Survey Finds Canadians Support Net Neutrality Law 201
An anonymous reader writes "A new public opinion survey conducted in Canada finds overwhelming public support in that country for net neutrality legislation. Three-quarters of Canadians believe the government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice — even though most of those surveyed did not know the term 'net neutrality.' The survey was commissioned by eBay." Of course the devil is in the wording. Given the survey's sponsorship, it's unlikely that respondents were presented with examples of the value that ISPs say packet shaping can bring, or asked to weigh such against net neutrality.
So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
kdawson FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Packet Shaping (Score:5, Insightful)
How about just switching my fscking packets and shove your "value added" up your ass. The contents of my packets are none of your business. I'll be very happy when IPSEC is ubiquitous and the only information ISPs will have access to is the minimum needed for routing.
Re:Right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name one (Score:4, Insightful)
If an ISP needs to shape packets they've over sold their service, and that is their problem. Not ours.
Three Things To Think About (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Canada is used to having a high-bandwidth internet that is cheaper than the US one, faster, and in more households.
3. Only those who want to sell you less for more are in favor of killing off net neutrality.
Wording is everything (Score:5, Insightful)
You could probably get a poll to go either way based on how you word the question:
"Do you believe that governments or corporations should place restrictions on what websites you can visit, or charge you extra based on visiting certain sites?"
"Do you believe that private property should be respected, and that Internet Service Providers have the right to control the content they deliver, such as restrictions on child pornography, sites that contain malicious software, and terrorist web sites?"
Re:Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Right! Re:Right? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I pay for bandwith, I expect to be able to use it as a chose not as YOU or anyone else sees fit. I understand that this costs money and that is the source of my outrage.
Conversely, use of public servitude and spectrum are privileges not rights. Those that would use those public resources have obligations to the public. It can be argued that the current owners of spectrum and networks in this country have failed those obligations and should be removed from their position of privilege and jailed.
Re:So What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think 90% of people on slashdot would agree with this. But then most people here have some understanding of the issues involved. A lot of non-technical people, especially regulators, will get caught up in the FUD being spread.
I think the real background to this is that certain groups are, for obvious reasons, very keen to change the internet from it's current free-for-all state to a managed tiered service; more closely resembling "push" services like television or other traditional media. ISPs are generally happy to support them as they can see opportunities for profit, e.g charging both the user and the server owner for the same bandwidth.
If some form of network neutrality legislation is not forthcoming I think this could become a serious problem. There's only a handful of companies that own most of the internet backbone, if they decide to start prioritizing content they like over content they dislike it will force all the smaller ISPs to follow suit and pass these fees on their customers. The dangers for internet freedom of allowing some random CEO to price internet services they dislike out of existence should require no further explanation.
There are clearly legitimate applications for QoS, prioritizing latency dependent applications over somebody's p2p traffic for example. The question from a regulatory point of view becomes where do you draw the line. What level of regulation is required to stop attempts to change the nature of the net and prevent unscrupulous ISPs charging twice for bandwidth, and to what extent will this interfere with legitimate technologies.
I think we need to be very careful. There is clearly a need for regulation, but it's imperative that those drafting it have an understanding of the technical issues involved, as bad regulation could be as much a danger to internet freedom as no regulation.
re: Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to. What I do know is that we should probably rethink what we understand as "rights" and "privileges", when it comes to novel technologies that act as mediums for free speech. Maybe the internet should play by different rules, like those that would be provided by a net neutrality act. Maybe not. But what is obvious is that the internet is somehow different than other privileged services, in that it has become a somewhat essential medium for global citizens to convene and engage in free speech.
As I said, I don't know the answers, but I do believe that your approach is not the direction that we should go in.
Re:Right! Re:Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
When taken in conjunction, these two statements are all that needs to be said. You are paying for a product or service. You should receive it.
Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now we have a situation where largely there's a disconnect between data, voice and video networks. They run on different standards, are handled by different equipment and so on. However that's slowly changing. VoIP is one of the first examples, but it'll keep going. Eventually we are likely to have everything routed to us over an IP network. However some of it is more important, or rather more time sensitive, than others. I don't mind if packets for my download have to wait a little bit. However with video, you've got to get me the next frame in not more than 33 milliseconds or I'm going to start dropping frames. This is the reason why video that operates over the Internet has to buffer and can't be true realtime, and even then still drops sometimes.
As such it is not a clear cut case of "just leave it alone." If everything goes to IP we are going to need a way to give priority to time critical packets. Even if that doesn't happen there's reason to want to shape packets. The big objection people have to P2P is that it eats up an unfair amount of network time. Most networks, all other things being equal, will work out so that each transfer gets an equal amount of time. Download one file via HTTP on a T1, you get somewhere in the realm of 150-190k/sec. Download a second file, they both go in the realm of 75-95k/sec. Ok, good deal. However P2P works off of lots of connections. You can have a single download having 150+ connections. So it'll grab more resources than its fair share and slow things down.
An easy solution to that, without banning P2P or something like that, is to just make P2P a lower priority than normal traffic. That's what we do on the campus I work on. We have a couple packet shapers that will put P2P packets behind others. That means that so long as there's bandwidth, everything works normally. However if we cap out, P2P slows down before other things do.
This isn't a clear cut thing. I agree that companies should be prohibited, either by law or simply by people refusing to do business with them, for charging people extortion money under threat of slowing their traffic down. However that doesn't mean we want to declare that all packets must be treated equal. Some things are just more important than others on a mixed network, and there needs to be allowances for that.
Re:Right? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Internet access is not a right."
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Not precisely true. There are other rights besides the "inalienable" ones. Sometimes, we create new rights and give them to the citizens.
This can be a "good thing", especially when advancing technology brings up a new issue.
Now that online video is becoming more prevalent, and people are moving from their TVs to their computer screens, it may behoove us to create and support the poor guy's right to view the same content as the rich guy.
Of course there are always trade-offs, and some who will even abuse such a right, but over-all I think it will be best for the nation to adopt a net-neutrality position, and sick the courts on those who try to profit by claiming some bits are worth more than others.
Re:Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the old adage of "better on paper". People should be holding companies liable when they pull that sort of crap, but consumers don't act in a self-interested manner anymore. Capitalism only works right if everybody involved in the process does their part to keep everybody else in check, but consumers have just rolled over and asked for it up the rear over the last few decades, so they're getting exactly what they requested now.
Re:Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are your neighbour allowed to download at such a high speed that it prevents you from watching video. The opposite question could of course also be, Why are you allowed to download video at such a high rate that it interfers with your opponents p2p traffic.
An ISP should ensure that it gives each custome adequate bandwidth. What the customer does with that bandwidth is their own business.
Know the counter argument from QoS proponents is of course, What if I want to use p2p, VoIP and play an online game at the same time. Without QoS this won't work.
This is true, but the only place where the QoS needs to take place is on the local router (or using software like cFosSpeed). The ISP doesn't have to be involved at all. I have personally cFosSpeed and played online games while using p2p, and it works just fine.
Re:Packet Shaping (Score:3, Insightful)
For reference, see the "value edition" of various graphic cards, memory sticks and other hardware.
Re:series of tubes? (Score:1, Insightful)
You're choosing your ISP from a pool of two or maybe three major players, and all of them have adopted onerous terms and conditions for you to obey with no negotiation.
Let them compete by offering it--why is there a need for legislation?
Because frankly, the ISP doesn't give a shit about you and your double-digits-a-month connection now that they've set their sights on extorting multimillions from other companies. You can vote with your $30 a month or whatever, but that's small fry compared to what they're going after.
Evidence against packet shaping for QoS (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet2 project found [oreillynet.com] that the costs and complexities of implementing quality of service guarantees exceeded the benefits. It was more practical to add sufficient bandwidth than it was to prioritize packets. They also predicted - and other research supports [ufl.edu] - that QoS would encourage ISPs to deliberately downgrade service in order to charge more.
Re:Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps a compromise? (Score:1, Insightful)
Given that both ends of the line already pay for scaled service, why should they have to pay _again_?
Re:Lets wait for a real problem before passing a l (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the way the US government is now, it may be the only chance to get the legislation through. Once powerful corporations decide they don't like Net Neutrality, their money will start to flow to politicians, and there can only be one outcome then.