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Net Pioneers Say Open Internet Should Be Separate
angry tapir writes "The US Federal Communications Commission should allow for an open Internet separate from specialized services that may prioritize IP traffic, a group of Internet and technology pioneers has recommended. The document, filed in response to an FCC request for public comments on proposed network neutrality rules, steers clear of recommending what rules should apply to the open Internet. Among the tech experts signing the document are Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Bruce Perens, founder of the open-source software movement; Clay Shirky, an author and lecturer at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program; and David Reed, a contributor to the development of TCP/IP and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab."
I propose we make a new internet, except with blackjack and hookers! Oh...
crazy dynamite monkey
I bet your ISP would LOVE to sell you 2 internet connections, they might even let you 'bundle' them together... Of course, the open one would probably cost more.
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These guys are all smart and should have known better than to hedge to this degree. They have written a lot but not provided any value with their enormous brainpower.
Besides, if you split the internet into two pipes, one neutral and one non-neutral, you kill net neutrality because you can prioritize the non-neutral bit over the neutral bit. In other words, you can't be a little bit pregnant.
No, I propose that the electric company upgrade their infrastructure to handle the capacity.
Of course, this creates problems. What if one guy is running an MRI machine or something that sucks up insane amounts of juice? Obviously the electric company shouldn't be required to upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate that load. So where do we draw the line?
The issue is that we're not talking about one guy on the block "using up all the internet". It's the fact that bandwidth usage is increasing for EVERYONE. Games are distributed electronically, movies are streamed, music is streamed, web pages have more and more content that you can download, etc. This isn't one guy with grow lamps causing a brownout. It's everyone on the block that wants to turn on their lights at reasonable times that's causing the problem. This more closely models internet usage.
Also, there's no talk here of guaranteed electricity or bandwidth. ISPs promise "up to" such and such a limit. This means that they can give you absolutely no service because 0kb/s is still "up to" 30MB/s (or whatever the fuck they advertise). This would be like the electric company promising you "up to" some power and then not giving you enough to even run your lights. If the electric company did this, people would be rioting until it was fixed. (It's happened before)
In either case, the solution is not to implement throttling.
We can debate all day about whether or not the government should regulate the internet, but I think we can all agree that competition would result in better service for everyone. Once some company actually makes good on a plan that contains a real SLA (including minimum speeds and uptime) they'll start raking in money like none other. The problem is that there is no competition. The barrier to entry is huge, and you have large companies like comcast that have monopolies in large areas of the US and lawyers to make sure it stays that way.
Thus, I propose that the government needs to regulate the internet only to the point that it spurs lots of competition. Congress needs to introduce laws that make it easier for new ISPs to start up and limit how much control a single company can have regarding broadband service in any given area. That way, the free market takes over and we can finally get some good fucking internet service.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Idealism is great until you realize that someone has to pay for it, and that someone is always, without exception, YOU.
Sure. My local library is paid from my taxes and has a nice assortment of books and I can discuss with them what they carry or not. They don't bundle advertising and spam with the goods either. Would I want a commercial for profit library instead of it? Hell no. Just imagine what it would be about. Oh wait. We have "adult video rental" shops already.
The problem is we ALREADY paid for it, and now they want to seize it and bundle it with a nice bow and hand it to their shareholders. We paid for it in direct taxes, we paid for it in subsidized rates, and we paid for it by allowing a telecommunications duopoly to develop. We have a natural monopoly/duopoly situation going on and we have two valid options as I see it, we can either have the government run the infrastructure and allow all comers to provide open service on a competitive basis or we can have tightly regulated monopolists. Going down your distopian path to corporatism run amok will only lead to America becoming a technology backwater gheto where corporations only service the most profitable customers and spend as little as humanly possible to maintain their existing subsidized infrastructure while maximizing shareholder profits and CEO bonuses until things get so broken that they get another multi hundred billion dollar handout from the government.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Heh.
This proposal is like relegating the whole stack to a newsgroup-level of relevance.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I signed it "co-founder", the article gets that wrong. And of course I acknowledge that RMS is the founder of the Free Software movement and Open Source stands upon his shoulders, just as RMS acknowledges that Free Software existed before he came along. There are several online videos of me speaking in which I explicitly acknowledge RMS, one of them shot at the U.N. Summit on the Information Society.
Bruce Perens.
Actually, Christine Petersen coined the term "Open Source" at the meeting where the formation of a separate Open Source campaign was first discussed. She was at the time married to the nanotechnology guru Eric Drexler. I created the Open Source Definition 9 months before ESR got involved, as the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And I'm pretty clear that RMS writings came long before CaTB.
Bruce Perens.
The authors of this work may believe that an open Internet will succeed on its merits alone. I don't.
Why not? That's what happened with the first Internet. Take a look back at the 1980s. At that time, there were lots of proprietary networks, one per vendor, and it was difficult or impossible for users of different vendors' equipment to communicate with each other. But over in academia, the open Internet was alive and getting attention. When it went "public" and finally allowed connections to businesses and homes, everyone jumped on it. The vendors all tried their mightiest to convince everyone that they had a better network, but everyone wanted the one that was open and could connect everyone to everyone, even if it might not be the perfect one in all its details. Eventually, one by one, the vendors grudgingly moved onto the Internet, as they realized that they couldn't compete with an open network.
The obvious prediction would be that the same thing will happen after the corporations succeed in taking control of the Internet. It will devolve into a set of "walled gardens", one per comm company, with limited communication between people on different parts of the Internet. If someone can come along and offer an alternative that connects everyone to everyone else, people will once again jump on it wherever they are permitted access.
Maybe this is how IPv6 will take over. The people working on it should be pushing for ways to sneak it into our homes and businesses in a manner that's beyond the control of the powerful commercial interests. If they can manage this, we can relegate IPv4 to the backwaters of walled gardens like IBM's and DEC's networks were back in the 1980s. The comm companies can then control the connectivity in their walled gardens all they like, and their customers will slowly find ways of getting onto the real, open Internet2, just as we all did in the early 1990s.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You mean you were expecting the usual crowd of horse's asses on Slashdot and suddenly there's the horse's mouth :-)
Bruce Perens.
Sigh. I signed it as "co-founder of the Open Source movement in software", in an attempt to get some credibility for the issue. Unfortunately a lot of the folks who were in favor of Net Neutrality in congress aren't going to be in congress any longer. We are in a really bad position and this is an attempt to get some movement back on the field.
Bruce Perens.