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."

Comments

This isn't net neutrality,

[casualsax3]

This is the DoJ saying it's legal to have different levels and quality of service. A good analogy would be "should I have the option of paying UPS more to get my package to its destination faster". The answer is an obvious yes - there's nothing wrong with priority traffic. If you want to pay to have your data moved faster, why shouldn't you be able to?

This is already the case with a lot of webhosting providers - many run two networks, one with quality bandwidth blends that cost more for them to operate and result in lower ping times and higher throughput, and one with inexpensive (read: crappy) Cogent bandwidth.

This whole price to performance thing has been around forever - there are already massive tiers of quality built into the internet, both on the consumer end and the content provider end. Take a look at Akamai and Limelight - you'll pay absurd amounts of money to have your content hosted on their CDN - sometimes several dollars per GB transfered.

Then take a look at a webhost like Colo4Dallas, Voxel, or The Planet and you'll find that they as well offer expensive fast bandwidth, or cheap slower bandwidth. Also keep in mind that you can pay Time Warner, Optimum Online, or Verizon an extra monthly fee to bump up your speed. Should that be against the rules?

Prioritizing web traffic isn't really the major issue. I think your original analogy doesn't apply to this particular article, however it's a good analogy which hits on another core issue of "net neutrality" - ie the type of filtering that Comcast has been caught doing over the last few days. I think the headline is a bit misleading, as the DoJ isn't coming out against Net Neutrality - they're coming out and saying this is already how shit works, and there's nothing wrong with it. Now if they came out and said what Comcast is doing is alright, that would certainly justify the headline...

Re:This isn't net neutrality,

[driftingwalrus]

The biggest problem is that the analogy is to postal mail. Mail is a batched system, whereas the internet is not. The analogy is profoundly and egregiously flawed. It exposes a profound lack of understanding in regards the function of the internet.

Re:This isn't net neutrality,

[Opportunist]

Where your analogy fails is that the one paying is on the other end of the traffic. With UPS, I, the buyer, have to pay. The seller doesn't care at all whether I want it overnight or standard, for him, it does not matter.

Without net neutrality, the "seller" (the content provider) is the one getting the bill. And yes, that is a competition issue. Large corporations will most certainly not have a problem paying for the "premium" service, while it could be a real problem for small startups which can now easily compete with established companies if they provide a better service. Without NN, it takes a lot more money to get into the content game.

Re:This isn't net neutrality,

[cnet-declan]

Yep. As you said, the DoJ isn't coming out against Net neutrality.

The headline should have said something closer to "DoJ opposes new Net neutrality *laws*."

One additional word. But a big difference.

Re:This isn't net neutrality,

[Doc Daneeka]

See, there isn't anything wrong with pricing tiers for the individual users wanting to access the internet at varying speeds and reliabilties. The problem comes in when they also want to charge the people _with_ the content for the users visiting their site; it's extortion, pure and simple. On top of that, they want to prioritize the protocols going over their networks. It makes sense for network administrators to prioritize certain protocols in order to achieve a more efficient network; however, they want to make it so that certain protocols are never used on their networks.

There would be nothing wrong with any of this if the ISP market were sufficiently saturated with competitors so that the free market could push towards network neutrality on its own, but this won't happen when there are still plenty of areas that are lucky to have a single ISP, let alone have a choice.

Re:This isn't net neutrality,

[TemporalBeing]

You can't have any such thing as an SLA without being able to somehow control the service...

An 'SLA' is simply a Service Line Agreement, which when it comes to the Internet and Internet traffic, to properly provide means that the SLP (Service Line Provider) must not do anything to control traffic on that line - they're right under an SLA is to make sure the traffic gets to where it is suppose to go.

While the road analogies are bad, they are the closest. But think of it this way - you contract an 'SLA' to get somewhere (say the airport) with a Taxi Service. The Taxi Service must get you to your destination and do it in a timely manner. The contract does not allow them to say "well, that destination is in our premium price so you have to pay me more to get there", nor does an SLA with you give the Taxi Service any ability to say to the airport "well, our customer with whom we have this SLA contract wants to come to you, and you are in our premium price area, so you must pay us this additional amount or we won't bring our customer there in time to meet their flight, thus costing you more money than we're asking for". The Taxi service has an obligation to get the traffic there.

Now, that does not preclude the Airport from saying to the Taxi Service - you frequently bring customers to us, so we built this new road for our own transportation, and if you sign this other SLA with us, then we'll give you access to it so you can get to us faster and get back to servicing other customers, and btw, the route is just as long so you don't lose any mileage money.

Essentially (to wrap this up), you are the customer. The Taxi Service is the providers of the Internet - with whom you have a contract with your ISP to provide you access to anyone you desire to contact on the Internet. The Airport is whatever site you want to contact (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Slashdot, SourceForge, FSF, DoJ, etc.), and they also have an SLA with the Internet - with their provider, which is even more expansive than the one you have (they can do more than you can, and they also pay a lot higher price for it). For any of those Internet providers to fulfill their contractual obligations with either you (their customer) or the site you wish to visit (also their customer), they must provide a neutral means of getting there.

And, that "new road" the Airport built would simply be another SLA from their SLP, or perhaps another SLP. (Any business that relies on Internet for its business - e.g. Amazon, Google, etc. - would be a fool to only have one SLP. So multiple SLAs with multiple SLPs would be required.) But that is that business's decision - not the SLP's decision.

Going back to my example - if the Taxi Service said to you "we can't take you there because they won't pay this fee for us delivering you there" even though you had an SLA with them, then they would be in breach of contract and liable to you in court. (IANAL, but that should be pretty obvious.)

So you say - well, just go to another Taxi Service. What if all the Taxi Services did that? Or what if you didn't have the money to call or otherwise access another Taxi Service? What if the Airport was unable to pay? What if the fees were too expensive for the Airport (e.g. paying them would put the airport out of business, but the Taxi Service(s) based the fees on what it got from others that could pay and wouldn't change them)? What if the Taxi Service was the only way to get anywhere?

See the implications? Net Neutrality is certainly something that is required for the Internet to operate. If the Service Providers need to put in more lines to fulfill their contracts, well that is their problem. They are getting paid by two parties to provide, and if they don't provide then they are liable. (Again, IANAL but that should be pretty obvious.) If the Taxi Service couldn't provide because all their drivers were tied up, then they'd have to hire m

Not a surprise.

[birdboy2000]

The internet, with its ability to let people disseminate ideas and other content easily, and open archives to those who don't feel like going to libraries to track them down, is a threat to the military-industrial complex and many of the other big business lobbies who control the Justice Department. It's not really surprising that they'd back a proposal to kill it for those without deep pockets -- they don't come out for Habeas Corpus, and they don't come out against the possible destruction of the internet.

ok

[nomadic]

Who the hell cares? They shouldn't even have an official position on this; the Justice Department has certain specific duties and interests, and setting communications or commerce policy is not one of them. They have neither the expertise nor the authority to even contribute to the debate.

Same justice department that let Microsoft go free

[karl.auerbach]

This is the same justice department that eviscerated the anti-trust judgment against Microsoft that the proceeding administration worked so hard to obtain.

And this is the same justice department that can't seem to see that ICANN is a combination in restraint of trade on the internet that is costing domain name consumers something on the order of $500,000,000 per year in excessive fees for domain names.

So I wouldn't expect to see this Justice department to notice even the total destruction of the end-to-end principle.

My prediction: The internet will soon resemble the US cellular phone system - a system of provider shaped lumps of good connectivity, for paid-for applications, and only enough free inter-provider HTTP/HTTPS connectivity to keep the level of customer complaints manageable.

And perhaps we might even see mandatory provider-centric, provider crippled user software, just like we have provider centric, provider-crippled cell phones.

Of course they do...

[gillbates]

Just like patents, we in America need a profit-making monopoly to encourage progress in the useful arts and sciences. Because, everyone knows that businesses won't invest in technology unless they can turn it into a profit-making monopoly and shut out the competition. ;-)

Some people think of progress as something that enriches all of humankind. Obviously, these people don't work for the Justice Department - whose notion of progress is measured by how much money is being made from things formerly given away for free. Apparently, progress isn't progress unless you can put a dollar value on it and sell it. It's called Market Creation(TM), and it is considered a Good Thing(TM) by those who believe Corporate America(SM) is the savior of the working classes.

After all, every politician drools at the prospect of creating jobs out of thin air. The rights of the consumer, OTOH, don't seem so important.

Now is the time for us to raise our concerns with our elected officials. Write or call a senator. Send them an email before it becomes "premium content" and subject to an additional surcharge.

This is what we get . . .

[mmell]

for allowing non-technical people to make fundamental decisions about the appropriate use of technology.

A poster (above) has commented that this is analogous to UPS charging more to deliver your package faster. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ISP's et. al. want to be legally permitted to throttle or block traffic based not only on how much the consumer pays for internet access but also upon whether or not the web content provider has ponied up for "express lane" service. Also, the ISP's want the authority to block certain types of content from delivery altogether (gnutella, bittorrent, audio/video streams). A better analogy would be UPS refusing to give me priority delivery because the recipient on my package isn't on their preferred list - and letting UPS determine that the content of my package is not merely safe for transport, but doesn't contain anything which UPS might consider bad for their business (say, fliers and advertising materials for the USPS).

My local cable company shamelessly blocks all gnutella and bittorrent traffic (when they can identify it), and throttles audio and video streams regardless of source. My perception is that they don't want guys like me getting their audio or video unless it comes down their designated pipe - after I pay them for it, that is. Now, my ISP is a telco. I can stream/download anything I want, but I suspect that any attempt on my part to set up a VOIP solution is doomed to failure. Funny, when I was using the cable company for internet, they encouraged me to use VOIP, bundling their own telephony technology up with my cable and internet access. Hmmm . . .

Back to my point - this kind of decision is what we get when we let non-technically oriented people make fundamental, binding, long-term decisions about consumer rights vs. corporate rights with regard to technology. I suspect that the justices under discussion have the same understanding of net neutrality that the UPS poster does - and that understanding is inadequate to the job.

Yes it is.

[raehl]

It only specifies 'users'. It doesn't specify whether the users are end consumers or not.

A better analogy would be:

"Should Intel be able to pay UPS to look inside your packages, and if it contains AMD chips, sit on the package for an extra day or two?"

Your analogy applies to the current situation, where ISPs already charge different prices for different bandwidths. So this DOJ thing can't be about that, since it's about preventing something that doesn't already exist.

It's about enabling ISPs to require end-consumers to pay more for faster delivery of content. The only way that can work is if at least some content is intentionally delivered SLOWER than the user's paid-for bandwidth.

This is stupid -- argument is being framed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. Net neutrality isn't tiered service levels. Net neutrality isn't about prohibiting the phone company from selling DSL service that's capped at 512Kb/sec versus 20Mb/sec. It's about the phone company and backbone providers screwing with traffic. It's about prohibiting ISPs from artificially degrading traffic from companies that don't pay extortion money. It's about not allowing ILECs to screw with VoIP traffic by introducing random packet timing delays to protect their own old voice network monopolies. And so on.

The argument is being framed by those opposed to it as being about preventing ISPs from offering different speeds of service, which is horse shit. They need to be called out on this, but the concept of net neutrality is complex and technical so cynical opponents can get away with framing it any way they like. I'm disappointed the article summary played in to this scheme.

Re:Why?

[MobyDisk]

But every libertarian also knows that capitalism does not work:
1) without an even playing field
2) in the presence of a monpoly

Broadband internet is a regulated monopoly. And without network neutrality, the ISPs can perform subtle slight-of-hand making it appear as though one web site is too slow while another is fast. Or make it appear like you need more bandwidth for your VOIP when you really have plenty. This distorts the reality of the market unto the consumer.

A libertarian should support network neutrality because the minimal government intervention necessary to enforce the rules is required for capitalism to function. Libertarianism without this principle devolves into a corporate oligarchy.

Re:Bravo

[griffjon]

"continue to monitor and enforce any anticompetitive conduct to ensure a competitive broadband marketplace"

Like, maybe, cutting out copper infrastructures when installing FiOS, locking the current and any future customers in to one vendor?

Antitrust lost its fangs under Clinton and the rest of its teeth under Shrub. It's not even bother to gum corporations anymore.

content-determined speeds

[sdedeo]

I am confused. The problem is not paying for a bigger pipe, the problem is that speeds will be determined in part by content. In other words, some sites will load faster than others on the same connection. I have no problem kicking speakeasy extra bucks for a faster connection; I do have a problem if they get to choose which of my packets is speedier.

Speakeasy is of course the google of ISPs, but don't be surprised if you start to see abuse of this system. AT&T has a deal with myMusic? Wow, my iTunes Store downloads are taking quite a bit longer...

Here's a better analogy

[DaftShadow]

Roads.

The US postal service, along with UPS, FedEx, and DHS, all operate on Roadways & Interstates. These are required in order to traverse the World. Currently, it costs 'nothing' for me to start up a competitor to these guys, and begin competing with FedEx/UPS/USPS. Roadways are publicly paid for with taxes, and thus available to all. Everyone competes on the same playing field.

But suppose someone built a private set of roadways, only for premium members. Let's say that they are 4 lanes wide, with a top speed of 120mph. To use these awesome new roads/highways, you had to pay for advanced access. UPS/FedEx/DHS pay extra to use these roads, and can thus travel faster and further per truck than I can. They are paying for more bandwidth.

Here is the question: Should the road builder be forced to open up his private roadways to the public, at no cost, even though he spent $X Billion of his own money building the roads?

- DaftShadow

Re:Here's a better analogy

[jafiwam]

God damn people like you piss me the fuck off.

Internet is not a private road. Internet was built on lots and lots of public funds, and lots and lots of private funds. Likewise the physical cabling runs across all sorts of land, most of it public right of way, granted to the telcos to use for what amounts to in the end, a bribe to governments.

So you analogy has a fucking hole right in the center of it like akin to 'hello.jpg', fingers digging in and pulling it open and all.

And what YOU are proposing is not just a fee to get on this "private highway" but also the private highway gets to steal paint, concrete and exit/entrance ramps from the public highway. Unless you are talking exclusively about point-to-point lines, you are a fucking liar. ALL of it connects to the same public network one way or another. And allowing priority this and QOS will fuck it all up. You think the telcos get in pissing matches about peering points now, just wait until they can charge everybody by the packet/hop and oh, if you leave the network thats x10.

The ONLY question is do the carriers have a right to charge content provider A to content consumer B as well as charge content consumer B for the bandwidth.

In other words, can we extort and double dip or not?

Nobody with any goddamn brains thinks that's a good idea. Nobody that doesn't stand to get RICH while doing it as well anyway.

Re:Here's a better analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, people like him piss me off, too. Nobody expects anyone to open their networks to everybody for free. But people like you piss me off just as much: The internet is not a public network. Public networks are part of the internet, but for the most part, the internet is comprised of private networks. All these networks have chosen to interconnect to form the internet.

Network neutrality is about ensuring that the network doesn't turn back into an "online service" the likes of the old AOL and Compuserve, but you can't slaughter the last-mile providers over it. It is very important that providers can cut deals for direct traffic between their networks. Being forced to accept all peers would indeed mean that providers of high-bandwidth content could swamp the last-mile networks with traffic from a relatively cheap hosting facility and reap the benefits of the access provider's work and investments.

Here is my take on network neutrality.

Re:Here's a better analogy

[Baba Ram Dass]

The toll operator looks inside the truck, sees an Amazon package, wants to force the truck to take the slow lanes unless Amazon pays a toll in addition to the toll UPS is paying. Should that be allowed? Depends on whether or not the toll road is privately owned. If it is, then it's no one's business but Amazon and the toll road owner. If it's a public road, then I think we can all say: no.

But your analogy is a bit flawed. The UPS consumer who will receive the package is like you or I at home at our computer; we know not nor care what UPS had to do to get it to our doorstep, as long as they charge us the amount agreed upon. How do you fit that into your Internet analogy? I suppose you could say UPS is like your local ISP, whereas the trunk providers are the toll road owners.

And here is where it boils down to: assuming there isn't a local monopoly* on high speed Internet access in your area, your ISP is going to do whatever it is they can to please the consumer; if the consumer wants non-tiered** Internet access, they will either a) demand it and get it, b) go to a provider who will meet the demand, or c) do nothing because non-tiered access isn't, for whatever reason, enough for them to complain or switch providers.

*More often than not, competition is forbidden due to the local government giving a local company, or a "city-owned" company, a monopoly on high-speed Internet access. Don't like the service? Tough shit--get satellite or go without.

**Non-tiered from the end-user's perspective. If you're capped, and you most certainly are, it doesn't matter if access is tiered at a higher level than the cap your provider imposes on you, so you'll have virtually non-tiered access.

Re:Here's a better analogy

[zerocool^]

Here is the question: Should the road builder be forced to open up his private roadways to the public, at no cost, even though he spent $X Billion of his own money building the roads?

Problem with this: AT&T and others were given tax breaks and governmental funding to build their infrastructure. THEN, they charge the consumers to use it after having been granted an essential monopoly by the government. THEN, they continue to receive tax revenues and government subsidies to operate it (Universal service fund). NOW, they want to be able to charge Google to give their content to you, as well as charge you to get Google's content.

I don't know why you all want to use analogies, because this genuinely isn't hard to understand.

But, if it were your road analogy, it would be more along the lines of: The road builder spent $X billion of his own money, along with $Y Billion government subsidies to build the road. Now he has been granted exclusive rights to high-speed traffic, and the only other routes from anywhere to anywhere else are 2 lanes and filled with traffic 24/7. Oh, and he owns that route, too, by the way. So, he charges people a fee to use the highway, while the government is still paying him to maintain the road.

Now he wants to charge you not only to get ON the toll road, but to get OFF the toll road, and charge more, based on how fast you were going. Also, the road builder is ugly, and wants to have sex with your sister.

Whatever. ISP's should be tightly regulated in favor of the consumer, at ANY cost. It helps our case that our fucking tax dollars built their infrastructure in the first place, and that the companies have been granted a virtual monopoly over what *should* be publicly owned infrastructure. I dunno, man, sweeden seems to be headed for 100 Mbit internet for $30/month in the next year or three. What the fuck is wrong with us?

~Wx

Re:Here's a better analogy

[bitflip]

First, most of the US internet infrastructure was paid for by the taxpayers, in the form of tax incentives, and favorable laws restricting competition. The result was _supposed_ to be high bandwidth everywhere, but somehow the various parties didn't fulfill their part of the bargain. Second, yea, that happens all the time. It's called an easement

Re:Here's a better analogy

[wish bot]

Content providers can only swamp last-mile networks with traffic if the SUBSCRIBERS to that network are downloading it. If they swamp their network, then the god damn isp isn't giving their SUBSCRIBERS what they're paying for.

This is what things like PROXY SERVERS were invented for.

Re:Why?

[king-manic]

Maybe they understand the issue, but oppose (or see no reason for) government intervention, like I do. And like all the supposed libertarians on /. should.

Take a lesson from history, drop blind ideology because there are no ideal fixes. Sometimes government intervention is good, sometimes bad. A blanket statement or position that ignores all variables is not a productive socio/political philosphy but so many Americans/slashdotters seem to take it because it's simplistic and appeals to the "KIS" side of you. Unfortunately people aren't simple.

Re:Why?

[the eric conspiracy]

A libertarian should support network neutrality because the minimal government intervention necessary to enforce the rules is required for capitalism to function. Libertarianism without this principle devolves into a corporate oligarchy.

A libertarian would do no such thing. Enforcing net neutrality laws in fact supports entrenched economic rights (i.e. de jure monopolies) rather allowing a free market system to work. Maybe people actually WANT a non-neutral system. They should be allowed to choose it if that is what they want. A libertarian would work to remove the regulatory barriers that give incumbent ISPs an economic advantage. With a proliferation of ISPs there would be a choice of carriers to use, and people would pick the service model they want.

This link illustrates the principle as applied to another famous monopoly.

http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/microsoft_monopoly.h tml

DOJ? WTF?

[onemorechip]

What does the DOJ have to do with Internet regulation? I could see this as a Dept. of Commerce thing, but Justice?

Re:I'm hoping to get through to you

[QuantumG]

And if rudeness is what it takes, I apologize, but it's worth it. Ok, fine, idiot - THINK.

Ya know what happens if an ISP blocks "Google and friends"? They get a phone call from every single one of their subscribers asking why they can't get to Google. If the ISP lies and claims that it isn't their fault? The customers say, yes, it is their fault, their friend with another ISP (or their connection at work) has no problem getting to Google. If the ISP still refuses to remove the block? The customers quit and go to another ISP.

You are living in a fantasy land.

And before you say "we have no choice of ISP here", that is your problem. Fix that and everything else will be fine. Sheesh.

Re:what the internet needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! I'm so sick of this "think of the children" bullshit. Mommy, Daddy, YOU think of your children. I grew up and now still have to play in the kiddie pool because you don't like how the net is? I am thinking of the children- may I please have the freedom to not be one?