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FCC Begins Crafting Net Neutrality Regulations
ceswiedler writes "The FCC has begun crafting rules for network neutrality. The full proposal hasn't been released yet, but according to their press release (warning, Microsoft Word document) carriers would not be allowed to 'prevent users from sending or receiving the lawful content,' 'running lawful applications,' or 'connecting and using ... lawful devices that do not harm the network.' There will be a three-month period for comments beginning January 14, followed by 2 months for replies, after which the FCC will issue its final guidelines." Reader Adrian Lopez notes that US Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain has introduced legislation that "would keep the FCC from enacting rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet content and applications." McCain called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet.
Update: 10/24 16:32 GMT by KD : jamie found a Reuters story reporting that the Sunlight Foundation has revealed John McCain to be Congress's biggest recipient of telco money over the last two years — "a total of $894,379..., more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev."
Update: 10/24 16:32 GMT by KD : jamie found a Reuters story reporting that the Sunlight Foundation has revealed John McCain to be Congress's biggest recipient of telco money over the last two years — "a total of $894,379..., more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev."
decides what is lawful?
Why, yes! I AM new here.
As usual McCain has no clue what he's going on about, surprise, surprise.
There is a war going on for your mind.
You're right! ;P
Among other advantages, you can get viruses a helluva lot quicker and easier opening windows docs on windows
Why, yes! I AM new here.
For all you federal employees, donate through the CFC: charity code 10437.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" -I guess I should leave then
This article was linked on the Drudge Report as "Julius [Caeser, implied] wants to regulate the internet."
I consider it, rather, a common carrier issue, akin to the situation we had with the railways 100 years ago - they were able to leverage their power over transit into other areas. You know, like how Microsoft used its OS dominance to destroy a rival in another field (web browsers). While all the networks are crying out that its a solution in need of a problem, the whole issue was raised because the telco's all started talking excitedly about how they could do all sorts of shady things, like double-dipping for bandwidth charges, that network neutrality would stop.
I'm a libertarian, and I support net neutrality, since oligopolies are market failures (see for example the price of cell phones in America over time). The actual implementation? Seems to actually have too many loopholes to me. They can, for example, tier service in order to deal with "net congestion". Hah.
I'm less concerned about the definition of Lawful than I am about the definition of Harmful. Law is at least ... a matter of law, even if I don't agree with it. How do courts determine whether something is or is not harmful to a network?
McCain is right, one of the few times, and this would affect free markets and should be stopped.
As various free market groups have put out there is no evidence or even examples of a problem. Until there is an example or even a discussion of a company going to implement something like this* there is no reason for greater government takeover of the Internet or wireless. The only thing we are going to see from any proposal at this time less inovation and something like the CAN-SPAM law that will make it harder to get a need law passed if something does happen.
*Some people having been saying that things like the international Kindle are examples that a net neutrality law needs to stop. Sorry I am not counting blocking pictures as something that ISPs should be blocked from providing.
McCain called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet.
Does he have a problem with that then? Is the Echelon not a government takeover? Is ACTA not a government takeover?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
In case you'd assumed that a press release from a communications agency on the subject of the Internet would be a web page?
Oh I love this part.
"McCain protested the FCC's proposal that wireless broadband providers be included in the net neutrality rules. The wireless industry has "exploded over the past 20 years due to limited government regulation," McCain said in the statement."
Wireless has exploded in the past 20 years because the damn technology has only become feasable for mass market computing in the past 20 years.
There is a war going on for your mind.
All the carriers need to do is suck a senator off to get him to classify any devices which are running things they don't like as "unlawful" and they're okay.
Yeah. Next thing you know the feds will be trying to take over medicare.
Best Slashdot Co
True, I'd prefer a web page. But a press release would typically be a printed document, especially from a governmental agency. I don't think "warning" is appropriate...makes it out to be some kind of dangerous thing. Sounds more like anti-Microsoft type behaviour.
Viruses? If you aren't running a virus scanner, you're gonna get a virus by just going to web pages or via other means and other document formats.
Even though .doc format remains an abysmally poor choice for a document produced by a government agency for public distribution, the days when non-Windows users would be inconvenienced by that are long gone.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Why is FCC doing its press releases in a proprietary vendor lock in format? Haven't they heard of ODF? We should demand FCC and all government agencies to release their documents in a vendor neutral or vendor agnostic format.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The libertarian side of me gets really worried when the government gets involved in anything that says "neutrality" I'm sorry, but freedom of speech is freedom of speech...PERIOD! Do I like about 75% of the garbage on TV, radio or the internet? Hell no! But, I always side on freedom. No one is FORCING me to watch or listen to something I do not want to hear or see. When government gets involved, it usually screws everything up. Truer words were never spoken when someone said the scariest thing every said was... "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help". I don't want ANY regulation on speech, though, or expression. That includes the KKK, pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-abortion, pro-religion, anti-religion or anything else. If you don't like it, don't watch, read or listen to it.
I wonder how they plan to enforce the "lawful uses"/"lawful content" clause. That could turn out to be a hole big enough to drive a truck through. What if the providers say that the only way to insure that legal content is available to to limit access to the few sites that they have vetted and partnered with.
I can fully understand giving ISPs the right a prevent DDOS and other attacks on the network, but the enforcement of what is lawful should be limited to that, and not be a license or directive to police the sites and protocols allowed on a network.
The proposed rules only apply to "lawful content", "lawful applications", "lawful services", and "lawful devices". I'm not sure what I think about this. By way of analogy, do we have laws for our public highway system that limits our use of the road based on what content we carry in our vehicles? Is our use of the roadway illegal if we intend to use something we're carrying for an evil purpose or application? I can see where my vehicle (device) might be unlawfully configured (over the maximum weight limit, for example), and that might be analogous to a lawful network device, but even then, only in so far as it affects use of the network itself, not in any other context.
Why do we need this automatic extension of contexts? It will mean that anything illegal in one context (say, money-laundering), is going to also be automatically illegal in the entirely different context of how it is being conveyed. It would not only be illegal to launder money, but if one uses the Internet, it would be additionally illegal to have merely conveyed instructions to do so.
That we will get all manner of unintended, unhappy side consequences out of this mixing of contexts seems almost guaranteed.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Gurbamint takeover! Gurbamint takeover! Run run! Free murkits, not duh soh-shul-izzum! Gurbamint!
Hey everybody, look! I'm a Republican! I'm dumb enough to believe that corporations can police themselves! Never mind that with the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and land grants we give to the telcos, they might as well be publicly owned. Also never mind that when it comes to abusing their monopoly power to restrict 'lawful' content, double-dip with bandwidth fees, and send rates skyrocketing for practically everybody, the telcos have been giddy with anticipation. This isn't about being tech savvy, Ted Stevens already embarrassed his party enough over that. This is about having the common sense to realize that a major piece of essential infrastructure the public has had an enormous role in building - which is now subject to abject mismanagement, worsening obsolescence, and a total dearth of competition thanks to the companies that are now in charge of it - should be subject to some simple rules to make sure it continues functioning as desired - by us.
In conservative la-la land, capitalism is only fair if you can't ask for lube while the rich skullfuck you. Maybe we should start asking for all that subsidy money back, especially for the shit the telcos never intended to deliver.
the "government takeover" of the Internet (by the way Internet is an entity larger than USA and its government), by government takeover of the FCC, and indirectly government takeover of the Internet by disallowing anyone to prevent any illegal practices that might ensue.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
LOL, stop seeing conspiracies where there are none, any non-html page gets a warning because they need plugins which are often slow and unwieldy. Also .doc/.docx is a format for editable text not release documents, pdf/djvu (which if you take a look around tend to contain a warning) are much more appropriate.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
"Allowed to throttle content that is not legal". That loophole is big enough to pilot the Titanic through. That could easily be interpreted to block everything from p2p traffic to VOIP. This loophole would flat kill P2P in entirety and severely hurt VOIP and all with the ISP's having governments blessings. Many things are legal in one country and not in another.
This loophole needs removed in entirety for all such rules, I can guarantee you that any type of traffic you can think of is illegal, somewhere (Dutch trying to shutdown Swedish P2P, nazi artifacts illegal in France, most newspapers are illegal in certain hardline islamic countries and so on). The Internet is international by nature, it needs to be a neutral platform for the sake of international peace. If someone is breaking a local law (kiddie porn or the like), we already have plenty of laws to send them to prison as needed.
"lawful applications", "lawful services" and also be used for unlawful things.
...concidering the ISP legal-slime logic:
We're not supposed to drop 'legal' connections but we still don't want the high traffic users. We'll filter all high traffic connections. Configure the sandvine filters to increase latency 50% on P2P connections and website x. When the high traffic users complain say 'we're entitled to filter to remove 'illegal' connections. When they cry 'net neutrality' politely inform them that we comply with the rules because we aren't 'preventing users from sending or receiving lawful content', just hindering aka throttling.
McCain called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet.
Somebody wake up grandpa.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sure, those "large companies" can (and did) cut their infrastructure investments... but those investments were paid by public money.
You are not legally allowed to dig your own cables -- Easements were given by the government to the incumbents.
So, tell me again how the government ISN'T involved?
Personally, I don't like to bail on something I have already paid for, but I don't need the Internet "24/7" that much. I can easily deal with "web by mail" and UUCP, or even data transfer via "truck of tapes" again. Strangely enough, if hackers go that route, AND we control the "good stuff" -- that is, the good pirated music/videos and technical information, the "Internet" will go down that path instead.
Which puts the attempted controls by the "other" cartel at risk. Basically, the content cartel wants a centralized Internet, if there is an Internet at all. The delivery cartel wants to put road-blocks into that centralized Internet, to maximize their profits. The hackers are willing to Balkanize the Internet, screwing both of the cartels.
The "end-users" really want the product the hackers produce.
You tell me how this plays out...
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
McCain called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet.
Mr. McCain, since the government pretty much invented the internet, please feel free to step in occasionally to make sure capitalism doesn't drive it back into the ground.
I was one of those quintessential brats in the back seat of my parent's car mindlessly chanting the eternal question, "Are we there yet?". When addressing questions that incorporate government oversight of national infrastructures that are run by near monopolies there are no destination solutions. There are tentative, context sensitive solutions. The answer isn't unregulated free enterprise, nor is it heavy handed government control. IMHO the answer is the solution offered by mature democracies that have in place the institutions and laws that permit tentative solutions to be put in place then publicly monitored and honed.
What works in our modern, mature democracies are the checks and balances, supplemented by free speech, and, government and business oversight, that allow us to find a workable middle ground. I'm a liberal but I'm always glad for the common sense conservatives who try to limit government interference. Solving social problems by way of democratic institutions is a messy, contentious affair but, I think, modern history has amply demonstrated that the current crop of mature democracies are the best way to go and it's the somewhat efficient functioning of our institutions that allow us succeed more so than does any other form of government. We succeed because we have in place institutions that allow for open debate and venues to address things when they go wrong. We aren't there yet, but then we aren't ever gonna be so we might as well enjoy the ride given that we've got the best vehicle on the road.
just my loose change in a contentious debate
ideopath @ play
"'connecting and using ... lawful devices that do not harm the network.'"So, anything with a network card must be switched off, then? Malware, poor configuration, malicious intent all turn a connected device into a DoS device.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Let the Telcos choose (this does not apply to cable unfortunately)...
If they want to keep the protections that common carrier status affords them, then they must support net neutrality and remain essentially a dumb pipe. They used public land and massive tax incentives and subsidies to deploy the initial infrastructure (with the exception of FIOS, which I believe Verizon is eating the total cost, but still using public land, and in some cases tax breaks).
Or, if they do not want to implement neutrality in anyway, and they want to double dip on charging for bandwidth, discriminate on the types of traffic so that their own services do not have to compete etc, strip them of their protections, let every content company, every person who has been libeled, every politician who wants to shut down $x type of service/product/content and what not sue the telcos and ISPs into oblivion.
Seriously, the only reason telcos have protections is because they were just the intermediary carrying traffic between end points, and could not be held liable for what those entities did. But if they want to start manipulating the types of traffic and data, then they should be held liable for whatever that data contains.
For the record, I agree with the principles, I may not neccesarily agree with how the gov will implement them. Also, I did not vote, I was taught to vote my believes, not the lesser of 2 evils, and honestly, there is very little difference between them from my viewpoint.
How about this.. we have a public referendum on what the public wants. Sure the public can be swayed, but atleast the public as a whole will have some visibility in front of the politicians, as it is right now, the politicians only real view is of whatever the lobbying entities put in front of them.. he who has the money makes the rules I guess.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
The BIGGEST problem I have with Net Neutrality (regardless if it is initially for the good or bad) is that your are removing the checks and balances from the free market (aka capitalism) and handing it to government.
I mean, don’t these sorta things always start out as “good intentions”?? There are a bunch of short-range thinkers on here who are only thinking of measures to equalize the rights of consumers against the big evil ISP’s. While there are valid points where these ISP’s are tipping the playing field in their favor, be careful what you wish for is what I say. If you give these powers to your government, are you also naive to think your government will always have your best interests in mind? I’d say historically speaking this is not always the case.
Net Neutrality is really a means to an ends. Nope, I didn’t get that backwards. Consider this:
If one wants to implement a communist/socialist structure within America, one would agree that due to the existence of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, this would be a very difficult task to achieve. In true nerd fashion, kind of like trying to run Windows XP on SPARC hardware (the software cannot function on the hardware). So how do you get around this?? Easy, install an emulator or virtualization layer. In this case I believe it is capitalism, aka big business. For example, government cannot directly infringe on your rights... to smoke a cigarette let’s say. But a company can, because your employment is mutual which "volunteers" you for anything the company wants. Therefore, a communist regime need not change this country’s fundamental laws in order to implement dictatorial control of the masses, they only need to control the corporations. Net Neutrality installs the transport layer needed for a government to control the Internet and that sector of our lives. Is it just me or does GE bother anyone else?? The sad irony here is that communism can use its arch nemesis “capitalism” against itself like a parasite uses a host.
I know most slashdotters here are a mixture of young IT professional's and students alike, and the vast majority being tilted to the liberal side - and there's nothing wrong with that. The danger (and this is historically substantiated) is that the ambitious youth as a whole are vulnerable to communist ploys. Ask yourself this honest question; would you recognize a communist ploy if you see one? How do you even know what to look for? Granted, like capitalism communism has it's good and bad parts. The difference is that capitalism incorporates both good and bad at any given time (check and balance) while communism starts out with good intent like "Net Neutrality", but then evolves into something nefarious. "Net Neutrality", oh sounds so fair doesn't it? I think communists like to use oxymoron’s for naming things. Like "Free Press" founder Robert McChesney is a Marxist. Sad that many of you have bought into the "business is evil" and "capitalism is evil", there always has to be a villain etc... and you are being fooled into doing the ground work for true communists. The sad part is by the time you all "figure it out" it'll be too late. I used to think the Germans were soooooooo stupid for falling for the Nazi’s and Hitler. But knowing history now, it was mainly the youth and the big unions that gave power to that movement. You all forget that those German unions and students all were fighting for the exact same stuff you all are fighting for today: social justice, equality, freedom from big business, better jobs, unifying the country (Nationalism), environmental concerns, community service, etc... Any of this sounds familiar? I'm not saying give up on those core beliefs - after all they are noble causes, just be careful what and whom you vote for, and recognize the hidden agendas. Ironically with all the slams I see on here about big business being bad for the ‘little guy’, you same individuals
Did your contract say that the ISP was allowed to monitor and shape traffic if they felt it may adversely affect their network? If not you should have been able to get out one some breach of contract clause. If they did say they might shape traffic and you didn't want them to do it then why did you agree to the contract?
I hate regulation. I'm so sick of Comcast regulating my Internet habits that I want my government to regulate Comcast. Net Neutrality is the least-regulation possible.
Robert Mcdowell:
"Consumers are telling the marketplace that they don't want networks that operate merely as 'dumb pipes,'" he said. "Sometimes they want the added value and efficiency that comes from intelligence inside networks as well."
I wish I could interview politicians, "You just made that shit up didn't you?"
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
And for the thing between countries? Do you think the FCC has anything to say outside of the US? Dutch don't care about the FCC, neither do the Swedes, nor the French. Net neutrality needs to be fought for in every country, not just the US.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" - Ronald Reagan
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
just what do you expect from the republicans. EVERY kind of move they made to control people's lives are disguised as 'for freedom'.
why the fuck arent highways being sold to whomever bids the highest for them, and they are let to discriminate against any and whomever they like and charge them whatever they like, for 'free market' and freedom ? why the fuck all the conservatives stop dead, when asked why arent we doing this ? wouldnt private companies run roads better ? isnt it scuttling investment to not allow private interests to build roads and run them ? and why the fuck shouldnt they be allowed who passes from their roads, and charge whomever they want, and whatever they want, because it is 'their' road ?
america needs to be get rid of republican ilk. they work against freedom of individuals by throwing them at the mercy of big private interests with every fucking move they make, and they dub this 'liberty'. LIBERTY WAS NOT MEANT AS 'BIG FISH COULD RULE SMALLER FISH' AND CALL THIS 'FREEDOM'.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1406601&cid=29770311
Read radical news here
the corporations dont want to leave internet 'as it is'. they want to CHANGE it, so they will be able to run their networks as cable networks. this is why you need net neutrality rules. net neutrality rules are no different than rules that govern the highways -> no highway administration can decide who passes over the road or charge any traffic according to source, not the type and amount.
get a fucking brain and realize what's going on before purporting knee jerk alan greenspanist comments.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1406601&cid=29770311
Read radical news here
It was hobson's choice.
There's no law requiring the acceptance of a TOS change automatically. There's ***supposed*** to be a contract law that says if one side changed the contract, then the contract is new and terminated by that side, so the change in TOS would have been the end of the contract BY the ISP and therefore the customer cannot be charged for it.
But that requires that you disconnect and ban bank charges from the ISP.
And no other ISP would take you on while that argument were going on.
So, hobson's choice: no internet or crappy internet.
PS the only reason the TOS contract has power is because the government enforce contract laws.
So if you want the government out of it, there's no contract law either.
fucking up of internet by american companies because they want to make it into a cable internet would incur SO much bigger a backlash from international economic community and get the internet out of usa's control and home ground SO fast that dumping of the dollar would be the least of your concerns.
Read radical news here
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-14-2009/rape-nuts
it has come to this point. because, you let those fucking republicans yelp on and on about 'letting businesses be'.
net neutrality is no different. its the freedom of internet being legalized. yet, same bastards oppose it with the same old barking.
Read radical news here
With comments like these:
http://blog.openinternet.gov/?p=1&cpage=128
I think it's game over for net neutrality in the USA.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Once you establish that the FCC has the power to regulate the internet, even if the initial regulation is something you approve of, you're likely to find they start using that newly established power in ways you most decidedly do not approve of. Calling in the government to deal with something that is really only a potential (rather than actual) problem at this point is liable to end up being a long term loss for internet freedom.
Oh no, the industry standard for documents is used! Seems a bit silly.
McCain called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet.
Keep the durned gub'ment out of my interwebs!
Except, you know, the part about how the gub'ment funded its invention and development, and made the internet widespread and accessible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Or watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zovJfeHj-Uc
I find it spectacular that McCain takes these positions with nary a sprinkle of what the people want. Who is advising him? And why doesn't he get some better people?
I support Net neutrality in the broader context but there are still very valid points to be made on the opposite side... yet, all we hear are sound bites that do not further the argument and worse, detract from the real provisions that make for a good governance.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2403704/John-McCain-technology-illiterate-doesnt-email-or-use-internet.html
Judges? Based on .. the law?
The problem with relying on judges is that you're more likely to get a ruling like Kelo than some noble defense of the Constitution. You know, Kelo, the one that declared, yes, governments can seize your private property and transfer it to other private citizens for "the public good".
There's a line in the Bible... "Put not your trust in princes"... that I think could easily apply to judges when it comes to your rights and the Constitution.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Why even have a government... it just wants to take over everything!
While I can easily believe McCain to be that stupid, I have a bit of difficulty believing that his entire staff is that clueless. Somebody's just feeding far-right talking points to McCain. Time to look at who's been making big political donations to McCain. (Three guesses as to who's been writing those checks.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I used to see a heck of a lot more of that when there were easily a dozen or more local ISPs offering Internet access in my area. Once the telcos were allowed to cut them out of the picture, innovation has become non-existent.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I need a simple analogy to explain net neutrality. Is this one adequate?
Imagine if the roads were owned by Comcast and AT&T. You pay a monthly fee to drive on the roads. Wal-mart and Target also pay a monthly fee to have the roads come to their stores. Under net neutrality, you and I drive at the same speed limit whether we go to Wal-mart or to Target.
Without net neutrality, Comcast and AT&T want to arbitrarily set the speed limit on their roads. They then want to tell Wal-mart and Target that they need to pay even more money to Comcast and AT&T or they'll lower the speed limit on the roads to their stores. Meaning, if Wal-mart doesn't pay the extra toll, then Comcast/AT&T will force Wal-mart customers to drive at 10mph to Wal-mart stores... Meanwhile, Target paid off Comcast/AT&T, which means that Target customers can drive at 60mh to Target stores.
Just wanted to point out that you gave excellent background in the first two paragraphs, then argued against Libertarianism in the third. However, you debunked your own argument against Libertarainism in the fourth, proving what I've always believed... That yes, indeed, Libertarianism is the true Capitalism. And with Capitalism comes natural ups and downs, much like with the weather and nature.
In short, you try to argue against Libertarianism but end up proving it the best course of action by the end of your rant. Not sure if that was your intent, but it does say something.
The FCC finally gets balls enough to put a stop to telco discrimination, and here comes big bad congress trying to de-fang them.
Looks like the FCC royally pissed off some special interests.
I'm quite sure the $609,334 from Time Warner for his 2008 campaign committee has absolutely nothing to do with his principled stance on this issue.
I'm quite sure the $1,069,595 from Goldman Sachs, the $761,939 from JP Morgan, the $742,375 from Citigroup, or the $540,881 from Morgan Stanley for his 2008 campaign committee has absolutely nothing to do with his principled stance on the issue of bank bailouts.
Are you sure you want to play this game?
source
You idiot, moron, democrat!
Have'nt you heard of Adobe acrobat? PDF? The ubiquitous document file format!!!!!
And, NO! No one has really heard of ODF!!!! Precisly because it is not ubiquitous!
Similar sitation where I live. Actually there are four options for our household. (Five if no internet access is an option nowadays.) We have AT&T which may or may not (more on that below) allow me to operate the servers on the connection that supports my home-based work. Comcast which absolutely does not allow servers. A wireless provider which does not (despite offering a "business" plan with fixed IP addresses). And, finally, Covad which allows me to operate servers but with a lower bandwidth connection than I'd like and costs more than any of the other options. I would have additional options if we actually lived within the big city (Chicago) limits. (But it only takes one or two watches of the evening news by anyone with school-aged children to understand why that is not a reasonable option.)
The trouble with the telcos acting as providers of dumb pipes is that they cannot make as much money off that model. Look at what happened to banking. Taking customer deposits and lending them out didn't allow them to make billions in profits. So they got rid of the restrictions that prevented them from doing all the really profitable stuff -- like trading in derivatives -- and now they make money hand over fist.
If the telcos are restricted to being nothing more than electonic plumbers, they won't make the really big bucks. They drool over the ability to charge content providers a fee for delivering their content faster than someone who hasn't paid that fee. To the telcos, this would be innovation. It doesn't help the regular folks that use the Internet one iota (well movie streamers would benefit, I guess; big effin' deal.) But the innovation that the telcos are predicting would be prevented by Net Neutrality is not any technical innovation. (Cisco probably disagrees since they surely have equipment they're anxious to sell the telcos to assist them in their traffic management.) It's the new innovative ways they'll be able to suck money out of the pockets of the users of their pipes that'd be blocked by any net neutrality policy.
And $DEITY help us if the telcos were to begin designing the web services that people use. I occasionally visit AT&T's web site (most recently a couple of months ago) to see if switching to them would be possible. The site is almost impossible to navigate using anything other than IE. The information is difficult to find and understand. I have gotten two different web pages that purport to describe the service that I was interested in and after several visits I still can't figure out what's allowed. Calling them for more details was a completely useless exercise; they thought what I was looking for was available but could not point me to where I could confirm anything. (The people who you reach are totally oblivious as to what's on the company web site. It's really incredible. I'm told that the staff that mans the telco's phones experiences a very high turnover rate. That doesn't surprise me one bit.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Forget the lawful part. Who decides what's damaging to the network! Could an ISP suddenly declare that more than 1% usage of a pipe over the course of a month is considered damaging?
If you're sharing the upstream with over 9,000 other subscribers in your town, then of course 1% usage can be damaging.
Agreed. I think McCain is confused about the difference between "Government Takeover", and Regulation. Perhaps if they had tried a little more Regulation these last few years, we would have had a little less of the 'takeover'...
Shouldn't libertarians support the free internet market, though?
What free internet market? In a free market with strong property rights, one is not free to pull cable over a non-subscriber's land to reach subscribers' premises.
It's basically what you have now: "Lawful" is rather clearly defined. I'm more worried about whimsical definitions of "harm". "Harmful" is plenty vague. Like all them VoIP packets "harming" the network, or "harming" the provider by blocking their spam and ads. Same old spit.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
What if the providers say that the only way to insure that legal content is available to to limit access to the few sites that they have vetted and partnered with.
It depends on where the final bill places the burden of proof: either on the subscriber to demonstrate that the content is lawful, or on the ISP to demonstrate that it is not.
1) Take an undefined activity that harms no one but to which some people object.
2) Make a law that 'protects' said activity as long as the activity is 'lawful'
3) Start chipping away at the activity
In two decades we won't be able to send an email without every ISP involved reading it, scanning it, logging it, dissecting it, and probably gooing on it to see if it's 'lawful'.
There goes the neighborhood.
Thanks, Republicans, for helping me figure out whether "Net Neutrality" is a good thing or a bad thing, without even having to find a definition. All one needs to do is figure out which side of the argument the Republicans are supporting. The opposite side is the one which is best for consumers. It's so easy!
It's not okay for "That damn Obama to take away muh guns!" But it IS okay for the government to give ISPs the power to strip away peoples' choice of what they want to do on the internet? I'll never understand Republicans.
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"Network Neutrality" sounds good, but...
As I see it, there are 4 basic issues:
1. Access to content and services.
2. Bandwidth.
3. Availability of land-based broadband service.
4. Government involvement.
Issue 1 - Access: I am absolutely for big dumb pipes. I should be able to get what I want from wherever it is. Maybe I'm dating myself, but remember AOL and CompuServe? I don't want to re-live that. That said, one cannot discuss open access to content without also discussing bandwidth.
Issue 2 - Bandwidth: The biggest problem, IMHO, is that IPS's have oversold their bandwidth capacity, especially to individual consumers. I have yet to see a web hosting plan that does not include usage caps, yet ISP's continue to advertise and sell "unlimited, always-on internet access" to individual consumers. As much as it pains me to say it, I am in favor of REASONABLE tiered or metered plans. I would favor a time-of-day metered plan as it would allow you to pay for what you use, without being cut-off. I know my idea of reasonable probably isn't yours, but when Joe Schmo cable-modem user decides to download the entire "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series starting Saturday morning, it really screws their other customers on that segment.
Issue 3 - Broadband Availability: If you live an a rural area that is not already served by cable or teleco DSL, your only choices other than dial-up, if that, are cellular and satellite. Face it, for most people that's really not much of a choice. Perhaps we could look into something like the "Rural Electrification Administration". There are very few areas in the U.S. that do not have land-line telephone service. Multiple, private ISP's could then offer service over the newly opened segments For the record, I am opposed to "broadband over powerlines" as it produces massive interference in the lower- to mid- radio frequency bands.
Issue 4 - Government Involvement: As with pretty much everything, government regulation of the internet is a bad thing. Once you get the camel's nose under the tent flap, you'll never know what will happen (chances are you'll need a shovel, but you'll never get rid of the smell).
We have seen Version's degrading competing VOIP streams and Comcast forging packet headers to knock-off bittorrent feeds and the commented on ISP throttling on-line gaming, etc. The ISP's need to get their collective acts together or the government will impose itself on them (and us) and we will all be the worse for it.
how can you be a libertarian and be in favor of regulating private networks?
How can you reasonably call them private networks? They had plenty of public assistance/intervention to get them built.
Sure, but then don't sell me a 10 mbit pipe, if you're going to cut me off for using more than 100kb of it
You're sold a 100 kbps pipe burstable to 10 Mbps.
Few people have more than two ISPs to choose from. If they both have service agreements that say they can screw you whenever they feel like it, what the hell are you supposed to do? String your own wires?
When it comes to broadband, there is no free market. If there is no free market, there has to be regulation to protect the consumer.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm not really sure how 4 major communications players absorbing every local/smaller wireless provider (most of whom were probably already paying the bigger providers for access) is "exploding." Sounds more like the market's proving that you need to already be the entrenched, big player to survive.
Talk about a strong market surviving off of limited gov't intervention...
There is no such thing as a market failure.
Citation needed.
Tweet, tweet.
What is it with the idiot, moron, Marxist
This is as far as I got.
The McCarthy era called. They want their red scare back.
Get a grip.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
John McLame ( Yes I voted for him ) is a moron I doubt he even understands what the internet is let alone why its a bad thing for service providers to throttle down users bandwidth. Especially when they advertise much higher speeds than what users end up getting. Yes I know there is an End User Agreement that you have to agree to when you sign up with an ISP for internet access. But I still feel compelled to have some regulation that says no to the ISPs you cant do that. Some oversight is good I just would not like to see it balloon into this huge monolithic entity that ends up screwing us all. Net Neutrality should be exactly that neutral not controlled by a group of corps or govt bodies.
Nor do they want it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunications
what the fuck else was i trying to say, pray tell me. and also please tell me what the fuck i am going to eat for lunch today. also, tell my next 5 years' fortune please.
you should learn not to put fucking words in people's mouths, if you want to be taken seriously, and responded to. this is why i havent responded to your blabberscrap, and you wont get another reply.
Read radical news here
I just shared my support for net neutrality with the FCC, and you can too! Go here: http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs2/upload/display?z=ydawa Enter 09-191 in the "Proceeding" text box, and fill out your contact info. Paste this, or a variation of it, or your own thoughts: I am very strongly in support of net neutrality, and hope the FCC enacts rules that will prohibit any internet provider from offering preferential internet access to some sources or types of data, and offering inferior access to other sources or types. I believe that the internet has been an engine of creativity in large part because of its openness and low barriers to entry. Without net neutrality, the internet may not be able to continue in its role as an economic driver and source of information and innovation.