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New Legislation Could Eventually Lead to ISP Throttling Ban
An anonymous reader writes "Comcast's response to the FCC may have triggered a new avenue of discussion on the subject of Net Neutrality. Rep. Ed Markey (D — Mass.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, introduced a bill yesterday whose end result could be the penalization of bandwidth throttling to paying customers. 'The bill, tentatively entitled the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, would not actually declare throttling illegal specifically. Instead, it would call upon the Federal Communications Commission to hold a hearing to determine whether or not throttling is a bad thing, and whether it has the right to take action to stop it.'"
I wonder if this will have any effect on web/application hosting providers who are using traffic shaping to allocate only a certain amount of bandwidth (such as 3Mbit even though they advertise having larger backbones). Or could it be applied to modules like mod_bandwidth where hosting providers cut off your web hosting if you exceed a certain amount?
looks like some senators might actually be listening to their constituents
either no changes and an ISP will continue to do business as normal, forced equality (no shaping) and your Internet access pricing will double or triple, forced equality (no shaping) and ISPs will move to a base-rate plus metered billing solution, based an $/meg/gig (although some already do this) where the cost goes up exponentially.
While I hate Comcast's man in the middle "throttling" of internet packets (Bittorrent), I'm very concerned with the government getting involved. It almost feels like Alien vs Predator, "Who ever wins, we lose" scenario. Because the government will screw it up worse than it is now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So they're asking a government agency whether or not it has authority over something (how said authority will be used is a separate matter, of course). Gee, I wonder what the answer will be?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I believe ISP's throttling bandwidth is wrong, but the answer is for consumers to punish them in the marketplace, not for government to regulate the internet. It will set a horrible precedent (IMHO).
... and even then depends on the company.
We have had the same ISP for years and never had any trouble, we pay for the fastest broadband available which is £40 per month. It changed hands (I will not repeat the name) and now we are throttled, but it is called an AUP. We do not download that much and many "name not mentioned" ISP customers have had exactly the same problem!
They even got found out!
My point is, they are making a public show when they are (or will) do it anyway... just with a nicer name than "throttling", Acceptable Use Policy is much nicer sounding, it really fools us Brits!
In the name of sticking up for someone with autism, f**k you! Prejudiced bastard.... that is unlawful and linuc for dumm
First, giving the FCC more discretionary authority is not a good thing to do. They are very receptive to lobbying (broadcast flag, mandatory DRM ...) and industry corruption (employees that leave directly to cushy jobs in the industry they were supposedly regulating just recently). Secondly, I'm not sure where the Federal interest is in regulating businesses -- that the internet as a whole is international?
This is really a contract issue. If their TOS promise "unlimited bandwidth" then they should provide that. If the TOS say "we connect you to the internet" they should not be able to block random ports. And sending fake packets is already a computer crime (at least, if I sent fake packets to Comcast servers I would probably be charged with attempted DOS or something). So I would support a "contact terms mean what they mean" law -- not giving the FCC more discretion to help the industry to screw the customers.
Not even the firehose listed. Well, here's a related story and it's still on the front page.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
So given the broad definition of ISP that's been used in other areas of law it would seem colleges and universities would fall under this throttling ban as well.
That's going to really suck.
File sharing eats a very large majority of bandwidth for many colleges and without some form of throttling access to resources for other purposes (e.g. college business, student research, and incoming traffic to college resources like websites and distributed computing services) would be seriously hindered.
If Comcast is having similar issues then I can see why they do throttling and would support them. If you don't like it switch providers. That'll hurt Comcast where it really counts for them: their wallets.
Mod parent up.
The answer for every little squabble is NOT to introduce new legislation. If Comcast continues to punish customers, it is the opportunity for other ISPs to step in. Let the free market punish them back.
Unless it is a case of a monopoly that has spun out of control, the free market is a better solution than government intervention.
Who would try and throttle an ISP? I mean the service I get is pretty patch, but I don't see how strangling someone is going to help.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And yes, it is a monopoly which has spun out of control. Or rather, an oligopoly.
How many ISPs do you have to choose from? Unless I go dialup, I've got exactly three. Fortunately, one of them claims to believe in net neutrality, and they're the one offering fiber, but that's extremely unusual. Unless you're prepared to move to where I live (a small town in Iowa), chances are, your only real option to "let the market decide" or to "vote with your dollars" is to decide that you don't really need this Internet thing anyway.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Comcast wants to kill off P2P because it is competition for VoD. Follow the money.
My local government created the comcast monopoly. They allow them to tax us through a "municipal cable fee" and my government gets 24 hours a day of commercials with no dissenting viewpoints that tell us how well the incumbents are doing.
Market forces didn't create this monopoly, government did.
It's a vote on a chance to vote to do something about this problem... not a vote to actually do anything useful. This law is just one more notch on the senator's legislative re-election portfolio. As in: "look, I am for net neutrality, I even co-authored a law!". In the meantime, the law gets stuck in committee, or even if it comes to a vote, and even if it passes, and even if it gets signed by the president, the matter of fact is that all that has happened is that it the question got kicked to the FCC, which will promptly support the telecoms.
Everyone wins... except the customers/voters.
So, they don't block any content? That doesn't seem consistent with their terms of service (interesting parts bolded by me):
So what is it comcast? Do you block content or don't you? Either they are lying to the government or they are lying to their customers. And don't get me started on the internet policy statement (pdf warning)... I'm sure comcast is all about this one:
It's okay. I know a lot of people who are high on life... and glue...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
the answer here it More competition. Although, I think that competition has been prevented by government. Cable companies are awarded Monopolies, just like phone companies. Really the only solution here is new competitors from new technology. I am anxiously awaiting Wimax and FIOS as possible solutions. With only 2 choices (cable Vs DSL), there is no room to expect competitive pressure.
Throttling based on usage == good. There is only so much bandwidth to use, and we have to share it. If you're using 100GB/month on torrents, streaming video, porn, whatever, you're probably using more than you're paying for in the grand scheme of things. Why should I, a person who maybe uses 2-3GB/month, pay for your excess?
Throttling based on protocol == bad. If I use bit torrent to fetch an ISO [say a Ubuntu CD] once every 6 months, that's my own damn business.
Interstate commerce clause. It's in the Constitution of the United States.
Best Slashdot Co
It would seem truth in advertising should take care of this, if enforced correctly. I would rather like to see Congress set in motion what it needs to, to get high speed internet nationally and available in most areas. We are lagging far behind Japan - even Verizon Fios is much slower.
Recall how one or both of the houses influenced against the injunction against RIM because so many of them were Blackberry users? This really shows one of their weaknesses... that they are pretty much just like us in that they care most about the things that affect them most and that they aren't TRULY interested in the greater good or any legally recognized form of justice or the processes of justice.
So when a politician or the child of a politician can't get his warez, mp3z or moviez due to something Comcast or some other ISP (who would rather restrict users and usage than improve their networks to handle the load which is what they should be doing) does to block it, that's when you'll see action actually take place. This is a lesson in how to actually get things done.
When you write your government representative, you need to write in a way that it makes it clear how something potentially affects THEM and not the "poor people of 'whereever' county." They don't care about poor and unfortunate people. Poor and unfortunate is a disease and they are rather immune to it and so they don't care. And the attitude of most immune people is that somehow the diseased deserve what they get anyway. (Take the general attitude regarding AIDS today... people STILL think that whoever gets it deserves it somehow.) So don't write them telling sad stories of the plight of the "average person." They are the privileged few after all and generally don't understand or care to understand. Tell them how it affects them potentially or directly and you will see better results.
I am not a billion dollar corporation with lots of powerful lobbyists in Washington
IANABDCWLOPLIW?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
From the FCC's website:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.
From the FTC's website:
The FTC deals with issues that touch the economic life of every American. It is the only federal agency with both consumer protection and competition jurisdiction in broad sectors of the economy. The FTC pursues vigorous and effective law enforcement; advances consumers' interests by sharing its expertise with federal and state legislatures and U.S. and international government agencies; develops policy and research tools through hearings, workshops, and conferences; and creates practical and plain-language educational programs for consumers and businesses in a global marketplace with constantly changing technologies.
The FCC is clearly responsible for regulating how communications companies deploy their technologies, but clearly defining how those technologies are sold, and ensuring the customer gets what he/she paid for seems to be the responsibilty of the FTC.
My cable company told me that I purchased a 30mbps/10mbps internet connection. They also told me that I purchased the right to run a server on that connection. A couple of times, they have throttled my connection. I can't imagine why - I can't exceed the 30/10 limit, and I was connected to hosts on the internet. The cable company never defined who I could connect to, and they never told me if there was a limit other than the 30/10 hard limit that was sold to me.
If I am not getting what I paid for, shouldn't the FTC be involved?
-ted
When I buy a quart of milk, the jug contains a quart of milk. If I try to pour out this quart of milk all at once, it does not slow to a trickle after the first half-pint and then announce that I've reached my daily pouring limit because the dairy doesn't have the cows, feed, and trucks required to actually produce the whole quart it sold me. Not if everyone who bought milk wants to drink it at the same time.
Whatever law covers that situation with my quart of milk not being a whole quart, can also quite well handle the situation where I buy 1.5Mb/second bandwidth, and then the second doesn't actually contain all 1.5Mbits, because the company doesn't actually have the infrastructure it's selling access to. ISPs already throttle, that's why they have different speed tiers for us to buy, same as milk is offered by the pint, quart, half-gallon, or gallon.
What we're really talking about here, is that the ISPs are lying about how much milk is in the jug. If our 1.5Mb pipes have to drop to 384K when everyone downloads at the same time, then we have 384K pipes, and they should be labeled and priced as such. Throttling based on content is just a way to legitimize weights-and-measures fraud.
I'm in Massachussetts.
The constituents were amused the the Aqua Teen response too.
The officers who over-reacted are not constituents - they're lackeys.
Who would have expected this kind of behavior from the industry that redefined "Unlimited"?
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission", Amazing Grace
When electricity was first introduced, the usage was extremely low and the cost to build out the infrastructure high, so people were charged a flat rate for service. Eventually usage increased to where the cost of producing electricity was the main factor, so usage based service became the norm, despite whining by people who had gotten used to flat rate service. We would now never think of flat fee based electricity regardless of consumption. Internet has developed the same way, starting with dialup at a flat rate where the cost of bandwidth was a small part of the equation for the supplier, so simple flat rates were the norm. With the huge increase in bandwidth usage, bandwidth cost is now the largest factor in providing ISP service, so metered service will soon be the norm by necessity, regardless of the whining by people who are used to a different model and want a free lunch. Oh, and regardless of what legislation comes along to try to make people think the government is listening to their whining. Reality is reality folks. Comcast is just trying to delay the inevitably change as long as possible.
The problem, in my opinion anyway, isn't bandwidth throttling per say. It's *selective* throttling of certain protocols. That's tantamount to censorship.
What they should do, providing they don't actually have enough capacity to guarantee the bandwidths they sell, is clearly specify a minimum guaranteed bandwidth (in absence of equipment failure) and a percentage of time that the rated bandwidth is typically available. E.g. "10 Mbps connection (min 2Mbps, full 10Mbps available 90% of the time)". It would be preferable that these items were shown up front and not buried deep in the TOS. This would probably require government intervention of some kind, however. (And, IMNSHO, that's EXACTLY what a government should be doing - regulations that protect consumers and increase competition through transparency of offers.)
Regardless of how often throttling is done, it should always be protocol-neutral and user-specific basis. I.e. no throttling Bittorrent traffic on your backbone just because that's the easiest thing to do. No, you need to throttle each consumer individually (neutrally), basically giving them a slower connection for a (hopefully short) while.
Oh, and throttling ISN'T done by faking packets! That's fraud and should result in heads rolling, even though sending people to prison for wire fraud over it is *probably* overkill.
Possibly. The question for me is... why did this come up in the middle of a wider net neutrality debate? Granted, the two are (vaguely) related -- in the way that bike theft statistics are related to the number of bikes you can fit on a road, perhaps.
However, it sounds to me like they're trying to bribe netizens into giving up long-term goals like net neutrality in exchange for getting a relatively small gripe-of-the-moment issue resolved. I say small and gripe of the moment, because this is bound to get solved anyway -- there's no way ISPs will be able to lie to customers about what they're getting forever. Net neutrality is a much larger issue though.
Note to young readers/logicians: I'm NOT saying this is happening. I'm NOT being paranoid. I'm raising a legitimate concern, and warning people not to automatically assume this is a good thing to get behind. It could be a great thing to get behind. Getting behind it could also screw you in ways you don't yet realise. Research, THEN support.
So who called in the device as a bomb originally? Oh, right, constituents!
The people who then overreacted and refused to admit that it was anything but a bomb where the Massachusetts state government and Senator Kennedy, who proposed a bill to make causing a scare like that punishable by 14 years in a federal prison, no intent required.
The officers were just following orders from the state government, elected by the people. Has your governor admitted he overreacted? Has the state apologized to the people who placed the devices yet?
After the fact and after they were ridiculed by everyone with at least two brain cells the people of Massachusetts claim that they found the thing amusing. But at the time it was happening, when it was originally reported on Slashdot, the people of Massachusetts were rallying around the police in support of evacuating parts of Boston.
Even now, you still get people who defend the reactions of the police with some bullshit about an unrelated bomb threat at a hospital.
Because Rep. Ed Markey (D -- Mass.) doesn't have the backbone to come out with legislation to make throttling illegal he is going to leave it open for interpretation and allow special interest decide what is right and wrong.
First, the net-neutrality folks attacked the policy-map command and the whole idea if Differentiated Services (i.e., IETF DiffServe). policy-map lets you configure prioritization or other special treatment of packets.
Now they're attacking the rate-limit and traffic-shape commands that let me control how many packets I forward of a particular type.
Don't I own my own router? Why should I be forced to forward packets that I don't want to forward? Why should I be forced to prioritize or not prioritize if I don't want to?
Donating money to to political campaigns is considered "free speech". By the same logic, shouldn't it be "freedom of the press" for me to decide which packets I want to forward through a router that I own?
Just correcting a typo.
Mods: Please double check the timestamps before deciding to mod *this* post.
Plenty. The problem isn't lack of choice. As long as people think of themselves as "consumers", then they have to buy whatever crap is hoisted on them.
They could:
- get dialup (most people don't really need broadband)
- move (most people commute, anyway; what's the big deal about having people take ISPs into account when they decide where to live?)
- get "business-class" (which is actually about the same price, in my city)
- get a bunch of friends together and petition the two companies they have for network neutrality -- remember, even for those of us who can get it, it usually costs more, so I'm sure if a big group of people went to Comcast and asked for a more expensive plan, they would be willing to listen
- start your own ISP (which is basically what Copowi did)
The problem isn't that people don't have a choice. It's that people aren't willing to make a choice. It's not Comcast and Congress who are preventing a real free market; it's the minds of the people.
Mods, pay attention, this one is informative *and* insightful.
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The same story twice within a day? one and two.
So basically in principle, if I run a private mail/package delivery company, I do not have the right to allocate resources either to expedite or to delay delivery at my arbitrary discretion, even if it is based purely on the type of package I am delivering? The government could force me to deliver all packages with equal resources? That's one example among a million. Why do people treat the Internet like a public commodity? Various entities own the communication lines and access to those is not a universal right, it is a privilege. The only problem right now is that ISP's do not openly disclose the nature of this practice, complicating informed consumer decisions. Come on, people, get consistent.
OMG you misspelled cum!
As a user of comcast who is willing to equitably share the service, you might best understand a different perception of heavy downloaders from this story and the picture accompaning it.
http://people.monstersandcritics.com/bizarre/news/article_1384370.php/Louisiana_fat_people_banned_from_All_You_Can_Eat_Buffet
Comcast, let me explain to you the exact nature of the service you are contracted to provide: get the data where I tell you to send them, do so at the rate advertised, and get the hell out of my way. That is all.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
You have all three acquired a new fan.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
1) you're breaking the internet - suddenly I can't send certain packets on certain ports. This increases the chances of other services being broken, and ISPs filtering the wrong ports. Legitimate bittorrent use might be affected.
2) It won't work anyway - people will just invent a different p2p protocol which isn't detectable
3) It seems to be restricting free speech
I don't think 3 is important at all - according to Article 17 of the UN declaration of human rights, everyone has the right to own property, and not to be arbitrarily deprived of it - as far as I am concerned that's the right of Madonna to sell her music and the right of EMI's shareholders to profit on the music it owns. If people claim "free speech" means you can plagiarise and steal, then they can stick it.
1 isn't a big deal for most users, I download my isos over http. 2 looks insurmountable - but I can't see why people are up in arms based on any of these reasons. If it's in a noble cause, like protecting people from theft, why not try filtering internet traffic - if it fails then try something else?
I've said it before, and I'll
say
it
again!
CERTAINLY NOT THAT EDWARD MARKEY! Jeez, I bet Chris Soghoian thinks this is just special!
FairTax baby!
You can follow the progress of the bill at opencongress.org.
The full text is actually very short so I encourage you to read its entirety.
It has three main points:
First to amend the 1934 Communications Act to include some policies which state that "to maintain the freedom to use for lawful purposes broadband telecommunications networks, including the Internet, without unreasonable interference from or discrimination by network operators" is a good thing. And similar statements.
Second to require the FCC to assess various things such as how harmful the restrictions providers apply to a user's network connection are. F'ex Comcast forging 'reset' packets to break BitTorrent.
Third to require the FCC to hold multiple summits on the topic, include a wide range of input (including on the internet as well as live events), and report the results to congress.
I actually think it's a reasonable conservative step forward on what is an extremely complicated issue. I'm for it.
In the real world, whether we're talking about a company LAN or the local DOCSIS system, 10% of users *always* use 90% of the bandwidth. As long as it's not the SAME ten percent all the time, Until (especially American) ISPs get past this limited "unlimited" fraud, nothing is really going to get better, though, because the abusers will always come back and say "it said it was unlimited, so..." and a (non-technical) judge and/or (proudly ignorant) jury will always see it that way - unless the law says they can't, and has real teeth in it so that the providers say exactly what they will and won't do or allow.
Then, of course, the next step is to get a reregulated environment so we can have real competition again.... but that's another Global War On Error.
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