Slashdot Mirror
Senate Set To Vote On the Repeal of Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "The United States Senate will vote sometime today on the bill that would repeal the net neutrality laws that the FCC has put into place. The bill passed the US House back in April, so it only has to be approved by the Senate before it is sent to the President's desk. President Obama says that he will veto the bill. The debate over net neutrality has largely been split on party lines, with the Democratic party mostly being for keeping net neutrality laws in place, and the GOP looking to avoid them."
Another kink in the armor of American freedom.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The problem isn't equal treatment of all traffic. Nobody would complain about FTP traffic being slowed during busy bursts to avoid interfering with voice traffic. It is the stated aim of some ISPs to throttle back certain sites unless you pay a premium. So Microsoft could agree to pay certain ISPs to advertise bing while at the same time making google very slow and barely usable. They could also undermine free sites by charging the provider to allow customers reasonable access, meaning that they have a charge to pass on somewhere. The end result will be the end of the free to access internet.
Some despite the fact that private companies have pretty much destroyed our economy you are ok with them controlling the internet, too?
I know, right? That's why food contamination actually got worse after we passed the Pure Food And Drug Act.
Wait, did I say "worse"? Sorry, I meant "better".
You're taking "government will always handle everything worse than any private company" as an article of faith not backed by evidence. Sorry, I'm not religious in that particular manner.
In general I'm against the government adding senseless regulations, but in THIS case the regulation IS necessary. It's actually a requirement that all traffic be treated equal. How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on unless you put two extra stamps on each of your letters they would add a week to the delivery time of your first class mail?
Let's see...
Regulator aka bureaucrat familiar with the industry (supposed to be an expert) he or she is regulating
Law maker aka at best a laymen having their opinion on matters formed by 22 year old legislative aids and lobbyists
I can see why law makers are the vastly superior option here
I'll take net neutrality laws as they have been written any day over letting the ISPs just do as they please. After all, the broadband ones are all old entrenched telecom and media companies that already do discriminate between content. At the very least they pretty much all throttle P2P which contrary to some people's opinions can and is used for plenty of good, non-pirate things.
On the other hand... why can't we have laws which distinguish between a provider's LAN services and the internet? When TV service comes through the modem on what is essentially a big LAN, usually a 10.x.x.x network and the internet comes through as a tunnel on that LAN then I think net neutrality laws should be applied to what comes through the tunnel, not the whole LAN connection. The LAN belongs to the ISP, the Internet does not.
In other words, when I connect to the internet I expect to be able to reach Google, Bing or some other competitior, NetFlix, some big corporate website or somebody's personal page all equally (as far as my ISPs connection is concerned, obviously they will each have different providers and capacity). If however the ISP has some kind of assurance in place that the other services on their LAN aren't being 'squeezed out' by the Internet tunnel that is fine with me.
Then again, with an ever faster Internet traditional TV and phone services become pretty obsolete. Using that whole LAN for Internet access and plugging my computer into my TV sounds just fine to me and I haven't had use for a landline in years.
Oh right, because private companies would do such a good job to ensure net neutrality. I mean, who's supposed to ensure that content gatekeepers don't create tiered services? ISPs? Uh huh...
Sometimes you just need to admit that government regulations are necessary. No FDA? You can go back to the days before Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Frances Oldham Kelsey. How about the EPA? Not sure why people oppose the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. And if the US government were a company, you might have been bankrupt long ago.
>the fact that private companies have pretty much destroyed our economy
Private companies ARE our economy, comrade.
Yes, the solution is simply to switch ISPs- oh, wait, most people in the US have only two broadband providers available at most, and they both have abhorrent neutrality practices.
I can't start my own ISP because the barrier to entry is impossibly high and the current ISPs have state or city-granted monopolies on internet/phone/cable service.
Free market theory doesn't work when the market isn't free.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Back when google was cool and actually believed in "do no evil", it supported net neutrality the way most people understand it.
Ask the common geek, I would assume many of them would agree the following should be defined as Net Neutrality:
* Treat all data equally, regardless of source. (e.g. data from Bob's Video Shack would be treated the same as Netflix)
* Do not block services (e.g. BitTorrent should not be blocked)
* Do not block web sites (e.g. Comcast/NBC should not block access to ABC/CBS/etc)
* and probably a few I'm forgetting.
If an ISP wants to charge more for bandwidth, that's understandable. It's a limited resource.
But I shouldn't have to pay more to visit netflix just because 75% of the traffic goes there. I already paid for the bandwidth!
The problem I see is that corporations who control content and access are trying to define "Net Neutrality", when really they are defining a set of policies to make them more money. Maybe before putting together regulations and laws, IETF can get together a RFC of what Net Neutrality should be.
We don't live in Shouldland.
You could also say that "despite the fact that the government has pretty much destroyed our economy, you are okay with them controlling the Internet, too?"
When most of the damage that the government did was through removing regulations... yes. Especially since we're not talking about the government controlling the Internet, we're talking about the government imposing limits on how much private enterprises can control it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The problem is that the whole issue of net neutrality is misframed. We don't necessarily need or want "net" neutrality. What needs to be absolutely sacrosanct is LAST MILE NEUTRALITY. We should all have the absolute, inalienable right to have our network traffic handled with absolute neutrality between our endpoint device (router, phone, whatever) and the nearest peering point where access is available on open, equal, and neutral terms to all (ie, not "free", but if AT&T pays $N per month for a 1U rack slot and the right to run a single fiber to it, anybody else should be able to do exactly the same thing for exactly the same price.
To keep carriers able to blur the line between last-mile and "internet" service honest (say, a carrier like Verizon that bundles "free" internet access with 2gb cap with the cost of monthly wireless service, but charges 1c/meg wholesale costs to anybody who peers privately with them), VPN traffic should be the one exception that enjoys special protected status and by law can be neither favored nor throttled relative to traffic of the network's most favored provider. In other words, Verizon would be perfectly free to throttle Netflix in favor of Blockbuster, or Google in favor of Bing, but if they did, VPN traffic would have to be given exactly the same priority as their otherwise-favored Blockbuster and Bing traffic. This would empower consumers to do an end run around the carriers by purchasing VPN service from some thirdparty with traffic policies they happen to like better. In the long run it probably wouldn't matter much, but like legislatively-mandated equal access to landline phone networks, it would nevertheless create opportunities for niche (if expensive) services that otherwise wouldn't exist at all.
The truth is, hardcore last-mile neutrality isn't necessarily about lower prices for Joe Sixpack -- it's about enabling services for Slashdot users that otherwise wouldn't be available because they don't neatly align with the business plans of AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast. It's about being able to do an end run around them and enjoy services they aren't themselves necessarily interested in selling you, or allowing you to buy from others.
(example: if you're moderately wealthy, live in the middle of Georgia farm country or exurban Dallas "Horse Country" and want broadband, a company like Covad will happily twist AT&T's arm and force them -- at slightly exorbitant cost -- to provision wholesale dry copper between the nearest central office and your house and give you what you want, even if AT&T itself would tell you it simply can't be done and broadband isn't available in your neighborhood).
That's not true. Common carrier laws have been in place for *hundreds of years*. The US actually inherited them from British commonlaw, back when they were concerned that freight carriers could mess with cargo. This only became a problem when the courts ruled that voice calls sent over the internet is not a voice call.
There is no economic orientation, nor government structure, that can protect people from corruption.
So long as humans are capable of attaining any measure of power over other humans, that power will be abused. Humans are like that.
Carry on.