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UK ISPs To Make Voluntary Net-Neutrality Commitment
Mark.JUK writes "A UK government advisory body, the Broadband Stakeholders Group, has confirmed that most of the major fixed line internet providers in the country will next week sign-up to a new Voluntary Code of Practice on Traffic Management Transparency. Recently everybody from the European Commission to the UK government has called upon ISPs to be more 'transparent' with their traffic management policies, which until now have been too vague and often fail to inform customers about any background restrictions that might be being imposed upon their services. The new code is likely to surface as a result of last year's Net Neutrality consultation — the principal of treating all internet traffic as equal — by the country's communications regulator. Ofcom is not expected to enforce any tough new rules, largely due to a lack of evidence for market harm, but will recommend greater transparency from ISPs. However, to most providers, transparency usually means yet more unreadable small print."
Self regulation is just toothless regulation, basically letting a business say, 'ya.. thats kind of a cool idea.. and if it's convenient i might consider it'
the principal of treating all internet traffic as equal
Who is this guy, and how can we give him power over the entire internet?
It has worked very well with Union Carbide, Goldman Sachs, BP, and many more.
..... it works because organizations founded purely on the principle of profit, act against their potential profit, and think about the public first. they have high moral and ethical standards. and if they fail, they are accountable. because, corporations arent 'people', and the perpetrators of the failure can be punished. They never can just ditch the haywire corporation, and just start a new one with the immense profits - no, our system prevents that - you, sir, are accountable for all of your actions. you should remember that.
really. it works
or, maybe these are only true in an alternate reality, and in the world we lived in, opposite of all of the above holds true.
Read radical news here
With transparency, you'll clearly see how you get screwed!
The inter net is already somewhat prioritized: ftp, udp, http... Why let the wealthy mess with a system that has served the populous so well for so long?
If ISPs need to "manage traffic" because they oversold bandwith, then they should be heavily penalized in some fashion AND lower their rates.
It sure as hell does work if they enter into a legal binding contract.
This is the first resolution that I feel is a good idea. LET THE MARKET DECIDE, not politicians and not CEOs. If a company signs up for Traffic Management Transparency, and is subsequently throttles their bandwidth based on data content, the lawsuits will make the cost savings of their throttling irrelevant. If another company publicly refuses to adhere to the TMT guidelines while remaining economically viable then the market has spoken. PLUS, since it's a voluntary code of practice it can be implemented IMMEDIATELY ALL OVER THE WORLD.
Also, net neutrality is a little more complex than "Big Corporation wants to charge me MORE for access to [political website]!!!!". While I personally find that possibility to be remote, I think that the possibility of 911-type emergency VOIP calls to be dependent upon a reliable connection to be in the very near future. Ask yourself if you want to be in a situation wherein you cannot connect to a 911 operator because the 13 year old fapper next door is downloading pr0n! Just sayin, it isn't necessarily as black and white as many seem to make it out to be.
Random thought...in the recesses of my mind, I believe I recall a "priority bit" in the TCP/IP spec...
First off, it seems like the title of this /. article is a bit misleading; they seem to be agreeing to traffic-shaping transparency, not necessarily neutrality.
But let's say there was a neutrality provision put in place prohibiting traffic shaping. Under those rules, how would providers ration service if total usage was regularly exceeding their capacity? If they beef up their networks enough to accommodate the consumers eating bandwidth at >= 80% of their downstream speed (a group that may well grow in numbers if throttling and shaping were verboten), should the rest of the customer base have to subsidize it? What about the low-income users who just need access to email and interwebz at the minimum cost possible, and in exchange would gladly have speeds limited for traffic matching the most strenuous of usage patterns? Do they get an option?
US users constantly shout that "unlimited means unlimited" (and I agree, it does, though few service agreements actually contain such a phrase), so a user with a connection averaging 2.5Mb downstream could eat up ~800GB/month. But another user might like to have 10Mb downstream speeds available, though he rarely exceeds 3GB in monthly usage. Shouldn't that guy be able to buy a plan that limited Hulu, Netflix and torrent speeds but gave him his 10Mb speeds for nearly everything else?
For me, this comes down to the right to contract. Why shouldn't people have the right to enter into any contract they wish to, with any terms they wish to, for any product or service that's legal under other terms, provided those terms are fully disclosed and agreeable to all parties to the contract? That seems like a pretty basic right.
Pi Ran Out
I think what we have here is more of a opportunity from the regulator. Essentially the ISPs are encouraged to play nice and have the regulator give them some leeway, otherwise the regulator will decide how the game will be played. Regulators in European nations are usually more effective than their North American counter-parts, based on what I have seen.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So in a country that people deride as stereotypically socialist, net neutrality is accomplished voluntarily, whereas in the purportedly "free market" U.S., the government tried to coerce ISPs to do this. What's wrong with this picture?
Liberty in your lifetime
So in a country that people deride as stereotypically socialist, net neutrality is accomplished voluntarily, whereas in the purportedly "free market" U.S., the government tried to coerce ISPs to do this. What's wrong with this picture?
We tend to regulate here in the U.S. 'cuz we have a much more highly-developed corporate organism whose ability and willingness to consume anything - from human beings to the planet itself - has been on exhibition continuously for over 100 years.
(Doesn't that sound better than America has displayed a startling capability for breeding a scummier, greedier subspecies of humans?)
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Because Ofcom are a bunch of pussies staffed by the golf buddies of the people who control who goes on in the UK's ISP industry.
Ofcom, Ofwat - ineffective useless morons who pick up a paycheck for doing nothing, rather like their friends at the FSA (Financial Services Authority).
This Code of Practice is actually the complete opposite of net neutrality. Its all about being open about HOW they shape traffic, not NOT shaping traffic.
The Code of Practice also says that all LEGAL content should be accessible, not simply that all content should be accessible.
It seems to clearly promote the idea that ISPs should/will start blocking sites arbitrarily deemed "probably illegal" by themselves, such as Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, etc etc.