Slashdot Mirror
House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality Proposal
crimeandpunishment writes "A compromise on net neutrality appears to be as likely as Google and China becoming BFFs. House Democrats have pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who shelved the proposal late on Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition, said, 'If Congress can't act, the FCC must,' and called this development 'a loss for consumers.' Internet companies and public interest groups say the new regulations are needed to keep phone and cable companies from playing favorites with traffic, while those companies insist they need flexibility so high-bandwidth applications don't slow down their systems." The net neutrality debate seems to have fallen victim to the extreme polarization evident in the larger political culture.
As some of you know Xbox Live is getting a cool update called ESPN3. The concept of the app & system is pretty amazing, technology has come a long way to make it so. What you probably didn't know is that to get the deal, Microsoft had to get the ISP's to agree to license the content for Internet Users in order to broadcast ESPN3 over the internet. Not all ISP's bought the license, so not everyone will have ESPN3 - even if you're a Xbox live subscriber.
This is an area where net neutrality should shine. It should protect Microsoft and allow them to license content to distribute and it should protect consumers to not be held hostage to a carrier paying for content as a middleman. I hope this EPSN3 thing can light the fire under the community so they understand how net neutrality can impact them. I know this isn't the "typical case of concern" in regards to p2p or throttling or priority of services, but this just goes to show that Internet Traffic is already beeing bought and sold not just as a commodity itself but something that people have now had to license in order to push specific traffic over that commodity on as a carrier - not just a distributor.
With that said, the app is freaking amazing and i don't even like much sports. The fact you can watch scores, hedge on who will win and i'm sititng in my living room watching HD games on demand or live is pretty awesome. I admire comcast for building out the network to support stuff and maybe, that is what the license agreed to but damn, these backroom deals are dissapointing for the consumer and only pollute the fairness & equality of having broadband now into having to chose a carrior that has the right license deals, not just the best performance.
It would really, really help if we'd explain to my conservative friends just what "Net Neutrality" is. They are convinced that it's some form of Fairness Doctrine for the Web that will limit content.
(The fact that such a "fairness doctrine" might limit Mother Jones and Salon just as much as it does FrontPageMag and World Net Daily, depending on the party in power, doesn't seem to occur to them, either.)
I try to explain to them that it simply means that, if I visit YouTube, I don't want my ISP to limit their bandwidth because Microsoft (or someone else) has paid a premium for priority for *their* bandwidth.
We geeks have several flaws, and one of them is our love of catchphrases and acronyms. We just *assume* that everyone knows what "free software" and "net neutrality" mean. But when you start dealing with the Body Politick At Large(tm), that's not necessarily so. A few minutes to carefully explain just what we're actually talking about will go a long way ...
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
"pulled the plug on efforts to work out a compromise among phone, cable, and Internet companies"
That right there is a perfect example of what's wrong with Washington. This debate, like so many others, doesn't consider the interests of the public, but simply the interests of the industry players directly affected by the new law.
There is absolutely no legitimate reason why the US government should be negotiating with AT&T (or Time Warner, or Comcast, etc). None. If the US government wants AT&T to do something, they can pass a law and/or issue a regulation that says AT&T has to do it. No negotiation required - if AT&T doesn't do it, the US government can then bring them to court. That's what makes the government different from a corporate partner of AT&T, and AT&T is subject to the government of the US as long as it's operating in the US.
However, there's an illegitimate reason why the US government negotiates with AT&T: AT&T is in the running at least for largest campaign contributor in the country.
I am officially gone from
"Phone and cable companies insist they need flexibility so high-bandwidth applications don't slow down their systems." Fine. Let them charge the content producers by bandwidth. The wider bandwidth your content needs, the more you will pay. Low bandwidth content (most web pages actually) would get a free ride, things like Hulu and Youtube would probaby have to open their wallets to help support the inferstructure. Just so long as nobody gets priority over anybody else. First come first serve, but if you take more than average you pay for it.
As an ATT&T wireless user who has exceeded her monthly 5Gb limit once or twice, I can tell you for a fact, we "hogs" do pay more for additional usage. Too bad we don't get "rollover" bits.
Home of The Suki Series
... As a wacko leftist libertarian crypto-anarcho peacenik Commie, the oldest son of a right-wing fringe element religo millennialist rapturizing nut job, I have to tell you: Net Neutrality is the one thing dad and I can safely talk about, and agree on. That, and maybe there are some foods we both like.
Fine. Let them charge the content producers by bandwidth.
You must own an ISP, because that idea is bullocks. I pay my ISP to pipe content from my provider to my computer. If the content provider is paying, why should I?
If your system doesn't have the bandwidth to serve your customers, you need to invest in infrastructure. If you can't get a return on your investment you need to get the hell out of the business.
The phrase "taking you coming and going" springs to mind. This kind of nonsense really pissses me off. IMO the "troll" mod should have been "flamebait", but at least it's a downmod.
Free Martian Whores!
Democrats, Republicans... what's the difference? Neither one cares about the citizenry. This farce of democracy is made so evident by, well, everything they do. Even the idea of calling them "representatives" is a farce, since they don't represent us. Well, I suppose they DO represent themselves and their monied interests.
If you genuinely want to break out of this kind of rule, you need to break it from the bottom. Free software didn't compete with commercial software by asking the corporations if they would mind please changing the way they charge for things. No, free software started by people just doing it, and ignoring the monied interests.
You can do the same thing with governance. All you have to do is contribute to one of the many projects listed there, or to the umbrella group.
Or you can just sit back and whine about how the Democrats and/or Republicans screwed you over again. Here's a tip: it is never going to stop unless you stop relying on them to make decisions for you.
Ah but the point is that you didn't PUT the content on the net did you, you just consumed it. People like you shouldn't have to pay, and THAT'S what the FCC needs to regulate.
The point is, I used the bandwidth.
Home of The Suki Series
Wait... so you're saying that people who produce and provide need to penalized? That sounds awfully familiar...
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Actually I don't see any problem with charging consumers more per se. If I use twice the bandwidth that my neighbor does, then there's some logic that I pay twice as much. What's objectionable isn't that they charge more for using more bandwidth, but that they charge more for applications that they assume will use more bandwidth. Example:
I have an Internet connection. I use it for e-mail and web browsing (low bandwidth activities) on a moderate scale, but a few times a month I torrent something (Blizzard uses torrents for it's game updates, Linux distros, etc). While I occasionally use this "high bandwidth application" my overall usage is rather low (say 5-7 GB a month).
My neighbor has the same Internet connection I do. He uses only "low bandwidth applications", but he uses them *constantly*. Say he's a teenager and it's summer vacation. He's *always* doing something on the 'Net. He downloads multiple small files (often at the same time), but does so over low bandwidth (theoretically) protocols like http and ftp. In the end he uses way more bandwidth in a given month than me. 25-30 GB.
Under the types of rules that Internet companies want to see, I would be potentially charged more than my neighbor. Because I use a "high bandwidth service" (despite that I don't use it much and it doesn't actually add up to that much bandwidth), and he doesn't (despite that he actually uses far more bandwidth because of his sheer volume of activity).
A big part of the problem here is that Americans have gotten used to "unlimited Internet". No ISP wants to be the first to say "you pay by the GB", because they know that they'll get their lunches eaten by all the "unlimited" services. So rather than limit the actual bandwidth people are allowed to use (or charging a metered rate), they attempt to offer "unlimited" service while at the same time demonizing certain protocols and applications and trying to charge more for those. This allows them to claim that you can use the network as much as you want, while at the same time curtailing the use of protocols that are most likely to stress the network.
Net Neutrality isn't about you getting free Internetz. It's about companies being forced to sell unrestricted access to the network (on the protocol and application level). They can sell packages based on bandwidth or based on total usage (or both), but not based on protocols or who you're trying to connect to. They can charge you more for more Mbs. They can charge you more because you use more total GB a month. They can't charge you more because you want to use Bittorrent or access a competitor's website.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
No, what he's saying is that if you make >$75K and you're whining about being asked to contribute +$2K, then you perhaps need a little more critical perspective because, get this, you're already quite rich in relative terms.
He's not expecting to be given extra earnings, he's saying you should count yourself lucky that you are making more, rather than making $40K or less instead of expecting sympathy from the majority of society because you're so hard done-by. As a more wealthy person you, by default, use and benefit more from society, so you, as the the more wealthy person, should foot more of the bill for it.
Don't like it? Want to keep all your money? As tired a cliche as it is, perhaps you should move the Somalia? That way you'll only ever have to pay for your own needs, such as the private police force you'll require to maintain the law and order that allows you to keep the money you make.
--srj/mmv