Net Neutrality — Threat Or Menace?

Roblimo writes "I had a dream. In it, I was CEO of a large telecommunications company that was also a major broadband Internet provider and all five members of the FCC were stabbing me with pitchforks and yelling in my ear that my company would be treated as a common carrier, not as a special entity they couldn't regulate. That's when I woke up..."

Comments

Shitty Story

[sexconker]

Shitty or very Shitty?

Re:Shitty Story

[PopeRatzo]

For once in the history of mankind. Can't we have something good that excessive greed WON'T be allowed to fuck up?

You sir, are un-American. It is a founding principle of our nation that excessive greed gets to fuck everything up. It's in the 1st Amendment (or at least, it's been in the 1st Amendment since the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United).

I'm still shocked to learn that the FCC still doesn't classify broadband internet as a telecommunications service. What else could it be?

Re:Shitty Story

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm still shocked to learn that the FCC still doesn't classify broadband internet as a telecommunications service. What else could it be?

Adult entertainment.

Re:Shitty Story

[hedwards]

Wireless isn't a competitive market, they aren't competing with each other. It's more like an informal cartel. The prices are shockingly similar as are the services. Prices are strikingly similar carrier to carrier and there's a plethora of abusive practices which shockingly enough haven't gone away. What, pray tell, is the point of switching cell phone providers if they pretty much all engage in the same sort of bad behavior?

Re:Shitty Story

[jc42]

What we have is good? Try telling that to the old-timers like me who remember when USENET was a place where people enjoyed conversing, rather than a place of spam, hatred and hostility.

Well, that's what we get for inviting the marketers and politicos in on what we were building. If we'd kept up the pretense that it was an Ivory Tower thing only of interest to academic types (and our military funders ;-), we wouldn't have these problems.

Of course, we'd also probably not have connectivity to our homes or mobile phones. The only way to make the Internet available everywhere we want to go is to make it universally available. The universe includes those marketers and politicos, so it was inevitable that they'd stumble into our sandbox and behave the way they've always behaved.

here we go again

[Sir_Lewk]

Que the standard partisan trolls screaming about how the government should "keep their hands off of the free market". Remember folks, before posting make sure to conveniently forget that the current state of affairs is anything but a free market, and that telephone companies have been common carriers for years without the foundations of freedom this country was supposedly built on crumbling. (well, at least not because of that...)

Re:here we go again

[grcumb]

What's good for them and what's good for us are two different things.
Unfortunately, they've got billions of dollars and we don't.

Where, pray tell, do you think the billions of dollars come from?

The level of cynicism in the US these days is appalling. Given the number of things that are wrong with the country, and the relatively sophisticated level of interaction that we see on slashdot[*], you'd think that action might occasionally result. But no, the very people whom you empower to make stupid decisions are treated as some kind of force of Nature, no more controllable than the weather.

Yes, the system is fucked from top to bottom. Yes, getting anything done is boring and tedious and draining and maddening and prone to delay. It's designed that way to keep things from changing. Yes, dream as one might about overnight revolution, the only major changes to happen in the US since the revolution have taken decades as often as not. Equality for all races is still not fully achieved, a century and a half after people first began fighting about it. The very concept of the government as having a role in preserving the welfare of the people remains contentious and under constant challenge, fully two generations after it was first introduced as policy.

What, did you think there was any other way? Did you think you could just throw a hissy fit and the nation would re-shape itself to fit your latest whim?

The media are corrupt and debased, so find better sources for reporting, analysis and commentary. They're there to be found. Yes, your politician is a small-minded dick (or dick-ette) who's happier to comment on some inane 'wedge issue' than take an actual stance on policy. That's because the tactic works. Challenge them, primary them, pick on them and don't let up. Pick your battles and goddam well fight them.

Yes, you're going to lose a lot of the time. Most successes will be compromises that will make you throw up a little in your own mouth. But you'll have moved the sticks another yard.

Even if you do none of the above, please, for Christ's sake, stop throwing up your hands in despair. Come on, you're clever people! Act like it for once.

You - more than the nut-bars on either fringe - are the people who most make me want to despair. You're smart enough to know better, and to achieve real change, but you've already given up. There will be nut-jobs in every generation; what's tragic about this one is that you've ceded the entire political process to them.

----------

[*] I said 'relatively'. Relative to the average forum, yes, this is sophisticated. Hell, you're even reading the footnotes, so QED. 8^)

Re:here we go again

[MBCook]

In wireless there is enough competition, the barriers of entry are much lower, anybody with some money can buy/rent a few pieces of land and install their own cell towers.

I was going to moderate in this discussion. Forget it.

How is there enough competition? Is that why text message prices have gone up, despite costs to send them going down? Is that why AT&T has been spending less on their (famously bad) network lately, despite traffic being up at least 40%? Does that sound like something you do when you're in tight competition?

And what's this low barriers to entry stuff? Putting up cell towers is expensive as hell, and it's hard to get the land to put towers up (which is one reason it's hard to cover cities). Then you have to have a spectrum license, phones that work with your chunk of spectrum, backhaul.... And no one is going to sign up with a carrier that only has 2 or 3 towers.

Or are you talking about being an MVNO? Because those, even those that were arms of the big guys, have done so well over the last few years. The only carrier that seems to have entered the market recently is Wal*Mart, who is an MVNO (they don't have their own towers), and they have hundreds of billions they can spend to do it.

So if a company builds network infrastructure by itself without any help from any government, shouldn't it be able to sell a service with a contract that explicitly discriminates against anything they wish?

It's a legal contract, the government should stay out of it. But that's not the situation. We have 2-4 big companies, who move in concert (text message price raises are an example) and use their resources to keep new players out of the market (contracts, spectrum license auctions are bid up, etc). They have an oligopoly which they actively try to keep in place to stifle competition.

The government should keep it's hands off the free market. But wireless and consumer internet access are no where near free markets for the vast majority of people, so it's the government's job to come in and protect citizens. Sometimes an industry or market needs a kick in the rear to get it moving. Sometimes that comes from inside (foreign cars during the oil crisis pushed the direction of Detroit), and sometimes it has to come from outside (the AT&T breakup).

Re:here we go again

[eldiabloencarne]

Que los trolls partidista normales gritando acerca de cómo el gobierno debe "mantener sus manos alejado del mercado libre ". Acuerdate ustedes, antes de responder, asegurarse de olvidar convenientemente que el estado actual de cosas es cualquier cosa menos un mercado libre, y que las compañías telefónicas han sido los portadores comunes durante años sin que los fundamentos de la libertad se construyó este país, supuestamente, en ruinas. (bueno, al menos no por eso)
*que que QUE?!*

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think that the market will self regulate but it won't.

1) More smaller companies will not make regulation happen. We had dozens of wireless providers and they slowly consolidated again--that's the endgame of capitalism.

2) Cost of entry is too great for others to get in to the game and not because of regulation but because of hardware and wires, so we won't be seeing competition coming from the outside.

3) Some times a government granted monopoly is the way to go. What would happen if everyone had to pick their own garbage collection company to come to their house? Collection days would widely differ, so trash would constantly be on the curb on your street; trash would pile up if companies folded without notice; some people would crazy sums of money because they were out of area; and really since they are already going down the street, why not just get all the trash on the street at once.

Some times it's more efficient to be government regulated industry.

Re:here we go again

[TubeSteak]

Where, pray tell, do you think the billions of dollars come from?

The level of cynicism in the US these days is appalling.

1. If I had millions of dollars in disposable income to setup lobbying groups that would be pro-consumer, I would... but (see point #2)

2. More often than not, industry groups get invited to the negotiating table and consumer advocacy groups don't.

Yes, you're going to lose a lot of the time. Most successes will be compromises that will make you throw up a little in your own mouth. But you'll have moved the sticks another yard.

Even if you do none of the above, please, for Christ's sake, stop throwing up your hands in despair. Come on, you're clever people! Act like it for once.

It doesn't matter how "boring and tedious and draining and maddening and prone to delay" the system is if you and I never get a seat at the table when it counts.
Ultimately, by the time industries/politicians go public with their plan, our ability to negotiate a meaningful compromise is already irrevocably fucked.

It's very rare for a large policy issue to not get decided behind closed doors and then "opened" to public input.
You can assert that I'm being cynical and despairing, but I'm calling it like I see it.

Or to put it succinctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious or are you trolling?

FCC regulates stuff. For example, they regulate telephone networks so that telephone networks guarantee certain amount of traffic, *always*. What was the last time you picked up a receiver and didn't get a dial tone? That's FCC rules. FCC does not regulate your caller ID!

FCC job is to regulate ISPs such that they cannot to QoS on SIP vs. HTTP, or SIP from telco 1 vs. SIP from telco 2. They can regulate that ISPs can only do QoS based on end-point-IP of their customers only, and not on content provider's IP or what is type of connection.

Without FCC regulation, what is stopping ISPs from fucking over all SIP, IPX and any other voice connection because the ISP is also a phone company? What is stopping the ISP from demanding extra money to provide smooth HD traffic to youtube? Nothing. Monopolies can demand whatever they want.

PS. I pay $0.01/min (one cent per minute, or 60 cents an hour) to call any number in the US. Better quality than regular PSTN connection. All thanks to Internet and because my ISP *chose* not to fuck me over. But what guarantee do I have that the ISP will simply not start blocking SIP connections because their revenue for long distance from my number is non-existent?? And what choice do I have for another ISP? Absolutely ZERO.

My SIP provider, callwithus.com, even has a notice,

Some ISPs block VoIP traffic to push their own VoIP services to customers. We offer VPN (virtual private network) connection to our server to avoid provider's blocks. Stay connected! We have a high success rate.

yeah, it's already happening. ISP fuck customers over because they know they can't move to another provider anyway.

This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is.

[GiveBenADollar]

This is what I see:

Side A: Net Neutrality means that I can do whatever I want with my net connection without paying different fees!

Side B: Net Neutrality causes the government to regulate what ISPs provide, and stifles free market!

Nobody is arguing true net neutrality, which is that my ISP is not allowed to regulate what content I receive through the means I have purchased. I don't care if they block ports on some plans, or limit my connectivity in other ways so long as they are not blocking sites or CHANGING the content before I receive it. If I use more bandwidth I deserve to pay more because it costs my ISP more to cater to me, but I don't want them to re-direct my web browsing (even my advertisements), I don't want them to throttle certain things that I am allowed to do, or otherwise hinder my connectivity unless it's actually because I have gone outside the bounds of my service plan (Too many GB downloaded/uploaded). Until we can stand together and support the free exchange of information without tying it together with freedom to do whatever the hell you want net neutrality will fail.

Re:This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is.

[Jane Q. Public]

The problem with that idea is that it hasn't worked elsewhere, and we have no reason to expect it would work any better here.

I know a statement like this could get me shot at for being a troll, but according to all relevant statistics, the reason the U.S. is currently a third-world country for broadband is because it has been left up to private companies, who continue to price-gouge their customers.

In the other countries that have better and cheaper broadband than the U.S. (which means most other industrialized nations), it is regulated and there is mandatory leasing of resources like backbone bandwidth so that there is, in fact, some actual competition, unlike what we see here.

As long as the industries remain unregulated we, the citizens of the U.S., are going to continue to get screwed. The Internet is not a commodity like potatoes that will find its natural price in the market. It is an oligopoly that will never let go of its grip until it is forced to.

Re:This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is.

[jd]

The ISP doesn't pay more, the ISP has a fixed pipe for a fixed cost from their ISP, and so on up the chain. At the top of the chain, the backbones have a peering agreement at either fixed cost or no cost.

The pyramid works because the cost of the pipe is 99.9% the cost of installation, with 99% of the installation that will ever need to be done already done (via the existing telephone networks, cable networks, used fiber and dark fiber). The only actual cost to the providers is that 0.1% for maintenance. The cost of heating the buildings that the staff are in and cooling the server rooms the ISP's equipment is in, vastly exceeds the cost of actually providing the service. And that cost is fixed, regardless of how many customers there are or how much bandwidth they want.

Secondly, you are using an inherently unreliable network, NOT a commercial-grade MPLS tunnel. Even there, the same rule applies. A fixed pipe for a fixed cost. The cost is higher than regular rates, but the format is identical. If they want to scrap the regular scheme and move to a guaranteed service system, then price accordingly. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But metering merely works to obscure the real costs and the real service. You paying for a packet you send to the ISP, when you have no guarantee they will ever forward that packet to their provider OR that it'll ever make it to the destination OR that the reply will make it back to you -- it's about the same as paying the full price for a return train ticket in the knowledge that you can be kicked off that train at any time to make way for someone else with no possibility of a refund, a change of heart or a new ticket. If you wouldn't accept that for the train, then why are you so willing to accept the same crappy treatment of anyone else?

It is because people accept crappy treatment that most services today - be it the Internet, the phone networks, television, or whatever - are all crap. Don't add to the crap that you'll take from others, for goodness sakes!

Re:This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is.

[nurb432]

I don't care if they block ports on some plans, or limit my connectivity in other ways so long as they are not blocking sites or CHANGING the content before I receive it.

Right there folks is why we have lost our freedom. Its either all or nothing, and you cant have 'just beacuse it doesn't effect me ( today ) i don't care. You need to care from the start.

"Then there was no one to say no when it got to me"

Re:This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is.

[The Lesser Powered O]

People keep forgetting that networking is a layered service.

Access methods (DSL, Cable, Fiber, Wireless) shouldn't determine the ISP -- they should simply be means
to *get* to an ISP. That way, I can switch ISPs whenever one starts acting in a way I don't like. It used to
work well with dial-up -- you could have *several* ISPs from one phone line. There's no technical reason we
can't go back to such a situation.

Go down a layer. Let's have the regulations guarantee *packet* delivery. Whoever owns the fiber/copper/wireless
infrastructure can have a neutral packet delivery service. Pay them for a point to point conenction to any of a multitude
of ISPs.

That's a network neutrality plan I can live with...

Ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wonder why Americans treat regulation as something inherently bad. What is clear is that in the Western world, there are strong positive correlations between the amount of regulation of the economy and societal equality, and societal equality and general happiness. Assuming that the free market is good, and therefore regulation is bad, however, is a purely ideological stance.

While I understand that treating the government with suspicion is a healthy attitude that makes degeneration into tyranny less likely, but that is more an argument for government transparency, not for generally keeping the government out of things.

Re:Ideology

[Jane Q. Public]

"What is constitutional is what the Supreme Court decides is consitutional, that's how the system is set up."

This is a very common misconception, and it is common because that's what they want you to think. But in fact, that is not the way it was set up at all. During the Constitutional convention, something called The Virginia Plan was proposed. That plan called for putting into the Constitution language such that the Federal government could override state law whenever the two conflicted. That plan was overwhelmingly voted down. After the Constitution was drawn up, before the States would ratify it they called for reassurance that the Federal government would only have power over those 18 things, and that all other power was left to the states and to the people. The Supreme Court can declare that certain things are un-Constitutional, but it is not the final arbiter of what is Constitutional. Only the States are empowered to do that.

(1) The Federal government only has legal authority over the 17 (some say 18) enumerated powers that are specifically listed in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8. Everything else belongs to the States and to the people.

(2) NO branch of the Federal Government, including the Supreme Court, was given authority to decide what the Federal Government may or may not do. That power was left to the States themselves. Allowing the Federal government decide what its own powers may be is called "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse", and the Founding Fathers were much too smart for that. Want proof?

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." -- Thomas Jefferson

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." -- James Madison

"...the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison

"[T]he government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, about the U.S. Constitution [emphasis mine]

"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste." -Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possessio

"Common carrier" status

[Animats]

We need a rule that if network connectivity is provided by a company which uses (or is affiliated with a company that uses) public rights-of-way for its cables, or public airwaves for its transmissions, it is a common carrier. All data shippers must receive equal treatment, and the carrier itself cannot compete in the content business.

We used to have that in the US, and it forced a separation between ISPs and telcos. That was lost somewhere in "telecom deregulation". We need it back.

Now we have the worst of both worlds - unregulated carriers with monopoly right of way rights.