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

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: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

[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.