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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.
Dear AT&T,
How much for the Slashdot / Reddit / Gmail / Gaming Bandwidth package? Just planning ahead...
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.
Okay... so let's say I'm an ISP. I don't shape any traffic. A small percentage of my customers are slamming my transit connection with p2p traffic. What if I setup peering connections to large content providers (google, Netflix, Directv, yahoo, large hosting company networks, voip providers, etc)? Now all non-peered BitTorrent traffic will go through the transit link where is could get clogged up. All the sites the most of my non-peering users are interested in get nice fast connectivity. I also setup an alternate network for my own VoIP services -- no QoS, but traffic gets routed off congested points on my network.
If an ISP does this, are they violating net neutrality? Does the government get to tell me which networks I peer with? Is peering now a *bad* thing if the government has too much control over the "neutrality"?
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.
While I am for net-neutrality, and we do need some form of regulation on the internet to keep the providers fair and clean, do not, and I repeat, do not assume that the government is pushing net neutrality for the purpose of helping you. There have been many times in the United States where our government will push something like Social Security, saying "This is to help the widows with children", which, yes, is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I'm a bit curious who you think receives Social Security checks. You got the survivor and child benefit correct, but the only other two benefits are a retirement benefit available at age 62 (that's a reduced benefit; you don't get the unreduced benefit until age 66 or 67 depending on when you were born) and a total disability benefit which generally requires a year or two worth of paperwork to prove that your disability is severe enough to end your working life.
I think it's somewhat arguable whether or not the survivor benefit is strictly necessary in this day and age. But I'm curious how these social security benefits which you can only get at the end of your working lifetime are "a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work."
Do you think that Social Security is welfare? It isn't.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The regulation would be to keep things the same. To prevent things from getting worse. Not to change the internet.
Sent from my PDP-11
The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good"
The FCC is playing it's own political game. Broadband Reports has been covering it for quite awhile now. Essentially they plan on ignoring the recommendation of their own study groups. The studies they've done have concluded that "open access" (i.e: Verizon/Time Warner/etc are forced to let competitors use their fiber and copper plants) is the best way to increase competition. They have ignored these studies in favor of moving forward with a "third way" that won't do anything to address the mono/duolopy of ISPs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Except that the internet is not and has never been "the same". If the internet was kept "the same" we'd be having this conversation on Usenet over a period of days while we each waited for the UUCP batch job to run and update the posts.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one? Regulation tends to protect the status quo. I'm not sure if it's really the way we want to go with regards to the internet. I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market. I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
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
Perhaps if the infrastructure were not owned by monopolies, your points would have more validity. However, when companies lobby for and are granted monopolies over infrastructure *and* services, they then become subject to greater regulation and scrutiny, because normal market forces such as customers switching to another provider often are no longer possible.
From an ordinary user standpoint, once upon a time you actually could choose between many different ISP's because *you* dialed *them*. Can I dial any ISP I want over Cable, or DSL, or fiber, or whatever?
That's the problem in the US today. Infrastructure has been tied to service, leaving most folks with very little choice and the market forces hogtied by government granted monopolies.
There are plenty of examples throughout the world where there is good competition at the ISP level, with consumers benefiting from better infrastructure, services, and prices. And the great majority of it is from introducing competition, not allowing monopolies to get larger and larger.
Net Neutrality probably wouldn't even be on the radar if infrastructure and services were not tied together in government granted monopolies.
Are you old enough to remember how close we came to having several of the Great Lakes become completely dead bodies of water?
Before the EPA stepped in, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland actually caught fire. Today, thanks in largest part to the EPA, you can fish for snook, redbreast, sunfish or tarpon. If you've been to Cleveland in the last ten years, you'll find that the river no longer smells like creosote.
Since the EPA, the air in ever major American city, with the possible exception of Huston, has improved considerably. There were days here in Chicago when you could see green, stinking smog hanging over the entire downtown area. The Chicago River was a stinking mess, with factories and mills up and down the river dumping waste into it.
Today, living on the river is highly desirable and there is even sport fishing on the river. People can enjoy eating lunch along the river and you no longer have to hold your nose like you did twenty years ago.
If you want an example of what happens when there is insufficient, weak regulations on industry, you might have seen a little story in the paper sometime last week about an accident in the Gulf of Mexico, which, by the way, is not even in the top ten of oil spills. Yet. At what point do you think the "invisible hand of the free market" would have acted to clean up those environmental disaster?
If you can point to an example of a place where unregulated industry led to a healthy, prosperous, happy society, please do. Otherwise, you are just spouting nonsense.
You are welcome on my lawn.