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ISPs Blow Off Stanford Net Neutrality Hearing
eldavojohn writes "The FCC & Stanford hoped to host an on-campus debate over Net Neutrality and invited AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner to take part. None of them showed up. Unfortunately, only one side of the issue was voiced despite Stanford being home to people opposing Net Neutrality. At the hearing, the FCC Commissioner stated: 'Consumers have come to expect and will continue to demand the open and neutral character that has always been the hallmark of the Internet. The Commission is currently examining several petitions and complaints according to which broadband providers have intentionally and secretly degraded applications in a way that undermines the open and interconnected character of the Internet.'"
They are not interested in debating the issue at stanford, they would much rather lobby elsewhere to slip in legislation that destroys net neutrality without anyone noticing.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Why would the industry be willing to go to a bitch-fest where they are the targets? I know if I was in charge of profiteering, I sure wouldnt go to a university to say that Im right... I'd hide away under the senators and congresscritters desks while passing out hundreds to get what I want passed.
The leverage for the FCC would be indirect, everybody that provides Broadband internet that I know of also provides services that are more directly in the FCC domain; if an ISP is being thought of as obnoxious pricks they are less likely to get the benefit of the doubt in other matters where the FCC really can extract a pound of flesh. I would think that the ISP's would be on their best behavior until after the elections.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
. . . they obviously don't care what decision is finally made.
Couple of comments to that effect from the head of the FCC, and I'll betcha they'll all be at the next conference.
there should be no trouble debating it, you would think. They think they are above us mere mortals.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
if the major isp's that oppose net neutrality don't bother to show up for a hearing on the issue put on by their government regulatory agency, then they should LOSE by default and net neutrality should be mandated.
And again the little collectivists bitch and moan that solutions are not being forced down others' throats.
Why not take up onion routing and stop bitching. Perhaps develop another solution if current standards of encryption are not acceptable.
Perhaps a particular method where ALL content from server to client is ONLY available to server and client in question? Perhaps some form of consistent session SSL/TLS type validation?
Consistently switching ports? Perhaps some public gateways being used to setup the transaction? Perhaps a tunnel being requested before setting up any other form of transaction? I don't know yet... I'm throwing stuff out.
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that people need to stop asking for others to solve their problems. Until that happens, expect our "messiahs" to be more along the lines of "false prophets". We, as a group (geeks, nerds, computer people, gearheads, whatever term you want to use) will continually be shafted each time we look to a central organization to stand up for us. There can be no perfect system of control, so instead, the tools must be designed to provide us with the privacy, reliability and speed we seem to occasionally desire.
Just an idea, of course. I'm no big shot developer. Just another former geek who still tinkers.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I generally agree with you. But when you are dealing with government granted monopolies, doesn't the government have a responsibility, to the people, to regulate the corp to which the monopoly is granted? Unfortunately, it's impractical to let many competing companies run cables in public right-of-ways and on public utility poles, so for services which require cable-infrastructure, we limit the number of companies that can participate.
There possibly, might be *one* alternative, but it's complicated and generally ignored. Instead of auctioning off such monopolies to the highest bidder, wherein the government colludes with the monopoly-to-be to set consumer prices as high as possible, the government *could* bid out such monopolies to companies based on who guarantees the best service/price ratio. But, yeah, that's not gonna happen.
doesn't matter what we do with routing tricks or encryption, if my packets from ebay get routed the the ISP's ghetto-router because they didn't pay a kickback to get into the fast-lane router the pages will still load slowly! Now there are actually useful and/or entertaining things to do on the internet so there is an actual reason to get on, so what happens the ISP's start bitching beacause people actual are using what they bought!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I don't know yet... I'm throwing stuff out.
How is that going to help anyone if Comcast decides to only allow users to connect to their "partner" websites? Sure, I can switch to AT&T here, I'm sure THEY won't follow-the-leader (Prediction: Comcast will partner with yahoo, ATT with alta vista). We've already heard what Bell Canada is doing to all of the independent ISPs who thought the solution to shitty internet providers was to make their own ISPs... you've got to hook to "the internet" somewhere, good luck finding a spot not run by an incumbent telco or cableco that'll let you hook your ISP up without screwing with your customers.
The only solution that avoids the "waaaah mommy! make the companies not fuck up the internet!" route is to create a whole new internet from scratch, planet-wide, and make it appear instantaneously with absolutely no infrastructure expense that someone will decide they absolutely must have 500000% return on. Then hope that the people in charge might not get greedy and ruin it for everyone else again.
Amen. I'd buy you a drink. The best way to get what you want is to make sure that you make it more financially advantageous, especially from non-regulatory pressure, for the corporations to see things your way. I agree with you, and I'd expand a bit more...
Legislation on issues such as this would only allow for one more possible point of corruption for the big interests who want to break the rules. I'm not sure which government has jurisdiction over 'the internet' anyway. Does it only apply to your customers if you're an american company? Or only your customers? Are your customers anyone who pays you money, or anyone that does business with anyone who pays you money? What if they're outside the US? What exactly are they going to regulate anyway... traffic between any two hosts? Traffic on a particular network? Is that network considered to be of a subnet as defined by an IP Mask? Perhaps of an ownership block? Maybe it's a trail of routes. Even if we are unfortunate enough to have the government step in and force people to act more communist, the law has to be enforcible and there has to be a method of clearly showing tort anyway in court. It also has to appear in a court of appropriate jurisdiction. That last bit might be the hardest part of the whole idea to swallow.
For Net-Neutrality to have some kind of effect, you have to show that some party violated some rule, and that some body of enforcement has jurisdiction over the issue. If you can't answer every one of these questions about every incident then you can just only point and cry foul every time someone snuffs a packet out. As if our legal system wasn't muddy enough already. Next thing you know it'll be illegal to have personal and corporate firewalls.
Speak for yourself.
Instead perhaps we should stop running around in the shadows and actually confront something head-on? If we let them have an inch, they'll take a mile (and charge us up the ass for it).
Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads.
They're just older.
Ok, how about this: If you own a segment of wire, fiber, etc. which is on US soil and is used to carry IP traffic, then you may either not inspect or interfere with the packets (best effort), or you may be liable for any illegal activity which involves that segment.
This is, I understand, how common carrier status works. AFAICT, the telecoms are trying to have their cake and eat it too, by inspecting and interfering but maintaining immunity.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Well then, since you've told me what you CAN'T do, might as well give up and go live in a cave. No, you can't have mine. My lease doesn't end until 5 years from now :)
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
The big question is: Now that the technology exists to prioritise traffic along that wire according to any one of a hundred different metrics, is it significantly better for society if legislation is passed to make such use of technology illegal?
The question of whether or not someone will come along who doesn't do such prioritisation and thus solve the problem in a free market fashion is only tangentally related - mainly based on the likelihood of that happening. Given the costs involved in setting up an ISP and the likely marginal difference such a policy would make to the number of subscribers you would be able to sign up, there's a very real possibility that this isn't something which can easily be solved by the free market.
Sometimes, society needs laws in order to ensure that it gets what is best for society as a whole.