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Silicon Valley Kicks Off Fight On Net Neutrality (cnn.com)
Web companies met with FCC Ajit Pai on Tuesday and urged him not to gut the net neutrality rules that protect their traffic, a week after he met with broadband providers that have tried to kill the Obama-era regulations. From a report: The Internet Association, a trade group representing companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, stressed the importance of defending current net neutrality rules in a meeting with Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday. "The internet industry is uniform in its belief that net neutrality preserves the consumer experience, competition and innovation online," the group said in the meeting, according to a filing with the FCC. "Existing net neutrality rules should be enforced and kept in tact." The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, are intended to keep the internet open and fair. The rules prevent internet providers from playing favorites by deliberately speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps. This is the first face-to-face encounter between the tech association and the new FCC head. It comes on the heels of reports Pai met with the telecom industry to discuss changing how the rules are enforced, potentially weakening them.
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of support for some things and the fact that we were unable to defrag some stuff), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 10.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, then maybe. Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
Customers want walled gardens! Just look at cable bundles, it is clearly that bundles is the most popular choice by far. Also, customers want more commercials - just look at how popular are Super Bowl commercials are. It follows that Internet access should be bundled walled garden with auto-play video commercials inserted into browsing. This is what consumers want! Other internet is for dirty pirates and darknet hackers.
/sarcasm
You got Trumped!
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth!
Corporations are people too, my friends
Until Concast decides to block Google. Or Concast decides to replace Google ads with their own.
That's what net neutrality is. The Internet is better with priority lanes, because then the big guys won't clog all the tubes. They can pay extra for priority, and slow tubes will drop in price, so everyone can afford.
This is nothing but whining from the "winners" that were picked by the last administration.
Maybe instead of being political, Google et al should concentrate on their business?
As a mostly libertarian person, I see this as a reason for the government to have control of the communication system in the same model as they have roadways. Want to connect to the roads (by driving your car on it), then you have to meet specific standards meant to protect everyone else, but other than that you are free to connect and go where you want. You pay for your usage (through gas taxes...a model that is currently in flux due to electric vehicles), but other than that, no one tells you how much you can use or where you can go.
In fact, anything that requires the power of eminent domain should be handled this way. Electric grid owned by government. Anyone can produce and sell through it, as long as they meet the safety requirements.
If the cable companies want to throttle traffic depending on where it comes from, at the least they would need to lose common carrier status.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
One reason to have NN is to permit new kids on the block to grow.
Google, Facebook, and Amazon are information incumbents.
They are able to pay for access if they need to, especially if it stops new competition.
For them support NN is a real comment on how important it is to the network.
my company books for sales of medical devices running LiGNUx is at risk, not!
I say they should go ahead and get rid of net neutrality. This will, by definition mean that the various ISPs are actively curating their services, and therefor are responsible if anything bad happens (DOS attacks, viruses, etc) because they are now responsible for the traffic going through their networks.
You don't get to take control of something and then wave away any responsibility. You want control? They you have to take the responsibility too. Don't want the responsibility? Then don't take control.
This is precisely what also pisses me off about Windows 10. Microsoft has taken control away from the operating system, but they refuse to also take responsibility. The end result is that Windows 10 is quickly becoming the most despised Windows in history.
Unfortunately most people don't have a choice in ISPs, so what options do people have, besides lawsuits?
ayunt 'murika grayut.
forget net neutrality - lets have a real open market for access - stop cutting subsoity checks to ATT/Verizon/Comcast and CUT THE RED TAPE TO GET ACCESS TO EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE! Force the telcos to sell access to polls the same way FRAND patents have to be shared - no denials and reasonable terms. This is more than fair because the telcos use eminent domain to have the polls in the first place, and thats fine so long as its a community resource.
CALPERS and other giant employee retirement funds need to start making noises about dumping Telco stocks if network neutrality is killed. It's a kleptocracy and that's the only defense real people now have.
but the real argument against NN is that there's a lot of competition in the world of ISPs. Which is true if you include dial up & cell phone providers. Heck the cell phones even count as broadband by the legal definition of it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Nice editing CNN.
Do you think companies like YouTube, Facebook, etc. campaign for net neutrality out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They are lobbying for their financial interests, which do not coincide with yours.
Internet service in the US is such an unholy mess of regulations, rent seeking, government-granted privileges, restrictions, political interests, big money, and clueless techies that it is hard to know what any particular regulation does. I strongly doubt, however, that "net neutrality" will accomplish what people promise for it. Most likely (and given who is lobbying for it), it will simply cement the role of politically powerful and well-connected corporations.
Instead of imposing even more regulations in the form of net neutrality, it would probably be better if the federal government got rid of regulations, and perhaps also forced local governments to allow more competition.
Google, Facebook, and Amazon have razor-thin margins and huge volumes. If they had to pay for access, their business models might be in big trouble. Cloud computing might get more costly relative to local computing as well. So, no, they don't do this out of selflessness, they do it because it matters to their bottom line, big time.
In contrast, smaller players tend to have bigger margins, so they can more easily pay for this out of those margins. But ISPs are probably not going to bother with trying to charge small players anyway because it's a lot of effort for little revenue, and they'd much rather have the small players grow to be big, at which point they can then charge them.
Google, Facebook, and Amazon are information incumbents....
For them support NN is a real comment on how important it is to the network.
Or is it a real comment on how the real purpose of NN is in fact to keep new kids unable to compete with the incumbents?
In fact you'll find this is the effect of most regulations, keep the largest players fat and happy and free of sky "competition".
Regulations support corporatism, not capitalism.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I pay for internet i want my packets sent to me without any type of priority based on source or destination.
As a technically astute users I want MY packets sent such that Netflix has priority over my other web traffic. I don't care if my web pages load a little slower so long as it does not affect streaming video quality in the house.
Why is this so hard to comprehend? Why do so many Slashdot users not understand that people WANT PRIORITIZED TRAFFIC. Don't make something people strongly want illegal, because they will figure out how to get it anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I improved the headline.
It's only been the big bandwidth users (Netflix, Roku), whom have been affected by 'Net Neutrality'. I want to see big teleco go after the mom and pop websites before I support net neutrality. Let's see big telecom ban Dailykos, or freerepublic first.
A government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations
Hey you seem to have forgotten that Hillary wasn't the one elected.
Instead we elected Trump - what reason does he have to support the corporations? Unlike Hillary he did not take millions in "charitable donations" from them. Unlike Obama he is not owned by Goldman Sachs.
In fact the most logical thing is for Trump to actually work AGAINST corporate interests, because they would be competing against Trump's own businesses!
Trump is the first president in a LONG TIME who is actually not beholden to, nor seemingly in direct support of, corporatism.
We would have got the same effect electing Sanders also - which is why the Democrats made sure he would never be the candidate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would be moderately interested in enabling classes of service for TYPES of traffic, but not based on their source.
You claim that "so many Slashdot users not understand that people WANT PRIORITIZED TRAFFIC", as a reply to a post that is advocating for prioritized traffic, with the end user dictating the prioritization.
I guarantee you, as sure as the sun sets at night and rises in the morning. The ISPs will argue for control when it suits them, and against responsibility when it suits them. You linking the two issues will not matter 2 bits to their corporate interests.
Here's what they will say:
Liability? Oh no, we're just common carriers!
Control? Oh yes, we need that, to, ahem, improve service and provide targeted advertising! Why, untargeted advertising is bad, it is mere spam! Targeted advertising is good, no one can be against stuff they want!
Left unsaid will be the shakedown the ISPs will perform against content companies: Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Ashley Madison, eBay, PayPal, LinkedIn, Steam, Pinterest, Netflix, ...
Also left unsaid will be the quiet death of startups and innovators who cannot pay. They "don't matter" to the ISPs because they don't have money to pay off the protection racket. Nice company you've got there; it would be a shame if something happened to it!
If it's going to be that unpopular -- and I'm sure they know it will be -- how about... not trying it in the first place because you're supposed to represent me and not corporations? They're going to either start a smear campaign over Net Neutrality as it gets closer or be as quiet about it as possible, but only because I'm pretty sure they know they have to convince people that removing it is not the worst thing to hit the Internet since fake news.
This is such a prime example of how much power companies have over the American population at large and it's pretty disgusting. Am I a dirty liberal? Probably, but I don't see why expecting representatives to represent the opinions of the majority of the country, instead of a very rich few -- sorry, vocal few; campaign donations are free speech now -- is so difficult. There's a good reason why Congress' approval rating has been so low for so long.
"Corporations are people, too." I hope Mitt Romney is never given the chance to forget he uttered that filth.
...election campaign would've done a lot more for their cause than millions of dollars in lobbying. Instead, they went all in for Hillary, and fought tooth and nail for her. Don't be surprised if the current administration is rather pissed off at them. Elections have consequences. Backing the wrong side in elections has bad consequences.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
"Urging" means nothing against the army of telcos and their huge donations with sights set on burring kill Net Neutrality.
Plus the telcos claim it "hurts jobs", Trump got the champion kill to lead the Department.
Nope, if Silicon Valley want's to save NN, those tech billionaires break need to break out the war chest check books, it's time to "go to the mattresses".