The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy 457
NoMoreHelio writes "The political blog ThinkProgress lays out big telecom's plan to attack net neutality. The blog obtained a secret PowerPoint presentation from a telecommunications industry front group (PPT) that outlines the industry strategy for defending against regulatory attempts by the FCC. The industry plans to partner with two conservative 'astroturfing' groups, best known for their work seeding the Tea Party movement. Today's revelation from ThinkProgress comes as Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) joined various telecom-funded front groups to unveil an anti-net neutrality bill."
Will They Ever Learn? (Score:2)
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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
- George Orwell
With each passing year, he becomes more the prophet.
It's no secret (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't so much about Net Neutrality as it is about them not wanting the government to have control of the situation. It wouldn't matter what the government wanted to do, the Telecoms want to be the ones in charge.
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At this point, we need to decide who we want to be in charge of the internet. Letting it evolve on its own has gotten us to where we are now, but I can't see that continuing much longer.
So, we now need to choose between an oligopoly (relatively unregulated) and "government takeover" (unspecified regulation).
I don't trust either side right now ....
Re:It's no secret (Score:5, Informative)
So far we have seen all manner of attrocities. ISP companies lying to its users and the government about its activities with regards to blocking and tampering with traffic is just part of it. Hijacking DNS and all sorts of other nonsense is just the beginning of what ISPs want to do to make even more money than ever before. They want to regulate what applications you can run and, who knows, maybe even what operating systems you can use.
The push for net neutrality is to stop what they are trying to do and prevent them from doing even worse. Think back to how the phone networks were handled before various regulations were placed on it. You couldn't even own your own phone!! You had to use theirs and it had to be leased! Even now they still charge for stupidity like "tone dialing service" and crap like that. How would you feel about getting charged extra for using https or ftp? It took more than the application of regulations to clean up the mess that was the phone network -- it took the courts system to break up the phone company and then serious regulation. And what did the public "suffer" from this? We suffered regulations like minimum quality of service requirements among others. We all got better service and better flexibility and you could use your own phone! I would expect nothing less from net neutrality regulations.
Re:It's no secret (Score:4, Insightful)
> Think back to how the phone networks were handled before various regulations were placed on it.
> You couldn't even own your own phone!!
No, it was totally regulated even then. AT&T was a government granted monopoly with regulation at both the State and Federal level. AT&T had just achieved regulatory capture.
Yes, monopolies are bad. But so will government control of the Internet. We get screwed either way. Since I don't like getting screwed why don't we try something different? How about the Free Market? It is the one solution that works every time it is tried.
Break up the monopolies one last time, this time doing it right. The last mile is the natural monopoly so admit that and let it remain a government regulated utility. But forbid the monopoly from offering ANYTHING on the pipe, instead force them to sell access at the same rates to anyone who wants in.
Re:It's no secret (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
Utilities should be BORING industries. By all means they should improve bandwidth/etc, and be able to sell that. However, they should be pipes and wires.
The problem is all the vertical integration. Nobody wants to be a company that guarantees shareholders 25cents per share every quarter from now until eternity. They want to be able to promise double-digit earnings growth, and that requires the ability to grow markets. However, when your market is ever home in a 10 mile radius who could own a phone, and they already own phones, then there is no room to grow.
The problem is greed. It isn't like the CEO of a boring utility company doesn't make a good six-figure salary. However, who wants 6-figures when they could be the next Bill Gates? Well, if you want to leave and start your own company that's fine, but when you want to use a government-granted monopoly as the springboard for world conquest then don't be surprised when taxpayers start complaining.
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Shut up, Glenn.
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So, we now need to choose between an oligopoly (relatively unregulated) and "government takeover" (unspecified regulation).
I don't trust either side right now ....
Look to the way television evolved: in the US, it was seen as too big for government to run, so it went to the oligopolies. In the UK, it was seen as too big for the private sector to run, so it went to the government (until ITV came along at least).
Oligopolies will mean the net turns into an ad-infested worthless mess where every mouse click has to be monetised. What will government mean for it?
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What is business class 100mbit?
Is that like cable, where you may get 100mbit at some point or like my T1s where I know exactly what I get?
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Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, some of us are trying to fix it earlier than that, you are not helping.
The reason the internet exploded like it did, is not because of government stand off, far from it. If you believe that, go Google the story behind ISDN, and the telecommunications acts.
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"All government did was allow other companies into established Central Offices so they could drop DSL equipment at the end of the copper lines."
This HUGE step, which would have completely stopped the internet in its tracks if it hadn't happened, was because of direct intervention by the government.
Re:It's no secret (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately I just looked at Google, and it appears the true story behind ISDN has been revisioned away so I'll summarize.
In the industry, it was commonly known as "I Smell Dollars Now". The sibling posters are quite correct that DSL was the explosion of the internet, along with cable etc. My point was that ISDN was an option *years* before those. What held back ISDN was a complete lack of interest in deploying it by the physical plant providers, coupled with exorbitant pricing because they could, and no one could compete with them.
The reason DSL went so well, was the forcible opening of the lines by Congress/FCC, which created an explosion of competition (hundreds and hundreds of ISPs), which have all but withered and died under the Bush administration's view that large corporations should be free to do anything and the market will decide.
I am very excited to see these changes, as it is a step in the right direction (a small one, but still a step), back to the days of the 90s opulence of consumer and small business success.
brutality (Score:3, Funny)
Net Neutrality? more liek net BRUTALITY am i rite?
seriously, who writes this crap?
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People who have been trained and have practised for years in the field of sophisticated propaganda.
A La Carte (Score:5, Funny)
How much for the Slashdot / Reddit / Gmail / Gaming Bandwidth package? Just planning ahead...
Re:A La Carte (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear AT&T, How much for the Slashdot / Reddit / Gmail / Gaming Bandwidth package? Just planning ahead...
A la carte? You wish. Be prepared to pay for a package of 500 sites you do not want to access Slashdot.
Re:A La Carte (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear loyal customer,
Slashdot is now part of our classics package which comes with Geocities, ICQ and
Reddit is available as part of our social notworking package along with facebook,
digg and twitter. Unfortunately Gmail is only available a pay per view service as
we couldn't strong arm Google into subsidizing it.
The gaming bandwidth service is not available in your area. We can however sell you
our gaming plus package which offers upto 44% lower ping times (*) and a free subscription
to Steam.
The total cost of your service will be $71.99 or only $70.49 if you sign a 60 month contract.
(*) Based on off-peak usage
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This is probably the best explanation I've seen, do you mind if I use this in official meetings?
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Not logging in was a wise choice for you.
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I hope you like paying by the bit.
As I run a small business, I already pay "by the bit". It encourages me to trim my website and keep bandwidth usage down. What I'm NOT happy about are the repeated threats by major ISP executives that they somehow deserve a single penny of my revenue for deigning to permit me to show my website to their users.
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Slashdot doesn't qualify to be on our Premium network however Digg is available for only $1.99/mo. however, if you get our 50-sites Package** you can have high-speed fast lane access to any 50 websites in our Tier 1 provider category for $59.99/mo. atop your $49.99 Basic Internet Access* package when you also switch to our world-class VoIP services.
*does not include YouTube or any online video streaming service access, attempted accessing of such services will automatically upgrade your package to the Video
Those wascally conservatives! (Score:5, Insightful)
They favor small government when it helps big business. They favor new legislation when it helps big business. They are experts at fooling average hard-working folks into voting against their own best interests.
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Similar to how Liberal != Democrats.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties of the US simply favor government to the highest bidder, they really -have- no consistent ideology other than to oppose the other side if it is politically convenient.
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No, they both agree to fight about certain "key" issues that they ensure cannot be resolved. Abortion is a good one, it lets you get the fool on one side and the other to vote for their designated party while both parties sell the government to the highest bidder. We have only 1 party that simply use these fake issues to make it look like we have 2.
Next election I am voting for whatever third party is doing the best. Since they cannot win I do not care what their ideology is.
Hang on there, pardner... (Score:4, Interesting)
They favor small government when it helps big business. They favor new legislation when it helps big business. They are experts at fooling average hard-working folks into voting against their own best interests.
I keep hearing that the GOP = Big Business, when big business have given more to the Democratic Party over time than to the GOP. While there is certainly support in business for the Republicans, there is certainly no shortage of support for Democrats in the halls of commerce, either. Goldman Sachs is practically the in-house fundraiser for the DNC. Each of the largest megabanks... Citi, Bank of America, etc.. has very close ties to major Democratic politicians like Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd, and ... I think you get the picture.
While your narrative plays well at Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, etc, those Wascawy Demokwats are even more deeply buried in the bosom of "big business". The RIAA is big business. As is Google. As is Apple. As is HP. The quintessential "big business" is GM, and guess who was eager to have government buy them? Hmm?
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Our Outcome (Score:2)
Oh yeah, we're gaining some real traction here! Better get started installing that OC3...
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Web Page Traffic: 200 visitors in 3 days.
I'm sure they didn't break out the number of visits from their own offices, their web developer, their mom, the intern using their site as his new home page, their dog chewing on their iPhone ... actually, I'm surprised it was only 300!
What is to stop how ISP's peer? (Score:5, Interesting)
If an ISP does this, are they violating net neutrality? Does the government get to tell me which networks I peer with? Is peering now a *bad* thing if the government has too much control over the "neutrality"?
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Shaping has nothing to do with this.
This is about you deciding that you will lower the QoS on or drop vonage packets so you can make sure your users use your VOIP service.
Another good example would be TWC dropping all traffic to hulu to protect their cable tv lineup.
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Is peering now a *bad* thing...
Peering sounds good, but it made it harder for new content providers to rise up and become competitive before. It has the same effect now. While I might appreciate having faster service to the provides that you hand-pick for me, there's really not a lot of people that I'd trust to do that hand-picking. Will my ISP have the sense to stop peering with provider XYZ when they become dominant and evil and no one else can enter the market?
Re:What is to stop how ISP's peer? (Score:5, Insightful)
here is a clue - Don't offer unlimited bandwidth if you can't handle it.
Re:What is to stop how ISP's peer? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is pure propaganda that network neutrality would affect any of the above very reasonable engineering decisions.
That being said, you should really re-examine your business model if p2p is filling your transit from a small percentage of your customers. That is an engineering problem with your sale of unlimited services without adequate feed.
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Re:What is to stop how ISP's peer? (Score:5, Insightful)
You sold the users unlimited bandwidth, either deliver it, or change your business model. The mistaken belief that your profit margins are your right, and that you have the retroactive authority to restrict what your users do with what you have sold them, is the reason that this whole mess has started. Business changes, if you are unwilling to adapt, that is one thing, but coming back and trying to force after the fact restrictions on what you have sold your customers is unethical at best.
Why do you get to decide that some users traffic is less important than others? Did they get any say in the matter? Are they currently under contract?
If you cannot provide what you have sold, tell your customers that and let them find other providers, but to deceitfully and silently degrade some customers service because they are lower margin than others, is reprehensible.
Re:What is to stop how ISP's peer? (Score:4, Insightful)
The solution is simple, do not filter traffic at all. Instead put a reasonable limit onto all traffic and count all traffic. At 200 GB/m on most households will not use a quarter of that. After 200 GB, offer additional blocks of bandwidth at $1 per GB or such (or offer shape the entire connection speed down to something like 512 Mbit, but give customers the choice). Paying for your actual usage is the only fair system. There is no point selling all plans for $60 when 30% of people only want 10 GB a month which will cost $20, whilst 10% want 500 GB a month and are willing to fork over $100, the other 60% fit somewhere in between.
A service provider should never be permitted to interfere with your traffic, its akin to the supermarket determining what I am and am not permitted to buy from their stock, "Sorry sir, the Brie is reserved for our Premium customers, only Cheddar is available for all. Perhaps you would like to buy a Tesco Plus subscription for $49.95 a month". Right now, the only limits the supermarket can put on my cheese consumption is governed by how much money I want to give them. However bandwidth is not free (especially international bandwidth) as we start to use more and more you will have to adapt this system. Intra American bandwidth is pennies on the dollar, international bandwidth starts to cost.
But get rid of contracts, put a flat installation fee and possibly an ETF if the customer leaves in less then six months.
Oh, joy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder what completely wrong definition they'll assign "net neutrality" to?
Given that their first 2 scare lines involved the phrase "government takeover", I think they'll take a similar route...
Useful Idiots (Score:2, Interesting)
I like the slide that says (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop the Government from taking over the internet!
Umm Hello?! If you Assholes remember, the Government *created* the Intranet, specifically Al Gore did. They then said, Hey All, we're going to turn this really nifty thing, that we created, over for the public good. I know I lived through it. Despite your best efforts to market/rewrite the web's history. I was on BBS's, CompuServe and Prodigy. I had a Accoustic coupler, and was war-dialing open systems before your fucking CEO's had even a wet dream over how much money could be made.
You Telco Asshats have proven over and over and over again that you are incapable of intelligently stewarding teh Intrawebs.
Re:I like the slide that says (Score:5, Insightful)
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"We the people".. The government is us. Not sure why people forget this..
Re:I like the slide that says (Score:4, Insightful)
So no, the government hasn't been "us" for a long time. That and the fact that all the Supreme Court Justices are from NYC and attended either Harvard or Yale should tell you something about the ruling elite in this country.
So I'm going to get back to work so I can pay my taxes which pay for two foreign wars I don't believe in, an auto company I think should have gone under, the mortgages of half the people in this country and the police force that makes it so I can't even smoke a joint on the weekends without fear of being put in jail. Oh and if I miss report my taxes they'll also put me in jail. Oh and if during my commute I get into the music on the radio and don't watch my speed I'll end up in court as well. Luckily when I get home I can watch TV and play video games; well censored TV with no expletives because my government doesn't think its appropriate. Oh and nothing with skin, because the human body is so offensive. Oh and no salt or sugar either.
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You have the history right, but that doesn't make your argument right. At this point, telecoms are the problem. How many $billions of taxpayer money did they receive to increase broadband penetration? How many cable companies and telephone companies are spending $millions to actively lobby city governments against even considering municipal broadband and fiber to the home that has proven it can cost less to deliver 100mbps to every resident in an urban area than to pay Cableco/Telco rates.
Internet is a u
So they are going to target... (Score:3, Insightful)
...the video gamers who are the ones who need net neutrality legislation the most to prevent ISP's from choking off their bandwidth... Clever, and probably very effective, too. No one ever seems to challenge their lies, and the general population is more likely to believe lies than they are the truth (i.e. death panels). Amazing that they can get away with this, but these guys are good. They've been taking away the livelihood of the middle class for a generation and yet people are still cheering them on!
How to milk American Internet users (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Create sea of regulation preventing competition from entering telecom business.
2. Achieve government-sanctioned monopoly on said services.
3. Screw over users.
4. Prevent users from regulating against being screwed in the name of freedom.
5. Profit
Since when were ISPs the bad guys? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone notice where this story came from? Think Progress, the far-left-liberal group.
Recently a bill was introduced in the House that would provide the FCC the ability to regulate ISPs, it was written by Free Press [nationaljournal.com], a badly misnamed organization dedicated to regulating an over-use of free speech, and, among other things, criminalizing private media ownership in favor of "democratic" collective ownership, regulating bloggers, reporters, instituting government-funded reporting and journalism, and re-introducing the fairness doctrine. Woa! And government doesn't want to regulate ISPs, they just need to? Nothing bad could come of this? Seriously?
Since when were ISPs bad? They provide a great service to many people. Remember what the Internet is. It's a network of privately owned computers, linked together. Each individual has the say as to what happens with their computers and their network, each individual has every right to say how to route their data. Engineering and internal self-regulation has always solved more problems than outside regulation done by force. This is how the Internet has always operated, why are we now criminalizing this idea of Internet freedom?
Re:Since when were ISPs the bad guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if the infrastructure were not owned by monopolies, your points would have more validity. However, when companies lobby for and are granted monopolies over infrastructure *and* services, they then become subject to greater regulation and scrutiny, because normal market forces such as customers switching to another provider often are no longer possible.
From an ordinary user standpoint, once upon a time you actually could choose between many different ISP's because *you* dialed *them*. Can I dial any ISP I want over Cable, or DSL, or fiber, or whatever?
That's the problem in the US today. Infrastructure has been tied to service, leaving most folks with very little choice and the market forces hogtied by government granted monopolies.
There are plenty of examples throughout the world where there is good competition at the ISP level, with consumers benefiting from better infrastructure, services, and prices. And the great majority of it is from introducing competition, not allowing monopolies to get larger and larger.
Net Neutrality probably wouldn't even be on the radar if infrastructure and services were not tied together in government granted monopolies.
I draw your attention to Slide #9 (Score:3, Funny)
They're going to create a Facebook group.
One of the popular Facebook memes is, "I bet X Facebook group can get ##,###,### followers before Y Facebook group does."
Feel free to substitute X and Y for the People and Corporations.
Perhaps X Facebook group can host the leaked PPT file of which Slide #9 is a part of... at least until they get hit with a DCMA notice.
Could they then post said DCMA as part of their group, along with links to relevant media discussions about the subject? Streissand comes to mind.
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All net neutrality should be, is the people who had their money taken from them by the government and given to the telecoms receiving what they paid for essentially.
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You can't give someone money and then later impose conditions on what you must do with it, that violates rule of law and the very idea of exchange and contracts. Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently.
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently.
And I never said that they should go around telling people what they can do with their property. I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for. The internet implies neutrality by definition. When we paid these millions of dollars to telecoms we weren't wanting non-neutral internet connections because such things were nearly impossible with the technology level. However, with deep packet inspection and the like, its becoming a threat.
If a company wants to not use public land and public funding, fine, do whatever you want. However, the moment you use public land or public funding, you should be subjected to the will of the people. The will of the people is pro-net neutrality, and the lack of net neutrality has almost no positives and many negatives.
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I'm absolutely opposed to government control, however, if they are going to take my money, I should have a say what it is used for.
That kind of tenuous reasoning could lead to people organizing and shutting down big corpulent wastes of money like HEW, the EPA, etc.
And if public money has gone to National Public Radio (a certain amount has and can be documented) where's my open mike?
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Your open mike is with several call in shows that NPR hosts.
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History has proven that the largest polluters aren't corporations but rather the government.
When you have any numbers to say that government creates more waste than just the power industry, you might have a point.
However, since we live in a reality where those numbers don't exist....
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Informative)
Are you old enough to remember how close we came to having several of the Great Lakes become completely dead bodies of water?
Before the EPA stepped in, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland actually caught fire. Today, thanks in largest part to the EPA, you can fish for snook, redbreast, sunfish or tarpon. If you've been to Cleveland in the last ten years, you'll find that the river no longer smells like creosote.
Since the EPA, the air in ever major American city, with the possible exception of Huston, has improved considerably. There were days here in Chicago when you could see green, stinking smog hanging over the entire downtown area. The Chicago River was a stinking mess, with factories and mills up and down the river dumping waste into it.
Today, living on the river is highly desirable and there is even sport fishing on the river. People can enjoy eating lunch along the river and you no longer have to hold your nose like you did twenty years ago.
If you want an example of what happens when there is insufficient, weak regulations on industry, you might have seen a little story in the paper sometime last week about an accident in the Gulf of Mexico, which, by the way, is not even in the top ten of oil spills. Yet. At what point do you think the "invisible hand of the free market" would have acted to clean up those environmental disaster?
If you can point to an example of a place where unregulated industry led to a healthy, prosperous, happy society, please do. Otherwise, you are just spouting nonsense.
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If you can point to an example of a place where unregulated industry led to a healthy, prosperous, happy society, please do. Otherwise, you are just spouting nonsense.
The Internet
If that doesn't meet all your requirements nothing will.
Now if you want a list of failed government projects:
Social Security
Postal Service - which should just be converted into an indexing service maintaining addresses and zip codes, while privatizing deliveries
Amtrack
Prohibition
War on Drugs
Prison System
Education System
Medicare
Medicaid
Don't get me wrong, government does do some things well and we should improve on those, but it really has a hard time admitting when something suck
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The Chicago River was a stinking mess, with factories and mills up and down the river dumping waste into it.
Today, living on the river is highly desirable
Ahh, I remember as an adolescent, whenever crossing the Chicago River on the way to the neighborhood park, we used to pause at the middle of the bridge and gaze at the flowing water, timing how long it would take until a used rubber floated by. Usually took less than a minute.
Now, billions of tax dollars later, storms wash the sanitary waste from Chicago's old combined sewers into the Deep Tunnel instead of overflowing directly into the river, and gets treated before being pumped into the waterways. So,
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That's not even close to good enough.
When it comes to the environment, there is no "E" for Effort. There are no mulligans, no do-overs, no breakfast balls.
If it turns out that there was a safety system that was no put in place on this rig because it was an "exploration" well instead of a "production" well, or to save money, every single goddamn BP asset, every Haliburton asset, every TransOceana asset, in the US ought to b
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Just to clarify, NPR relies on the listeners to pay the majority of the tab for operating expenses. Yes, they have gotten grants from the government. But grants are not equal to subsidies. Furthermore, they are a non-profit charity acting for the good of the people whereas ISPs, as you said, are for-profit. I don't like certain for-profit companies getting an unfair advantage from the government, unless it's something we're really falling behind the world in. As of now, we're doing pretty good with bro
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It proved you're a moron. The Jungle demonstrated with clear examples from our own history
the need to prevent companies from running amok. The Gulag Archipelago is about what happens
when governments run amok. You have to be really quite dishonest (or stupid) to connect one
with the other.
It takes a really long slippery slope to turn a somewhat free market economy to a total command economy.
You could equally as well use Gulag as an excuse for anarchy in general rather than just anarchy for Robber Barons.
See h
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No, but we sure can impose conditions on future money or land use rights. If the telcos want to lease the space for each and every pole let them do what they want. If they want to use right of ways provided by the public they need to learn to deal.
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know. There have been AT&T trucks blocking my alley for the past week and all their work seems to take place on poles standing in the alley, not on people's property.
And to me it has less to do with the public property that the telcos have appropriated than the fact that they have glommed onto an internet that was developed entirely with public money and turned it into their own private playground.
Just remember, private industry would have never created the Internet that we use today. Can you even imagine for a second how that conversation would have gone? "How much will we charge per email? You want to use an open source what?"
It's a shame so many people seem to have forgotten where the Internet came from. They think it's some great gift that AT&T has given us so we can subscribe to U-Verse and play World of Warcraft.
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What are you talking about. Gov't tells you what to do with your property EVERY DAY! Your house required a building permit to build even though you may have already purchased the land. Your car has to be registered and insured, and you have to follow a long list of rules while driving. The government says that you have to have electrical wiring inspected, and that structures built must conform to t
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Why? Because it was built using taxpayer money and with the expectation that it would be a neutral and uncensored... waitaminute
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You mean like granting the telcos the continuing right to bury their cables under MY yard and to dig for repairs any time they like without even a by your leave?
Good then, they may either agree to net neutrality now or come get their damned cables out of MY yard right now!
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Insightful)
Government cannot go around telling people what they must do with their property, that's central planning, and it makes it impossible for private owners to regulate how their property is used efficiently
Yay! So I can ban all those filthy niggers nips and spics from my Quikkkie*Mart!
Except no, we know this is wrong and there are laws against it.
For the same reason telcoms shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily throttle traffic based on who is sending it to who and for what purpose.
Telcoms can state that I can connect at 2Mb/s for up to 100GB up, 20GB down a month with bursts of up to 1GB/hour up, 500MB down. (And they better should be serving me that! No excuses.)
They shouldn't be able to say what I can do with that bandwidth, if I want to spend all day watching youtubes video or chatting over skype is my business only.
And don't bring the "free market", most people have no choice of ISP or only 2 ISP that are equally bad.
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That's a pretty big generalization, and -- at least in some cases -- provably untrue.
When the "telephone industry" was in its infancy, the Federal government decided that telephone service was a "natural monopoly", which could -- and should -- be tightly controlled. As a result, the United States dev
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I'm taking that as sarcasm. I am wondering though, is net neutrality going to end up a victim of partisan politics? The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good" so the GOP leadership says "Net Neutrality bad" for no reason other than taking the opposite side of Obama seems to be their strategy? While taking a good chunk of telecom money, of course. Combine that with the fact that many elected democrats aren't exactly the staunchest supporters of net neutrality, and obviously also take money from telec
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so the GOP leadership says "Net Neutrality bad" for no reason other than taking the opposite side of Obama seems to be their strategy?
No, I think the GOP has always come down on the "net neutrality bad" side ever since there was a question of it starting back in 2005 with the SCOTUS ruling in NCTA vs Brand X. For far too long now, the GOP SOP has been "Corps good. Privatize the public commons, better!"
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Informative)
For far too long now, the GOP SOP has been "Corps good. Privatize the public commons, better!"
And that should be a reason for supporting net neutrality. We've given the telecoms tons of money, tons of land, etc. its a myth that all these ISPs got to be so large because of their own work and its the big evil government who is regulating them. That is completely false. It is the big evil government who said "here have a few million dollars, 'modernize' America, give it internet access" and then handed out public land left and right so its citizens could have internet access. However, now the internet access is no longer internet access but rather dumbed-down media portals in essence.
If it was privatized we sure wouldn't have these huge ISPs who can conspire to block net neutrality but instead smaller, regional companies competing for your business.
Really, if arguing from liberal, conservative, libertarian, green or just about any other political ideology, net neutrality in the US makes sense for the majority of ISPs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. The problem as I see it is that someone, somewhere, somehow got the idea of net neutrality tangled up with the "fairness doctrine," which really was anything but fair.
It doesn't help that net neutrality as a concept has just started to come to public attention around the same time that Democrats are trying to re-introduce the "fairness doctrine" to wield against their supposed foes, conservatives in "talk radio."
I don't know who's red herring it's supposed to be, either: is it supposed to distract
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good"
The FCC is playing it's own political game. Broadband Reports has been covering it for quite awhile now. Essentially they plan on ignoring the recommendation of their own study groups. The studies they've done have concluded that "open access" (i.e: Verizon/Time Warner/etc are forced to let competitors use their fiber and copper plants) is the best way to increase competition. They have ignored these studies in favor of moving forward with a "third way" that won't do anything to address the mono/duolopy of ISPs.
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How did that get uprated? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. crooksandliars.com and mediamatters.org are sites whose main purpose is to document the outrageous behavior of the right so we don't have to rely on hearsay and wacky conspiracy theories. They actually do what you claim Glenn Beck does.
2. Glenn Beck is one seriously troubled and paranoid man. Or else he's morally bankrupt and just acting nuts so he can make truckloads of money by whipping people into a frenzy.
3. You've got the "hands over control of the internet" idea exactly backwards. Net neutrality is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Conservative Republicans believe in THEIR right to free speech. They could care less whether anyone else has it, let alone what they are saying. It takes one heck of a persecution complex to say that the government is trying to censor you, ON YOUR OWN NATIONALLY BROADCAST SHOW!
And for you to try to make a comparison between Venezuela and here, by saying you have been 'watching' whats happening, well thats just completely laughable. Unless by watching, you mean reading web sites and watching documentaries.
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Yes. Just like we had bureaucrats mandate the seat belt, fire alarm, and safety elevator.
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Informative)
The regulation would be to keep things the same. To prevent things from getting worse. Not to change the internet.
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the internet is not and has never been "the same". If the internet was kept "the same" we'd be having this conversation on Usenet over a period of days while we each waited for the UUCP batch job to run and update the posts.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one? Regulation tends to protect the status quo. I'm not sure if it's really the way we want to go with regards to the internet. I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market. I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
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is that it is a multi-billion dollar proposition to enter that market
Sure, if you want to build a nationwide network. I live in a city of 50,000. It would not cost billions of dollars to enter this market. The only thing stopping someone is the fact that the local government doles out the right to sell service in the form of exclusive franchise agreements. Good luck outbidding Time Warner when the contract comes up.....
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However, remove that, and you still have the market problem of building a network - even a regional one.
So what? That's a perfectly solvable problem, even with a saturated market. The market for grocery stores is mature and well established but new ones still crop up from time to time. They haven't all merged into one mega "Food Store, Inc." The difference of course is that I generally don't need to outbid a national corporation to receive a license to operate a grocery store.
Finally, it is not tied to Net Neutrality, nor to any regulation around it.
I didn't claim it was. All I said was that regulation tends to protect the status quo and that it gets in the way of innovation.
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys seriously want to have a bunch of bureaucrats go in and regulate something that has been so successful and has provided so much information and knowledge...
I've been involved with the internet since the very early days when it was a government project. A big part of why the internet has been so successful is because the military and government did a pretty decent job building it. So you're okay letting government design and build it, but suddenly they can't handle oversight.
Corporations are not the solution, corporations are the problem. Without the government having the ability to enforce fair dealing, corporate interests are going to stomp all over consumers. Maybe you remember what happened when we let the banking industry self-regulate. Or did that little episode not make it on to Fox News? It'll be that on the internet.
What's really interesting is how often corporate interests are lining up with the "grassroots" organizers of the tea party.
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Informative)
Look up Common Carrier [wikipedia.org] sometime (how about now? I dare you to learn). Net neutrality is not a new and exotic concept, and it is not unreasonable or out of line with how business is done in other industries right now.
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For the same reason as other government regulations.
along with all the unintended consequences.
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They are against government doing things for other people. Note that they blaim Obama for the rescue plan, that was enacted by Bush and the result of republican policies, the neo-conservative movement started with Reagan.
First, the name calling makes you sound like a five year old... I know you think you're being funny, but it just comes off as snarky, at best, every time it gets used.
Second, learn some history. The neo-con movement didn't start with Reagan, it started in the 1950s and 60s, as international interventionalist Democrats split with their own party and joined in with the Republicans. In fact, that's where the whole "neo" part about them being conservatives comes in... they were a "new kind of conservative."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at the SEC and what good their regulation did. They totally ignored Bernie Madoff (under Bush) and Enron (under Clinton), giving regular folks a false sense of security in the market. If there was no SEC, people wouldn't have a default assumption that the market isn't rigged and they would invest more carefully.
I really don't like comments like this as they are completely unproductive. Why, Fred over there got robbed for all the good the laws and cops did! Guess we shouldn't have any laws or cops at all, giving the folks a false sense of security that they can leave their homes without being armed to the teeth.
*sigh* The idea is not to abolish something when it fails, the idea is to see where something failed and improve upon it.
The answer isn't to regulate the internet, it's to get rid of the whole monopoly provider system. Have a regulated (even non-profit) independent company (can't be owned by an ISP) run and maintain the network, deriving its revenue from the ISPs wishing to use it.
This fails in a number of ways. First of all, you are just replacing a bunch of lo
Re:How can people think this is okay? (Score:4, Insightful)
They elected GWB twice, it seems they can get plenty done.
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I think we should make Internet access available to the poor, in this day and age lifting oneself out of poverty would pretty much require having Internet access.
Mostly agree... (Score:2)
Have there really been issues where ISPs have purposely blocked traffic -- and if they did, I would think it would be found out pretty quickly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You don't remember comcast forging reset packets?
I still do not understand why they were never charged with anything criminal. At the very least some sort of fraud or wire tampering.
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Data (Score:2)
to help the widows with children... is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I hear this a lot, but I've never been able to find a lot of evidence that a large portion of Social Security goes to "social leeches" who are just too lazy to work. Do you have data?
Re:Watch the other hand... (Score:5, Informative)
While I am for net-neutrality, and we do need some form of regulation on the internet to keep the providers fair and clean, do not, and I repeat, do not assume that the government is pushing net neutrality for the purpose of helping you. There have been many times in the United States where our government will push something like Social Security, saying "This is to help the widows with children", which, yes, is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
I'm a bit curious who you think receives Social Security checks. You got the survivor and child benefit correct, but the only other two benefits are a retirement benefit available at age 62 (that's a reduced benefit; you don't get the unreduced benefit until age 66 or 67 depending on when you were born) and a total disability benefit which generally requires a year or two worth of paperwork to prove that your disability is severe enough to end your working life.
I think it's somewhat arguable whether or not the survivor benefit is strictly necessary in this day and age. But I'm curious how these social security benefits which you can only get at the end of your working lifetime are "a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work."
Do you think that Social Security is welfare? It isn't.
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My point it, watch the other hand.
Were you watching the other hand when the FCC reclassified ISPs as "information services" from their previous categorization of "telecommunications services" back in the 2005 SCOTUS ruling of NCTA vs Brand X Internet Services?
IMNHO that was an absolutely terrible decision. One thing to note is that the SCOTUS ruled that the FCC had the legal right to make such classifications, not which one was the right one, just that the FCC could make the decision itself.
All the FCC is currently doing is returning to th
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Also, you do not have a god given right to the internet.
No, God specifically told me I have a right to the Internet. He said we all do.
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[What follows will seem to be flame bait to some. That's because the subject seems to have so warped some people's perspectives that they cannot conceive of