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Cory Doctorow Draws the Line On Net Neutrality
Nerdposeur points out that Cory Doctorow has a compelling piece in The Guardian today, arguing that network neutrality is not only crucial for the future of the Internet, but is what the ISPs owe to the public. He asks, "Does anybody else feel like waving a flag after reading this?" "If the phone companies had to negotiate for every pole, every sewer, every punch-down, every junction box, every road they get to tear up, they'd go broke. All the money in the world couldn't pay for the access they get for free every day... If they don't like it, let them get into another line of work — give them 60 days to get their wires out of our dirt and then sell the franchise to provide network services to a competitor who will promise to give us a solid digital future in exchange for our generosity."
As long as a competitive, free market is ensured, this won't happen.
If a ISP starts filtering, people will move to the next.
Of course, things may turn out very different if we allow dominant market positions to be built in the ISP market.
(But this won't happen, right? Just as we never let any dominant market position arise in the OS market, or in the microprocessor market. Now sorry, gotta rush back to my cave).
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
How about the opposite... how anout as municipalities, we band together and start charging them rent on our ditches and land that they are running the cable through. They want to screw us on the received end then we will screw then on the intake valve. If we stand firm enough, the fear of being charged billions to use their own lines will put the fear of some sort of ancient evil from beyond the stars into them.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Ridiculously high upfront cost, is a waste of resources to make multiple sets of them for each competitor, internet cables, like roads, seem like the perfect thing to have under government control. We can have private companies competing for the services they can provide over these lines.
The only sucker around here is the one that thinks that either one is better than other.
The both have sold out. Blasting one and supporting the other is height of foolishness.
That's not what net neutrality is about. That's QoS or usage tiers. What net neutrality is about is making sure that toll road owners are not charging more for trucks carrying company A's stuff than trucks driving company B's stuff. ISPs want to be able to degrade performance from certain internet services, such as Skype and Hulu, in order to "encourage" you to use their own services. That is, unless those services pay your ISP an extortion fee.
In other word, net neutrality is about not discriminating against the source of the traffic. It says nothing about discriminating based on the type of traffic and amount. Comcast should not arbitrarily degrade my Skype traffic because they prefer me to use their VOIP service and Skype refuses to pay them a kickback. I should be able to choose how I use my connection, so long as I am not infringing upon other users.
You're half right. If you had said "Fuck the Republicans AND Democrats" I could agree with you 100 percent.
I understand the sentiment, but the correct answer is "I will never vote for any politician who puts corporate interest ahead of the welfare of citizens and neither should you."
This covers many Democrats and all Republicans. Unfortunately, it also seems to cover most Libertarians.
Corporations are the enemy of Democracy. Not because it's a necessary part of doing business, but because they've have chosen that path.
The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process. There needs to be iron-clad, enforced limitations on campaign finance, with a Justice Department squad whose only job is to make sure that a brand new set of campaign finance laws are enforced without exception.
The notion (put forth by corporatist SCOTUS judges) that MONEY=SPEECH has been the single most destructive opinion put forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in our history. We will never again have fair elections, accountable office-holders or a strong middle class until we have reduced the influence of money in our political system.
Term limits aren't enough. Campaign finance "reform" isn't enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because the government is terrible at managing things, has no competition, and little oversight.
Not true, no matter how much it's the cornerstone of libertarian thinking. It's just that the stuff that the government does manage really well hardly ever gets noticed. Examples include municipal water systems, fire fighting and prevention, traffic controls, and park systems. Municipal power companies also tend to do at least as well as their private competitors in the next town or city over in terms of providing cheap and efficient service to their customers.
I am officially gone from
But even if that never happens, it's still better to choose the party of least corruption
That is generally going to be the party out of power. So it's actually not a bad idea.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Who owns the city? Last time I checked I thought the idea was the public owned everything and the city was the "property manager" supposedly operating in our best interests.
Sorry, but you make it sound like it is operating in an ideal fashion with no corruption or nepotism involved at any level.
A win for the city officials. A win for the company. A big loss for the citizens.
There is not enough competition, and that is a problem. It's not like gas, electric, or water. I'm tired of people equating the two, since the Internet is far different than other utility. It *has* become as important the other utilities, but it is not the same.
I share your sentiment. This is a stupid and shortsighted mentality. Unlimited must be removed for any sanity to be introduced back into the system. I am vehemently opposed to caps, but I am in favor of a different pricing model that includes throttling once you have reached your agreed upon "cap". Basically, I want to be charged at home the same way I am charged at my data center for bandwidth. There is no technical reason why it cannot be accomplished, it's all just opposition from the MBA's and POS executives.
What are we talking about here? QoS based on traffic type or traffic source?
QoS is a technical solution that can work well when implemented end-to-end. Nothing sinister about it. Voice traffic, Real time gaming traffic, etc. need to get there first before somebody's FTP and torrent traffic. Most people don't have a problem with that.
Where is gets very concerning is when companies "penalize" traffic because it directly competes with one of their own products and services. The Internet, as a utility, has become to important to be malevolently twisted in such a damaging way.
Local telephone companies are not degrading, stopping, or interfering with your communications if it interferes with their business, or the business of their affiliates. Like another poster stated, it would be like being put on hold when calling Pizza Hut with a message saying, "Press 1 to be connected to Domino's our preferred pizza partner". I paraphrased, but I think you get the point.
The Internet is special, in that it has an unprecedented amount of information concerning every little tidbit of communication passing through it. It can certainly be abused, and there are people drooling to do so.
I fully support the idea of net neutrality. ISP's should stick to ONLY providing the Internet. Nothing more allowed by law. Traffic shaping based on the source of the traffic, or it's content should be disallowed by law in the strongest language possible with very serious consequences. In return, the ISP's get blanket immunity for all traffic passing through their networks.
This whole circus where bandwidth "abuse", P2P, and Piracy are being mixed up with the Net Neutrality debate is just bullshit designed to distract us and create inflammatory environments in which intelligent dialogue becomes impossible. Which is what Big Media and some the ISP's want.
Net Neutrality is about ONE THING ONLY. Making sure the source and content of a communication is never used to give preferential/detrimental treatment based on financial motivations. That's it. It's in our best interests as a society, all societies, to make it happen as quick as possible.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He may be a sensationalist blowhard, but that doesn't mean he'll never touch on a real issue. (Actually, it means he's likely to hit many, if only for attention. Ignore him, but don't disregard a real issue just because the loudest supporter is a nutcase.) Cory may be full of smoke, but where there's smoke there is a fire.
If you read TFA:
"Telus, a Canadian telcom that blocked access to a site established by its striking workers where they were airing their grievances."
The RIAA would love to make iTunes less popular to force people to their own services.
Hulu would love the chance to do this to YouTube. (Forget who makes $ off of celebrity jeopardy, the big prize is stopping amateur movie makers from developing enough of a following to ever pose a credible threat.)
Existing ISPs would love to make it harder to find competitors.
Sweetheart deals where big $ companies paid for upstarts to be unable to compete would be all over. To call that paranoia is to ignore history. (Including a fair amount of recent history) Imagine if before and during an RIAA style sue 'em all, don't bother to only sue guilty people style incident, the victims were unable to find legal assistance.
"Common Carrier" status was established, trading protections to Telcos in exchange for a lack of censoring for one reason, the blackmail capacity the phone companies were sitting on was a racket that could not only crush any other company it chose, it could be used against the country itself. Imagine the economic damage if just one major phone company decided to shut off for the day... The telcos could easily force themselves into power, and given the # of great deals given to them, it's uncertain whether they're being constantly appeased to prevent this, or if it has already happened and this is them giving themselves presents.
So your problem is with the man and not his argument? Sorry, you lose, automatically.
Moderation in everything, including moderation.
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
*Huge* corporations *are not* simply large businesses. They don't simply have just a bit more power, they are huge collections of money and huge collections of power, so huge as they change the gravity of the power of the country.
The governmental structure of the U.S. was just not intended to deal with huge pockets of power. U.S. society has a huge blind spot in regards to this, but the writers of the constitution did not. They saw the damage that was caused by the East India company and while they believed that corporations could be a positive force as long as they were limited. They believed in giving them *limited* charters (ones that actually expired!) and not allowing them to own other corporations or land that wasn't related directly to their businesses. That was all chucked in the mid-1800s because the rich wanted to get richer.
Corporations are useful for big tasks, but I don't think that any the tasks you listed here couldn't be done by a small or medium size businesses. With the Internet and the modern tech available to us there are damn few jobs that I know that couldn't be done by a small business, and just about anyone and be an international player. Sorry... I doubt the modern corporation is necessary to maintain life as we know it.