and enough of it, she said, to commit identity theft."
Or then there's the recent AOL event. In short: Data anywhere is at risk.
--TaoPhoenix
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm afraid I don't have to terribly much to offer to the discussion, but I do wonder: what sort of content do these large providers actually have to offer to their customers? The large bandwidth-needy sites are not run by them... does anyone actually know what sort of content their provider provides? Perhaps future rollouts of VOIP and IPTV? Double charging though, that's ingenious. I'd love to be able to sell a book to someone, then thereafter be paid every time the new owner reads it. Perhaps they're onto something.
---
qqwe (random chars so I can identify this anonymous post via a search)
u think anybody in washington cares about net-neutrality ?!
most of them have no idea what that is and dont even wanna know
what they DO KNOW and DO CARE about are CampainContributions .. and big internet companies like google&co were probably kind of "lazy" with the contributions ... and washington decided to show them who's the real boss and how fragile their position is .. it's THAT SIMPLE!
and i doubt that legislation about net-neutrality will pass anytime soon ... this is a huge cash-cow for politicians ... u want net-neutrality, u contribute, u oppose it, u contribute .. why would anyone wanna pass a law and kill the cash-cow?!?!
P.S. looks like this guy got it right
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The government IS indeed there to protect citizens preemptively BEFORE something bad happens to them.
This is why you have an army, everstanding, to meet any foreign attacks, to intervene before the attack occurs and reaches your mainland.
This is where child abuse, protection laws and so on are put forth, in order to prevent abuse before it happens.
Same goes with network neutrality.
Handing over free speech to a few corporations so that they might be able to curb it once it does not fit their needs, is not something to be risked, and it is defnitely not something that you can "later fix".
Its similar to saying "lets allow passing of laws that allow the president to assume dictatorial powers. If something bad happens, we can fix it later".
my pardon, but this is absolute bullshit.
Read radical news here
I have no problem with a Tiered Internet that gives us more choices
WHAT choices ?
Read radical news here
He was trying to make the point that the internet became what it is today because it was unregulated and untampered with, and now large telco's are trying to tamper with it in the same way the government tampers with telcos.
The concept of net neutrality is not really a regulation as an "anti-regulation" law, which basically states that weather youre the state or a private interest with monopoly powers rivaling the state, you are not allowed to cause discrimination against specific traffic on the internet.
It is essentially a law saying "you must maintain things the way they are now",though I can't really say I'm very confident in the government's ability to craft adequate legislation toward the intended goal (after all this is the same government which was going to give the "induce act" a fast track _)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I fully understand why people are against a neutrality law.
net neutrality is essentially acting upon the same principles as the DMCA.. it's trying to "keep things the way they are".
The problem is that, just like the DMCA, it's going about it the wrong way, it's trying to prevent the activity rather than change the (somewhat reasonable) motivations which precipitate the activity..
Rather than passing a law to try to prevent companies from acting in what they believe is their interests, they should be bringing neutrality into line with their interests.
The best way to do that is by removing their common carrier status if they refuse to be a "common carrier".
By doing that it makes neutrality of great importance to telcos because if theyre not a common carrier theyre subject to liability for all the p2p traffic circulating through their lines.
If you still consider this approach "regulation", keep in mind that unlike the government which is subject to telco bribery, the RIAA has demonstrated complete willingness to rabidly attack anyone they can pin an infringement charge on. They would be most excellent slave-I mean enforcers of neutrality under this proposal.
It's almost poetic how constructively this would turn the corruption and greed of one institution into a constructive counter to the corruption and greed of another, and as a bonus it would not involve the government expanding its power =)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Do you think those donations are bribes or extortion payments?
I think they are extortion payments. "Donate or else!"
Corporations want to be left alone as much as possible. But the government can snuff them out with a simple stroke of the pen. A corporation would be foolish not to make donations across the political spectrum to all sorts of politicians.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The goal is perfectly just, and anything but a neutral internet is anticompetitive. The neutrality of the internet is just as important to society, freedom, and the economy as the neutrality of interstate highways, but most of what you said is a fat steaming load.
The internet was first designed by and for the military (arpanet/darpa), from there it was released to the wild and more or less organically expanded, but, while it did have a body for establishing basic operability standards, it never had a single unified "cabal" of creators beyond it's beginnings in the military. If you want to argue the internet should only be used as it's creators intended then we should be closing off all the fiber and leaving it only to the government and military.
- that guy who proposed that non-neutral net providers should be stripped of common carrier status probably has it right.
it's a better solution than down-right regulation because we all know the government cannot be trusted to do anything right, let alone with technology and computing which requires exacting precision to avoid unintentional consequences (see DMCA for great example of overly broad incompetent and ineffective tech law).
I think it's a rather elegant solution. It attacks not the crime, which is pretty much useless against powerful wealthy interests, but the motivation behind it. It's like killing a weed by removing it's roots.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Oberondarksoul (grand parent post) is probably right. It is unlikely that anything like this is happening ... yet.
However, once some of the ISPs start charging content providers, then I think this is the way things will go.
Present company excepted, most of the people using the low cost ISPs won't notice if SlashDot is a little slow, or downloading updates to OpenOffice or Linux take ages.
As long as the commercial websites, MySpace, MSN etc are nice and zippy, they will be happy.
Even if one or two service providers do still offer a neutral connection, they will have to charge a premium price for it to cover the money they will loose from not prioritising commercial content. Which means we have a two tier internet; standard price to access the commercial websites from our sponsors, pay extra to see the rest of the net.
Yes, that really is how the system works.
Sucks, doesn't it?
What someone suddenly found a gaping hole in some existing law? I know this one's ridiculous, but what if it was suddenly discovered that, due to unfortunate wording, a missing clause, a situation that no one thought of when they made the law, or something like that, it was technically legal to commit murder? You would certainly want legislators to fix this before anyone tried to exploit it.
What if someone found a hole in antitrust laws that allowed some companies to be the only provider of their (important) services to a large group of consumers (a monopoly)? Would you want legislation to fix this, or would you want to wait until it was a serious problem, if it ever became one?
At what level of potential danger would you want legislation "expanding the scope of the government's responsibility"?
This space reserved for administrative use.
The easiest solution to any problem is to fix it now before it becomes a problem.
Does this mean that since politics is a problem we should get rid of politiics?
FalconShould there be a Law?
If they want to create different classes/speeds/whatever of internet service, they have to clearly differentiate them so people will know what they are getting. They need to be upfront and honest.
But new laws aren't needed for this as there already are laws on the books about truth in advertizing. Such as the lemon laws many states have. People need to use the tools already available not create new ones.
So do we have an internet whose structure is robust and determined by technical considerations or one that is a craven creature bowed and bent by marketing droids?
Your choice!
Try this on for size:
Do we have an internet whose structure is robust and determined by technical considerations or one that is a craven creature bowed and bent by socialists?
Your choice!
FalconShould there be a Law?
Of course, taking action before there was a problem would avoid the disruption, but the FTC is on the side of the people who stand to benefit from the "problems" that would be prevented.
While I support the precautionary principal in some instances I don't see a need for it when dealing with net neutrality. I have yet to see one instance of a problem regarding it. If you want to apply the precautionary principal then start with something like say automobiles. Because of the number of injuries and deaths caused by them they should be made illegal. And yes I know what I am talking about. I am a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury survivor. I was injured when a moving van hit me while I was riding my bike. And the "survivor" bit isn't figurative, it's literal. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I survived.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Its similar to saying "lets allow passing of laws that allow the president to assume dictatorial powers. If something bad happens, we can fix it later".
Passing laws is like granting one's self dictatorial powers. Mnay new laws restricts liberty and promotes a dictartorship. Now it might be different if all proposed laws or bills were put up on the net so anyone and everyone could read them, and they are written so that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand them, in a timely fashion and vote for or against them But that's just not how things are done, and most politicans would fight to keep it from happening, politics is their bread and butter.
This is where child abuse, protection laws and so on are put forth, in order to prevent abuse before it happens.
Child abuse laws don't prevent child abuse, if they did then there wouldn't be any child abuse. Instead they are there to punish offenders. Capital punishment is the same, the death penality doesn't stop murder it only punishs some offenders, as well as some innocents.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What if someone found a hole in antitrust laws that allowed some companies to be the only provider of their (important) services to a large group of consumers (a monopoly)? Would you want legislation to fix this, or would you want to wait until it was a serious problem, if it ever became one?
What monopolies are you referring to? Do you mean the cable and telcos? Those are monopolies, natural monmpolies, granted by government to begin with. The local authority is usually the granting authority and it is the responsibility of the locals to make sure any monopoly is open.
While I am a Lbertarian and believe in the freemarket, there are instances where a local community can do things better than a business can. One such instance is "A Broadband Utopia where a groups of communities in Utah got together and put a broadband network in. The communities own the infrastructure but allow anyone who wants to to provide services to people there. I don't have a problem with this because it's the local people who decided themself to do it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In their minds neutral tubes might get contaminated with porn or other bad data, so surely dedicated, premium tubes would be much better
Ah but it's porn providers that can afford to pay more for priority access. Porn is one of the drivers of technology. Customers screamed for broadband for porn and multimedia, movie, formats to watch porn movies. The same with satellite tv reception, and bigger displays/tvs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You pay for your providers full cable package, so you get all the channels. However, PBS has decided not to pay the "premium service fees" set by Big Cable, Inc., where as NBC has paid them plenty of money. You like PBS, and watch it a lot. Slowly but surely, the signal for PBS is getting fuzzier. You can still watch the shows, but the picture isn't as crisp as it is for NBC because Big Cable has decided he'd prefer your eyes on NBC, who pays them money. So he throws some noise onto the PBS frequency.
Though about the only tv channel I watch is CNN if I did watch PBS, I used to watch it years ago but stopped, and my cable co tried to do that I'd scream about to them, the FCC, and anyone else. I might even higher an attorney and sue them because because their interference when I signed no contract with them saying they could do it. I could certainly go to the local authorities who granted the cable co the monopoly and ask them to revoke the license. I can and will do the same if they try that with my net access.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I pay to access the internet, not some part of it.
The lack of net neutrality means that an ISP can prevent me from accessing content hosted by someone who uses a competing ISP unless I, or they, "pay extra". They're already "paying extra" to interconnect in the first place!
Did you sign a contract with your isp saying they can do this? If not, and I didn't, you should and I would scream to high heaven that they weren't delivering the service I paid for. Get enough neighbors that feel the same and we can have enough money to higher lawyers to sue them. I could maybe even gather people to start my, our, own wireless broadband business or coop.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...but I really do hope that if Net Neutrality passes, that Google creates a nationwide free wireless network to combat it. Now I'm not saying that one monopoly is better than the other, I just like watching cable companies get F****d.
Now why would Google do that? Google is one of them that is pushing for net neutrality and doesn't oppose it. Oh, and Google not only owns dark fiber themself but is also setting up wireless service. I don't recall for sure but I think they are setting up wireless in LA, both a free and a paid service. The free service is broadband but the paid service is still faster.
FalconShould there be a Law?
But the FTC's version of "not hesitating" is to establish a blue-ribbon panel to look into setting up a commission to investigate the idea of setting up a web site to solicit people's opinions. Even if I trust the FTC to be acting in good faith, I worry that the cable/telco providers would have somewhere between one and five years to stomp certain web sites to death before the FTC is able to act on their "existing authority".
A blue ribbon panel may be the FCC's methodology for some things but not for all. They're pretty quick when it comes to indecency on tv or the radio.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you still consider this approach "regulation", keep in mind that unlike the government which is subject to telco bribery, the RIAA has demonstrated complete willingness to rabidly attack anyone they can pin an infringement charge on. They would be most excellent slave-I mean enforcers of neutrality under this proposal.
An excellent idea! Sick the RIAA and MPAA on the telcos and watch the fight. The Prize Fight of the Century!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?