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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.
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
Off the top of my head, here's one substantial difference. Television is strictly one-way communication, used to deliver a message to a segment of population (i.e. advertising). The Internet is two-way, capable of being used by nearly anyone for nearly any purpose.
To build an analogy using cable TV it would be more like this:
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.
That's what we need to prevent.
What?
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 */
Where I live Shaw already does something very similar to this. They insert a small bit of fuzz into the analog system so that you will upgrade to their digital system.
Because the spirit of TV and the spirit of the Internet are completely different. On the Internet, anyone can publish content. I can pay the same as my neighbor and play an online game of chess, read Slashdot, and check my investments. My neighbor can swap school photos with their family, get scrapbooking tips from an online community, and participate in chain letters of impending religious doom.
It is commonly accepted that TV is a very difficult market to enter. My neighbor wouldn't have the capital to create a scrapbooking TV channel, but she could certainly start a scrapbooking Yahoo group.
Tiered Internet does make sense -- but only if you tier based on application and not by content. In my opinion, VoIP should go quicker than HTTP. However, I don't want my ISP limiting my HTTP traffic by allowing google.com to come through unmetered, but at the same time limit money.cnn.com because Google decided to pay my ISP more.
The problem is that cable tv was originally introduced as a completely different product than was advertised to everyone, including the government. It was supposed to be commercial free, and much more consumer friendly.
The problem with not having net neutrality is that even though there isn't a true monopoly it seems that the big ISP's work together to make more money, and that doesn't benefit the consumer.
As a consumer, why would you want it so you have to pay more, and have a nickel-and-dime service. We are already paying surcharges and fees for things that shouldn't have a fee or surcharge (note: Verizon and Cingular are famous for this).
Sometimes legislation, although unfortunate, is required to protect the consumers from being unfairly treated. The ISP's are already making money from you, and also making money from the websites that you go to. They are trying to double, and triple charge everyone to pad their pockets.
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?
I think it's along the lines of ISPs doing this without informing their customers what has happened. Their customers need not know that SBC extracted a heavy toll from YouTube or Google in order to deliver their video. And that even if you could know when your connection was tiered, no market offering would exist for an untiered connection. In other words, they're levying their massive subscriber base against people who profit from them having a decent internet connection, by holding it ransom. You'll note they aren't calling it anything like QoS, because that would imply that the offering has some level of reliability / quality.
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Open Source Sysadmin
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
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!
Do we really want to reduce the internet to a bunch of transiently connected BBSes?
You could've hired me.
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; }
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!)
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
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