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Net Neutrality Comment Period Ends Friday
FatherBash writes "Friday marks the final day for citizens, corporations, and paid spinmeisters alike to file comments with government regulators on Net Neutrality. Wired has the story with a link to the FCC page where you too can throw in your two cents."
Just because energy is being focused in one area does not mean that all other areas are being ignored.
In fact, as we all know, neither Iraq nor Africa are being ignored.
I always hate these types of arguments. They rely on the assumption that any person, government, or whatever else can only do one thing at a time and that all energy and monies are poured into that one thing.
In truth, however, this particular issue is one of importance to many Americans, and therefore it seems appropriate that the government would take it up.
Could someone post a link to the place where we can submit a comment (I mean, other than Slashdot. I don't think the government takes official notice of Slashdot comments).
Except when you have no other competing corporation to give your business. Oh well. Who needs the internet anyway?
One of these days legislation will simply slip in, and then everyone on will really regret not taking more action when we had the chance.
You have that backwards. Without some legislation, they can destroy net neutrality as soon as it suits them.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Airwaves belong to everyone. Although transmission is regulated,
reception is open and unrestricted. And the only purpose of the
regulation is to ensure that the openness of the medium is preserved
and the utility of the radio space is not compromised.
This is as it should be. Everybody benefits when the utility of a
common resource is preserved. Otherwise, the phenomenon of the
"Tragedy of the Commons" rears its ugly head. Here, overly agressive
private consumption of a public resource causes a compromise of the
utility of the common resource, to the detriment of all, including
the private individuals hogging the resource!
The Internet is, by definition, a shared resource. It's a peering
agreement based on communications protocols which enable all of its
parts to cooperate together, seamlessly, for the public benefit. Any
part can access any other part as though all parts were local. It's
the first, truly open, global communications system whose immense
potential for benefiting humankind has barely begun.
It is now up to you, here, to declare for our progeny, that this
shared, common resource shall remain open and free for the benefit of
all, to ensure its use, utility, and power so that everybody can benefit.
Balkanizing this public medium with an "unequal" internet, where the
common carriers of the traffic are free to degrade access to portions
of the network not in their personal interest, serves only to pillage
the utility of the common good. It provides enhanced short-term
profits for the pillager, but degrades the overall utility of the
network.
Please, please please, follow the forefathers before you who have
declared that this land be preserved for the common good, and those
who declared that the roads be preserved for the common good, and
those who have declared that the nation's power grid and telephone
grid be regulated to preserve their utility for the common good.
The utility of the Internet should be preserved. Please, please, keep it neutral.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Fact 1. Telcos rely almost entirely on public easements to run their business.
Fact 2. Lack of public land would destroy almost all current Telcos.
Thus, putting Fact 1 and Fact 2 together, to me, means that the Telcos serve me first before they serve their shareholders. If they want everything deregulated so they can charge more for "premium delivered" bandwidth or whatever their current term-du-jour is, they can alter their business such that they do not rely on public funds or land to build their business.
- No tax breaks or other governemtn guaranteed incentives for telecom providers
- No government granting of exclusionary/preferential franchising of certain areas to telecom providers
- No government-enforced easements or right-of-way for telecom providers
When all of those government intrusions into the business of telecomm are remedied,then we can address the reduction of any net neutrality requirements.
Sound good to you?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm sure that will look really important next to the millions of dollars already in there...
All you have to do is write a letter to your congress critter saying.
/end letter.
I purchase internet service for a fee. I am told I am getting so much speed or bandwidth for this purchase. Not having a neutral net means that the speed At&t or whoever my service provider at the time will be charging the websites I wish to visit a fee for them sending the services it offers at the speeds I paid for. Net neutrality guarantees this won't happen and that I as a consumer will not have my services slowed down on purpose by the service provider because they couldn't get some other party to pay them.
Currently, there is a system in placed with the shared bandwidth agreements between providers and owners of the internet's network hubs that allows one network provider to raise funds for the maintenance and usage of their network by another. Of course this is a two way street and the providers feel threatened in that if they overcharge, the other provider will do the same for the traffic coming back through. When Google pays for it's internet, they are paying their provider a fee for the amount of bandwidth they are using. When I use the internet, I am paying a fee to my provider for the bandwidth I am using. When I visit google's site or use one of their service, we both are currently paying for the fees and services. Removing the idea of a neutral network would mean that we would be purposely limited and not getting the services we paid for by the people we are paying in order to have the internet service.
Not preserving net neutrality means the service provider to whom we pay for our service can legally not deliver the speeds and services they promised when advertising and attempting to gain us as a customer. Government has always attempted to protect the consumer from devious acts like bait and switch or outright fraudulent and misleading advertising. This is the effect not preserving a neutral net will have when someone doesn't pay the fees for increased bandwidth and the consumer doesn't get the internet as their provider advertised. This goes against the history of the government and the basic protections from deceit and dubious business practices.
PS,
Might I remind you that the internet is a growing place for political outreach from candidates to their current or potential constituents. Not having a neutral internet means you could be charged to have your website and internet campaign materials delivered to every state in the country and often times inside the same state and cities fee's on top of your normal internet hosting and such. I suspect that popular sites will have advertisements explaining why their site is slow and who is responsible for the slowdowns too if net-neutrality fails to remain in place. IT is imperative that consumers get what they pay for and the government doesn't legalize the ability of them to not deliver what was promised when signing up for the service. When dealing with internet service providers like SBC/At&t, Qwest, Time Warner, and such who own the networks because of government granted monopolies that existed for a period of time, there isn't a level of competition that would protect consumers and guarantee they get what they paid for without the idea of net-nutrality that is currently in existence today.
I think too many opponents of what the telcos want to do don't focus enough on the consumers getting screwed by not having the service they pay for because their provider or the owner of the network their provider uses didn't get the extortion payment. If you buy a car advertised to go 70 MPH and it doesn't get over speeds of 55 MPH, there is recourse because of laws that were designed to protect the consumer. It doesn't make sense to throw this out because some big companies support it. Currently the idea against net neutrality is about competition and profit. Well, that is wrong, there is competition and profit from the current system, the problem is that the competition is a two way street, they need the other network as