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Google Argues Against Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an article at Wired:
"In a dramatic about-face on a key internet issue yesterday, Google told the FCC (PDF) that the network neutrality rules Google once championed don't give citizens the right to run servers on their home broadband connections, and that the Google Fiber network is perfectly within its rights to prohibit customers from attaching the legal devices of their choice to its network."
The net neutrality debate is NOT about preventing abuse, as many naive people would like to believe. It is about ensuring that home users don't develop services that compete with commercial ones.
For example, Google doesn't want anyone starting up community-run OwnCloud instances reducing the attractiveness of Google's services now do they? How hard would it be to run a server to sync your contacts, files, calendar and other PIM data either yourself or with a group of friends? We're pretty much there with open source software like OwnCloud and Zimbra. THIS is what Google and other service providers don't want. They are protecting their ability to monetise you and charge you for the basic services that could be done privately, securely and effectively either yourself or by community groups.
I hate printers.
you are confused.
first of all, we paid the telcoms *billions* of dollars in the 1990s to provide us with high speed networking. guess what they did with that money instead?
now we get 1/20 or less the bandwidth of the rest of the world.
the bandwidth leeches are the telecoms.
if I am paying for x mBytes down and y kbytes up, there is no ambiguity about what that means I am paying for (and note again, fhese rates are *pitifully slow*)
so no, we're not to cry you a river about what the lines can carry. those LEECHES, who have stolen billions from we the taxpayer and we the subscribers, can upgrade their gear so they can provide what they claim to have sold us.
quit being a shill for the LEECHES
Right now it's all just talk, so yeah... that would be a start.
As of Today; I have no Google fiber, and Google fiber is nowhere even near my state.... all of the broadband providers in may area forbid running servers without buying an uber-overpriced "business" service that increases the monthly price tag from the residential $120/month for 3 Megabit cable from Charter to a minimum of about $800/month
Where on earth do you live? Our office in the Detroit area pays about $180/mo for 100Mbit down/10Mbit up (cable modem), with a static IP, and we can run pretty much whatever we want on it (I say pretty much because if we started e-mail spamming, for example, I'm sure they'd cut us off). My residential service costs $75/mo for 30Mbit down/3Mbit up (also cable), and I have never once been scolded for running any kind of server.
Why should I really be too upset about Google restricting the use of its bandwidth to non-commercial purposes for the 5 or 6 people they are serving, again?
I believe the point is that Google is now publically arguing against net neutrality after championing it for so many years. It's not about their customers, it's about their lobbying power and money and how it could adversely affect us in the not-so-distant future.
They can specify an upstream bandwidth without violating net neutrality, but to put arbitrary limits on what data I can send in my upstream packets is definitely violating neutrality.
That's true.
You've convinced me. It's like the policy that Telstra in Australia once had, where they wanted to charge you extra to have more than one PC access the net behind a NAT device. It's bullsh*t, because they should have the right to limit actual resources, not make arbitrary stereotypical rules.
As AC said in reply to my previous post - Arbitrarily blocking "server" traffic is behind both the letter, and (after a quick read of wiki) the intent of the Net Neutrality act.
However, we are beginning to see this plan be released in Australia, not just to arbitrarily segment the market, but because a residential plan will no longer get a real-world IP. You will be given a private IP and be one of 300 people sharing a single IPv4 address, masqueraded with carrier-grade NAT.
Why? Because when IPv4 address space is worth $20 per IP, putting 300 customers behind one IP address saves $6,000. Putting 30,000 customers behind only 100 IP addresses saves > $500,000.
So, the question is, if Google were supporting this arbitrary decision with a technical limitation done for commercial purposes - is it still a net neutrality issue?
After all, all "servers" are being treated equally.