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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.
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.
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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.
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"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!
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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)
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...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
The government can't save you.
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?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
emt 377 emt 4
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.
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.
.iso downloads in order to have all of my VOIP calls not make that horrible "your upload sucks right now" screeching noise.
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
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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...
I am the man with no sig!
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.
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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.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
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.
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