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Network Neutrality Back In Congress For 3rd Time
suraj.sun writes "Ed Markey has introduced his plan to legislate network neutrality into a third consecutive Congress, and he has a message for ISPs: upgrade your infrastructure and don't even think about blocking or degrading traffic. The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week's introduction of the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009' [PDF] means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to 'block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade' access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device. Rulemaking and enforcement of network neutrality would be given to the Federal Communications Commission, which would also be given the unenviable job of hashing out what constitutes 'reasonable network management' — something explicitly allowed by the bill. Neutrality would also not apply to the access and transfer of unlawful information, including 'theft of content,' so a mythical deep packet inspection device that could block illegal P2P transfers with 100 percent accuracy would still be allowed. If enacted, the bill would allow any US Internet user to file a neutrality complaint with the FCC and receive a ruling within 90 days."
But just in case, encryption and protocol obfuscation for EVERYTHING.
That does seem like a truck-sized loophole. I think some variety of loophole will end up in any bill that gets passed, though, because at this point the idea of at least some traffic shaping is accepted pretty widely. It is still possible to concede that while insisting on neutrality with respect to sites--- say that, sure, they can prioritize email over bittorrent, but they can't prioritize foo.com traffic over bar.com because bar.com failed to pay for the high-tier service. I see that sort of source/destination discrimination as more insidious than per-protocol discrimination.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
See the telecommunications act of 1996. This opened up the market for new companies to come in and provide data services over existing lines. Those new companies upgraded the hardware for data, then Greenspan ratcheted up interest rates over 2 points over two years. This helped to start the telco / dot com bubble burst. You then had companies with huge debt from upgrading equipment, a glut in capacity, and their stock prices falling along with the dot coms. One by one, they went out of business, and guess who bought up all the new equipment in their own closets for pennies on the dollar? The ILEC's.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
This would kind of solve the whole thing. The cable companies can partition the bandwidth any way they like. They can reserve bandwidth for their own movie services. The customer still gets what is advertised.
Again, I just want to make this clear... It doesn't solve the problem. The customer gets what is advertised... unless it's a site TW doesn't like. Because you haven't required them to be packet agnostic (i.e. "net neutral"), they can still do traffic shaping to suit their agenda.
The enemies of Democracy are
ESPN 360 blocks access to anyone visiting it's site from any ISP that didn't pay ESPN a subscription fee. I don't mind ESPN charging me for access to their content in fact I expect to pay for quality content but throwing up a page saying something to the effect of oops! looks like your current internet provider isn't one of our subscribers. You should switch to one of our "partners" below. isn't what I would call neutral. IMHO it's a direct attempt to turn the internet into just another cable provider. What do you think your internet connection will cost as more & more sites start charging the ISP a subscription fee?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Given that the founding fathers had recently fought a war where they were defending themselves FROM their own government, I think they may have had a broader view than you attribute to them. Maybe Jefferson's wording was ditched, not to save space, but ebcause a majority of the other founders didn't like it?
Maybe. But more likely given all of Jefferson's writings on the subject, is that the GP's reading of the 2nd Amendment as not supporting the idea of armed rebellion is simply wrong. Egregiously so, considering his admonition to read the Founder's writings. Hello? Jefferson was constantly on about the need for the people to remove governments that don't represent them, and do so through organized rebellion. And that explicitly included the government he helped create, should it become necessary.
The enemies of Democracy are
If it isn't unlimited transfer over a guaranteed 2 Mbps pipe, stop trying to convince me that it is in your advertising.
What advertisements are you looking at with "guarantees" to Internet sites at line speed? Or is it a case where you don't understand what "best effort" Internet access is?
Learn to love Alaska
You're probably right, but it would be a royal pain to keep upgrading to new programs. If the consumer gets frustrated then the Cable company has won.
BTW the reason folks like Comcast have a monopoly is the same reason your local phone, natural gas, and electric companies have monopolies. It's considered impossible to create a competitive market in these areas, and they are excluded from antitrust laws.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
ESPN360 has been pulling a reverse on the "charge for access" BS the ISP's whispered about to start this whole movement.
They offered it free to colleges to hook people, then demanded cable style "bulk license fees" from ISP's.
One by one they have been caving. Complaints to the FCC regarding this practice, which forces every customer to pay for services they likely don't want or use, have been slow producing results.
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