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Spirited Exchange Over Net Neutrality
LukeCage sends us to The Register for a rabble-rousing account of a US Commerce Department official's talk at Supernova 2007. The article is headlined Bush official goes nuclear in New Neut row, and points out that the speaker, John Kneuer, is a former telecom lobbyist. To figure out what really went on in that session — whether it was a shouting match as El Reg reports — be sure to read Suw Charman's notes from the floor and Kevin Werbach's note (Werbach is the conference organizer).
One of the worst things about the last 7 years of US government has been the destruction of rational debate. Everything is now about opinion rather than about facts and its become perfectly okay to have a firm opinion, no matter how insane it is (Cheney and his "I'm not in the executive" for starters).
Its hard to see this changing in the next few years because it is actively supported by the media who much prefer a strong opinion to some dull and boring facts.
At least he didn't claim everyone against him was supporting terrorists......
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Wait. So you're telling us that the Register--that beacon of journalistic insight and integrity--is misrepresenting what happened at the event? Color me completely and utterly shocked. Why anyone bothers to read that piece-of-trash site is far beyond me...
This guy's the limit!
I appreciate the free market perspective on the net neutrality debate: the federal government has no Constitutionally-acceptable power to regulate the Internet. Net neutrality is just that: regulation where none is needed.
The biggest concern by geeks and techies is that the superpowers of the web will start restricting bandwidth for competitors' sites and promoting bandwidth for their own sites. Yet who are the superpowers we're worried about? They're the very companies that are subsidized or given monopoly powers by the State.
With a truly competitive marketplace, there should be almost zero concern over the net neutrality issue. Yet the FCC and the local State bodies are at fault for creating this fear for the marketplace -- they've created a mess of bureaucracy and redtape (and regulations and subsidies) that keeps competition out of the mix.
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Some techies fear the skies over their homes filled with cables and wires, but this too is a non-issue. In a town two cities over from mine (Libertyville, Illinois), there are 3 wireless providers who have leased tower space to provide very reasonable high speed access at a very low cost. All 3 of the companies battle one another because the village of Libertyville lets the compete -- and the pricing and services have both gotten better. Who complains about their services? Comcast, of course.
My town (Zion, Illinois) doesn't let anyone run a wireless service, let alone multiple providers. We have Comcast, and we have the phone company. Both offer unreasonable service at unreasonable pricing. I've looked into renting tower space, and the village has said NO 3 years in a row. They're concerned for what reason?
Let's stop the net neutrality debate, and bring up the proper debate: let's allow competition in a marketplace that has been "free" from competition for far too long. The cell phone companies are ready to roll out HSDPA as soon as the FCC allows them to (again, a mess of State intervention in a market that could be flourishing). The WiFi locally-owned providers want to roll it out, but the city States don't allow it. There are numerous ISPs who want to roll out very high speed DSL but can't because they're not allow to pull cable to the homes (and many local providers are more than willing to invest in this market).
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
:fingers in ears:
didn't happen didn't happen lalalalalalalalalalalalala thereg is commie.
America needs an enema.
they'd better check and see in a few weeks if they're still allowed to fly. :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
While I understand most of your concerns, somehow I don't think consolidating power to the federal government will improve any of the things you'd like to see fixed. What makes you think it would be easier to change the problems at a federal level, rather than at a state level? Even if you only fix it in one state, that's plenty of market for people interested in setting up wireless ISPs or pulling new cable.
It's also worth noting that, while many ISPs are chartered as telcos for various reasons (like the ability to install their own DSLAMs) and therefore subject to the regulation of state utility boards, simply becoming a wireless ISP does not require such regulation in places -- it's a matter between you, the FCC, and whatever body regulates radio towers in your area (usually the city).
Since the FTC doesn't think there's a problem.
I don't get it... why do we have to wait for the telecomm industry to screw us before we can do something? What happened to "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
Politicians (and the telecomm lobbyists who pay their bills) like to bloviate about the "free market"; can someone please point out what they're talking about? I've been looking for competition between broadband providers for a decade now, and the only thing I've come across is phone companies complaining that cable operators are horning in.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
A Bush official would *never* go "nuclear"... they would go "nucular"! :D
Why take somebody else's word for it when you can watch the actual talk? Thanks to conference organizer Kevin Werbach:
k neuer-on-spectrum-policy-and-network-neutrality/
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-
Summary: Kneuer makes a total idiot of himself, but remains generally calm. He is reciting Cheney-Rove talking points, not actually discussing the issue in any meaningful way. He declares American broadband policy to be a success. He also sets up a straw man argument, that any kind of network neutrality rule would be regulating the "rates, terms and conditions" of Internet access. And he simply assumes that regulating "rates, terms and conditions" (a phrase he repeats over and over) is Bad. This is to be taken on faith, and when the crowd doesn't get it his way (because they're not members of the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power), he just repeats himself.
He has to leave for the airport by the end of his talk. I wish the taxi had followed his model of deregulation. "Me and my boy Tiny here gotta inspect yer luggage. We have to take care of it, you know, so nothing happens between here and the airport. Hmmm, nice computer you have. You wouldn't want that to fall and have an accident. Let's see, that'll be $100. for safe passage. And gee, your plane leaves in an hour and a half. You do want to make that plane, right? That'll be a $50 fee for rapid delivery. And no, don't get off the taxi, because Tiny and I are going to Deliver this stuff, whether it's to you or not. We gotta pay for this nice taxi, you know. It ain't cheap maintaining a 1994 Plymouth on these streets." Yep, that's what he wants, the transport operator to take a cut of the goods. To (his term) "encourage investment".
the federal government has no Constitutionally-acceptable power to regulate the Internet.
Sure they do; the internet most certainly crosses state bounderies, and net neutrality is all about the telcos trying to make more money by throttling bandwidth for companies that don't pay. None of the major telcos are located entirely within a single state.
So while normally I agree that the interstate commerce clause is normally abused, this is pretty much interstate commerce and falls under the federal jurisdiction.
Well, the Federal government can (by statute) override local governments' ability to control their public property. Net neutrality and access to the last mile is something that local governments provide in exchange for the use of public rights of way by wired broadband providers. They (cable and telco companies) have lobbied quite sucessfully to force local governments to grant this access with no strings attached.
That doesn't sound right. Local governments have very little to say about the use of the airwaves. The FCC has repeatedly stepped in on the side of wireless system operators of many kinds, from cellular companies to ham radio operators and slapped down restrictions on antenna and transmitter installations. You could live in the most exclusive neighborhood just down the road from Bill Gates with the most restrictive architecture and construction covenants, and there's nothing they can do to stop you from putting up a 150' tower with a 20 meter Yagi. I know.
You can do whatever you want on your own property. But if you want to borrow a piece of mine (public r/o/w or airwaves) then I'm going to insist on negotioating some terms for my (the public's) benefit.
Really? How many do you think the city council should allow to plow up my street? 20? 30? That's about how many ISP's we have in our region. The city would rather have the existing cable and telcos wholesale their capacity to them than create such a circus. Particularly when the existing utilities have spent more money lobbying to keep newcommers (like cities themselves) out of the broadband biz rather than upgrading their own systems. And once these new ISPs pull their cable, the third will only have a theoretical 33% of the market. The 20th will only get 5%. For the same cost per mile, no sane investor wants to have an ever diminishing slice of the pie.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hurricanes? They provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to start up businesses rescuing flood victims for profit.
Local roads? Contract 'em out to private businesses. Let the incentive of tolls release entrepreneurial creativity. Hey, you could put an RFID chip in every car and charge a nickel every time drive down Main Street and a penny when you cruise down Mockingbird Lane.
Wars? Contract 'em out to Halliburton and Blackwater. (Oh, wait... we do, and look how well it works).
Because big, bureaucratic, oligopolistic, greedy megacorporations are always better at everything than big, bureaucratic, patronage-ridden government agencies. And the profit motive always automatically aligns itself perfectly with American moral values. As Engline Charlie Wilson said, "I always thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Was I the only one that got a headache trying to read Suw Charman's blog? I like to think I can deal with a fairly wide variety of styles when it comes to people just posting their thoughts, but good lord. I could read essays from third graders and see less sentence fragments. It seemed scatterbrained to me, and I just didn't walk away with anything other than a migraine after reading it.
Call me harsh or unreasonable, but it seems to me that if somebody is going to take the time to write about an issue - any issue - they should at least try to do so coherently.
I assume you've only got 1, then.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nuclear
Only 1 of those lists the metathesis pronunciation. And nowhere can I find that metathesis gives us a valid pronunciation, only that it happens. If some ignorant fool decides to pronounce 'carpal tunnel' as 'capral tunnel', that doesn't mean he's correct simply because there's a word for it.
Stop trying to excuse ignorance and stupidity and try to learn something instead.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The only way to assure net neutrality is to encrypt every packet and randomize the ports on all the new network protocols. This is true right now for some P2P and skype.
Given the current European policy on data retention, we should do it even for mail and instant messaging. Of course you should use sftp instead of ftp and ssh instead of telnet, and your SMTP sessions should go encrypted, but that is not enough. We should rewrite every protocol and make it look like IPSEC.
This way we would avoid the following problems without the need for regulation:
- Government censorship (the China firewall becomes less efficient)
- Traffic Shaping (ISPs shouldn't have the right to decide what protocols can you use).
- Multi tier pricing (the ISP could discriminate by IP, but not by service)
- Traffic analysis (for example the European Data Retention policy. If all packets look the same it becomes much more difficult)
A technical solution is always better than a political one.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Now honestly, do you think it would work, do you think it would be anything more than a catastrophic mess, much the same as what you are proposing with the communications networks, but hey, as an Australian, go for it, you will be self destructing access to your communications infrastructure and you will be giving every other country (apart from the third world ones) a massive technological competitive advantage ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Related to this is the annoying habit of the most zealous ideologues who post their opinions on web forums to end their unsupported, often ludicrous, assertions with FACT!
It's a fact that the word zealous and zealot are insulting terms used by astroturfers and PR flacks to smear people opposed to them. It's namecalling and people dip to it when the facts are not in their favor.
In this case, the Bush administration intentended to create a "marketplace" of two vendors. Each person is supposed to be able to chose between a cable company and a phone company for broadband and market pressures will make each behave. The most obvious flaw is that the policy has failed to provide even that level of competition. It's performance is poor, even by the FCC's convoluted "broadband" collection statistics, where everyone in a zip code has access to broadband if a single person there does. The second problem is that both parties all obviously collaborating with the powerful entertainment industry, where government "protection" has also led to a catastrophic lack of competition. Finally, the position is not even philosophically sound - if you believe in market forces you will open up the public servitude and spectrum to real competition. They can't have it both ways, you either regulate for the public good or you allow the public to mind it's own business. After a century of regulation, the former monopolies have a tremendous advantage that was built at everyone's expense, and should be as carefully watched as former Soviet companies until real competition emerges. What the impartial observer finds in Bush policy that it's designed to protect select private business, a private-public cooperation favoring few at the expense of all others. There are plenty of names for that kind of thing, Fascism, cronies, but the lables don't do it justice. The contraditions and poor performance are evident on their own, despite the Bush administration's best ability to eliminate facts from the picture. The contry that invented the internet should have the best public network in the world.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday recommended against additional regulation of high-speed Internet traffic.
n ternet_neutrality_ftc
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070628/ap_on_hi_te/i
Looks to me like the Federal Trade Commission is enforcing some lack of regulation in the name of economic competition. This may have influenced the fear shown in the Bush guy's rant. They may be right, economically-speaking, but from an information perspective it's a terrible loss if net neutrality goes.
technical writing / development
Where, precisely, did the GP suggest consolidating power to the federal government? If anything, he argued for removing power from government across the board. I believe 'State' in "...mess of State intervention..." was used in a more general sense, not to refer to the states in the US. It's any easy habit to slip into reading political materials, but it can be confusing for people in the US who aren't as interested in political theory.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Ah, you should have been around back in the 1850's! You think THIS is acrimonious?!?! We had Congressmen carrying pistols and knives and beating each other nearly to death on the Senate floor back in those days. Compared to THAT, politics today is a Sunday School luncheon.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Last 7 years? I'd say more like the last 30.
This statement is true, if all you've studied is the history of the U.S. for the past 30 years.
Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past. You'd do well to take a look at some of the political "cartoons" from elections around the beginning of the 19th century. Also take a look at some of the political deals that were being done.
With each new generation (in this case the post-gen-X crowd), people hit their late twenties (for some it's later) and become alarmed at what they see going on in capital hill. Why? Because they finally own houses, pay more taxes, have kids to worry about, etc. etc. They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! It was the same in the late 60's when the draft was on (as they say, all politics is local).
A cliffs notes version of the political history of the U.S. won't show you that it's always been the same - but a thorough study of the stuff will. Personally, the only productive consequence of this new-found political outrage I see from folks is that maybe, and I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election rather than talking about how bad things are inside the beltway, and then changing the channel to whatever staged "reality show" they're following for the time being.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The whole Internet thing is and was really just a farce - it never existed...
.doc and .xls are standards, while in fact they are completely closed is another Free Market aberration. The lock-in they represent prevents consumers from choosing the best word processor or spreadsheet, rather without significant expertise and effort they have to choose the brand where they first put their data. Come to think of it, Microsoft's (and Intel's) licensing agreements are another example of restricted information. In general, people have no idea whatsoever what the costs of OS or CPUs are, because those details are hidden from them.
That's because the US has a Free Market, and the Free Market does everything RIGHT!!
So things were just hunky-dory with computer data communications before the Government-infested Internet came along and upset the apple cart. There were plenty of competitive services like The Source, Compu$erve, AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, and the like. Oh, I almost forgot about MSN and Advantis. They all interoperated just fine, and exchanged data with no difficulties whatsoever. Telecommunications lines were ubiquitous and cable penetration was increasing, so every household had all the bandwidth and access it needed, and many had carrier choice.
Let's get this straight. The ONLY reason the Internet succeeded and the rest of those names are dust (or completely changed) is because it was NEUTRAL!
One of those unappreciated facts is the the Free Market also only works with free flow of information. In order to be a proper customer, you have to know sufficient information about the suppliers' products. So you have to go back to the first piece of sarcasm in this post, "the US has a Free Market" and realize that it all went off into left field, right there. THE US DOES NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET. Nor is the first problem preventing Free Market with government regulations of the limiting nature. Rather it's because US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information.
Again, US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information. Talk about a few mechanisms... First there are gag orders on lawsuits, so we can't really know liability issues of some of their products. Next, there is refusal to communicate and interoperate. The line about AOL, Compu$erve, et al was obvious sarcasm, because NONE of them exchanged information until they did it through the Internet. For that matter, Microsoft's pretending
So reading as I write, I'll have to assert that the Free Market simply CANNOT exist without regulations, in practice.
First, it's in the suppliers' self interest to restrict information as much as possible, first off permitting only "good" information out, and second using information to lock-in their customers.
Second, in the short-term, short-term self-interest will always win out over long-term self interest. Besides that, if short-term self interest garners sufficient benefits in the short-term, it's entirely possible to destroy the competitor who takes long-term self interests into account. In this situation there is no long-term, merely one short-term after another. (IMHO that's what we're locked into, today)
So IMHO if Net Neutrality is cast aside, at least in the US the Internet will turn into the Balkanized pile of crap that was AOL, Compu$erve, et al so many years ago. Furthermore having surrendered what the Internet was really about when it started, the US will accelerate its competitive decline in the world marketplace and communities.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.