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HR 5252 Bill Dies
Oronar writes to mention a post on the 'Save the Internet' site applauding the death of Ted Stevens' bill. From the post: "The fate of Net Neutrality has now been passed to what appears to be a more Web-friendly Congress ... The end of this Congress -- and death of Sen. Ted Stevens' bad bill -- gives us the chance to have a long overdue public conversation about what the future of the Internet should look like. This will not only include ensuring Net Neutrality, but making the Internet faster, more affordable and accessible."
What? You can't just pack up one Congress and replace it with another. It's not like a truck. Congress is a series of tubes.
Care about privacy? Read this!
Next year we will see it as a tag on part of a bill called something like "Keep soldier safe bill" and in trying to save our soldiers or keep porn from the kiddies, they'll find a way to control the tubes of the intarwebs...
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While I agree with you post, it ignores the history of US telecommunications. First of all the US government paid most of the initial infrastructure cost for the phone network in the US. Time for an example. Lets say the US government in its grand stupidity had contracted out the creation of the Interstate system. They said, OK private companies here is a load of cash to build the interstate, you build it, and you can charge fees, and 95% of those fees have to go back into maintainance and building new roads. That is exactly how the phone system was build and maintained untill the mid 90s. At that point they said, Hey there is demand for an all new phone (sorry falling off the methaphore here, oh forget about the raods) system using fiberoptics. You remove that 95% requirement and give us some extra tax breaks, and we will be motivated more to build a newer better system. Congress fell for this (bribed, whatever..) and that is where we stand today, with the new system that was promised never built. The phone companies are now saying, hey we are thinking about building extra toll booths, ones that allow us to charge large trucks based upon the value of their load and not just how much it weights, and other stuff too. Technically there was nothing in law to stop them from doing it besides oversight, but the new HR 5252 was going to remove a lot of that oversight. Now we are just waking up and realizing the boondongle we got ourselfs into.
Personally I think the government should claim ownership of ALL lines, and then remove all regulations. Meaning if you want to build new lines and compete with the government, thats fine, but you're going to have to do it on your own penny. But the current system which was created from government money really should belong to the people, not these companies.
This is from a while ago, when people were calling the internet the "information superhighway"
"Free speech is such a slippery little eel... Just when you think the Constitution has it right, you run into an interpretation that fails the "common sense / bull shit" test. Perhaps an analogy will serve... Think of the computer highway AS a highway.
There it is again. Some clueless FOOL talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know JACK about the net. It's NOTHING like a Superhighway. That's a BAD metaphor.
Yeah, but suppose the metaphor ran in the OTHER direction. Suppose the HIGHWAYS were like the NET. All right! Severe craziness. A highway HUNDREDS of lanes wide. Most with potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member VIGILANTE POSSES with nuclear weapons. 237 ON RAMPS at every intersection. NO SIGNS. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions. AD HOC traffic laws. Some lanes would VOTE to make use by a single-occupant- vehicle a CAPITAL OFFENSE on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just SHOOT you without a trial for talking on a car phone.
AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking BUS with hundreds of EBOLA victims and a TOILET spewing out on the road behind it. Throwing DEAD WOMBATS and rotten cabbage at the other cars most of which have been ASSEMBLED AT HOME from kits. Some are 2.5 horsepower LAWNMOWER ENGINES with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn NITROGLYCERINE and IDLE at 120.
No license tags. World War II BOMBER NOSE ART instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or VAMPIRE EAGLES. Bumper mounted MACHINE GUNS. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a WHITE PHOSPHORUS GRENADE up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks with ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILE BATTERIES to shoot down the KRUD Traffic Watch helicopter. A little kid on a tricycle with a squirtgun filled with HYDROCHLORIC ACID. "
I think that describes it pretty well, and is how it should be explained to the politicians.
I'm sorry, QoS inside the network is and has always been a bad idea. The Internet is a dumb network. It was designed that way and that is why it thrives. QoS can and should be done at the edges of the network, by the nodes which are actually doing the communicating. If your VoIP traffic is delayed by the HTTP download you're doing, throttle it! It's not as if your computer has no control over the rate people are sending it data.
Now, if your VoIP traffic is being delayed by the HTTP download *someone else* is doing, you don't have control over it. However, the correct solution here is NOT QoS. The correct solution to this problem is more bandwidth inside the network at the congested node. Adding more bandwidth is cheap, probably just as cheap as adding QoS, yet more bandwidth solves all of the problems QoS does, plus it increases the utility of the network for *everyone*, not just those using latency-sensitive applications. Furthermore, it keeps the network neutral to everyone, and doesn't introduce the possibility of QoS discrimination between classes of users.
Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.