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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."
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.'"
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
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.
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.
That doesn't stop creationist ministers who don't study biophysics, self-righteous atheists who attack religous people, race-baiting anti-immigrant types who don't full understand NAFTA and GATT or people jumping the anti-welfare bandwagon without knowing anything about how public assistance works.
Its usually the least informed who have the most to say.
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
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.
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?
No, the problem is that it doesn't really matter if you switch ISPs if your packets still have to travel through networks owned by other ISPs that alter policies based on packet source.
In other words, you are on the west coast with ISP A.
The server you want to talk to is on the east cost with ISP B.
Backbone provider C sits in the middle, and your packets want to cross over their network.
C decides that B hasn't payed them enough money, and thus slows down packets to and from B that cross over C.
From your end, it looks like service is degraded and your ISP sucks. What do you do? Switch ISPs? It won't help if you still have to cross C to get to B. So there's really no way to "vote with your dollars" in this case -- as if that would work anyway, because like I said you won't know the root cause.
Network neutrality is a basic part of the net's design. So basic nobody thought to codify it until it became clear that certain money grubbers want to eliminate it. Sorry GP, but regulation is the only way to fix this problem.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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.
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."
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.
And you know why there aren't any? Government monopolies!
You can't block Net Neutrality on the grounds that it introduces government regulation to the net, when the very existence of the infrastructure on which the net runs is due to a whole raft of government-granted monopolies, government claims of eminent domain, etc.
The day I can start charging Verizon rent for the lines they keep on my property, instead of just giving them those rights for free because the government tells me to, is the day I'll buy the "no government regulation of the net" argument against Net Neutrality.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
How about waiting to see if there actually is a problem? Right now there is nothing to fix. Nobody has implemented tiered service yet. Nobody has targeted packets to slow them down yet. I say at least let the market try first (may or may not work), then if an actual problem arises, try regulation. Once regulation starts, it's only going to get more pervasive. There is a good chance that regulation will be worse than the problems that may arise without it.
Finding other idiots on
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
Big business will charge you any way they can. And they'll usually make you watch ads at the same time. Ads that they charged someone else to put there.
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.
This is what the federal government said about Microsoft's anti-compeditive practices back in the mid 1990's. Would you say they have sure done a great job of regulating Microsoft since then?
A big problem is that whenever one of these massive companies notices a potential regulatory threat to their cash cow, they simply sponsor a few senators and their parties and get the entire thing stopped.
Um... it might just be that those times are generally when the internet is heavily used and your ISP and/or the ISP of the server you are playing on is probably just bogged down with heavy traffic. No conspiracy there at all.
Finding other idiots on
How about waiting to see if there actually is a problem? Right now there is nothing to fix. Nobody has implemented tiered service yet. Nobody has targeted packets to slow them down yet.
Yes, yet. Are you implying that therefore the ISPs might not actually want to? Then why are they fighting so hard against net neutrality? It certainly isn't because they're averse to government regulation, seeing as how that's why most of them exist as localized monopolies! There's clearly a desire to implement tiered services, and to target packets to slow them down. They will do it, it is only a matter of time.
Personally, I prefer to fix issues before they become a problem. Kinda like fixing your tire design before the first SUV flips over. But waiting until the obvious problem actually bites you in the ass sure is the typical market way of dealing with things.
I say at least let the market try first (may or may not work), then if an actual problem arises, try regulation.
I'd be interested to hear how it could work. Where's the market incentive? As I was pointing out, it's not like end users can actually affect anything, assuming they can even tell what is going on.
Once regulation starts, it's only going to get more pervasive. There is a good chance that regulation will be worse than the problems that may arise without it.
There's already regulation. Regulation is why the internet exists in the first place. Internet is better than no internet, and net neutrality is better than no net neutrality. Even if the legislation that brings it about has its own negative side effects. The balkanization of the internet is a terrible problem. I do not see a good chance that even particularly bad legislation would be worse, so long as it enforced neutrality.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
Who says you'd give rights to a dozen companies to dig up your property? Remember, its your property. If Verizon wants to lay wire across your land, they're going to have to pay rent. They don't, because the government circumvents your property rights and gives them rights that they would not have in a free market.
Of course, I'm not suggesting this as a workable solution. If Verizon had to actually deal with the free market, and obtain the right to lay line on everyone's land, they wouldn't exist. The logistics would be impossible. That's the point. The internet is a public good, like the road systems or sewer systems. The only way these systems can be created is through government circumvention of the fundamental property rights of citizens. Thus, its stupid to argue that government regulation will destroy free market competition, because there is no free market involved.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...