Net Neutrality Summit

Castar writes "BoingBoing has a post about an upcoming summit in San Francisco about the issue of Net Neutrality. The EFF and speakers on both sides of the issue are gathering to debate and spread awareness of Network Neutrality, which is an increasingly important topic. The FCC, of course, might have the final word."

Comments

"Net Neutrality" is the wrong term.

[houstonbofh]

I think "Net Neutrality" is the wrong term, because it allows people to twist the argument to the wrong thing. I am more concerned with network transparency, and honesty. Make them say what they are doing and why. This will keep the Comcasts of the world somewhat more honest...

Re:"Net Neutrality" is the wrong term.

[Nullav]

What good is that? $LOCAL_MONOPOLY could start molesting people with gardening equipment as long as the only other option was dial-up.

Highly balanced summit

[MobyDisk]

...bringing together lawyers, academics, economists, and technologists... Those people represent the pro-network neutrality side. Now, please invite the CEO of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast as well, so we can get the view of all 3 people on the other side.

FCC, really ?

[bahbar]

The FCC, of course, might have the final word.

And I thought that Congress would have the final word...

Define net neutrality.

[Futurepower(R)]

So far, the biggest problem with Net Neutrality is that those who want it don't define what they mean by it first. Should VOIP packets be delivered quicker? I think so. I don't mind if my email is delayed for several seconds.

I don't want complete packet neutrality, I just want all providers to use the same sensible transmission configurations.

Comcast has its own very expensive and poor quality VOIP. Comcast should not be allowed to delay the packets carrying the much superior free Skype VOIP calls.

make that 4

[Quadraginta]

I can't imagine why I, a consumer, would support what I've heard about "net neutrality." It seems to be all about restricting my freedom to buy the service I want in the service of a dubious and cynical goal that, practically, boils down to making sure freeloaders don't have to pay any more per packet than the rest of us. More or less a guarantee of some kind of Tragedy of the Commons on the Internet.

For example, it sounds like if I happen to want a massive pipe to my door, and lightning service to various IP addresses of my choice, then Big Momma a.k.a. the government isn't going to allow me to cut a deal with my ISP for speedier treatment of my packets in exchange for more money. Likewise, if my aged parent wants only some de minimis service for reading e-mail, and is perfectly willing to accept 4th class parcel-post service for her packets if the price is in the basement, then she, too, is up a creek, because it's a one-size-fits-all price and service level set by some doofus bureaucrat in Washington.

Well, screw that. I trust my ability to cut a deal with Verizon over my ability to cut a deal with a Federal agency any day. You think Dell's customer service is crappy? Try getting a government agency to change its mind, make a reasonable exception to the rules, see you as a person instead of set of numbers in a computer record. At least with Verizon I can threaten to withhold my money from them, which of course I can't do with the government, and if I piss Verizon off the worst they can do is refuse to sell me their service, while the goverment can and will put me in jail.

Furthermore, using the ol' retrospectoscope and checking out the record of innovation and efficiency growth in industries that have been heavily regulated in the past -- in the interests of fairness to the consumer of course -- such as airlines, telephone service, broadcast radio, power generation and distribution, public education, public health -- then alas any one with half a brain comes to the unpleasant conclusion that such interference always increases the price and decreases the efficiency of the service. Inasmuch as I'd like to see the spectacular gains in efficiency and innovation in networked computing continue, and not sink into the torpid sludge of the standard government-dominated project, then I'd also have to conclude that nearly any kind of top-down regulation other than that required to keep everything above board and open is the kind of clever-sounding but ultimately dumfuk idea that occurs to all of us when we've had a few too many beers during a college bull session.

Re:make that 4

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

it isn't about you paying more. it's about google, vonage, et all paying verizon more. It's QoS based on who pays your isp the most. It's a fucking protection racket, plain and simple.

"gee, sure would be nice if your VoIP packets from that competeing service weren't put last in line to get to you. I mean, the internet is a dangerous place, they might get mugged on the way."

The tragedy of the commons

[killbill!]

While the current assault on net neutrality is a blatant money grab from ISPs, they do have a point. Content providers - especially those that rely on peer-to-peer networks - consider bandwidth as something that can be externalized. They are looking at ISPs, looking at their own customers, and see a free lunch waiting to be picked up.

History and economics prove that such an attitude leads to a non-optimal allocation of existing resource allocations, and removes incentives to invest into additional capacity. In a recent study, the Nemertes Research group warned that last-mile investment by ISPs was falling behind and would slow down adoption of HD content on the Internet.

The solution to the tragedy of the commons is the market. Only the market can achieve an optimal allocation of resources, and drive investment into additional capacity.

What the Internet needs is a marketplace for hosting capacity, supported by a universal network where:

• content providers set the price they want to pay in exchange for hosting their traffic;
• hosting providers decide at what price they accept to host the former's files;
• hosting providers are guaranteed to be paid (i.e. investments have a predictable ROI).

That would pretty much make the "net neutrality" debate a moot issue. Content providers would enjoy lower hosting costs; consumers would enjoy faster downloads; ISPs would make money providing the bulk of the hosting (à la Usenet), instead of setting up roadblocks.

Re:The tragedy of the commons

[SpaceLifeForm]

The current attack is not so much the ISPs, but the top Level ISPs
and bandwidth providers.

They want to milk the current ipv4 infrastructure instead of
building out the ipv6 infrastructure.

If we kept ipv4 infrastructure as is, and moved the high bandwidth
traffic to ipv6 over fibre, the "need" to manage bandwidth (i.e, to
control the packet traffic), would go away.

The telcos were given billion dollar incentives by the government
to build out the fibre, but they did nothing with that money but
put it into their pocket.

It's all a scam orchestrated by the darkside to attempt to
control the Internet.

Once upon a time ...

[akb]

... there was a company called ATT. The fairy godmother DARPA asked ATT to build it a redundant network that could survive links being severed in a nuclear war. Oh, DARPA also wanted the ability to plug any computer it wanted from ATT's competitors into the network. ATT told the fairy godmother to take a hike, so the fairy godmother asked the hippies at Berkeley and MIT to build it for her instead. And of course the hippies let anyone who wanted to connect to the network and opened the code and the Internet lived happily ever after.

Oops, or at least they lived happily until another company called ATT and its evil brothers and sisters Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner reared their ugly heads again and wanted to take unplug all those happy services which they don't have revenue sharing agreements with. They also want to lock you into crippled phone/computers so they can charge you $2 for a ringtone and $0.15 for a text message.

You don't understand the issue

[spun]

So why isn't the free market providing something like that? And what about the high level backbones, which is what net neutrality is about? Hosting providers don't usually control Internet backbones. Neither do ISPs.

Bandwidth is not externalized. You and I and hosting providers all pay for bandwidth. But the high level backbones want to extort more money from the content providers, basically saying, "Pay us more, or your competitors' packets will get there faster." The thing is, even if you want a neutral net, you can't buy it. Your ISP can not guarantee that a higher level backbone provider is not messing with the packets of content providers that you want to visit.

Please, don't try to simplify everything down to free market solutions. The issue here is fraud and extortion, which are legal issues and require legal solutions.