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Google & Verizon's Real Net Neutrality Proposal
langelgjm writes "Announced this afternoon in a joint conference call held by CEOs Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg, Google and Verizon have released a joint net neutrality proposal in the form of a 'suggested legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers.' This comes on the heels of last week's assertion (and subsequent denial) that Google and Verizon were close to concluding talks that would permit Verizon to prioritize certain content in exchange for pay. A look at the actual text of the framework shows some positive net neutrality principles, but there is also some more curious content: 'Wireless broadband' is singled out for exclusion from most of the agreement, and providers would be permitted to prioritize 'additional online services... distinguishable in scope and purpose.' Public Knowledge, a watchdog group based in Washington, has criticized the agreement for these provisions."
We either get Big Corporate or Big Government deciding on what, when, how, and how fast... I am not sure I want either, and consider it the end of the Internet as we know it.
Feels awesome. Doesn't it?
Google: Yay, net neutrality! Verizon: As long as it's not on our wireless network...then fine!
this tips their hat. something evil is up, you can be sure of it.
mobile is going to be far more of a growth market (they both are betting, it seems). this is a distraction to be 'good' toward the wired folks but sneak in bad shit for wireless users. creating exception creates the impression (in lawmakers' eyes) that the media matters. it should not matter! we don't want locked-down wireless in any way shape or form!
people, please oppose this!
(and I'm sorry, I don't trust google anymore. if that even needed to be said.)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
forget about whether its evil/not evil, why in the world these two mega corps about public policy? Who the fuck gave them the right to provide a "legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers."?
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Putting aside the lack of clarity about how this proposal would actually work in practice (especially since it seems to require the cooperation of the FCC, who are understandably pissed at both Verizon and Google at the moment), what's up with the wholesale exclusion of wireless networks?
In the age of 4G providers like Clear that are readying themselves to feast upon the marketshare of the DSL and cable broadband providers, does anyone really think the future of the internet lies in burying more landline cable in more rural areas? While it's true that backbone fiber isn't exactly going out of style, a cell tower is certainly a much more elegant solution for the "last mile" problem that's plagued wired broadband providers for years. Now that the price of wireless chipsets has dropped substantially, the only real obstacle is building more towers.
To put it another way, Verizon Wireless is a $50 billion company, while it's (55%) parent Verizon Communications is a $100 billion company. So the proposal is excluding anywhere from a quarter to nearly half (depending on how you count) of "Verizon", before you even account for future growth.
In slashdot fashion, I would vote Verizon and Google as the new evil over lord. I mean what the f**k do these companies think? Everyone should stand behind an open internet and fight the idiotic carriers.
from the text:
(1) sending and receiving lawful content of their choice;
(2) running lawful applications and using lawful services of their choice; and
(3) connecting their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network or
service, facilitate theft of service, or harm other users of the service
LAWFUL? what the fuck is that all about? now, we have to have layer8, the LAWFUL INSPECTION layer, before we can send the PDU?
this is stoopid. lawful this, legal that. lets just insert a truly literal (cough) policing layer in the IP stuck. sure, why not. its now 'in the spec' (so to speak).
and point 3 is a nice gotcha: if you are using up 'too much' b/w you can be classified as 'doing harm'. if you ping to discover, you could be seen as 'doing harm'.
nice. or, should I say, nice try, assholes.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
From TFA, I am seeing a strange trend. They are making some outright statements that fit in with what the /. crowd has been discussing, often enforcing the view that the net should be neutral. Their words however, seem to hide subversive tactics. for example: "This means that for the first time, wireline broadband providers would not be able to discriminate against or prioritize lawful Internet content, applications or services in a way that causes harm to users or competition. Meaning that centralized agencies can shut down - or degrade access - to "unlawful" (defined by US government) content such as wikileaks, etc. (taken from comment section from TFA) So, while this looks good on the surface, even surprisingly so, my gut is to not trust either of these entities. Cautious skepticism is the name of the game here.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Extra Extra.. Google Now Evil (tm)... So much for that ;)
Here's the full proposal of the deal. Cringley called it correctly; Google has found a cake-and-eat-it-too compromise: a parallel internet. One internet layer will run more or less openly, with data type prioritization allowed, but no sender prioritization. The other layer can be sender prioritized.
Actually, it's not a bad compromise. The immediate problem I see is how does one keep the Commercial Channel from taking bandwidth away from the Open Channel, so consumers are forced to buy the Commercial Channel just to get decent throughput? If it works like public television does now, with no diminution of the channel capacity or quality, then that would work just fine, I think.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Really, with all the Net Neutrality FUD aside, Google's getting fed up with all of the ISPs, so they're threatening to start their own. Google clearly wants to fiber-up some lucky community with dreams of proving it's profitable and allowing them to fiber the whole nation.
Why pay a backbone provider to serve Google/YouTube content when Google has the dark fiber and up/down traffic to be considered a peer by the other ISPs. This isn't a tiered Internet situation, it's simply Google saying they'd rather provide their own line into the major networks rather than paying somebody else to do it for them. Yes, this does mean Google's going to get faster delivery at their own expense, but it's unclogging the backbone exchanges so everything else will go faster too.
Why is anybody opposed to this?
The Register has an interesting piece on Net Neutrality and Google's co-location deals. El Reg posits that Google is trying to eat its cake and have it too: appearing to be the good-guy by supporting Net Neutrality, while knowing that its own private backbone network and ISP server co-location will give it a de-facto advantage regardless:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/09/neutrality_new_net_hypergiants/
The tone of so much of what I've been seeing about this announcement is remarkably negative, and I don't really see that being justified.
Remember, right now, there's no net neutrality legislation. And until today, so far as I know, none of the major players in the ISP field has shown even the slightest inkling of support for any such legislation.
So now Verizon—bloody Verizon—comes out with a proposal that's actually a strong endorsement of real, enforceable net neutrality legislation that would make a huge difference, and Slashdot, Ars Technica, Public Knowledge, and God knows who else comes down on it like a ton of bricks because it doesn't completely lock out all possibility of the ISPs ever doing anything shady.
Good grief, people, get some perspective. This is a hugely good thing. If legislation like they propose could actually pass, it would be a remarkable step toward full net neutrality. It wouldn't be complete, no, and it would leave wireless pretty much the way it is today—but even there, they want a group (the GAO, I think) to watch the situation carefully and make a yearly report on whether the current laws are protecting consumers enough. That's a hell of a lot more than we get now!
So for Cthulhu's sake, look on the bright side for a change, Slashdot!
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Blogger, WordPress.com and TypePad make up the majority of small media hosting. If you have something to say online, typically you sign up for an account with one of those. All three of them are owned by private companies who have far more incentive, on paper, to regulate what you say than Verizon does. Verizon doesn't give a shit if you are birther, truther, armed opponent of the Zionist Occupation Government, hate the Blue-Eyed Devil or worship the love child of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Puff the Magic Dragon. Your data looks about the same to them as CNN.com or FoxNews.com. It's Google, WordPress and SixApart who have to look at the content and say "do we really want this on our machines?"
The fact is that in terms of censorship, you know real censorship like "no one sees your content because it is proscribed," the hosting service is 10x the threat that the ISPs are. They are the ones who people pressure to shut down content they don't like, they're the ones who decide your content is bad for their reputation and they're the ones that dumb your data into the ether if you become too much of a rabble rouser.
If a pressure group goes to Verizon and wants them to censor your content, they'll just say "f#$% off, jackass, we're not going to build filters into our pipes." That's why those guys go after the hosts.
Verizon's Market Cap is 84B. Google's got $30B in cash, and $48B in "assets", not to mention plenty of profits. Issue stock for the rest and they could BUY verizon if that's the business they wanted to be in.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Lets look at the mobile broadband agreement differently, shall we? Verizon is a mobile phone carrier, correct? As of right now, their main focus is mobile communications. Bandwidth for data that isn't a phone call is very high, correct? They need to keep their quality as a communications company up, and to do that, they would have to make sure that phone calls are prioritized. How is this so bad? If I sign up for something like Comcast or AT&T for my house's internet connection, they would still be required to let me handle my own QoS settings. On a mobile network, where the main thing being sold is phone access, it makes sense to prioritize this type of data.
As for the "Lawful" types of data transfer, this could only exclude types of data that are illegal to transfer. Peer-to-peer networks aren't (at the moment, at least) illegal because, just like any other form of data transfer, it can be used for legal and illegal transfer. I just hope the government realizes that... or we could be in trouble.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
The first amendment gave them the right to provide a 'legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers'.
Last I checked, the first amendment was for people, not corporations.
Except that their proposed legislation is effectively:
We hereby bar all those old fogies from punching you in the face. We, the young fogies, reserve the right to kick you in the nuts.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It's like Verizon makes a car, and then gives that car to a politician in exchange for their vote to create a second separate internet that isn't neutral, while still discriminating against "unlawful" activity on "regular" internet.
I'm a popular stranger, I'm nobody famous, I'm a famous nobody.
*Who owns the network infrastructure and the right to regulate the traffic on that owned infrastructure?
*What is (or what should be) the difference between public space/resources which are finite and tangible, such as City Hall, national parks, street rights-of-way, public roads, rivers, the air, etc., and resources which are practically intangible and theoretically infinite such as Network Access and Storage and Bandwidth?
*Which is the most important principle, private property ownership rights or the Public Good?
*It would appear that the USA is moving towards a belief that people have an individual right to healthcare, to access to healthcare. Do/should people in the USA have an individual right to Internet access?
*What would be the effect of formally declaring the Internet to be a public, communal resource? Would that essentially make the government everyone's single-payer ISP?
*If access/bandwidth are not public resources, what is the reason companies which own backbone infrastructure shouldn't be able to operate that infrastructure in whatever way they see fit?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
There proposal sounds to me like they want to charge me for a premium internet connection in addition to the open internet that I have been paying for. Oh I just can't wait. Double my internet bill please.
Really the Google-Verizon statement in favor of net neutrality "in principle" (but clearly not in practice!) is right up there with "Ignorance is Strength."
Utterly.
Hilarious.
Wasn't this already sort of being addressed by Internet2? Well, other than the paying for premium services part?
As I said back then: There is no such thing as "premium service" in things like networking, no matter what you call it. On an airplane you can offer additional things above and beyond the transport itself (say, a nice menu, or naked stewardesses, whatever). But on a network, if you provide "better" quality for some services, it really translates to degraded quality of the rest. You can't serve bytes a Martini as a special comfort.
That is exactly why net neutrality is so important, and it's important to get it done and over with finally and irrevocably before the lawyers, marketing people and lobbyists get their teeth into it. These are all people who are experts at spinning a simple matter, say, you can't make information move faster than the speed of light (plus switching), pump it up with nonsense terms, complicate the matter needlessly, twist and turn it around and then publish a convulted explanation of whatever their profit-hungry masters want.
Once upon a time, entire nations were founded on simple, straightforward principles. You do not need lawyer-weasling to find out what's right and wrong. On the contrary, far on the contrary, he who can't state his purpose in simple, straight up words is hiding his real purpose. Life may be complicated, but human desires and goals and dreams aren't. If your corporate mission statement is more than ten words, you can very probably replace it by one word: Greed. The rest is just lies and bullshit and attempts to find a nicely sounding description for the ugly truth.
Net neutrality is simple, like equal rights or emancipation.
Those against have again and again failed to make a simple, straightforward, convincing argument. They are talking around the matter in the same language all crooks use to hide their true intentions.
Maybe it is time to find a different search engine. Or found one, since MS isn't exactly an alternative.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The end of the free internet :-(
As someone who has family in the public policy business I know that there are generally two sides in these debates - the corporate side and the public side. Usually there's one or more non-profit that leads the public interest comment-gathering, regulation reading/wrangling and lobbies on our behalf (ie read not the corporations behalf).
I see nothing in this discussion so far about a coordinated campaign to seriously propose pro-Net-Neutrality regulation. CREDO has been posting some stuff, as have EFF I think, but is there an umbrella organization that is organizing opposition to a corporate reign of this area?
Incidentally, despite all the bribery and corruption, a lot of lobbying is simply about who has the ear of the right Senatorial and Congressional aides, and advising them about the difficult issues on a debate. The challenge for the public is having an organized lobbying ability on every issue. Too often its just the corporations who have the resources to make their case.
W
Fiber and wires, mediums which people/companies actually own: regulated neutrality. Public space / "ether" which is unownable and therefore the FCC was invented to regulate it: unregulated, no neutrality required.
Say What?!
Whether you you're a bleeding heart Marxist hippie who thinks private property is a crime against humanity, or a cold hearted laissez-faire Randroid capitalist dog counting your wealth in other people's tears, there's something for you to hate here. Left, Right, everybody can agree this is fucked up. Well done, Google and Verizon, you have given us unity.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The phrase "facilitate theft of service" is so vague that it could be interpreted as just being in competition with the carrier's own provided services e.g. voice,SMS, video etc.
This statement puts the Internet in the USA back into the pre-dialup days before the split up of AT&T, where the carrier could deny access to any modem because it could "harm the network" or just compete with its existing services.
If you seriously think that BP would have done a better job of protecting the environment absent the EPA, or that fewer rapes would occur without any police, or that less justice would be served without any legal system, or that Microsoft would have been less monopolistic in the absence of government... well, you must be taking some non-FDA-approved drugs.
Sure is a lot of idiots that want the government to save them...
Net Neutrality is a joke. The government will fuck it up like they fuck everything else up.