Net Neutrality Act On the Agenda Again

blue234 writes "On January 9th, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and Democrat Byron Dorgan reintroduced the bill popularly known as the Net Neutrality Act, and officially called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill was killed in the Senate last year in a vote split along party lines (Democrats yea, Republicans no), with the exception of Senator Snowe, who voted with the Democrats. Now that the Democrats have a slight majority in the Senate, the bill certainly has a better chance, but it still needs 60 votes to prevent a Republican filibuster.

Comments

Wait and see, I think

[JoshJ]

If this suceeds, I think we basically win the internet freedom war against the telcoms and cable companies- it'll be a long time before they can do any more damage.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[JoshJ]

Stall the internet's progress?
I'd say allowing the cable companies to charge people for delivery of content would halt it entirely- there'd be no more small innovations, you would have to be a big player to have a website, period. Nothing new would be possible from the average person- only from the large corporations.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[morgan_greywolf]

If this suceeds, I think we basically win the internet freedom war against the telcoms and cable companies- it'll be a long time before they can do any more damage.

Maybe. I guess it depends on how loosely worded the bill ends up being and how many loopholes get thrown in by senators catering to special interests (read: corporate campaign sponsors). This sort of pandering to special interests isn't a Republican thing and it isn't a Democrat thing either -- it's a politician thing.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[Colin Smith]

Stall the internet's progress? Yes, that's exactly what it'll do. That's the purpose of the legislation. To prevent change to the network. It will prevent beneficial changes as well as malign ones and thereby stall development.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[nmb3000]

From the article:

"How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"

Clearly this guy has a stick up his pipe (and it's tubes, not pipes you moron). IANAE but here's how I figure it: I pay my ISP for access to the Internet. Google pays their ISP for access to the Internet. What happens in between is called the cost of doing business . You don't hear Walmart bitching because they have to ship their crap from Elbonia to Hometown, USA in order to sell it.

"The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts!"

No. What's nuts is that I guess he forgot about the $60/mo raping they're handing people. Yes, I realize that in the tiny land of Nugotheosia every house has a 1Tb/s fiber tube connected straight to the Internets for only $1/mo. However, this is the America we're talking about, where infrastructure has to span huge distances and urban areas usually only have one or two providers.

There's not much news here really. Telecoms trying to screw their customers for more profit: old news. Political parties disagreeing about levels of governmental regulation: old news. Even if the bill does pass, it probably has more holes than the proverbial block of Swiss cheese and will be about as effective as the CAN SPAM act.

Good idea? Sure. Will it fly? Like a chicken.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[FleaPlus]

I guess it depends on how loosely worded the bill ends up being and how many loopholes get thrown in by senators catering to special interests (read: corporate campaign sponsors).

Question: Is there any way to word a Net Neutrality bill without loopholes which wouldn't also interfere with legitimate activity?

Re:Wait and see, I think

[IWannaBeAnAC]

and it's tubes, not pipes you moron

This, and the rest of your post where you refer to 'tubes' again, suggests you actually believe this. Interesting how internet jokes make their own reality ;-)

Re:Wait and see, I think

[Dachannien]

That's the purpose of the legislation. To prevent change to the network.

Uh, no.

Network neutrality aims to prevent telecom/cable ISPs from regulating traffic based on content or source. That's all. You should be able to pay your ISP - and only your ISP - for the bandwidth you use, without your ISP throttling or blocking your access based on the content that is delivered. It protects third-party innovators by ensuring that their content can be delivered to the customer as long as they pay their bills to their own ISP.

Can you state how network neutrality will "prevent change to the network" beyond offering this protection? Opponents to network neutrality continue to try to convince others that all legislation is, on its face, a bad thing, but they provide no evidence to indicate how it would be bad. All we hear is that somehow, in some nonspecific way, innovation will be disrupted, when supporters of network neutrality have already stated multiple concrete and very real ways in which innovation is fostered by adopting these regulations.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[anthony_dipierro]

If this suceeds, I think we basically win the internet freedom war against the telcoms and cable companies

Call me a cynic, but once Congress gets involved I don't have any hope that this legislation will increase freedom for anyone. The only way to truly win freedom from the telecoms and cable companies is to build a network which doesn't rely on telecoms and cable companies.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Question: Is there any way to word a Net Neutrality bill without loopholes which wouldn't also interfere with legitimate activity?

I'd hope it would be possible, but it would certainly have to be carefully worded. However, and I'm sure this may put me in the minority here, but I don't think any Network Neutrality laws should be passed at this time. Any type of such regulations will add to costs (if nothing else than from an administrative/legal perspective) and of course those costs will be passed on to the consumer. I think Network Neutrality MUST be maintained, but I don't see the need for laws/regulation to enforce it as this time.

History teaches us laws tend to be far from perfect and I'm sure this would be no different. Instead of passing laws/regulations on this, hopefully just the threat of such laws/regulations will keep the telcos in line. Instead of passing a law on this, I think currently I'd rather see some kind of non-binding resolution passed explaining the spirit of Network Neutrality and threatening regulation if the Telcos attempt to interfer with it. My feeling is the Telcos would much rather live with Network Neutrality than face additional regulations, so hopefully this will keep the internet free without having to resort to the burden of regulations. Besides, who do you think will get the loadest voice if/when any such regulations are enacted? The Telcos! I think keeping things the way they are but with the threat of regulation is the best course right now.

That said, if there is to be a network neutrality law here are some important ideas I think should be included to allow legitimate activity while also keeping network neutrality:

1) Any network neutrality laws should only apply to "common carrier" networks (ISPs and the large backbone network providers). My private network at work or home, I can do with what I want. Now there will be some tricky questions here as well. Universities which provide internet access to students, are they ISPs? Should this apply to them? I'd say probably not, but thats open for debate. So there should probably be some carefully spelled out exceptions that these laws will NOT apply to and also have a system in place for organizations which do fall under the law to apply for exemptions (of course there is the danger of this beign abused, but I think it needs to be there to protect unforseen cases).

2) Network Neutrality should NOT be about treating ALL traffic equally. It should be about treating all of the same type of traffic equally. If there is a reason to give UDP traffic priority over TCP traffic, thats fine but all UDP traffic gets that priority not just certain people who pay more. If there is a reason to give port 80 traffic priority over port 21 traffic, again thats fine but all service providers get the same opportunity to use port 80 traffic not just the ISPs private service, etc, etc, etc. Possibly any such priority decisions like this will need to be approved by some type of standards body so each ISP/carrier doesn't just use different priorities to segment the network.

3) Exceptions about treating all traffic equally may be made for SPAM/virus/security reasons. If there is traffic coming from a botnet sending tons of spam you can treat that traffic differently. (ie black lists, etc are still permissable). However, any ISP or common carrier found to be abusing that exemption to the detrement of thier competitors will face stiff fines.

I'm sure I'm missing tons of other key ideas, but these are ones that first come to my head which will keep things flexible, but hopefully still get the hoped for result.

Re:Wait and see, I think

[Damastus the WizLiz]

Pipes are Tubes

Re:Wait and see, I think

[deevnil]

.... would have to be carefully worded....History teaches us laws tend to be far from perfect and I'm sure this would be no different. Instead of passing laws/regulations on this, hopefully just the threat of such laws/regulations will keep the telcos in line.....

This is true, with no laws - when you're cheating and lying and know it, you have to be careful. With law, you just need a lawyer. The Native Americans were initially 'granted' most of the United States all they had to do was agree to the concept of property to lay the groundwork for having it taken.

Sometimes they work marvelously.. with all this free market talk going on I am reminded of a particular example: Recycling duties in the NE USA. One problem(or solution for others) with the free market is that pesky moving target of profit maximization. You sell 1000 sodas a month at .75$, at 1.00$ you sell 900 and for .35$ you sell 1050(saturation). Obvoiusly you go with $1 and it creeps as we grow accostumed to paying the set point. When they mandated a 10 cent recycling duty on cans and plastic bottles so that the consumer pays up front the exchange fee, business still had to sell at a maximised price which isn't any different from what I pay in the SE. I'm sure it was an accident(functional interference), but they get their cans recycled so...

In a way it's like the people who would be willing to pay just a few cents tax on email to cut back on spam - that would simply legitamize spam for whoever could afford the tax. Government regulation can seem like a good idea, right up until it happens. It should be possible to define Net Neutrality in 50 words or less, but then what self respecting congressman would consider a one sentence law. Hrm.

Tiered access would do more than just define whether you lived in an Amazon or Barnes 'n Noble zone - which is bad enough.. it could potentially differientiate Beverly Hills Amazon and my Amazon and would create seperate markets for large file transfers and create well defined video conferencing services. I think video conferencing is the future that is being debated most of all - the backbone providers made a fortune on the telephone and they are considering ther next meal... for it to be universially palletable, in a light that will appeal to the growing majority of people who view the internet as a shopping mall/marketplace near exclusively.

I mean, I dunno... I'm sure there are complications but I don't doubt that any law that is passed, for or against, will lay groundwork for legal monitoring, bandwidth discrimination towards linux ISO distributors, fewer exhibitionist webcam chicks, and all that. Somehow. In a positive scenario, neutrality will be guaranteed but for a few hooks for legitamite anti-terrorist monitoring and then there will be a quasi legal BSA type corporate funded organisation leveraging whatever. It's always the same.

There they go again...

[icebike]

Those damn Republicans will be trying to kill off our Internet Freedom again.

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Oh, wait a minute....

Re:There they go again...

[Manchot]

It's too bad that the bill's Republican co-sponsor is labeled a RINO by many members of her party.

As a North Dakotan

[alexwcovington]

I say.. Go Dorgan! I'm impressed that we have a representative in Congress that knocks back the backwoods sterotypes. I'm not kidding-- Fiber-to-the-home is already offered by the phone co-op in Rugby. Compare that to the constant delays at the big telcos.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[icebike]

I don't think you read very carefully:

From TFA:

"The prioritization of types of content, applications, or services would be allowed under the condition that it is done free of charge, and that it is done for all types of that particular content. For example, the prioritization of packets to insure Quality of Service for Voice over IP must be done for all VoIP providers free of charge to them."

Now since virtually every telco is also an IP carrier you can kiss skype goodby. Anything that competes with POTS is likely to be degraded to death.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[epee1221]

From what I've heard, neutrality has been mostly a non-issue at the backbone level -- it's only the last mile providers who were trying to be non-neutral. So no, VoIP is probably not dead, but yeah, I'd definitely expect there to be continued problems if you try to use VoIP with a DSL connection.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[Garse Janacek]

How is this different from the current situation? Providers already treat different content differently, and some providers block certain ports / content types entirely. Is there something in current law that would prevent them from (e.g.) degrading VoIP, that will lose effect after this law passes? (For example, if telcos could be prosecuted under anti-trust laws for this behavior, they probably could after the law is passed as well, even if the law doesn't specifically restrict VoIP degradation -- it's not the action itself that's illegal, but the conflict of interests / abuse of monopoly power it entails.)

Re:As a North Dakotan

[Firehed]

Sounds like that says that if an ISP who's also dealing in VOIP wants to prioritize their VOIP packets above your bit-torrent and whatnot, they're free to do so provided that Skype, Vonage, etc get that same prioritization.

Although it sounds like you're coming from the other side of things - those ISPs who don't have VOIP services are going to send them to the bottom of the stack. Still, I take some comfort in knowing that they're going to have to either screw themselves or help their competitors (or, rather, not abuse their position of power and screw their competitors while helping themselves) whenever there's some new market that they want to enter. I see no reason to be racist towards bits, but then again I think I'd put up with slightly slower pira^H^H^H^H Linux .iso downloads in order to have all of my VOIP calls not make that horrible "your upload sucks right now" screeching noise.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the backbones not caring about this whole neutrality thing, but for the telcos, you actually have it a bit backwards. Thanks to deregulation, the phone companies can do whatever they want with their lines, and in most places, you're damned if you're going to get DSL without already paying for a home phone line. If you want voip on top of their phone line, that's fine with them, just don't cancel your land line. Now, they have other issues with network neutrality (as in, they want to force everyone else to subsidize your "cheap" DSL line so that they can continue to lower their prices to compete against newer, better cable installations without having to spend money on actually providing competitive service).

It's the cable companies that are pushing their voip services that are going to be the real troublemakers for skype and vonage. If you have cable and you're not buying their voip, then they're not getting the money they believe they are entitled to.

T1 prices in the big cities are reaching the point that if ISPs begin to break net neutrality, I could easily get one from Qwest or Covad, resell extra bandwidth to a couple of neighbors, and possibly break even if they don't turn out to be bittorrent-using porn fiends ;) It wouldn't be as fast as DSL, but then again, my DSL isn't all that fast because SBC/ATT continues to drag its feet on network upgrades.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[Paulrothrock]

No, this is the solution I came up with a long time ago. If companies want to give all VOIP packets preference because of QoS concerns, they're allowed to. However, they're not allowed to give Comcast or Verizon VoIP packets preference over Vonage or Skyp VoIP packets.

That provision sounds completely fair.

Re:As a North Dakotan

[epee1221]

It's the cable companies that are pushing their voip services that are going to be the real troublemakers for skype and vonage. If you have cable and you're not buying their voip, then they're not getting the money they believe they are entitled to.

Isn't preventing this exactly the point of allowing only "type of service" traffic shaping? Or did you mean that's what would happen without neutrality law?

Re:As a North Dakotan

[icebike]

"That provision sounds completely fair."

Not to me.

I'm paying for the bandwidth. What I do with it is my business.
No provider should be able to impose penalties on my particular
choice of usage provided I stay within the law.

Besides, the likelyhood that they will enhance voip is virtually
nill. They will degrade it so as to protect their dialup business.

Hopefully...

[Watson Ladd]

the bill survives committee intact. Do not contact your Representative or Senator to ask them to support the bill until after it makes it through committee! Otherwise you could be supporting a bill that's completely different from what you think it is.

Re:Hopefully...

[mordors9]

Oh c'mon. You must be forgetting the Dems are now in control. The days of any legislative shenanigans are over. (removing tongue from cheek)

Operation Preserve Freedom

[s388]

"Internet Freedom Preservation Act"

It's funny. In this day and age I hear a bill title like that and I automatically assume it's some tyrannical euphemistic horror-show and that I should immediately call my representatives and insist they opppose it.

Incidentally this bill really is evil, because apparently all consumers and businesses currently use tremendous bandwidth without paying for it! I for one think it's about time the internet service providers were paid a monthly bill for the courtesies they provide!

Re:Operation Preserve Freedom

[oSand]

You're probably just one of those people that hate Patriotism and don't want Clear Skies.

Re:Operation Preserve Freedom

[Duhavid]

He was being ironic.

It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

here's how I see it...

My friend sends me a link to a clip on Google Video.
I go to the link, get my clip and laugh at the money drinkin' its own urine, or whatever.
Google gets a bill from my Internet service provider for bandwidth usage.
Google rips up the bill and tells my ISP to go fuck themselves.
My ISP reduces the available bandwidth to connections to Google's ip range.

Great, so then what happens?

My friend sends me another link to a clip on Google Video.
I go to the link and discover that the clip is too slow (or completely blocked).
I moan to my ISP that I can't play these important movie clips from Google Video.
My ISP tells me that I can't play them because Google hasn't paid their bandwidth charges.
I tell my ISP to go fuck themselves and switch to a provider that honours net neutrality.
Everyone else does this too because we really like Google Video.

And there goes the backhanded stupidity caused by ISPs temporarily forgetting that we, the consumers, control exactly how much money they make.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[JoshJ]

And what happens if all the ISPs make a deal that they will all refuse to honor net neutrality? Because that's what would happen- they'd all make a deal behind the scenes. That's what happens today- corporations ganging up to rape the consumer.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

If that happens, we've got a lot bigger problems than net neutrality.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[epee1221]

I tell my ISP to go fuck themselves and switch to a provider that honours net neutrality. Everyone else does this too because we really like Google Video.

Then you remember that since you don't live close enough to a DSLAM, the only other available provider is dial-up, and it not only takes forever to load the video but ties up your phone line too.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[JoshJ]

I'm curious- why do you think basically every Internet service costs about the same?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[FandySidestar]

Also, in a lot of the US there isn't a real choice between ISPs. As in there's only one broadband provider in your area.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Duhavid]

Google is already paying for the bandwidth they use.

Why should they pay twice?

Not to mention that such an arrangement would freeze
out smaller businesses that cannot afford the
bandwidth pirate fees. And note that the unpredicablity
of such fees will make that especially troublesome
for a small business.

If the ISPs and Telcos cant make ends meet on what
they charge, then there is an easy, direct, non-extortionate
solution to that problem.

Another post in reply to yours has covered the concept
that companies can and will act in a cartel'ish manner
to increase profitability, so I will say no more.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

Maybe they do where you live, but most parts of the world, they have these laws that prevent price fixing, and companies actually compete for the customer's business. Of course, if you have any evidence of price fixing, maybe you shouldn't be talking to me, maybe you should be talking to a lawyer, cause you could have some sweet class action lawsuit payout coming. But I think you don't.

Similarly, if you're so sure that ISPs are price fixing, in clear violation of the law, then why bother supporting a new law? Won't they just break that one too?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

If you happen to be in that situation, I have one suggestion for you: get out now. No matter what you are paying, it is guarenteed to be too much. No competition, no chance you're getting a good deal.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Duncan3]

They will just ALL start charging server rates for all uploads. Since 1/3 of all traffic is pirated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H BitTorrent which means upload, and a tiny tiny fraction is Google, the ISP's win.

(why they haven't already attempted to solve the piracy problem this way I have no idea)

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

Ya know what you should do about that? Start your own. And don't give me any of this shit about having to lay cables or whatever, get your local government to declare that the current provider must open their infrastructure so you can compete with them. This is what happened in Australia and we have a thriving broadband market.

It seems to strange to me that the US has become the land of the monopolies and very few people stand up and declare that it aint right.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Grey_14]

Hey great plan ace! then the next time he wants to post on /. he can just wander down to the local library and use their computers! How Convenient! It's a good thing he stuck it to the man and showed them what he thought of the lack of competition!

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Grey_14]

there are more costs associated with running an ISP than just cable, though thats a huge part of it, now IF the local government manages to declare this, which I have no idea how likely that is, There are huge other costs to get up and running, and then your trying to stay competitive with these other companys who have been in the business for years. You make it sound like anyone can just push a few buttons on their home PC and make the internet free for all again, There's a lot of reasons things aren't as golden and rosy worldwide in this area, It's a nice hope and maybe a possibility, but don't just shrug it off and say people should go start their own ISP like it's nothing, it's just not not that easy.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Garse Janacek]

I live in a major city, and have only one option for bandwidth (besides dialup): Comcast. Or somebody else, Earthlink or something, that also goes through Comcast (when I used them, I still had to call Comcast for my tech support). I can't use DSL, my building doesn't support it. Actually, despite living in a number of large urban/suburban areas, I have never yet lived in a single place where I had the option of DSL, or more than one cable network.

I see some variant of your post almost every time net neutrality comes up, but let me assure you: if Comcast decides I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google, I'm getting lower bandwidth to Google.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This is what happened in Australia and we have a thriving broadband market.

Since when? Last I heard, a year or two ago, the partially-state-owned telco had a near monopoly and was farting around with xfer caps for any international traffic. Apparently you live there and all and thus should know more about it than someone who is too lazy to google it, but if what you say is true, it's gotta be a recent phenomenon.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

ISPs have been attempting to charge upstream for access to their network since the commercial Internet began. They've all met a resounding answer from the content providers: fuck off or we will block you . Who do you think has more to lose, Google being blocked by even the biggest ISP in the US (leaving the thousands of others with millions of users visiting their site daily) or the ISP being blocked by Google (pretty much all of who's customers would subsequently quit and find another provider). This whole net neutrality bill is bogus as we don't need laws to enforce what is the status quo. The only thing we need to watch is any laws that try to make it hard for upstream to retaliate against ISPs who try to break net neutrality.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[kindbud]

My ISP tells me that I can't play them because Google hasn't paid their bandwidth charges.
I tell my ISP to go fuck themselves and switch to a provider that honours net neutrality.

Yeah, but does your provider's provider honor net neutrality? There are few sources of bandwidth outside the existing telco infrastructure, and very few companies that control all that. Everyone else is a reseller.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[epee1221]

Ya know, some people really do say, "screw Comcast" and just stick with dial-up.

then the next time he wants to post on /. he can just wander down to the local library and use their computers!

Dial-up is fine for posting on /. The last thing I downloaded at the library was an OpenSuSE install iso.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

This is why we don't need these laws in Australia.. we have competition. Maybe the US should do something about that, instead of trying to pass regulations. Personally, I thought it was the american way and Australia was just copying.. guess I was wrong.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

I have the choice of about 100 different DSL providers.. and I live in an outward suburb of the second smallest city in Australia.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

Last I heard, the vast majority of people were saying "screw broadband" and sticking with dialup.. maybe breaking net neutrality will be the last nail in the coffin.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Qzukk]

The US was like that too, at one time. Then the government decided to "deregulate" and by "deregulate", I mean cancel the regulations that forced the telcos to share their lines.

Even so, it was more of a joke than not while it lasted. The 100 different DSL providers all simply resold lines they rented from the telco, and buying service from them was generally pointless. Half the time the telco would fuck the line up and continuously blame the DSL "provider" (but of course, if you bought the DSL direct from them, there'd be no problem) while the DSL provider insisted it was a line problem (but of course, what do these little companies know about lines, we're the telephone company, it's their fault and we're right because we say we're right).

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Qzukk]

My ISP tells me that I can't play them because Google hasn't paid their bandwidth charges.

And risk you telling them to go fuck themselves? Clearly their first tier support staff will be trained to tell you that the problem is that google's servers are overloaded and you should use a different server like [paid sponsorship here]'s funny video server.

Why do so many people assume that companies are going to tell the truth about the bad things they do?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[stinerman]

Where do you live that you have more than 2 choices for broadband? Most people don't have the zillion choices that are needed for perfect competition.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

As if that wouldn't elicit the exact same response.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem is that many areas have a monopoly or duopoly, and if there are any choices, they are between evil and retarded.

Even the mobile phone market is pretty bad, those providers call the shots, you buy their service and their restricted phone with an overly long contract and they charge you about $200 to end the contract.

I think the ISPs are well aware of this.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[mibus]

Said state-owned telco is still screwing people over, but is forced to allow access; this includes ISPs being allowed to install DSLAMs for DSL2+ into exchanges.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

Yeah, I've learnt this, posting to this.. I live in Australia and have about a 100 suppliers available to me. the US is fucked, and no amount of regulation is going to help you. Not that kind of regulation anyway. Your government needs to force the current big players to open their architecture and provide competitive prices. I guess you folks learnt nothing from the Ma Bell incident. Sigh, history repeats.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[stinerman]

Price fixing is obvious. Take a look at any street with gas stations on either side of the road. 9 times out of 10 they have the same price. Unless that price is wholesale (or close enough to cover marginal cost), its price fixing.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[qbwiz]

It could be that if one had a higher price, then it would go out of business. As you can see from the demand curve there is a good incentive to keep the prices all at the same level, even without collusion. No collusion=no price fixing.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[JoshJ]

You're confusing American freedom/democracy rhetoric vs the actual reality of American corporatist oligarchism.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know what you should do about that? Start your own. And don't give me any of this shit about having to lay cables or whatever, get your local government to declare that the current provider must open their infrastructure so you can compete with them.

Exactly. What is with you lazy Americans? If you don't like the cost or service of your internet provider, just start your own! It's so easy! Why I had my own ISP up and running in a Saturday afternoon!

It's similar to gas prices. People keep complaining about gasoline prices at the local stations. You know what I did? I started my own oil company, petitioned various governmental agencies to get access to pipelines, and built a gas station! No problem. Took a few hours to get it all together, but it was worth it.

Another example. Cell phone prices. I just couldn't deal with those expensive monthly fees and lock-in plans that the major cell-phone carriers push on consumers. You know what I did? That's right, I started my own cell-phone network! Set up a few cell phone towers, connected all the infrastructure, and now I'm barely paying 20 USD a month for my usage (plus the inital $1,950,000.00 start-up fees).

It has always seemed strange to me that Americans can't just start major communication and technological infrastructures on their own. It's like they have something better to do with their time.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[JoshJ]

You do realize the feds just let AT&T, Southwestern Bell, SBC, and Bellsouth merge?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[ewieling]

Google already pays for the bandwidth it uses -- they pay their ISP. I pay my ISP for the bandwidth I use. Now if my ISP starts charging Google for bandwidth then I expect the ISP to stop charging me for bandwidth.

This whole "Net Neutrality" thing would be a non-issue if a law was passed that prevented ISPs from charging more than one entity (company or individual) for bandwidth.

Charge me or charge the content provider, but not both.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[stinerman]

Indeed. Its pretty much Verzion, Qwest, and AT&T now. Just wait until Qwest gets bought out by one of the 2.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[stinerman]

We have CLECs which are people who use the lines owned by the old Bells. So in many cases I can get a different service provider. I used Speakeasy as an ISP, and I found them to be excellent. The only problem is that if there was something physically wrong with the line, they'd have to call up AT&T to fix it. And since AT&T isn't getting much money out of my line, they decided to put it on idle priority. I was without a connection for 6 days because AT&T couldn't be bothered to fix their lines. Apparently they were doing work and screwed with my line.

Of course, AT&T isn't supposed to do that, but no one ever calls them on it. So your only bet is to go with the monopolies, because you can be guaranteed better service (in my experiences anyway).

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[TeraCo]

There's your solution then - Wait for them to merge into one superplex, then declare the infrastructure. They'll scream like a stuck pig, but within a year you'll have 10-15 ISP's and within 5 you'll have a couple of hundred. (Or more).

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[GFree]

Yes, we have competition between ISPs in Australia (it's rather good actually), but unfortunately the buck stops with Telstra, so we're fucked no matter what. If similar laws were passed here, we'd be an ever worse-rate country for broadband than we are now (if that was even possible).

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

Yup, that's fucked, and is exactly the kind of thing that should be attracting government attention.. not net neutrality.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[QuantumG]

We have the best broadband in the world second to maybe, south korea. And what laws are you talking about?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Eskarel]

Having lived in both the US and now in Australia, I call BS. In australia, you have quite a number of options, for DSL, if you live in or very close to a major population point. If you live out of range for a DSL line, you're basically screwed. For cable there's what Optus and Foxtel? Neither of those are great. Plus Telstra is rather heavily regulated(perhaps too regulated, but that's what you get when a private company owns the telco infrastructure for the whole country).

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Artifakt]

I'm starting to think Google already has a solution to the ISPs 'taxing' them in mind. Google has bought a lot of dark fiber, and more significantly, they are leasing a lot of fiber. At least by related precidence, Google simply can't be charged with abuse of a vertical monopoly if the case is based on that monopoly including pipes they only lease. (Not actulally owning even a simple majority of some asset is a tremendously strong defense against a claim of monopoly in that area). If some zealous prosecuter does try to build an antitrust case, any arguement against Google that mentions their bandwidth assets would be much more valid against the ISPs.
      (And every other business out there is going to be tremendously concerned if the courts start establishing preliminary opinions that a business with less than 50% actual ownership of an asset can even remotely possibly be subject to antitrust based on vertical monopoly rules for that - the ISP that seeks such a verdict won't just find itself in a telecommunications war with Google after that announcement, rather businesses such as Nissan, Exxon, International Paper, and Caterpillar will all be working vigorously on driving them into bankrupcy before their case against Google can even be finished, once they realize the implications for their own business models. Just imagine how Alcoa Aluminum would react to the news that having the dedicated electrical output of only about 8% of all the power produced by TVA's dams could still make them legally a vertical monopoly, or how Pepsi would react if told a court case could open the way for #1 Coca Cola to proceed against #2 Pepsi on antitrust claims.).
        If ISPs start imposing special fees on Google at that point, then Google uses fiber it controls to force peering arrangements, buys or leases more, AND converts some of those leases to purchases. Since Google is the underdog at that point, facing monopoly practices, and are 'just trying to minimize the damage being done', Google isn't seeking a Monopoly. Yes, they could end up with at least a pretty close approximation, but they can deny any intent to violate - argueing that if they meant to abuse a monopoly, they would have first intended to buid it in the form where it could most be abused, and the purchases they made show all they intended was self defense. That's another nice thing about antitrust law, you can't unintentionally abuse a monopoly.
          With this, Google will be just about totally immune to antitrust charges anywhere an ISP is involved, for at least 20 years, even if they end up owning 80% of the internet backbone or something. Maybe even if they end up owning 80% of the GNP.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[tepples]

Who do you think has more to lose, Google being blocked by even the biggest ISP in the US (leaving the thousands of others with millions of users visiting their site daily) or the ISP being blocked by Google (pretty much all of who's customers would subsequently quit and find another provider).

If the ISP is a nationwide cable ISP that serves numerous geographic areas that are too far away from DSL, then the only alternative is dial-up, and Google YouTube has a lot to lose.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[theLOUDroom]

Maybe they do where you live, but most parts of the world, they have these laws that prevent price fixing, and companies actually compete for the customer's business.

Where the hell do you live where you have a plethora of broadband providers to choose from?
A typical American has a choice of either one or two providers, that's it. We have competition for milk, eggs and beer, not broadband.

Of course, if you have any evidence of price fixing, maybe you shouldn't be talking to me, maybe you should be talking to a lawyer, cause you could have some sweet class action lawsuit payout coming.

Yeah right. "Sweet payout" Maybe you'll get back the money that was swindled from you illegally, but probably you'll just get a discount coupon. Take a look here to get an idea of what a typical settlement with a megacorp looks like.

Similarly, if you're so sure that ISPs are price fixing, in clear violation of the law, then why bother supporting a new law? Won't they just break that one too?

This is bullshit logic. Just because one law is ineffective it does not mean that:
A) Any other law would also be ineffictive
B) We should give up and let crimnals do whatever they want

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[MegaFur]

Switch to another provider... Good idea. Where I live right now, my choices are:
1) AT&T High Speed Internet -- works pretty good, but the rate at which AT&T is re-emerging as a monopoly makes me not want to support them.
2) Comcast High Speed Internet -- Comcast, in this particular area at least, is fairly sucky. They won't let me have Internet unless I pay for cable channels as well, and I don't want to do that.
3) A couple different sattelite-based ISPs. But, if I go with one of those, then I can't use it for digital phone as well because the latency is too high for reliable VoIP, or so they tell me. So that means I'd still have to have AT&T for phone so I'd still be supporting their rise to monopoly-hood.

Yeah, that's a lotta choices I got there. Any route I go, I feel rather screwed. I sincerely wish there were real competition going on here, but there ain't.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[7Prime]

isn't it ironic that so many industries have gone to pieces, all in the name of "deregulation". The Airline industry will never be the same after Reagan got a hold of it... I bet now Delta wished they hadn't lobbied so hard back in the day.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[anthony_dipierro]

There are few sources of bandwidth outside the existing telco infrastructure, and very few companies that control all that.

But I thought the telcos were already required to allow CLECs to buy local loops. These local loops are just copper wires connecting the CLECs to the homes, so they are already network neutral.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Kwesadilo]

I tell my ISP to go fuck themselves and switch to a provider that honours net neutrality.

I wish it was this easy. I've been getting shafted by Comcast for years now. DSL has never been available at my location, and FiOS has only recently become available. I'm not sure whether I can get it at my exact location. So I don't really have that many options for a high-speed Internet connection. I'm sure that a significant portion of the population is in a similar or worse situation.

By the way, I plan to switch to FiOS as quickly as I am able. Unfortunately, I'm not the primary decision maker in that arena.

Re: It's not gunna happen..

[gidds]

That's not the problem.

The problem is when some third party in between your ISP and Google tries to charge Google for bandwidth. Net traffic often travels through many systems and pipes, sorry, tubes, before it reaches its destination; it just takes one to screw things up.

(Oh, not the dropping-packets sort of screw-things-up; that'd be routed around. But the giving-preferential-bandwidth-to-those-who-pay-mor e type of screw-things-up. I don't think many routers are geared up to make decisions based on that sort of thing.)

So: you get slow response from Google, and your ISP isn't doing anything to your traffic. What do you do? Even if you find out who's doing it, what recourse do you have (short of paying them for the bandwidth yourself)? Even if you switch ISPs (assuming there is another one), who's to say the other one wouldn't have exactly the same problem?

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Paulrothrock]

That would work, except that most people in the US only have one or two choices for broadband access. Create more broadband competition and your theory would work as expected.

Currently, my options are bad service from Comcast, worse service from Verizon, or no service at all.

Re:It's not gunna happen..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Airline dereg was the best thing for consumers, which is the way it is supposed to go.
Tickets that used to cost $2000 in inflation-corrected dollars regularly go for $200-$300 now.
Even then, the industry isn't fully deregulated, look at the FAA's twin priorities of promoting the industry and overseeing it as well as thing the multi-billion dollar 'bailouts' they got over the last few years.

2 Senators appeal to YouTube community for support

[remove office]

Obviously YouTube has a lot to lose if Net Neutrality is not preserved and if teclos start treating consumer's bandwidth in a fashion unfavorable towards the site. You can see videos of Senator Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Senator Dorgan (D-North Dakota) appealing to the YouTube community for support regarding Net Neutrality here:

Kennedy's video (3 min, 22 sec)
Dorgan's video (1 min, 48 sec)

Dangerous

[Dunbal]

You know, I am seeing this practice more and more often in many countries throughout the world. Some bill or act is shot down. A few years later when the balance of power shifts slightly, some trivial modifications are made to the content of the bill, and it is resubmitted.

      I think this is a dangerous practice. Yes it is a reasonable strategy for a party or special interest group - because if they are persistent enough the bill might just pass. However it is dangerous for the rest of us - since once this bill passes - even if it is merely through insistance and momentum, we are stuck with it. It is much harder to get a law repealed than to get one approved. So we end up with laws that got approved through sheer bloody-mindedness, and are stuck with them because no one dares repeal it. I mean, if it is a law - it must be right, right? People must have agreed with it, right?

      Sigh, another pebble is eroded off of the cliff of democracy...

Re:Dangerous

[TheSuperlative]

How is this eroding democracy? That is democracy.

Under your ideal government, reform would be impossible, since one could only pass things by consensus - and anything that could not pass a few years earlier would be considered bad.

Change happens in a democracy. We vote in new leaders precisely for the reason that we want them to pass the things that the old ones wouldn't.

Re:Dangerous

[kfg]

If this sort of nonsense keeps up we stand the risk of banning slavery and giving women the vote.

KFG

Re:Dangerous

[Loke the Dog]

No, I don't think this is dangerous, infact, this is very good for voters. When a is proposed but rejected, people know exactly who is for and who is against a certain proposal. They don't have to take anyones word for it. In this case for example, people could see that the democrats where positive to this, and thus voting for the democrats would make this bill pass. And apparently, chances are good that it will. This is good for the people's right to power, and thus it is good for democracy.

Re:Dangerous

[HappyEngineer]

I agree. I think the system would work better if all bills required 60% to pass and 45% to repeal. Furthermore, once a bill has been in place for more than 5 years it should be possible to repeal it with only 35% of the vote.

Re:Dangerous

[grcumb]

How is this eroding democracy? That is democracy.

Indeed. I think this is where the phrase 'An idea whose time has come' originated.

Re:Dangerous

[ptbarnett]

I think the system would work better if all bills required 60% to pass and 45% to repeal.

We effectively have this in Texas. Every legislative session, the Texas Senate adopts a rule that 2/3rds of the Senate must agree before a bill is brought to the floor for debate. It was challenged this year by a freshman senator, but he was outnumbered 30-1.

More info: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legis lature/stories/01/10/10senate.html

Re:Dangerous

[Peter La Casse]

Under your ideal government, reform would be impossible

Under an ideal government, reform would be unnecessary.

Re:Dangerous

[Frenchy_2001]

And yet, when the big companies do that (sponsor bills again and again until it gets through), we cry injustice.

This forces us to be forever vigilant and active about the same problem, again and again, because for the people pushing the bill, it IS a full time job, while hobbyists have to defeat them on their own time.

Remember, if they can push it as many time as they want, it means they have as many tries as possible and it is enough for them to win only once.

This is a bit the situation in Europe with software patents. The proposals have beeen defeated several time and yet, they are still trying, by every possible means...

Why the split?

[FandySidestar]

I don't understand why the previous bill split along party lines. I know the republicans are usually associated with corporate interests, but is this part of either party's official ideology or agenda?

Re:Why the split?

[MightyMartian]

Well, I suppose it was because the Republicans controlled Congress, so all the money from the Telcos was being used to buy them off. Let's wait and see. I have no doubt that the Democrats will be receiving nice big fat checks, whores, dinners, golf club memberships and the like from the Telcos. Heck, I'm sure the Telcos will happily draft the legislation that puts the nails in the coffin of net neutrality, just like the record and movie industries did to limited copyrights and fair use.

After all, America is all about Congress prostituting itself to commercial interests.

Re:Why the split?

[Ironsides]

but is this part of either party's official ideology or agenda?

Think about it this way. This bill is a proposal to regulate the internet itself. Specifically, to regulate how an ISP and network backbone company can allocate bandwidth.

Republicans: Regulation mostly bad.
Democrats: Regulation mostly good.

Capiche?

Re:Why the split?

[Duhavid]

Because the Republicans hate our internet freedoms?

Re:Why the split?

[endall]

More like:

Democrats: Regulation of big corporations often good.
Republicans: Regulation that protects big corporations mostly good.

This still makes NN more likely to be supported by the democrats, though with Google and Amazon in favor, it should attract a few republicans as well.

Concern

[LordMyren]

I am concerned about net neutrality. Quality VoIP and video conferencing requires low latency, and thats not typically available on the public internet. Paying extra for a low latency pipe seems valid to me. My understanding is that net neutrality would prevent this intelligent discrimination. No doubt, any slack in disciminating between users will be immediately exploited in terrible corporate ways, but principally i cant see how anyone could support enforcing a lowest common denominator upon everyone. Theres so much hype on this topic its really hard for me to figure out what is the regulation target and what the ramifications would be.

Re:Concern

[JoshJ]

You pay extra for broadband instead of dialup, don't you? That's your low-latency pipe. There's a difference.

Re:Concern

[icebike]

Paying extra for a low latency pipe seems valid to me. My understanding is that net neutrality would prevent this intelligent discrimination.

You want band width, you pay for band width. But don't come telling me my use of the bandwidth I pay for is somehow less important than yours and therefore I can't watch baseball or view youtube so you and your suits can crack wise across the continent.

principally i cant see how anyone could support enforcing a lowest common denominator upon everyone.

How is it that a level playing field is some how cast as the "lowest common denominator" in your twisted world?

You get what you pay for and I expect to get what I pay for. Why should you get a megabyte of bandwidth at a cheaper rate than I do? Why should your megabyte perform better than mine, just because I happen to be using Skype which competes with the carrier's voip product?

There is not a bandwidth shortage in this country. This isn't an argument about rationing a scarce resource. Its an argument about allowing carriers to degrade (prioritize to death) protocols that compete with their own services.

Re:Concern

[Duhavid]

Discrimination could be allowed, based on type of traffic.

Discrimination based on end points would be the real issue.

That would be crucial part of any legislation.

Re:Concern

[icebike]

Discrimination could be allowed, based on type of traffic.

That's ridiculous. Why should there be discrimination based on "type of traffic" (sounds like color of skin to me) when both traffic users pay the same amount?

Its a common network. We all pay our ISPs monthly fees. Other than buying in bulk, what possible justification is there to rob Joe Sixpack's email priority to sweeten the pot for Daddy Warbucks stock quotes?

And while I'm taking pot shots at your theory (all in the spirit of debate mind you) why should end-points not matter? It costs more to get a megabyte to Point Barrow Alaska than it does to Portland Oregon. The user in Barrow already pick up that difference in cost.

Re:Concern

[Duhavid]

"That's ridiculous."

Why is it ridiculous?

The packet headers can be used to detect kinds of traffic
to some extent at least.

"Why should there be discrimination based on "type of traffic""

Should bittorrent or FTP run at the same priority as VOIP?

"sounds like color of skin to me)"
I am missing your point.

"when both traffic users pay the same amount"
Yes, and both traffic users can have various types of traffic prioritized
differently. Its not like Joe is only going to run traffic type
"A" that is always high priority, and Alice will only run traffic
type "Z" that is always low priority. There will be a mix, and
if several users are all running high priority stuff they will
balance each other out. Yes, that sounds like it will lead to lower
priority stuff being choked out, but that is only temporary, unless
the ISP/telco is running only enough bandwidth to service just that,
and if that is the case, then the current one priority system would
be choked also.

"Its a common network. We all pay our ISPs monthly fees. Other than buying in
bulk, what possible justification is there to rob Joe Sixpack's email priority
to sweeten the pot for Daddy Warbucks stock quotes?"

You are assuming a lot there, I think. Each user will be running a variety
of things, it will not just be Daddy Warbucks just and only doing stock
quotes, and Joe SP running just and only email. Unless you are thinking
of end point discrimination, where Daddy Warbucks is paying for priority,
which would choke out Joe SP. Recall, my theory would disallow end point
discrimination, only traffic type discrimination.

"And while I'm taking pot shots at your theory (all in the spirit of debate
mind you) why should end-points not matter? It costs more to get a megabyte
to Point Barrow Alaska than it does to Portland Oregon. The user in Barrow
already pick up that difference in cost."

Because the user *has* already picked up the cost. Once this is done,
why do you care about the end point any more? Also, if you allow end point
discrimination, then the ISP/telco can can prioritize their VIOP traffic
over competing VIOP solutions. Or make their IPTV stuff run great at the
expense of Joe SP's email. If they can only look at type to discriminate,
then all VOIP, all IPTV ( and why we need this is a bit beyond me ) would
run at the same priority. This would keep them from anti-competitive
type behaviours.

Re:Concern

[icebike]

You ask:
    "Should bittorrent or FTP run at the same priority as VOIP?"

    To which my answer would be emphatically yes. My FTP is just as high
    a priority as your VOIP.

Then you state
    "You are assuming a lot there, I think. Each user will be running a variety
      of things"

      To which I reply: then let the user prioritize, not the telco. My voip use may
      compete with their long distance fees, but that is no reason to give them the
      option of setting all voip traffic at a lower priority.

Re:Concern

[alphamugwump]

Just to add to that, there's a big difference between latency and total throughput. With bittorrent, you could get away with several seconds of lag. With quake, you want it in the tens of milliseconds. QOS is good.

What's bad is when you start blocking your competitor's voip.

Re:Concern

[Duhavid]

"To which my answer would be emphatically yes. My FTP is just as high
        a priority as your VOIP."

Your FTP is not as careing about delays as VIOP is.

"To which I reply: then let the user prioritize, not the telco. My voip use may
            compete with their long distance fees, but that is no reason to give them the
            option of setting all voip traffic at a lower priority."

If you let the user decide, then you will have everyone setting their priority
to high for everything. Then you will be back in the same boat.

As far as the VOIP vs long distance, that is a good point. I dont know how to
handle that.

I think you are thinking about these things from an individual user's viewpoint.
I am trying to look at things from the aggregate user's perspective.

I would agree that letting the telco prioritize is not good. I am not wild about
legislation doing the prioritization, that would be worse. Letting the end
user prioritize will lead to everything set to high priority. Having the
application developers do the prioritization might work, but I do recall that
Microsoft sets what prioritization there is now to high, and I can see other
vendors doing the same. And the market will not do a good job with this,
in my opinion, unless we get into differential pricing of packets with premiums
being paid for high priority traffic. My understanding is that paying by the
byte has not worked well, as people cannot predict how much they will be charged
until it is too late ( at least that is my theory on why pay per byte pricing
has not worked well in the past ( for consumers, anyway... ) )

Be very wary

[bendodge]

I am personaly against the current form of net neutrality. I think that government intervetion is almost always bad. The ONLY regulations that should be passed:

1. All backbone providers must allow other providers to connect to them on a naked pipe
2. All providers must use standard protocols
3. Providers may only throttle data/bandwidth based on protocol, not orgin/destination

I believe anything more is harmful to the free market.

Re:Be very wary

[compro01]

this is most intelligent comment I've seen in this story.

too bad such regulations will never be passed. they're too sensible.

Re:Be very wary

[Lord Kano]

I agree with your post, but I do find one flaw in your logic.

2. All providers must use standard protocols

You'd need to specify who defines the standards, how do you prevent/battle corruption in the standards body, and how do you prevent secret "standards" from being adopted?

LK

Re:Be very wary

[anthony_dipierro]

I'd regulate things even less. The last mile is the only place where there's any real monopoly power, so that's where I'd focus. Basically, I'd separate out the OSI Layer 1 (physical layer) connections of the local monopolies (telcos, cable, and cell phone companies) from everything else, and then I'd require those physical layer companies to negotiate with the government to establish reasonable fees to resellers. For example, Verizon would be disbanded and reorganized into at least three separate companies, with two of them being highly regulated and one being essentially unregulated. The first company would own the cell phone frequencies and would resell raw bandwidth to the third. The second company would maintain the copper wires and would resell local loops to the third, and the third company would buy bandwidth and rent copper loops from the first two on the exact same terms as anyone else who wanted to get into the game.

Re:Be very wary

[Paulrothrock]

So you'd be in favor of Net Neutrality then? Cause what you listed is pretty much what's in this bill.

Re:Be very wary

[Paulrothrock]

Interpretation is half the law. If we didn't infringe on people's rights to bear arms, we'd have private armies springing up wherever we had a captain of industry. Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or the Walton family could buy military grade equipment for "self defense." We as a society have to ask ourselves "Do we want that?"

Wording that errs on the side of protecting consumers is preferable because we're the ones at the disadvantage. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T et al are able to put millions of dollars behind their legal team. If I tried to sue them for blocking access to my website, I'd have to find someone to work pro bono. Protecting the little guy is what net neutrality, and indeed all regulation, is about.

Re:Be very wary

[bendodge]

Interpretation is half the law. If we didn't infringe on people's rights to bear arms, we'd have private armies springing up wherever we had a captain of industry. Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or the Walton family could buy military grade equipment for "self defense." We as a society have to ask ourselves "Do we want that?"

Yes.

James Madison: "Americans have "the advantage of being armed" -- unlike the citizens of other countries where "the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

Patrick Henry: "The great objective is that every man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun."

George Mason: "To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."

Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

Richard Henry Lee: "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

You chose force, I choose the free market

[cryfreedomlove]

I disagree. Let's say one area has both DSL and Cable IP as choices for high speed internet access. Let's say that the DSL company implements your fear scenario. They will block any blogger that does not pay to reach their customers. If I am the cable IP provider then I will not do this and then make this clear in my advertising campaign. My ads would say: Do you want the entire internet? Then signup with my cable IP service. Customers will flock to me.

I have a lot more faith in the invisible hand of the free market than I do in corrupt politicians whose hands are dirty from counting bribe money.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You are trusting that your cable IP service won't also have tiered access. Of course, both cable and telephone companies currently provide tiered services (DSL, DSL-Lite, voicemail, premium channels, VOIP, etc) why wouldn't they charge for access to third-party media providers.

It takes more than two sources of broadband to create a free market.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[JoshJ]

The invisible hand of the free market has failed left and right. Standard Oil. Carnegie Steel. Ma Bell. Microsoft. No thanks- I'll take a regulated market that guarantees individual rights by taking some away from corporations.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[QuantumG]

Yeah, sorry, the market was ruined by the consumers, not the producers. If you don't demand competition, then don't be surprised when producers don't compete. Go ask an Indian how many monopoly products he bought last year. Shit, we don't even haggle in the western world anymore - it's considered rude. Where's the US version of whirlpool? Exactly how much effort have you put into finding the best price, on any product, in the last week? And don't go blaming the marketing and the slick advertising... you let it get this bad. Now you're crying to the government for regulation.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[daeg]

The thing is, it won't necessarily be your local cable company that is forcing the charge. What if it's your peering points? What if it's the local government that gets greedy? What if it's the FCC? Or a "tax" on pornographic websites to help cover "filtering costs"?

As well as the "entire Internet" will attract customers, you could have 100,000 local customers but if you can't get anyone to peer with you, you basically have a city-wide Intranet.

I'm not saying those would happen or even could happen, but a non-neutral net is a very dangerous tool in the hands of legislators. I'm happy to see legislators willing to legislate power away from themselves for once.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[CrazyDuke]

This is because what inevitably happens is large scale economic powers eventually gain government level power within the so called free market. And, natually, such economic powers find it irresistible to regulate the market in their favor. Such entities have a significantly high amount of immunity to individual action because it is extremely difficult to organize a viable alternative in a market regulated by said entity. In extreme cases they can simply arrange it so that they extract their profits, not just simply revenue, directly from your tax dollars and effectively outlaw competition.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[DurendalMac]

And they get their service through other providers much larger than they. This provider charges them to get the regular ol' bandwidth, thus raising costs for consumers. The purpose of net neutrality is to prevent all-out fucking greed from ruining the internet. You and your ISP will have to cough up in order to get decent service from other networks. Your cable company may advertise that it will give you full-speed access to the internet, but their service will be more expensive as a result. So the internet gets slowed down, customers cough up more money, and who gets it? The greedy assholes running the companies. I consider myself a pretty staunch capitalist, but I'm not so naive to think that this kind of thing wont fuck a market completely. Sometimes regulation is necessary and just.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Endo13]

You are trusting that your cable IP service won't also have tiered access. Of course, both cable and telephone companies currently provide tiered services (DSL, DSL-Lite, voicemail, premium channels, VOIP, etc) why wouldn't they charge for access to third-party media providers. It takes more than two sources of broadband to create a free market. I wish I had some mod points for you. Not only are you right, but to add to your post there's also lots of areas that have either one or zero high-speed providers. Many of these areas that now have only one will likely have only one for some time to come, and most of the areas that currently have no providers, when they do finally get one will most likely be stuck with just that one for years.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[kharchenko]

>Where's the US version of whirlpool?
Here

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[macdaddy]

Don't forget all the RBOCs. I was just commenting on that today over lunch. A free market can not work without some oversight and some smart regulation. This is required to ensure that a bamboozled majority can't steer us in a bad direction by fundamentalists. Somebody has to ensure that the playing field is level and kept neutral.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[bladesjester]

I hate to break this to you, but the free market is an illusion. It's a convinient lie told to people by economists and parroted by large companies because it suits their purposes (eg "don't blame us. It's just the market at work"). The thing that amazes me is that so many intelligent people buy into it.

The truth is that the major players in any given market often collude with each other on one level or another for their own mutual benefit and the government goes along with it. In fact, governmental interference in your so-called free market is the reason that the phone companies were feaseable in the first place (the fed paid for the infrastructure) and is the reason that the airlines are still operating because most of them are hemoraging money left and right.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[miskatonic alumnus]

You know, I will blame the marketing and slick advertising. It was designed to play to people's weaknesses, much as propaganda shapes public opinion. Face it: almost all media is owned by a handful of corporations that want us to buy their crap. The only recourse is education --- an increasingly watered down, one-sided education provided by the public schools. And the corporate drivel has infiltrated there too. So, no, the consumers aren't at fault, they are behaving the way they were programmed to --- by market forces and a weak, greedy government.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Roxton]

In the absence of government, consumers would have an incentive to "unionize." I have a few ideas on how such a "unionization" would take place and what it would look like, but that's not immediately germaine to the discussion...

Once consumers organized on a larger scale, they could more readily pressure companies to not do abusive things. Laws such as those that force telecoms to permit the transfer of telephone numbers would be unnecessary, as that feature would be negotiated on between consumers and telecoms. Net neutrality could also be negotiated on that scale.

But an expansive government does exist, so rather than developing any kind of organizational cohesion to confront these kinds of issues, consumers turn to the government to answer these kinds of questions. In light of this, is it really that bad for government to impose the kind of regulation that a consumer "union" could pull off? Of course, it's not perfect. You can only guess whether such a union could pull it off, and there's no room for negotiation or compromise. Unlike Congress, there are strong checks against the power of such a "union" such as the fear of partitioning if the costs get too onerous or benefits become unsuitably lopsided within the union.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Let's say one area has both DSL and Cable IP as choices for high speed internet access.

I have a lot more faith in the invisible hand of the free market than I do in corrupt politicians whose hands are dirty from counting bribe money.

There is no free market when it comes to internet access. The cable and DSL companies have their lines and equipment strung all over public and private property which is all made possible through government granted rights-of-way.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Anonymous Coward]

you let it get this bad. Now you're crying to the government for regulation.

Insightful? Maybe intuitive is a better word, because you're wrong. When you say "you", you are of course referring collectively to all consumers/citizens. But, "the body of citizens acting independently as consumers" is not a political entity, so you can't attribute blame to them. There IS a body who is supposed to represent the collective though, and it's called -you guessed it- the government.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[DDLKermit007]

What magical fucked up delusional world do you live in? It's certainly not this one. "Some" very well off locations have the ability to choose between at least two providers (often more than). Whereas the rest of us have to just take whats available. Know whats available in my area? Cable...and satellite if you count that. Know how long DSL has been saying they'd build out to my location? Going on 6 years now. Not exactly counting on annnnnyyyyyyy progress with DSL like ever. I'm not in some run down or back country area. I live in fucking Las Vegas in a nice area.

Plus lets put this into perspective a little maybe. Sure, maybe you have two or more providers clamoring for your service. Problem is both of them go through the same backbone. Those are the people that are most likely to start charging, and once they do it, your fucked, it becomes the norm, and before you know it the internet is more like TV.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jvkjvk]

Ok, so you agree with the premise of the GP. Thanks.

Now, what are you planning on doing about it? Government regulation is one group of people saying - "This is what I think we should do about this issue." You forget that generally most of the government tries to do what most people want most of the time.

Do you object to the government stopping corporate tyrannies? I really don't see a point, unless you are trying to say that since we got ourselves into this mess we deserve what we get.

But that's hardly constructive. If "the consumers" ruined the market it's only because they were part of the feedback cycle created by the military industrial complex post wwII. Manufacturing capabilities had grown so much that consumption had to be promoted. Not that people had much problem with that given the austerities of the War.

Charging into the sublime 50's producers seemed to have gained access to the psych work done by allied and axis scientists during the propaganda wars and and the real start of the War on Consciousness advertising began to have much more bite beyond the crude pokings of a pre-freudian mindset, it began to more closely target increased probabilities of "conversion". Having no natural defenses against this kind of attack, large portions of the population fell sway, and still are, of this feedback cycle and meme complex.

However, this type of underhanded maneuver is certainly not limited to advertising. Political issues are quite tasty treats for this species of behaviour. Speech writers choose their diction quite carefully nowadays and certainly use the latest NLP and related exploits.

Hrm that could be what this is analogous to - exploits to human consciousness - 0 day ones, as i don't think we've quite caught up. Pretty weird.

*at least some of the above is true*

at least i had fun writing it. :)

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Harmonious Botch]

Sorry, but I think you are confusing lies with abstractions. The 'free market' is a theorerical abstraction for economists like a black body is a theoretical abstraction for physicists. Calling economists liars because the free market doesn't match your day-to-day economic experiences is like calling a paint manufacturer a liar because his black paint does not emit perfect black body radiation.

In the real world, the free market is gummed up by many things, such as collusion, friction, well-meaning government interference, and bribery-motivated government interference. What is truly remarkable is how well it works in spite of such problems.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[shma]

Yeah, sorry, the market was ruined by the consumers, not the producers.

Yeah, and when a scientific theory doesn't match experiment, it's not the theory that's failed, it's the universe's fault.

Look, what use is a theory if it doesn't match the real world? Free market capitalism's desirable results come from specific predictions about how consumers behave. And if those predictions doesn't match up with how consumers really behave, then the theory has little or no use. A good economic theory shouldn't make demands on how we spend out money, it should take that as a given and develop the rest accordingly.

After all, the economy exists to benefit US, not the corporations. Corporations are just a tool that are supposedly designed to maximize useful economic output.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[socerhed]

This is the same argument for saying that games are the source of violence, and has all the same problems in its foundation. People that blame their problems on propaganda are weak and stupid. It doesn't take much to find out about a product in todays day and age. People are lazy and want to be told what is good and what is not, they don't want to take the time to figure it out for themselves.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[linuxmop]

You know, it's really cute that you can parrot back examples of big bad monopolies you learned in middle school. I know, those were simpler times, and you thought that if you received enough gold stars from your teacher then maybe, just maybe, Jenny from math class would let you sneak a peak behind the bleachers at recess. But here in the real world, you can't just regurgitate nonsense and get a pat on the back and $20 for an A on your report card.

With that in mind, let's take a look at your list of examples of the failure of the free market.

Standard Oil - breakup was largely for political reasons. Debate continues among economists.

Carnegie Steel - never broken up, sold to US Steel in 1901. Care to go into more detail?

Ma Bell - also known as AT&T, who obtained monopoly status directly due to government regulation. Can't really blame the free market for the problems of a regulated entity.

Microsoft - was never regulated. Market got over it. What's your point?

But let's say we give you the benefit of the doubt. Four dubious examples of monoplies in 100 years. Uh oh, boys! The free market might work for those wild west frontier types, but not for us! Protect us, Daddy Government, protect us!

Give me a break. Enjoy your +5, enjoy your self righteous condemnation of commerce. But please, don't vote. In fact, just move to Canada. We don't need your kind in America. You need us, but we don't need you.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[nick.ian.k]

Yeah, sorry, the market was ruined by the consumers, not the producers. If you don't demand competition, then don't be surprised when producers don't compete.

Insightful nothing. *We* demand competition. We get written off as cranks, crazies, too small of a marketshare. The market here is geared towards the uninformed consumer and nobody else. The scant handful of people who honestly vote with their dollar are too small in number to effectively rally for change. The market is fucking broke and demands some form of regulation to fix it, because we can't effectively *start* a new market. What are we going to do...barter? Print our own form of currency? Good luck extending that to a practical level.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[tepples]

Microsoft - was never regulated.

Copyright is a regulation.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[theLOUDroom]

Yeah, sorry, the market was ruined by the consumers, not the producers. If you don't demand competition, then don't be surprised when producers don't compete.

That's stupid. What the fuck is this law doing besides demanding competition?
Voting with your wallet isn't the ONLY way to vote.

you let it get this bad. Now you're crying to the government for regulation.

So because it's broken we shouldn't try and fix it?
Fantasic reasoning there!

What it comes down to is that:
A) Regulation is necessary to ensure a free market
B) Markets change and so must regulations

The concept that because people don't have enough money influence the market and force things to be the way they want, they deserve what they get is so incredibly morally bankrupt I don't even know where to start. Based on that logic you could argue for the elimination of every single law and law enforcement body we have. Don't want to be robbed? You should have hired a private security force. It's you fault for not all hiring private security forces to keep you safe. After all, if everyone just did that, they could all consolidate and be SOO much more efficient than the police, right? But you stupid consumers didn't spend your money wisely and now you deserve to get robbed!

You seem completely ignorant of the reasons people create governments in the first place.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Jorgandar]

I dont get it..dont you understand that the US govt a long time ago made monopolies (supposedly) illegal? Our forefathers knew that if the market is reduced to a single player, then the free market is no longer free.

It's absolutely absurd to think consumers "demand" competition, that's not how it works. (what planet are you on?) What consumers demand is a product from whoever makes it the best quality for the cheapest price, whether that be from one company or 100. Competition occurs when someone comes along and thinks they can produce the same thing at a higher quality or for less cost or both.

In a monopoly, that can't happen for obvious reasons.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[QuantumG]

dont you understand that the US govt a long time ago made monopolies (supposedly) illegal? Our forefathers knew that if the market is reduced to a single player, then the free market is no longer free. Unfortuantely, they didn't. They certainly believed what you have said, and if you read anything that was written about monopolies at the time, you'll have no doubt what they intended, but they failed to codify this in law. Instead, they provided rules for what monopolies could and couldn't do. This was interpreted later as proof that monopolies were both expected and permitted. In fact, the original intention was that no monopolies were permitted, except for new inventions, and those only for a limited time. The time limit chosen was indicitive of the intention of this exception: the expected amount of time necessary for a new immigrant to come to the US, set up a shop to make this new invention and train an apprentice. After that, they figured, the immigrant is established and others can begin competing with him. Patents were solely intended as incentive for knowledgable people to immigrate. How in the hell did we get from there to here? Nothing short of a lack of vigilance.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[alphamugwump]

Exactly. The monopoly itself isn't really all that bad, usually. I mean, even with a near-total monopoly like microsoft, there are still people on the fringe selling alternatives -- and they can make money on it, by either selling something higher quality, or much cheaper. Also, keep in mind that crazy competition (like the oil business, before rockafeller took over) is usually incredibly sub-optimal. The formation of the monopoly is just the pendulum swinging back, just like anarchistic revolutions tend to lead to dictatorships.

However, if the monopoly becomes too powerful, they can directly buy politicians and market share. The government HAS to kill something like that, just out of self-defense. I'm not sure it's something they could avoid if they wanted to. I mean, if a company has enough money, they would literally rival the government in power, they would no longer need to buy politicians at all, and politicians hate that sort of thing.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[slysithesuperspy]

• Standard Oil: already loosing market share when anti-trust policies came in to force
• Microsoft: government granted copyright and is better described as natural monopoly (that kind of contradicts my copyright (monopoly) bit but even if someone did believe that copyright was part of a free market then that would apply to them)
• Bell: government granted monopoly
• I would wager that there is a similar story that applies to the steel industry.

What you are suggesting is using the fox to guard the hen house. Government is the problem and you suggest to use the problem to fix the problem. Why not vote/write to stop government from creating the problem in the first place?

Looking at history from a clean perspective shows that the market has not failed but government has. A market failure is figment of peoples' imagination. The market is slow sometimes and it is never perfect. Usually government uses that opportunity as an opportunity to show up on a white horse (or to fix a problem them previously created.) The whole point of an entrepreneur is to find places where the market hasn't provided a solution, this is a place where they can make profit. It is a pity many of them get cosy with the government.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[anthony_dipierro]

What if it's the local government that gets greedy? What if it's the FCC? Or a "tax" on pornographic websites to help cover "filtering costs"?

I'm not saying those would happen or even could happen, but a non-neutral net is a very dangerous tool in the hands of legislators. I'm happy to see legislators willing to legislate power away from themselves for once.

The problem is, we're not talking about a constitutional amendment here. It's just a plain old law, which can be overturned just as easily as it was passed in the first place. So if the government wants to "tax" pornographic websites to help cover "filtering costs", they include verbage in the bill to exempt themselves from the net neutrality laws. In fact, they only need a few words: "notwithstanding the provisions of section whatever..."

By the way, I mentioned the constitution above. Fortunately the constitution has been interpreted to already guarantee that the local government can't "get greedy", in the form of the Commerce Clause.

Peering points are generally pretty powerless anyway, because the number of them grows exponentially with your number of hops from the endpoints. If network neutrality laws serve only to regulate the monopolies providing the physical lines to individual households (and those companies given monopolies over certain radio frequencies), then I don't have a problem with it. But if it tries to go further and regulate all internet providers, even the ones without any inherent monopoly power, then I have to remain strongly opposed.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[sbrown123]

If you don't demand competition, then don't be surprised when producers don't compete.

You seem to lack understanding of how the market works.

In the U.S., most Americans walk around with a cellphone their provider gave them for free. On the converse, Japanese often pay top dollar for the best cellphone. This is because in the U.S. the mentality is to get the most for less. Cheaper is better. Its a Walmart world.

Go ask an Indian how many monopoly products he bought last year.

I did. He said there are a lot of monopolies in India. He figures that there are easily more monopolies in India as compared to U.S.. Why is this important to the U.S. consumer?

Exactly how much effort have you put into finding the best price, on any product, in the last week?

Like I said earlier, Americans are huge bargain hunters. Haggling may be a lost trade, but haggling doesn't mean you always pay less. For example, if you haggle a product I was selling for $500 down to $400, is that a deal? Lets just say that you can find the same product in Walmart now for $375. How? Walmart did the haggling and bought a crap load of the item in question.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[moeinvt]

I hereby DEMAND competition in the broadband market!

. . . (Final Jeopardy theme song playing for 10 years) . . .

OK Damnit, I guess I'll just buy the one service that's available to me rather than suffer through another minute of dial-up.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[moeinvt]

"Looking at history from a clean perspective shows that the market has not failed but government has."

I agree that the government has often done more harm than good in attempting to regulate markets. However, I must point out the obvious examples of "market failures" in the form of externalities. This is hardly "imaginary".

When a company can dump the toxic waste of its production process into the environment, society bears a portion of the cost for the company's output. This leads to an artificially low market price for the goods in question. The result is that capital is misallocated to the production of this particular good (artifical shift of the supply curve). The market gets hit with an opportunity cost due to the fact that the capital in question could be put to otherwise efficient alternative use.

Regulations are required to correct this market failure. Our current government has rarely come up with "good" implementations of such regulation, and is prone to be over-zealous, but this doesn't alter the fundamental need for a mechanism to correct this real world market failure.

IAAE

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[slysithesuperspy]

I must disagree :)

This is another case where the government has done harm. It's top priority should be upholding private property rights. By allowing a company to dump waste it has failed at its most important task.

It was government 150 years ago who decided that economic progress was more important than certain property rights so there was no effort to use cleaner coal or to invent new filtering methods etc. Although, one of the things it did do was to make the chimney stacks higher---to move the pollution elsewhere, which, of course, doesn't really help the situation.

However, the land may have been the governments land. So, it is likely that is allowed the company to dump stuff there. It gets more tricky at this point because, would the land have been homesteaded or not? It is impossible to tell, however what is apparent is that the land looses value when polluted. There has to be some polluted land, and this may be a way of homesteading land (e.g. a waste dump,) as long as it didn't interrupt other peoples property rights. This would not matter if it was the government land (to the government or the factory owner) but it has more of a chance of mattering if it was privately owned because it would loose value.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[deevnil]

Not only that, but the US Constitution doesn't explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights on US citizens.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Brew Bird]

I disagree. Let's say one area has both DSL and Cable IP as choices for high speed internet access. Let's say that the DSL company implements your fear scenario. They will block any blogger that does not pay to reach their customers. If I am the cable IP provider then I will not do this and then make this clear in my advertising campaign. My ads would say: Do you want the entire internet? Then signup with my cable IP service. Customers will flock to me.

You are assuming consumers have a clue. The success of AOL in 'packaging' part of the Internet would lead me to believe otherwise. Have you paid no attention to the lesson of Jobs? Having the best technology, or even the best solution does NOT = profit. Having the best marketing does.

I have a lot more faith in the invisible hand of the free market than I do in corrupt politicians whose hands are dirty from counting bribe money.

Amen, brother. Amen.

I would be all for preserving a 'best effort' service, available for all. But I would think broadband companies would offer to prioritize VoiP packets on their network, for ME, if I was willing to kick them a couple of dollars a month extra. I don't think that's unreasonable, I'm asking them to use a less profitable model, over-subscription wise, than they had originally planned. Despite what some people think, bandwidth DOES cost money to create and maintain.

I also dont think its unreasonable for ATT to tell yahoo, google, vonage and the rest to buy service direct from ATT or RR, or Comcast, if they want premium access to that customer base.

Everyone I have seen that rails 'for' a government net neutrality mandate seems to think that ATT et.al. are going to magically implement some kind of filtering system that will keep competition out. Considering that most of the major players you guys are citing as 'victims' are ALREADY customers of ATT and the rest, and are ALREADY paying for access to the network, I just see hysteria over an ATT execs misunderstanding of how one of his products work.

Bandwidth costs money. Priority Bandwidth SHOULD cost more money. However, just like regular access to the network, BOTH parties get to pay for access.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[deevnil]

There is no free market when it comes to internet access. The cable and DSL companies have their lines and equipment strung all over public and private property which is all made possible through government granted rights-of-way.

Somebody should backhoe up some fiber that's on their property and install a counter for billing the providers - hehe. That'll learn 'em.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[ckaminski]

Or the cable company and the telephone company are in collusion, and you're screwed both ways coming.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[cryfreedomlove]

Microsoft? How is Microsoft a monopoly? What would you do about it if you were in charge of the country?

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[miskatonic alumnus]

Oh, please. The only way to figure it out for themselves is to purchase one of everything and test it. Not too many people have the time and financial resources to do that. So, they have to take someone's word for it. Now, is the source of their information honest and reliable? Or is it biased? Not every source of information is forthcoming with their motives or ties to corporate interests.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jafac]

The thing that amazes me is that so many intelligent people buy into it.

Intellectual dishonesty trumps "intelligence". We're human beings. It's what we do. Mostly.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jafac]

The only way to figure it out for themselves is to purchase one of everything and test it

. . . not to mention the application of this method with regard to Health Care.
You're having a heart attack. Quick. Evaluate which doctor and hospital will provide you with the best "bang for your buck"! You might want to choose wisely on this one. Go ahead. Take your time. You've got at least 10 seconds of consciousness left. . .

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jafac]

It's not a theory. It's a RELIGION.

From now on, I encourage you to refer to it as "The Cult of the Invisible Hand".

It's my windmill and I'll tilt if I want to.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jafac]

mean, even with a near-total monopoly like microsoft, there are still people on the fringe selling alternatives -- and they can make money on it, by either selling something higher quality, or much cheaper.

I don't think that's what's happening in the OS market.

People who compete with Microsoft are not actually competing in Microsoft's market.

Microsoft's market is a unified Server/Desktop network operating system. Nobody else really makes what Microsoft makes. Novell does not. Sun does not. Apple does not. RedHat does not. You give me an example of any other player that is competing with Microsoft on their terms, and I'll give you a counterexample as to why they're actually NOT competing; but rather trying to eke out a living in a niche market.
True - Sun does sell a Desktop/Server solution - but Sun Ray's are not the same thing, because you can't take the Desktop home, and use it in a standalone mode, and run stuff like Photoshop, (et al) on it.
True - Apple does sell a Desktop/Server solution, but Apple does not seriously pursue the server market (by offering competitive prices, or working with ISV's to provide some semblance of Network Management software, like Tivoli, or OpenView, or the equivalent of Microsoft's ActiveDirectory/Group Policy (etc) functionality.)
True - RedHat probably offers the closest thing to what Microsoft offers in terms of an integrated Desktop/Server network operating system. But the Ernie Ball story about how - there IS functionality sacrificed when going from Microsoft to Linux. (Linux does everything he NEEDS, but there's additional functionality Microsoft offers that he doesn't NEED, but a lot of other customers DO need - specifically, some of the Outlook/Exchange/Office functionality.) - what works for Ernie Ball but not for other customers puts the RedHat offering into a niche market. Yeah - 90% of what's "missing" is cruft. But look at the marketshare.

Personally - I believe that Microsoft IS a Monopoly, they ARE in violation of the law, and they ARE in violation of their Consent Decree, and I *do* believe that there was a smarmy quid-pro-quo when Bush took office and shorted out the DoJ case. I can only hope that when Bush leaves, this case will be revisited, and meaningful action will be taken. But frankly, I doubt that will happen. As it stands today, there is NO PLAYER in the entire world with the resources to even ENTER the market Microsoft is in. You see a lot of ISV's in a merger-frenzy right now, in an attempt to keep up with Microsoft. But even if every single other software company in the world merged, right now, there's no way in hell they're going to unseat Microsoft, no matter how poor a showing Vista makes. I think most people grossly underestimate the unassailable position Microsoft is in right now.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[jafac]

Hell, for that matter, the INTERNET that Microsoft uses to bolster it's Monopoly position, was government funded.

Corporate Charters are a Government Regulation.

The public schools that probably 90% of Microsoft's employees were educated at - Government Regulation.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[Roxton]

In 99% of cases, it isn't, self interest takes care of it.

Congratulations, you've graduated from making blanket statements based on free market ideology to making blanket statements based on absolutely nothing. Have a cookie.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[laxcat]

Plus, many areas don't even have the choice between DSL and cable. When there are so few competitors (and there will never be a ton of competitors in typical suburban America, just due to the difficulty of laying a network), regulation is necessary to keep companies honest.

Also, it should be noted, even though its probably obvious, that the bill does appear to specifically allow broadband companies to continue "tiered access" so far as speed and bandwidth is concerned (charging more for more bandwidth).

Another clause I found interesting is the specific prohibition of forcing a customer to purchase another service in order to get broadband.

Re:You chose force, I choose the free market

[bladesjester]

Yet a lot of the people on here shout out against what is painfully obvious just because the obvious isn't taught in a class and the lie is.

There are way too many lovers of and believers in the "free market" despite the fact that it's being used to hang them out to dry. It's rather sad, really.

Re:Lol, isn't that the stupid theorycraft?

[QuantumG]

I'd respond to your points, but you're so ill-mannered that to do so would be just encouraging more of your kind.

Re:SAVE TEH INTERNETS!!!

[Duhavid]

My recollection differs from yours.

The bill came up after the head of ATT complained
about how "google was using his 'pipes' for free".

And how he wanted to correct that, so that google
was paying him.

Never mind that google paid their ISP, and their
ISP and ATT ( if they are not the same, I presume
not, or he would not have cause to complain
( course, I am stupid, he doesnt have cause to
    complain then, but still he did ) ) have either
a peering arrangement or a cash arrangement to
carry each other's traffic ( you know, the
arrangements that make the interconnects between
each telco/isp's networks worth much of anything
in the first place... )

But, yes, the Democrats backed the bill.

Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[volkris]

I think this Network Neutrality debate is a bit misfocused. If we want to ensure the ability of people to speak their minds on the Internet we would do better to attack the near-universal practice of ISPs blocking ports and restricting the use of home servers.

THAT is where the free speech comes from: the people. The NN debate seems to be rather focused on the ability to choose between large companies that want to profit through our expression. Even though there may be more options it still represents a consolidation of content. If we want information we must get it from these providers; if we want to share it we must share it through the providers. As a group they become the gatekeepers.

It doesn't have to be this way. If more ISPs would let us use even our measly aDSL uplinks (that we pay for) to legally serve our own content, people would be able to self-publish in all sorts of new ways. Once we can participate directly in the internet without the middleman of some company with servers we'll unleash an amazing amount of potential and innovation.

Software would be created to deal with the technical challenges that would arise, perhaps with legitimate P2P providing interesting solutions to some of these problems. Network-centric computing would get a huge boost too. In any case, that small change in SOP has the potential to really change the way people view and use the Internet.

Network Neutrality proponents love to talk about a level playing field... lets level the playing field between the consumers and the providers as a whole.

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[volkris]

Firstly, running servers is in violation of the terms of the agreement that most ISPs provide. This has a chilling effect on the entire environment: from developers to users to those who may come up with fantastic innovations, all will be dissuaded from attempting to use incoming connections in a significant way when those incoming connections are not only subject to filtering but even illegal.

We're not just talking plain ol' web servers here. We're talking anything that might have a use for listening for incoming connections. Right now half of the infrastructure coming to our homes is being blocked; who knows what might be possible if we had full communication in both directions.

Even as things stand now people are hampered by this situation. For one, just look at the hoops you've suggested in your comment. Setting false ports to duck the fuzz? Dyndns? Yeah, my grandma is really going to get that. No, Granny, even though you have an always-on connection you're going to have to find somewhere to upload the pictures of your sewing team so I can see them. Even though both of our computers are on high-speed links with plenty of bandwidth for the purpose, your ISP doesn't want you doing things on your own no matter how easy it is.

This common ban on incoming connections (that's what it is, no matter how a technically oriented person to get around it) gives us only half of what we could easily have, discouraging innovation and maintaining a needless hierarchy of consolidated information sources.

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[OakLEE]

If more ISPs would let us use even our measly aDSL uplinks (that we pay for) . . .

If you want to run a server, buy a commercial package. ISPs typically oversell their bandwidth for home use so that they can charge cheaper rates. This works since they ISP only has to keep enough dedicated bandwidth on hand to meet peak usage demands, which are usually less then the theoretical max throughput of all of their users. If we had everyone running around with dedicate servers, ISPs would need to up this minimum bandwidth to achieve a reasonable QOS. That in turn would leave us paying $300-500 a month for a 1.5Mb DSL line, which is about what you pay for dedicated commercial-grade bandwidth. This is why they do not allow you to run a server, not because they want to sensor your speech.

If you look carefully at your service agreement, you see that you do not actually pay for full bandwidth usage 24/7. You instead pay for "reasonable" usage of their service. Examples:

AT&T DSL Service Agreement: "You understand and acknowledge that the Service is intended for your periodic and legitimately active use." (emphasis added) link.

Cox Cable HighSpeed Internet Service Agreement: "In addition to complying with the limitations for specific features, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in Cox's sole judgment) an unusually great burden on the network itself. In addition, you must ensure that your use does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cox's ability to deliver the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services." (emphasis added) link.

Most other providers have similar language. In sum, I'm all for you running a server, but buy some dedicated bandwidth. Don't advocate a solution that drives the cost of service up for the rest of us "non-server" types.

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[volkris]

You don't get it at all.

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[volkris]

You completely miss the point.

I'm not talking about getting myself upstream connectivity (I already have it). I'm talking about setting the table for an environment where everyone has it and everyone can therefore run whatever applications developed to utilize this additional capability.

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[OakLEE]

Then please tell me, how do i not "get it?"

Re:Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think

[OakLEE]

Well I think that's exactly what they are offering right now. They only difference is that instead of outwardly limiting bandwidth, most ISP's reserve the right to cut you off if you are engaging in excessive use. It allows them more discretion, and doesn't piss of consumers as much.

Re:Republic vs Democracy

[42Penguins]

I guess that's the difference between the parties in the US:
One bitches when you get past,
and one is a bitch to get past.

Re:SAVE TEH INTERNETS!!!

[Garse Janacek]

This is my recollection as well. I also recall that after the bill was proposed, the big cable/telcos started running counter-factual advertisements in TV and newspapers, essentially saying "Google wants to raise your Internet bill! Stop them!" -- which even those who oppose net neutrality ought to agree is not really correct. But this widespread dishonest behavior does suggest that, even if the major bandwidth providers had not yet started the tiered bandwidth charges the bill was meant to prevent, they still had (have) an interest in doing so in the future. So this is something that will need to be dealt with sooner or later...

Re:+5 Sad

[Headcase88]

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles! [unmasks them] [audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us!
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud] [Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]

Thanks, Simpsons Archive!

Re:SAVE TEH INTERNETS!!!

[compro01]

This bill is absolutely needed, because the internet has been completely destroyed by evil corporations since the problem of INTERNET NEUTRALITY was discovered by brave Democrats last year!

it was not a problem until a year ago as ISPs (DSL providers anyway) fell under the same regulations as phone companies. the courts ruled that they are not an "information service", thus they are subject to different, less stringent, regulations.

net neutrality is returning the former regulations and standardizing them to ALL isps, regardless of means, be it DSL, cable, satalite, wireless or whathaveyou.

Re:Republic vs Democracy

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Troll

How appropriate that the rightwingers will lie and spew whatever venom (like "questioning the president is treason") they want, but simple statements comparing their Republican Party behavior to Democrats is called "Troll" by their trollMods. TrollMods are the Slashdot equivalent of the filibuster, but not as effective or boring.

The Truth

[Godji]

Think what you will, but here's the One True Statement when it comes to Net Neutrality:

The Internet is not something you just dump something on! IT'S NOT A BIG TRUCK! IT'S A SERIES OF TUBES!

Who owns the Internet? Who owns Congress?

[sweatyboatman]

I am all for preventing telecoms and cable companies from filtering the internet and giving priority to their own services. Tiered internet is a dead-end road leading right back to how cable television works now.

So on the face of it, a law mandating Net Neutrality is a good thing.

But big ISPs are also big campaign contributors. The cable and phone companies have long since learned to cover their asses by bribing our elected officials on both sides of the aisle. So odds are good that if Congress does pass such legislation it will be with the blessing of the big ISPs. Which means that either the bill will so watered down as to be useless in hampering any tiering or we can expect another series of bills (with little fanfare) giving the ISPs special powers so their fiefdoms and profit margins can be assured.

I'm guessing that once Congress gets started, they wont stop legislating how the intertubes work until it's well and truly borked.

mod parent up +1 Insightful

[Sean0michael]

I think this is a very informed post, and I'm glad you bring up how ISPs restrict users from using their own web servers. As far as I can tell, I pay for the ability to send and receive packets. It shouldn't matter what application sends the packets. In this respect, I am no different from Google, who also pays to send and receive packets. As long as the user fees are enough to cover the cost of operating, maintaining, and improving fiber, routers, etc. then I see no reason why they should charge anyone more than anyone else.

The only reason I can see that telcos would go after companies like Google is that Google has oodles of money. Because they have the ability to may far more than they do now, the telcos would love to make some extra cash via packet "protection money." It'd be a shame if your packets should come across a Moe Green Special. But a special contribution to our humble efforts might keep your packets from bein' found in the Hudson wid' a pair of cement shoes. Don't think they wouldn't hesitate to do the same to the average consumer if they felt they could earn a few quick bucks. Fortunately, the very reason that Google has oodles of money is because consumers love them. So if Google decided not to send packets via particular ISPs, consumers would be in an uproar. After seeing that, no other ISP would consider doing anything like that, and the other one would lose a large customer base.

Hello theory, meet reality

[Travoltus]

In reality, both the DSL and Cable company will adopt the same behavior because they stand to get more money extorting content providers than they stand to get from winning one another's subscribers over.

Plus they are gambling on consumer apathy, as in if Youtube is slow because they're not paying the extortion fee, the customer doesn't know that Youtube is slow because it's de-prioritized, so the consumer just forgets Youtube and moves on. You know what's happening to Youtube but no one wants to hear your explanation because it's too techy and too political for them. They'd rather hear the latest gossip about American Idol.

Now before you respond, let us assume that there are no Government laws about who can establish a competing cable modem company. Let's say you want to compete. That means you'll be up the streets in the city and laying your own network of fiber alongside your competition's existing network of underground fiber. What happens when a third competitior comes along and tries to do the same thing? And then a fourth, or fifth? Those streets will never be driveable because everyone's always tearing up the roads to lay new fiber. That's why you only see one company servicing a city.
^^^^^ This, ladies and gentlemen, is one solid fact that laissez-faire dreamers can't wrap their brains around. :)

Re:Hello theory, meet reality

[thegameiam]

Do you remember driving in a major US city in the 90's? I do, and there was a tremendous overbuild going on. In general, the availability of fiber in the street is not the thing which makes competition hard - it's really the connections from the street to individual homes or apartments. The phone and cablecos already have those, and look at how much innovation has gone into being able to cram more bits down those wires than they were originally designed to handle!

Re:SAVE TEH INTERNETS!!!

[Duhavid]

And what is funny about the "google want to raise your internet bill"
type campaign, is that if google *did* end up paying for it, they
would end up passing those costs on to the end users anyway, just
in different ways. So, the end user would get the cost, plus some
percent of profit going to Google for the transaction.

Here is how the free market will sell

[whoever57]

Internet access from provider 1: $40/month
Internet access from provider 2: $10/month (see note)

Note: hidden in our contract is a disclaimer that Internet access does not mean access to all the Internet at reasonable speeds -- only access to our "partners" is guaranteed.

Grounded asset problem

[jofny]

If you don't like what you're charged from an ISP or a content provider, don't pay it and go somehere else. The problem is that you're in one location and, even if you have isp choices, you certainly dont have many. That's why market forces are of questionable importance here. The ISP's, in theory, will use the fact that you -can't- switch (or will only have one or two other options) to wedge themselves into the equation. If you could just drive down to another ISP, it would be different - they'd have to compete. Instead, since they can by and large dictate what is allowed to go over their lines on a content basis in order to make money, why wouldn't they? That location lock-in is why net neutrality is needed.

Compromise

[Tablizer]

I think there needs to be some compromise on this. Perhaps allow a bandwidth differential between preferred content and non-preferred content to be a set maximum. For example, say that non-pref sites must get at least 1/2 the bandwidth or thruput as preferred.

Because there is a Consumers Union

[tepples]

In the absence of government, consumers would have an incentive to "unionize."

Would such a consumers' union evaluate products and services and produce consumer reports for the benefit of its members?

If I pay my ISP for my end of the tubes...

[tepples]

The question of net neutrality: If I'm paying my ISP for my end of the tubes, and the sender is paying his ISP for his end, why should the sender have to pay my ISP too?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

[Ayanami Rei]

Calling economists liars because the free market doesn't match your day-to-day economic experiences is like calling a paint manufacturer a liar because his black paint does not emit perfect black body radiation.

Wow, I'm going to have to remember that one. :-)

Re:2 Senators appeal to YouTube community for supp

[electrosoccertux]

Should YouTube be the ones appealing to the political community?

Hopefully Google is.

Tell my wife...

[dangitman]

... Hello.

Go USA

[Darth Korn]

C'mon Americans, this is your government doing this. Isn't the states a democracy? Stand up and tell your government what you think! The rest of us around the world are counting on you and can't do a damn thing about it. On the other side. It'll encourage the rest of the world to innovate and we might loose a bit of our dependency on America for decent content.

the difference

[petermgreen]

the difference is that the republicans still have the president and the president still has the veto, it can be overriden but only by a larger majority than the democrats hold.

so the fact that the republicans have the presidency and the dems only have a slim majority in the senate means that neither party can pass a bill without at least some cooperation from the other.

Re:Republic vs Democracy

[yesthatmcgurk]

This post is a goof, right? Nobody is actually this stupid, somebody tell me, please.

Re:Republic vs Democracy

[Doc Ruby]

Your post is pretty goofy, but representative of rightwinger denial. Whether it's "stupid" is left as an exercise the reader. Its writer evidently isn't even up to judging that for themself.

Correction to the article (was Re:Why the split?)

[apnielsen]

I don't understand why the previous bill split along party lines. I know the republicans are usually associated with corporate interests, but is this part of either party's official ideology or agenda?

You don't understand it because it didn't happen. The article is seriously misinformed. The bill in question (S.2917) was read by Senator Snowe on the Senate floor on May 19, 2006, where it was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. There was no vote, party lines or not. It was not killed. It presumably died of natural causes in committee when the 109th Congress ended, as there is no mention of it in the committee record.

Look it up.

Not a Democracy!!!! It's a Constituional Republic!

[L33tGreg]

No, actually we are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. Unfortunately, most of the people and the federal government don't know that.

Re:Not a Democracy!!!! It's a Constituional Republ

[NewWorldDan]

Regardless, internet traffic arrangements easily fall under the umbrella of interstate commerce, one of the few enumerated powers of the federal government. On the other hand, I'd prefer a wait and see approach rather than adding more lines that may not be needed to the federal code.

On the other hand, maybe we should just repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to the states appointing their senators instead.

I know just the way to do it.

[Kadin2048]

The only way to truly win freedom from the telecoms and cable companies is to build a network which doesn't rely on telecoms and cable companies.

I agree completely! This is why RFC 1149 is only going to become more important in the future. We need to start rolling out alternatives to the telco backbones immediately.

Enforcement Issues with this...

[Brew Bird]

Ok, so, assuming this legislation passes, how are you going to enforce it? how are you going to PROVE its not being followed?

When the underlying transport you are using is INHERENTLY best effort, ALL services are sub-sets of best effort! The Internet is a best effort delivery.

Currently, ISPs have ZERO control over what goes on outside their own networks.

So how is this brilliant idea supposed to work? Are we going to try and mandate that carriers agree upon set bandwidth guarantees between each other? How is that going to work? Doesn't this mean carriers are going to have to start charging each other more for 1) Integration and Management 2) Some kind of SLA verification system 3) more infrastructure to support the higher classes of service?

We haven't been able to make this happen at the carrier level yet. There isn't any REASON to want to do this, because THE INTERNET IS BEST EFFORT SERVICE. If someone wants the higher performance, guaranteed bandwidth type of product, that is done with a different kind of service, and you buy it from one carrier, so its properly integrated.

Why don't we write some laws that force people to use screwdrivers as hammers while we are at it.

Re:Enforcement Issues with this...

[Brew Bird]

Thanks for clarifying my point.

Re:Enforcement Issues with this...

[Brew Bird]

QoS compliance _is_ measured everyday, but only for services that are _purchasing_ it. (Im speaking of backbone networks here, not LANs)

What I fear this regulation might attempt to impose is some kind of _proof_ of QoS compliance for EVERY location on the network across every network on the Internet, regardless of their contracted service.

The great thing about the Internet is that it is pretty much raw bandwidth, with very little service guarantee. attempting to impose a government regulated QoS system on this model is a frighting idea.

Thats the problem with government regulation. You cant just tell the customers 'the EF queue on your connection has 80k reserved, so you can do VoIP'. If there is no regulation, you can DO that, and not worry about documenting it to hard, if the customer has problems, you troubleshoot, fix, and move on.

Once you get the government involved, you have to generate a paper trail, show the performance of each CoS on the backbone, and basically prove that you are NOT unfairly dropping some one's packets, no matter who they might be, because at any moment, one of those providers could swoop down with your local Federal Agent on their arm to demand you stop unfairly dropping their VoiP packets. At that point, you are guilty until proven innocent.

I think we are in violent agreement about infrastructure as well. I'm not so concerned about network infrastructure, as I am about reporting structure, however.

Who uses DS3s anymore? Gig-e connection? 100M Ethernet? ;) (I kid! I kid!)

Thats what the carrier I work for uses for most of their Corporate Customer connections all over a large number of metro areas.

I havnt worked with anything as slow as a DS3 (by choice) in about 4 years.

tubes metaphor

[esocid]

Please for the love of god can everyone stop using the tubes metaphor. It's not a sewer system, contrary to what Senator Ted Stevens thinks.

Republicans just tried the filibuster

[DanTheLewis]

The summary has not been watching the news. The Republicans just tried to filibuster the federal minimum wage hike. They said they were holding out for tax breaks for the small businesses who would have to pay the wages.

Harry Reid told them they could forget the Congressional pay increase until they did the minimum wage. Magically, the cloture vote (to end the filibuster) was suddenly 85 to 10.

With a fragmented caucus trying to avoid being seen as Bush's lapdog, with an eye to the 2008 elections for President, with an eye on the Republican millstone that is the failure to withdraw from Iraq... the Republicans are going to stand firm with the President and showdown with the Democrats on issues that 70% of the country agrees on? Bullcrap.

The Democrats have immense bargaining power right now. They own all the committees. They get to complete the Phase II investigation into the political misuse of pre-war intelligence, and myriad other investigations into the illegal wiretap program, war profiteering, torture... the list goes on and on, and there's subpoenas waiting at the end of it. The corruption at the top is being exposed in the Libby trial as we speak. No one trusts the President. Everyone but the dead-enders agrees the Democrats should be in charge of the country.

The only thing that will stop net neutrality from passing is if it gets bumped down the agenda by larger issues like withdrawing from Iraq.