Net Neutrality — Threat Or Menace? 253
Roblimo writes "I had a dream. In it, I was CEO of a large telecommunications company that was also a major broadband Internet provider and all five members of the FCC were stabbing me with pitchforks and yelling in my ear that my company would be treated as a common carrier, not as a special entity they couldn't regulate. That's when I woke up..."
Re:This all hinges on what "Net Neutrality" is. (Score:2, Informative)
The function of the Internet is to transmit content, it always has been. Therefore, if your ISP blocks ports, it blocks content. You might be lucky and that protocol can be represented on the Web, like with Usenet and Google Groups. However, that is not always the case. When my ISP blocks Skype, I can no longer access content (i.e. voice data or chat messages) via Skype. When my ISP blocks Bittorrent, I cannot access content that is on Bittorrent, like the songs from artists on my favourite netlabel.
The Internet is not the web. The Internet is TCP/IP access to the largest network of computers on the planet.
Re:Ideology (Score:5, Informative)
"What is constitutional is what the Supreme Court decides is consitutional, that's how the system is set up."
This is a very common misconception, and it is common because that's what they want you to think. But in fact, that is not the way it was set up at all. During the Constitutional convention, something called The Virginia Plan was proposed. That plan called for putting into the Constitution language such that the Federal government could override state law whenever the two conflicted. That plan was overwhelmingly voted down. After the Constitution was drawn up, before the States would ratify it they called for reassurance that the Federal government would only have power over those 18 things, and that all other power was left to the states and to the people. The Supreme Court can declare that certain things are un-Constitutional, but it is not the final arbiter of what is Constitutional. Only the States are empowered to do that.
... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." -- James Madison
(1) The Federal government only has legal authority over the 17 (some say 18) enumerated powers that are specifically listed in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8. Everything else belongs to the States and to the people.
(2) NO branch of the Federal Government, including the Supreme Court, was given authority to decide what the Federal Government may or may not do. That power was left to the States themselves. Allowing the Federal government decide what its own powers may be is called "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse", and the Founding Fathers were much too smart for that. Want proof?
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." -- Thomas Jefferson
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.
"...the government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison
"[T]he government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, about the U.S. Constitution [emphasis mine]
"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste." -Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possessio
Re:Threat or Menace - correction? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I googled it after posting - I guess "Threat or Menace" was a J.J. Jameson thing (from Spiderman)... If my memory is correct and they really did use it in TMNT, then it must have been a nod to Berne's status as TMNT's version of Jameson...
Re:here we go again (Score:4, Informative)
**gasp**
All of you folks trumpeting free market and people thinking for themselves need to remember one thing:
Think about how dumb the average person is. Now remember that half the people are even dumber than that.
Theres a reason for all the regulations, and most of them started out with the intent of keeping some of those sub average folks from sticking forks into electrical outlets. I'm not saying its right, I'm saying their hearts were originally in the right place.
In addition, as a free thinking person that can "think for themselves" the greatest example of a purely free market at work can be found in multiple areas over the last few thousands years, rampant with slavery, all of the wealth being focused in a few people and used to gain power, or power being used to accumulate wealth. At some point, someone gets an advantage in cash flow, it probably isn't even from their primary market, or if it is its used on something that isn't their primary market to gain an additional cash flow. Now with this advantage they use it to slowly damage the competition, because they can afford to do so. Either by selling below cost for awhile, forcing the competition to do the same while they can't afford to do so but you can, or if they manage to make the gap wide enough fast enough then they just buy the competition. Anything new springs up and bam, bought. A new idea? Oh, shit you'd rather ride it out than just sell to me now?... Oh, wait, screw that, I'll do it too but I have so much more money to pour into it right now that it'll be better than yours, available faster than yours, and I'll sell it below your cost, then I'll buy whats left of you for next to nothing after you're broken and just go right back to gouging the people for however much I want. Hell, in your "omg regulations" system right NOW this happens on a regular basis, its partly made easier in some cases but mostly made harder and there are laws in place to attempt to prevent it, but most of them don't go far enough.
Theres your free market theory at work, thats what happens in a pure free market. The money eventually all aggregates at the top creating an oligarchy or plutocracy, which in turn makes almost all of the people under them their indentured slaves, except for a select few of course.
I can provide specific, recent examples of things that have happened simply because of a cash disparity and not enough regulation in place to stop it from happening, but if you still think a free market is a good idea then likely you have your fingers in your ears going "la la la I'm not listening"
He doesn't want to be "forced" to host at YouTube? (Score:4, Informative)
Ugh. Nobody "forces" Mr. Miller to host anywhere. He's more than welcome to host his videos at his friend's Joe's Globaltap hosting service, but is he expecting his friend to do this for free or give him some flat rate $5/month service? Does Mr. Miller expect his friend Joe to eat the Internet transit costs of $3 to $10 per Mbps per month which might be thousands of dollars a month for popular content while he free loads off of his friend's hosting service? Is he under the dilusion that all Internet websites operate at the same speed (http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/07/call-the-net-neutrality-police-dailykos-loads-faster-than-foxnews/)?
The reality is that only the largest websites like YouTube can afford server transit bandwidth on the Internet and there has always been a toll to deliver content on the Internet. YouTube gives you this bandwidth for free because they value your presence and your content which attracts eyeballs and advertisers. Google loses money but they're making a huge investment gamble on the future.
Why is it that people lose all reason and sanity when it comes to the commercial Internet which is made up of all private networks and private investment? We can all oppose bad behavior like censorship of content or the blocking of legal applications on bandwidth people paid for, but Net Neutrality insists on going further to outlaw legal and voluntary premium content delivery services.
Re:Ideology (Score:3, Informative)
And while we're at it, the idea that societal equality and general happiness are good is also a purely ideological stance. It's a stance most people agree with, but there is nothing inherent in the universe that requires it.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint - keeping the populace reasonably happy is a good way to prevent revolution.
Re:Ideology (Score:2, Informative)
/sigh
"The Virginia Plan was proposed. That plan called for putting into the Constitution language such that the Federal government could override state law whenever the two conflicted."
No, it was the plan to have the national legislature apportioned by population, giving big states like New York and (wait for it...) Virginia the advantage in lawmaking. It was, predictably, rejected by the smaller states, like Connecticut, who produced the compromise of a bicameral legislature, one chamber apportioned while the other had equal representation.
"That plan was overwhelmingly voted down."
--Article VI, clause 2, emphasis mine.
"The Supreme Court can declare that certain things are un-Constitutional, but it is not the final arbiter of what is Constitutional. Only the States are empowered to do that."
South Carolina called, they want their Nullification Crisis [wikipedia.org] back.
"NO branch of the Federal Government, including the Supreme Court, was given authority to decide what the Federal Government may or may not do. That power was left to the States themselves."
Then what, exactly, is the point of Congress? If there's hard-and-fast answers to all possible political questions about what the government can and cannot, will or won't, should and shouldn't do, what's the point of having a deliberative body at all, let alone a deliberative lawmaking body?
"Allowing the Federal government decide what its own powers may be is called "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse","
No, it's called "the political process." And if there is going to be a metaphor involving foxes and henhouses, the fox is the states themselves, whose efforts to cripple the federal government under the Articles of Confederation were the entire catalyst for the Annapolis Convention to begin with.
"and the Founding Fathers were much too smart for that. Want proof?"
Can I have a side-order of context with your proof?
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." -- Thomas Jefferson
First and foremost, TJ wasn't there, he was in France. I likely know more about what happened in Philadelphia than he ever did.
Secondly, this quote doesn't appear real, but rather a mash-up of two unrelated quotes, one where he expresses his concerns that the "specifically enumerated" powers don't include a national bank (Hamilton disagreed; the bank was his idea), and one where he insists that Congress' ability to "provide for the general welfare" is limited "only" to levying and expending taxes towards that goal.
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare(...)"--James Madison
Awfully popular on Tea Party websites (much like the previous manufactured quote), but nobody likes talking about the source. The best I've found is a claim that this was from a debate in the House of Representatives. Y'know, after the ratification, debating what the government can and can't do... i.e. the political process.
By the way, Jimmy was the primary architect of the Virginia Plan you vilify. Maybe you should look for other people to defend your ideals.
"...the government of the United States is a definite government(...)" -- James Madison
This one actually has a verifiable source! [loc.gov] Once again, a debate in an already-established House of Representatives. H
SPs can't have it both ways (Score:2, Informative)
When they can explain how South Korea, Taiwan, Japan etc all have 50-100Mbps edge links to consumers... in the U.S. we seem stuck around 10Mbps. There's really no excuse for this.
The SPs already discriminate traffic where/when they can... look at Bittorrent traffic. Comcast and others regularly limit torrent traffic.
If the SPs take it a step further.. what can we expect? Video from Providers NOT affiliated (paying off) your SP may just appear to have crappy video. A VoIP service (skype, etc) may just not have quite the voice quaility it could have because its being QoS throttled by the SP who may have its own voice service.
With limited competition if Net Neutrality doesn't stand then the U.S. is going to fall further and further behind the rest of the world and the rest of our competition.
Re:Shitty Story (Score:3, Informative)
Please tell me you're joking, Jonas. You believe that your ISP is "gathering" something? All it's doing is connecting you to the resources that do gather something.
Please tell me you're just being ironic. I can't tell the difference any more between someone being ironic and actual drooling idiocy.
Re:Shitty Story (Score:3, Informative)
It might be fair for them to say "no, you can't torrent right now" since you torrenting could kill everybody else trying to share your tower. We may not agree with them on this, but it is a valid point of view.
It is! We call that point of view QoS (Quality of Service). It is shaping traffic based on type. It is entirely orthogonal to Network Neutrality, which refers to treating packets the same, no matter their point of origin.
Network Neutrality and QoS are completely different things. Poorly written language enforcing Network Neutrality might accidentally ban QoS. We should be careful not to do this. But we must not let the need for QoS deter us from enforcing Network Neutrality.