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FCC Backs Net Neutrality, Chairman's Full Speech Posted
ArmyofGnomes writes "FCC chairman Julius Genachowski delivered Monday on President Obama's promise to back 'net neutrality' — but he went much further than merely seeking to expand rules that prohibit ISPs from filtering or blocking net traffic by proposing that they cover all broadband connections, including data connections for smartphones. Genachowski stated: 'I understand the Internet is a dynamic network and that technology continues to grow and evolve. I recognize that if we were to create unduly detailed rules that attempted to address every possible assault on openness, such rules would become outdated quickly. But the fact that the Internet is evolving rapidly does not mean we can, or should, abandon the underlying values fostered by an open network, or the important goal of setting rules of the road to protect the free and open Internet. ... In view of these challenges and opportunities, and because it is vital that the Internet continue to be an engine of innovation, economic growth, competition and democratic engagement, I believe the FCC must be a smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet.'"
for the folks who have read this in detail, can anyone spot any omissions or areas that they might have failed to cover in their ideas? Does it open anything up to exploitation?
It sounded good to me but for some reason I got a vibe of "they'll use this to exclude things not covered" in some way. I'm thinking about the promises of "up to" as one thing that's not touched upon, or the forcing of people to purchase certain bundles by financial incentive (such as being cheaper for internet + cable than naked internet - aka comcast again).
As a web hosting provider, I feel that they've left an important part of it out, the server side. At what point does net neutrality apply to me? They need to define this before they make any laws. Otherwise rules could be applied to things that they shouldn't.
It is exciting to see a political figure take a stance on something important that makes sense for once. I thought a man with enough backbone to fight for net neutrality publicly would certainly have a moustache but a quick google search proved my assumption wrong.
Perhaps he had some facial hair in a past life or something...
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Some protocols want high bandwidth, while others want low latency. I see no problem prioritizing like this. Anything beyond this is a slippery slope, though.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Gesundheit!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
But you know the telcoms will fight it, and they basically own Congress--so I don't hold out much hope.
The telcos don't own Congress. That's preposterous. Congress is owned by the health insurance companies, the financial companies, the military contracting companies, and the big agribusiness companies. The telcos are at most a minority owner with about 5% control.
I am officially gone from
In other words, they can still filter content. The ISPs' role should be nothing more than a dumb pipe. That is what we must demand. Let the police, with a PROPER warrant, handle the legalities.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I live in Canada.
Does this mean, if this passes, that I'll be able to watch services such as Hulu, which are otherwise blocked to ISP's outside the USA?
So is Verizon. And all the other wireless providers.
Cable companies too.
In fact, I can't think of any provider that won't object.
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This story needs that tag or a similar one.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
It's almost like there are qualified, knowledgeable adults making policy decisions these days. Quite a difference from the days policy was dictated by partisan fund raisers who's qualifications were decided by how much money they could raise, right Brownie? Sometimes during the dark days it was like our government was being run by Romper Room.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Celebrate that the principals of network neutrality are finally getting airtime and understand that now is the time for increased scrutiny lest we give legal reasons to block the very things that they are trying to open.
Before the people which you're trolling get here... 1) The department already exists, it was the head of that department who gave the speech; congress has nothing to do with it as it's already the law for the FCC to regulate communication lines and has been since its inception, oh, a hundred odd years ago. 2) The problem exists; denial ain't just a river in Egypt. DNS hijacking is just a tip of a very big iceberg if you care to look. 3) You have no idea what "behest" means; try not to use it until you do.
The CAN-SPAM act makes spam legal, so long as it complies with the act.
Do you want to get into the details of legal spam vs. illegal spam?
What we should be doing is requiring the telecommunications companies to declare themselves as "Common Carrier" or not. If they are, then they get protections under the law but can't discriminate. If they aren't, they can filter, but lose some of their legal protection.
So, ISPs could offer "family safe filtering" or the like, but to do so, they have to declare that they're not a "Common Carrier".
Disclaimer: I used to work for a small (3k user) ISP, and still hold stock in the company that bought it out. I'm also an elected official, and know that passing even the most mundane of laws takes months, and even then likely doesn't plan for every possibility.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think the title would have been a lot funnier if it were: "FCC Backs Net Neutrality, Chairman's Full Speech Available on Pay-Per-View"
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Every time this issue gets brought up on air, those jackasses (Dennis in particular) cover the story like "net neutrality" means is some socialist takover of the internet.
They think it means that ATT will have to build it and then give it all away for free.
If they REALLY understood it, they would realize the ground rules for building the internet are one of the greatest successes of CAPITALISM in the past 50 years.
It encourages innovation, calculated risks, and investment towards long-term gains by corporations.
But, without net neutrality rules in place, there's nothing to stop your ISP from directing you to BING.com when you typed GOOGLE.com, because Microsoft threw some promotional money at them, and that's a massive problem.
I guess as a slashdot reader I'm supposed to be for "net neutrality" however I trust profit grabbing companies more than I trust the FCC. If I don't like the way a company is routing their traffic I can at least switch companies. If the FCC gets involved and they do something stupid there is no alternative. The worst case for a business blocking/routing traffic is that someone else creates a competing ISP.
As an ISP, I call bullshit. In fact, the major carrier ILECs were even already paid to expand their network and they didn't.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
They're showing their corporatism honestly, which is depressing as I used to like Wired. Physical communications is a natural monopoly much like the interstate system, and I would very much prefer to see one utility only allowed to provide physical plant, and mandated to do so, and not permitted to sell any services over said plant.
You would then have service companies sell connectivity over the utilities' physical plant, paying the utility for the base connectivity.
Unfortunately what we have right now, is a hybrid situation, which to be perfectly honest, serves neither goal, and is almost an example of regulatory capture. Complete deregulation would be similar to what New York City looked like in the early days of power distribution (many lines from competitors going everywhere to all buildings), while we had full regulation attempted in the destruction of MA bell back in the day, but its been eroded and sidelined by both competitors/incumbents eeeking out sweetheart deals in order to compete (1996 Telecom Act), as well as the sibling Bell's continued lobbying specifically of both the FCC and their Republican friends in both the legislative and executive branches to relax their restrictions on service, while leaving their right of way easements intact.
Neither of the above options is very attractive, yet the status quo, and the far "liberal" annexation and seperation of service from infrastructure are just as hated by other camps. Honestly, I don't see the status quo lasting forever more (its too self serving at the moment on the primary carriers as evidenced by ISDN and DSL experience), yet I'm not sure what solution will ever be put forth, let alone passed, against a very large base of empowered and wealthy inertia seeking to maintain their own dominance.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
It seems that you're claiming that the only reason to use BitTorrent instead of some other (presumably less bandwidth-intensive) protocol is for illicit activities -- your example given is stolen music and movies. This, despite leading in with the reasonable-sounding declaration that there are legitimate uses for torrents.
Personally, I would hate to have to rely on FTP or HTTP to download a Linux DVD ISO, or the latest patch for World of Warcraft (yes, WoW patches are distributed via BitTorrent). In most cases, I could get what I wanted via FTP or HTTP, but I can't tell you how many times I had downloads > 75% complete which choked for some strange reason and would not resume, forcing me to start over from scratch. BitTorrent has proven frequently faster and almost always more reliable.
In the case of Blizzard, I think they do offer patches for direct download, but that method seems kind of frowned upon... and you don't get to download that way until after the patch becomes mandatory IIRC.
Thinking of some of the NIN albums I (legally) downloaded, I know Trent made a few things available via BitTorrent -- mostly longer works, like the lossless or 96k/24bit high-res versions of albums. Again, I don't have a problem downloading a smattering of MP3 files the more conventional way, but if I want the lossless version of an album, I'm going to torrent that. And you know what? After the torrent is done, I'm going to leave the BitTorrent client running for a couple days so others can benefit from my seed, which moves traffic away from Trent's servers and helps distribute the load across the network.