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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.
"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
... 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.
While conservatives may dislike "Net Neutrality" for the reasons you state, I believe they have another reason - an undying faith in "the free market and the ability of players in the free market to come to an optimal solution for all." In other words, "Free market players need to have the maximum flexibility to arrive at market solutions which both maximize profits and deliver optimal solutions." Note that I keep using quotation marks in the prior sentence, and in this case it's not a misuse of "quotation marks," rather it's expressing a position that sounds really neat, but doesn't work that well in practice.
First off, the "free market" really isn't so free, it's loaded with large players. There have been studies indicating that when 4 or 5 major players have captured something like 80% of the market, it no longer acts like a "free market." According to those studies, even without overt collusion, a market dominated by a few large players starts to act as if there is price-fixing and market restriction happing, just by normal corporate behavior.
Second, the "free market" never developed anything like the internet, and they had over a decade of failure at it. CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, The Source, etc are all ashes of the market failure. The only reason AOL has anything like survived is because of the proprietary players it best embraced the internet. The normal corporate behavior these days is to "own the pie" rather than work with others to create a much bigger pie. Oddly enough, they continue to do that even when the cooperative pie is so much bigger that their share is bigger than their full ownership of a private pie.
Finally, I don't think conservatives understand that sometimes we do better if our actions are limited. They have complete distrust of the limiting agency - ie, the government, and do understand that sometimes their own decisions can be bad, but fail to see that sometimes, the "free market" will fail to correct them, and they fail to appreciate the damage done, while waiting for the marketplace to correct things.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Show your friends this picture http://dvice.com/assets_c/2009/10/net-neutrality-thumb-550xauto-27419.jpg This is what Net Neutrality protects them from.
...I don't want my ISP to limit their bandwidth because Microsoft (or someone else) has paid a premium for priority for *their* bandwidth.
You think that's a better explanation to a conservative?
Dude. This is how you put it:
Net Neutrality allows for FREEDOM and it allows for your non-profit CHRISTIAN website to have as much bandwidth as those atheist-secular ones. It allows for your GOD FEARING content to have the same bandwidth as those abortion promoting god-less family planning websites! It will also allow you to track what the GOVERNMENT is doing because voting against NET NEUTRALITY is falling right into the government's hands.
Hit the streets now! It's in the CONSTITUTION and the Founding Fathers said that we have the right to equal access! It's true! It's in the exact same part where it says we're a CHRISTIAN Nation!
God Bless America!
That'll get Net Newtrality[sic]!!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
and the list goes on... As for the last 30 years, actually I beat you, let's do 60 years, under Democrats the income of the middle class has steadily increased by 3%/year and that of the upper class by 2%/year, under Republicans the increase has been around 1% for both.
if you want to believe propaganda go right ahead, You would look a lot smarter if you did some research first though. I'm an independent and I can think with my own brain. There are lots of stupid Democrats but they don't resemble the Republicans by far.