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Poll Says No Voter Support for Net Neutrality
Giants2.0 writes "A survey conducted by the Commerce Committee says that Americans don't know what net neutrality is, and they don't want it. Ars Technica reports that only 7% of respondents had ever heard of net neutrality, but the report questions the fairness of the survey, which was crafted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to assess support for the current version of the Telecommunications Act of 2006. The survey suggested to respondents that net neutrality would prevent ISPs from selling faster service or security products, both of which are not true." From the article: "The very brief net neutrality description used by the pollsters is somewhat misleading insofar as it suggests that net neutrality would bar Internet Service Providers from selling faster service than is available today. Strict net neutrality does not concern itself with ultimate transfer speeds available to subscribers, but instead focuses on how different kinds of Internet traffic could be shaped by ISPs for anti-competitive purposes. For instance, strict net neutrality would not prevent an ISP from selling extremely fast 35Mbps connections, but it would prevent ISPs from privileging traffic for their own services for competitive advantage, or degrading the traffic of competing services."
But I'd rather use the power of my wallet to walk away from an ISP than turn the internet into an even bigger federal disaster area. Our wild west wonderland is being turned into a political wasteland by the feds. Any net neutrality bill will probably empower net nannies, do-gooders, and moralizers to get their agendas and probably fund a bridge in Alaska.
Just last night I saw a commercial on TV urging viewers to vote No on a proposition about Net Neutrality. It was trying to say that it would cost consumers more, or at least allow ISP's to charge more. This was in the St. Louis area. Has anyone else seen or heard of anything like this in non-internet media lately?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
The only question I have (for the committee members touting these results) is, "Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?"
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Gee, that's amazing. I wonder if that could be because almost all the media in the US is owned by ten megacorporations, and they don't report on things that they don't want us to hear about?
If this subject interests you, I suggest watching Orwell Rolls in his Grave. (ObDisclaimer: link to a review on my website, amazon referral link if you clicky from there. You know what to do if you want to find it somewhere else. I do not sell ads, I don't get money for page views.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As usual, the communications company-funded "polls" return the desired result. Is anyone surprised that they would stoop to giving people a loaded question?
"Poll Shows That People Can Be Tricked By Biased Pollsters"
>Americans don't know what net neutrality is, and they don't want it
How can anyone have an opinion on something if they don't know what it is?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
A more obvious conclusion is that once again, America's population has been lied to by its own leadership. Not just during the polling, but also in the presentation of the results, there is untruth.
I mean, really.. that is a completely inaccurate description of Net Neutrality. Not only is it deceiving in its results, but it also misrepresents net neutrality to those that potentially have never heard of it before. What bothers me is that if this is the first instance of some of these people learning about net neutrality, then the poll not only came to the wrong conclusions but also might negatively affect these people's future feelings on the manner.
It seems to me that it is extremely unethical for a committee to try and shape public opinion through the misuse of untrue information on their survey.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Reminds me of the UK poll to see if people wanted ID cards. I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like:
Do you want an ID card? 85%
Do you want an ID card if you have to pay for it? 7%
So the govt reports 85% support and that will cost you GBP150 pounds each please.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
This is why America is not a democracy. We don't have to know these things. We pay specialists to study and vote on these issues. That is what republics are all about. The only problem with that is that the specialists are more interested in finding ways to keep their jobs than they are in finding ways to do their jobs right.
The ISPs already have a structural advantage in that it is far easier to push high speeds from their servers to my home than from a random spot in the Internet (less hops, they contol all of them) so I don't believe that requiring them to play fair would completely remove their advantage in providing content to me, but if despite this advantage I request data from some other service, I expect my ISP to not throttle that connection. There are bottlenecks enough in the net without artificially constricting flows to give your own services an advantage.
If you were in the Death Row, would you be for the death penalty or against against against?
If you were a fetus in the verge of being aborted, would you be for abortion or against against against?
By phrasing the question the right way, you can imply that net neutrality would limit services and download speed. In that scenario, you'll get an overwhelming response (from those who don't know what net neutrality is) that net neutrality is a bad thing. Phrased another way, you can imply that without net neutrality, Comcast and the baby Bells would be able to make web sites harder to reach. In that second scenario, most respondants would favor net neutrality.
For comparison, Cato has similar things to say about polling for support of school vouchers. When you imply in the question that other countries are doing it with great success, people are in favor. When you imply that it would hurt the public schools, people are against it. Shocking.
Only 13% of young americans surveyed could find Iraq, but you still went to war there. I was under the impression that neither public knowladge or approval were prerequitites for American laws.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm currently studying political science and public opinion, and 7% strikes me as very impressive. I'd be even more suprised if 7% of representatives that have a say in the issue understand it any better than the way it was outlined in the report. That being said, I am more than a little troubled.
The public good doesn't have a lobbying firm.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
It's a series of Neutralized Tubes that contain much pr0...er information....Vote AOL in 2008!
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
"Do you want to decide which web sites you can surf, or should your ISP make that decision for you?"
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
And that's how you skew a poll. Funny or insightful, I'll take either.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How does this not suprise me? The majority of net neutrality information was distributed on sites (like this one, which most people don't read because it doesn't offer coupons for the gap) or by shitty emo youtube videos(which no one takes seriously). I'm sure the issues been catered to look pointless in the eyes of printed media so thier pappy coroporations can get a heads up from the ISPS to make sure you get an extra DRM'd lassie in 240 by 320 for your video portable.
Nice poll. I believe it should be verified with a second one. I propose a proved question type:
Do you support net neutrality or do you support terrorism and child pornography?
What a timely article...just finished a lecture with my class where we talked about net neutrality and how a tiered Internet system would most likely result in "haves" and "have nots" based upon the ability and willingness to pay. When I asked my class of 25 how many had ever heard of "net neutrality," not a single hand went up.
Typical. They had never heard of ICANN, either.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Its seems like just a few years ago that I say a web address in an advertisement for the first time. The internet has changed so much over the past few years. The one thing I've always appriciated about it was how open and vast it was.
Now I just feel this being segmented, sliced up, analized, commercialize, and legalized. Don't get me wrong, some of it has been good. Would have never gotten outta dial up days if nothing happened to it but the face of the internet in another 10 years scares me.
Am I gonna need a passport to go to a website in another country?
Will I have to log into more then one "Internet" depending on who I am and where I want to go?
I think, the price of the internet should eventualy move to nothing, with the right commercalization wouldn't commerce want to you log on to the net like they want you to turn on your TV?
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
They don't know what Common Carriage is either, but benefit greatly from it. Net Neutrality is basically trying to re-frame Common Carriage as something new, unnecessary and unproven rather than old, essential to business, and time tested. It was what allowed all the small ISPs and software companies to flourish in the last two decades: it prevented newer business and services from being locked out by more established ones, it prevented ISPs and hosting companies for being liable for the content produced by their customers.
Now that a handful of megacorps have crushed or absorbed all of the small ones, and it's really hard for these to crush or absorb each other using the same methods. Going back to the pathetic crumbly, balkanized patchwork of non-interoperable, 1960-style proprietary networks seems to be what these want to try again. It gives exponential advantage to larger market share. Common Carriage is preventing these megacorps from balkanizing the net. So far...
How about a poll phrasing it this way:
"Are you in favor of equal access to the net or would you prefer to allow groups and businesses to be closed out by the big players and to allow ISPs to give you slower service unless you pay extra?"
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
isn't there an inherent flaw in net neutrality? my isp (road runner) offers trailers of the movies they have on the on-demand chanel. if i wanted those same trailers off imdb for example, it is slower then downloading them off the road runner servers. under this law, wouldn't road runner be required to throtle bandwidth to their own server to match the speed to imdb? or am i just way off.
...For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
I'd give you both, but I don't have either at the moment, so I'll have to offer one of my home-brew mods, a +1 Sad But True.
At the rate we are going I would not be surprised to see that level of push polling being done in the next few years. If it hasn't started already.
--MarkusQ
Even if a survey has a genuinely random sample, you _can't_ be sure how much it means until you know the exact wording of the questions.
That's a separate issue from "push polls", which are meant to change what people think as opposed to simply getting the desired answer. An example push poll was a telephone "survey" in the 2000 South Carolina primary asking "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?".
A new poll shows Pres. Bush has gained in popularity. I feel my feet becoming disconnected from the ground - my head is spinning. How is any of this possible? Why are we so stupid?
Why is the government funding a poll on an issue with lobbying constiuents on both sides, seemingly in favor of big business donors? Is this really an appropriate use of our tax dollars? Reminds me of the taxpayer monies spent to back the No Child Left Behind act. Who lost their job for misappropriating government funds in that scandal? Ummmm, no one.
Where's the outrage from the hypocrites on the right about wasteful government spending? I don't think Republicans stand for anything except their tee time these days.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Americans are stupid, ignorant jackasses who only care about the next idiotic "reality" TV show or who wore what to the Oscars. These are the same fucknuts who were duped into electing Bush twice despite a record of utter and abject failure. Hell, most of 'em probably can't even spell "net neutrality."
Not intended as a troll or a flame, just an expression of frustration. Jesus, Canada is looking better and better by the day.
...at least this sort of survey. Asking the general uninformed population about an issue they know nothing abount and can formulate the questions in anyway that makes your conclusion valid is improper. If they had asked the same question of informed internet aware users, such as visitors to Slashdot, arstechnica, anandtecg, toms, dslreports, etc...the results would be different than what they wanted them to be no matter how babdly and twistedly they formulated the questions.
Net Neutrality needs to happen its good for everyone, the ISPs must not make the rules, the people using the internet must.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
How can so many people know so little about something that they all use every day, and is vital to our economy and way of life? Do we need to tell them that their ISP will slow down their MySpace if net neutrality isn't regulated?
I know it may seem stupid, but the term "Net Neutrality" may be a stumbling block to the average American. When was the last time anyone but the Swiss got really worked up about neutrality?
Maybe we can call it "Not being sodomized by the bastards" or "Not paying extra for crap service" or "Leave my Skype alone!"
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Exactly how is this a troll? I have been deliberately downvoted to bury my comment, possibly because of my link? Although I did provide full disclosure, so clearly someone has their panties in a wad.
Anyone who doesn't believe that ten companies own nearly all the media in the US is quite simply ignorant. Anyone who doesn't believe that those ten companies control the news such that their outlets don't report on news unfavorable to them is incredibly naive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Martin Prince when you need him ?
ISPs that prioritise bandwidth will get a reputation like AOL has managed to achieve through continually being badmouthed by those who understand the technology. Any ISP considering this should be aware of the backlash from their customers, and the technical people who ultimately have the most influence in choosing bandwidth products.
How many of us have gotten off our asses to communicate that to Congress? There's more to gauging an issue than polls, and incoming comments to Senatorial offices can have a big impact. As few as a couple hundred well-worded letters or phone calls can swing a Senator's vote one way or the other, especially on more "niche" or technical issues.
Start here:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=senatetally
Most Senators are not on record and so are more likely to be open to influence from their constituents. Your best bet to describe, in simple terms, why it is important and why it is a major voting issue to you. It does not have to be a magnum opus, just a short e-mail, letter, fax, or phone call.
And if you one of those who don't understand or care, I invite you to read this:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
they added a disclaimer on the bottom which said "In a survey conducted of Ted stevens close and personal family. In the same survey they also said that they would like lead tubes abolished as it sends out radiation from their monitors"
Because their leaders tell them so.
It's the core principle of advertising.
Sorry for the redundancy in my subject line.
The net will be regulated. The net is too important to too many people to stay off the political radar. If we don't support the regulatory process to work in the people's favor, the companies will certainly not abstain from making it work for them. The market is powerful, but it cannot work in the presence of rules which explicitly turn market forces off, like zoning laws. If you can only get your broadband internet access from one phone operator and one cable operator, and nobody else can bury cable to bring the internet to you, then there is no market to speak of. Network neutrality is a kludge, but a necessary one.
It was my understanding that we already have the situation of network neutrality on The Internet. It is, at present, not legislated. Instead, it is created by how we currently operate our networks (standard operation). In other words, a new law in favor of network neutrality is in favor of what we already have today. This basically means that carriers still provide the same services, but are now not legally allowed to traffic shape (throttle up/down) information based on favoritism. The telecoms are interested in killing this proposal, the legislation, because they are interested in surcharging content providers like Google to "ride" their intermediary bandwidth trunks like a toll road. In essense, like any corporation, they are trying to find ways to cash in on all that capital they invest in infrastructure. I doubt that this is really an interest of the Tier I ISPs, such as cable internet access providers. This is more of an interest to LECs such as AT&T et. al. They have the monopoly, and are just waiting until they can turn the "toll machine" on and start reaping in more cash-o-la. The standard argument against net neutrality is that content providers already pay for their bandwidth, and most likely that money trickles down to the LECs (or intermediary carriers) in some form or another. This is simply posturing by the LECs (or should I say LEC singularily?).
My 2cp.
--COWARD OUT
No voter support? BIG SUPRISE! There's no voter support for anything that gets press here on slashdot. Where are the voters who support guys like Larry Lessig and Richard Stallman? Republicans and Democrats are guilty of ignoring corporate rule over technology for too long! Support EFF, CreativeCommons, FSF, Knowmore.org, FreeCulture.org... and all the other folks who want to see innovation and invention survive and not be swallowed by companies who put greed above all else, threaten democracy, and pollute the political process.
Check out http://alternativefreedom.org/
Features DangerMouse from Gnarls Barkley, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman, Bunnie "X-Box Hacker" Huang, DOSEONE and EFF Superstar Jason Schultz.
"How can anyone have an opinion on something if they don't know what it is?"
Basically explain it's having the freedom to decide if you're going to be using a toll road today, or the interstate. What some are proposing is a toll road, and you don't get to decide, except to give up driving.
See an example that everyone can relate to.
The most useful thing we can do here is to write to our Senators. If enough people write, they pay attention. Besides, you'll probably get a nice glossy photograph in the mail.
I'm generally as cynical about the government as anybody else here on Slashdot, but I think there are certain situations where it makes sense for the goverment to intervene.
Those cases mostly arise when the market either has already, or threatens to create a situation that prevents future competition in the market. For this reason, you have anti-trust laws and lots of other regulations; the goal of them is to create a basically level playing field on which various firms can compete for business. This is how the system is supposed to work. Let the market work when it can, but when it won't produce the desired outcome on its own (where the desired outcome is determined through the democratic process), then there's a place for regulation to step in and create the environment where it will.
Now I think we can all agree that the outcome that most users want is not one where there is nothing but a series of regional monopolies, dispensing to users your telephone, cable TV, and internet, and charging exorbitant rates to do so, far in excess of what other people in other parts of the world pay. Therefore, if this seems to be the likely result of noninterference, then the government has a mandate to inject itself and regulate.
Although the government does have a history of mucking things up where it's not needed, history does show that there are times when regulation by some sort of governing body is both necessary and in the long run, beneficial. (E.g., securities markets.*) Also, governments have been engaging in infrastructure-development projects since probably the beginning of recorded history, and in the 21st century, the Internet is as much an important economic thoroughfare as the Interstate Highways are. Allowing a small number of companies to control and manipulate our electronic "tubes," would be akin to handing over control of the highways to Ford, GM, and Chrysler in 1955, so that they could prohibit Japanese cars from driving on them.
* - For a pro-capitalist analysis of the development of the U.S. securities markets prior to regulation, I recommend reading The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street; I think most people who advocate complete deregulation aren't quite appreciative of how rough things were prior to its introduction.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Democracy is great! At least it was until the marketing and lobbying set in.
Just how much more blatant can you get with "buying" votes? Unfortunately, people don't want to be informed, they want to be led. They want someone to tell them "That's the way it is, swallow it!", and they even get away with it.
Is free press really that bad? In countries where censorship is running rampart, people distrust government and press, and they try to find the truth. Often with their life at stake should they be discovered as "dissenters" who want to know the other side as well.
Why don't we? Why do we believe every lie fed to us?
Why are we happy when someone tells us how it's supposed to be? Because we're (still) free?
Why are people so complacent and lazy and delegate thinking to someone else?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...the unwashed masses are ignorant.
And this is news?
Lets say you want to get to Google.
You dial into (or are connected to) Ma and Pa ISP
Ma and Pa ISP connects to some local back bone
local back bone connects to a national back bone
national back bone connects to major ISP
major ISP connects to Google
Now, let's say that the national back bone ditches out on NN. That national back bone sends Google a bill saying "pay this much or your service will be degraded." So, if Google pays them, great. Except then the Major ISP is going to tell Google that if they want premium service on their side, they'll have to pay them more as well. No biggie, at this point Google is just shelling out a few extra checks a month. But then it hits the local back bones. Networks all over the world demand that Google pay them directly to get non-degraded service. And then it comes to Ma and Pa, they get the best of both worlds, they can bill you an extra fee for "preferred services" and the can bill Google for it's traffic.
Even if you switch from Ma and Pa to another ISP, you'll still hit non-neutral traffic in between you and Google.
The infrastructure industry is demanding more money. Fair enough, there are two ways of getting it: The NN way, increase your bill rates. Or the non-NN way, bill the providers and users an extra fee.
Using the NN way, the implementation process is simple, you increase your bill rates. No new technology to implement, no new personnel, no new sales, etc.
Using the non-NN way, the implementation process is incredibly complex. You need to first implement new hardware over the network to take advantage of the performance. Then you need to establish a billing system for the new services. You need to increase your staff to manage the new billing and sales requirements. You need to advertise and educate. You need to spend a whole lot more money to get the extra income. Which means it is significantly less efficient.
NN or non-NN, either way the infrastructure will get the money they need/want. The question is how much will it cost the customers (consumers and businesses). And from what I've seen, implementing a non-NN solution is going to have significantly more overhead, costs, and problems than just raising the rates.
Not to mention the inevitable use of unfair practices to leverage business opportunities. Imagine if AT&T choked all VOIP traffic to a snails pace. Just by disrupting VOIP on their back bones they could literally crush the VOIP industry overnight.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Democracy dies when voters get their non-news from television instead of researching sites like Vote Smart, when voters leave school without a basic education and never get it later.
/. readers in the US, help your country: use Google and go find things out.
How can US voters make wise decisions if they don't know who borders whom, or the difference between Sunni and Shi'a (read to near the end)?
I keep six faithful serving men
Who teach me well and true
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who. -- Rudyard Kipling
and they don't care about the internet. For most people, there much more important things to worry about than a series of invisible tubes.
Well, not to take sides here, but that is exactly how S.2917 proposes net neutrality should be defined: A prohibition against offering tiered Internet services.
The problem here is that there is no one definition of "net neutrality" that is accepted by either side of the issue. Spin is put on the definition depending upon one's perspective. Given the context of this one specific bill, the poll question as stated is not misleading.
To argue that this poll (or any other) is biased is futile, unless both sides agree to the rules of the game.
I suppose we can go on Gov't conspiracies here. From the report it seems pretty obvious that the Gov't is favoring buisnessees and shafting the consumer. All in the name of improving the economy. I have noticed that the mainstream press has not really covered this issue at all seeing how it can potentially change things for consumers. You would think this would make news to some extent. As far as I have seen not even Bay Area news networks have talked about it. Seems odd to me. Based on the way this is being structured I can easily see censorship being imposed on us. But in order to have it lifted you have to buy your way out. So in this sense we are still not boxed in. It won't be until after this law is passed that people will scream bloody murder. We need to write in to our local congressmen and tell them to veto this law. Buisnesses, the media and the Government are gaining too much power. The people are effectivly being neutered. "Broken" Voting machines, miscounts, Buisnesses extorting individuals for thousands over a $20 CD. All of this is being made possible by the current administration and their "war on terror". Seems to me that this is a crock. They are the ones spreading the "terror" by keeping people afraid to take action (legal actions don't want anyone doing anything excessive :P) At the time Bush was elected the first time I thought he might be able to deliver on some things he said. In some respects he has. Sadly he is also making our freedoms go away. This I am not happy with. There are those who may say my stance is extreme, if so take a good look at what is happening and actually read the news. Read your history also you will see that there is precedent for this. Civil wars always got started over some major issue of the day. If you say we live in different times then you are clearly ignoring human nature and our leader's lust for power and prestige. Privacy laws that are diametrically opposed to the constitution are being passed quietly to keep the rabble in line. They can use a discussion like this if it was on the phone and say well you are a terrorist because you said this. Done. This is not very different from the Gestapo. They just need to ramp up the violence a bit more now to make it the same.
Net Neutrality is just another way to keep people in check. Think about it . You would have to pay (or slashdot might have to pay for better bandwidth via specific providers) to be able to just be on the net or to be viewed. If you dont pay you dont get to see the site. This is bigger than just a law for buinsesses. Looking at it from a broader perspective it lays the groundwork for companies to be the censors under Gov't control via the FCC. The excuse can be child porn, terrorism, gambling in your bathrobe, whatever. But it is not that hard once the laws are loosened for the Gov't to take control. Now it is just a matter of getting stricter gun laws and that is it. Since that is a staple of the Republican party at this time it is doubtful that will pass during this administration. But I don't doubt it will happen later on. Or at least an attempt to try it.
IMO these things are all connected. Just looking at each individual issue itself is not going to give a clear picture. Looking at all the current events as a whole will at least give you an idea of what is going on.
Disagree all you want but there is precedent for this in modern, medieval and ancient history. The issues were different but the basic ideas are there. Control through fear and subjugation of th populace.
If Google, YouTube, and MySpace put banners on their screens informing people about Net Neutrality and what it'll mean for their services, this issue would go away quickly.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
1 - Have you ever heard of net neutrality?
Real Question - Do you think I should be re-elected
Answer = Yes ask "Do you think ISP's should not be allowed to privilage thier services?"
Answer = No ask "Should ISP's be not forced to lower bandwidth, this means slower speed for you?"
2 - Do you think net neutrality should be a broad reaching and controled by the telcos?
Real Question - Should I be prevented from getting more money for supporting MaBell
Answer = Yes ask "Should the phone company be forced provide broadband nation wide?"
Answer = No ask "Should the cable companies be forced to stop selling tv programs?"
Is not a poll, it's an opinion of 800 people.
A poll should be at least 100,000 people
800 is a fart in the wind with an error factor +/- 800
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
My kingdom for mod points right now...
Despite the crassness of parent, it's a pretty accurate representation of what a good portion of the rest of the world is feeling. TV and media distract the average American suburbanite into not thinking about what actually matters. As long as they can drive to their office job in their SUV and come home their TV, everything in the world is fine. They don't have to think because they pay to have someone think for them.
You're welcome here in Canada. We're far from perfect, but we're a world better.
Arrrrr-genius. (talk like a pirate)
I don't understand why so many people here are like 'Oh, well, we'll wait until they enact it and then if it's a problem we'll stop it.' Welcome to the reason you pay Income Tax, morons. It was instated in WWI, then stopped after WWI. Then it was instated for WWII, and then it never stopped. And that's why we pay income tax. Because a bunch of people did the exact same thing -- 'Oh well, it will only be here for the war ...'
Let me try and break this down into small, understandable chunks:
Scenario A: The Die Hard Gamer
Johnny plays Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 4 almost religiously. He has a nice DSL connection and usually sees ping times under 30ms to his favorite servers. His DSL provider contacts him and informs him that due to a restructuring, his $54.95 a month now only allows him 'Standard' service. He notices that his ping time has risen to over 200ms during his gaming sessions, significantly impacting his ability to play online games, but sees no other real latency issues while surfing. Another phone call to his ISP informs him that for the low, low price of $14.95, they will stop prioritizing his gaming packets lower than all other traffic. They would call it the 'Gaming Extreme' package. Now, Johnny is spending $15 more a month, just because his ISP has the ability to prioritize his traffic as they see fit.
THAT SUCKS.
Scenario B: The Mom and Pop Shop ISP
Mom and Pop start an ISP and have a big contract with Concentric, one of the bigger backbones. A high percentage of their customers are in the SW, and a lot of what their customers do involves servers in the NE. In order for the data to get from Customer to End Server, it passes through Mom and Pop, Concentric, Cogent, and Level3. (I know, I know, it wouldn't likely go through that much.) Cogent and Concentric are at odds, because Cogent wants to charge Concentric $1.00 per megabyte for priority speeds. Concentric told Cogent to stuff it, so now every packet going through Cogent has 4x the latency of 'priority' traffic. As Cogent is a bunch of idiots in this example, it's not much of a stretch to assume that Level3 dislikes them as well. Level3 won't pay Cogent for priority traffic, either. So now, Level3 is slowing down Cogent's traffic, and Cogent is slowing down Concentric's traffic. This results in your latency being between 500ms and 750ms, instead of 30ms to 50ms. All because some assface in a suit at some table wants his $1.5M salary pushed up by another $250k/year.
If reading THAT doesn't make you understand that 'waiting to see' is the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas, GET THE HELL OFF THE INTERNET. No one wants you here if you don't have the slightest of interest in the longevity and perserverence of the network.
To the darkened skies once more, and ever onward.
Thsi is the perfect time to speak up and tell people around you what Net N is really about. Inform them of what is really being proposed
Send people to web site where they can educate them self about the issue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality or http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html)
Remember
If you don't vote you can't complain
If you don't speak up youll never be heard
~ Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe ~
Another example of asking people a question without properly explainting it, as demonstrated by The Man Show.
Help End Women's Suffrage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrSs1ClzU4w
in the beginning. Net Neutrality is not about charging more for us to get what we want. Net Neutrality is about charging more to the content providers such as Google and YouTube and MySpace because they send out a lot of data such as videos. The biggest reason that Net Neutrality is coming up is because ISPs are finally getting into the VOIP services. They want to be able to slow down the performance of services like VOIP for providers like Vonage or Skype so that unless Vonage or Skype pay them more money there service will suck but the ISPs VOIP service will be great. The problem I have with all of this is that the content providers (vonage \ skype \ google \ youtube) are already paying for the bandwidth that they put out. But Comcast and\or RoadRunner don't like it because google is paying MCI for their bandwidth and Comcast\Road Runner have to carry their traffic anyway. Think of it this way, I am in a truck that is licensed in Iowa so I pay my registration money to Iowa. I have to travel to Indiana and pass through Illinois. Now Indiana and Illinois are pissed off because they have to let the truck use its roads to get to Indiana but don't get any money to keep up the roads that the truck is using. So what do they do? Put in a tollway to say "If you want to use this road you need to pay for it." We already do this in our world. The problem is that the internet was created so we didn't have to worry about this crap and we can get anything from anywhere. If the company is complaining that they aren't making enough money then they can kiss my ass and go somewhere else.
the telcos are so used to introducing new features and charging for them that they simply cannot conceive of a way to make money otherwise.
for example: want your phone number listed? pay to be listed. too many crank phone calls from being listed? pay for caller ID. Caller ID not helping you screen effectively? pay for our privacy manager service.
the last thing anyone (except the consumer) wants is a price war between similar competitive services. the telcos and cable co's want to keep their services as apples to oranges as possible.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Idiot.
After all, Cable companies are commissioned to deliver Cable TV, not internet. Where do Cable Companies get their internet access from? Most don't have upstream sataliite feeds, so they must be paying for land lines. Land line mean they are ALSO TELCO CUSTOMERS!!! While cable companies can do most of the stuff by satallite, they will loose ALL of their VOIP services and internet connections..over night! They do realilze that the TELCOS have monopoly over phone services... over phone lines, with no net neutrality, they don't have to allow VOIP to connect to their networks. While most people can live without cable, most cannot live without phone. That's the telco's magic bullet. They will be able to upgrade EVERYBODY (profitable) to high speed internet and put TV on it as an "information service" Cable won't be able to do the same.. the telcos will be able to charge thru the noze for VOIP. Cable companies LOSE! Which side are they on again?
There's a clip that sums up Net Neutrality pretty well here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRGdVf6Mf8 Share it with your friends.
On Digg you would have received a +10.
This shows how much of a closed system Slashdot is. People with an agenda have become the old guard in the Slashdot community and people like me who have only been reading Slashdot for a year, are shut out of the moderation system.
I post this anonymously because I don't want to feel their wrath.
So go to Digg and stay off Slashdot. Or go muck around on Kuro5hin, the site that completely obsoleted Slashdot five years ago.
For more information, click here.
Net Neutrality would have the possibility of killing some business models to provide free wireless, as add based service would often not be neutral.
If we can get people to agree to ban dihydrogen monoxide why is anyone even remotely surprised when, given something that the public understands even less than chemistry, the mechanisms of the Internet, a skewed poll suggests that they don't want it. A poll on a subject like this has to be skewed because absolutely everything the person being polled knows about the subject comes from the poll itself. It's definitely non-trivial to write a completely unbiased summary and certainly given the limited amount of space that you get for a poll blurb.
Riddle me this: Won't net neutrality also prevent "throttling" for reasons that aren't nefarious? With a fixed bandwidth, wouldn't it make sense to throttle services like Email where a few seconds delay isn't noticeable as opposed to VOIP, where a few seconds delay is catastrophic. Doesn't net neutrality prevent this? And thus prevent an ISP from the optimal state for it's traffic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UlCXXZTTh8
Am I the only person who read the article or am I missing something? Were there two surveys?
Looks like people want Net Neutrality after all. 80% of the US population is about 100% of the US population with internet service. You could say that 100% of internet users think that it would suck to let ISPs throttle the internet.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not precisely. It depends on if your agenda matches Taco's or not. Several people who have complained about things here on slashdot have apparently been locked out of moderation forever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I particularly like the multi-colored "Google-esqe" text of Mumbo Jumbo and the young dot com exec on the bed where it's raining money.
The transcript just does not do this ad justice.
I think that's a big difference here, people have latched on to a kind of worst case scenario that really hasn't happened anywhere and they're pushing that as the reason to regulate. I think if there is a real problem the regulate to fix it but so far there isn't a problem, just a potential threat. Subsequently, if ISPs were to start blocking some traffic and giving preferential treatment to other traffic, it creates a ripe market where an alternative ISP could really add value. Microsoft, Google, those are fricking huge companies with a lot of money, they are completely with the means to build a new large ISP. I think IBM has created multinational networks and sold them off at least twice now.
What are the down sides of net neutrality? What's the potential worst case there? We all get dumbed down to the same speed because that's fair? Something like that? ISPs refuse to innovate and increase speed? Or maybe they cannot increase speed until they can do it for all of their customers at the same time, which in effect will end innovation or any more speed. I simply don't see a lot of good coming from regulation before there is a problem to fix.. especially when we're talking about doing it to telcos that are already clustered fucked up.
I'm all for net neutrality, but not in the form currently being campaigned for here and in congress. There is virtually no way that any net neutrality law that gets pushed through congress would be a good thing for consumers.
Here's what needs to happen...
The big problem in the US is that there is no competition between broadband providers. In most places, if you're lucky, you have a choice between DSL and Cable. That usually means getting service from a monopoly telco or a monopoly cable provider. Sure, there are companies like Earthlink that sell broadband services, but they have the uncomfortable position of having to be both the customers and competitors of the monopoly providers. This is never a good arrangement.
For true net neutrality, we need to divorce the companies that own the copper and fiber (local loop) from the ones providing dialtone. This means breaking up the monopoly providers into 2 or more entities each. One monopoly company that owns/services/maintains the wires, and one company that rents these lines from the monopoly provider and provides dialtone. The first one is regulated as any monopoly should be. The second is essentially a peer with all other dialtone providers.
This would put all the dialtone providers in the US on an equal footing, and give some serious incentive for them to add value since changing broadband provider wouldn't necessarily mean dealing with a company that has to buy stuff from their competitor.
There is clear precedent for this. Look at the deregulation of long distance in the 80's.
If we could ever make this happen in the current regulatory environment, then all this net neutrality stuff would go by the wayside. Any provider that wanted to pull this garbage of trying to charge both ends for traffic on a pipe would be writing out their own corporate suicide note, since people would just drop their inferior service.
QED (except for the part of overriding the lobbies of the monopoly companies)
I have to take great exception to a couple of your statements
self-righteous atheists who attack religous people.
For one, in my experience, it's almost always the other way around. In particular, one of the preferred attacks is to claim that atheists are always attacking them and trying to repress their beliefs, which is laughable in a country like the US where 80%+ of people are Christians, and an open atheist stands no chance of getting elected to national office. There is a minority of new atheists who are obnoxious asshats, but they usually calm down after a while, and they're no worse than born-again Christians, who (on the other hand) tend to never get less shrill.
Its usually the least informed who have the most to say.
For another thing, most atheists I know are quite familiar with the commmon arguments for and against the existence of God and knows at least a bit about the history of Christianity and the Bible. (Often weak on other religions, but hey, Christians are the majority religion here and are often big proselytizers.) Atheism is not a position most people come to passively or inherit from their parents -- unlike most religions. The atheists I know are well read, thoughtful, rational, highly informed people.
I really don't understand the whole fussa about getting mod points. I do get them fairly often, but I rarely use them. Given the amount of stories posted here, I only have so much time to read a couple of them, so I read the ones that are actually interesting to me (duh), meaning that I will probably want to comment on it too, therefore preventing me from modding anything on the topic.
The only way to use my mod points is to read comments on a story that I don't care about. Which is boring... and time consuming... and doesn't make sense anyway.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Which is why I am now set unwilling to moderate. I think the whole system is stupidly broken and I don't want to participate (any more than I have to) until it is fixed. Which might be never.
I was just bringing up the point that it's not just the old guard that's running the place. It's more accurately whoever is friends with the powers that be and that's not all the oldbies. (And it certainly doesn't include me, because I am part of the [large] group that likes to point out the utterly retarded mistakes made/left uncorrected by our illustrious "editors".)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't the whole point of Common Carrier status that a comms provider doesn't have any control over what goes over their network ?
Surely if they lose common carrier status then the content owners will go after them in court ?
Hey BigCommsCorp ! Whats in that can there ? Worms you say ?
I just presented an overview of a position paper I am writing for my Engineering writing class at the University of Southern California (USC). Not surprisingly, no one in the class had ever heard of it before I had brought it up in class.
Not only is it an issue that we should look at from a political perspective, staying informed and letting your governmental representatives know your positions. It is also a professional issue, those of us who work in engineering for companies that are pushing to make net neutrality go away should make sure the public is informed of these actions and do your best to oppose them in all professional ways that you can.
Mr. Green
Somone should try to make an almost mainstream media friendly parody of the anti nautrality lobbers, something in the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and collect money for a NYT ad like they did with firefox!
I don't think anyone is debating that certain protocols, such as VOIP, not get priority. It is more about denying service from others. For instance, your company sells a VOIP product, but throttles down VOIP traffic coming if it is coming from other VOIP products.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Ah, net neutrality. Just what America needs, more government meddling in the affairs of private enterprise. Net neutrality is just one of the recent schemes to edge America ever closer to socialism/communism. For those of you still hung up on the idea that Communism = Utopia, I refer you to the gargantuan failure known as the U.S.S.R. I am confident that these abuses many of you have imagined will never happen, but if they do, then it might be time for government intervention. For the government to intervene now is reminiscent of "The Minority Report".
"When was the last time your cable bill went DOWN?""
Which answer do you want?
1-When Dish Network became available for apartment dwellers.
2-When I quit purchasing cable service.
In both cases my bill went down.
How about we don't?
Let's be honest and call a spade a spade: Communication carriers want to bill both ends of any IP communication. If I'm in DC and call you in Seattle, does my phone company send you a bill for those minutes too? No, but that's exactly what a lot of these communication carriers are essentially proposing and mulling over.
Think of it like this: My phone company decides that when I try to call you, if you aren't a customer of theirs, they will "degrade" *MY* phone call that I initiated. And if it just so happens that my phone company offers a service that competes with you, I won't have any problems with my call being degraded as long as I call them.
I don't have anything against carriers trying to get business or make more money. But when they start entertaining ideas publicly about *degrading the services I pay for* to coerce someone else to pay them, I don't need to sit on my ass to make a judgement call whether that's right or wrong.
Let's ban Dihidrogen Monoxide too! It's claimed too many lives already, yet no action has been taken to ban this dangerous substance! When will the government listen to its concerned citizens?
"The Internet has changed the way people live and do business. So, how would you like to pay $1 for every e-mail you send? No? Then call your elected representative and demand they vote for net neutraility."
Break it down to something people do care about: e-mail.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Most of the time, when someone advocating network neutrality tells me what they think they want, they describe a policy under which I would be prohibited from dropping packets from spammers, or from giving questionable sources heavily throttled bandwidth.
I know that's not what most of us think we want. But when we ask people to define a policy, and give them a sentence describing the policy, that's what gets said.
And I, for one, do not want to face an 11 million dollar lawsuit from spammers (hi, spamhaus!) over a questionable law.
I am gonna be opposed to legislation of network neutrality until I see clear wording that doesn't have any unwanted side effects. Since that will never happen with a law, I guess I'd rather rely on market forces; I certainly wouldn't buy bandwidth from a company that was being abusive about their packet policies.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Scenario A: The Die Hard Gamer
Johnny plays Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 4 almost religiously. He used to have a nice DSL connection and usually sees ping times under 30ms to his favorite servers. Now it varys widely from 30ms to 250ms since a bunch of file sharing, VOIP, and internet TV users have moved in.
His DSL provider contacts him and informs him that due to a restructuring, his $54.95 a month now only allows him 'Standard' service. He notices that his ping time has risen to over 200ms during his gaming sessions, significantly impacting his ability to play online games, but sees no other real latency issues while surfing. Another phone call to his ISP informs him that for the low, low price of $14.95, they will prioritize his gaming packets higher than all other traffic. They would call it the 'Gaming Extreme' package. Now, Johnny is spending $15 more a month, just because his ISP has the ability to prioritize his traffic as they see fit.
THAT ROCKS. And yes I am for real.
So I used to hate ads that tell me I should vote yes or no on a particular proposition, but now I realise it actually makes my life easier.
When I see an ad telling me to vote no on a prop. because it will raise gas prices and is bad for the environment I check to see who sponsored the Ad, if it is a major oil company (like exxon) then I know it is FUD and I can safely vote yes.
When I see an ad telling me to vote yes for a prop. because it will help pay for medical costs associated with smoking and then see it is sponsored by hospitals, I can safely vote No.
It's all about who will benefit by the proposition passing or not passing and then who is sponsoring the ad.
The hard one is when it doesn't have a clear bias but seems to be benificial, like increasing money for schools or public parks, then I actually have to check if it will be funded by taxes or bonds (in which case i vote yes if I feel it is needed when it will be funded by taxes and no if it is funded by bonds(for whatever reason) as funding through fiscal irresponsibility is just stupid and ends up costing more).
...Also, governments have been engaging in infrastructure-development projects since probably the beginning of recorded history,....
It's probably the main thing that allowed history to ever be recorded in the first place.
If you're talking about the beginning of recorded history, you're talking about ancient Sumer, where the government controlled food production and distribution, and a system of writing (called cuneiform) was developed specifically to track food production and distribution.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If they dont know what it is, how can they say they dont want it?
Their 'vote' should be disqualified.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That goes for corporations (e.g. Comcast) just as well as it does a government (e.g. China). So H.o.t.I. as a slogan is more apt for those in the pro Network Neutrality camp than against. We have NN today and we don't want it to change. The level playing field on the Internet is the reason it is so much more successful than AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and their kind were. The Internet is much closer to a meritocracy than a network run by a handful of large corporations.
To argue that there should be no regulation until there is a problem to fix ignores the past problems (e.g. Madison River) and the stated intentions of telco execs (e.g. Bellsouth).
Any telco spokesman complaining about Google (or any other site) is using their network for free should either stop lying or renegotiate their peering arrangements. Every ISP has an arrangement for each of its peers, either one party paying the other or free peering. Either way it's an arrangement between consenting parties and to suggest a content provider is using their network without their consent is a lie.
Given enough competition, none of this matters, but we don't have it. If trillions of dollars were spent by several companies each running coax, fiber or wireless networks to reach all of us, they would have to compete and couldn't leverage their monopoly (or duopoly) power to obtain dominance in other areas than access. But we don't need to spend those trillions if we just require the access piece be level and let the competition happen in the services that use the access layer.
Let's be realistic here.
The public knows jack shit about the internet, nor is it likely to be educated by the media, for obvious reasons.
There is not going to be a public outcry, because the public is too damn stupid to know what's going on.
Ultimately all we can really do is hope that Google and their allies win out in this fight.
Thats the stupidest thing I've read on slashdot in a while. ::FLUSH::
Look at our freedoms go down the drain!
"Sure we know the levees are in rough shape, but who knows if we actually need to improve them? Why don't we just wait and see what happens if a hurricane hits".
The backbone companies have made it perfectly clear that they want to blackmail companies like Google into paying them a toll for premium service, even though Google pays for their access just as I do for mine. The only variable here is how greedy the backbone providers will be. Taking a "wait and see" approach when you know exactly what the problem is and exactly what it's going to do to consumers and businesses is...stupid.
It's well known that the majority of marketing strategies fail. So will pay-as-you go packets. Even if some brands manage to secure a grip over their unsuspecting customers and have them paying more for the same services and products, the Internet has adaptable and evolutionary characteristics that will enable it to overcome what the majority of us do not want.
We don't really need lobbyists. Just let the mechanics of the Net work their pseudo-Darwinian forces of "survival of the fittest" and the Net will endure in the most suitable form to meet most of our requirements.
You can't freeze water at room temperature. Likewise, you can't put packets into slavery when most packets want to be free!
That's sure as hell not what I got.
I got a form letter telling me the Senator's position on the issue I wrote about (exact opposite of mine) and I got put on his mailing list, so that I could see how he was making us all happy with lots of pork for our state.
Sometimes you just want to give up on this country and move. Does anyone know of a country that isn't AFU?
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Yes, I know, I've had the same experience more often than I care to admit. Nonetheless, Senators' aides do pay attention to the volume of mail taking a particular position, even if they don't really read the individual letters. If enough people write supporting a point of view it makes a difference.
By the way, is the parent from Alaska? If so, I hope he'll write lots of letters.
People who support Net Neutrality government interference legislation have no earthly idea what they are talking about. These people seem to have the mistaken impression that ISP's want to control your access to increase profitablity. Actually quite the opposite. With government regulation of access speed, your costs would increase because you'd be funding the bandwidth hogs who bog down the network with hi density multi-media data. The ISP's want these companies to pay a premium for sucking up all the internet bandwidth. This is perfectly sensible way to handle use of bandwidth on the internet. Why should the consumer have to pay extra so a multi-media company can sell movies and TV reruns over the same network you use to surf and get email? You want your VOIP to stop while your neighbor watches Star Trek reruns? To keep your speed, you'll have to pay more to increase network bandwidth so the Trekkie gets his fix. Let the Trekkie pay for the bandwidth. This is really basic logic people. Don't be dummies about this. People who use bandwidth should shoulder the cost of providing it. Net Neutrality is socialism at its worst. In case you don't understand that, it means everyone is "equal" in that they get less and less since the government is very ineffective at regulating the quality of your lives.
Worth watching. While the corporations would have you believe net neutrality would affect only big web providers, it would also impact internet users. How would you like tiered net service? Google? Sorry you have to subscribe to our GOLD service for that. You could of course use our crappy proprietary search engine with your current cheap level of service.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXAJbkeXoV4