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Congresswoman Writes On Broadband, Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Anna G. Eshoo, a California Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, has written an op-ed defending net neutrality and pushing the administration to take more steps to speed up US broadband. From the article: 'A climate of openness and innovation has been the hallmark of the Internet. A decade ago, it's what allowed a startup named Google to compete with better-funded, less technologically advanced competitors. Today, Congress has the responsibility to preserve this climate for the next Google, and for the consumers and the economy that will benefit from its success.'"
Can we opt out?
with the occupant of the White House acting AGAINST net neutrality, this is nothing more than lip service as any meaningful bill has zero chance of reaching the White House, and even if by some wild chance that it does, it has little chance of being signed.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
To begin talking about Net Neutrality, it helps to clarify what the internet is. It’s simply data sent via TCP/IP (the protocol for sending data through routers). Some people host web sites, others connect to their company e-mail, others do other things - it’s all the internet.
Understanding that the internet is just a connection using TCP/IP, then Net Neutrality is simple, too. Net Neutrality simply means that your ISP may not interfere with the internet. They may not censor your packets (the data that is sent via TCP/IP). This means they can’t censor your news, keep you off of Skype, or otherwise interfere with your TCP/IP communications.
Any compromise on this is wrong for two reasons: 1) Your ISP should not have the right to interfere with your free speech, and 2) ISPs should not be able to tax the value creation of the media industry.
ISPs should not be able to interfere with consumer access to media companies, nor tax those companies for access to consumers. ISPs should not be able to interfere with our speech or block our access to the speech of others.
ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.
Better to light a candle than complain about the darkness.
The internet has flourished precisely because the government regulators (aka nannies) have stayed out of it.
It has flourished because all the major players considered that neutrality was a good idea and just went along with it, making government involvement unnecessary. Now the major players believe that neutrality is no longer in their business interests.
The internet is going to be regulated. The only question is to what degree and by who.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm sorry, I would have loved to read your comment, but I wasn't able to. Comcast had throttled the speed at which your comment loaded, since its content was determined to not be in the best interest of Comcast-NBC. Maybe next time say something about 30rock or Outsourced at the end of your comment so it loads a little faster for me please.
Congress has a responsibility To support America's richest fatcat aristocracy from upstarts and mushrooms. Puppets work for those who pull their strings.
That is what it exists to do these days.
They don't want anymore Googles. They'd rather such things were strangled in their cribs.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
What are you smoking? The internet flourished specifically because of regulation. Look up some of the history of reciprocal comp for example, or the tarifs before cable/dsl were exempted from them, PSCs etc.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
The editor was clearly indicated to be OPTional.
To be frank, you have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't about the government trying to control the internet, it's about the government telling the ISPs to STOP trying to control the internet. It takes extra equipment, extra staff, extra planning to control whos packets get which priority and keep track of billing. All of this will require and entirely new divisions inside ISPs. It's much simpler to just leave everything alone and stop dinking around with traffic shaping. The ISPs have been lying to and defrauding their customers about what bandwidth they can expect with their given package for about a decade. With the advent of recent high bandwidth services such as Netflix, youtube, etc... it's becoming increasing obvious to the average internet user that "something" is wrong. ISPs are trying to blame their customers or the services their customers are trying to use. But the fact of the matter is, the formula is fairly simple, If they are selling you 5mb/s service, you should be able to get that speed at 6pm on a Saturday night. But we all know how unlikely that really is. ISPs need to upgrade their infrastructure and are instead are trying to block their customers from accessing sites that would allow them to use the service they paid for.
Notice that the parent doesn't deal with any of the issues at hand. It's just talking points and ideological scary-talk (Oooh, "bureaucrats," "control," "clowns," "nannies!")
Whom.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
...devalues Citizens United.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Since when? Have there been sites you could not access? I haven't noticed ANY change in how my ISP acts now, or five years ago, or even back in the beginning (1993).
It didn't yet get to the point where it would be up in your face, such as pay to access certain websites. But major US ISPs have already stated that they'd like to see e.g. Google pay extra to have their content delivered to end user at the same speed as everyone else's, rather than being throttled down. The way it reflects upon you as a user is that Google might no longer be able to afford to offer some services for free that it does today, and there will be more ads on others.
Is there an apt for that?
The nannies are already involved. In most locations cable is the one technologically superior option, and the operators have been granted monopolies by the state (natural monopoly kind of thing).
Alternatives exist, but they have disadvantages. DSL is slower, WiMax/4G/etc. are nice but tend to have caps, Satellite is expensive and has major latency problems, and fiber is costly to deploy so doesn't have significant penetration.
If you consider the cable companies as agents of the state (since their monopolies are sanctioned by the state), then the enforcement of network neutrality is simply a codification of first amendment rights. If you consider them as monopolies than its a pre-emptive description of how anti-trust laws will be applied to ISPs.
I admit, I think Net Neutrality has its issues: it limits innovations in consumer-friendly QOS implementations, and who knows what else. However, I'd rather have that than let the cable companies stop new business models from growing on the internet (I'm sure Comcast is salivating to be able to legally crush Netflix through 'helpful' throttling). A better solution would be to treat internet providers as common carriers and enforce line-sharing, create a real market and let the invisible hand do its thing. But if we can't do that, net neutrality is the best way to keep the internet as the dynamic force it is today.
What? ed is never optional. It's part of the Unix standard!
/opt is pure blaspheme.
Furthermore putting the only holy editor in
The internet has flourished precisely because the government regulators (aka nannies) have stayed out of it. Yes, there were some great engineers earning government paychecks through the military and universities who got it started - but the bureaucrats largely ignored it because they didn't know what it was, or how important it would become.
No good can come from the clowns in Washington "tweaking" the Internet. This is not about "openness" or whatever other word they want to use. This is about exerting top-down control, and the power that comes with that kind of control.
The funny thing is that the same politicians and commentators feeding you those lines are also in support of an "internet kill switch" for the president. They dislike net neutrality, which is government regulation limited to preventing preferential bandwidth based on business interests (maintaining the status quo that's only recently begun to shift), but they love the idea of giving government the power to shut down the internet to prevent political opposition. Oh, to prevent cyber attacks, you say? Excuse me while I unplug my sensitive systems from the internet and go about my merry way.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)