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Net Neutrality Is Just "Mumbo Jumbo"
Ergasiophobia writes "It seems the National Cable & Telecommunications Association is spreading a blatant lie in the form of a commercial claiming that the net neutrality act will cost the consumer more and that it is 'bad' for the consumer. This, of course, ignores how much the cable companies will profit from the act's defeat. For some truthful information on the net neutrality act check out savetheinternet.com" This honestly seems too stupid to actually be real. Anyone know for sure?
This honestly seems to[o] stupid to actually be real. Anyone know for sure?
Shouldn't you work that out before putting it up on the front page?
You asking if the commercial is real?
It is. I've seen it in the Dallas-Fort Worth area once.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
1) One might argue that net neutrality wouldn't be a net cost to customers but it's hardly a "blatant lie" to suggest it would. At this point, one can only make guesses as to how market forces would net out in either situation.
2) Even if that claim were obviously false, the submitter's argument against it is a total non-sequitur.
3) People who write "seems to stupid to actually be real" shouldn't throw stupid.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is not geared to the /. crowd. While there will be be some in here who will buy into it, the vast majority will see it for what it is.
This is being addressed to the ignorant consumers and politicians. Sadly, they are the majority. As it is, if you really want this to not happen write your reps. Better yet, if you have the time, or contacts, educate them. keep in mind that these companies have BILLIONS backing them and are sending "educators" (lobbyists along the lines of abrahamoff) to help your local politicians understand the issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Makes Microsoft's FUD look a bit tame by comparison.
Net Neutrality is not the answer to the problems seen in the US. The correct answer is to make the largest players rent out their infrastructure with bitstream access and LLUB (Local Loop UnBundled).
As soon as other companies can buy access to the customer and sell them services, then the largest players can't offer degraded or bad service, because the customer can go elsewhere. The problem that Net Neutrality tries to solve is a problem because the customers in a lot of areas don't have many companies to choose from. Solve that problem instead of trying to enforce Net Neutrality and the US will be much better off.
Learn? Not from this 30-sec pile of crapload called advertisement. I watched it from the beginning to the end and there is nothing, nada, zilch substantial, only baseless accusations.
What Google and other companies on the other side need to do is to come up with simple way of explaining how the routing works (nailing the "tubes" cavemanship as a positive side effect), and why messing with the routing is bad for the internet.
Google et al needs to pick up the challenge and reply with their own advertisement.
Generalizing: is there something that consumers can do all these industry associations? Is it possible to slap some anti-monopolistic laws against those bastards?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Well, here is the other side.
Once the above occurs, the telcos/cable will start charging for the connections from one to the other. All in all, this is beginning of the end of the net IFF the tellcos are allowed to charge on the other side of the connection.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Government.
"Affirmative Action", "Homeland Security", "War on $flavour_of_the_month", "Electoral Recounts"...
We have seen an explosion of telecommunication technology and consumer options since AT&T was broken up and the telephone industry was transformed from a monopoly into a set of carrriers that could each compete on level ground. Many here might be too young to remember how the phone company used to argue that the integrity of their network would be compromised by even adding a diifferent (not AT&T) handset to a line in your house. At that time, AT&T's network ended (barely) at your ear.
There were plenty of jokes about the break-up at the time and it was impossible back then to see what the full effect of this might be. But today, we have a recent and relevant history to help guide our decision-making. Level ground, competition for services and not territoriality of infrastructure is what gives consumers choices while driving up profits. I believe Net Neutrality is ultimately better for service providers, too, though they appear to be too greedy to see it.
I've not been hearing comparisions by the media or analysts of Net Neutrality to the phone system break-up but the parallels seem compelling to me. To the extent we can bring the argument to "people who matter", perhaps this is a way to get past that disengenuousness that is the hallmark of today's politics.
We understand the opposition's side just fine. They want to make more money and they spread lies to do so. The net is going to be paid for by the consumer, whether indirectly through Google or by the consumer directly doesn't change that. What net neutrality does ensure is that the consumer, by paying directly instead of indirectly, has the power and right to choose. For the network operators that means real competition instead of backroom deals with other big companies. That's why net neutrality is good for consumers and bad for network operators: Competition means lower prices for consumers and lower margins for network operators. It's quite clear WHY the opposition does what it does.
Time Warner Cable in Green Bay, Wisconsin has been airing this advertisement. I agree with some of the other posters that we should look at both sides of the issue before calling the commercial a blatant lie. Being someone who has worked for a long time in the telecommunications industry, I feel that Net Neutrality is essential for freedom of speech, nothing more. Let's face it, the monopolies that currently "own" the bandwidth in the United States are going to, "raise the cost to consumers," with or without Net Neutrality in place. Why make it more difficult for unpopular ideas (ie, those without big corporate funders or lobbyists) to have a voice?
The thing that I found most disturbing about the advertising was its total lack of substance. Never once does it explain how or why costs would rise, etc. It felt really slimy, like a poorly done political mudslinging ad (which, some would say, it was). My gut reaction is that nothing in the advertisement was blatently illegal, just very very unethical simply due to what it does not say. Deceipt by omission of fact is still indeed a lie.
I was dong some work in Austin, TX two weeks ago and saw it every commercial break during some periods. I couldn't believe it myself - all "political" ads like this just say "don't understand it, just be against it". Sad part is it works.
This might be a weird question, but what happens to international traffic from outside of the US to the US? It seems unlikely that sites from Abroadistan will be itching to pay US telecoms for priority access into US homes.
Does anyone even realize that the internet isn't a US only affair? That abandoning network neutrality could result in isolating the US?
How do you figure it'll cost the consumer more? Net Neutrality basically means the service providers can't double-dip and try to invent profit where there is absolutely no expense, thus unnaturally inflating the cost of the internet as a whole, by making service providers pay for the end users' end of the network connection, when end users are already paying for it, and service providers already have to pay for their own end of the connection. By making such unfair fees illegal, the failing of Net Neutrality "will cost the consumer more", not the other way around.
How do you figure it's "common sense" that Net Neutrality is bad for the consumer? The failing of net neutrality would almost assuredly make the costs of starting a new online business prohibitively expensive, as opposed to the amazingly level playing field we've managed to maintain for new business starting out on the internet for the last decade. If Amazon, Yahoo and MSN are all given the high-priority bandwidth, and the "next big thing" would be relegated to whatever is left over. With the "next big thing" appearing to be slower than dirt, through no fault of the creators, the "next big thing" becomes the "last failed thing", and the only companies that are able to innovate are the likes of Microsoft who can afford to put the money into it. What happens to all the sites out there right now you love so much? Wikipedia would be toast, so would Last.fm, and del.icio.us, and Digg... maybe even our very own Slashdot, who knows. It depends on how much more expensive it gets to run a high-traffic site.
Here's my favorite part: their argument is "why should Google be able to use my pipes for free?" To truly get an idea of just how absurd this would be, think about this: AT&T offers consumers and small businesses internet service, as well as offering backbone-level service to web hosting providers and data centers. Theoretically, there could be an AT&T pipe connecting Google's servers to the internet, and an AT&T DSL or dialup connection connecting YOU to the internet, and Google would STILL have to pay for "higher priority". In this scenario, not only would Google not be using those pipes "for free", but AT&T would in fact be collecting THREE TIMES from two parties.
But, forget all of that, because the real reason Net Neutrality is good is very, very simple. What matters is that Big Telco - specifically Verizon and SBC - had a brilliant idea of how to double their profits without incurring any additional expense, any additional work, or much in the way of additional equipment (routing gear is peanuts compared to most of the infrastructure expenses they've got), all the while looking like the indignant victim, by using peoples' fear and misunderstanding of technology. They want something for nothing and they'll use all the FUD they can muster to get it.
Don't let them!!
[Z?]
They do what all companies do. They charge more if their competition allows it, or they change their business model, or they increase their efficiency, or they go out of business for being unable to meet the needs of their consumers.
Google's telco is entirely free to charge Google more if it needs to. My telco is entirely free to charge me more if it needs to. They are not free to set up an infinite number of toll bridges in between me and Google.
The problem is not that companies want to prioritise certain kinds of traffic (eg http is more important than bittorrent, so gets higher priority), but that they want to be able to (for example) prioritise traffic from msn search over google search, because they've done a deal with MS.
The other main reason is to keep Skype et al. out of their captive markets.
When it comes to telecos, as I understand it, the competition is in reality an illusion - If your only two choices for high speed net are CableCo and Bell, then you as a consumer don't actually get to choose - particularly if (as often happens) they operate on nod-and-wink basis. It's also highly unlikely that you will know which companies the CableCo and Bell have made deals with for better access before you sign 12 months of your money away - they are hardly going to list such "commercially sensitive" information on their adverts.
To use the UPS/FedEx analogy - Imagine UPS don't serve your town, so you have to use FedEx. You place an order with Borders for some books, to discover that because they have done a deal with UPS, FedEx refuses to provide any better service than 1-week parcels. Amazon, however, have a deal with FedEx, but charge a little more for the books you want. You can get Amazon books next-day though. It means you are paying more, unless Borders decides to increase their overheads by doing a deal with every carrier. It means UPS and FedEx now have leverage in the market for selling books. Now you might say I'm making a false arguments here, because there's nothing stopping UPS from delivering. However, in the case of the internet, generally once you have a connection, you are tied down for a fixed period with one supplier - regardless of the level of service you get, and in many towns you only have a few choices anyway
There are fairer ways
- put download limits on the cheapest contracts
- impose traffic shaping based on packet type (but not source/destination)
- make it abundantly clear in the TOS what traffic shaping you do
- regulation to ensure providers who have a monopoly don't use discriminatory traffic shaping polocies
If some traffic shaping based on source/company etc. is ever allowed
- force companies to issue a list of which companies' services will recieve higher QoS, and which will receive lower QoS, so consumers can actually choose.
I'm not making any comment on the technical merit of net neutrality, rather the consumer issues.
The thing to remember is that in the case of services like this, the only consumer protections are in the law that governs the service - because the contracts themselves are written to benefit the company, not consumer (since you can't get service without signing their contract, and unless you have $millions you have absolutely no power to negotiate). It's also worth noting that once one company finds a legal (but fairly subtle) way to screw their customers for more money, you can rest assured that the rest of them are not far behind.
The key to Net Neutrality was that phone companies no longer controlled the lines anymore. They owned the lines and provided telecommunication service... They were not allowed to restrict end user devices that met FCC specification for Telcom (faxing and dial-up took off after this) the local bells were not allowed interstate long distance anymore. Later, the restrictions were included to define the telco as "line owner" and any company could rent the lines and provide service. Also, telcos were prohibited from providing many extra pay-for services outside phone service. Things like providing music over the phone, or even running their own ISPs were orginally prohibited.
What's happened specifically since 2000 is that there's been a push to designate internet connections as "data service" not "telco". Of course that narrowly defines "telco" as POTS.. when the network is so much more now. Thru FCC rulings and court cases they've got "data service" ruled as a seperate business from telephone. Cable companies pioneered this when they got Broadband over the "public" cable network reclassified as a seperate business from the Cable service with little to no public oversight..(never mind their orginal charters don't include data service either) since then telcos have been biding their time when they can own the whole "internet" all over again. You're still getting the internet over a phone line, they want to own it all again.
Net Neutrality is a "pre-emptive" strike against the telcos that have been manapulating for years to undo the restrictions put on them after the monopoly was broken up. The point is that they clearly plan to go right back to predatory, non-customer-friendly practices just as fast as they can when the ink is dry.. after all, 3 of the 5 were sued just last week after the Universal Service Charge was supposed to come off... but they tried to sneek a new fee in to replace it!!! is there any more proof than that needed to show we need to heavily restrict these guys BEFORE they ruin something really good for their own greed!