Congress to Debate Net Neutrality

evw writes "The NYTimes is reporting that legislation was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday in support of Net Neutrality. It is bipartisan legislation introduced by Olympia Snowe, R-Maine and Byron Dorgan, D-N. Dakota, however the article notes that Senator Snowe is one of the few Republicans that supports it. "Senior lawmakers, emboldened by the recent restrictions on AT&T and the change in control of Congress, have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access." This isn't the first attempt. Last year a similar amendment was blocked. However, conditions placed on AT&T in its merger with SBC have emboldened supporters of the legislation."

Comments

Re:IPTV

[PingSpike]

The concern isn't that the telcos will use QoS to make their IPTV service faster. Its that they'll choke any IPTV packets that don't come from their own IPTV service, effectively shutting the competitors out of the market and leaving you with yet another local monopoly to deal with. Or try to extort money out of big content providers like google for instance. Hell, one of those fat fucks actually said he was planning on doing just that.

Re:I find this funny

[UbuntuDupe]

Net neutrality is fraudulent, because no one knows what the market will want tomorrow.

Let's go easy on the rhetoric; net neutrality might lack merit, and it's proponents might on occasion make fraudulent claims* but "net neutrality" is not fraudulent. And while I agree that people too often use static thinking when talking about markets, I strongly suspect people will ALWAYS want to know when their access to something is being throttled because the provider has been bribed to make your access more difficult by someone who can't compete on a level field.

*though more often it happens the other way around. Ted Stevens and Professor Woo, I'm looking in your general direction. Except about the internet not being a truck. That part you got right.

Your energy provider agrees.

[Zeek40]

Tell this to your local utilities company,they'll agree wholeheartedly because it's incredibly expensive to lay down the infrastructure to compete. Your electricity bill and water bill will go through the roof without the government smacking them on the hand. These sorts of things are natural monopolies where the cost of competing in the industry outweighs potential benefits to the consumer. There are very few cities in the US that i know of which have multiple cable companies servicing them, do you really want your only option for high speed internet access to have the freedom to determine what services (that they're not providing to you, they're just delivering) you have to pay extra to see?

Re:Your energy provider agrees.

[Zeek40]

Here is how I see this scenario working out, please show me where you disagree.

1. Company A is the only utilities provider for the Towns, and is charging exorbitant prices.
2. Company B sees the opportunity to compete in the market with Company A, and invests billions of dollars in infrastructure necessary to compete as a utilities company, laying lines to the entire town and creating their power plant.
3. Company A recognizes what company B is doing and lowers its rates in each area that Company B services to sell utilities at a loss, relying on their dominant market position and the capital that they have accrued while being the only shop in town.
4. Company B tries to compete for customers with Company A, but with the new low rates company A is charging, Company B finds itself short of customers and with angry investors who would like to see a return on their investment this decade breathing down its neck.
5. Company B files for bankruptcy after it is unable to recoup its massive intitial investment in laying down infrastructure to the town. Unfortunatley, as their assets are liquidated, they find that there are very few people willing to buy a backup power plant and backup power grid for an entire town, and their investors really take it in the shorts.
6. Company A resumes charging its exorbitant rates.
7. Repeat as often as there are investors dumb enough to try to get into the market.

The problem is the massive up front investment in assets that are worth very little outside the market.

Re:I find this funny

[hxnwix]

Selection? Selection of what? In what way does mandatory equality of QOS negatively impact the internet? I posit that the internet owes its success to carrier's whose motivation presently is to provide the best possible service. Breaking nuetrality means it will be the carrier's fudiciary duty to degrade all traffic and underinvest in their networks in order to force all users to pay unavoidable tolls. Users who refuse will see their traffic neglected and actively sabotaged.

"Net neutrality is bad idea -- just like most regulation of industry. How about revoking some of the pro-monopoly laws that exist, and allowing the market to go where the consumer wants it to? Voting with your dollars gives us cheaper goods in greater quantity. Setting regulations does the opposite."

You are working from an unsupported proposition - that all regulation is bad - and saying that since net nuetrality is regulation, it must also be bad. Your conclusion presupposes your conclusion. That's called begging the question.