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FTC Says 'Slow Down' on Net Neutrality
Bushido Hacks writes "The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade Commission has fumbled the Network Neutrality Act, again, as of this past week. However, the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies. Instead, the FTC report urges caution on Network Neutrality Regulation. While this news is disappointing, the FTC's decision appears to be thought out and a message to remind people to not let the subject of Net Neutrality be abandoned by the general public so corporations could undermine the interest of consumers. We discussed the row this created, but with constant stalling tactics being employed here how long will it be before net neutrality opponents craft their own legislation?"
Americans are still consumers, and while we may be a largely unthinking purchasing mass, people can quite easily distinguish "shitty" from "awesome" which is exactly the distinction one can make between a mass media run network with terrible latency and low bandwidth and one run by, say, Google.
If the networks go to hell in a flaming hand basket, what would it take for Google to start lighting up fiber they already own? Get a few major metropolitan areas wired up, get word out, and consumers will begin switching in droves. It wouldn't take much pressure beyond that to wake up the telecoms and get them right back into the game.
I'm no free market blind follower, but this seems like a situation when a viable and large enough competitor is sitting in the wings, ready to smack the wannabe monopolists upside the head if they attempt their backwater cousin fucking ideas of raping the connections we pay for.
Look, I know that everyone here gets regular blowjobs from network neutrality, but I'm just wondering. Having looked at the Patriot Act, and the YES-YOU-CAN-SPAM act, and our "healthcare system" (I use the term loosely), and our current, uhm, whatever it is, but it's certainly not a war, over in Iraq...
Are you guys SURE you want the US federal government legislating this?
I have said it before, and I suppose it's time to say it again: Most of the time, when I see someone try to articulate what "network neutrality" means, that they want legislated, they end up with a set of words which, if they were a law, would prevent me from blocking spammers and DDOSers. There are good reasons for which networks are sometimes rather decidedly non-neutral about which traffic they carry, and there are real reasons for which people would like to have the option of paying for guaranteed bandwidth.
Most of the horror stories come down to "what if I only got the sorta dodgy networking I'm currently paying for, but other people were able to buy a better network." Not all; there's real potential for abuse. I just don't think I trust the US federal government to come up with something better, no matter how smart or good the people advocating it are... And honestly, a lot of the advocacy I see is knee-jerk reactions that haven't even bothered to gloss over the question of whether teergrubing should be illegal, or any of the dozens of other technical questions this raises.
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Yea, because Google, who is in bed with the CIA, would be a MUCH better choice. Google will probably be the Internet 2(read Net Neutralized)bringer of doom. What else would they need all that fiber and all those data centers?
The internet should not be run by a handful of corporations, or one corporation. The Internet should stay the decentralized network that it is.
Simply giving control to a single company, Google(as you seem to be OK with), is not the answer. if anything it is worse than five companies.
Just my two cents.
The Captain
Your idea of the market players regulating each other seems sound enough.
My interest lies elsewhere, though. We have an election coming and numerous candidates have already declared intent, raised millions of dollars, and started building their platforms.
Will one of them have the foresight to make this more than a John-McCain-style-uninformed-soundbyte type issue?
If so, I am ready to start thinking about actually voting in this election. No one candidate can reverse the course of the war in Iraq, no one candidate can fix healthcare/welfare/the educational system. One candidate can, however, help America understand how high the stakes are for this particular issue.
Believe me... I would much rather see some sort of movement by all candidates to drop the party lines and attempt to fix the war and all the other issues I detailed above. Failing that, I guess I will consider voting for any candidate that shows an understanding of this issue because the impact on our future can be so incredibly far reaching.
The candidates now have some added time to weigh in on this issue. I'll be watching.
Regards.
The problem is that "net neutrality" sounds so techie and confusing, and the majority of Americans have no idea what the issue is, nor do they care. This is especially dangerous for consumers because in cases where the public is disineterested, lawyers for corporations, unions or special interest groups usually get to write the legislation nearly verbatim.
I for one welcome this move. Many many problems have been caused by quick to act not very well thought out actions on the part of our government. The FTC said slow down lets make sure we don't fuck this up, that doesn't happen very often these days and should be welcomed with open arms. As a member of the US military I can say I am being directly effected by one of these rushes to judgment, maybe if the morons in the Hill had thought about shit first and made the intelligent rational choice instead of the "patriotic" one we wouldn't be in this mess. Just for the record I'm net neutral by leaning but I understand why they corporations want what they do. Here's the catch though they're very often regional monopolies. I've lived and live in a place where there are one or if you're lucky two broadband providers. If backbone and distribution access was free and open then we wouldn't be having this issue. Time Warner and Verizon etc.. would have already tried this and failed when many of their subscribers moved onto providers that didn't restrict their access.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I completely agree with urging caution when it comes to regulation. However, the fact that they urge caution with network neutrality, but pretty much nothing else, suggests that they are singling out network neutrality.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I don't think you understood his point. Google wouldn't take over the internet, they would provide a net-neutral alternative. And, given their history, it would be low cost as well.
So, it plays out like this: Major players start degrading service of non-paying services, Google enters the market and starts providing service that people expect, gaining them an immediate large share of the market. After the major players get told that it's too bad, and that Google isn't violating any anti trust laws, they have no choice but to move to a network neutral policy just to compete.
That's the hope at least, if the government isn't willing to look out for it's own citizens.
If they don't, telecom companies will ruin the Internet.
You mean the same companies that you depend on to actually do anything on the Internet and have relied on since day 1 to do so? Why haven't they already ruined it? Why don't you just stop paying them to ruin the Internet?
How some things get modded up on Slashdot is beyond me. How about: If we pass the wrong type of network neutrality law, there will be 0 profit in expanding broadband access, and while that will make everyone on Slashdot extremely happy that those 'evil' companies cannot make money, it will also guarantee no new broadband, because unlike Slashdot, in the real world if you make something unprofitable, companies will take the hint and not do it anymore.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Most people do NOT have a choice when it comes to broadband. In many areas with relatively dense populations, the local cable/telco provider is given a monopoly, either by the town or the developer.
Ontop of that, the Internet as we know it, is an oligopoly run by a handful of national providers who get their bandwidth from a cartel of 9 Tier 1 ISPs and half-a-dozen or so important Tier 2 ISPs.
Because of this, no matter what you & the GP seem to think will happen, Google can't fly in and save the day by lighting up dark fiber. The "free" market is not so free.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The market is perfectly free. It's just expensive to provide the service. I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing.
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If the networks go to hell in a flaming hand basket, what would it take for Google to start lighting up fiber they already own? Get a few major metropolitan areas wired up, get word out, and consumers will begin switching in droves. It wouldn't take much pressure beyond that to wake up the telecoms and get them right back into the game.
What would it take? Well, a hell of a lot more money and influence than Google or any other company has.
Light up some fibers? You think that is all that it takes? It appears you have a poor understanding of the telecommunications infrastructure. Since the telcos and cable companies are no longer required to share their lines, Google (or whoever) would have to dig up every street and yard in the United States to offer a competing service. Google doesn't have that kind of money, the cities wouldn't let them do it and granny wouldn't let them dig up her rose garden. Furthermore, there is currently no wireless technology that can provide competitive bandwidth on a large scale.
While it's true that Google has bought up some dark fiber, that only allows them to bypass the core network to a certain extent. The key is the last mile and it's locked-up in the hands of the telcos and the cable companies.
It is very naive to believe there is a viable competitor waiting in the wings. There isn't one. There isn't going to be one tomorrow, next year or anytime in the foreseeable future. No company has the money and influence to duplicate the infrastructure and there are no viable wireless technologies available to bypass the last mile. It's going to be a duopoly for the foreseeable future and free market economics don't apply.
I would have expected they would have gotten a clue that people are being abused these last few years by companies such as Comcast. We can't trust them to do the right thing. So why do politicians think the market will make sure it's ok? After all, we have very few options unless you live in SunnyVale California.
Most states don't have 20 or 30 options for highspeed Internet. If a company goes nuts you have to put up or go dial up (like that's an option these days).
I urge people to contact the FTC and let them know what's on you mind. This needs to be dealt with before Telco's make their own laws.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Don't get me wrong, Google does some cool stuff (gmail, google maps (I really like the hybrid setting), picasa, etc), but at the massive ammount of information they log on everyone is very scary.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
...the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies....the FTC's decision appears to be thought out... Given that the overwhelming majority of the public is for net neutrality, of course the decision has to have the appearance of being well thought out. Like duh!But make no mistake about it, this is the FCC -- once again -- caving into the large corporations that fund politicians and who more-or-less run the US gov't.
Net neutrality legislation is a blunt instrument because nobody has any idea exactly what the Telcos want to do. We don't want a law that's too broad just to stop them from doing something that they have no desire to do because there's always the risk of also preventing perfectly legitimate behaviour.
Any ISP logs every piece of information, remember the AOL search logs?
It's just expensive to provide the service.
Without government subsidy they'd collapse within days. Why should taxpayers support private enterprise that stay afloat without massive government aid? Is it better to have private for-profit corporations heavily subsidized by the government (airlines for example) or is it better to simply have the government take over the corporations? I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing. What, like the Post Office, interstate highway system, Social Security, and national parks? And the system we have NOW is run by the government, it's just contracted out to telcoms and cable companies. It's like claiming the US military is a "free market" because their weapons are provided by private contractors.
They can run their network on private property anyway they like. The second this network is placed on public property it should become subject to certain rules, net neutrality being one of them.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Exactly, which is why I specified a phased-array system, like the ones Vivato makes. Phased-array systems use multiple antennas and mathematical tricks to transmit/receive narrow beams of radio waves. (Each antenna gets a programmable signal delay. Pick the delays right and you can make a flat antenna act like the dish antenna of your choice.) The neat thing is that radio waves don't interact with each other, so you can run many beams on a single antenna array. The number of beams is limited by how many antennas and math chips you can afford, which greatly multiplies the data throughput. The systems would also use small dish antennas for the fixed building customers, meaning the customers don't see each other or other base stations, and nearly eliminating interference with omnidirectional wireless systems on the same frequency.
It would work, and goddamn fucking well. We'd have a new era of blazing fast networks, rapidly improving because of intense capitalistic competition. It would be just like the Alexander Graham Bell era of cowboy telecommunications: whoever can deliver charging whatever the market will bear. Why, within a few years, it will have worked so well that people will forget there was ever a problem, and take the new status quo for granted.
And then the professional administrators will take over the regulatory agency. Just like the post-Bell Great Wars era of telecommunications. They'll have inherited the three-ring binders that tell how to do things, figured out years before by people who actually knew what the hell they were doing, so the system will keep working, a little creakily but not bad enough that the people who could fix it care enough to.
And then the professional administration layer will be captured by the industry that is being regulated. Just like the AT&T era of telecommunications. Gradual consolidation and mission drift will mean the industry becomes dominated by a giant near-monopoly, at both the government and market levels. It will end up running for the benefit of the people running it.
And then a social crusader or a revolution will smash the near-monopoly into bits and pieces. A new era of cowboy whatever will start, bringing cheaper and better whatever to the grateful capitalistic masses.
And so on and so forth.
You see, human enterprise has cycles just like wild things do. Riotous growth, consolidation, stasis, fire and chaos, ash. The wheel turns. People like you come up with these oh-so-clever little plans for perfecting an enterprise, but what you usually end up doing is yanking the wheel around to the stasis phase.
If you should succeed, start planning the anti-trust lawsuit before the network neutrality laws go into effect.