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AT&T Says Net Rules Must Allow 'Paid Prioritization'
suraj.sun writes "AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in 'paid prioritization' of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet."
..AT&T...YOU are harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet!
AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Uh, no...that would uphold the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Living With a Nerd
1. We do things on the internet that you pay us for.
2. You do things on the internet that you pay us for.
3. When you do things on the internet that other people pay you for, you pay us for the privilege of doing them.
4. If we find out you are doing things on the internet that we are also doing, you will pay us for the privilege of doing them slower than us.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Man, that's a short summary.
Essentially, AT&T is arguing that because the idea of service classes is built into packet headers, the internet is not meant to have net neutrality.
Their opponents argue, essentially, that the service classes are there for a given end user entity to prioritize traffic by class if they choose, not for the telecom companies to do so.
Honestly, who could be surprised that AT&T reads the history/design of the internet in such a way that it seems to say exactly what they'd like it to say? This isn't any different from a corporate version of the phenomena in which a person interprets the holy text of their religion in such a way that it just happens to say that they should hate things or people that they already hate.
The point of net neutrality is not to do away with differentiating levels of service. It's to prevent ISPs from charging others for access to those tiers, while giving themselves or preferred services access to those tiers for free or reduced prices. The main fear is that a company like Comcast might offer a streaming video service over their network for a fee, then charge other services, like Netflix, a quality of service fee that makes it prohibitive to compete with Comcast on their own network and prices them out of the market. AT&T objections here, while worrisome on their own, don't necessarily conflict with the principles of net neutrality.
I'm pretty sure that is exactly what "paid prioritization" means. AT&T wants to charge Netflix for prioritized packets. Unless Netflix ponies up, then AT&T will downgrade, or eliminate, Netflix traffic.
AT&T calls it paid prioritization. You call it quality of service fee (possibly tongue in cheek). I call it double dipping.
How about ths:
The internet should be considered a public good, because the benefits of having it are spread to the entire public in the form of greater communications and information spreading.
Also, the internet was created and funded by the federal government, and currently continually uses public land.
Because of these reasons, we should have a say in assuring that the internet continues to operate in a manner primarily supporting the public good, and not primarily as a for-profit endeavor.
Sounds good to me. If Time Warner does something I don't like I can go to.... hmmm.... FIOS isn't in my area yet. I suppose I *could* go to DSL but Verizon doesn't seem to be supporting that as well as they used to. And what if Verizon does something I don't like? No other company in my area offers high speed Internet.
The problem with the "go to the competitors" argument is that most people in the US have a choice of two or less companies from which to get broadband. You can't rely on the threat of competition with two or less companies.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It also stops companies from charging you more for expediting certain kinds of data. Well, what if I as a consumer WANT to pay a bit more to have my Comcast voice work really well with video, or to get faster bandwidth to some CDN's so that I could really replace cable video with internet video? Why should they and I not be allowed to do that?
I haven't read any proposed rule-making for Net Neutrality that prevents ISPs from offering expedited services to customers/endpoints as a paid option. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you paying as a consumer/endpoint for the QoS prioritization you desire; that's the entire point of QoS.
The problem is that many big ISPs started out as content suppliers as well, or want to be in that business. Thus, they wish to control access to their competition's content by either blocking it, or by rate-limiting it on their networks so as to be difficult to impossible to access, unless their competition pays them a toll on the back end to carry it.
A more proper analogy would be that you are a long-time YouTube user. You're on a big ISP like Comcast. Comcast sets up its own user-video service called YouCast. They then start blocking/rate limiting YouTube unless YouTube pays them an exorbitant toll to carry their traffic. As a result, you as the YouTube user are faced with a number of rather unfair options: no access or painfully slow and choppy access to YouTube, or now YouTube has to charge you money (or more money) so they can afford to pay the "toll" just to serve you. But, hey! YouCast is still free/cheap, and boy is it FAST!
Normally, in an open, competitive market, you have lots of choices, and you can simply toss Comcast into the garbage can and go with a REAL ISP who doesn't pull those types of shenanigans, because either it is run by more ethical people, or they don't have a content division which is going to end up competing unfairly via their ISP division. However, because of the way the Internet has come about (and, yes, I realize the government had a hand in the debacle), those "other choices" don't exist for the vast majority of consumers.
The first problem that needs to be fixed is that ISPs should not be allowed to have content divisions and vice versa. The people who own/run the pipes should have no vested interest in what content flows through the pipes. Ever. Likewise, the people who supply the content that flows through the pipes should have no vested interest in the pipes themselves. As long as there are businesses which do both, there is a HUGE potential for abuse, including wanton violations of the Sherman act which need to be prosecuted.
Now, that said, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with large content providers buying big pipes into many major ISPs to make sure that their content is delivered faster to as many people as possible. The difference between that and what AT&T is talking about is that the default situation is not intentionally degraded by AT&T as an ISP in an effort to extort money from said content providers.
The last note I want to offer is one of caution - if you choose to regulate the internet, which until now has been free and open, you invite special interests to follow up and shape what the regulation means. If the government has a hand in regulating the flow of the network it can just as easily decree that MPAA blacklisted torrent trackers MUST be blocked or the ISP would face a fine. Is that really the world you want to move forward into?
That's a no-brainer for me. I know how corporations work. They are a known quantity, and I can fully expect them to do the worst possible at all times in the name of their single-minded pursuit of the Almighty Profit. The government, on the other hand, in principle, is intended to protect and serve the people. It doesn't always work out that way, but it does do so often enough for me to feel pretty comfortable in giving it a chance to make the corporations do the right thing when they have zero incentive to do so otherwise.
As s
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."