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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to create unduly detailed rules that attempted to address every possible assault on openness, such rules would become outdated quickly.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.'"
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...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
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?
I don't know of anybody who has argued against using QoS for what it was intended for, and that is management of networks to assure stability and reasonable delivery of bandwidth. If that's all the Teloos and other big network companies had been on about, I don't think there would be anything to talk about at all.
But these guys have been using, or at least considering, QoS and other technologies in an attempt to leverage their own servies or the services of those willing to basically pay an extortion fee. One can envision scenarios in which those who do not ante up being dropped down the pole, or maybe even dropped off. Since these companies have been going around intentionally confusing the two issues, one can only presume that that, to one degree or another, is their intent.
But the whole argument has always been disingenous. They bitch about Google and other content providers somehow basically taking advantage of their networks, but with the content providers, there is little or no point for those networks. If there's no content out there, then the Internet is little more than a collection of protocols. They want to have their cake and eat it too; get the consumer to pay for the Internet connection, and then get the content providers to pay to be visible, or at least visible in some meaningful way, on their network.
I'm glad the US government is finally making it clear that this behavior is unacceptable. And why shouldn't the US government? At the end of the day, one way or the other, the US taxpayer has basically underwritten much of the networks in question. The Telcos, in particular, are very quick to forget last mile and right of ways, which have been a big fat invaluable gift to them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Trouble is that many (for example) BitTorrent clients will specify a high-priority ToS so they can get more upload and download bandwidth. In fact, given the choice, ANY software vendor is going to choose a ToS that gives them the lowest latency and highest bandwidth possible.
So, in order to determine which packets are P2P or other "latency tolerant bandwidth hogs", ISPs started implementing deep packet inspection, where they actually went into the contents of the payload to determine what was there. If it smelled P2P-ish, it was reassigned a "proper" ToS (or in the case of Comcast, merely dropped for a while, which is what started the whole neutrality brouhaha).
I think most people, even a lot of P2P users, would be OK with traffic prioritization if it was implemented properly - eg, if it was implemented so it saturated your allocated pipe most of the time, but differentiated your VoIP packets from your P2P ones and made sure your VoIP line worked even when you were running P2P. I, for one, would welcome that sort of prioritization. Even if it meant that during peak periods my P2P dropped considerably in speed due to overall network traffic, as long as I knew my ISP would do some upgrades within a reasonable time period to handle the traffic.
Unfortunately, Comcast's solution was too draconian, and by denying P2P traffic altogether they went too far and soured public opinion on any kind of rational Quality-of-Service (QoS) prioritization and traffic shaping.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It just struck me: ISPs are trying to follow the American cellphone model.
While I'm sure our European counterparts[1] have learned about it by now, a brief explanation: In America, we pay to both send and receive. It's not just that our text charges are insane, but most plans charge you both for sending and receiving a text message (in some cases, even if you don't read it you still get charged for receiving a text.) Many plans do the same for phone calls.
ISPs are trying to do something similar. While both ends already pay for their connection, ISPs are trying to make the content providers pay double. "You have access to our network, but if you want access to our clients you must pay again." It's relatively the same kind of double-dipping, which, if not curbed now, will extend to end users as well. "What's that? You want to use Pandora? Well, we offer our own 'free' music service, RealRhapsody NapsterTunes, but if you really want to use Pandora we can let you access it for an extra $1/hour."
[1] I say European because my understanding is that this kind of bullshit doesn't happen commonly in Europe
...or a similar one.
How about "Sudden outbreak of common sense"
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.
The profiteers took the government's money, our money, while demanding competitive considerations (ie monopolies) and promised us all super fast, super cheap internet would be here three years ago. They're lying whores that can't be trusted to even act in their own interests let alone ours.
There's actually been huge stretches of time (postwar period, for one) where a lot of thought about policy was actually directed at making policy beneficial for the country and it's citizens. It's only since the '80s that this went by the wayside, and even then it took 20 years to completely die, when we elected an administration that didn't care at all about policy. As John D'Iulio, a Bush insider and student of prior administrations put it:
"In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, nonstop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking..."
Don't be pushing any false equivalence between this admin and the last or any previous. With any luck, the last 8 years, a low point in thoughtful policy since before FDR, will remain the low point and things will start getting better again.
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