Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
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?".
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.
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.
No you are way way way off.
Its more like your ISP would be able to contact imdb and say "Hey your users like to download movies, pay us and we will make sure to send the packets as fast as we can, if you don't pay us, we will throttle the connection for your users."
The end user would have no idea why imdb is slower than the roadrunner site.
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
There's a clip that sums up Net Neutrality pretty well here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRGdVf6Mf8 Share it with your friends.
Except that up until a few months ago we had network neutrality. It is called the "common carrier law" and it actually still applies to most types of communications such as telephones and shipping. The ISPs haven't had time to regroup, put the hardware in place, and find a way to profit. Notice that router companies like Cisco are siding with the telecoms - they expect to get big sales from ISPs ordering new routers with non-neutral firmware support.