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The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy
NoMoreHelio writes "The political blog ThinkProgress lays out big telecom's plan to attack net neutality. The blog obtained a secret PowerPoint presentation from a telecommunications industry front group (PPT) that outlines the industry strategy for defending against regulatory attempts by the FCC. The industry plans to partner with two conservative 'astroturfing' groups, best known for their work seeding the Tea Party movement. Today's revelation from ThinkProgress comes as Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) joined various telecom-funded front groups to unveil an anti-net neutrality bill."
This isn't so much about Net Neutrality as it is about them not wanting the government to have control of the situation. It wouldn't matter what the government wanted to do, the Telecoms want to be the ones in charge.
They favor small government when it helps big business. They favor new legislation when it helps big business. They are experts at fooling average hard-working folks into voting against their own best interests.
I wonder what completely wrong definition they'll assign "net neutrality" to?
Given that their first 2 scare lines involved the phrase "government takeover", I think they'll take a similar route...
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
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They elected GWB twice, it seems they can get plenty done.
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently.
And I never said that they should go around telling people what they can do with their property. I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for. The internet implies neutrality by definition. When we paid these millions of dollars to telecoms we weren't wanting non-neutral internet connections because such things were nearly impossible with the technology level. However, with deep packet inspection and the like, its becoming a threat.
If a company wants to not use public land and public funding, fine, do whatever you want. However, the moment you use public land or public funding, you should be subjected to the will of the people. The will of the people is pro-net neutrality, and the lack of net neutrality has almost no positives and many negatives.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
here is a clue - Don't offer unlimited bandwidth if you can't handle it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, it is pure propaganda that network neutrality would affect any of the above very reasonable engineering decisions.
That being said, you should really re-examine your business model if p2p is filling your transit from a small percentage of your customers. That is an engineering problem with your sale of unlimited services without adequate feed.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for.
That kind of tenuous reasoning could lead to people organizing and shutting down big corpulent wastes of money like HEW, the EPA, etc.
And if public money has gone to National Public Radio (a certain amount has and can be documented) where's my open mike?
1. Create sea of regulation preventing competition from entering telecom business.
2. Achieve government-sanctioned monopoly on said services.
3. Screw over users.
4. Prevent users from regulating against being screwed in the name of freedom.
5. Profit
Did anyone notice where this story came from? Think Progress, the far-left-liberal group.
Recently a bill was introduced in the House that would provide the FCC the ability to regulate ISPs, it was written by Free Press, a badly misnamed organization dedicated to regulating an over-use of free speech, and, among other things, criminalizing private media ownership in favor of "democratic" collective ownership, regulating bloggers, reporters, instituting government-funded reporting and journalism, and re-introducing the fairness doctrine. Woa! And government doesn't want to regulate ISPs, they just need to? Nothing bad could come of this? Seriously?
Since when were ISPs bad? They provide a great service to many people. Remember what the Internet is. It's a network of privately owned computers, linked together. Each individual has the say as to what happens with their computers and their network, each individual has every right to say how to route their data. Engineering and internal self-regulation has always solved more problems than outside regulation done by force. This is how the Internet has always operated, why are we now criminalizing this idea of Internet freedom?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
They didn't turn the Internet over for the common good. It was dragged from their bleeding hands by thousands of BBS sysops turned ISP and their subscribers. Aided by rogue backbone networks like UUNet and whipped into action by Jack Rickard, we tore up the Internet Acceptable Use Provisions and stopped paying the outrageous amounts they charged for admission to their exclusive little club. Since then the Internet has been ours, not the government's or that of the government-funded academic and research groups that we took it from. Internet 2 is a way for them to get back control. So is Net Neutrality. If you think the telecoms are a problem and government management would be an improvement, you need to find a friend who'll lend you a few grey cells.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
You guys seriously want to have a bunch of bureaucrats go in and regulate something that has been so successful and has provided so much information and knowledge...
I've been involved with the internet since the very early days when it was a government project. A big part of why the internet has been so successful is because the military and government did a pretty decent job building it. So you're okay letting government design and build it, but suddenly they can't handle oversight.
Corporations are not the solution, corporations are the problem. Without the government having the ability to enforce fair dealing, corporate interests are going to stomp all over consumers. Maybe you remember what happened when we let the banking industry self-regulate. Or did that little episode not make it on to Fox News? It'll be that on the internet.
What's really interesting is how often corporate interests are lining up with the "grassroots" organizers of the tea party.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They are against government doing things for other people. Note that they blaim Obama for the rescue plan, that was enacted by Bush and the result of republican policies, the neo-conservative movement started with Reagan.
First, the name calling makes you sound like a five year old... I know you think you're being funny, but it just comes off as snarky, at best, every time it gets used.
/shock), which, yeah, pissed off fiscally conservative people even further. The last few years of Bush pushed them over the edge, causing them to turn on Bush... but where are the Bush fiscal policy bashers from the left now that Obama is in power? Seems as though they disappeared when their side "won" even though Obama is exacerbating Bush's bad fiscal policies that they supposedly disagreed with. For as much as the left criticizes the Tea Party people for being, uh, late to the party, it seems as though the left has completely abandoned it once they gained the White House.
Second, learn some history. The neo-con movement didn't start with Reagan, it started in the 1950s and 60s, as international interventionalist Democrats split with their own party and joined in with the Republicans. In fact, that's where the whole "neo" part about them being conservatives comes in... they were a "new kind of conservative."
Third, I'm sure you're up on your talking points, but most Tea Party people are as just as opposed to Bush's role in the bailouts as they are Obama's. In fact, many Republicans who voted for TARP are facing a similar backlash to incumbant Democrats (see McCain getting a serious challenge from Hayworth, Bob Bennett getting the boot in the Utah Republican primary last week, Crist leaving the GOP in Florida when it became apparent that Republicans wouldn't support him in the primary, etc).
But also, let's not forget that Obama voted for TARP himself (which makes him as bad as Bush), and then he went on to create even more bailouts and a giant new entitlement that we obviously can't afford (CBO projections continue to increase as of this week
It is like financial regulation, the banks are dead against that, but want very strict laws that enable them to collect on debts. Freedom is me telling you what I can do and you can't.
Big banks are all FOR financial regulation. It raises the bar on new competition trying to get their foot in the door. You don't think the big banks actually suffer, do you? It's kinda like how Microsoft is all for software patents (which are another type of government regulation) - it makes it harder for the little guy to compete and does absolutely nothing to hinder the big guys, whom generally take a Mutally Assured Destruction approach with each other (I won't sue you for violating my software patents if you don't sue me for violating yours).
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully. Likewise, that FDA stamp on your meat doesn't mean the FDA inspected that piece, just that the facillities met requirements the day the FDA showed up. Ditto for your local health departments inspections of restaurants. In fact, "crappy" chain restaurants like McDonalds are FAR more rigorous than your local Dept of Health when it comes to food safety inspections (at least back when I was a manager in the mid 90s, corporate inspects 4 times a year, one of which is a surprise inspection, compared to once a year for the state, which notifies you that you'll be inspected "sometime this month" before showing up). BigChainFood wants to protect its brand from bad franchisees, the Health Department wants to do the minimum to meet their job requirement.
Back to the topic of Net Neutrality, I've never seen a single definition th
Stop Koolaid Politics
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently
Yay! So I can ban all those filthy niggers nips and spics from my Quikkkie*Mart!
Except no, we know this is wrong and there are laws against it.
For the same reason telcoms shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily throttle traffic based on who is sending it to who and for what purpose.
Telcoms can state that I can connect at 2Mb/s for up to 100GB up, 20GB down a month with bursts of up to 1GB/hour up, 500MB down. (And they better should be serving me that! No excuses.)
They shouldn't be able to say what I can do with that bandwidth, if I want to spend all day watching youtubes video or chatting over skype is my business only.
And don't bring the "free market", most people have no choice of ISP or only 2 ISP that are equally bad.
But... the future refused to change.
The solution is simple, do not filter traffic at all. Instead put a reasonable limit onto all traffic and count all traffic. At 200 GB/m on most households will not use a quarter of that. After 200 GB, offer additional blocks of bandwidth at $1 per GB or such (or offer shape the entire connection speed down to something like 512 Mbit, but give customers the choice). Paying for your actual usage is the only fair system. There is no point selling all plans for $60 when 30% of people only want 10 GB a month which will cost $20, whilst 10% want 500 GB a month and are willing to fork over $100, the other 60% fit somewhere in between.
A service provider should never be permitted to interfere with your traffic, its akin to the supermarket determining what I am and am not permitted to buy from their stock, "Sorry sir, the Brie is reserved for our Premium customers, only Cheddar is available for all. Perhaps you would like to buy a Tesco Plus subscription for $49.95 a month". Right now, the only limits the supermarket can put on my cheese consumption is governed by how much money I want to give them. However bandwidth is not free (especially international bandwidth) as we start to use more and more you will have to adapt this system. Intra American bandwidth is pennies on the dollar, international bandwidth starts to cost.
But get rid of contracts, put a flat installation fee and possibly an ETF if the customer leaves in less then six months.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You sold the users unlimited bandwidth, either deliver it, or change your business model. The mistaken belief that your profit margins are your right, and that you have the retroactive authority to restrict what your users do with what you have sold them, is the reason that this whole mess has started. Business changes, if you are unwilling to adapt, that is one thing, but coming back and trying to force after the fact restrictions on what you have sold your customers is unethical at best.
Why do you get to decide that some users traffic is less important than others? Did they get any say in the matter? Are they currently under contract?
If you cannot provide what you have sold, tell your customers that and let them find other providers, but to deceitfully and silently degrade some customers service because they are lower margin than others, is reprehensible.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
I don't know. There have been AT&T trucks blocking my alley for the past week and all their work seems to take place on poles standing in the alley, not on people's property.
And to me it has less to do with the public property that the telcos have appropriated than the fact that they have glommed onto an internet that was developed entirely with public money and turned it into their own private playground.
Just remember, private industry would have never created the Internet that we use today. Can you even imagine for a second how that conversation would have gone? "How much will we charge per email? You want to use an open source what?"
It's a shame so many people seem to have forgotten where the Internet came from. They think it's some great gift that AT&T has given us so we can subscribe to U-Verse and play World of Warcraft.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It hasn't been "We the people" since about 1865. The imperial federal government decided that states could no longer rule themselves and took over. Since then the imperial federal government has been at war with "We the people". They started taking our money in 1913 with the addition of the 16th amendment. Then they tried to subdue us by removing our booze in 1920 with the 18th amendment. This failed but then they succeeded later in 1972 when Richard Nixon started the war on the people. Then in 2001, Bush gave us the Patriot act. Finally in 2010 they completed the assault on "We the people" by making it so that if you were to rebel or even think about it and propagandize about it they would revoke your American citizenship and strip you of all civil liberties including your Miranda right and label you a combatant and keep you imprisoned indefinitely. That being the "terrorist expatriation act".
So no, the government hasn't been "us" for a long time. That and the fact that all the Supreme Court Justices are from NYC and attended either Harvard or Yale should tell you something about the ruling elite in this country.
So I'm going to get back to work so I can pay my taxes which pay for two foreign wars I don't believe in, an auto company I think should have gone under, the mortgages of half the people in this country and the police force that makes it so I can't even smoke a joint on the weekends without fear of being put in jail. Oh and if I miss report my taxes they'll also put me in jail. Oh and if during my commute I get into the music on the radio and don't watch my speed I'll end up in court as well. Luckily when I get home I can watch TV and play video games; well censored TV with no expletives because my government doesn't think its appropriate. Oh and nothing with skin, because the human body is so offensive. Oh and no salt or sugar either.