Slashdot Mirror
Survey Finds Canadians Support Net Neutrality Law
An anonymous reader writes "A new public opinion survey conducted in Canada finds overwhelming public support in that country for net neutrality legislation. Three-quarters of Canadians believe the government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice — even though most of those surveyed did not know the term 'net neutrality.' The survey was commissioned by eBay." Of course the devil is in the wording. Given the survey's sponsorship, it's unlikely that respondents were presented with examples of the value that ISPs say packet shaping can bring, or asked to weigh such against net neutrality.
You can go sign the petition at http://www.neutrality.ca/
So what if the respondents don't understand QoS issues. Net neutrality isn't about getting rid of QoS, but about the deliberate extortion of money by ISPs and backbones to give preferential service to their own offerings and to those willing to pay. The deliberate muddying of the issue by industry shills is what gets people going "but what about packet shaping". Trying to prevent 5000 customers with Limewire at 8pm from dropping the average subscriber speed to 33.6kbs is not the same thing as demanding Google pay you money or you'll cut the bandwidth from your subscribers to them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Does it mean that bandwidth providers can charge more for high demand customers? Probably fair enough. Does it mean that they can charge end users more for extra speed. No complaints. What is not acceptable is that the owners of the backbone can make deals with "partners" and give them a special rate and stiff other customers. Or they can charge their customers more for bytes from one source than another. The concept of a "common carrier" has served will in the the fields of communication and transportation. Regulation is necessary. I don't want a top down controlled Internet where I am merely a content consumer.
Just because its commissioned by eBay doesn't mean the company (the largest independent polling company in Canada) made a loaded survey, especially when AT&T is also a client of theirs. If the survey turned out to be negative for eBay, they could simply not release the information.
Those that heard of a proposal to let a sex-starved panda free to roam the Canadian tundra were outraged.
On a more serious note TFA:
This happens all too often here in the US as well, and needs to be more severely penalized.
Walk with Music;
But I wants me some video choice!~
;)
I guess the exchange rate applies to intelligence too, eh?
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
How about just switching my fscking packets and shove your "value added" up your ass. The contents of my packets are none of your business. I'll be very happy when IPSEC is ubiquitous and the only information ISPs will have access to is the minimum needed for routing.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Kind of a loaded wording, but no more loaded than the survey question.
You might want to read your quote. It appears to be at odds with your post.
Since traffic shaping that is done based on the kind of content without regard to the source of content and which is accompanied by sufficient bandwidth so that non-prioritized content isn't just dropped on the floor in favor of prioritized content is neither inconsistent with the concept of net neutrality as a common-carrier-like provision nor inconsistent with the goal articulated in the question asked in this survey, I'm not sure how you think pointing that out would be relevant.
Why should the service companies be able to charge on both ends for a service that they are already providing to paying customers?
Labor and public tax money. You forgot that. Speaking of, where is the fiber optic network we paid for?
Come on, name one benefit that packet shaping can bring. In all serious I can't think of a single example where it would be acceptable.
If an ISP needs to shape packets they've over sold their service, and that is their problem. Not ours.
1. Canadians value privacy, freedom, and their role in creating the open communications systems they depend on (SFU and UBC R001!)
2. Canada is used to having a high-bandwidth internet that is cheaper than the US one, faster, and in more households.
3. Only those who want to sell you less for more are in favor of killing off net neutrality.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think in this case wording is everything. It doesn't seem to me that the majority of the general public, outside of techies and their friends, is really informed about "Net Neutrality" and the debate over it.
You could probably get a poll to go either way based on how you word the question:
"Do you believe that governments or corporations should place restrictions on what websites you can visit, or charge you extra based on visiting certain sites?"
"Do you believe that private property should be respected, and that Internet Service Providers have the right to control the content they deliver, such as restrictions on child pornography, sites that contain malicious software, and terrorist web sites?"
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Well put, but perhaps not the best thing in mixed company.
The easy way to defeat "packet shaping" sophistry is to point out that value comes from bandwith and nothing but. Constricting bandwith through a filter always reduces the bandwith available, even if it favors a few "sensitive" packets. The only way out of bandwith problems is to spend the money on more bandwith. Money spent on other things is wasteful, even if honestly used.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
There are laws against abuse of monopoly and laws against collusion between what should be competitors. A net neutrality law would be along the same lines.
Even if you understand some of the basics of it, most people come down on the side of net neutrality. I mean having a neutral policy is good right? It takes some fairly detailed understanding of the issues to realise how a well meaning law like that could have unintended consequences that makes things worse overall. It is a complicated situation. On the one hand you have assholes like AT&T saying they want to depritorize traffic from anyone who doesn't pay them protection money, on they other you have network admins worried this means they can't using things like packet shapers and such at all on their network.
It isn't the kind of thing people can give an informed response on unless they are given a decent bit of background info, maybe more than they are interested in listening to.
When I pay for bandwith, I expect to be able to use it as a chose not as YOU or anyone else sees fit. I understand that this costs money and that is the source of my outrage.
Conversely, use of public servitude and spectrum are privileges not rights. Those that would use those public resources have obligations to the public. It can be argued that the current owners of spectrum and networks in this country have failed those obligations and should be removed from their position of privilege and jailed.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access? After all, if the government of China provided the labour in order to provide internet service for their citizens, then China has every right to limit what their citizens do. And so on for other countries. Why do we care about the "Great Firewall of China" or any other government that limits their citizens' activities online? What do we care about the Burmese bloggers?
I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to. What I do know is that we should probably rethink what we understand as "rights" and "privileges", when it comes to novel technologies that act as mediums for free speech. Maybe the internet should play by different rules, like those that would be provided by a net neutrality act. Maybe not. But what is obvious is that the internet is somehow different than other privileged services, in that it has become a somewhat essential medium for global citizens to convene and engage in free speech.
As I said, I don't know the answers, but I do believe that your approach is not the direction that we should go in.
No doubt the people who tell us how wonderful it would be without net neutrality are the same people who tell us how marvellous it is to watch ads instead of TV programs.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Well, since rights are declared, not given, maybe we can declare it a right and require the government to provide access.
hmm... on second thought, I may actually trust a telecom more.
This isn't mixed company, this is Slashdot.
Sounds good. So then let's take a situation some years in the future where it's law. What happens when you are watching TV, and all of a sudden the stream starts stuttering. You call your cable company angry. They explain that TV is now delivered over IP, like everything else. Currently you have some neighbours hitting the P2P really heavy and it is using up enough of the segment that it is interfering with video traffic. They'd love to have video have a higher QoS, but alas the law says they can't. The "contents of your packets are none of their business."
Right now we have a situation where largely there's a disconnect between data, voice and video networks. They run on different standards, are handled by different equipment and so on. However that's slowly changing. VoIP is one of the first examples, but it'll keep going. Eventually we are likely to have everything routed to us over an IP network. However some of it is more important, or rather more time sensitive, than others. I don't mind if packets for my download have to wait a little bit. However with video, you've got to get me the next frame in not more than 33 milliseconds or I'm going to start dropping frames. This is the reason why video that operates over the Internet has to buffer and can't be true realtime, and even then still drops sometimes.
As such it is not a clear cut case of "just leave it alone." If everything goes to IP we are going to need a way to give priority to time critical packets. Even if that doesn't happen there's reason to want to shape packets. The big objection people have to P2P is that it eats up an unfair amount of network time. Most networks, all other things being equal, will work out so that each transfer gets an equal amount of time. Download one file via HTTP on a T1, you get somewhere in the realm of 150-190k/sec. Download a second file, they both go in the realm of 75-95k/sec. Ok, good deal. However P2P works off of lots of connections. You can have a single download having 150+ connections. So it'll grab more resources than its fair share and slow things down.
An easy solution to that, without banning P2P or something like that, is to just make P2P a lower priority than normal traffic. That's what we do on the campus I work on. We have a couple packet shapers that will put P2P packets behind others. That means that so long as there's bandwidth, everything works normally. However if we cap out, P2P slows down before other things do.
This isn't a clear cut thing. I agree that companies should be prohibited, either by law or simply by people refusing to do business with them, for charging people extortion money under threat of slowing their traffic down. However that doesn't mean we want to declare that all packets must be treated equal. Some things are just more important than others on a mixed network, and there needs to be allowances for that.
Weaksauce as they say...
"Internet access is not a right."
---
Not precisely true. There are other rights besides the "inalienable" ones. Sometimes, we create new rights and give them to the citizens.
This can be a "good thing", especially when advancing technology brings up a new issue.
Now that online video is becoming more prevalent, and people are moving from their TVs to their computer screens, it may behoove us to create and support the poor guy's right to view the same content as the rich guy.
Of course there are always trade-offs, and some who will even abuse such a right, but over-all I think it will be best for the nation to adopt a net-neutrality position, and sick the courts on those who try to profit by claiming some bits are worth more than others.
"We think people rightly feel that once they buy something, it stays bought," --Suw Charman, Open Rights Grp
That's why I will take and ISP that provides me with the most neutral access to Internet.
As for the *proposed legislation* that would ban ISP from not being net neutral, that's net-statism, a quite different beast which must be beaten to death and then shot to make sure.
\u262D = \u5350
The funny thing is that there are well known effects that skew the effects of polls, among which:
1. People are nice social beings. They tell you what they think you'd like to hear. It's a reflex and enculturation effect that, well, I suppose helps us live with each other. If you know someone, say, likes pink, the nice social reflex is to say "yes, it's a nice colour."
Why does that matter? Most people, even on a perfectly anonymous poll, tend to answer what they think would please the poller. If they're polled by eBay, of course they'll say what they think eBay would like to hear.
2. (Or 1.b.) The wording is very important. If you present a skewed view where option 1 is pure good and option 2 is pure evil, you've already told them what you think on that matter. So they'll subconsciously try to be nice and agree with what you told them you like, regardless of what they actually think on the matter, and regardless of whether they even give a damn at all.
3. All things being equal, there's a bias towards answering more "yes" and less "no". I guess we've all been educated that it's not nice to disagree all the time. So well design polls actually randomize the questionnaires so 50% will ask the question one way, and 50% ask the negative version.
E.g., if half the questionnaires ask "should we stay in Iraq?", the other half must ask "should we pull out of Iraq?", because otherwise you get it skewed towards "yes". If you only ask "should we stay in Iraq?" you'll get your results skewed as some people will vote "yes" just because it's, you know, a "yes."
4. Biased sample fallacies. Was that sample representative, or was it, say, only the people who visit site X? E.g., if you were to make a poll about computers or OSes on Slashdot, I hope you can see how the results wouldn't really reflect what the whole population thinks.
Etc.
Now I don't know how the poll in TFA was done, so I'm not commenting on that. But basically if you want to know what people _think_, then you _don't_ do a poll along the lines of "do you think we should stop ISP extortion?" If you do that, you'll just get a false result that's good for self-shoulder-patting, but won't reflect what they actually vote for in the next elections.
Just saying...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's the old adage of "better on paper". People should be holding companies liable when they pull that sort of crap, but consumers don't act in a self-interested manner anymore. Capitalism only works right if everybody involved in the process does their part to keep everybody else in check, but consumers have just rolled over and asked for it up the rear over the last few decades, so they're getting exactly what they requested now.
Talk to me about WoW and I'll punch your faggot face.
"Blame Canada" The US usually does the exact opposite of our friends up north.
TPP didn't say that access to the Internet was a right. It said that access to Internet content and applications is a right. That might seem like a trivial distinction, but it's not. Access to information is a fundamental right, and if the only way an individual has to access that information is through an ISP, it makes perfect sense to insist that the ISP not play the role of censor.
If you want to stream some music produced by some heavy metal band you just heard about, and your ISP says, "Sorry, we don't carry packets from that server, how about some nice Britney Spears?" then they're interfering with your first amendment rights. Also committing a crime against nature, but that's another issue.
I think Yes Minister said it best.
Humphrey: You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: " Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard: Oh...well, I suppose I might be.
Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told her you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.
Bernard: Is that really what they do?
Humphrey: Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result.
Bernard: How?
Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard: Yes
Humphrey: There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.
A society has the right to determine the parameters by which a business must operate. This is especially true of large of these large semi-monopolistic organizations for which there is little competition.
proof, apparently, that the idea is not a sound one.
If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access?
Because an oppressive government uses stolen money (i.e. taxes) to fund its operations, and it prevents competition through physical violence or violent threats. In contrast, a company must acquire its money by providing goods and services, and a company can not use violence or violent threats to stop competition. A company can only oppress you to the extent that you allow yourself to be oppressed.
Another poster mentioned that it's dangerous to allow a random CEO to price a provider out of the market. Yes, a CEO exercising his right to control his company's property on behalf of the shareholders is dangerous to your "freedom" to dictate to that company how they will use their property. However, I don't believe in your so-called freedom. Build your own damn network.
And no, I don't think the government has a right to control the internet because it was partially built with tax dollars. If the government has funded the internet infrastructure in the past, then the solution is for that money to be repaid to the government, and for the government, in turn, to return the money to the taxpayers. The solution is not to treat the internet as though it is a "public resource", because that is both immoral and inefficient.
There's a world of difference between the Chinese government censoring the internet and net neutrality. They are using taxpayer money to artificially limit what would voluntarily be consumed by paying customers. If you don't like the terms of the internet service providers, you are welcome not to use their service. But over there the people are compelled by force to participate.
I view this the same way as our cable TV provider and ala carte scenario. I don't find that the 200 channels they offer for one block rate is compelling enough, so I simply don't subscribe. When they decide to offer individual channels I want at a reasonable price I will gladly pay for it once more. Until then, I'll go with netflix or whatever other entertainment seems appealing. But I don't believe that forcing others to use their property in certain ways is the right thing to do. I'm sure some people might call me an industry shill for saying that, but that's what I feel is just in this situation.
If internet providers start choking their bandwidth enough, I will not subscribe to their service too. Maybe I'll just stick to using the internet at work... who knows. But what I do know is that it would create a great business opportunity for a new provider to come in and offer what people want to pay for.
Yeah, for example, they're supposed to prevent the formation of monopolies.
People in the US never seemed to have learned that lesson.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I am strongly in favor of both your proposals and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
"three in five Canadians concur that ISPs should be required to treat all content, sites and platforms equally."
This prevents any sort of packet prioritization. Therefore, services which require QoS will ONLY be provided by telecom companies. Telecom companies have their own private networks, and don't need the internet. However, net neutrality makes it impossible for a company like Vonage to sell a quality phone service, and compete directly with telecom companies. It makes it impossible for Netflix to guarantee quality on the video on demand service. It makes it impossible for a company that is not a telecom company to offer quality IPTV. Given consumers choice. Don't strangle the internet.
If we compare the Internet like the airwaves that we allow mobile phone companies to operate, we can see first hand how anti-net neutrality causes the US to fall behind the rest of the world. Freedom of the airwaves would give consumers better choice of phone services than if each carrier stingly guards and closes their own network - same with the Internet.
True, but you are paying for that service. Shouldn't you expect to get what you're paying for? Not what the highest bidder is offering for the service provider to give you.
You do get what you pay for. So does the service provider on the other end.
"You should get what you pay for" is a pretty nonsensical argument. Because service providers paying to get their traffic prioritised (or not de-prioritised) is a fairly standard example of exactly that.
Why should the service companies be able to charge on both ends for a service that they are already providing to paying customers?
Same reason they can now. They have a resource that various parties want to access. According to free market ideology, they should be able to charge both parties as much as they are willing to pay.
We always want the ISPs to be treated like other common carriers, but people seem to have differing notions of what they really want. With other common carriers like transportation, it is possible to pay higher rates to receive faster delivery. The post office is a fairly standard common carrier, but it has had various classes of postage for ages. Companies shipping food know that canned soup can take a couple of weeks to get from California to New York, but the fresh produce needs to move now. Can something like this be implemented on the Internet?
The Internet was really designed to move data around reliably rather than quickly. In the past, it was more important to get the data around a bombed-out relay than to provide real-time delivery. The Internet has moved beyond that and now applications, VoIP or Starcraft for example, really do need fast delivery or else the application is useless. So much of the discussion of network neutrality seems to treat it as all or nothing: either every packet is treated with the same priority or else the ISPs get to gouge the senders and/or receivers for priority.
It seems to me that something similar to the postal system might be a viable compromise. One could imagine the ISPs operating on several tiers, where they could charge different prices according to the speed of data transmission. On the flip side, they would have to charge in a non-discriminatory manner, with rates based only on the volume and priority of data (perhaps with discounts on high volumes). First class data from Google, EBay and a tiny VoIP startup would all move at the same rate, but would move faster than low-priority transmissions such as web browsing. One could also imagine mandating that ISPs allocate bandwidth to the various tiers in a fixed ratio as well, so as to avoid them ignoring the lowest tier stuff. Class 1/2/3/4 bandwidth, for example, might have to be transmitted in a fixed 10%/20%/30%/40% of total available bandwidth.
The easy way to defeat "packet shaping" sophistry is to point out that value comes from bandwith and nothing but.
I use a 13kbps 100ms wireless voice link (cell phone) that lets me talk with my brother in Florida. By your logic, we should be just as happy recording everything we have to say on CDs and mailing them back and forth to each other, since the available bandwidth is higher.
I always figured it was a symptom of a larger problem. The majority of people seem to have very little ability to completely think through the consequences of their actions (or are unwilling to). Think of how many people you know who will get completely raped by a store over something, to the point they're fuming mad, but they'll immediately go back and buy something else just because it's the cheapest place to buy that something else.
The problem here is really that IQs are specifically built to fit a bell curve so they're always an average, but the average person isn't really that bright. The vast majority of people, speaking from the perspective of an absolute intelligence, are pretty dumb.
Talk to me about WoW and I'll punch your faggot face.
In contrast, a company must acquire its money by providing goods and services, and a company can not use violence or violent threats to stop competition. A company can only oppress you to the extent that you allow yourself to be oppressed.
This theory works up until the point where avoiding that company's products is a reasonable thing to do. In many cases, that isn't true.
Another poster mentioned that it's dangerous to allow a random CEO to price a provider out of the market. Yes, a CEO exercising his right to control his company's property on behalf of the shareholders is dangerous to your "freedom" to dictate to that company how they will use their property. However, I don't believe in your so-called freedom.
When that CEO and the rest of his regular golfing foursome control 99% - 100% of the avenues you have to access a particular good or service, then you probably should start caring about "so-called freedom".
Build your own damn network.
Needlessly duplicating that sort of infrastructure is a grossly wasteful and inefficient exercise.
I'm a Canadian and I have had Internet access since the dark days of dial-up (which at the time were rather sunny and bright come to think of it) and no one asked me about this. I'm appalled. If they had asked me, whoa boy, I'd have given them my opinion, which since I wasn't asked I guess is irrelevant.
Well shit.
I guess I'll just go... away.
The Internet2 project found that the costs and complexities of implementing quality of service guarantees exceeded the benefits. It was more practical to add sufficient bandwidth than it was to prioritize packets. They also predicted - and other research supports - that QoS would encourage ISPs to deliberately downgrade service in order to charge more.
Net Neutrality is the Sarbanes-Oxley of the internet. Everyone has good intentations, but people with little understanding are trying to write a law based around the *potential* for a problem that simply does not exist, nor shows signs of existing anytime soon.
Let's not hasten to have government come in and wedge a big old bureaucratic foot in the door of networking - any bill that specifically defines how ISP's are to shape traffic, even if initially neutral, is only a small amendment or two away from something like banning all P2P packets. And of course any law dictating how traffic is to be shaped includes expensive compliance documentation that must be kept by the ISP, raising service prices for all of us...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This theory works up until the point where avoiding that company's products is a reasonable thing to do. In many cases, that isn't true.
I don't believe there is some threshold of "reasonableness" in which other men become your slaves. For example, I can't say, "I was born without any arms and legs, making it unreasonable for me to take care of myself. Therefore, it is moral for me to ask society to force you, as a non-handicapped human being, to support me." No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it. The fact that you find it unreasonable to refuse his offer shows how grateful you should be to him.
When that CEO and the rest of his regular golfing foursome control 99% - 100% of the avenues you have to access a particular good or service, then you probably should start caring about "so-called freedom".
Why? The CEO owes me nothing. He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible. If he is able to make more profit by providing an inferior service, then that must be because the customers are willing to pay more for an inferior service, and therefore, have only themselves to blame. On the other hand, if the majority of customers are happy with his service, but you are not, then that is your problem.
Needlessly duplicating that sort of infrastructure is a grossly wasteful and inefficient exercise.
If I build my own house, instead of moving into someone else's, is that needless duplication? No, because I value control, and I can control what I build myself. The only way for two people to have full control over a single good is to duplicate that good. You see this as wasteful because you don't like the way one of those individuals chooses to control his good. But why is your opinion of how the good should be controlled more important than his?
Also, don't forget that if company A controls a good in way that his customer B does not like, and B decides to duplicate that good, A will be pressured to give into B's demands. But if the government prevents B from duplicating that good (because it would be "wasteful"), then A has nothing to fear, and very little reason to give into B's demands.
"Only in America"
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo
If net neutrality is destroyed, what will happen to the small internet developers such as the high schooler running the server out of his parent's basement or the guy trying to work out a few bugs in a new program that needs large automatic updates? From my position, it seems like there would be a great risk of losing some of the hobbyist programmers necessary to the open source community, especially considering the dropping of packets. I know that I (the high schooler running a web-server from his basement and the programmer) would just find a different hobby if I had to pay outrageous (or any) rates to test and implement my programs and setups at a decent speed (besides what my family is paying for broadband already).
Yawn.
little ponies for every girl...until they know what the heck is being talked about.
What a pointless survey. 95% of people don't know enough about the issue to have an informed opinion.
IPTV can't possibly work without QoS, huh? I personally am using IPTV all the time right now, provided by ABC.com, NBC.com, Comedy Central, Joost, iTunes, and yes, even YouTube. None of these services are provided by telecoms, and all are high enough quality for me in the *complete absence* of QoS. Whoops! Turns out QoS isn't quite as vital as you thought. OTOH, without net neutrality, it is likely cable companies will begin throttling video packets (and phone companies too as they try to move into the triple-play market). Given a choice between ISP-enforced QoS and net neutrality, I choose net neutrality.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
No, by my logic you would be happier doing both.
What should really make you happy, though, is the liberty to use your cable modem or fiber hook up to communicate with 128bps and exchange the other information in real time. More is better. Filters always provide less bandwith. People in Japan with their 10 mpps connections both up and down are laughing at your featureless cell phone and sorry internet connection.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I don't believe there is some threshold of "reasonableness" in which other men become your slaves. For example, I can't say, "I was born without any arms and legs, making it unreasonable for me to take care of myself. Therefore, it is moral for me to ask society to force you, as a non-handicapped human being, to support me." No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it. The fact that you find it unreasonable to refuse his offer shows how grateful you should be to him.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or how it is relevant, but *my* point is that in many cases, the frequently heard retort of "deal with it, or go somewhere else" (or variations thereof, like yours) ignores that "leaving" is often not a reasonable course of action to take.
Further, it is not at all unreasonable to expect people not to be arseholes when dealing with them. That it frequently takes government regulation to make this a reality, is a sad reflection on the attitudes prevalent in business, not on the consumers who request that the regulation be imposed.
Why?
Because you simply may not be able to access that resource without going via that CEO or another he colludes with.
The CEO owes me nothing.
On the contrary, he owes everyone something because it is only through government legislation and law enforcement services that he is able to operate fearlessly behind the shield of incorporation, rather than actually having to take responsibility for his actions.
He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible. If he is able to make more profit by providing an inferior service, then that must be because the customers are willing to pay more for an inferior service, and therefore, have only themselves to blame. On the other hand, if the majority of customers are happy with his service, but you are not, then that is your problem.
Or, alternatively, they have no choice because that CEO - or the other CEOs he influences - don't offer any alternatives. Or they don't know about alternatives because the half a dozen guys that CEO has dinner with every other Tuesday own all the mainstream media outlets and don't publish any negative information about his services (and he, in return, gives their services priorities over any competitors).
If I build my own house, instead of moving into someone else's, is that needless duplication?
No. Nor is the comparison valid. There is value in separate housing, because different people have different needs. There is no value in (to use a relevant example) two lines of fibre optic cable lying next to each other transferring the same bits over them when one could do the same job.
You see this as wasteful because you don't like the way one of those individuals chooses to control his good. But why is your opinion of how the good should be controlled more important than his?
No, I see it as wasteful because it uses twice as many physical resources to provide exactly the same goods and services for no reason other than a bad attitude. Sorry, but physics trumps economics.
Also, don't forget that if company A controls a good in way that his customer B does not like, and B decides to duplicate that good, A will be pressured to give into B's demands. But if the government prevents B from duplicating that good (because it would be "wasteful"), then A has nothing to fear, and very little reason to give into B's demands.
Indeed. Which is why critical infrastructure and utilities should be regulated, at the very least, if not wholely government-owned. Thus preventing A from being unreasonable and allowing B to offer his services.
The purpose of net neutrality legislation is not to tell ISPs *how* they may shape traffic, but to ban them from doing so at all. We're far more likely to see a ban on P2P packets from greedy corporations who don't want people using the bandwidth they've paid for.
So take the option out of their hands. ISPs may sell bulk bandwidth, no strings attached.
My P2P traffic is far more important than some yokel glued to the idiot box. Who the fuck cares if TV works? Only children and morons watch it anyway.
Then it wouldn't really matter. You wouldn't pay hundreds of providers to speed up your service. Likewise any individual ISP in a hundred throttling speeds would only hurt itself. The real problem is near monopolies need this law so they can abuse their control. If there was real competition among providers this wouldn't even be an issue or a thought.
The reality is that they are already charging both parties for extra access to that resource. Only, instead of charging for access based on content, they're currently charging for access based on speed.
Charging extra for faster upstream or downstream is a fair system. Users are happy with it, businesses are happy with it, and it's an accurate way of measuring and limiting how much the ISPs' networks are actually being used. It also doesn't carry any of the scary byproducts that are possible in a tiered system.
By contrast, a tiered system offers no (or very little) visible advantage to either the customers or the businesses, isn't an obviously fair way to charge for your services, and can potentially stifle the rate of innovation on the Internet.
A free market would be nice, but unfortunately, the ISP market isn't big enough to properly support the advantages of a free market.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
The current state of the internet is where you know it today WITH net neutrality. That's what's currently in place.
Net neutrality was decided years ago. The question isn't whether or not to put net neutrality in place.
The question is "Should net neutrality be RESCINDED?"
This Canadian votes NO.
Americans of all strips are deeply skeptical of all large organizations, including especially their governments. Some Canadians are, but many more trust these organizations to at least look out for their long-term interests. There is an understanding, acceptance and even hono[u]ring of authority. Civil servants aren't pariahs. Many people aspire to Cdn civil service jobs.
There is a certain public spirit in Canada that transcends the profit motive in many cases. And an utter horror [naivete] when the public trust is betrayed, rather than a cynical "what did you expect"?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or how it is relevant...
I'm trying to argue that no one owes you anything, so it doesn't matter if it's "reasonable" or not to refuse to use their good or service. You respond by reiterating that it's not always "reasonable" to refuse someone's good or service, which makes me feel like we're just going in circles. So, I'll give up on this particular point.
There is no value in (to use a relevant example) two lines of fibre optic cable lying next to each other transferring the same bits over them when one could do the same job.
If the second line is transferring the same bits as the first line, why would anyone build the second one? A second line would only be built if it was transferring bits the first line was not.
It's true that the first line is the only line necessary to get the job done if the job is defined as "getting bits from point A to point B", but what if the owner of the first line doesn't want certain resources on his network used for a certain purpose? In that case, a second line is required. You can call that a "bad attitude", but you only say that because you don't like the way the resource is being used.
For example, some slashdotters are saying that it's okay to filter packets by kind, but not by source. But that's just the opinion of some slashdotters on how things should be done, and other users will differ. If you, as a customer, tend to use certain sources, it benefits you if traffic to and from those sources are favored. The owners of the network will try to guess at what their users would prefer more (as indicated by the amount the users are willing to pay, not by what the users say they want).
It's similar to coach and first class seating on an airplane. If you define getting the job done as "fitting as many people as you can on a plane", then first class is wasteful. But, since some people demand a certain amount of comfort and amenities on their flight, we have first class, and another plane is required for more passengers. No waste is taking place, it's just different strokes for different folks.
Of course. And, by that reasoning, if Verizon's cable goes across my property on an easement seized by government actions, I have every right to cut it unless they agree to give my packets priority over everyone else's.
If you let the government steal property and give it to people, that would be just as wrong as the government stealing it, right?
scamble word - sagacity
Effectively illegal in a number of places where government sponsored monopolies are the only option.
Yes, which is why we must put an end to government intervention. We have to move to a free market.
furthermore many of these networks were paid for by taxes to various extents making them effectively partially the property of the government.
I already answered this in the last paragraph of my post.
I do not see that this is even news. Most Americans support "net neutrality" too. I think most intelligent consumers would.
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed *in the wake of* the likes of Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. We don't wanna wait to be in the wake of corporations abusing their power to ruin the net, because by then it will probably be too late.
Besides, the way the US government is now, it may be the only chance to get the legislation through. Once powerful corporations decide they don't like Net Neutrality, their money will start to flow to politicians, and there can only be one outcome then.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
If you want to show your support for this issue, then take the ten minutes of effort and write your MP, both email AND a printed snail-mail copy.
Online petitions are like prayer. They give you something to do, but they really don't get you anywhere.
I'm not sure that entirely true. What we're seeing is a natural result of capitalism. It's easier for corporations to "give it" to their customers than it is for customers to avoid "getting it". A corporation only needs to hire 1 lawyer to write an abusive EULA, but then every customer of their's needs to read, understand and act upon the EULA. Similarly a corporation with a vested interest in copyrights only needs to hire 1 lobbying firm to change laws in their favour. Most customers do not have a similar incentive to protect themselves from that abuse. Heck, capitalism working at its best dictates that it's probably better for consumers to get routinely screwed by corporations as long as the screwing doesn't become more expensive than what you'd have to pay to avoid it.
Consumers roll over and take it up the rear because it's generally cheaper than fighting it. It's exactly what economics predicts they'll do.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Effectively illegal in a number of places"
The entire Internet was illegal before Tony Rutkowski at the ITU made it legal worldwide.
Also around that time the USG mandated the use of OSI protocols.
But guess when happened when the first transatlantic X.25 link went up? Poeple started shooting IP packets over it before any other flavour of data.
The point is, if you make a usefull tool people will use it and government regulations be damned.
I suspect your problem is wires. I think all our problem is wires. We've been sucking at the convenient tit of telcos for ages and I've always wondered what the landscape would be like right now if we'd gone to a uucp style RF mesh in the mid 90s instead of just granting any wingnur with $20/mo a dialup connection. In a sense we only have our own greedy asses to blame. While it's true the UUCP network only passed mail and news the underlying paradigm made much more sense than the more regimented internet that consumed then killed it.
Need Mercedes parts ?
...that big businesses do not care what Canadians want.
"I may actually trust a telecom more"
Bingo. A telco is accountable to it's shareholders who expect it to make money by providing a tool people will use. If hey provide a stupid tool and somebody provides a better one that telco dies an organic death.
In thery a government is accountable to the people. In practice nothing could be further from the truth.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"TPP didn't say that access to the Internet was a right. It said that access to Internet content and applications is a right. That might seem like a trivial distinction, but it's not."
You have no rights.
The internet is a concatenation of privately owned networks. There is no such thing as "the public internet" it is very specifically not a public resource.
For a very good reason.
The government regulats public resources. Look at FCC spectrum. Nobody can so shit without the FCC doing so.
With the internet you can do what you want without asking or a license. People may so dumnb things, but ah, you still have the freedom to do better things without asking for a license.
This is why you and I are using TCP/IP to talk right now and not X.25.
One is centrally controlled, one had no central control and is instead edge-controlled; anybody with a root password controls their piece of it. Now how much do you want your root access controlled by the government for your piece of the "public internet" ?
Need Mercedes parts ?
"A society has the right to determine the parameters by which a business must operate "
Uzbeck asshole.
Need Mercedes parts ?
If your ISP hosts Google info, this reduces the traffic that your ISP has to pay for (because they already paid for their own network, running it at 100% doesn't cost any more than running at 1%).
I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. I'd consider justice a right but that is provided by someone's labour and it costs something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Unlike most Slashdotters, I don't pretend to be a legal expert, so don't try to get me into an argument about specific cases. I'm simply pointing out that when there's a conflict between property rights and other rights, property rights don't always come first.
The purpose of net neutrality legislation is not to tell ISPs *how* they may shape traffic, but to ban them from doing so at all.
Exactly - so the bill is defined in such a way as to shape traffic neutrally. That is a form of traffic shaping. From there any shaping the government wishes to introduce can simply be added to the bill, because after all the government is now dictating routing policy...
We're far more likely to see a ban on P2P packets from greedy corporations who don't want people using the bandwidth they've paid for.
Yet we haven't seen that to date, and with it not being a law any such actions would be on a case by case basis.
So take the option out of their hands. ISPs may sell bulk bandwidth, no strings attached.
Also prevents them from doing something like selling service that prioritizes game traffic... it's the ISP's bandwidth, let them parcel it up however they like.
Let ISP's operate without a cloud of government mandates controlling what they can do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed *in the wake of* the likes of Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. We don't wanna wait to be in the wake of corporations abusing their power to ruin the net, because by then it will probably be too late.
But you'll note those were one-off cases, not generally widespread - and the cure has been horrible, a terrible waste of resources across the country.
In that case the "cure" should never have been implemented since shareholders insisted on more disclosure anyway - why should we make a terrible mistake and hamstring ISP's without even a problem in sight to overreact to?
Besides, the way the US government is now, it may be the only chance to get the legislation through. Once powerful corporations decide they don't like Net Neutrality, their money will start to flow to politicians, and there can only be one outcome then.
Oh Noez! The Powerful Corporationz!!!
Has it ever occurred to you that there are "powerful corporations" on both sides of this issue? While Verizon might want to do some crazy traffic shaping, Google and Yahoo can just as easily smack them down when it comes to donations and lobbying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're basically reciting the Libertarian mantra: "Less government! More individual rights!" This logic ignores the fact that powerful individuals are just as capable of taking away your rights as any government.Excuse me? Both protocols have semi-governmental origins. X.25 was invented by the International Telecommunications Union, which has 700 private entities as members; its advocates in the U.S. were mostly private telecom companies. TCP/IP was invented by DoD-sponsored researchers. Neither was ever imposed by government fiat.
Internet Qos should work like parcel delivery. How would you like it if the post office, not you, decided which of your parcels got "next day" and which got "ground"? If ISPs would implement consumer choice QOS, they could charge a premium for priority packets. Geeks would use iptables to select which packets get priority, while end users with no interest in the details would have simple switches for common needs in their consumer broadband router: for example, "make VOIP high priority". ISPs could even offer to prioritize traffic for end-users that chose it - as long as they don't force it on the rest of us.
This is what the internet is going to turn into if we don't have net neutrality:
http://i7.tinypic.com/5z6vt4n.jpg
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This is mixed companies. We have Linux and Windows supporters here. The latter group may be smaller, but they're nontheless present.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is protection money for packets: "Pay us not to do something we shouldn't be doing anyway."
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
No man owes you anything. If a man does offer you a good or service, for any price, be grateful for it.
I'd like to meet with you to discuss how much you owe me for the service of not stabbing you.
Let's not pretend I owe you any special kindness or mercy.
Why? The CEO owes me nothing. He's going to run his company in order to maximize profit; in other words, to get customers to pay him as much as possible.
I see you approve of my business model.
The people who care most about net neutrality are content creators. Most people "on" the Internet these days are not content creators (save a few comments here and there, Yahoo Answers, social networkinc, etc.), therefore, they don't have any stake in the notion.
Which to me means that the Internet inasmuch as it is a public commons of communication, has failed, because people simply aren't interested in being content creators, at least not for anyone they don't know.
Also, most of these same people read only the top few portal sites and have little idea of the wealth of what is out there. 80%/20%: 80% of the people read 20% of the content that is out there. The sites that most people read are the sites that won't have much trouble shelling out for the priority routing.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
There's this telco/ISP that's been making public comments to the effect of "major internet companies should pay us for using our bandwidth."
Yes, I already talked about this. You'll note those statements are from quite some time ago. If they really feel that way, where is the action on that talk? Answer, there is none. You are fearing shadows my friend. What crazy people would like to do and what markets allow them to do are quite different things.
Do you really think even the largest telco on earth would be able to hold out long against a Google blackout for all users? It's not like Google is some defenseless creature browsing on the underbrush. They have mighty teeth as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you saying that I have to watch my mouth around Windows users? I always though that Linuxites were the prigish ones...
"Neither was ever imposed by government fiat"
It was a USG requirement in the 80s that you talked to them with OSI protocols or you didn't talk to them at all.
I'm not particularly libertarian. But I was deeply involved in the DNS mess and from experience, government involvement in the net is akin to handing it over to industry lawyers.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"I don't pretend to be a legal expert, so don't try to get me into an argument about specific cases. I'm simply pointing out that when there's a conflict between property rights and other rights, property rights don't always come first."
Whatever. Remember "it doesn't have to be fair, it has to be legal".
It helps to know the law. It tends to be the framework things are built on. Your opinion, while intersting it does not mesh well with the way things actually work, in theory and practice.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The vast majority of people are able to make and use tools, reason abstractly to solve problems, communicate with each other with vocabularies of many thousands of words and learn hundreds of new facts and concepts every day. I would really like to know what average humans are dumb compared to. Unless of course you mean they are dumb compared to smart humans which is a pretty self evident and meaningless statement, sort of like saying that the average jet interceptor is slow because some can do over Mach 3 but most travel at about Mach 2. Quit your misanthropy and give our species a break.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Well, computer enthusiasts have different pet peeves as ordinary people. Abortion or not, capital punishment or not, a minor bickering point. But emacs or vi could well be the reason for the next big DDoS war.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The way things work in theory and practice? People believe they have the right to access information, and that other people, be they governments or network providers, don't have the right to interfere. There are other factors, but that one factor gets a lot of weight. There's a theory for your.
You may as well be arguing that a ban on murders is an open door to allowing some murders.
Check the crazy libertarian anti-government stance when you're talking to grown ups.
Actually, it's neither self-evident nor meaningless to an average person. Most people are wholly unaware that scoring 100 - an "average" score - on a typical IQ test is a poor showing of intellect. I mean, "average" means not real great, but not bad, right? Right!?
I don't think so. Humanity is both pointless and cruelly idiotic. If every human being on the planet vanished tomorrow and left no trace of existence behind, the living conditions of hundreds of billions of creatures, if not trillions, would be vastly improved, and billions of human beings would cease living pointless, painful, and ultimately wasted lives. Even if only smart people existed, it would still be pointless because intellect is only the first of a vast number of massive flaws in our species.
A "break"? No, I think not. Humanity has never achieved anything purposeful, and I seriously doubt it ever will. For all the hubbub of our cultural, architectural, technological, whatever accomplishments, we've done little more than make this planet a worse place for a significant chunk of our existence, and I'm rather certain that the odds are favorable that when we're snuffed out - or we snuff ourselves out - the planet will be that much better for it.
Talk to me about WoW and I'll punch your faggot face.