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Content Filtering Pulled From Free Broadband Proposal
huzur79 writes "Electronista is reporting that Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has dropped the content filtering provisions from the proposal for free wireless broadband service, according to an interview with Ars Technica. Previous drafts of the plan required protection methods to prevent users from accessing objectionable content, such as pornography. 'I'm saying if this is a problem for people, let's take it away,' Martin said.
The proposal has received criticism and opposition from a variety of groups including the Bush administration, wireless companies, and consumer interest organizations. T-Mobile has argued that communicating data on the allocated frequency bands will cause interference and quality degradation. Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
Inconceivable!
>Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution.
The FCC is on the way into history - don't these groups read the papers...?
Interesting that the FCC makes this move before the Australian Government on their respective filtering proposals.
Anonymous Coward
The FCC has been overstepping it's authority for a LONG time.
The FCC exists to dole out a limited public resource, content (and esp obscenity) has never been part of it's mandate and represents little more then a moral power grab.
The whole free wireless internet access is not going to be all that cheap to build to the requirements of 95% of the population in 10 years.
If you give free 768k access, it is going to be enough for quite a lot of people. For people who need more, you are normally competing with existing solutions in the market, thus you will have hard time selling them.
Maybe FCC hopes for someone to be stupid enough to build it and go bankrupt and then someone else to buy it for a small fraction of the building cost. In such scenario that followup company might make enough money to cover the operating costs and make some profit as they do not have to pay for the infrastructure.
does he want a job as a communications minister? seems Australia needs a competent one. He wont have high expectations going into the job given what his predecessors were like.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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Come on, the FCC is not an evil agency by any stretch. It does have a legitimate role in issues like frequency allocations - there is only so much spectrum to go around.
It also has a great role in the enforcement of technical standards like those that prevent one user from interfering with another's use of the airwaves.
Only if the FCC interferes in the actual content of the communications can it be considered to be entering the category of "evil". Or if they mandate the use of a patented "standard" as a condition of use of the public airwaves, they are certainly at least in bed with "evil".
That said, I actually applaud the dropping of a well-meaning but ill-concieved idea.
It looks like the Chairman haas understood that what he originally wanted was impractical, infeasible, and really a bad idea.
It's okay to propose something stupid, so long as one listens to the reasons for those who object to it and doesn't respond by a "digg in the heels, fight, and whine" attitude when the suggestion and it's rationale is challenged.
"Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
By its existance alone the FCC is a violation of the constituion according to the ninth and tenth amendments.
I think "broadband" in most politician's minds is ``has access to email''---I doubt they're intending for customers to view youtube or download stuff (or play WoW :-)
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
But now lots of legitimate services need high bandwidth, netflix, iTunes, even youtube, and most kids are used high speed connections that let them play games and watch videos. They need the bandwidth. So many would say we can no longer use bandwidth as a proxy, and need filtering. I disagree.
To me the best way to make sure that the most people can use this, and not just for play, is to limit the speed to .5 Mb/sec. Those who need the service will appreciate it, and those who can afford something faster will buy it. I would love to have free, reliable internet access even at 300 kb/sec. It might be a bummer for people who just want to play, but for most work it is fast enough.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's simply not enough to provide a significant number of people with broadband internet, at least not with the kind of network topography this band is proposed for.
I bet it will kill the market for text messages with 1000x markups though.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
A great deal of the difficulty in the various internet regulatory issues seems, to me, to arise from the fact that the provider of the last mile connection and the provider of the internet access are almost always one and the same(and, worse, even reform proposals tend to assume that they will always be so, without even cursory examination). This is tricky because the two things really exhibit rather different behavior.
Last mile network connections, wired or wireless, are pretty close to natural monopolies. On the wireless side, there is only so much spectrum, and it isn't exactly a fluid market, and there are only so many locations where you can get zoning permission and whatnot for a tower. On the wired side, legacy environments are duopolies at best, phone company and cable company; while any new deployments run into the fact that(considering the pull itself, plus right-of-way hassles and all the rest) the fixed cost of doing a pull of any bandwidth capacity is huge, while the cost of pulling a high bandwidth line as opposed to a low bandwidth line is much smaller. It isn't quite as bad as roads, where multiple runs are generally not even physically possible; but still an oligopoly at best, monopoly at worst.
Internet access, on the other hand, has the potential to be a properly competitive market, once enough end users are aggregated at a central point. If all relevant structures in a town or geographic region are connected to a peering point, choosing any service from any provider who reaches that point is literally a matter of switch configuration, and could be largely automated.
The trouble is, as long as the two distinct services are provided by the same entity, you have massive incentives for the people who own the last mile connection to mess with the internet access, hence all the net neutrality issues, and this content filtering stuff. We need to separate the two: treat the network link between you and the peering point as a natural monopoly similar to water mains, roads, or electrical lines(whether this means regulated private monopoly, public utility administered by private contractors, or public utility administered by public employees is a matter of implementation). This portion would be simple: dumb pipe of X speed between you and the peering point. Anything from the peering point to the internet at large would be pure free market, internet access at higher or lower speeds, quotas or no, filtering or not, various numbers of static IPs, access to various other things over IP, etc.
Translation: We can always put it back in later.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
... I no think it means what you think it means.
"They were both poisoned. I have spent the last several years developing an immunity..."
which is why the telecom industry tried to dissuade the government from pursuing plans for a free public wireless network. first they claimed that public wireless wasn't viable, and that all attempts to create such networks by governments have been huge failures. and now they're changing the reason for their opposition to claims of "interference and quality degradation."
it's ridiculous that they're even given a voice on this issue when they have such a conflict of interest. the only people whose opinions should be solicited is the public. just hold a nationwide referendum. if people want a public national wireless infrastructure, then it should be created. the technology has been available for a while and has been proven to be sound. San Francisco and many other smaller cities here in California already have open wireless networks, and there's no evidence that it has any impact on cellphone networks or any other communication systems.
you say yourself that interfering with content is "evil", then you say that the concept was well-intentioned.
Aside from the contradiction (which I do not think you intended), I say that the idea that it was well-intentioned is giving Martin and friends far too much benefit of doubt. On the contrary, it was a political move, for the blatantly obvious purpose of sucking up to a certain group of voters and businesspeople.
Martin has been called out before for doing exactly the same kind of thing... and didn't another certain female FCC commissioner give a speech recently that was a downright gross example of exactly the same kind of ass-kissing? (Answer: yes, without any doubt whatever.)
Once might be an accident. Two might be a coincidence. But three and more... ??? Give me a fucking break.
are not caused by those with high bandwidth. Your problems are because of your communications supplier(s). And perhaps your geographic location.
Blocking the bandwidth of others (except in your own small local area) will not make your own performance better.
"You cannot embiggen the small by shortening the tall. You cannot enrich the poor by impoverishing the rich." - Abraham Lincoln
The government wants to gives us free wireless broadband, now without content restriction.
This is the same government that conducted warrantless wiretapping. If they own the bitwaves, there's less barrier to the same occurring.
If there's restrictions, people wanting privacy will go elsewhere. If the restrictions are lifted, people will be more likely to feel safe using it for more sensitive matters. The government will be more able to catch more people.
Can anyone conceive of a better way for the government to maximize its chances of catching people doing things they find undesirable while minimizing its chances of getting in trouble and so having to stop?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yes. We may also hold a referendum on whether "the public" wants free food and beer vending machines in each corner.
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Just look at websites like Facebook and Myspace. You are basically telling those companies, through their website, who you are, who your friends are, maple story mesoswhere you like to hang out, etc. There is a rapidly decreasing margin of privacy for the government to encroach on; just quickly looking through someone's Facebook profile tells you who their friends are, and which of those friends they hang out withdofus kamas
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To stretch out a poor car analogy: you're allowed to masturbate at home, but not in your car in public.
Never been married, eh?
Actually, it is likely that these "bandwidth hogs" are INCREASING your available bandwidth. How fast of a connection do you think you would have if no one ever maxed out their 56k modems. We certainly wouldn't be seeing 6mbps connections being rolled out. We wouldn't likely even see 256kbps lines. It is the guys that are watching HD movies off of netflix and running bittorrent 24/7 that are creating the expectation that we need faster internet. They are the ones that are fighting the good fight so that you and I can get good speeds tomorrow.
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I bet not.
I don't quite understand how any of it works, but I don't think its all that simple to run a good push service over a shitty public IP network.
Not to mention that you would need some sort of good 2 way gateway in order for it to see any sort of wide adoption. Look at all of people with iPhones that come with "unlimited" data, but some tiny limit on text messages. You don't see too many of them using email to SMS gateways to get out of paying for texts do you?
The fact that people still use SMS in an era of ubiquitous mobile IP is undeniably stupid, but its up to the telecoms to change that.
How much throughput that could equal is going to depend on the way that the system is set up, how much noise there is on a given frequency, dopler shift and what kind of spectrum management is used, but no matter how you cut it it won't be much. Assuming only one to one overlapping of cells (which is very generous) and very low noise you might get a total of 4 megabits combined up and downstream to be shared by all users in a given area.
You mention doppler shift, despite the fact these are electromagnetic waves, and you have to be in something moving very very fast to observe this effect. Anything land based won't get near those speeds
rember back before the 2k bubble burst. there was a tone of isps offering free service some with ads some without. back then dial up was usable as well. in fact thers only 2 isps i kone of that offer it without having a broadband offering as well. aol and netzero. i think even netzero is starting to offer dsl now to. now we live in the brodband era where no free offering are around. dialup is dead its abought as useful as not having internet. many new pcs don't even have dial modems anymore. so i for 1 think this is a good idea. it might not be nowhere near as fast as a paid service but tossing something free into the brodband mix will force prices down. kinda like how dialup got dirt cheap.
You don't see too many of them using email to SMS gateways to get out of paying for texts do you?
I dunno anyone with an iphone. But I know a few non-tech girls who have regular phones with basic internet functionality who have practically stopped texting in favor of IMing each other.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Before the bile starts pouring in, let's take a moment to thank the FCC for having a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense. That they listened is nothing short of incredible, and we should savor this moment and reward them for it, before we start tearing down the proposal for everything _else_ we each think is wrong with it. :-)
For the last frickin time, can we stop saying things provided by the government are "free"? It's not free if I'm paying for it, no matter how many politicians my money is used to bribe before getting spent on my "free" services.
Going from fast to slow effects measured terrestrially: You can hear the doppler shift of a carrier transmitted by LEO satalite using a SSB receiver and it is significant enough to require continuous tuning. GPS receivers correct for doppler shift from the 12 hour orbit GPS satalites. A common police radar gun design uses doppler shift by mixing the reflected wave with the transmitted one and measuring the frequency difference. Weather radar often uses doppler shift to measure cloud velocities and look for tornado formation. Roanoke style doppler direction finding equipment measures doppler shift using a standard FM receiver by measuring phase differences in the recovered audio.
which, depending on carrier/application, may still use sms to transport the messages...
Xaotik Designs
Email on my device syncs every 15 minutes, txt is immediate
Xaotik Designs
I'm guessing it's not a blackberry? If so then the reconcile now option is very useful. I'm on t-mobile with a pearl and personal IMAP server.
Charles Wyble System Engineer
I do not think that in the present climate of competing belief systems, that there is a way to regulate content that would not end up infringing on political, religious, or scientific speech. Therefore, content regulation has to be done by the individual, and the individual sets of parents.
HTC Touch Pro, so I can hit Send/receive on it if I'm expeciting something, normally hitting it several times until the mail arrives. Or if I'm not expecting something, it may take up to fifteen minutes to receive with my sync settings. So if it's something that someone needs an answer to quickly, SMS will always be faster and simplier.
Xaotik Designs
From Summary
"Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
----
Hey, everybody violates the U.S. Constitution. Even SCOTUS. I say go for it!
A little polemical documentation
The Constitutional Relationship Between the People and the Law
http://tinyurl.com/3du9ec
I_Voter
My New Web Site:
(Under Construction)
Political Power in the U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/2sdtvk
which, depending on carrier/application, may still use sms to transport the messages...
It's quite possible, but their carriers don't charge them same as regular sms, which is why they go to the effort.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Not always correct...
Verizon Wireless charges the same for SMS whether it's to a phone or using an IM service
Xaotik Designs
Nice to know, but irrelevant to the topic of "do people use alternate means to communicate when cheaper options are available?"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
it is if the example of a cheaper option, isn't...
Xaotik Designs
Right, because people who are looking for a cheaper option are not smart enough to figure out if the choices available to them really are cheaper.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Most people aren't smart enough to figure things out on their own...
Xaotik Designs
Right, the free market system doesn't work for shit. Got it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So they are really patriots and not porn hoarders? Good deal!
seriously?...
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
So they are really patriots and not porn hoarders? Good deal!
They don't hoard their porn, if it's a torrent they are probably seeding it back.
They not only fight for our bandwidth but share their free porn, hooray!
How much cock do you really have to suck to have that attitude?
I'm just sayin'..
There is no reason that they cannot be both.
Yes. We may also hold a referendum on whether "the public" wants free food and beer vending machines in each corner.
If we had the technology to do it for a relatively small amount of money? Hell yes. We have water fountains that are free for anyone to drink from.