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Justice Department Opposes Net Neutrality
thornomad writes "I was saddened (though not surprised) to read that the Justice Department opposes net neutrality saying that it could 'hamper development of the internet.' While it may seem counter-intuitive to me, they argue that allowing ISPs to provide different levels of service/speed for different content will benefit consumers. They did promise to 'continue to monitor and enforce any anticompetitive conduct to ensure a competitive broadband marketplace' — not that anyone was worried about that."
You probably want the ap.google.com version instead.
The sticking point is most of the current infrastructure the government and indirectly we paid for. So it'd be like someone offering 3 different speed limits depending on what your willing to pay to get our of your own driveway.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
there is a HUGE difference between allowing me to pay more for higher bandwith to my house so I can download your website as fast as the bandwith you paid for allows and both of us getting charged to get the bandwith we already paid for prioritized so we can actually use it. they want to charge you so that once it gets past your link and on to the backbone of the net it doesn't get the brakes slammed slowing it back down. basically this is a chance to make us pay twice for speed. I don't mind paying but I think its a ripoff to make me pay twice for one service.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Once you put up a blog or small store, and it becomes popular, and you suddenly get a bill from a large provider who's not even your provider, saying you either pay, or they'll block all their customers from visiting you, you might get it.
Anything after the first paragraph is only available to subscribers. Shouldn't all slashdot users have an option to TFA, as rare as such a desire might be.
I would disagree with you. What the parent was trying to explain (and he did a pretty good job in my opinion) is that most service type agreements have a level of speed/priority which equates to cost. Translation: If you want something now versus tomorrow, it will cost you more.
Also, you might want to see just how companies like UPS and such do their 'batches' as you call them. They provide several pickups for packages depending on the priority (oops, pun there!) of the package as well as dispatches of major deliveries between hubs based upon priority (oops, theres that word again...).
Because I purchase bandwidth from my ISP for a set amount of money to be able to use with any site on the internet that I choose to visit. I should not then be penalized because X site does not pay my isp to allow my traffic to go to them or visa versa.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Thats what everyone has been talking about. Or have you only been listening to the side from the big corps wanting to do away with the concept.
Ok, thye don't want to stop it all together, but they would make it painfully slow enough to undo any momentum you have made.
Net neutrality is the combination of these two rules:
1) No service level agreements based on content or content derived traffic characteristics.
A VoIP call must not be treated worse than an FTP transfer or web traffic with the same or higher bandwidth requirements.
2) No transit service level agreements based on remote side of communication.
Any two peers can charge eachother what they want for data which is exchanged directly between their two networks, but a transit provider can only offer to accept traffic which isn't destined for the transit provider's network. To the transit provider, the destination and type of the traffic must not make a difference. Conversely the transit customer must accept traffic which arrives through the transit provider, regardless of the origin or type of the traffic.
The important part is that it only applies to transit traffic: You can still offer premium services, like for example Akamai's cache network, but you cannot charge extra for faster access to Google, the iTunes Music Store or the next big thing, unless they're connected directly to your network. This also means that you can't charge the company on the other side of the transit provider for access to your network.
The sticking point is most of the current infrastructure the government and indirectly we paid for.
That hasn't been true for at least a decade.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If ISPs are blocking popular sites, the users will change providers. Yes, some users have limited CHOICE now , but most do not. Over time the demand for more ISPs will grow, people will have more CHOICE, then "Net Neutrality" will no longer be an issue. Internet access will become a cheap commodity.
There is no such thing as a true monopoly. Look at Microsoft; it is slowly but surely loosing its so called "monopoly" on the IT industry (Linux rules!!).
Capitalism is good. Socialism is bad.
That's utopianism. In the real world, no regulations means you get to give your lunch money to the biggest bully, because there's no checks in place preventing the bullying. Saying that the kid is free to pick the least expensive bully is balderdash, because nothing prevents that bully from beating up all the smaller bullies you could otherwise use.
And that's a direct anology to what happens in a truly free and unregulated market -- it invariably becomes an oligopoly or monopoly, because the big guy has the power to prevent the small guys from ever becoming a threat. Start-ups are killed because the playing field isn't even, and if even that doesn't succeed, with marketing budgets they have no chance in hell to compete with, or they're outright bought. That's what neo-liberalism does for you.
I'm sorry to say, but what ultra-conservatives like Ron Paul calls "liberalism" is nothing but populist conservative politics, and a neo-liberalist voter is nothing but a conservative without money.
It'd be nice if they'd spent any money on it.
They're just now laying fiber, because Cable companies have been kicking (A)DSL's ass, and the open access to their copper means they can't gouge people as much as they'd like. So, to maintain their monopoly, they're laying fiber and cutting copper since they don't have to share fiber. Even though we (the people) essentially paid for this much delayed fiber network to the tune of $200B? and counting.
It explains the telecom bubble in the late 90s and crash in 2000. Had they actually spent the subsidies as they were supposed to, they'd never would have had the "spectacular" paper results.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.