Slashdot Mirror
Stimulus Bill Contains Net Neutrality Provision
visible.frylock writes "Cnet is reporting that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF), currently in the House Appropriations Committee, contains Net Neutrality provisions: 'The so-called stimulus package hands out billions of dollars in grants for broadband and wireless development, primarily in what are called "unserved" and "underserved" areas. ... The catch is that the federal largesse comes with Net neutrality strings attached. ... recipients must operate broadband and high-speed wireless networks on an "open access basis." The FCC, soon to be under Democratic control, is charged with deciding what that means. Congress didn't see fit to include a definition.' The broadband grants appear to begin in SEC. 3101 (pg. 49) of the PDF."
First of all, I do not live in America (in neither meaning of the word) so I might be a bit off on details but...
This "FCC will soon be under democratic control" boggles me. In this context I assume it means that it will be led by the democrats (instead of democracic as in having the public vote on all issues).
But that doesn't really tell anything. There are people on both sides of the net neutrality issue who have different opinions of (foreign) policy, economy, Iraq situation, etc... I, having not followed USA inner politcs very closely, would think that net neutrality is hardly among biggest dividers between democrats and republicans.
So does this tell anything about it or is it relevant at all? I am not saying that it isn't but honestly wondering if it is...
I know that here we could tell a lot based on will some issue like this be controlled by the Green party, the Left party, the Pirate Party, the Socialist Democrats, our major right wing party, another right wing party concentrating mostly on countryside issues, or any else of the political parties...
I live in Lake county, California and this would be a fantastic environment for WiMax. We have a volcano (dormant... heh heh) in the middle of the county upon which we already have a radio shack, and I don't mean the store. I helped my pop insulate it when I was a kid. We have a capture-and-rebroadcast system here called LCTV, and I believe Edge (now part of the evil empire) has a tower up there as well (maybe AT&T has some of their own stuff up there too.) There is good road access, so it would be relatively trivial to truck a small shipping container and some building materials up there, and there is far more than sufficient exposure for combo solar/wind power to run the system. If this bill goes through before I move out of here, I may have to start tapping some connections and see if I can finally get a working last mile solution up in here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't get it... How operating all wireless networks in unencrypted, unauthenticated mode is supposed to provide Net Neutrality?
so, we are finally getting someone in government who does not just measure Net in truckloads.
of a crap sandwich still doesn't change the fact that it's a crap sandwich.
So if it's not defined what open access means, how can anyone say that it means net neutrality? It could mean anything and that usually means the definition will be dependant on lobying dollars.
My basic problem with methods like this, is that it continues to reward the expedient, eg. short term thinking. While I realize that the new administration has to pick their battles, they will not cause long term 'change' unless they change incentives. And changing incentives first and foremost means changing the balance in compensation 'per customer' between short and long term company interests.
The only way, that I am aware, to kick start this in an area of natural monopoly... (not to mention massive subsidies which have been exploited), is to either form a government competitor, or enforce line leasing agreements so that the barrier to entrance is reduced.
I for one certainly can't imagine ANY possible negatives of more government involvement in the Internet.
Well, it would make sense.. "We're going to give incentive for new net access, go ahead and screw any web site shmoe who doesn't have enough to pay for premium access"...
I mean, what do you think this is, the banking or finance industry?
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
primarily in what are called "unserved" and "underserved" areas. ...
How about "undeserved" areas? Just give the money to the people. They worked, it's their money. Instead they slave 1/3 of their life away to retire without anything while corporations buy cheats in the game of capitalism by the way of government.+
*DrugCheese rants*
Guess what? Our government is itself the product of a market system. Cities like New York, London, and San Francisco are successful precisely *because* of their enormous governments--they compete for capital, talent, and prestige against cities with small, ineffectual governments that are unable to effectively lure and corral said capital, talent, and prestige. And as goes the city, so go city-states and nations: Somalia, being a libertarian paradise, is a rather unpleasant place to live for non-ideologues. Somalians, those who can, vote with their feet and leave.
Now go suckle Ayn Rand's rotten tits some more and leave the rest of us alone, you stupid fucking Paultards.
Most people are hopeful that the right thing will be done. They will be disappointed, unless someone puts out a louder voice than the telecoms.
This is the third or fourth time I've seen this troll. At what point can it just be added to the lameness filter and be done with it?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sorry, I get a little tired of hearing this time and time again. "Oh noes! It's bigger guberment!" is exactly as stupid a slogan as "Think of the children!" and "Terr'rists!"
Take a moment and actually think about this.
Which do you trust more with this decision? An oligopoly (not a free market) of corrupt businesses, whose best interests run directly counter to yours? Or a government, dysfunctional as it may be, that you at least have some hand in electing and keeping in check?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
`Communist` said the ex-capitalist and he nationalized a few banks. More businesses to follow.
I feed trolls when I'm bored... Here's a quick rebuttal, since you've obviously pasted this from somewhere.
But, I'd like to tear it apart myself, because I'm bored...
If it can be demonstrated how to properly falsify evolution, regardless if evolution is true or not, only then can evolution ever be proven or disproved.
No, then it could be disproved. No theory can ever be "proved", only disproved.
That is the essence of falsification; if it can be shown that something is not false, it must therefore be true.
Except that to show that something is not false is as impossible as to show it is true.
No, all you can show is that a given method does not suffice to falsify something. Depending on how good the method is, you may gain considerable evidence for a theory in this way, but it doesn't "prove" anything.
If evolution be not true, the only explanation for the appearance of varied life on the planet is intelligent design.
That is a false dichotomy. It could have appeared purely randomly. It could have been the natural result of an equation we do not understand. It could be something else we haven't thought of.
Furthermore, this troll only attempts to disprove Darwinian evolution, which is not the only kind of evolution, any more than Christian Creationism is the only kind of Intelligent Design.
If evolution theory is true, the word kind is a superficial label that does not exist, because beyond our classifications, there would be no clear identifiable division among animals or plants, since all plants and animals would therefore share a common ancestor.
"Common ancestor" is one kind of Evolution theory. And it certainly does not imply that there are no identifiable divisions -- for example, while many believe that life began in the ocean, and later evolved to survive on land, there is a clear distinction between a creature with gills and a creature with lungs, or even a creature with both.
If no such common ancestor can be found and confirmed without bias, and this test is performed between two or more of any plant or animal life without ever finding anything to the contrary, we can confirm with certainty evolution did not happen
Aren't Creationists always the ones claiming that just because you can't see a god, doesn't mean he's not there?
Well, just because we haven't found a common ancestor, doesn't mean there is no common ancestor. Unless you can demonstrate that no such common ancestor ever could have existed, there is no certainty there.
should any two animals or plants within a family (a palm tree and a coconut tree) be proven to not share a common ancestor, or if no provable increase of traits can be demonstrated to be in its beginnings or actively present in the animals and plants living today over their provable ancestry,
Should that be correct, it's possible you've found some problems with evolutionary theory. You haven't done that much.
Even should that be correct, all you've provided is absence of evidence. You've provided no evidence for your own hypothesis of creationism.
Now, there are significant problems with the Bible. There are profound inconsistencies, even in Genesis. There are mistranslations from the original Greek, and between that and the original Hebrew. Even if you can prove Intelligent Design, surely you have more evidence for your own origin story than I do for the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There are foreseeable problems with this Net Neutrality provision:
You see where this can go? Fuzzy regulations are often abused, this one will be no exception.
Good going, guys.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
Network neutrality is a big deal and should not be stuffed into a poorly thought-out overly-vague rider on a more important bill.
I don't like it when senators put their own personal agenda into unrelated bills. I'll stick with that principle even when the personal agenda is one I like. Bills should deal with one thing only, and I think that senators who put riders onto bills are doing something immoral -- even when the rider is one I approve of.
The first is for the FCC to actually enforce the 'common carrier' rules that ALL the ISP's claim to operate in compliance with, but which in fact they do as they damned well please simply because congress has pulled the manpower and legal help teeth to enforce them with.
What do I mean? Simple really.
As an example, verizon blocks outbound to the customer port 80 requests. This forces the customer who wants to have a web page, to put it on verizon's servers, where they can then load it up with all the commercials they can sell in the form of shrinking the page to make room for the other crap. This port 80 blockage is a VERY blatant violation of the common carrier rules, yet it has existed for at least 5 years that I know of, and the commission has done nothing about it. I think mainly because most of the sheeple wouldn't have any idea how to go about setting it up on their own machines anyway. So there is little public outcry, unlike the bandwidth controlling that seems to have ComCast in moderately warm water.
Because losing the common carrier status has an effect on the taxation and license status, these operators will kill to keep it, and there is no way in hell you'll ever get a tech support drone to confirm that they are doing it.
Enforcing this is the biggest step the commission could take to ensuring net neutrality, but since the likes of the big businesses involved are also heavy contributors to both parties, I really don't expect to see any action unless and until there is a highly visible public outcry against those practices.
Oh, and expect your bandwidth bill to rise to pay for the infrastructure required to handle that level of bandwidth in both directions. I'd guess about 2x with no other factors thrown in. Throw in the build out costs, and even with gubment support, it will go up, cuz the gubment has yet to pay the going rate to pay for the mandates they've passed yet, like the no child left behind act, which may have gotten 5% of what it would take to do it right. Yes, that is an admirable idea, but it should be accompanied by similar mandates for the truly gifted child, and there is 2 of those for every un-educatable one out there, being held back because the other kids can't begin to keep up with them. So they get bored and say screw it, putting their smarts to use in nefarious schemes that will cause them to clash with the law all their lives in many cases.
Damn, I love a chance to get a good rant in...
-- ... it may not pass your way again.
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yield to Temptation
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
Government enforced "openness" will allow government controlled "decency regulation."
The US Government is on a spending orgy of bailouts, stimuli and old fashioned pork. All pretenses of fiscal conservativism, from either political party, have vanished. We're into several trillion in promised payouts. The spending is accelerating, even as revenues are falling due to the crisis. There is simply no financial restraint left in government anymore. It wouldn't be so bad if the incoming president said he was going to pull back, but from all indications he thinks we aren't spending fast enough.
But geeks don't care, they're getting their net neutrality pony, and the rest of the world could burn for all they care.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Just glanced at the bill and could only find wireless as the only tech available for grants. This is ridiculous as what we need is fiber deployments. Wireless is not going to deliver tomorrows broadband, just the lousy "broadband" of a few Mbps at the max.
Don't believe the WiMax hype. A cell which can only cover a mile or two (if you are lucky) has to share the 10's of MBps that a WiMax base station sector.
If we want to stop the US's descent to an Internet 3rd world country, we need fiber to the home and office.
if the restrictions only apply to those service providers accepting the funding, you get "net neutrality for some". The goal should be "net neutrality for all".
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Congress will pass a bill that has one purpose and has no earmarks.
I know you're being satirical (probably justified), but are more local politics, such as at the state level, any less absurd? Overseas we don't hear about much other than US federal politics.
I've never lived in the US, but it seems like a huge government compared with many, and in many ways I can appreciate why there are so many people who don't bother voting. Especially when I compare it with what I'm used to in New Zealand, where the government represents 4 million people, and I guess that's more similar on scale to the population of a typical US state. Personally I think it works okay (opinions vary) and you're never really too far away from other voters or hearing about issues that other people think are important.
If I had a vote for a government of about 300+ million people, though, I'm not sure I could be bothered because it'd just be too hard to fully comprehend how I fitted in with everyone else. My own vote would be irrelevant because it'd be completely outweighed by people voting because of issues I hadn't even heard of, let alone understood. From the outside, it sounds as if the EU's moving in that direction, too, with a government that's extensive enough to be good for the economy, but too huge for many people to care about or perceive themselves as having the slightest bit of significance in its operation.
Correct me if necessary, but my understanding was that the USA was formed with the understanding that the federal government was always supposed to be fairly minimalist, with individual states having a lot of independence to choose how to govern themselves. How and when did this change? Was it all during WW2 or something like that, or has it been more of a slippery slope?
One, or IMO the only, strong argument that opponents of net neutrality have is that net neutrality will prevent backbone innovation...
but if we have a loosely defined definition of open access, backbone innovation will still be possible within the limit of what is reasonable.
Obviously the backbones of the Internet aren't monopoly, and haven't been since we got the NSFnet out of the way, so I assume you're talking about the last-mile access.
Last-mile access not only isn't a natural monopoly, it isn't a government monopoly either. Sure, telephone wires and cable TV in most places in the US were both installed by monopolies, but that's all changed - the FCC's required that cities allow overbuilding of cable TV for over a decade, and while most copper telephone wires are still owned by the telcos, they're generally required by PUCs to not only rent them to other DSLAM providers like Covad and/or to support virtual circuit connections from other ISPs using the telco's DSLAMs.
Cable TV franchises were usually originally given out to small companies wanting to provide television, and while *your* town may have decided who got them based on visionary thinking about the future of telecommunications, most towns let them tear up the streets in return for deals about whose brother-in-law got the paving contract and how many channels the town council could extort for public access or broadcasting their council meetings. But that was the 70s-80s, and by the late 90s, most of the little guys had been bought up by national carriers like Comcast or Time-Warner, who then had to modernize the really ugly mess of local infrastructure. But the FCC mandated that competition be legalized, and companies like RCN actually installed additional cable systems in some places.
The real monopolies are in radio spectrum - the FCC allowed a few small high-interference not-very-useful bands for unlicensed low-power use, so that's of course where the most creativity and competition have taken place (2.4 and 5GHz.) They've also given oligopoly-style licenses to cellular companies, which haven't been as creative because they've had to pay way too much for the spectrum on the expectation of getting it out of their customers' wallets later. And there's a whole lot of spectrum given to TV stations, or kept for themselves, or licensed for other applications (e.g. 38GHz point-to-point microwave.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For a moment I read it as "Undeserved". I was like, WTF?
That isn't chocolate either.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How much will it cost users for regular access if and once installed..? Have yet to see that minor little detail mentioned whenever the topic arises...
I comment, therefore I am (procrastinating elsewhere)..