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Obama & McCain Conflicting On Net Neutrality
longacre writes "For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"
Obviously. Both sides refuse to clearly state their positions so that they can define them... after the election.
"Of course we mean X. We always meant X. Why, did we ever say otherwise?"
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This is a minor issue, not a vital one. I'm glad they don't waste debate time talking about it.
Free market, to me, gives me the impression that I have a choice among many competitors. Unfortunately where I live this isn't true. DSL doesn't work and I have only one cable provider to choose from. If this happens to be one of the ones that decides net neutrality is evil then I'm screwed. So the government needs to force a standard. I guess to me, as a self described libertarian, I see the government as a sort of ISO standard body with military backing. Perhaps I'm off my rocker with that idea.
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the telecom providers to do what they want with their lines
Than stop worrying about it. Those lines are built on public land, and many of them became entrenched in their position due to government-granted monopolies. We have every right to tell them how to prioritize our packets.
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Posting anonymously because I modded in this thread.
You seem to misunderstand what Net Neutrality is. Net Neutrality is the principle that telecoms can't favor one type of net traffic over another. Since the telecoms are in a sense the gatekeepers of net access, then they have the technological power to do this.
The ONLY way to keep a business from doing something within its power is (obviously) to pass legislation against doing that thing.
Guess what? Legislation = "government involvement"
I'd be interested in knowing exactly how you'd MAKE Comcast stop downthrottling bittorrent without, you know, making them. Care to elaborate?
While it's interesting to know where they stand on the NN issue, do you really wanna tell me *that's* what will determine to whom you're voting?
Clearly you simply have no idea wtf you're talking about.
Net Neutrality == the idea that if I visit a website, that website won't get preferential treatment (in terms of bandwidth or latency priority) because they've paid my ISP for the privilege. Or: all content is created equal. Note: this does *not* rule out QoS to, for example, reduce latency for real-time applications, at the expense of increased latency for bulk transfers, as per Comcast's recent announcement, as that prioritization is not based on the source or destination of the data, but instead on the protocol being employed.
This definition says *nothing* how this fairness comes about. However, given the stances that telecom companies have taken recently, my belief is that the government may need to step in and impose regulation in order to ensure that net neutrality is preserved. And this just so happens to be Obama's stance. McCain, however, would prefer to leave private industry to sort things out on their own. 'course, given how that's worked for the financial world... well, colour me skeptical.
Exactly. The number one priority of being an informed voter is making sure we are never exposed to the other side.
</snark>
PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality.
Hm, what a coincidence, I'm puzzled that they have yet to be substantively challenged on any vital issue.
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That statement is simply false. Of course anyone could quibble over the definition of any word ad infinitum, but the general idea is no tiered service.
I think it is more important for networks not to discriminate based on who sends the data, rather than how much they pay. It is certainly possible to have network neutrality even with tiered service.
In the real world, the post office is regarded as a common carrier but has still varying classes of mail (standard, priority post, next day service, etc). It is regarded as a neutral carrier because it doesn't discriminate based on who is sending the material. My letter being sent by priority post is treated no worse than one being sent by a major corporation.
I've yet to see him say he is anti-net-neutrality, or that he wants government regulation.
Well those are really opposites, or at least orthogonal. In this case, it is government regulation that would theoretically enforce net neutrality by making it illegal for ISPs to throttle packets based on their source and charge said source extra to get better service. By saying that he doesn't want government regulation, he's at best saying he trusts private businesses not to do this, and at worst saying he thinks it's fine if they do whatever they want, and either way he doesn't support taking action to stop them from doing it. While not exactly anti-neutrality, it is definitely not a pro-neutrality stance.
Obama was very pro-net-neutrality, so he gets points for that, except the stance disappeared from his website, so the promise is less clear. This is also a guy who promised to vote against the FISA bill over and over again, even the day before the vote, and then voted for it.
Obama's stance has not change, it only became described in simpler terms on the website (and the old lengthy description is still available there). His vote for FISA was extremely disappointing. I don't think it means his position has changed, I think it means he's a politician (with all the negative connotations) running for office and he needed to deny ammunition to his opponent. Sad, but on the other hand, I'm sick of the kind of idealist who thinks the first thing you need to do is throw all practical considerations in the name of sticking to principles and thus ends up failing to accomplish anything. "Change I can believe in" to me means "Change that can win", even if that change isn't as awe-inspiring as my hypothetical ideal.
The enemies of Democracy are
Barriers To Entry
(that's assuming anyone is motivated enough to start an ISP so they can get a good Internet connection)
But you libertarians (I'm judging you by your response) say "But we'd remove the barriers to entry by doing away with all regulations!"
The problem is that when you turn the market into a free-for-all, the bigger and better-established companies rapidly outcompete the smaller ones, monopolies or cartels form, and they use their newly found free reign on everything to create new barriers to entry (say, heavily throttling inter-ISP traffic) which can't be broken down because there are no laws or regulations...and you're worse off than ever before.
Honestly one of the few political ideologies I just can't wrap my head around is libertarianism. One basic premise is good - minimize market regulations - but it's like you guys just want to do away with them all willy-nilly and you either don't think through the ramifications or have an incredibly simple and naive idea of what they will be.
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