Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push

uuddlrlrab writes "A group of 72 Democratic lawmakers is the latest to question the US Federal Communications Commission's move to create new net neutrality regulations. Democrats, including US President Barack Obama, have generally supported new rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content, but the group of 72 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks. A coalition of minority groups made their objections known as well, saying, 'We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind.' This follows news from earlier in the week that similar letters were sent by a group of 44 tech companies and a group of 18 Republican senators." It's worth noting that the FCC is receiving letters in support of the net neutrality regulations as well. One such is from a group of internet pioneers, which includes Vint Cerf and Stephen Crocker.

Comments

Government parties against neutrality

[nurb432]

Who would have ever thought.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[cjfs]

Definitely does fit in the current political climate, complete with just making stuff up left and right.

Opponents of net neutrality rules say there have been few examples of broadband providers blocking or slowing traffic.

So what's the problem with restricting if if there have only been "few examples" of it?

In light of the growth and innovation in new applications that the current [regulatory] regime has enabled, as compared to the limited evidence demonstrating any tangible harm, we would urge you to avoid tentative conclusions which favor government regulation

So what do they consider tangible harm and what's the evidence of it being "limited"? The article and letter could use about 15 [citation needed] tags. I can't seem to find anything to back up the "could slow investments in broadband and slow minorities' access to telemedicine, distance learning and other services" either.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

The article and letter could use about 15 [citation needed] tags. I can't seem to find anything to back up the "could slow investments in broadband and slow minorities' access to telemedicine, distance learning and other services" either.

It's all speculation propagated by the AT&T Artificial Turf(TM) fanclub. The argument is that network neutrality will make the Internet "more expensive" to poor people because there won't be any discounts for the people who "want" all of their Internet traffic other than the ISP's walled garden to be degraded into the abyss.

The argument ignores the fact that the absence of network neutrality in the presence of a monopoly/duopoly landscape will only result in higher prices for the people who want the "no DPI" option (if it's available at all) rather than any sort of lower prices for anybody else.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Ironsides]

So what's the problem with restricting if if there have only been "few examples" of it?

If there's only been a "few examples" why pass a law restricting it? Shouldn't the government try to get by with as few laws as possible instead of as many as possible?

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[postbigbang]

These are utilities and common carriers. They're supposed to work for US. Instead, the propaganda pushes have become obtuse. They threaten to slow down expenditure-- slowing down broadband speed and reach. In fact, what happens is that the vacuum breeds ISP investment in areas the current crop of jerks don't want to reach. The BPL initiative starts. Sat from Hughes gets cheaper. Even gas companies figure out how to get into the broadband business.

The group of Democrats that have been suckered in by the propaganda become their stooges, once again. They won't learn. But why should they as long as their own campaign finances are good.... filled and lined by the telcos?

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[isa-kuruption]

Let's use a comparative example:

There have only been a "few examples" of people buying fertilizer to make bombs, so the gov't is going to pass regulation to make sure fertilizer can no longer be purchased.

Is that enough of a reason for ya?

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Jaysyn]

Go buy 4 tons of ammonium nitrate without being a megafarmcorp & see which prison you end up in.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[thrillseeker]

Shouldn't the government try to get by with as few laws as possible instead of as many as possible?

Fewer laws mean less "requirement" to position oneself as a gatekeeper, requiring constant attention from the adoring masses, and of course constant campaign "donations".

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Mikkeles]

'...saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks.'

Call me cynical, but I suspect their concern is proportional to their bribes^wdonations.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

These are utilities and common carriers. They're supposed to work for US

No, these are for-profit companies. They work for their shareholders ("themselves").

The group of Democrats that have been suckered in by the propaganda become their stooges, once again. They won't learn. But why should they as long as their own campaign finances are good.... filled and lined by the telcos?

Then perhaps, vote for their competitors. Or campaign by yourself. I question that there is any need for the federal government to intevene. Let's let a few states do net neutrality, let a few other states not support net neutrality, and see what happens.

---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.

With people like you, Europe would have been nazi. Asia would have been massacred until it was 100% communist, or worshipped the mikado and the US would likely be fighting a war for survival. If the Soviets combined forces with said mikado, they would likely win. I wonder if statements like this mean that you are pro-Nazi, pro-Soviet and pro everyone who ever went to far. Surely you are in favor of kidnapping children of anyone with a competing religion ("devshirme"), for example ? Otherwise you wouldn't be pro-peace.

War is not good, but violence is the basis of society. Whether we're talking protecting the weak from the (physically) strong, division of resources, or borders. Violence always was, is, and always will be the basis for civilization. And if you don't agree with me, think that peace is more important, I will personally come and hit you hard in the face until you agree with me, or die. If you do hit back, or call the police, you're obviously dishonest.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[postbigbang]

Yeah, they're for-profit, built on the scam of "municipal utilities" where the infrastructure was stolen outright on the lie of developing communications infrastructures. In fact, the communities own the easements, right of ways, in favor of property owners.

As regards peace, no one argues the basis for WW2. The Soviets were dogs because we were. Violence can be overcome, just like hunger. You have to work at it. So I do.

Your otherwise black and white world is devoid of wisdom, only reacting in a binary way. Too bad. There are other dimensions to humanity.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have ever thought.

I guess I dont like Republicans or Democrats now ...

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[dgatwood]

If there's only been a "few examples" why pass a law restricting it? Shouldn't the government try to get by with as few laws as possible instead of as many as possible?

As far as I know, there has only been one example. The problem is that the example is Comcast, which is the nation's largest residential ISP, serving more than 15.3 million customers, or almost 14% of the households in the United States.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[mi]

The motivations are different. Whereas the Republicans are instinctively against any regulation — even if they overcome that initial reaction often, the Democrats believe, a good Government regulation is the best solution to any problem.

So Republicans were opposing "Net Neutrality" because it is a regulation. These Democrats oppose it, because it does not fit their goals.

In addition to the "concerns for minorities" (the equivalent of Republican's "think of the children"!), it should be noted, that "Net Neutrality" will also impede implementation of the "Fairness Doctrine" online. And they will come to that right after imposing the said doctrine on the airwaves — the same people, who want to shut up Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh (1st Amendment be damned), can't be happy about Drudge's selection of headlines...

Oh, and if you think, the doctrine is abandoned, think again. The above link is dated June 28, 2007. But the same text was just republished as on op-ed word-to-word by a free daily newspaper on October the 14th, 2009. The author didn't even bother adjusting the wording, which — two years later — still refers to some events as "recent". Maybe, the professor is just cheating on the newspaper to augment his Columbia salary. More likely, this is the sign, the Left are giving up on trying to establish their own talk-shows, and want to use laws against the speech they don't like...

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[AlamedaStone]

I'm tellin' ya guys: ask around. Watch an episode of Glenn Beck where he shows entire clips of these people claiming Mao and/or Stalin to be their political idols.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, has he finally come out and denied these horrible allegations against him? I, for one, really love the guy. I really don't understand why he wouldn't categorically deny his involvement in the rape and murder of that poor woman in 1990.

I mean, I love Glenn Beck. And I'm afraid for him!

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Tenebrousedge]

Evolution does not require death, merely successive generations. Violence is not remotely necessary.

The rest of your post is incoherent and senseless. The debate you are attempting to incite is a rather old one, and you have a great deal of literature to draw from in your arguments. If you are not incapable of logical argument you should attempt one, for your puerile and toothless "challenge" is worth no more notice than a graffito on a toilet stall.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Evolution does not require death, merely successive generations. Violence is not remotely necessary.

And we're supposed to take this as an article of faith ?

No offence, but are you truly this stupid ? Have you ever seen animals hunt ? Would you call a bacterial invasion of a human nonviolent ? Yet all those things are very, very important for both human and bacterial evolution. Hunts are about 50% of animal evolution.

Of course, in American cartoons they all look very cuddly. And that you never ever see that in real life, never mind in open, free nature, oh, who cares ? It's on TV ! It must be true, right ?

What exactly do you base this idiotic "nature is nonviolent" bullshit on ? I truly wonder.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Tenebrousedge]

You seem to be conflating many different concepts here. Evolution is a mathematical concept, and again, it does not require either death (though it helps) or violence. Evolution can and will happen in bacterial monocultures, without any selective pressure, simply due to genetic drift. I recommend some remedial study of the subject; you might begin with the wikipedia article.

For what it's worth, I live in rural Alaska and haven't watched television in years. Your ad hominem remarks are quite amusing.

I must point out, however, that in attacking me you are quite straying off your subject matter, which is the necessity of violence in the human condition. I am increasingly convinced of your inability to mount such an argument. If you choose to do so, you may contact me at the email address attached to this post at any time.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[rtb61]

It is worse than that. They are simply wishing to line their own pockets. With universal high bandwidth broadband there is no need for commercial add placements nor the campaign funds to pay for them, as anyone at any time can view any add,speech etc streamed from congress or the senate for free, as such they can all commercial adds can be banned outright.

This of course cuts off corrupt politicians from the 'teats' of the lobbyists and their corporate backers (apparently they do have prostitutes on the payroll). Hmm, apparently stimulus funds to protect and prop up banks and their executives bonuses but very little for broadband.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[postbigbang]

Thanks for the help, but this is a closed mind you're dealing with. Sadly, there is no cure for that; it's terminally entropic. But thanks for trying.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[postbigbang]

It's always important to follow the money. Once found, most explanations become clear. Yet the telcos aren't taking stimulus money, as it comes with strings. So complaining loudly will have to do for them.

Sadly, this is what it's come to. I long for the entrepreneurial days when someone would take a long, jaundiced look at something like a telco, and figure out how to lay several hundred thousand miles of dark fiber.

Oh, wait......

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this has become all too common in America.

The Fed: Force us to show our records and we'll destroy the banks
Telcos: Regulate us and we will destroy the internet
Banks: Regulate us and we will destroy the economy.
The Fed: Audit us and we will destroy the country.

You'd think the public would get wise to this scam and get some pitch forks.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Paleolibertarian]

While I am a Free Market advocate, in most cases a free market does not exist BECAUSE of government regulation.

In the case of ISP's in many if not most areas broadband connections are provided by a single provider or 2 at the most. Those 2 are usually DSL from the local telephone company which is a government granted monopoly and the local Cable TV provider which is also a government granted monopoly. In rural areas often there is no broadband at all except for satellite which uses a satellite downlink and a dial-up uplink or a more expensive up/down dish. both of which are kind of sucky.

Being there is a real lack of competition there isn't much incentive for the 2 local ISP's to upgrade their services and they would much prefer to keep their existing rates, speeds and capacities.

As a result when there is heavy load by a few types of users these ISP's would rather choke off the service than to upgrade their capacity. If the other ISP is allowed to do the same then there isn't much reason for users to switch either. There is actually a sort of collusion when the 2 companies aren't forced to upgrade because the other ISP won't upgrade either. The result is crappy service and little hope of improvement.

What I would like to see is not only a net-neutrality which prevents ISP's from throtteling certain ports or users but FCC rules which prohibits cities from granting monopolies to telecomm and Cable TV operators. There would then be more competition in telecomm altogether which always results in better services at lower rates.

If you're going to have peacemeal regulation in the hopes of having more competition then there isn't really much hope of improving the state of any utility service. In a totally free market not only would there be cheaper and better broadband but cheaper and better services from ALL utilities.

This is not conjecture. It is actually the case in a few places. There is a city somewhere in Texas that has competition between electric companies. They even use a single set of transmission lines! If a customer decides to buy electricity from company X they simply order the service and company X comes out and switches the meter. the electricity providers negotiate between themselves for the maintenance of the transmission lines and how the electricity is injected into the grid. Utilities buy power from each other now so this isn't a radical change.

The same could be done for telecomm including cable companies which would make the method of getting the data to your house (the last mile) a mere technical question. The idea that a city would be buried under a huge amount of utility lines is simple propaganda put out by utilities seeking a monopoly and has been used since the early days of the quasi-public utility provider to justify their monopoly of providing crappy service at exaggerated rates.

Edwin

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

*sigh* Let's take an evolutionary algorithm :

We start with some basic population
1. we let them multiply, inserting mutations
2. we calculate the fitness function
3. we discard everyone "failing" minimum fitness -> this one would be death in the real world
4. goto 1

Obviously if you, as you suggest, take out step 3, then what happens ? Well, quite simply, the genetic code slowly randomizes. While one could say this will not destroy the evolutionary gains of the species in a single generation, it will eventually destroy all information that was gathered previously. Some people call this "de-evolving", which is blatantly incorrect. The correct term would be "suicide". It is like taking out parts of an engine and replacing them with random parts. Sure, the first change will (probably) not cause total destruction of the car, but obviously there's a limit of such changes you can do before the car will be destroyed.

It doesn't work without death. Without death, evolution has essentially the same function as "rm -Rf /".

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Violence is unnecessary in the "human condition" to the extent that individual freedom is unnecessary.

While I'm a fan of using nonviolent resistance where it is applicable, I don't see how such tactics can be used in a society where the oppressors control the media.

For example, the famous self-sacrifice of the Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire would have been for nothing without the subsequent worldwide spread of the photograph of same. I suspect that if the South Vietnamese could have suppressed the information, they would have.

Also (and at the risk of invoking Godwin), when asked what the Jews could have done to prevent the Holocaust, Gandhi suggested that they should have committed mass suicide. That is the logical conclusion of uncompromising nonviolence.

The moral is, unthinking nonviolence can be just as bad as unthinking violence. So, think!

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Toonol]

Speaking of Glenn Beck, has he finally come out and denied these horrible allegations against him?

For those who aren't in the know, a bunch of juvenile whackjobs are trying to start a meme by implying that there are allegations against Beck for murder, rape, and other crap. They seem to think they're scoring points against the right; in actually, those who do it (like AlamedaStone, above) reveal themselves as intellectually dishonest. Don't ever expect a reasonable discussion with anybody who thinks that's a clever way to argue.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Homburg]

Don't ever expect a reasonable discussion with anybody who thinks that's a clever way to argue.

Glenn Beck isn't interested in reasonable discussion. Hurling abuse at him is a perfectly reasonable way to respond to this.

Re:Government parties against neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrrrrrrrrr! FIRE THE PITCHFORK CANNONS!!

-Anonymous Coward of a Pirate.

Har

[Alarindris]

saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks

Any slower and the underground cables are going to start digging themselves up.

Re:Har

[davester666]

Yes, they'll actually have to go from stopped to going into reverse and digging up infrastructure if they are going to be forced to share.

Re:Har

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they'll actually have to go from stopped to going into reverse and digging up infrastructure if they are going to be forced to share.

You mean like Verizon ripping the copper out of the ground when they install FIOS?

Orwell

[Pharmboy]

So all internet traffic is equal, but some traffic *should* be more equal than others?

Re:Orwell

[Anonymous Coward]

...just the traffic that they can't monetize is less equal... after all it's not like they're already making huge profits for the most part, or at least adequately run ISP's are.

I wonder how much those groups were paid to write those letters or how much carefully crafted propaganda they were inundated with... either way it works out the same...

Re:Orwell

[Anonymous Coward]

See, the telcos are Stalinists!

--
posting as AC due to cookie cleaning and laziness of logging in
google is your friend

Similarities?

[paintballer1087]

"Enter the bureaucrats, the true rulers of the Republic, and on the payroll of the Trade Federation I might add. This is where Chancellor Valorum's strength will disappear."
Palpatine

Re:Similarities?

[zippthorne]

Worth noting: That was a lie...

Re:Similarities?

[paintballer1087]

While in that case it was a lie, it's normally true. It was the first thing to pop into my head when I RTFA.

Re:Similarities?

[TheRaven64]

Also worth noting: That was a terrible, terrible, film...

Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon now, "disenfranchised communities"? How many minorities in the USA are unable to access the Internet because they have been actively disenfranchised from doing so? It's really about as universal as it gets, the only reason anyone can't get it these days is because they can't afford it economically.

They should retitle these "minority groups" to "special interest racist groups" because that's what they are.

Re:Oh please

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

How many minorities in the USA are unable to access the Internet because they have been actively disenfranchised from doing so?

Sex offenders?

Re:Oh please

[Nathrael]

In the US, "sex offender" sadly also includes people who did a crime as simple as urinating in a less-than-suitable place. Not that I'd defend such behavior, but while I have absolutely no problem with rapists and child molesters being denied access to the Internet (or any other place, they are the scum of the Earth), but you shouldn't receive such harsh sentences for being an idiot and getting drunk.

Re:Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, "sex offender" sadly also includes people who did a crime as simple as urinating in a less-than-suitable place.

Ok, I promise not to piss on the seat next time.

slow down investment in broadband

[nurb432]

I read that as 'if we cant control content distribution and restrict our competition, and screw our own customers out of more money, we don't want any part of it'.

I hate to support the federal government, but that is what the FCC is there for, to watch out for us citizens, not the corporations.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[Shakrai]

I read that as 'if we cant control content distribution and restrict our competition, and screw our own customers out of more money, we don't want any part of it'.

That's one way to read it. The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks. Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as 'if we cant control content distribution and restrict our competition, and screw our own customers out of more money, we don't want any part of it'.

I hate to support the federal government, but that is what the FCC is there for, to watch out for us citizens, not the corporations.

Rather than get the federal government involved, though, I'd rather see an end to government-backed monopolies. We need real competition in internet access.

--
"All we ask is to be let alone." --President Jefferson Davis

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[drinkypoo]

Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?

That's a good point. Let's get congress on forcing cable companies to resell part of the right-of-way. Otherwise it's not worth it to me to grant them the right to install their equipment. Fuck cable TV.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, I dunno, the taxpayers AND subscribers already paid massive amounts a decade ago and have been paying more and more since then all the while the rest of the world (ok, Europe, Japan, and Korea) enjoys faster internet connections at lower rates?

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[just_another_sean]

Here, something worth reading if you haven't already.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[microbox]

open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks

The taxpayer paid for the networks.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[falconwolf]

Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?

How can you roll out broadband when the incumbents enjoy a monopoly. How many people have a choice as to whom they get cable or landline phone service from? Governments granted these companies monopolies so even if a compeating cable, phone company, or combined company wanted to they could not install their own cable or fiber.

Quite simply there is no free market in these services and until there is the incumbents should be regulated.

Falcon

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[j1mmy]

prove it

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[mrmeval]

Is the 'minority coalition' acorn? How much money did the corprats pay to get that sort of 'grass roots effort'?

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[dgatwood]

There can be no free market in these services until government lays down the cable itself and leases it in a nondiscriminatory fashion to any ISP that wants to set up shop in a community. Only when the colossal startup infrastructure cost is taken out of the picture completely can competition be even slightly practical outside of large cities.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[SEE]

How can you roll out broadband when the incumbents enjoy a monopoly. How many people have a choice as to whom they get cable or landline phone service from? Governments granted these companies monopolies so even if a compeating cable, phone company, or combined company wanted to they could not install their own cable or fiber.
Legally, those monopolies were all voided thirteen years ago with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In practice, the political power structures in large urban areas tend to have, ahem, "mutually beneficial financial relationships" with the local cable providers. The result is that, for example, when competitors tried to lay cable in Philadelphia, they faced all sorts of barriers.

These same ties of money and power, of course, encourage the members of these urban power structures (like the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and leaders of "minority rights groups" discussed in the article) to oppose net neutrality.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[grcumb]

The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks. Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?

I live and work in a country which recently introduced exactly these measures. The incumbent monopoly Internet provider has been fighting tooth and nail against what a past CEO called a 'cuckoo's egg' - a business that leverages someone else's infrastructure to compete directly with them.

On the face of it, it seems like a reasonable concern, but the moment you begin unpacking the implications, you realise that it's actually quite the opposite. Under the new law, network resources that are unlikely (or impossible) to duplicate are known as 'bottleneck resources'. The Telecommunications Regulator has the right to designate a particular carrier dominant in a given area, and to require them to negotiate in good faith with anyone who comes calling. In fact, the telco's license requires that they provide a 'reference contract' that other businesses can use to prepare themselves.

In practice, what happens is that, far from losing money, the telco actually gains. There are two main reasons for this:

• Income. The telco gets its tithe from all traffic that uses its resources. They have the right to ask a fair price, and thus are guaranteed not to lose money on their own traffic as well as everyone else's. Most notably, they profit more as the middleman, because the end-user support costs are borne by their competitor.
• Network Effects. Because more people are now encouraged to use the network, and because the competition makes it desirable to maximise the efficiency with which it's run, we end up with a larger pool of customers receiving better service than we would have otherwise.This, in turn, increases the value of the network as a whole, which increases its appeal to customers, and so on.[*]

Rather than reducing profits and creating burdensome regulatory overhead, enforced competition has the reverse effect. In truth, if the government is imposing anything on the telco, it's market forces. By requiring an open, competitive environment, they're allowing the Adam Smith-ian principles to apply themselves. This ensures that the network as a whole is run in the most efficient, most profitable manner possible.

And that is good for everyone.

-----------

[*] I live in a developing country where Internet reaches less than 15% of the population. This argument does not apply to the same extent in an already saturated market, though I suspect that it remains an influence.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[spammeister]

[*] I live in a developing country where Internet reaches less than 15% of the population.

So you live in Northern Ontario eh?

I'm counting dialup as not being internet, as this article is related to broadband...

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[falconwolf]

There can be no free market in these services until government lays down the cable itself and leases it in a nondiscriminatory fashion to any ISP that wants to set up shop in a community.

A free market wouldn't require government to build and own the infrastructure. If government does though I'd rather it be local and regional government working on local stuff, the state doing state wide stuff, and the feds doing interstate connections.

Only when the colossal startup infrastructure cost is taken out of the picture completely can competition be even slightly practical outside of large cities.

Who pays though, taxpayers? Taxpayers who don't want and won't use the infrastructure shouldn't be made to pay, in which case how does government pay for it? Also if there's no competition what incentive does the government have to upgrade the systems? In a really free market cable operators would be compeating with each other and with DSL and fiber. It would be insane to have taxpayers stuck paying for all these.

Falcon

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[falconwolf]

Legally, those monopolies were all voided thirteen years ago with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

So, if I had a billion dollars I could lay my own fiber? That is without greasing palms? If I were able to talk most of the people in my neighborhood to support it I could connect fiber to a tier 1 or 2 provider and offer fiber connections to everyone willing to buy it from me?

In practice, the political power structures in large urban areas tend to have, ahem, "mutually beneficial financial relationships" with the local cable providers.

I didn't find a reference to it but I once read where there were parts of New York City that still could not get broadband, either cable, DSL, or fiber so what you say above doesn't explain that.

Falcon

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[dgatwood]

A free market wouldn't require government to build and own the infrastructure.

The point is that you can still have a free market that sits on top of a government-run monopoly. We have plenty of examples of that. Cars aren't useful without roads, for example. It might be more cost effective for the government to just provide Internet service outright, though. Hard to say. Maybe let the government provide a standard, basic redidential setup and let businesses offer high-end services for people and businesses who need more. *shrugs*

If government does though I'd rather it be local and regional government working on local stuff, the state doing state wide stuff, and the feds doing interstate connections.

Absolutely agreed.

Who pays though, taxpayers? Taxpayers who don't want and won't use the infrastructure shouldn't be made to pay, in which case how does government pay for it?

Who pays for the interstates? Taxpayers who don't want and won't drive from state to state shouldn't be made to pay.

See the problem with that logic? It's the same thing. The initial construction costs come from the taxpayers because it is in the national interest to have much, much better broadband and to not continue falling rapidly behind the rest of the world. The continued maintenance costs come out of the money you pay the ISPs for your network connection, just like road work is largely paid for by gas taxes, car tags, sales tax on cars, etc.

Also if there's no competition what incentive does the government have to upgrade the systems? In a really free market cable operators would be compeating with each other and with DSL and fiber.

What incentive is there to upgrade the network now? In large cities, where there is at least a little bit of competition, you have options. In most places, you have at most two competitors, and for homes beyond that first few thousand feet from the CO, you only have one. Right now, there's no incentive to upgrade because people can't easily switch ISPs on a dime. There are exorbitant setup fees, early termination charges, etc. all because of the cost of doing a truck roll to the premises. And even after you get past that, it's a huge hassle with downtime, changing out CPE, etc. And their email often goes through the ISP, so they feel locked in (though this is slowly changing).

If you set it up correctly--as a government-run nonprofit with a separate funding pool--then the money has to get spent somewhere because otherwise it just sits there doing nothing, so there's no incentive not to upgrade the infrastructure. A great example of this in action is TVA. They provide some of the cheapest power in the country, their lines are generally well maintained, their infrastructure gets regular upgrades... everybody wins. And with government-issue fiber, the CPE becomes compatible across every service and no truck roll is ever needed (unless the fiber is bad, in which case the government pays to fix it), so there's no valid reason for the ISPs to charge early termination fees and similar, so they likely won't be allowed to do so. This makes changing ISPs as simple as changing long distance providers is now, which is why there *is* competition in that space (though much less now that cell phones offer free long distance; the point is that there was a lot of competition before something free came along).

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[lamapper]

prove it

Not a problem...to get you started...

- $200 Billion of tax payer money given to telcos for promises never kept.

Where's the fiber?

Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?

I would suggest that when a corporation purchases another corporation, it purchases it assets and liabilities. I would be shocked if you did not agree with that simple premise.

Since those companies made promises to Americans via elected officials; any company that purchases them shall be held responsible for those promises. When a company purchases another company, their due diligence should expose these obligations. They are responsible for them regardless.

There is not a single area of the county where promises of fiber for tax dollars have NOT taken place. I suggest to you, prove that the company has NOT promised fiber.

How much fiber could they have already installed for $200 billion?

How much fiber could they install for the $1.8 million per week they spend lobbying our elected officials against net neutrality, competition and free/open markets?

Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.

Re:slow down investment in broadband

[Uberbah]

The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks.

Maybe in some alternate reality where Time Warner spends $4 billion on infrastructure and saves $300 million for profits, instead of the other way around.

How will this slow down investment in BB networks?

[Bob-o-Matic!]

I have been a subscriber to Armstrong OneWire for cable internet for the last 5 years and the bandwidth has not changed at all. You would think that the price would drop, but it has remained constant, too.

Where I live in Ohio there is no incentive to invest in BB networks. There is no real competition.

Write your congresscritters!

[toppavak]

The signers*:
Michael Arcuri (NY-27), Joe Baca (CA-43), John Barrow (GA-12), Sanford Bishop (GA-2), Tim Bishop (NY-1), Dan Boren (OK-2), Leonard Boswell (IA-3), Allen Boyd (FL-2), Robert Brady (PA-1), Bobby Bright (AL-2), G.K. Butterfield (NC-1), Dennis Cardoza (CA-18), Russ Carnahan (MO-3), Christopher Carney (PA-10), Travis Childers (MS-1), Donna Christensen (VI), William Lacy Clay (MO-1), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-5), Jim Costa (CA-20), Joseph Crowley (NY-7), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Elijah Cummings (MD-7), Kathleen Dahlkemper (PA-3), Danny Davis (IL-7), Lincoln Davis (TN-4), Steve Driehaus (OH-1), Chaka Fattah (PA-2), Bill Foster (IL-14), Marcia Fudge (OH-11), Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20), Al Green (TX-9), Gene Green (TX-29), Parker Griffith (AL-5), Debbie Halvorson (IL-11), Alcee Hastings (FL-23), Baron Hill (IN-9), Tim Holden (PA-17), Sheila Jackson ,Lee (TX-18), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30), Hank Johnson (GA-4), Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24), Frank Kratovil (MD-1), Rick Larsen (WA-2), Daniel Maffei (NY-25), Michael McMahon (NY-13), Gregory Meeks (NY-6), Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Michael Michaud (ME-2), Walt Minnick (ID-1), Dennis Moore (KS-3), Glenn Nye (VA-2), Ed Pastor (AZ-4), Solomon Ortiz (TX-27), Ed Perlmutter (CO-7), Nick Rahall (WV-3), Jared Polis (CO-2), Silvestre Reyes (TX-16), Mike Ross (AR-4), Loretta Sanchez (CA-47), Kurt Schrader (OR-5), Allyson Schwartz (PA-13), David Scott (GA-13), Heath Shuler (NC-11), Albio Sires (NJ-13), Zachary Space (OH-18), John Spratt (SC-5), John Tanner (TN-8), Bennie Thompson (MS-2), Paul Tonko (NY-21), Ed Towns (NY-10), Peter Welch (VT), Charlie Wilson (OH-6)

*List retrieved from:
http://www.precursorblog.com/content/72-house-democrats-letter-urges-fcc-avoid-tentative-conclusions-which-favor-government-regulation

Headline != article

[jd142]

"Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push"

Except that's not true. The second sentence says that Democrats, including the President, generally support Net Neutrality. Also, the phrase "minority groups" is misleading because it is generally referred to groups of traditionally underrepresented peoples.

It's the equivalent of writing:

Slashdot supports Microsoft Windows 7 over Linux.

One of the people who works for Slashdot uses Windows 7 at home. Here is his story.

Re:Headline != article

[falconwolf]

"Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push"

Except that's not true. The second sentence says that Democrats, including the President, generally support Net Neutrality.

Except it is true. The third paragraph says this "Although the Congressional Black Caucus isn't traditionally against government regulation, some members are concerned that many African-Americans and other ethnic minorities lack access to broadband networks." They are concerned that if net neutrality becomes enforcable broadband provider will not build out broadband. I say this is hogwash. In a free market, which we do not have, businesses would be compeating with each other for customers. Instead of people not having broadband access they'd have choices as to whom they get it from.

Falcon

Re:Headline != article

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, "minority" has been used to refer to a small group in congress for a lot longer than it has referred to racial/ethnic groups.

Re:Headline != article

[uuddlrlrab]

Being the person who submitted the story, allow me to clarify that the input field for the title is a bit limited, thus necessitating that the original title be clipped a bit. Please forgive my editing skills, or lack thereof, when trying to shorten the headline as seen in the source article into something /. would accept.

Let it go.

Whew, close one

[cjfs]

Democrats, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have generally supported new rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content

It's okay, they still think the Internet is just the web.

Re:Whew, close one

[betterunixthanunix]

Why is that OK? I know that Fidonet is long forgotten for most, but a friend of mine who is still active there pointed out that the Whitehouse press release echo recently died because the Obama administration decided to "upgrade" to a new, blog system for press releases. I can see a net neutrality bill being passed that only covers the web, and suddenly I will lose access to IRC and Usenet because my ISP decided to maximize web bandwidth at the cost of other "services."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Uh.... -1 Nitpicking and Wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, the headline ought to read, "72 Senate Democrats and a Coalition of Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push?"

I mean, any time you refer to "the Democrats" or "minority groups" you are referring to a fictitious whole, sure. But democrats (plural) did question the push, and the minority groups in the article are in fact groups that claim to represent traditionally underrepresented peoples... groups with names like "Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership," "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)," and "Asian American Justice Center."

So... yeah. I'm grumpy on Saturday mornings, too, but geeze.

Well, if you are going to pick nits, you should at least realize these are 72 HOUSE Democrats. Not even in Howard Dean's wettest dreams are there 72 Democrats in the Senta.

Investment?

[Dega704]

"saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks." Aka, the providers will hold our broadband future hostage if they don't get their way. Craptastic. With this many people pitching a fit perhaps they should come up with some other incentives to keep the telcos happy, although I have no idea what would be as tantalizing as being able to auction off their bandwidth to the highest bidders.

Re:Investment?

[falconwolf]

I have no idea what would be as tantalizing as being able to auction off their bandwidth to the highest bidders.

That wouldn't work, it's those who have the bandwidth now that can afford to be the highest bidders. The Mom and Pop ISP willing to provide broadband certainly couldn't afford to pay. The answer to expanding broadband penetration is to take away the incumbents's monopolies.

Falcon

Re:Investment?

[Dega704]

Exactly. That is what the big ISPs want and the government wouldn't be able to think up any other incentives to keep them happy otherwise when the net neutrality rules keep them from doing it. I guess I worded it poorly but trust me we are on the same side on this issue. :)

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[nxtw]

AT&T DSL (available in much of Ohio) has gone from 768/128 for $40/month and a one year agreement in 2002, to 6016/768 for $35/month with no one year agreement in 2007. AT&T never bothered to upgrade to ADSL2, so they can't offer speeds that are much higher than what they offer now. Only those who live in an area in which their IPTV service is available can get faster speeds (over VDSL.)

In the past 5 years or so, Time Warner/Road Runner (also available in much of Ohio) has increased the speed from 3 mbit to 7 mbit without any price increase, and have added "PowerBoost" - marketing term for a DOCSIS feature that provides a temporary burst of higher speeds. They also have a "Turbo" service which brings the speed up to 15 mbit.

How investment slows down...

[Qzukk]

"We don't want to invest in speeding up the network, so if the government blocks us from investing in slowing down the network, no investment will get done!"

Re:How investment slows down...

[moxsam]

Nicely said. That's their attitude, IMHO.

Don't worry, the government will make it better

[Anonymous Coward]

SSSUUURRREEE they will.

Believe that crap and I'll sell you a bridge. And some swampland.

Giving the government more power so they can regulate the internet just means the government will attract that much more money from special interests and lobbyists trying to influence that power.

So the golden rule will apply: those that have the gold make the rules.

Better to not give the government the power in the first place. It's not like "We the people" will ever get it back.

Of course, Democrat voters always vote to give more power and money to the government, then for some strange reason act totally surprised when the government either fucks up or misuses or downright abuses that power. If Democrat FDR hadn't set up massive federal police forces like the FBI and Democrat Harry Truman the CIA and the foundations of the NSA, those forces couldn't be used against the US populace under the Patriot Act. Doh! Maybe the "Dummycrat" epithet is well-earned.

Yeah, that may be flame-bait. But it sure as shit is true: Democrat voters vote for more taxes and power to the government, then they're the ones who act surprised that power and money get misused.

How about growing up and not expecting the government to hold your wee-wee and otherwise take care of you?

Re:Don't worry, the government will make it better

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but either the Gov or the Corp's are gonna get the power. I know the gov rarely looks out for the people but the corps NEVER look out for the people so right now it is a better bet to let the gov regulate than hope that the corps will do the right thing.

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[Anonymous Coward]

You would think that the price would drop, but it has remained constant, too.

The real price has dropped. The nominal price has not. What, do you think inflation doesn't exist?

The perception of neutrality is "change"

[erroneus]

"Change we don't understand!" The reality that the legislators need to understand is that new neutrality is what we have when people/parties aren't actively doing harm to the way the public internet was designed to work. Net neutrality is what we have NOW. The net neutrality legislation would merely be written to keep things as they are in terms of large players disabling other large player or preventing small players from existing or growing.

Re:The perception of neutrality is "change"

[jfengel]

> the way the public internet was designed to work.

The internet was designed to be flexible. Nothing in the protocols precludes non-neutrality, and there are already instances where ISPs favor some over others. Before the ultra-high-speed Tier 1s became ubiquitous, you ended up with non-neutral access based on who your ISP decided to connect to.

They just wanted to expand it further, prompting calls for a legislative solution. Legislative solutions to the Internet tend to fail. If you want something solved, you set up the protocols to enforce it. And the Internet Protocol was designed precisely to allow different subnets to have different policies to the greatest degree possible.

Maybe the world would be better off with a net neutrality law, but that's far from obvious, and it's not the way the Internet was designed.

Yes and no

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Government parties against neutrality

Who would have ever thought.

Yes and no. The Obama Administration's official policy is strongly in favor of net neutrality.

Re:Yes and no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and Obama's also strongly in favor of ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell - something he can just do, without needing Congress's support.

And he still hasn't done it.

Throw in his complete failure to get healthcare reform going, the administration's position on net neutrality seems - well, less than meaningless.

Re:Yes and no

[uuddlrlrab]

Right, he'll just handily get that all fixed before jetting off to the Mideast, make peace between Israel and their neighbors, create a new Palestinian state, convince the militants in both Iraq and Afghanistan to lay down their arms, thus ending both wars and magically transforming both nations into corruption-free democratic-republics just like us, convince Iran to stop their nuclear program, and make OPEC fall in love with the U.S. and give us free oil just long enough until we get our energy policy sorted, which should be by, ohhh, say noonish Monday? After that, he'll return for a relaxing weekend of writing up a new healthcare plan that makes everybody happy and cures all disease instantly! Of course, being a magic negro, he won't need sleep, and he'll spend Sunday night into Monday morning crafting aforementioned energy policy, which he'll handily convince congress to implement before lunchtime. With all that tackled, he'll be free to casually move on to simpler issues like the worldwide recession, world hunger, and violence and repression in Africa, all of which couldn't possibly take him, what, two, three days tops? Amirite?

Re:Yes and no

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that all he has to do for his Don't Ask, Don't Tell promise is a single executive order, right?

It would take him less time to implement than he's spent talking about implementing it! If he has time to give a speech about it, he has time to write the executive order and be done with it.

Re:Yes and no

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when has the Obama administration's publicly declared policies shown any resemblance to its actual intent and actions.

Example : the Obama administration supports organic farming and produce
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html

yet appoints Mr. Monsanto as the food czar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html

Obama has a habit of saying one thing to garner media and public support and doing the exact opposite to appease its financial and political supporters

My letter to my congressmen.

[Logger]

Time to get off our collective butts. Emails, Letters, and phone calls! Keep it short, sweet, clean, well reasoned, and SIMPLE. Remember their attention span isn't all that long. Here's my letter I just fired off to my senators and congressman.

Senator/Congress(man/woman) --------,

Please support net-neutrality.

When Cisco and cable/phone companies say "innovation" it is not my idea of innovation. Cisco means rather than competing with cheap, commodity hardware they can sell expensive traffic shaping hardware. The cable/phone companies mean rather than expanding their networks, they can reap more profit from the existing network. That may be an innovative way of generating profit, but it's not bringing innovative technology and services to the consumer.

Net-neutrality will protect truly innovative startup businesses like NetFlicks and Vonage from unfair and anti-competitive tatics by the cable/phone companies. Please support net-neutrality.

Sincerely,
----------

Re:My letter to my congressmen.

[aurizon]

Good, non inflammatory letter. I think rational and non inflammatory letters have the best chance of being read and heard. Letters from loons are not considered at all.
We need to educate both parties about the reasons the USA has steadily fallen behind the rest of the world due to the actions of the Bell monopoly and it's descendants in the internet age.
The reasons are the real world bribery of the politicians by lobby groups, PACS etc, all driven by industry, who fear competition, ologopoly is so much better they say.
The FCC sees this and is on the side of the public, but it is vulnerable to the politicians and will yield to them and condemn us to a new dark ages, LOL

Apt analogy using telcos

[taumeson]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the case for Net Neutrality could easily be made by asking everyone opposed to it the following question:

"Do you support the ability for telephone companies to charge you different rates based on who you're calling instead of long distance charges?"

I would think it's a pretty obvious "no". We don't want the telephone company charging us different rates for calling Papa John's pizza instead of Domino's, right? We certainly don't want to get charged a different rate for calling one radio station over another (you know Clear Channel would want to work out some kind of deal).

Why does it seem logical to allow for broadband companies to pull this kind of stunt?

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[baKanale]

I don't understand that. Maybe if it were a car analogy.

How about, "Do you support the ability of toll bridges to charge you different tolls based on whether you're driving a Chevy or a Mercedes-Benz?"

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[will_die]

However it would be wanted if you asked those same people:

"Should calls to the emergency call center be of the same priority as calls from telemarketers?"

Under the current proposals all ports and message types have to be treated at the same priority, so DoS attack would have the same priority as E-mail.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[skine]

It's not necessarily charging different rates, but rather enforced delay or blocking the site completely.

So to use your example, say a telco were to sign a deal with Papa John's that any of their customers who called Domino's would be put on hold for five minutes before being connected. Obviously this would severely cripple Domino's business.

The telco could take it one step further, and simply block any of their customers from calling Domino's. If there are only two telcos in town, this means that Domino's just lost about half of its delivery business.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[falconwolf]

Under the current proposals all ports and message types have to be treated at the same priority, so DoS attack would have the same priority as E-mail.

So change that. Just don't let access providers charge different rates depending on the originations and destinations. If I wanted VoIP phone service, not that I do, and I got it from one company why should my ISP be able to charge the ViOP service when it offers a compeating service? The compeating service still pays for it's access and I pay for my access.

Or say you're a Republican but your ISP supports Democrats, would you want your ISP to say what you can and can not access? That Republican website you want to visit is blacklisted, what would you think of that?

And don't forget, most broadband service areas do not have competition for broadband. Broadband is provided by 1 cable company or 1 phone company.

Falcon

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[RobertLTux]

there is a galaxy of difference between a contractual and requested prioritizing of traffic and an ISP shaping a network to block competing vendors services or interfering with traffic on the network.
examples
1 on my control panel i elect to have my VPN and VOIP be given a set amount of bandwidth --- this is requested
2 my isp decides to shape traffic so that third party VOIP and VPN services fail 85% of the time --- this is not requested and should be illegal
3 my isp decides to flood the network with reset packets and false routing to jam Torrent and other P2P traffic or drops my IP address during ftp sessions ----- should be illegal

giving a customer what they want is one thing
trying to sell bundle services by degrading third parties is another
interfering with traffic just to cut costs and increase bonuses you need to have a 9 chevron address to get to

Network Nuetrality is at its core Function as an Internet Service Provider and keep out of what is on the network UNLESS IT IS PART OF THE CONTRACT (or flat out straight up illegal to be on the network and then provide LEOs with what they need)

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[hackiavelli]

From what I understand the rules allow ISPs to shape traffic, just not to the detriment of their competitors (e.g. providing fast video service while throttling Hulu).

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[dgatwood]

Under the current proposals all ports and message types have to be treated at the same priority, so DoS attack would have the same priority as E-mail.

That's not correct. HR3458 does not propose ANY specific regulations. It authorizes the FCC to create regulations and specifies a set of guiding principles for those regulations.

Further, it says that ISPs have the duty to:

'(1) not block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use an Internet access service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service through the Internet;

Emphasis mine. DOS attacks are presumptively not lawful until proven otherwise.

Finally, it leaves a specific exemption for any reasonable QoS.

(d) Reasonable Network Management- Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit an Internet access provider from engaging in reasonable network management consistent with the policies and duties of nondiscrimination and openness set forth in this Act. For purposes of subsections (b)(1) and (b)(5), a network management practice is a reasonable practice only if it furthers a critically important interest, is narrowly tailored to further that interest, and is the means of furthering that interest that is the least restrictive, least discriminatory, and least constricting of consumer choice available. In determining whether a network management practice is reasonable, the Commission shall consider, among other factors, the particular network architecture or technology limitations of the provider.

Again, emphasis mine. You can pretty much skip everything not in bold and you'll get the gist of the paragraph.

In other words, injecting TCP resets into BitTorrent traffic: banned; throttling bandwidth of excessive users only during periods of heavy load on the network and only to the extent necessary to give reasonable bandwidth to people just browsing the web casually: allowed. For once, the government got the regulation almost exactly right.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[nickmalthus]

Your assumption is that a person in distress would first call EMS which is not always the case. Without network neutrality would the carries prefer to take on legal liability for delaying or blocking direct emergency communications between people that result in personal injury or property damage? Additionally, who should decide what emergency calls are? A) The sender and receiver, who own the communication B) The government, consisting of elected representatives who presumably server the public interest C) Carrier corporations who's sole existence is to maximize profit within legal, not ethical, boundaries? Finally, DOS Attacks are illegal and are investigated and prosecuted by the FBI. If carriers wish to protect their customers from illegal attacks with the customers consent that is an entirely different issue apart from network neutrality.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[Anonymous Coward]

Telephone network analogies aren't great because they are circuit switched networks as opposed to packet switched.

BTW, your example is flawed since net neutrality doesn't say (or shouldn't) how to treat different classes of data, just that all within the same class should be treated equally. Thus me downloading from Youtube shouldn't be blocked or degraded just because they refuse to pay my ISPs an extortion tax. Similarly, if my ISP offered VOIP or TVOIP, they should be on the same playing field as any other service I choose on the internet.

The term network neutrality has been appropriated by lots of people, but in the original context that was what started all of this.

Of course, it would be nice if they started investing in expanding bandwidth, stopped trying to block or degrade legitimate forms of traffic, and provided services with no caps, but those are separate issues (or at least should be) from net neutrality.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[Qzukk]

"Should calls to the emergency call center be of the same priority as calls from telemarketers?"

"Should AT&T upgrade their network so that calls to the emergency call center can go through even if there are a ton of telemarketers on the phone?"

AT&T's answer is no. They would rather take the telemarketer's money and then spend considerable effort (that could have gone into upgrading the network) to mess with their calls.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[slashqwerty]

The real irony here is that the minorities opposed to network neutrality are the same people that will be discriminated against because of it. Without network neutrality the NAACP may soon find people can't access their network because the NAACP hasn't paid extra dues to a dozen different service providers.

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[jmerlin]

Balloonboy? Is that you?

Re:Apt analogy using telcos

[will_die]

This is for the FCC proposal. NPR had a recent interview where he used the port example one the more positive terms of stopping ISP from blocking certain ports. As for the government making a law for not blocking user wanted ports just look at CANSPAM.

Let's just bring back old-school AOL, then.

[dotfile]

'We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind.'

In other words, 'We want to make sure everyone is just as screwed as our constituents. If they can't afford top-tier service, then no one else should be able to get it either.' Or am I completely misunderstanding the logic here?

God forbid we don't legislate absolute equality in every aspect of life for all our citizens; after all, look how well it worked out for China and the USSR. I know some people are uncomfortable with the concept of poor people not being able to afford everything that's available to not quite as poor people, or people who live in the boonies not having their corner Starbucks and fiber connectivity. But what they're bitching about is that if carriers aren't free to pick and choose what they deliver and how fast, you might have areas that lag behind the population centers.

Well, yeah, no shit. I suppose we could all go back to dialup service and AOL, then we'd all be on equal footing again. Screwed completely, but equal, which I guess is OK with 72 of our elected morons and a few groups whoring for attention. Of course then they'd be squealing about not all the phone lines in BFE supporting 56K, and the whole thing would start over again.

Must we always seek the lowest common denominator? Or could we maybe get comfortable with the simple fact that advanced services and technologies are pretty much always going to be available to employed people in population centers first, then spread as economy of scale comes into play? Did none of these people ever read or go to school? Jeez.

Re:Uh.... -1 Nitpicking and Wrong?

[mqduck]

Yeah, I was particularly depressed to discover that the "minority groups" mentioned weren't somethings like The Black Businessman's Association (a name I just made up) but included groups like the fucking NAACP. I'm a supporter of the group, and this is really shameful of them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Problems with broandband

[falconwolf]

It amazes me none of these people mention the root cause of the lack of broadband, there is no competition!

Falcon

Who has a copy of this letter, me the whole thing?

[wonkavader]

I'm only seeing a few quotes repeated in a few forms.

Given that there's a typo in the first line of the extract which is getting bandied about I'm especially uncomfortable calling/emailing/faxing my congresscritter to rip him a new one.

I want to see the whole thing, THEN I will rip him a new one.

Which would be a service to him, because apparently, his current one is plugged by the external sexual organs of our local ILEC and cable companies.

This is ultimately the reason why ILECs are so slow, bloated and inefficient. The more people they have doing manual (both technical and paperwork) tasks, the less automation they have and the slower and less profitable they are, but conversely, the more votes they seem to control and the more they can enforce legislative support for archaic business models (monopolies wherever possible) and behaviors on the politicians in each state. "If this passes, we'll have to lay people off. We'll lay your district people off, and we'll blame you." They repeat this threat over and over, like a monotone operator message recording.

Our congresspeople keep screwing us (and primarily their own district people) because they're frightened. This is why you should always think very carefully before ever siding with an ILEC on ANYTHING.

What investment?!

[Dudeman_Jones]

Seriously, what investment would this be slowing? The Telcos already don't give a crap about the networks, that's how this whole disaster got started in the first place! They didn't want to upgrade, in order to artificially stimulate demand and thus profits. Cause and effect; This group fails at it.

Donations

[whisper_jeff]

Check the recent campaign donations for all of those politicians. I suspect we'll see some notable opponents of net neutrality on the lists...

Sorry, but only idiots and those who make money from a lack of net neutrality would oppose it.

Wait... Maybe some of those politicians are just idiots...

Re:Donations

[dotfile]

Maybe some of those politicians are just idiots...

That's a pretty safe assumption, unfortunately. Of course that doesn't mean they're not also greedy and corrupt. So, I think they're probably squarely in BOTH camps -- idiots, and those making money from blocking it.

In fact net neutrality forces companies to invest

[moxsam]

It's the exact opposite to what they claim. Net neutrality does not slow down investment in broadband networks, in fact massive QoS is the best tool to stall any investment in the infrastructure. If a network can work good enough at nearly 90-100% utilization thanks to QoS even if it means that for example non-HTTP traffic is slowed down to the brink of uselessness, then why invest in faster links? And if every Telco is allowed to do it, then every Telco will do it, leaving the customers no choices. Net neutrality is good for the competition, good for the market and good for the customers. It's a regulation to keep the market vivid and to weed out those companies that are unfit to compete.

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[thetoadwarrior]

That's pretty much guaranteed not to change just because companies will throttle bandwidth on small businesses. People in the middle of nowhere aren't profitable. They'll do anything to ignore them.

Re:Uh.... -1 Nitpicking and Wrong?

[jd142]

"I mean, any time you refer to "the Democrats" or "minority groups" you are referring to a fictitious whole, sure. But democrats (plural) did question the push"

So if two Christians advocated murder and cannibalism, an accurate headline would be "Christians advocate murder and cannibalism?" If it were 2 Republicans, could I write "Republicans advocate murder and cannibalism?"

Just as 2 out of millions doesn't justify that headline, 72 out of 256, 28%, doesn't justify the headline. If it were 160 out of 256, that would be different. Or if the leadership, the people who speak for the party, supported it, then it would be justified. But if the party doesn't support it and only 28% of the reps do, it simply isn't accurate.

An accurate headline might be "Blue Dog Democrats Question Net Neutrality" if the 72 were comprised of members in the so-called Blue Dog coalition.

And now a word from our sponsors

[dkleinsc]

Acuri (NY-27) $5000 from AT&T
Baca (CA-43) $5000 from AT&T
Barrow (GA-12) $5000 from National Cable & Telecommunications Assn
S Bishop (GA-2) $2750 from AT&T
T Bishop (NY-1) $2500 from Communications Workers of America, $2000 from AT&T, $1000 from Verizon
Boren (OK-2) $5000 from AT&T
Boswell (IA-3) $5000 from AT&T
Boyd (FL-2) $2500 from Verizon, $2500 from Comcast
Brady (PA-1) $5000 from National Cable & Telecommunications Assn
Bright (AL-2) $4000 from AT&T
Butterfield (NC-1) $5000 from AT&T
Cardoza (CA-18) $4500 from AT&T
Carnahan (MO-3) $6100 from Communications Workers of America
Carny (PA-10) $5000 from L3 Communications
Childers (MS-1) $5000 from AT&T
Christensen (VI) No obvious contribution reported yet
Clay (MO-1) $2500 from AT&T, $3000 from Verizon
Cleaver (MO-5) $2500 from Communications Workers of America
Costa (CA-20) $2000 from AT&T
Crowley (NY-7) $5000 from Comcast, $2500 from Verizon, $2000 from L3 Communications
Cuellar (TX-28) $1000 from Verizon
Cummings (MD-7) $1000 from AT&T
Dahlkemper (PA-3) $3000 from AT&T
Davis (IL-7) $5000 from AT&T
Davis (TN-4) $3000 from AT&T
Driehaus (OH-1) $1000 from AT&T
Fattah (PA-2) $1000 from AT&T, $1000 from Comcast
Foster (IL-14) $2000 from Comcast
Fudge (OH-11) $2000 from AT&T, $2500 from Communications Workers of America
Gonzalez (TX-20) $2000 from AT&T, $2000 from Comcast
Green (TX-9) $5000 from Communications Workers of America
Green (TX-29) $5000 from Communications Workers of America, $2500 from AT&T, $2500 from Comcast
Griffith (AL-5) $6500 from L3 Communications, $4500 from AT&T
Halvorson (IL-11) $7000 from AT&T, $3500 from Comcast
Hastings (FL-23) $5000 from AT&T
Hill (IN-9) $5000 from AT&T, $2500 from National Cable and Telecommunications Association
Holden (PA-17) $5000 from Communications Workers of America, $3000 from AT&T
Jackson (TX-18) $5000 from AT&T
Johnson (TX-30) $2000 from AT&T
Johnson (GA-4) $2500 from Communications Workers of America, $2000 from Verizon, $1000 from Comcast
Kosmas (FL-24) $4000 from Comcast
Kratovil (MD-1) $3500 L3 Communications, $3000 from AT&T, $3000 from Comcast
Larsen (WA-2) $1000 from Qwest, $1000 from Verizon
Maffei (NY-25) $4800 from Data Key Communications, $3000 from Verizon, $2750 from Time Warner
McMahon (NY-13) $4000 from AT&T, $2000 from Time Warner, $2000 from Verizon
Meeks (NY-6) $5000 from AT&T, $1000 from Verizon
Melancon (LA-3) $10000 from Comcast, $4000 from AT&T, $2500 from Communications Workers of America, $2000 from Time Warner
Michaud (ME-2) $4000 from AT&T, $1000 from Time Warner, $1000 from Qualcomm
Minnick (ID-1) $3500 from Comcast, $2000 from AT&T, $2000 from Verizon
Moore (KS-3) $2000 from AT&T, $1000 from Comcast, $1000 from Verizon
Nye (VA-2) $4800 from Cox Communications, $2000 from Verizon, $1500 from Communications Workers of America
Ortiz (TX-27) $3500 from AT&T, $1250 from Communications Workers of America, $1000 from Comcast
Pastor (AZ-4) $4000 from AT&T, $2000 from Verizon
Perlmutter (CO-7) $4500 from Qwest, $1000 from AT&T, $1000 from National Cable & Telecommunications Association, $1000 from Verizon
Polis (CO-2) No obvious contributions
Rahall (WV-3) $2500 from AT&T
Reyes (TX-16) $2000 from AT&T, $2000 from Verizon, $1000 from L3 Communications
Ross (AR-4) $5000 from AT&T, $4000 from Verizon
Sanchez (CA-47) $5000 from AT&T, $5000 from L3 Communications
Schrader (OR-5) $3000 from AT&T, $2000 from Qwest
Schwartz (PA-13) $2500 from National Cable and Telecommunications Association
Scott (GA-13) $3000 from AT&T, $2500 from Communications Workers of America, $2000 from Verizon
Shuler (NC-11) $4000 from AT&T, $1000 from Communications Workers of America
Sires (NJ-13) $5000 from AT&T, $3000 from Verizon, $2500 from

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

meaningless, of course: that's adding up any money from any employees from these companies, and these companies have a lot of employees.

Unless you're implying that if I as a private citizen donate money to a candidate, it really means that my employer is bribing them.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[ustolemyname]

Total:
$450450

Yet another example of how basic command line tools (in this case, sed + bc) can improve your daily life.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[The Longest Line]

The biggest surprise for me on that list is Jared Polis (CO-02). For those who don't know him, he's the dude who was behind ProFlowers.com and BlueMountainArts.com, as well as a flurry of other tech start-ups I can't recall. I just don't get it. He didn't take PAC money during his campaign (he mostly self-funded), so no overt telcom influence there that I'm aware of. And he's 100% safe for re-election in 2010, so it's not like he needs the money now. A tech entrepreneur against net neutrality. WTF?

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[TheRaven64]

And here you see a post by a man who needs to learn to use awk...

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[TheRaven64]

$5,000? That's all it takes to by a congressman? Seriously? Get all Slashdot readers who are US citizens to put in $2 and you could buy the whole government.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

meaningless, of course: that's adding up any money from any employees from these companies, and these companies have a lot of employees.

Those donations just happened to total up to such nice round numbers? Bullshit.

Unless you're implying that if I as a private citizen donate money to a candidate, it really means that my employer is bribing them.

In some cases that's exactly what it would be.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[bigngamer92]

The price goes up if there's someone on the other line though. If we pick out a topic that won't hit the mainstream news feeds (like this one), the price is low. But there is no way in hell you could simply buy something as huge as the Healthcare Reform Bill at $5k a senator. I think the price is probably more like $10k.

Gentlemen: If I gave you a Million dollars will you sleep with me?

Lady: Well yes.

Gentlemen: How about $20?

Lady: What type of Woman do you think I am?!

Gentlemen: We've already established that. Now we're negotiating price.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

Melancon (LA-3) $10000 from Comcast, $4000 from AT&T, $2500 from Communications Workers of America, $2000 from Time Warner

Comcast and Time Warner aren't even active in Melancon's district, which is served almost entirely by Cox and AT&T.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[gmhowell]

The sickening thing isn't that our congressmen are whores, it is that they are cheap whores.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[dkleinsc]

Notice he didn't have a contribution like the others.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[dkleinsc]

I should point out that's just contributions to campaign committees, not to PACs.

For more details, check out opensecrets.org.

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

  by dkleinsc (563838)

after seeing your stuff and realizing the pattern, we decided to expand your findings --- We linked to this page as well

http://newnetworks.com/fundingattverizon.htm

Congressmen, Senators and Minority Groups Getting Paid by AT&T, Verizon and the Cablecos to Block Net Neutrality?

turns out that the other letters we quote, like the minorities letter, were almost all funded by AT&T and Verizon, -- and the kicker ---

the Verizon and AT&T foundation money comes from ratepayers. Then the money is given to non-profits, who then spout the corporate line, who in turn harms their constituents twice by not confronting the issue to protect the constituent, but also, getting hit with rate increases or...bad telco/cable franchise agreements or ...

Re:And now a word from our sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a shame that slashdot readers don't recognize this as the most important part of this legislation... that it is supported by all of the large telecommunication firms. That should clue them in on who benefits from Net "Neutrality."

I swear, too many people want the Gov't to wipe their own arses for them.

The tech crowd really needs to understand the concepts of liberty and freedom (and not the bastardized 'freedom' peddled by Richard Stallman).

It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[R2.0]

"A coalition of minority groups made their objections known as well, saying, 'We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind.'"

Bullshit - "disenfranchised communities" (read "minority")being served now. The reason they are not going into those areas is lack of profit. So how is leaving the ISP's alone going to help that? Or how will net neutrality hurt it?

Of course, there could be another reason. Net Neutrality move ISP's closer to common carrier status. The effect of this will be to LESSEN the amount of pressure these politicians can bring on behalf of their "constituency". If the ISP's are treated as content providers, then the Fairness Doctrine will have more impact when it gets reapplied - they can try to force ATT, Comcast, L3, etc. to manipulate their traffic in a way that promotes "fairness". So the carriers could be forced to, say, throttle traffic from Rush Limbaugh's website so that its traffic level matches, say, Public Radio International (PRI). Or the NRA's website until it matches the Brady campaign.

But if Net Neutrality is the policy, that becomes harder - they'd be saying, in effect, that ISP's could control political speech, but NOT commercial speech. That wouldn't even make it past the District court, much less through appeals and SCOTUS. Net Neutrality would hobble a Fairness Doctrine for the internet, and THAT's why this group doesn't want it.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[shentino]

Personally, I'd say LEAVE the disenfranchised communities behind.

Not to say they don't deserve to have internet, but I'd propose we make sure everyone has good water, good power, and good fire protection, yes?

Case in point: My grandmother used to live in eltopia. Internet access? Hell no! We had to use well water, and we didn't even have a fire district.

I don't think internet access would be the first thing on their minds.

Yay for open access, but let's not forget life's essentials first.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[dgatwood]

That's absurd. The fairness doctrine will never be applied to ISPs. It covers ONLY broadcast TV and radio, and only because of limited spectrum. It doesn't even cover content providers like print media, much less ISPs. There's no way that anyone could possibly get it expanded to cover ISPs.

And even if they did, in order to get bandwidth restrictions put in place, they would have to prove that traffic was being unfairly altered in such a way that limited access to one side of the issues. The fairness doctrine requires equal access to the content, not equal viewing of that content. It would no more allow them to reduce bandwidth for a right wing site than it would allow them to force people to keep their radios turned on while a Democrat gives a rebuttal to a Republican State of the Union address.

BTW, the FCC commissioner who suggested this absurdity is a Republican-appointed commissioner who was formerly a paid lobbyist for telecom companies. His comments should be carefully weighed against his biases. I suspect that if you follow the money, you'll find that the Democrats who are fighting against network neutrality are similarly beholden to such telecom special interests.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[sumdumass]

There is a way to solve the issues without ever going to those points. A simple law that says no ISP can purposely limits traffic on their networks to speeds below what was advertised and sold to the customers sending or receiving the internet traffic.

That eliminates the entire idea of slowing others traffic down in expectancy of payments as well as slowing services down in order to promote their own services. Maybe add something about not being able to exclude communication protocols or tier them and make sure all speeds are accurately advertised and presented to the customer.

This will eliminate ISP's selling 1.5 meg bandwidth potential as 3 megs and slowing customers down when traffic gets heavy. It will also allow devoid Cable operators the opportunity to slow you tube and other sites like Hulu down in preference to selling channels on their outside systems. If they do not deliver their speeds, then people will demand an alternative.

It also allows companies to sell 3 meg services and offer 8 megs when the network is light on traffic. People will see that as getting more but not going below what they purchased.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[4D6963]

Eltopia, WA? You don't have running water in Eltopia, WA?!? And you're making one dumb ass false dichotomy. "Leaving the disenfranchised communities behind" by having net neutrality and thus hindering the incentive for telco companies to invest in infrastructure there won't make anything else magically better, that's completely unrelated.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[shentino]

I'm all for fair and open internet access, and for network neutrality.

However, I do believe that there are more important things, like a basic civic infrastructure, that need to be taken care of before a community should even be worrying about internet access.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still a dumb ass false dichotomy. Investing effort into discussing and choosing proper legislation for any conception of 'net neutrality' does not directly correlate to a loss of effort in providing people with necessities. So, shut up.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[shentino]

You missed my point...and are now engaging in ad hominems to boot.

I'm not talking about net neutrality regs, which I'm all for. What I'm talking about is potentially trying to force broadband providers to build out into areas that don't even have basic services.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[dangitman]

If the ISP's are treated as content providers, then the Fairness Doctrine will have more impact when it gets reapplied - they can try to force ATT, Comcast, L3, etc. to manipulate their traffic in a way that promotes "fairness". So the carriers could be forced to, say, throttle traffic from Rush Limbaugh's website so that its traffic level matches, say, Public Radio International (PRI). Or the NRA's website until it matches the Brady campaign.

Slashdot really needs a new mod-tag: "-1: Insane nutburger who's off his medication."

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[R2.0]

"That's absurd. The fairness doctrine will never be applied to ISPs. It covers ONLY broadcast TV and radio, and only because of limited spectrum. It doesn't even cover content providers like print media, much less ISPs. There's no way that anyone could possibly get it expanded to cover ISPs."

First off, the Fairness Doctrine doesn't apply to anything now. So it's not simply a matter of "lets just do what we did before - it needs to be re-implemented. Second, when the Fairness Doctrine was in place, the internet didn't exist in the form it does now. Third, it didn't cover other media because the FCC had no jurisdiction over them. But it DOES have some jurisdiction over the internet.

And even if they did, in order to get bandwidth restrictions put in place, they would have to prove that traffic was being unfairly altered in such a way that limited access to one side of the issues. The fairness doctrine requires equal access to the content, not equal viewing of that content. It would no more allow them to reduce bandwidth for a right wing site than it would allow them to force people to keep their radios turned on while a Democrat gives a rebuttal to a Republican State of the Union address.

No, the Fairness Doctrine did require that. But now the legal climate is a bit different, and regulatory agencies can look at results, as opposed to intentions. For instance, in employment discrimination cases, the plaintiff doesn't have to prove discrimination - the fact that not enough of that particular protected class are employed there is considered prima facie evidence of discrimination. So, under that regulatory regime, a complainant would not need to prove that an ISP is favoring a particular viewpoint, just that they are processing a lot more traffic carrying that viewpoint than the opposing one. And since the big ISP's are lobbying to be treated like content providers, and have the capability of manipulating traffic for business purposes, why shouldn't they be required to manipulate it in the name of fairness?

"BTW, the FCC commissioner who suggested this absurdity is a Republican-appointed commissioner who was formerly a paid lobbyist for telecom companies. His comments should be carefully weighed against his biases. I suspect that if you follow the money, you'll find that the Democrats who are fighting against network neutrality are similarly beholden to such telecom special interests."

Yep, he probably said it to introduce FUD into the Net Neutrality debate. But like the saying goes, "Being paranoid doesn't mean that no one is out to get me." Politicians are ALWAYS trying to muck about with the internet - do you really believe that this would be an exception?

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[R2.0]

"Slashdot really needs a new mod-tag: "-1: Insane nutburger who's off his medication."

I may be just that - it doesn't mean I'm wrong. Nice try at the ad hominem, though.

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[4D6963]

Well to be fair your point basically is "I'm all for safer cars but I think that watching old episodes of Top Gear is more important". They're two unrelated and unlinked things!!

Also, what more do you need as "basic services" besides electricity and POTS land lines for telecom companies to get infrastructuring there??

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[shentino]

For starters, water.

And police protection. Fire protection. You know, things that are simply more important than internet access, and which should be given priority in the event of resource constraints.

I just believe that there are things more important than internet access.

Blasphemy? Only on slashdot :)

Re:It's about the Fairness Doctrine and control

[4D6963]

What the fuck does that have to do with Internet connections, and why should any telco company give a crap if people have running water? You're a dumbass, you still don't fucking get it, if you think that for people to go to church every week is more important than the Internet then good for you, but no one else gives a god damn about your stupid fucking priorities that have no fucking thing to do with any mother fucking thing that's being talked about.

Special Interests

[just_another_sean]

Yes because catering to special interests is obviously in the best interest of the poor and disenfranchised.
Corporate America has only the people at heart when lobbying for legislation that benefits them. To do anything
but meet their demands is heartless and cruel.

Apples and oranges

[microbox]

There have only been a "few examples" of people buying fertilizer to make bombs, so the gov't is going to pass anti-terrorism regulations?

Fixed that for you. That is: besides comparing apple and oranges.

Once upon a time, regulations were all the rage. That was back when there were no regulations over the handling of meat, and all sorts of nasty junk was being sold. Adam Smith's invisible hand didn't fix the public health problems with the sale of meat, so regulations were brought in to set minimum standards for the public good.

So... if you are completely against regulations, then you would stand by people buying any old meat from any old butcher, in any old conditions. Like they still do in some parts of the world.

After-all, there is no conceivable way that anything good can come from government regulations. While we're at it, lets get rid of regulations on advertising and sale of tobacco to minors, and regulations on what's in the fuel pump when you buy gas.

Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[thetoadwarrior]

The whole problem with the internet is that there no where near enough competition already amongst ISPs. How is effectively killing competition amongst online businesses going to improve anything?

Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[petrus4]

As far as I'm concerned, business shouldn't rightfully have anything to do with the Internet at all.

I remember the net before business came here. I also remember that when business came, government came after it. Then came spam.

The corporate world destroys everything it touches, one way or another. The profit motive leads ultimately to nothing but corruption and death.

It cannot be allowed to dictate the Internet. It's bad enough that the fucking suits exist; there must be some places where their rule is not recognised.

Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[j1mmy]

slashdot is owned and opreated by SourceForge Inc., a business. if you really think the net would be better off without any businesses, stop posting here or any other websites that aren't run by non-profits or government departments.

Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[bnenning]

The profit motive leads ultimately to nothing but corruption and death.

How do you think the computer you typed that on came to exist?

Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[uuddlrlrab]

Counterpoint: It's bad business that leads to the aforementioned. I don't recall where I saw this, but I think there was a comment on a /. article mentioning how the big media gestapo has BAWWWWW'd at every single innovation, claiming everything from phonographs to recordable tape players to vcr's, and now, the internet, would somehow destroy or harm their business. Every time, they've been proven wrong. It's a good example of an entrenched group who, unable to come up with innovative ideas on their own (at most no more than once in a blue moon during a lunar eclipse and full planetary alignment, and flying pigs to top it off), so they turn to destructive means: political pressure and an army of lawyers to make- no wait, shake people down for money.
Another example is the subprime market that led to a lot of the bullshit that the economies of most countries face. Bad business. "Who cares about annual projections, or beyond? Just look at those fat quarterly profit margins!"

Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies

[petrus4]

slashdot is owned and opreated by SourceForge Inc., a business. if you really think the net would be better off without any businesses, stop posting here or any other websites that aren't run by non-profits or government departments.

There were forums and bulletin boards of all kinds before business arrived online. What do you think Usenet was? That was run as much by universities as anyone else. Most pre-net bulletin boards were run by individuals, not business.

I'm sick of this, as well. Seeing brainless, mind controlled American white males perpetuating the myth that the corporate world is a good thing, despite the amount of harm it continues to do them and everyone else.

no screw no investment

[dwreid]

So if I understand the position of these legislators I could properly restate their postion as: 'The big companies pay us money and then tell us what to think. Therefore, we think that the big companies should be allowed to screw their customers anytime they want. If they are not allowed to screw their customers then they might stop investing in their core business. Since we are corrupt shills, we have agreed to support our corporate sponsors in defeating any regulation that might protect consumers from being screwed thus maximizing their profits and our contributions.' There, that seems more clear.

Re:no screw no investment

[lamapper]

Very well written, to the point and factual! Sadly factual

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[FooAtWFU]

"PowerBoost" (a basic token bucket scheme) is basically their way of saying "Here, look, you can use the Internets for browsing the Web and it will seem fast, but you're out of luck if you want to download anything big." Considering that downloadable video games and movies and such are substitutes for regular cable television service, it's not surprising that Time Warner would want to hobble those (while showing people it's fast for other stuff.)

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[nxtw]

IIRC, the boost is from 7 mbit to 15 mbit for those on the regular service, and 15 mbit to 22 mbit for those on the turbo service. With H.264, this is sufficient to stream higher quality video than provided by Time Warner's MPEG-2 services.

I can see what they are worried about...

[divisionbyzero]

Here are their concerns: 1) net neutrality will make internet access more expensive and will cause the Telcos to slow roll-out to new locations; 2) net neutrality will prevent, say, Comcast from offering, say, Yahoo the chance to serve its content an additional 4 mbps faster to Comcast customers for a fee. Both concerns are overblown. While to a certain extent they are true in the long run slow incremental increases in the global quality of connectivity is highly preferred to localized improvements. Basically, the Telco's lobbyists' fingerprints are all over this astroturf. They feed these representatives a line with just enough truth to motivate them and lots of money and then watch them spinoff into a public frenzy spreading FUD everywhere. As usual we see that politicians are idiots and lobbyists are scum bags.

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[nxtw]

Correction - sufficient to stream higher quality video without the boost feature.

i still don't understand the push for this

[j1mmy]

government regulations have a long history of unintended consequences. it's good to see that these lawmakers recognize that.

furthermore, the internet has done exceptionally well so far without such rules. i think we're better off without them, in spite of the few incidences of filtering and blocking some providers have tried.

Re:i still don't understand the push for this

[angelbunny]

The lawmakers are not recognizing this. They are being paid off mainly be AT&T to argue in big business' favor. If a politician in my current district of residence tried that shit they would not get reelected.

This is much more about greed and politics than it is about net neutrality.

Re:i still don't understand the push for this

[grcumb]

furthermore, the internet has done exceptionally well so far without such rules. i think we're better off without them, in spite of the few incidences of filtering and blocking some providers have tried.

The Internet has done exceptionall well so far because of such rules. It blossomed where other networks (AOL, CompuServe et alia) died on the vine precisely because it is an agnostic end-to-end network by design. Recently, in response to moves to subvert these fundamental elements of the Internet, the Obama administration has decided that this set of general principles deserves to be formalised at the regulatory level. They're not proposing anything new, they're simply recognising what makes the Internet what it is.

Recently telcos have begun to realise that collusive, predatory practices serve their short-term interests better than the current open regime. The rise of Google has put the fear into them because it makes it vividly apparent that, unless they actually begin to run their businesses efficiently, someone who gets this whole Open thing is going to come along and eat their lunch.

The telcos don't fear regulation. They fear competition.

Where's the receipt?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that public land? Where's the receipt.

The wires were laid down with government workers.

Where's the receipt.

Personal property of US citizens have been overcome by the right of way of these companies who use OUR land to make THEIR profit.

Where's my cut?

Thieves.

You are like Napoleon "I see no ships!". That's because you're not looking. Because you daren't.

Re:Where's the receipt?

[uuddlrlrab]

I have a question /.
How does the above post that drives a point home get moderated down to 0, when the post above that, having naught but a juvenile 2 word response, "prove it," gets modded up?

Re:Where's the receipt?

[TheRaven64]

He didn't get moderated up as much because he attributed a line to Napoleon, which was really a misquote of something Horatio Nelson said. Given that Nelson was the one who defeated Napoleon's navy, that means he deserved an overrated mod or two, at least.

Please prove they aren't bribes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have YOU paid one of these governors?

That would be proof: show us the receipt and show us where it turns up in the declaration of monies that the GP summarised.

House, not Senate

[weston]

72 Senate DemocratsSo... yeah. I'm grumpy on Saturday mornings, too, but geeze.

I don't think it's too much to ask for that the Slashdot title not imply a fictitious whole, particularly when TFA has a perfectly accurate and communicative title: "Some Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality." Why'd we lose the "some"?

Re:House, not Senate

[weston]

Because strictly speaking it is always "some."

Sure:

1) Numbers are prime.
2) Some numbers are prime.

Both true, right?

Why even bother to distinguish between the potential inference that we're talking about "democrats in general" vs "some minority of democrats"? Same difference, I guess.

We do not usually demand this level of precision from our headlines

Level of precision? Keeping a single word that was already in the title of the TFA that helps point people towards making the distinction above?

here

[microbox]

enjoy

Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a subscriber to Armstrong OneWire for cable internet for the last 5 years and the bandwidth has not changed at all. You would think that the price would drop, but it has remained constant, too.

Armstrong is the lesser of two evils. No setup or cancellation fees. No charge to have a tech come out and fix things up for you. But Armstrong OneWire definitely drags its feet when it comes to price and speed.

They do just enough to make Embarq look like thieves and thugs with their pricing in my area. I thought the switch from Sprint to Embarq would yield better pricing, but that really hasn't been the case. The low end seems competitive, but Embarq wants that contract with the typical fees the telcos are famous for. The high-end is just laughable.

They even went so far as to charge $10 extra for Internet if you didn't have cable. (I know Sprint/Embarq used to do the same.) When I went to cancel my cable back in August, they told me there was no $10 surcharge any more and that it stopped a little over a year ago. I wondered why.

The next day I got junk mail from CenturyLink claiming to provide naked DSL for $30/month. Oh, that's why. Too bad it's at 1.5mb speed only. All the hype over how fast they are and that's the only option I get for signing up? Lame.

For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctrine

[weston]

If the ISP's are treated as content providers, then the Fairness Doctrine will have more impact when it gets reapplied - they can try to force ATT, Comcast, L3, etc. to manipulate their traffic in a way that promotes "fairness". So the carriers could be forced to, say, throttle traffic from Rush Limbaugh's website so that its traffic level matches, say, Public Radio International (PRI). Or the NRA's website until it matches the Brady campaign.

This assumes a construction of a new "Fairness Doctrine" that bears little resemblance to the old one, which essentially required broadcast media to give time to opposing views as they reached certain editorial thresholds as partisan outlets.

The web isn't really a broadcast medium, and it's already very easy to publish an opposing point of view on it. There's not much of a way TFD could be brought to bear.

throttle traffic from Rush Limbaugh's website so that its traffic level matches, say, Public Radio International

"As of 2006 Arbitron ratings indicated that The Rush Limbaugh Show had a minimum weekly audience of 13.5 million listeners."

"According to the 2002 Arbitron ratings, 15.2 million people listened to PRI programming each week."

I guess that'd really suck for Rush.

Which brings up a point: We all know that by and large The Media(TM) isn't just liberal, it has a radical liberal agenda, right?

If that's the case, shouldn't The Fairness Doctrine actually benefit conservatives far more than it benefits liberals?

(hollywood)

[Anonymous Coward]

When the previous Net Neutrality story appeared I was amused to read many comments along the lines; "if the Republicans are against it, it must be good," in reference to the 18 Republican senators cited in the story. There are many forces involved in monetizing the Internet. Among the wealthiest and best connected are the content producers, a.k.a Hollywood. With whom does Hollywood invest most of it's campaign contributions? Let us look and see if we can't discover what has motivated so many Democrats to 'question' the FCC.

Those of you that have allowed yourselves to be trained by your schools and your celebrities to suffer involuntary knee spasms on contact with all things Republican have been blinded to the larger picture.

How much money did these 72 get from CableTelco?

[rberger]

It would be interesting to see how much AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner has contributed to these folks.

I would say that Internet first/last mile deployment and innovation stopped when it was re-oligopolized 10 years ago.

I still don't have ANY choice of ANY high speed Internet service in Saratoga, CA part of Silicon Valley. The best Internet connection I can get for my startup in Mountain View Callifornia, the heart of Silicon Valley is limited to 500Kbps upstream.

I would say that they are already doing a bad job with no net neutrality legislation and it will only get worse until we break them up. This time correctly.

Compromise

[Tablizer]

Why not a compromise that limits the bandwidth advantage a company can give to X percent? That way they can give their own content enough of a boost to justify investing in smaller towns etc., but not enough to throw rivals into pure molasses.

Re:Compromise

[grcumb]

Why not a compromise that limits the bandwidth advantage a company can give to X percent? That way they can give their own content enough of a boost to justify investing in smaller towns etc., but not enough to throw rivals into pure molasses.

I've stated this before, so I won't bother repeating myself. Here's the summary: Network Neutrality is a fundamental design principle that defines the Internet. As such, it is not negotiable.

Re:For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctri

[MaggieL]

Um...how many programs do you think PRI ran in 2002? They have 33 now. Rush only has the one...

How many hours of programming do you think that was?

What's it like living in that echo chamber there, dude?

Re:For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctri

[weston]

Um...how many programs do you think PRI ran in 2002? They have 33 now. Rush only has the one...

Yeah, I knew somebody who didn't realize I wasn't the one who decided put Rush and PRI next to each other (please see the GP) was going to bring that up.

If you'd like to pick some other individual program X and put it next to Rush's while implying that if the Fairness Doctrine were in place it would threaten to throttle Rush's program to X's levels, feel free.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How much money did these 72 get from CableTelco

[angelbunny]

It is a little over $450k total. Scroll up on this page to the thread 'Write your congresscritters!' and then look down it. All of the info you're looking for has already been added.

Uh, US taxpayers paid for the internet

[Dan667]

And then let several big companies have exclusive monopolies. And US taxpayers are paying to network upgrades. How exactly is that going to slow investment?

HALF-ASSED LOGIC.....

[IHC Navistar]

"but the group of 72 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks."

-How on Earth could this slow down investment in networks any more that it is NOW?!? This would force providers to invest in their networks, because not doing so would cause congestion problems, as is ALREADY EVIDENT!

Special Interest groups are like drugs to Politicians: They make politicians feel good, but turn them into complete idiots.

Re:For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctri

[R2.0]

Let me hit all of your points, as you completely missed the mark.

First, yes, we all know that the original fairness doctrine applied to broadcasters. Considering that distributing content via the internet didn't even exist when it was in place, that's completely rational. What ISN'T rational is the belief that, if TFD were to be reinstated, that the internet would be ignored. The point that I was making is that, since there is a push among Democrats to reinstate TFD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine#Reinstatement_considered), it's likely that they are also thinking about the Internet as well.

As far as parsing between "broadcast medium" and the internet, the model is outmoded. Previously, differentiating between "broadcast" and "private" made sense regarding the radio spectrum. But now there's this medium that the FCC has _some_ control over, that isn't exactly like broadcasting and isn't like a private phone call, either. So we've started using a new model - content provider vs. service provider. In that sense, a new Fairness Doctrine\ne would apply to content providers, would it not?

Regarding my comparison, I'd compliment the straw man you set up, but for its idiocy. What do their radio shows have to do with internet traffic? If you thought I was just mistaken and talking about radio, I'd have thought my use of the words "throttle", "traffic", and "website" would have set you straight. But that's OK - I'll just use Alexa numbers instead.

rushlimbaugh.com - Rank: 5,710, Category: Arts > Radio
PRI.org - Rank: 166,719, Category: Arts > Radio

Yep - PRI is just crushing Rush on the web. But that's unfair, because PRI is a news service, and Rush is opinion. Alright, lets look at Pacifica Radio, which is unabashedly liberal.

pacifica.org - Rank: 1,647,109. Really putting teh beat down on Limbaugh, aren't they?

As for your last comment, it really gets down to the heart of it. In your dismissive recital of what we "all" think, you reveal how shallow your understanding really is. The ENTIRE reason Democrats have been pushing the return of TFD is the utter dominance of conservative talk radio. See the Wikipedia article I cited - it has quotes. Those quotes show that the goal is to get rid of conservative talk radio. How? By forcing broadcasters - aka content providers - to carry liberal shows as well. Which sucks in the ratings. So they're much more likely just to ditch political talk altogether.

How does this work on the internet? Well, since ATT/Comcast etc. are trying to be classified as "content providers" because they can make more money that way, that would make them responsible for political opinion that comes through their network. And by looking at those website stats, Pacifica could easily claim that ATT/Comcast has stepped over the threshold of neutrality, given that Rush's traffic is greater than Pacifica's by a couple orders of magnitude. Now, since the "content providers" can't force people to visit the Pacifica website, what to they do? The only practical course would be to throttle rushlimbaugh.com. Sure, people could get to it, but it would be so slow that it would have the effect of limiting the content.

None of that would be remotely as easy if the ATT/Comcast were forced to treat traffic equally regardless of the source. It's the Dems deal with the devil - they'll support the big ISP's effort to manipulate traffic to make money, because it also leaves an opening to manipulate traffic politically.

minority

[z-j-y]

what minority group? Asians?

hiding behind a generic 'minority' label, are you guys ashamed of your color or something? what a pussy.

Lobbyists at Work

[Xenographic]

> It's all speculation propagated by the AT&T Artificial Turf(TM) fanclub.

You're absolutely right, but you didn't give any citations. So I'll dig up a few of them for you. It seems like getting people to call something "racist" or to claim that it will "harm the disabled" are some of the most popular current lobbyist tactics. Why? Because no politician wants to be branded a racist.

Here are some places where corporate lobbyists have pulled this exact same trick:

* Critics of Rep. Conyers called "racist" ... because they're against radio performance royalties which "exploit black musicians" even though the RIAA types pushing for these royalties are going to pocket most of them and exploit the artists far more than anyone else. (citation) This was in an NAACP resolution, incidentally.

* Lobbyists fearing a loss of Microsoft leverage stir up a bunch of disabled people who don't even know the difference between a file format and an application to protest ODF as harmful to the disabled. They also create a bogus story calling Peter Quinn "corrupt" (with the retraction to be printed later, in a place most people won't see it). (It's harder to find good links any more, but try this and this).

As you can see, this is a common trick being used by lobbyists. These groups aren't, incidentally, usually controlled by the lobbyists directly. They just get told what to think about some issue they don't fully understand by someone who happens to donate money to them. If you tell people that somebody is out to screw them, they'll be biased against it no matter what.

And it's funny on Net Neutrality, because if you remember, the one thing that everyone from the ACLU to the Christian Coalition protested was the idea that an ISP (I think it was AT&T) could pick any high-traffic website and say to them "we're going to throttle access to your website unless you pay up." Nowadays, people are all saying "what IS Net Neutrality, anyhow?" because they've forgotten what we're all against. Or they're worried that the government will try to create some rule against doing exactly what I just said and end up banning QoS, end-user traffic shaping, etc.

Part of the "confusion" is due to highly-paid lobbyists. Suppose there's some popular outcry against something a business wants to do. As with smoking and laws banning it in public. Then you do a few things:

* Find people who are naturally against this law (e.g. smokers) and convince them their rights are being "trampled." These are your allies. Fund them if need be. Create them if need be.

* Find out why people oppose smoking (it's deadly) and counter this with disinformation. First, they said that smoking hadn't been "proven" to cause anything, it was only "linked" to dozens of diseases, cancer, etc. but not "proven." After that failed, they did exactly the same thing with second-hand smoke. There's no doubt in the scientific community that cigarette smoke is harmful, even if you're not actually smoking. Someone will probably show up shortly to claim otherwise.

* Lobby politicians. As seen with Mr. Quinn, if you can find alleged dirt, even if it's bogus, you can use that to threaten them by "exposing" them to the press. You can also get your allies, especially if they're groups of minorities/disabled/whoever, to decry the move as somehow racist/homophobic/whatever if there's any possible way to make this mistake. No politician wants to be a racist or to have a group of disabled people protesting them.

There's more, but if you look around, you'll see the same fact pattern. The advice to "follow the money" has always been golden. It works on tobacco lobbyists, Microsoft lobbyists, RIAA lobbyists... ever

That's interesting, a -1 disagree moderation.

[weston]

Funny, both my posts on this topic have been downmodded.

Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation, and I'm sure that if I've said something particularly stupid, it should be a piece of cake to refute me and help your own case rather than skulking around trying to sink arguments you don't like with negative moderation.

Re:Uh.... -1 Nitpicking and Wrong?

[Dhalka226]

Speaking of nitpicking: It's 72 House Democrats. There aren't 72 Democrats in the Senate total, and if 72 senators of any stripe were opposed to this legislation it would be dead on arrival and completely moot.

For comparison purposes, 72 house members--assuming all of them were to vote no--is about 16.5%. Significant, but not insurmountable. It's somewhere around 28% of the democrats in the House. And, of course, chances are either little tweaks are made to bring more on board before it comes to a vote or the majority whip starts whippin' some into line.

the letter shows concern, but not N-N disapproval

[keneng]

I read the October 14th, 2009 letter to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, and Commissioner Robert M. McDowell regarding "Broadband Industry Practices (WC Docket No. 07-52), National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry (WC Docket 09-51)".

This letter shows concern about the net-neutrality policies and implementation rather than out and out disapproval. The letter simply wants to delay any approval until the actual policies are clarified from what I understand.

Ok if that's the problem, to make everyone comfortable about net-neutrality, the pro net-neutrality gurus should respond with another letter proposing a vision showing the steps to spur off a business model which supports bridging the digital divide putting the minority groups on equal footing in terms of internet access, bandwidth and quality of service.

I think the best vision of what net-neutrality business model would look like is the google implementation which free-service in exchange for in-your-face advertising on your monitor. You go to google for a search, google provides the information proxied through access and bandwidth paying advertising banners connections.

The trick here is that not only google is entitled to do this, but everybody is. The only difference is instead of internet service providers going directly to the subscribers for internet access/bandwidth/quality of service fees, the government could instill a business model whereby the connection and hardware maintenance setups are all paid for by the government, the advertisement firms paying for the national internet bandwidth/quality of service structure in exchange for the privilege of proxying/framing all traffic content through advertising banner connections. The advertising firms win with all the revenue generated by the loyal customers buying their products because they are thankful for their partnership in providing the synergetic-equal-opportunity-generating internet services.

I think google is very close to being "THE ONE" to make this happen. Apart from the existence of google's awesome search engine achievements, they encourage the synergy of open-source software development demonstrating google's will to provide equal-opportunities for all and to encourage rewards for all based on merit. That said, google can't be the only one to make net-neutrality happen. All citizens should participate and encourage net-neutrality considering the importance to their future generations' opportunities.

The ad revenues from internet co-opete(coopetition) with the legacy media. As a result, they all have an opportunity here to do the right thing and win business in return.
A government estabilished internet advertising monthly license fee could help build the infrastructure from scratch. The added government internet advertising license could be encouraged by providing tax kickbacks somehow. The trick here is that the actual license fee would need to be accessible for all keeping in mind all the little players wanting to get into the internet advertising business.

Are there any business-minded people here that could back all this up with numbers? Any ways this is all just brainstorming to get your ideas rolling and making net-neutrality a reality without all the back-room secret government deals we've been seeing for the net-neutrality policies and the ACTA internet copyright infringement spying policies.

Re:For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctri

[weston]

pacifica.org - Rank: 1,647,109. Really putting teh beat down on Limbaugh, aren't they?

You might want to clarify if there should have been some extra zeros after any of those numbers, because there appear to be some hanging commas that make it somewhat unclear whether or not you're being sarcastic.

If he does better on the internet, that's interesting. I would have thought it'd be a reasonable assumption that the audiences would be roughly proportional, apparently that's wrong.

But that's unfair, because PRI is a news service, and Rush is opinion.

I don't believe I'm the one who originally brought them into the discussion side by side.

What ISN'T rational is the belief that, if TFD were to be reinstated, that the internet would be ignored

I don't see any reason to believe they would. That belief only makes sense if you assume bad faith on the part of people who conceived TFD or are interested in seeing it return. The idea that broadcast outlets who enjoy their position because of a government granted monopoly on scarce spectrum should be required to examine a number of points of view may have pros and cons, but it's a reasonable principle, reasonable enough that you could assume people who want it are genuinely interested in carving out space for underrepresented viewpoints. The idea that the Internet as a whole or even a single website requires state intervention to make sure opposing viewpoints are represented doesn't have any such cover, not even ostensibly. Everybody knows that if you feel like the Daily Kos isn't telling the whole story it's not that hard to start your own site that does. Everybody also knows that if you want your own radio or TV station it's a lot more involved.

The ENTIRE reason Democrats have been pushing the return of TFD is the utter dominance of conservative talk radio.

I'm aware of this, which brings us back to my larger point: the conservative consternation over TFD reveals that the common conservative wisdom that the media landscape is unfavorable to their politics is a sham.

Those quotes show that the goal is to get rid of conservative talk radio. How? By forcing broadcasters - aka content providers - to carry liberal shows as well.

Shows aren't the requirement of TFD. Equal time isn't the requirement, even if shows were. There was considerable latitude in how you handled access, and in practice, it wasn't particularly fair. Perhaps you're old enough to remember how the 10 minute segments some channels used to fulfill their requirement right before airing the test pattern for the rest of the night.

How does this work on the internet? Well, since ATT/Comcast etc. are trying to be classified as "content providers" because they can make more money that way, that would make them responsible for political opinion that comes through their network. And by looking at those website stats, Pacifica could easily claim that ATT/Comcast has stepped over the threshold of neutrality, given that Rush's traffic is greater than Pacifica's by a couple orders of magnitude. Now, since the "content providers" can't force people to visit the Pacifica website, what to they do? The only practical course would be to throttle rushlimbaugh.com. Sure, people could get to it, but it would be so slow that it would have the effect of limiting the content.

I don't know what to say to this other than I suspect this is about as likely as the idea the Obama will arm Americorps and use them as a domestic military force, and I'm considering starting up an electronic market to profit from beliefs such as yours. In short, I'm willing to bet some cold hard cash that despite my very low faith in the carriers and in the ability of Congress to understand the issues surrounding net neutrality, what you're describing will not happen under the current congress or under an Obama administration. How sure are you that you're correct?

Net neutrality is the most dumbass geek pipe dream

[yeehaomgyay]

Supporters must all have been software pirates when they were kiddies. If it could have been done without subsidies then it would have been done without subsidies. You are all new-wave hippy idiots.

where is the fucking relevance ?

[unity100]

'you cannot discriminate against any other competitor or content provider' does NOT mean that 'you cant make money'.

its the fucking RULE of the free, competitive market for centuries anyway ? is any company allowed to block roads and prevent other companies from moving their truckfull of products over the areas they own ? is anyone allowed to block a higwhay because the highway was built on private land ? or, is a corporation that runs a bridge is allowed to block traffic of vehicles which belong to a company that is a competitor to its parent company ?

internet is just like roads, bridges. you can NOT allow anyone to claim lordship over ANY portion of it, because it would directly kill the flow of information and commerce by killing their competitors at their whim. leave aside 'nourishing it', as those morons posing as lawmakers claim.

those 72 'lawmakers' are either STUPID, or dont know shit about laissez faire economics or internet. i would assume both, plus they were possibly bought by big evil like at&t, time warner etc.

use the roads and bridges example in every time you hear some moron says 'net neutrality hampers investment'. IF, they insist, ask them whether they would allow you to buy highways and decide who passes over them and who not, and charge whomever you want more than the others... they will probably shut the fuck up and get it.

objection by suspect organizational rabble rousers

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who are being scripted to object probably have no idea what the 'issues' of net nuetraility are.
These people do what the ones who fund them tell them to do.
'people of something' ? 'people of so-and-so community'? what a load of crock.

Organizational coupling of groups that are run by 'community organizers' get paid to rabble rouse for the cause that is funding them. In this case we have people who are 'on the team'. "yes they can'. Why? Becasue they use bullying tactics to get their way. Obviously the people who pay for these 'organizers' to 'protest' do it for very banel money-oriented reasons. 'people of such-and-such' group are of no concern. Those people are merely the pawns. If I was one of them it would bug me that this rabble claims to represent them.

Do the so-called organizers even realize how transparent their tactics have become? Do they understand that they are slaves to the ones who fund them? They say that slavery has been abolished and yet there are the 'organizers' jumping to attention with their stage show freak-show activism butting in where they have no idea what thye are talking about because their 'funding group' has a guy who calls and gives them the word. What bigger kind of slave could you be? What worse kind of slave? A willing slave who doesn't even know that he works to try and enslave the rest of us all in the name of 'people of some group'.

who pays?

[falconwolf]

Who pays for the interstates? Taxpayers who don't want and won't drive from state to state shouldn't be made to pay.

Users pay, that's who. Fuel taxes are supposed to pay for roads, though they don't. Even the neoconservative Weekly Standard published an article, The Net-Zero Gas Tax advocating raising fuel taxes. While I consider that a start I'd go further. When People renew their license plate tags, I'd have them pay a fee on how many miles they drove. I'd then require the fees to be high enough to pay for the roads. However like the article says, I'd cut income taxes. If by raising the fuel tax the average fuel bill goes up $10 a week I'd cut income tax by $10 a week.

What incentive is there to upgrade the network now?

That's part of the problem, there is no competition now. So if one provider won't upgrade it's infrastructure a customer can't switch to another provider. Of course with one entity owning the infrastructure but not selling services it can deliver there's still no competition. I see 3 possible partial solutions. One since everyone uses the same infrastructure they have more of a voice in demanding upgrades, if they don't vote them out of office. The second option is to move to someplace with better access. And the third is wireless. Open up the airwaves, which I have supported here and elsewhere, and let wireless broadband thrive. Heck that's something I'd love to have and would be willing to pay for both fiber to the curb and lower speed wireless broadband.

If you set it up correctly--as a government-run nonprofit with a separate funding pool--then the money has to get spent somewhere because otherwise it just sits there doing nothing, so there's no incentive not to upgrade the infrastructure. A great example of this in action is TVA. They provide some of the cheapest power in the country, their lines are generally well maintained, their infrastructure gets regular upgrades... everybody wins.

I followed you until you brought up TVA. Some lost when that TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill happened. TVA also operates nuclear power plants and those like the Navajo have had to pay, for accidents, mining, and spills.

This makes changing ISPs as simple as changing long distance providers is now, which is why there *is* competition in that space (though much less now that cell phones offer free long distance; the point is that there was a lot of competition before something free came along).

Cellphones are more competition. As you say cellphone service plans include long distance. The only phone service I have is cellphone service, and I pay less than I did when I had a landline. Now notice above I said I'd be willing to pay for both fiber and wireless. I'd have my server connected to fiber and would use wireless broadband with my laptop. Of course it would have to be mobile, and not fixed, wireless. I love hiking and photography. With mobile broadband I could be out hiking then when my memory cards got full I could upload them to my server.

Falcon

Re:who pays?

[dgatwood]

Users pay, that's who. Fuel taxes are supposed to pay for roads, though they don't. Even the neoconservative Weekly Standard [wikipedia.org] published an article, The Net-Zero Gas Tax [weeklystandard.com] advocating raising fuel taxes. While I consider that a start I'd go further. When People renew their license plate tags, I'd have them pay a fee on how many miles they drove. I'd then require the fees to be high enough to pay for the roads. However like the article says, I'd cut income taxes. If by raising the fuel tax the average fuel bill goes up $10 a week I'd cut income tax by $10 a week.

And you missed the entire point of my comparison, which is that this is what would likely happen with broadband, but that it is not possible to make the users pay for the initial buildout because without some infrastructure to begin with, there are no users to pay for it. Just like with the interstates when they were first created.

I followed you until you brought up TVA. Some lost when that TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill [wikipedia.org] happened.

And yet, this is no different than it would be for any other company maintaining that power plant. The plant is a 50 year old plant. TVA has been trying to replace them with nuclear power for several years, but they've been met with environmental resistance. Also, after the accident, TVA is talking about retrofitting this plant so that it won't need these holding ponds; sometimes it takes an accident to show people how badly things can go wrong. I don't think anyone could have predicted that the wall of that holding pond would suddenly collapse.

Either way, my point was not about how well they run outdated coal plants. My point was about the reliability of power relative to the financial cost. Damage to a handful of residences out in an extremely rural area could be solved just by requiring them to buy more land around the property and not put holding ponds so close to a river.... In the grand scheme of things, it's a sign of design mistakes from 50 years ago coming back to bite them, not a sign of poor maintenance like we see so consistently with commercial power production.

TVA also operates nuclear power plants and those like the Navajo have had to pay, for accidents, mining, and spills.

What the heck does a botched mining operation in New Mexico have to do with power plants in the Tennessee Valley area? That makes as much sense as blaming TVA for coal mine collapses. Mining anything has risks, and that's a part of life. Those risks are still there whether a nonprofit like TVA is buying the material or a for-profit like Enron is doing so. TVA doesn't allow those accidents to occur. The mining companies do. Therefore, the nonprofit approach has no significant downsides and significant financial upsides. Relative to commercial power, everyone wins by virtue of getting cheaper, more reliable power.

Cellphones are more competition.

In economic terms, cell phones are what is known as a disruptive technology. It doesn't compete so much as it makes the old technology no longer relevant. Cellular networks never allowed real competition on their networks, and as such, cell phone long distance providers weren't really competing with the long-distance carriers that operated on land lines. They were competing with the land lines themselves. As the land lines became largely obsolete, the long distance carriers no longer had a market, and have diminished to almost a nonexistent state. Add to that the fact that the cell companies chose to roll the cost of long distance into the per-minute cell phone cost instead of splitting it out as a line item, and you had a closed, monopolistic market within each cell carrier in which no long distance carrier could compete even if they wanted to. Were it not for competition among the various cell carriers themselves, the s

Re:who pays?

[falconwolf]

And you missed the entire point of my comparison, which is that this is what would likely happen with broadband, but that it is not possible to make the users pay for the initial buildout because without some infrastructure to begin with, there are no users to pay for it. Just like with the interstates when they were first created.

It was alright that the initial build-out of the interstate highway system was paid for with taxes. The federal government is specifically empowered to work with interstate commerce. My problem is with maintaining and expanding it, once the original interstates were built user fees should have paid to maintain and expand it.

I don't think anyone could have predicted that the wall of that holding pond would suddenly collapse.

It might of been true if spills like it had not happened before. However they have happened prior to the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill. There was the Buffalo Creek Flood in 1972. The Martin County sludge spill happened in 2000. And it was 30 tymes larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Fact is is spills and such do occur. Here "EPA Releases Locations of 44 "High Risk" Coal Ash Sites".

Either way, my point was not about how well they run outdated coal plants. My point was about the reliability of power relative to the financial cost. Damage to a handful of residences out in an extremely rural area could be solved just by requiring them to buy more land around the property and not put holding ponds so close to a river.... In the grand scheme of things, it's a sign of design mistakes from 50 years ago coming back to bite them, not a sign of poor maintenance like we see so consistently with commercial power production.

Potential spills is only part of the problem. Another problem is Mountaitop Removal. Also notice the coal slurry pond above the elementary school in the third photo. Google has more photos as well as maps of Mountaintop Removal. Then there's the CO2 emissions as well as other problems.

What the heck does a botched mining operation in New Mexico have to do with power plants in the Tennessee Valley area?

Mining would not happen on the scale it does if there wasn't a demand. Are you really so lacking in basic intelligence? And it's not just one "botched mining operation". Three nations with the best environmental laws and regulations regarding the nuclear industry and mining are Australia, Canada, and the US. However each have had problems, Google is your friend, or enemy depending on how you want to look at it. Oh that link is just about mining too.

the nonprofit approach has no significant downsides and significant financial upsides. Relative to commercial power, everyone wins by virtue of getting cheaper, more reliable power.

Is that why communism won over capitalism?

Cellular networks never allowed real competition on their networks

Why should cellular networks allow competition on their own networks when competitors could build their own networks. And saying it costs too much to build a network does not belong in reality. Many people in the Third World who may never get landline phone service can get cheap cellphones and service. Even here in the US some homeless have cellphones.

Falcon

Oh, and I expect you to say "you missed by point" again, even though I include the relevant part in my own

Re:who pays?

[dgatwood]

My problem is with maintaining and expanding it, once the original interstates were built user fees should have paid to maintain and expand it.

You do understand that the sorts of government-initiated nonprofit broadband providers that I suggested would work in exactly the way you want, right?

It might of been true if spills like it had not happened before.

By that standard, if my friend's Ford Pinto blew up in an accident, I should not be at all surprised when my Toyota Rav4 does the same thing, and I should have seen it coming. If you want to make such an argument, you need to show that the holding ponds were built with walls of similar thickness, were in areas with similar soil composition, had similar water content.... It's not as simple as "It happened to another one, so they should have known." It's easy to take advantage of 20/20 hindsight and say that they should have taken more precautions. The only relevant question is whether they should reasonably have known at the time based on the information available....

Potential spills is only part of the problem. Another problem is Mountaitop Removal. Also notice the coal slurry pond above the elementary school in the third photo. Google has more photos as well as maps of Mountaintop Removal. Then there's the CO2 emissions as well as other problems.

That's the tip of the iceberg. Airborne uranium, mining runoff, mine fires and cave-ins.... Those things would still be happening with a corporation in charge, though.

Mining would not happen on the scale it does if there wasn't a demand.

And you think there would be less demand if a corporation were running the power plants? Power consumption has, for all practical purposes, never obeyed the law of supply and demand, with few exceptions (mostly dealing with time-of-day metering). It takes insane hikes in power rates to trigger any significant drop in overall consumption. Therefore, none of your criticisms of TVA are any less true for any other power provider. Is it perfect? No. Are their power rates a small fraction of what I'm paying in California? Yes.

Is that why communism won over capitalism?

Neither has actually been tried.... Assuming you mean the fall of the USSR, that had nothing to do with communism and everything to do with Reagan convincing them that we were nuts, causing them to build up their war capacity at colossal expense, essentially causing them to bleed themselves dry. This was coupled with a huge drop in the price of oil that significantly reduced their intake. Their problems had nothing to do with communism and everything to do with an inept government. Other communist countries (China, Cuba, North Korea) are doing just fine.

And nonprofit corporations are not communist. These would more properly be described as fascist/statist. You don't want a large percentage of your economy to be this way (as the USSR learned), and under no circumstances should such state-owned businesses be run as a budget source for the government (which is why I specified government-seeded nonprofit corporations, not governmnet-run). It's a fine line, but the results are dramatically different.

Why should cellular networks allow competition on their own networks when competitors could build their own networks.

I neither said nor implied that they should. I merely said that this was the reason there was no competition for long distance providers on cellular networks.

"Pacifism" = law of the jungle, in practice

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Also (and at the risk of invoking Godwin), when asked what the Jews could have done to prevent the Holocaust, Gandhi suggested that they should have committed mass suicide. That is the logical conclusion of uncompromising nonviolence.

And, pray tell, do you consider that reasonable ? He's quite right that that was the only nonviolent way to deal with the situation. Of course, the nazi government stated it's intentions in no uncertain terms : if Europe fell completely, America would be next, and Germany would assist the mikado (Japan) invading China. Gandhi's policy would only have lead to peace in that it would have led to spreading the genocide over the entire world. This was before the Soviets "betrayed" their national socialist "brothers" (a word Stalin liked to use for the nazi's).

Furthermore, if I tell you I want to kill you because of your ugly face, would you commit suicide ? Would you consider yourself violent if you didn't ?

Pacifism, in reality, is an extremely violent ideology, as long as there is a single person on this planet that wants to use violence. Pacifism on the part of others will encourage this person to use more violence, and will encourage others to imitate him, leading to more violence. Pacifism, in an actual conflict, is merely rooting for the party that uses the most direct, most cruel violence. In the palestinian-israeli conflict, for example, pacisifism is merely wanting the palestinian massacrers and terrorism to win, and not even "all" palestinians, but merely the cruelest, most violent ones among them.

Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

You are describing abuse.

Its also abuse When Papa John's pizza pays your ISP money so that you are charged more for using Domino's. The ISP wins both ways and its both kinds of abuse that the FCC should stop.

Its just as bad even that Domino's might be limited. so that you favor a competitor.

Re:How much money did these 72 get from CableTelco

[lamapper]

...is limited to 500Kbps upstream.

You need and must have Fiber, anything else is a waste of your time.

I have basic cable, a promise of up to 8Mbps. I am throttled and restricted back to less than 100Kbps downstream and less than 40Kbps upstream. Its not the limit or the promise, its what they will guarantee you. The cable companies, neither Comcast nor TWC will promise anything. In fact quite frequently a friend of mine and I are both shaped back to 0Kbps upstream. Our upstream bandwidth bounces up to 40Kbps and back to 0Kbps, up and down, up and down, just enough to prevent you from watching any decent IP TV or video content. My friend went for their "burst" service, however he is still throttled the same as he was with basic service. While he is still trying to work with them, I am just about to give up.

I am thinking two DSL providers, even though they promise less on the upside, either 1.5 Mbps or 3Mbps upstream, you are not sharing that pipe. And if you get either 384Kbps or 758Kbps upstream consistently you will be able to watch any rich content, even high definition. The upstream bandwidth is the true limiter of service based on what he and I have seen. It sucks.

You MUST have fiber, not just to the neighborhood, but into your house and to a fiber modem. This is what gave Japanese customers 100Mb/100Mb in 2000 and 1Gb/1Gb in 2006. They have the bandwidth to create jobs, develop rich content widgets and apps that require more bandwidth than a mere 100Kbps. Americans do not.

FYI Here is what the current American market is worth in billions;

1GB/1GB Fiber ($52/mth) 40% of 307,212,123 would be 122,884,849 subscribers or Revenue of $6,390,012,148 per month ($6.3B)

1GB/1GB Fiber ($52/mth) Sales Rev $6,390,012,148 / mth; for a year: $76,680,145,776; a $76.6 Billion Company, Want to go into business?

As they say on Survivor, worth playing for?

Americans best and ONLY hopes are the following four:

1) New competitor not related to any of the current telcos, going it alone, only with fiber. 40% of the Internet Market in the US would be worth over $30Billion per month when charging customers rates of $52 per month for 1 Gbps / 1Gbps.

2) Greenlight, the local politicians of Wilson N.C. invited them to come into town and run fiber to homes. They did. They charge $100 per month for 100Mbps / 100Mbps (synchronous) bandwidth. I think 95% of Americans would love for Greenlight to come to their town. BTW: the Cable Cos and telcos are working the North Carolina legislature hard to stop Greenlight and prevent either them or other companies from offering service to other North Carolina communities. See last legislative session and upcoming legislative session for details. Probably what we can expect in D.C. They are not spending over $1.8Million per week in DC to lay Fiber!

3) Google, same reason as number 1, but Google, leveraging their data centers, undersea cables and running Fiber. Please oh please this would be a dream come true. I am not aware of any plans for Google to enter the consumer marketplace, but it would be a public relations coupe!

4) Our politicians to stop accepting bribes and de-regulate the telco / cable / wireless / wireline monopolies and oligopolies. It was successful in Japan. They actually have working competitive markets thanks to politicians deregulating NTT (tel co) and their Fiber. By 2000, they had 100Mb / 100Mb for less than $55; in 2006 companies introduced 1GB / 1GB bandwidth for less than $52 per month. Prices actually went down due to a thriving competitive marketplace. Both historical Republicans and historical Democrats would jump at this for different reasons, but neither party is like they use to be. They both fail us. I blame the Republicans more based on their bail out of the bands/financial institutions. I will never, ever vote Republican again because of what they started and did via Bush. The Democrats are

Unintended consequences

[Vibben]

Originally this was to help prevent carrier networks from discriminating against others due to conflicts of interest or the like. Then it molded into a you can't discriminate against certain forms of data transmission (streaming videos, bittorrent, etc.) True we see a FEW of these cases that quickly was overturned yet we get calls of "Network Neutrality." As if the world was going to end tomorrow. I'd rather not give the FCC more power but that's just me. In any case has anyone thought that the carrier networks are forced to do bandwidth allocations because there's limited bandwidth? That more and more people are using bittorrent, streaming HD videos and thus creating a bottleneck? That if we forced these carrier networks to treat all traffic as equal they'll change the way they charge us? In fact I see the carrier networks billing us the same way as cell phone companies do. Give us a set amount of bandwidth and then charge us for going over. In fact this is being talked about already and I'm sure it's in anticipation that this thing will get passed. How about instead of adding more power to the FCC we instead use some of that "stimulus" money used to "improve" infrastructure and use it build a fiber optic network. How about instead of crying to the government to shake their finger at the carrier company we tell them to use OUR taxes to improve our own country's broadband infrastructure.