EFF Reviews the Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Deal 162
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The EFF has written an analysis of the Net Neutrality deal brokered between Verizon and Google. While the EFF agrees with substantial portions of it, such as giving the FCC only enough authority to investigate complaints, rather than giving them a blank check to create regulations, there are a number of troubling issues with the agreement. In particular, they're concerned that what constitutes 'reasonable' network management is in the eye of the beholder and they don't like giving a free pass to anyone who claims they're attempting to block unlawful content, even when doing so in such a way that they interfere with lawful activities. On balance, while there are some good ideas about how to get Net Neutrality with minimal government involvement, there are serious flaws in the agreement that would allow ISPs to interfere with any service they wanted to because there is no algorithm that can correctly determine which numbers are currently illegal."
So, regulation haters... (Score:5, Insightful)
...how's that "let companies police themselves" stance on net neutrality working out for you?
Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:4, Insightful)
"let companies police themselves"
Almost as well as letting banks and investment companies police themselves.
Or oil companies policing themselves.
Or government contractors with automatic weapons police themselves.
And the deregulated airline industry has done wonders for air travel.
Government bad, corporate self-regulation good. Just stick to that line and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
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"let companies police themselves"
Almost as well as letting banks and investment companies police themselves.
Or oil companies policing themselves.
Or government contractors with automatic weapons police themselves.
And the deregulated airline industry has done wonders for air travel.
Government bad, corporate self-regulation good. Just stick to that line and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Or letting Internet users police themselves. This just part of the process of finding an UNhappy balance between freedom and control. Myriad, mutually exclusive motives guarantee that any reasonable solution must leave the fringes deeply unsatisfied.
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Precisely. The "free market" simply means "power to the citizen".
...And "power to every corporation, even to the degree that such corporations will hold much more influence than the combined citizenry, but still enjoy zero accountability".
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Ford has no power over you? Interesting. How were you included in the decision-making process that allows their vehicles to travel above the legal speed limit, endagering you and your loved ones? How were you included in the decision on how many cars and how much public transportation is best for the environment, traffic safety and you daily life?
Does Google, Yahoo, et al call you with regards to what information they publish and how this affects you? Have they promised to delete all the emails you send to
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Or government contractors with automatic weapons police themselves.
So it'd be OK with you if they only had semi-automatic or bolt action weapons?
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Government bad, corporate self-regulation good. Just stick to that line and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
I'm going to go with:
Government bad.
Market self-regulation good.
Corporations having the legal protections of a person without any of the legal obligations / responsibilities terrible.
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Instead the owner/managers of the company would be directly responsible for the actions of the company
I also think corporations should somehow be exposed to accountability, but I don't think pinning individual humans is the right course of action. Firstly it is not always cut and dried to find out who is really pulling the strings in an organization, so we'd just end up with scapegoating. Hire an idiot as CEO and manipulate the company around him to do terrible things while he thinks he's really in charge, then he takes the fall.
Secondly, in most organizations of any size there is no one human who is pullin
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Which agency is responsible for executing over 100 million of its own citizens over the last hundred years? ...it must be government.
Most of them deserved it. Not all sadly, but most.
Corporations don't have power to throw me in jail, bust down my door, send me to Afghanistan to die,
And neither does our government, without justification. But then again, a corp guard can kill you if he has justification.
or suck money directly from my wallet
Ah, well. You got me there. But then again, how much do you pay all the corporations? Sure you get something in return, usually, but you also get something for your taxes. Which is more valuable to you? That new T
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Also I find it odd you would compare an *accident* in a coal mine, to the government's willful extermination of its own citizens
We aren't. HeckRuler, I believe, was comparing deaths that occurred because there were no government regulations against government executions.
You, on the other hand, are comparing deaths from accidents that occurred despite government regulation with executions that that same government carried out. That doesn't even make sense. It's like you're trying to say "without government, those >100,000,000 would not have been killed, and the mining death toll would remain the same", completely forgetting j
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Why does everyone I talk to think in black-and-white?
We don't, you just phrased your argument like you were talking in black-and-white. If you'd actually bothered to read my post, most of it was about a specific government, namely ours (the US government).
As for citation, it's pretty easy to add up the numbers
Again, if you'd bothered to read my post, you'd see my original question about "how are you getting this number" was about the assumption that you were talking about a specific government, ours. When I realized you were talking about the concept of government, I saw how you got that number. You'd also hav
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>>>So how many people died in coal mines?
In the last 100 years? Just a few hundred in the US (because of [government] safety requirements).
Until you manage to rephrase your argument, might I suggest a disclaimer before the argument? Something that very bluntly states "I'm not saying to get rid of gove
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Oh, but hey, when tryin
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How many corporations do that?
The original Corporations (eg East India Trading Company) were expressly given the permission to fight wars against other nations to establish their trading outposts and protect their "turf".
Even in reasonably modern times, corporations had hired militias to gun down strikers' wives and children with impunity.
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Yep. Have you heard of the Ludlow Massacre [wikipedia.org], for example? My favourite bit was when, subsequent to the killing of strikers, all the strikers - and not a single militiaman - were arrested for murder.
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And, before you reply how I know you're going to reply: the link between smoking and lung cancer was first identified in 1920. The addictive nature of nicoti
Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:4, Interesting)
Loan mortgages to people who can't pay them back, else the US Government will drag you into court and prosecute you.
That's a damn lie. One of those trite, Fox News talking points you repeat over and over with no basis in fact. I had my real estate license during the go-go years and there wasn't any government regulation requiring lenders to give loans to people who couldn't afford it. They were not allowed to red line or discriminate based on zip code, but it didn't matter. They would write anyone with a pulse, no income verification, nothing. It was pure greed coupled with a corrupt industry. Even when I tried to convince my clients to buy something they could afford, there would be a mortgage broker telling them that was bad advice and trying to push one of the gadget mortgages with variable interest rates. These were in affluent, suburban, upper middle class neighborhoods. The areas hardest hit when the market collapsed, not the poor urban areas you're trying to hang.
But way to try and rewrite history. It was the corrupt, inept leadership you supported, so I can see why you're so anxious to find a scapegoat. Even if it's in the rear view mirror. It can't ever be that the people you supported were incompetent, that you were a dupe and voted for stupid people, it's always someone else.
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Up until now it has actually worked fairly well. Think about that for a min... There is no regulation right now. In fact I would say some regulation has hindered us such as build out rules and line sharing rules. Which let single providers monopolize huge areas.
The reason regulation idea has started popping up is because a few have decided the gentleman agreements that have held in the past are no longer helping them. There be gold in dem der hills, they yell. What they do not realize is that the very
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Meanwhile those of us against net neutrality regulation at this time are shaking our heads wondering why so many people want to forever trade their freedom of choice to a bunch of politicians that are sure to meddle with the trust they have placed in them a thousand times over.
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Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:5, Insightful)
Deep packet inspection of large amounts of traffic was not possible until fairly recently. The technology did not exist to allow ISP's to treat traffic differently. The peering agreements between providers were born out of the difficulty of accurately accounting and billing for traffic. It was cheaper for everyone with roughly similar amounts of traffic to agree to pass each others traffic for free then to spend millions on systems to try to figure out who was owed what. The only reason this hasn't been an issue until now is purely technical in nature. Because of the huge investment to enter the market, plus the network effect and economies of scale inherent, plus the corruption of politicians, make the telecom industry a natural oligopoly, if not a natural monopoly. WIthout regulation, they will abuse their customers to the maximum extent possible, because their customers have little if any choice. Choosing an ISP is like choosing between getting in a cage with a hungry lion or a hungry bear, either way the outcome is unpleasant, just in slightly different ways. There is no avoiding it in the current environment, every business in this situation is going to act this way. The only solution is to either artificially break them up into small pieces, or to artificially regulate their behavior. I'm willing to bet the companies involved would prefer the latter to the former.
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The technology did not exist to allow ISP's to treat traffic differently
Yes it did. We were running QoS at my Mom-and-pop ISP back in 2000. It was the only way to provide decent service to our business customers when Napster and Kazaa first appeared on the scene.
DPI was around back then too. There was a program called Etherpeek (which is still around I believe) that could even give us a real time running list of the URLs that our customers were visiting. It cost serious money and there are free tools today that will do a better job but it was still effective enough for our
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I take it you couldn't simply charge by the kilo/mega/gigabit? You know, kinda like a gas/electric meter? That way you wouldn't have to snoop in on where they were going. Something which sounds very offensive. An ISP should be prohibited from doing anything beyond simple routing of traffic. Just count the bits, and go from there.
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We could have (charged by the bit) if we wanted, though it would have required some upgrades to our billing system. We were mainly interested in ensuring that business customers weren't buried by teenagers down/uploading tons of music that they'll never listen to. We didn't care how much bandwidth they used, only that they didn't disrupt the experience for everybody else on the network.
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We were mainly interested in ensuring that business customers weren't buried by teenagers down/uploading tons of music that they'll never listen to.
And that's precisely the tiering we want to prohibit. You could just as easily limit total bandwidth that penalizes no particular user based on what they do with their connection. And spying on them for that purpose is even worse.
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Climb off your high horse. It's not "spying" on your customers when an automated system puts network traffic into different QoS tiers. The notion that all traffic should be treated equally is absurd. VoIP needs real time routing. Interactive terminal applications (remote desktop/X/VNC/SSH sessions/etc) need real time routing or something very close to it. FTP/Bittorrent/NNTP could care less if the packets spend a few seconds in the queue before going out. HTTP is somewhere in the middle -- the protoco
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The key phrase is "large amounts of traffic", as in hundreds of megabits per second. Examining the URLs customers visit for other than network management purposes is probably illegal, by the way.
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We ran our operation on two T-3s. That's nearly 90mbit/s. If my small business employer was able to do it back in 2000 I have a hard time believing that a Fortune 500 company like Verizon or AT&T couldn't scale it up to their operation.
BTW, I didn't say that we monitored everyone's web traffic, only that we had access to software that was capable of doing it. We mainly used it for troubleshooting and the occasional law enforcement subpoena.
Time for another breakup? (Score:2)
Verizon used to be Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic used to be one big company but it got broken up. If Google grows too influential they'll have to be broken up too.
Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously people, stop modding up cowards who are probably verizon astroturfers.
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Hey, I'd be happy with either getting rid of monopoly licenses or regulating the heck out of them - I just hate the worst of both worlds where we can only get one or two options in many locations and they can screw with the net however they want.
I don't know what has to be done, but I find it very sad that our pricing and restrictions have gone up, and our choices down since dial-up. Dial-up may have been slow, but I could change ISPs by changing the phone # I dialed. And I could change phone companies too.
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Without Net Neutrality, every ISP becomes the old Compuserve from the 1980s. I, for one, do NOT want that. I traded Compuserve for BBSes as soon as I found out such things existed.
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But if Congress gives itself power to regulate net neutrality, then it also gives itself power to remove nudity from the web, and to require licenses to publish blogs. Like they did with TV and Radio. That too started as a way to prevent multiple stations from interfering with one another, but quickly expanded to restrict the actual content.
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How is the government created monopoly in telcos working out for you?
Government providing subsidies to phone companies, exempting them from land taxes, doing all sorts of things to give a specific company a monopoly status and let it own the landlines.
So if government creates monopolies in ISPs that way, then sure, fighting evil with evil will be necessary.
However if you open your own Telco tomorrow and buy 100 pieces of land and put 100 cell towers on that land and start selling wireless access including I
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How is the government created monopoly in telcos working out for you?
It was government created only in the sense that the US government declined to enforce monopoly laws strongly against AT&T a century ago, instead restricting itself to fairly toothless regulations. Everything else followed from that. There's no point trying to set up a competitor providing local lines if the local incumbent won't allow their existing telephone customers to call your customers or vice-versa. Why would you buy a line that won't let you call most people with phones in the area over one tha
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That's not even remotely the case, what actually was and still is happening is that government provides telcos with various tax breaks, rights to lay cable through all properties, public and private without paying property taxes without incurring any costs associated with using public and even private property. The entire network of cables was subsidized, there were various ways the government did it after the government decided that it's going to nationalize the telco industry.
Additionally, without govern
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You buy the access to the 'airways' just like anybody else for your purpose, you are paying a fair price for it.
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Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Verizon owns the bandwidth lines leading to your community (or to the specific site you're attempting to access), it doesn't matter who your end ISP winds up being.
Sick of hearing 'no other options' . . . (Score:1)
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AT&T and Verizon both own major Internet backbones. It doesn't matter if you use cellular or satellite your data is still extremely likely to run over their networks. That's the problem with the current Internet setup. If those 2 companies decide to charge for faster data (or rather charge to not slow your data down) then it doesn't matter what ISP you use, you are going to be affected.
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It doesn't matter if you use cellular or satellite your data is still extremely likely to run over their networks.
Actually, in this day and age the Tier 1 networks aren't as important as they used to be. The bulk of my traffic on Roadrunner comes in on Time Warner's own (tbone) backbone. They have peering arrangements with most of the major content distribution networks. The only time I've seen traffic traceroute onto Level 3 is for oddball connections (torrents to European hosts and the like)
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That's just not true. I don't have any lines to my house and I use satellite. Don't have line of site? Use a cellular connection. There are options.
Dude, if you don't have cable, DSL or satellite, you sure as heck aren't going to have 3G cellular. Might as well say "Hey, they can still use dial-up, so what's the problem?".
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If Verizon owns the bandwidth lines leading to your community (or to the specific site you're attempting to access), it doesn't matter who your end ISP winds up being.
That is like saying if Verizon owns the telephone lines leading to your community it doesn't matter who your bank ends up being. Telephone companies are legally prohibited from doing things like arbitrarily charging one bank more than another if they want the privilege of receiving incoming calls, let alone listening in on the conversation an
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Re:So, regulation haters... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty well seeing as I can just switch to someone who isn't Verizon if I don't like it. That's a lot easier than trying to pick a new government.
Really? I takes you four years to get a new government, and it seems like it'll be a cold day in hell before I can choose between more than the one broadband provider in my area.
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rather I figured that after 4 years there'd be enough elections that you could have the majority of the positions be replaced (and thus the vote could/would go a different way).
The full House is up every two years. That's 1/2 of 1/3 of the Federal Government and more than enough to change what's going on in Washington if the people aren't happy with it. Remember the House is the chamber that has to originate all spending bills.....
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The full House is up every two years. That's 1/2 of 1/3 of the Federal Government and more than enough to change what's going on in Washington if the people aren't happy with it.
I'm reasonably happy with my own Congresscritter, it's those other bozos that are the problem. Unfortunately, everybody else seems to feel the same way.
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Except of course in 1994, 2006, 2008 and in all likelihood 2010......
Yes, the vast majority keep their seats, but enough turned over in those years to make a real difference on the national scene.
Not to surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
Limited FCC Jurisdiction — Good
Standard-Setting Bodies — Interesting
Reasonable Network management, Additional Online Services — Troubling
“Lawful” Content and Wireless Exclusions — Fail
One thing that seems good (mostly for content providers, but also consumers) and a few things that could be good for consumers, but still favor ISPs. Sounds like Verizon agreed, "We will let the FCC regulate on a case by case basis, as long as we get broad powers manipulate our other services, and block content we fear is unlawful." The standard setting body is iffy, since as the article points out, these groups tend not to be on the consumers side.
It will be interesting to see where this goes,
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Well there is more to say. The transparency requirements are a very good thing. This may indicate that they need to provide information about the bandwidth of the limiting router, and the number of people using it, which gives useful information. They would need to indicate any ports that they filter, whether they drop any packets by type. (There are some that block ICMP traceroute packets for no good reason, despite permitting ping packets. (They can differentiate by the much lower TTL values on the tracer
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Without the "network management" and "lawful content" clauses they would not be allowed to cut off spammers.
Who decides what is "lawful"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the agreement states that "lawful" content will not be interfered with.
But who decides what is "lawful"?
Is this an invitation for the ISPs to take on a police role?
Is it a way for big telco and the media companies they have merged with to decide that someone's content might be unlawful, because it is politically subversive - only because it questions government policies that the telco and media companies support?
ISPs should not be in the business of deciding what is lawful content and what is not. I hope the agreement does not presume that they will be in that business. That is a job for the police and the courts. ISPs should only act on legitimate police requests (i.e., those with warrants or some other transparent or traceable due process) and court orders.
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Lawful means:
1) Unencrypted (or encrypted with TSA backdoor)
2) Not infringing copyright, or involved in facilitating/inducing infringement
3) Not unauthorised communication of military/industrial secrets
4) Not relating to terrorism, extremism, drugs, porn, anarchy/sedition, blasphemy, etc.
5) Not unauthorised communication of personal data
6) Not transmitted to/received from banned sites, organisations, persons, IP addresses, networks, etc.
Other than that, and except for network optimisation purposes, all pack
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But who decides this? A court? A police officer? A judge? Or Verizon and Google?
Under these rules, the Pentagon Papers could not have been published on the Internet.
And under these rules, the ISP is free to decide is something violates copyright; yet, it is widely documented how publishers (including media companies) falsely claim copyright. For example, works that are in the public domain are routinely published in books with a copyright claim in the front. Media companies (or their telco partners) cannot
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'Network neutrality' IS regulatory capture.
Anyone who thinks government can regulate communication to ensure everyone can say what they like and that no speech suffers discrimination is living in cloud cuckoo land.
All that happens is that government says "Ok, if you really, really want us to regulate your speech, we will - reluctantly".
And then you end up with a system of censorship at the infrastructure level that China would wet its knickers over.
Network neutrality is everything everyone is asking for EXC
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"can't discriminate LEGAL traffic" -- watch out for that critical qualifier won't you?
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Good luck.
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Not unauthorised communication of military
That's not illegal in the United States. We have no Official Secrets Act. It's illegal for someone with a security clearance to leak information but it's not illegal for the person that receives said information to publish it.
Not relating to terrorism, extremism, drugs, porn, anarchy/sedition, blasphemy, etc.
With the exception of terrorism, none of those are illegal. There are websites that will tell you how to set up a grow-op and keep it hidden from the police. There are websites advocating the overthrow of the Federal Government. All perfectly legal and protected by the 1st amendm
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Believe it or not, but copyright infringement isn't illegal either (the holder of the privilege can sue to exclude, but unless they do, the infringement isn't illegal per se).
Frankly, 'packets not yet determined to be legal' is quite sufficient to route them via a network node with indefinite latency.
Copyright is already making illegal speech that should be free, so I don't know where you get your confidence that 'legal' isn't a major communications discriminator.
The best mechanism for achieving neutrality
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Actually, I'm pretty sure I've missed quite a few more cases of potentially unlawful communications.
Do also bear in mind that 'legal'/'lawful' doesn't stipulate the jurisdiction - it could be 'Lowest common denominator', e.g. discussion concerning the weather and praise for the king could remain the only legal communications in all jurisdictions.
Re:Who decides what is "lawful"? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are making a mountain out of a mole hill. "Lawful" means "not illegal". ISPs have no desire to police what is lawful or not, it just creates more work for them. ISPs do have an obligation not to aid and abet illegal activity if they have actual knowledge of the same.
This obligation applies primarily to hosting providers. ISPs are not held legally accountable if traffic pertaining to illegal activity traverses their networks, for the same reason that common carriers like telephone companies are not held accountable if two people discuss a bank robbery over the phone.
"Lawful" arises in the context of net neutrality merely by stating that _end users_ should have the right to engage in lawful communications with anyone they want, without ISPs blocking or purposely degrading communication with some sites in a discriminatory manner (i.e. for economic advantage).
ISPs (and common carriers in general) are not _required_ to pass traffic generated by illegal activity. They just have no incentive to even attempt to make that determination, especially since if treated like common carriers the may find themselves at the end of a lawsuit if they make that determination incorrectly.
What is unlawful communication? (Score:2)
We need to figure out exactly what this phrase means before we just agree that it's fair. Unlawful communication could be obscenity, and since everybody on the internet breaks the law now all communication is unlawful and what does that mean?
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If an accusation were made that you were publicly sharing copyrighted works,do you believe that your ISP would fight the legal battle on your behalf to protect your right to share files
It doesn't matter, as long as they are not held liable for your actions, they have no reason to interfere with your traffic.
Do the terms of "common carrier" regarding non-discriminatory packet delivery cover internet "packet" data or do they only apply to voice "packet" data?
The term "common carrier" applies to any kind of tr
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For example, if a web site advocates the blatant overthrow of the United States Government
cue to just a bit over 200 yrs ago. we, OURSELVES, overthrew a corrupt and unjust government. we were 'rebels' back then going against an established (very much so) kingdom.
how is today any different? if you EVER get a government you can't stand (we're basically at that point, now, right?) you do have the 'right' to overthrow it.
now, the ones in power will try to reverse this; just like jolly old england did 200+ y
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Yeah, horribly broken system right there.
Seems like all they do (Score:1)
"So long as your ISP claimed that it was trying to prevent copyright infringement or helping law enforcement, it could be exempted from the net neutrality principles."
So all they have to do is claim? "Preventing copyright infringement" seems to be high up on the list of motivators for anything the ISP's do anymore (and the Feds for that matter). This is so vague it seems like it could be stretched to essentially allow the them to do anything they wanted under the guise that it is "effectively reducing pi
Throw it to the civil courts (Score:1)
If we want to avoid letting a strong regulatory body decide, I suggest using civil law to fix the problem of net neutrality:
Allow plaintiffs to claim damages based on the inequality of their traffic.
This way, if Joe Small Site finds out that Crazy Big Network is dropping or delaying his packets, he can sue them.
Fear of lawsuits seems to trump even fear of the death penalty in this country, so it might work...
Anyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that a little backwards? I mean, I like the EFF. But the idea that we need lawyers to tell us what's good and what's bad seems odd.
And having two giants acting like they can simply write legislature is balls to the walls wrong. The FCC can do whatever the laws says they can do, Google and Verizon be damned. Who writes those laws? Those that We The People (tm) put in power.
Re:Anyone else? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure how old you are, young man, but, corporations (through lawyers, of course) have been writing some of our laws for quite some time. For a current example, see the DMCA; for an old example, we can see that Du Pont appears to be responsible for making marijuana illegal in this country [ozarkia.net].
But I do find it odd that they are now doing it so blatantly, right in front of our eyes!
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But it's that they're acting like they're sitting down at a table and negotiating power sharing rather then asking the FCC "please mother may I".
I guess my problem is that if all of slashdo
Re:Anyone else? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else think it's odd that we're reading an article about a group of lawyers commenting about two companies coming together to broker a deal about what the government should be allowed to do? Isn't that a little backwards? I mean, I like the EFF. But the idea that we need lawyers to tell us what's good and what's bad seems odd. And having two giants acting like they can simply write legislature is balls to the walls wrong. The FCC can do whatever the laws says they can do, Google and Verizon be damned. Who writes those laws? Those that We The People (tm) put in power.
I have to admit, I read the stories about the deal. First the NYT one that got it completely wrong, then the Engadget one, then several others that flowed out, and the EFF put it more succinctly than I could have understood. Previously, all I got out of it was, we want industry rules to remain neutral, but VZW wants some wiggle room on wireless/mobile traffic.
But surely you don't think our legislative bodies are informed enough to write laws/regulation about stuff like this? Imagine if Ted "the tubes" Stevens had been around to have a hand in NN legislation. These two parties are, but of course you have to single out what they say that will directly benefit them (screw consumers over), and see exactly what will benefit consumers.
Re:Anyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't write any legislation. They wrote up some suggestions that the FCC and the Congress are free to use or discard. They have every right to do that.
And I'm sure (Score:1, Troll)
I'm sure that's written on the post-it note stuck to VerGoozon's massive campaign donation checks; 'just a suggestion'.
Obvious solution: two networks (Score:2)
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The key point is, to whom would companies have to prove their service was worthy of a waiver? If it's the government, then basically that means the government would become the approver of all new internet businesses. Who in their right mind would want that? So, what if it was some other body, such as a standards body? Same problem. Is there any organization that we should trust to be the gatekeeper?
No. This whole notion eviscerates the very meaning of "free" in "free market".
Hmm, not quite. You've forgotten the context. It's not that they would be gatekeepers of all traffic, it's that they would be gate keepers of traffic getting a higher priority. IE company A starts prioritizing certain news sources traffic over other traffic. They would have to show that this is neccessary(for an emergency evacuation signal or something) or stop giving that traffic high priority. Not that they would have to drop that traffic entirely.
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However, I was persuaded by the EFF's argument the FCC is especially susceptible to "regulative captivity" -- that is, to becoming dominated by the industries they are supposed to regulate, and winding up regulating out the newcomers to the market, instead.
Ultimately, he who controls the priority decision can control the end-user experience to a very large degree. If I can make my data arrive first, wouldn't that be as effec
Unlawful Content (Score:2)
With the arguable exception of child porn, there is (or should be) no such thing as "unlawful content," in the United States; only "unlawful use of content." Unless a provider is either a party to, or a mediator of such contracts, their involvement is neither desirable nor justifiable.
If service providers want to be responsible for the traffic they carry, then I propose making them liable for allowing any port scans, malicious payloads, SPAM, fraudulent advertisements, or unsolicited phone calls (VoIP) to
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Out of curiosity, what's your argument for excluding it in a way that doesn't exclude other types of "unlawful content"?
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Tell me what other content is unlawful and I'll answer your question.
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1. The usual things -- bestiality, snuff films
2. In general, pictures of illegal activities
3. Pictures of illegal activities involving children (murder, torture, abuse)
4. Things illegal in some other countries like blasphemous material
5. Content that isn't necessarily obscene, but harmful, like slander
6. Generally private information like credit card and social security numbers
Just examples, not implying that each requires a different argument.
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None of that is illegal to possess, with the exception of child porn. That's why it's an exception.
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I'm pretty sure bestiality and snuff films are illegal to possess, but that's only part of the point. When you said "the arguable exception of child porn" I thought you meant you had an argument that shows child porn should be illegal whereas other obscene content shouldn't be. Usually an argument for child porn being illegal is naive and would lead to all of the things I mentioned being illegal as well. As you noted they're not. So I was wondering what your argument was.
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A corporation has nothing to do with "an entity created to sell things to consumers". A corporation is a tool to eliminate the possibility of liability to investors.
In a partnership the partners all share in liability for debts of the partnership. This also means that any fines or judgements levied against the partnership are distributed among the partners according to their interest in the partnership.
With a corporation the liability ends with the corporation. Only in very special circumstances and the
What nobody seems to understand ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Today there are two ways content is delivered on the Internet. I has been that way for a number of years, at least since 2000 and maybe longer.
Way one is the way we are familiar with - User A connects to Server B and content is delivered. Slowly. Through whatever forest of routers and links are needed to get from A to B.
Way two is evidently a secret to a lot of people. Akami. This company has servers co-located in ISP centers all over the US and other parts of the world. User A no longer connects to S
Re:What nobody seems to understand ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this what people are talking about trying to prevent from happening?
No. That's not network neutrality.
If someone wants to setup servers near New York and San Francisco to give those areas better service, that's just great. If they want to pay someone else to setup the server and host it for them, they can do that too. Shipping companies place hubs in busy areas. Supermarkets pay more money for real estate on busy roads. Gas stations try to get intersections. This is all fine.
Akamai is not an ISP. What we are trying to prevent is ISPs from filtering, delaying, or modifying traffic. Using my supermarket analogy: it's fine for Super Fresh to build a supermarket on a busy road. But it isn't fine if roads have special high-speed lanes for Super Fresh customers. ISPs are in the position of being able to create dedicated lanes on the internet, or to add stop signs that only apply to some people. If you make the roads, you must let all traffic pass equally. If you make telephone wires, you must pass all traffic equally.
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But it isn't fine if roads have special high-speed lanes for Super Fresh customers.
Sure it is, as long as Super Fresh pays the full cost of those lanes and the traffic on those lanes does not degrade the transit time of the customers using the ordinary lanes.
Telephone companies are common carriers. Have you ever heard of the FCC telling a company, no you cannot establish a private telephone network to interconnect your offices because that way you might get better service than if all your calls were routed
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Sure it is, as long as Super Fresh pays the full cost of those lanes and the traffic on those lanes does not degrade the transit time of the customers using the ordinary lanes.
Granted.
I was implying that that they aren't new lanes - they are re-purposing existing lanes. That's closer to what the ISPs want to do. If I make this analogy again, I'll specifically state that. Thanks for improving my argument in the future.
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I was implying that that they aren't new lanes - they are re-purposing existing lanes.
I agree that is a bad idea. Letting providers of open networks like the Internet allow classes of service that have a hard, unlimited priority over ordinary traffic is a bad idea.
The big Internet providers are now quasi-monopolies and need to be regulated accordingly, which ultimately probably means minimum standards for what "Internet service" is. If the providers can carry other traffic without impairing the quality of s
The #1 problem with "net neutrality" is... (Score:2)
The #1 problem with "net neutrality" is that EVERY net neutrality proposal to come out in the US that has a snowballs chance in hell of actually being adopted has had loopholes big enough to fly an Airbus A380 through, usually under the guise of "lawful content"
I have no problems with ISPs who want to block spam on their networks or stop denial-of-service attacks comming from (or aimed at) their networks. But there has to be a better way to word the exemptions for "unlawful content" (or whatever it is) in a
Do no evil and be vague as hell when doing it (Score:2)
Verizon and Google need to spell it out to-the-letter. Vagaries have no place in legal documents other than to implement some kind of imbalanced legal dynamic at some point in the future.