Spirited Exchange Over Net Neutrality 176
LukeCage sends us to The Register for a rabble-rousing account of a US Commerce Department official's talk at Supernova 2007. The article is headlined Bush official goes nuclear in New Neut row, and points out that the speaker, John Kneuer, is a former telecom lobbyist. To figure out what really went on in that session — whether it was a shouting match as El Reg reports — be sure to read Suw Charman's notes from the floor and Kevin Werbach's note (Werbach is the conference organizer).
The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Its hard to see this changing in the next few years because it is actively supported by the media who much prefer a strong opinion to some dull and boring facts.
At least he didn't claim everyone against him was supporting terrorists......
Re:The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah but (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
FACT!
as if that settles it. Oh, it has the "Fact Seal of Approval", I guess he's right.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Quoting Facts is Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Related to this is the annoying habit of the most zealous ideologues who post their opinions on web forums to end their unsupported, often ludicrous, assertions with FACT!
It's a fact that the word zealous and zealot are insulting terms used by astroturfers and PR flacks to smear people opposed to them. It's namecalling and people dip to it when the facts are not in their favor.
In this case, the Bush administration intentended to create a "marketplace" of two vendors. Each person is supposed to be able to chose between a cable company and a phone company for broadband and market pressures will make each behave. The most obvious flaw is that the policy has failed to provide even that level of competition. It's performance is poor, even by the FCC's convoluted "broadband" collection statistics, where everyone in a zip code has access to broadband if a single person there does. The second problem is that both parties all obviously collaborating with the powerful entertainment industry, where government "protection" has also led to a catastrophic lack of competition. Finally, the position is not even philosophically sound - if you believe in market forces you will open up the public servitude and spectrum to real competition. They can't have it both ways, you either regulate for the public good or you allow the public to mind it's own business. After a century of regulation, the former monopolies have a tremendous advantage that was built at everyone's expense, and should be as carefully watched as former Soviet companies until real competition emerges. What the impartial observer finds in Bush policy that it's designed to protect select private business, a private-public cooperation favoring few at the expense of all others. There are plenty of names for that kind of thing, Fascism, cronies, but the lables don't do it justice. The contraditions and poor performance are evident on their own, despite the Bush administration's best ability to eliminate facts from the picture. The contry that invented the internet should have the best public network in the world.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the most obvious flaw is that you can call a 2-competitor field a "market". Even if the competitors don't explicitly collaborate, there's still no pressure for them to actively lower prices or improve service substantially. It'll be like Pepsi vs. Coke, but worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and "astroturfers" and "PR flacks" are insulting terms used by zealots to smear people opposed to them.
Reality is not black and white.
dedazo is bad. (Score:2)
There is no nice word for people like dedazo [slashdot.org]. The phrase used by Orwell was "professional liar".
Re:The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
You saw Clinton go after the right by using the IRS to attack right wing think tanks. Then, Bush matched that by trying to get loser pays tort reform, a proposition which would bankrupt the plaintiff lawyers that drive the Democrats. And you see Republicans also proposing to allow members to opt out of union dues for political purposes, another union defunder and Democrat breaker. Now Democrats are trying to retaliate by going after right wing media - by basically banning free speech in radio.
The bottom line is, that anyone that thinks their guys, Democrat or Republican, is a fool, and anyone that goes onto a board and parrots the latest propaganda from the likes of MoveOn or National Review are even bigger fools, because they let themselves get used as puppets.
Distortions, flat out lies, go around on both sides, as if, it is settled that the truth can be sacrificed for the greater good of political victory. If you really want to take our country back, we need to realize that the people that are trying to whip up support for their own causes. People like Kos and Rush are in it to cash in, and gain personal power. They are damaged, all of these "talking heads", and they need more a good bullet to the head than to be taken as anything more as the demagoguing power mongering traitors to the American ideal that they are.
Not even CLOSE to the worst it's ever been (Score:3, Funny)
Mmmmm...reasonably uninformed cynicism. (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is true, if all you've studied is the history of the U.S. for the past 30 years.
Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past. You'd do well to take a look at some of the political "cartoons" from elections around the beginning of the 19th century. Also take a look at some of the political deals that were being done.
With each new generation (in this case the post-gen-X crowd), people hit their late twenties (for some it's later) and become alarmed at what they see going on in capital hill. Why? Because they finally own houses, pay more taxes, have kids to worry about, etc. etc. They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! It was the same in the late 60's when the draft was on (as they say, all politics is local).
A cliffs notes version of the political history of the U.S. won't show you that it's always been the same - but a thorough study of the stuff will. Personally, the only productive consequence of this new-found political outrage I see from folks is that maybe, and I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election rather than talking about how bad things are inside the beltway, and then changing the channel to whatever staged "reality show" they're following for the time being.
Re: (Score:2)
If 99% are scum, what does the 1% matter?
First, I highly doubt 80% of people can even name their state representative, much less who they ran against in the last election. The same goes for most elected representatives - even on the federal level. The argument that the choices are crap is a cop-out. I've almost always been able to find a palatable candidate for any office. On the few occasions I couldn't, I simply voted for the guy I hated the least.
That's the second pa
Re: (Score:2)
Either your young or haven't been paying very close attention. The US government rarely deals in facts, regardless which party is controlling the spin. Facts just get in the way of intended policy. You should read: "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" for plenty of examples of how the US Government has ignored the facts and used opinion to inflict significant damage thr
Re:The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he didn't, but those of us paying attention ahve already seen this argument used. The "reasoning" is obvious: Allowing everyone (who pays for service) equal access to the Net clearly does allow terrorists the same access. It also allows politicians, pedophiles, librarians, garbage collectors, and left-handed people the same access.
But one of the lessons of history is that if ISPs and other comm companies are allowed to block "terrorists" (or pedophiles or politicians), they will first use it to block their own economic competitors by slowing down their packets to uselessness. The real issue here isn't whether people we don't like can be blocked.
The issue is whether single corporations set up as legal monopolies (or duopolies in some neighborhoods) can be allowed to control who can communicate and who can't. Their main concern will be with maintaining their control, not implementing the public policies used to justify giving them control.
Communication is an important right. There's reason that it was the very first thing written into the US Bill of Rights. Without the right to communicate, our other rights don't mean very much. And the recent tendency in the US for those in power to label just about anyone as a "terrorist" without any evidence at all should give us all pause.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You may remember those shows, but did you actually watch them? Even if you did you're one of the few. There is a reason news magazines were moved to Sunday morning, the public would rather watch reality TV than intelligent debate.
If you still want intelligent debate, Meet t
Not surprising... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not new. I know it always seems like things are getting worse as we put a smiley-face on the past. Remember the past...? When people were all civil and wise, and used good rational discussions to settle their disputes? Yeah, that never happened.
Rhetoric full of logical fallacies has been capturing the attention of the masses for as long as we have recorded history. Go back to Lincoln, back to the American Revolution, back through the Renaissance, past Caesar and Rome, back to Pericles, Plato, Home
Re: (Score:2)
That sword cuts both ways...there is a similar phenomenon on the left, which is sympathetic to strong opinions, ignoring reasonable objections to the contrary, as long as the proponent is 'passionate' in their advocacy of the position. I agree that the level of debate has declined substantially in both civility and intelligence here in the United States, but whose fault i
Re: (Score:2)
Wait how did that one end again?
Re: (Score:2)
More more to the point is how the White House contradicts itself when it suits its purpose. Sometimes Tony Snow will flatly deny he said something, even though the entire world has it on video. Sometimes he'll flatly deny an obvious and inescapable inference:
Re:The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying "I" agree with Dick, but, some legal analysts say he 'might' indeed have a bit of a leg to stand on here. The office of the Vice President is I think fairly unique in that it might have to be considered a hybrid office, due to the fact that the VP is head of the Senate. That would make his office at least half legislative, and there are some rules about searching those (see the hubub about the searches of congressman Jefferson's office).
From what I can tell, the VP's office is unique in this, that it is partially executive, and partially legislative.....so, someone may have to rule on this.
Apparently this issue isn't as cut and dried as it appears at first. I'd have assumed it was executive right off to bat too.
Re:The power of debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, hmm. No way does he have a leg to stand on, and it has nothing to do with the 'hybrid nature of his office'. It very well may be true that the Vice-president can in some circumstances be treated as both a legislative and executive office...but that's not the issue. The issue is that Cheney is claiming that because he is in both, he doesn't have to follow the rules of either. And that is just patently stupid. If he is in both, he has to follow the rules of both.
For the vast majority (i.e. up until four years ago) of the time this republic has existed, the Vice-president, despite his cursory senatorial duties, has always been considered a member of the Executive. More importantly, all the rules, laws, and regs are written as if that were the case. So, there is a heavy precedental weight against even the theoretical contention that the VP should be considered legislative, even if he might for the sake of argument considered to be so.
Re: (Score:2)
I woul
His Job is in Article II of the Constitution (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but does Article II come with an invisible ink title header saying "Executive Officers of the United States of America". I'm pretty sure if it wasn't in invisible ink, people would have noticed.
Look, it's not that I don't agree that the Vice-president ought to be treated as an executive officer. It's only that the document itself, the Constitution of the United States of America, does not so clearly as you insist make it so. The office's hybrid nature may in fact be (and I think it is) an ar
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, but aren't those arguments obilerated by the Twelfth and Seventeenth Amendment? The country isn't the same as it was when the Constitution was written, and truth be told, neither is the Constitution since it has been amended over time to accord with developments in the Nation at large.
IANAL, but I've had more than my share of working with lawyers in the process of amending and interpreting corporate instruments and by-laws, and I am somewhat sympathetic to the bare argument that there is roo
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the Rove/Gonzales appointees count.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I can tell, the VP's office is unique in this, that it is partially executive, and partially legislative.....
...and partially judicial. The Senate tries impeachment cases. Yup, he'd preside over his own trial. Seriously. He's exempted if the President is impeached, but apparently it never occured to anybody that the VP could do anything to warrant impeachment.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he has a leg to stand on to choose where he stands. But I strongly suspect that there's no leg to stand on
Re: (Score:2)
You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
to be fair, the Register did word it in a mannor that agrees with all other attendies, EG: "Kneuer lost his temper, and shouted back at the attendies." That does not rule out the attendies acting up first. It only means that Kneur, being a "official" is under a higher obligation to maintain his composure, than the audience.
So the Register article may be a bit leading, but it is accurate. Still gene
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
QED
Re: (Score:2)
Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation is. (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest concern by geeks and techies is that the superpowers of the web will start restricting bandwidth for competitors' sites and promoting bandwidth for their own sites. Yet who are the superpowers we're worried about? They're the very companies that are subsidized or given monopoly powers by the State.
With a truly competitive marketplace, there should be almost zero concern over the net neutrality issue. Yet the FCC and the local State bodies are at fault for creating this fear for the marketplace -- they've created a mess of bureaucracy and redtape (and regulations and subsidies) that keeps competition out of the mix.
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Some techies fear the skies over their homes filled with cables and wires, but this too is a non-issue. In a town two cities over from mine (Libertyville, Illinois), there are 3 wireless providers who have leased tower space to provide very reasonable high speed access at a very low cost. All 3 of the companies battle one another because the village of Libertyville lets the compete -- and the pricing and services have both gotten better. Who complains about their services? Comcast, of course.
My town (Zion, Illinois) doesn't let anyone run a wireless service, let alone multiple providers. We have Comcast, and we have the phone company. Both offer unreasonable service at unreasonable pricing. I've looked into renting tower space, and the village has said NO 3 years in a row. They're concerned for what reason?
Let's stop the net neutrality debate, and bring up the proper debate: let's allow competition in a marketplace that has been "free" from competition for far too long. The cell phone companies are ready to roll out HSDPA as soon as the FCC allows them to (again, a mess of State intervention in a market that could be flourishing). The WiFi locally-owned providers want to roll it out, but the city States don't allow it. There are numerous ISPs who want to roll out very high speed DSL but can't because they're not allow to pull cable to the homes (and many local providers are more than willing to invest in this market).
Re:Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation i (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also worth noting that, while many ISPs are chartered as telcos for various reasons (like the ability to install their own DSLAMs) and therefore subject to the regulation of state utility boards, simply becoming a wireless ISP does not require such regulation in places -- it's a matter between you, the FCC, and whatever body regulates radio towers in your area (usually the city).
Re:Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation i (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That oversight is already provided for in a free market sense by all the various bodies within a given transaction. First, a consumer is "protected" from bad products by the point of sale reseller who carries the goods. Walgreens and CVS won't sell poisoned toothpaste, and if there ever was a toothpaste poisoning problem, you can believe that within 1 hour of the first reported deaths, private fir
Re: (Score:2)
government bureaucracies are easy to pay off and control by the wealthy few.
Case in point: stevia is not approved for use as a sweetener in the U.S., in violation of established standards of accepting products with a long history of use as "Generally Recognized As Safe" (GRAS). But then Coca-Cola decides they want to market a version of it, and suddenly the product is fast-tracked for approval.
In other words, the federal government protected Coca-Cola and other large companies from competition by startups interested in stevia, long enough for the larger, slower companies to ta
Re:Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation i (Score:5, Informative)
Sure they do; the internet most certainly crosses state bounderies, and net neutrality is all about the telcos trying to make more money by throttling bandwidth for companies that don't pay. None of the major telcos are located entirely within a single state.
So while normally I agree that the interstate commerce clause is normally abused, this is pretty much interstate commerce and falls under the federal jurisdiction.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't buy that argument. The network traffic may travel interstate, but the facilities that carry it are pretty much stuck under (or hanging over) cities' streets. And unlike a hard goods delivery service (UPS, FedEx) once the equipment is in, it can't be moved in response to varying demands caused by competition like fleets of trucks can. So
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, you could be bounced out of state and back just to get to an ip in the next city. Not likely, but possible.
Hell, the mom and pop shop down the road might have there web site hosted across the country, or even across the world.
So this does fall under Federal law.
As for your fed ex example: Yes the government could regulate it the way you have in your example. It would be political suicide, but they could. By that same toke, the feds can also rule the net neutra
Re: (Score:2)
That happens in our house, in a western suburb of Boston. We have DLS service via speakeasy, and traceroute shows that packets from here to mit.edu (11 miles away by road) go via er1.nyc1.speakeasy.net and vlan51.csw1.newyork1.level3.net.
Funny thing is that the ping time (typically 20-25 ms) is about 3 times faster than the "local" service that the two cable companies (Comcast, RCN) provide. Pin
Re: (Score:2)
And it goes from one city, to another, crosses onto AT&Ts network (for example) and eventually gets to its destination. Remember, its the AT&Ts that want to charge website operators. Do a trace route sometime, and see how much of your traffic goes over one of the major telcos lines.
I'm not really sure what the point of the rest of your
Re: (Score:2)
So how do you get that from traceroute? What I get is the names and addresses of the routers. In a traceroute that I just did (10 hops, three states), there's no recognizable telco name. It's probably because the telcos may own the wires, but at present they don't usually own most of the routers. But if you own the wires, you can easily insert an invisible bridge that "shapes" the traffic on its wires.
How
Re: (Score:2)
You can also look up their allocations at ICANN.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the Federal government can (by statute) override local governments' ability to control their public property. Net neutrality and access to the last mile is something that local governments provide in exchange for the use of public rights of way by wired broadband providers. They (cab
Re:Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation i (Score:2)
Eventually, your data will have to run through some middleman's wires. It's practically inevitable unless your data is going to someone with the same ISP in the same town. That middleman is going to sell his bandwidth to your ISP so they can send data to my ISP. I believe the term "common carrier" is what I'm looking for here.
If we let the free market forces do their
Re: (Score:2)
I think the term you want is actually "peering agreement." The term "common carrier" refers to restrictions and privileges of a carrier regarding whatever they carry.
Re: (Score:2)
Hear, hear. That said, it is also about the consumer's lack of choice in the last mile. Satellite isn't practical, and statistically speaking, in an area of average population density, it turns out not to be profitable to have two cable companies or two telephone companies. Many communities try it, and it always ends with either the incumbent buying out the newcomer, the newcomer decimating the incumbent and driving them out of business, or both companies getting so far in the hole that the government ha
Re:Net neutrality is not a concern -- regulation i (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's worth mentioning that if such an agency is required, the free market can create it without any force, coercion, or theft (taxation as we know it) involved.
Re: (Score:2)
If there were a button I could push that would bring that about instantly I'd push it in a heartbeat. I'm confident that socialism has wreaked havoc on our road system, just as it does on education, healthcare, and everything else it touches.
Although since the property the roads were built on was obtained by theft, I don't think the government truly has the right to auction them off, so a better approach might be to attempt to turn over anything to previous owners of the property rights, and abandonment
700mhz (Score:2, Insightful)
Identifying delegates as "application providers", he said it was their responsibility to compete with broadband incumbents by offering their own service, founded initially on portions of the 700Mhz spectrum. This spectrum will be sold under auction once terrestrial TV providers complete their move to digital in February 2009.
What the hell does that have to do with the ramifications of ending net neutrality? "Oh, we're screwing the consumer over be letting these monopolistic behaviors continue. But don't worry, heres some old shit that the cable industry doesn't use. Have fun!"
Summarizing the posts so far... (Score:4, Informative)
didn't happen didn't happen lalalalalalalalalalalalala thereg is commie.
America needs an enema.
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it... why do we have to wait for the telecomm industry to screw us before we can do something? What happened to "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
Politicians (and the telecomm lobbyists who pay their bills) like to bloviate about the "free market"; can someone please point out what they're talking about? I've been looking for competition between broadband providers for a decade now, and the only thing I've come across is phone companies complaining that cable operators are horning in.
Re: (Score:2)
Politicians (and the telecomm lobbyists who pay their bills) like to bloviate about the "free market"; can someone please point out what they're talking about?
What they're saying is that IF there is a problem (which they don't see but is obvious), a free market can sort it out because one company which is charging too much or having too many problems, etc. will be demolished by the competition. Basically, they're going back to the original captialist philosophy of Adam Smith and his "invisible hand" which guides the economy--namely supply and demand. The same theory which the U.S. abandoned about 100 years ago because it didn't work in an industrialized economy
Re: (Score:2)
However, having said that, I will also say that what they ignore is that the market is not free: many telcos have either government-given or self-induced monopolies in specific areas. Further, high entry costs make it practically impossible for homegrown competition to displace them when their service goes down the drain. And also, I suspect that there may be collusion to set prices (not that I have evidence, just a hunch). Plus, as another poster here mentioned, in his town, there is Comcast and the phone company. And no one else. Where I live there is hardly much more variety.
In addition, switching providers is not always possible or easy (it's not like switching cell phone providers or wiping one's ass like the FCC dumbass thinks it is). The very idea of "market correction" happening is laughable when you consider the networks some of us work with daily. Even for cell phones, remember the telcos fighting tooth and nail to stop the number portability thing? Yeah, that was just an entry in a database. They resisted purely for anticompetitive reasons.
Now add your firewall, net
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. The country transitioned to market capitalism in the early 20th century away from pure capitalism because the pure version allowed big business moguls to amass huge trusts and keep everyone else poor and dependent on them for jobs, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
That is an interesting take on things, and explains why broadband over power lines keeps
coming back up again and again.
Re: (Score:2)
I can agree with that, provided the qualification is added that market failures (including "malevolent" monopolies) only occur as a result of prior aggression, typically in the form of State intervention in the market. I have nothing against the State eliminating monopolies it created through its own act
A Bush official would *never* go "nuclear"... (Score:5, Funny)
Bush's Pronounciation is In The Dictionary (Score:2)
While you've got your dictionary out to verify, why not look up the word "metathesis" as well? Unless you walk around all day pronouncing "iron" as "i-ron", it's time to drop the whole "nuclear" issue.
Maybe Bush learned to say "noo-kyuh-ler" form former President Jimmy Carter?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nuclear [reference.com]
Only 1 of those lists the metathesis pronunciation. And nowhere can I find that metathesis gives us a valid pronunciation, only that it happens. If some ignorant fool decides to pronounce 'carpal tunnel' as 'capral tunnel', that doesn't mean he's correct simply because there's a word for it.
Stop trying to excuse ignorance and stupidity and try to learn something instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but clearly a large enough number of ignorant fools were mispronouncing nuclear to get the pronunciation mentioned in at least some dictionaries. BTW, one of the guys I went to school with, who was a Political Science major, mispronounced the word the same way Bush does. He was a really bright guy -- at the top of the class -- so I don't think you can call
Re: (Score:2)
If we're going to pedantic... (Score:2)
You're Fighting A Losing Battle (Score:2)
vegetable: vej-tuh-buhl OR vej-i-tuh-buhl
There's your multiple pronunciation through metathesis example. I only used "tomato" before because of the song.
Hmmm.... (Score:2)
Clearly, it is not a pronunciation consistent with the word's etymology, as nuclear is derived from the word nucleus about which there is no debate regarding pronunciation. It is therefore logical to conclude that the latter pronunciation came about through common usage in culture as a variation on the original pronunciation dictated by etymology.
It has been conjectured that the reason for the nu-ky
The talk is on line (Score:5, Insightful)
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-
Summary: Kneuer makes a total idiot of himself, but remains generally calm. He is reciting Cheney-Rove talking points, not actually discussing the issue in any meaningful way. He declares American broadband policy to be a success. He also sets up a straw man argument, that any kind of network neutrality rule would be regulating the "rates, terms and conditions" of Internet access. And he simply assumes that regulating "rates, terms and conditions" (a phrase he repeats over and over) is Bad. This is to be taken on faith, and when the crowd doesn't get it his way (because they're not members of the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power), he just repeats himself.
He has to leave for the airport by the end of his talk. I wish the taxi had followed his model of deregulation. "Me and my boy Tiny here gotta inspect yer luggage. We have to take care of it, you know, so nothing happens between here and the airport. Hmmm, nice computer you have. You wouldn't want that to fall and have an accident. Let's see, that'll be $100. for safe passage. And gee, your plane leaves in an hour and a half. You do want to make that plane, right? That'll be a $50 fee for rapid delivery. And no, don't get off the taxi, because Tiny and I are going to Deliver this stuff, whether it's to you or not. We gotta pay for this nice taxi, you know. It ain't cheap maintaining a 1994 Plymouth on these streets." Yep, that's what he wants, the transport operator to take a cut of the goods. To (his term) "encourage investment".
Re:The talk is on line (Score:4, Insightful)
The US broadband marketplace is very much closed.
The US broadband definition itself is brain dead. Defining broadband as anything over 200k in one direction is like describing a puddle of water in your driveway as a major inland sea. At best, any given place in the US has two choices for broadband (usually large cities), at worst no choice. Where you have choice, the best price always requires purchasing a bundled deal. Bundling by definition is not optimal for the consumer (less competition between the same service from different vendors and the act of bundling itself raises the entry barrier for smaller players).
No major infrastructure player (i.e. cable TV or phone provider) is required to allow competitors access to their hardware (as is the case for most electricity providers). Phone companies used public funds to build their infrastructure and yet still have NOT delivered on their promises of true broadband they used to secure that funding; now they want to charge their customers AGAIN for that increased bandwidth that we already paid for.
All of these issues and more can be traced back to the corruption in our political system. John Kneuer says that new government regulation would interfere with the marketplace. That is a misdirection. We already have government regulation; the problem is current regulation favors the established players and eliminates competition. In other words, our current regulation ALREADY interferes with the marketplace. What we need is regulation that levels the playing field. And that is what the established players are fighting tooth and nail to stop.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, I was hoping to see a video of him dancing like a monkey and screaming "Capitalism! Capitalism! Capitalism!"
Re: (Score:2)
That, sir, is a beautiful turn of phrase. I salute you for giving me my moment of genius insight for the day.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why take somebody else's word for it when you can watch the actual talk? Thanks to conference organizer Kevin Werbach:
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-k [conversationhub.com] neuer-on-spectrum-policy-and-network-neutrality/ [conversationhub.com]
Thanks for that link! I watched the whole presentation and discussion. What I saw/heard was far less incendiary than what I was led to expect from TFA summary. Seemed to me that Kneuer handled himself relatively calmly in the midst of a confrontational audience. At least twice he asked for the audience to bring on the hard questions. Here's my take on it;
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The actual controversy is better understood in terms of a turnpike (a.k.a. toll road). A third party -- not the taxi service you have hired -- has set up this nice road that is, realistically, the only good way for you to get from point A to point B. But if you travel along it, you'll have to pay a fee.
You're either misinformed or misinforming about the fight going on with Net Neutrality. No one opposes the idea of toll roads - after all, we pay our ISPs for their services, and they pay the big ones for theirs, and so on and so forth.
Net Neutrality is about not letting those big ISPs charge the users' destinations - YouTube, Google, MSN, etc. In your toll road analogy, it'd be as if the people you're going to visit have to pay a toll too. I already pay my ISP for access. Google already pays for their
Yeah, leave EVERYTHING to the marketplace... (Score:3, Insightful)
Local roads? Contract 'em out to private businesses. Let the incentive of tolls release entrepreneurial creativity. Hey, you could put an RFID chip in every car and charge a nickel every time drive down Main Street and a penny when you cruise down Mockingbird Lane.
Wars? Contract 'em out to Halliburton and Blackwater. (Oh, wait... we do, and look how well it works).
Because big, bureaucratic, oligopolistic, greedy megacorporations are always better at everything than big, bureaucratic, patronage-ridden government agencies. And the profit motive always automatically aligns itself perfectly with American moral values. As Engline Charlie Wilson said, "I always thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
Painful to read... (Score:2, Funny)
Call me harsh or unreasonable, but it seems to me that if somebody is going to take the time to write about an issue -
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That said, what I have read of the Bushite's talk made my head hurt even when it was editted.
Encription (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the current European policy on data retention, we should do it even for mail and instant messaging. Of course you should use sftp instead of ftp and ssh instead of telnet, and your SMTP sessions should go encrypted, but that is not enough. We should rewrite every protocol and make it look like IPSEC.
This way we would avoid the following problems without the need for regulation:
- Government censorship (the China firewall becomes less efficient)
- Traffic Shaping (ISPs shouldn't have the right to decide what protocols can you use).
- Multi tier pricing (the ISP could discriminate by IP, but not by service)
- Traffic analysis (for example the European Data Retention policy. If all packets look the same it becomes much more difficult)
A technical solution is always better than a political one.
Follow the money (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070628/ap_on_hi_te/i
Looks to me like the Federal Trade Commission is enforcing some lack of regulation in the name of economic competition. This may have influenced the fear shown in the Bush guy's rant. They may be right, economically-speaking, but from an information perspective it's a terrible loss if net neutrality goes.
History Student's version of network neutrality (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because the US has a Free Market, and the Free Market does everything RIGHT!!
So things were just hunky-dory with computer data communications before the Government-infested Internet came along and upset the apple cart. There were plenty of competitive services like The Source, Compu$erve, AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, and the like. Oh, I almost forgot about MSN and Advantis. They all interoperated just fine, and exchanged data with no difficulties whatsoever. Telecommunications lines were ubiquitous and cable penetration was increasing, so every household had all the bandwidth and access it needed, and many had carrier choice.
Let's get this straight. The ONLY reason the Internet succeeded and the rest of those names are dust (or completely changed) is because it was NEUTRAL!
One of those unappreciated facts is the the Free Market also only works with free flow of information. In order to be a proper customer, you have to know sufficient information about the suppliers' products. So you have to go back to the first piece of sarcasm in this post, "the US has a Free Market" and realize that it all went off into left field, right there. THE US DOES NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET. Nor is the first problem preventing Free Market with government regulations of the limiting nature. Rather it's because US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information.
Again, US suppliers almost always act to restrict the flow of information. Talk about a few mechanisms... First there are gag orders on lawsuits, so we can't really know liability issues of some of their products. Next, there is refusal to communicate and interoperate. The line about AOL, Compu$erve, et al was obvious sarcasm, because NONE of them exchanged information until they did it through the Internet. For that matter, Microsoft's pretending
So reading as I write, I'll have to assert that the Free Market simply CANNOT exist without regulations, in practice.
First, it's in the suppliers' self interest to restrict information as much as possible, first off permitting only "good" information out, and second using information to lock-in their customers.
Second, in the short-term, short-term self-interest will always win out over long-term self interest. Besides that, if short-term self interest garners sufficient benefits in the short-term, it's entirely possible to destroy the competitor who takes long-term self interests into account. In this situation there is no long-term, merely one short-term after another. (IMHO that's what we're locked into, today)
So IMHO if Net Neutrality is cast aside, at least in the US the Internet will turn into the Balkanized pile of crap that was AOL, Compu$erve, et al so many years ago. Furthermore having surrendered what the Internet was really about when it started, the US will accelerate its competitive decline in the world marketplace and communities.
Where are google, microsoft, yahoo, ebay, paypal ? (Score:2)
We made them, and its now their turn to protect what we, including themselves, have on the internet - a free community that is above and over nations.
this is time for their giving back to community. they should set up lobbying power and start lobbying in full force asap.
i know google is doing some, but it is not enough. all needs to move in and get on the same band
Re:Where are google, microsoft, yahoo, ebay, paypa (Score:2)
What Net Neutrality really means... (Score:2)
Net Neutrality really means to the Bush administration:
-The government stays in neutral with regards to doing anything
-The telecoms neuter consumers' rights to choose
Re: (Score:2)
Here in the US, people bend over and take it all the way for then to turn around and ask "Again, please?" When are you going to realize that the government is for the p
Re: (Score:2)
What I don't understand is why Americans accept this bullshit.
*sigh*...
Probably because the vast majority don't even know what Net Neutrality is, let alone that this conference took place, let alone further that such words were spoken at it.
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
Seriously - the schmucks who blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City back in 1995 were riding the same vapors.
How about you