ISPs Blow Off Stanford Net Neutrality Hearing 124
eldavojohn writes "The FCC & Stanford hoped to host an on-campus debate over Net Neutrality and invited AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner to take part. None of them showed up. Unfortunately, only one side of the issue was voiced despite Stanford being home to people opposing Net Neutrality. At the hearing, the FCC Commissioner stated: 'Consumers have come to expect and will continue to demand the open and neutral character that has always been the hallmark of the Internet. The Commission is currently examining several petitions and complaints according to which broadband providers have intentionally and secretly degraded applications in a way that undermines the open and interconnected character of the Internet.'"
Should I stop holding my breath? (Score:5, Interesting)
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> Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner to take part. None of them showed up. Unfortunately,
> only one side of the issue was voiced despite Stanford being home to people opposing Net Neutrality.
In a completely unrelated story, Brown university hoped to host an on-campus debate over the war in Iraq and invited George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleeza Rice to take part. None of them showed up. Unfortu
Re:Should I stop holding my breath? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why not take up onion routing and stop bitching. Perhaps develop another solution if current standards of encryption are not acceptable.
Perhaps a particular method where ALL content from server to client is ONLY available to server and client in question? Perhaps some form of consistent session SSL/TLS type validation?
Consistently switching ports? Perhaps some public gateways being used to setup the
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See, and there you go... (Score:4, Interesting)
About the only right humans have in the so called "society" we live in, is the right to freely contract (read, associate and exchange value and come to agreements with others). Everything from sales, purchases, to marrying someone or letting a rapist have his way with you, it is ALL contracts. Accords, agreements, even when you surrender to a bad guy, you've agreed to let him have his way. All things boil down to that. So enforce your contract. You bought 5 megs down 1 meg up, unrestricted internet access. Period. Enforce it. Take them up for violation of contract, there are remarkable collections processes available. Hell, a smart and asshole type individual willing to take it far enough, and with a stomach for leaving lots of people unemployed (whom I'd actually wager DESERVE it) could end up owning Cox@home
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You're not a lawyer are you? There are literally hundreds of laws limiting the freedoms that you claim. For example you can't sell Brooklyn Bridge, purchase a slave, marry your sister, and have sex while queuing at L
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- If you own the Brooklyn Bridge, you can sell it as your own personal property. (Same way Trump buys and sells whole freakin' skyscrapers.)
- Some states allow polygamy. Some states allow incest.
- You can buy a slave, as long as the slave is agreeable to the arrangement. Only INvoluntary servitude is illegal. Voluntary servitude is still allowed (think indentured servants).
- You can have sex in an airport. You'll get arrested, but you can still do it. (As a si
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How is that going to help anyone if Comcast decides to only allow users to connect to their "partner" websites? Sure, I can switch to AT&T here, I'm sure THEY won't follow-the-leader (Prediction: Comcast will partner with yahoo, ATT with alta vista). We've already heard what Bell Canada is doing to all of the independent ISPs who thought the solution to shitty internet providers was to make their own ISPs... you've got to hook to "the internet" somewhere, goo
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Sounds like hyperbole, but I'll tell you this much: there'll be rioting in the streets long before that happens -- and I'll be one of the ones with the hand grenades.
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Sounds like hyperbole, but I'll tell you this much: there'll be rioting in the streets long before that happens -- and I'll be one of the ones with the hand grenades.
Hah! Isn't that the very thing that was said about DRM? DRM didn't see massive consumer protests, but instead was killed off as the costs of keeping up with those cracking DRM became untenable. With Internet, though, the situation is different. Unlike the entertainment industry, the ISPs are usually in a monopoly or duopoly market, and aren't subject to the same market forces as the music and movie industries. Without competition, the ISPs' will always be able to hang a sword of Damocles over the cont
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Hey, if you're so confident that you can work around these inane restrictions, why don't you go ahead and do it?
There's a reason that the power of the ISPs hasn't been broken yet. Its because designing a fast, efficient network in the face of an adversary that is altering the topology of the links specifically to defeat you is hard.
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There are other ways, they're more expensive, but they're worth it. All free market ideas too. Most people are willing
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Sure, but who's going to foot the bill for that? The problem with utopian/anarchistic ideas: it works only so long as it's small. Once it gets big, then someone takes advantage of it. Not happening, slick.
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The only solution that avoids the "waaaah mommy! make the companies not fuck up the internet!" route is to create a whole new internet from scratch, planet-wide, and make it appear instantaneously with absolutely no infrastructure expense that someone will decide they absolutely must have 500000% return on. Then hope that the people in charge might not get greedy and ruin it for everyone else again.
good idea, we'll just go back to Fidonet [wikipedia.org] or even UUCP [wikipedia.org] like in the old days.
Re:Should I stop holding my breath? (Score:5, Insightful)
Legislation on issues such as this would only allow for one more possible point of corruption for the big interests who want to break the rules. I'm not sure which government has jurisdiction over 'the internet' anyway. Does it only apply to your customers if you're an american company? Or only your customers? Are your customers anyone who pays you money, or anyone that does business with anyone who pays you money? What if they're outside the US? What exactly are they going to regulate anyway... traffic between any two hosts? Traffic on a particular network? Is that network considered to be of a subnet as defined by an IP Mask? Perhaps of an ownership block? Maybe it's a trail of routes. Even if we are unfortunate enough to have the government step in and force people to act more communist, the law has to be enforcible and there has to be a method of clearly showing tort anyway in court. It also has to appear in a court of appropriate jurisdiction. That last bit might be the hardest part of the whole idea to swallow.
For Net-Neutrality to have some kind of effect, you have to show that some party violated some rule, and that some body of enforcement has jurisdiction over the issue. If you can't answer every one of these questions about every incident then you can just only point and cry foul every time someone snuffs a packet out. As if our legal system wasn't muddy enough already. Next thing you know it'll be illegal to have personal and corporate firewalls.
Re:Should I stop holding my breath? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is, I understand, how common carrier status works. AFAICT, the telecoms are trying to have their cake and eat it too, by inspecting and interfering but maintaining immunity.
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Even government owned roads have restrictions on the types of vehicles that can ride on them. Let's not even mention those that can only be traveled with a certain number of pass
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so, then, what's the incentive to own the wire then if you cannot use it for your own purposes?
You do use it for your own purposes. Specifically, it pays your bills because you are able to lease the use of that wire for significantly more than it cost to lay and the occasional engineer out if it gets broken. This is how the "traditional" (pre-Net Neutrality) ISP business model works.
The big question is: Now that the technology exists to prioritise traffic along that wire according to any one of a hundred different metrics, is it significantly better for society if legislation is passed to make suc
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I agree that it is entirely possible for a Net Neutrality law to go too far. However, under the status quo, Comcast can kill your packets without rhyme or reason, and, because of their monopoly status in many areas, leave you with no other connectivity options. Surely you're not advocating giving Comcast complete control over our data?
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People might be tempted to say that we should then have the government take over and do it all, but even in cases where the government does take over, you still have traffic laws (see roads, vehicle restrictions, tolls, and HOV lanes.)
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You imply that there was wholly private investment in 'Net infrastructure to begin with. In practice, companies like Comcast and Qwest have always wheedled the government for subsidies to pay for their network upgrades.
The entire debate over network neutrality stems from the fact that we (as a society) can't decide if communications lines should be treated as a common good (like roads or sewers) or as private property. My opinion on this is quite clear. Communications lines ought to be considered as pub
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We are asking the regulator - whose job is to, you know, regulate - to step in and make a ruling - is this kind of packet inspection and interference desirable in the backbone? If they rule it is legal at least then
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Flamebait? Parent makes good points. (Score:2)
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What excellent points? The grandparent conveniently ignores the fact that, for many people, Comcast is their only option for high-speed internet access. All the encryption and routing tricks in the world won't help these people if Comcast simply refuses to transfer packets going to certain destinations.
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Too slow with untrustworthy exit points...wait didn't I read this before somewhere? Damn broken records...
What cave have you been hiding in anyway? Encrypted traffic gets heavily throttl
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You whine and whine about contracts, but only contracts that benefit you and support your ideology. Never mind that we had contracts with the telco providers. We gave
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No, YOU did... I didn't... what is this "we" you keep talking about. You are you, and I am me. There is no WE in this endeavor. I do not consent to be part of your posse.
contracts
Silly boy, only men and women, flesh and blood, can contract. Paper tigers cannot. Be they public or private.
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Look, I'm all for self reliance and responsibility. But we are not islands. Everything we do effects others, and everything we are we learned from others.
People join together into societies for a reason. Because we are weak, because the world is uncertain, and there is nothing we can do that will provide perfect protection. There is no training available that will prevent all rapes
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If you spent time studying groups and packs, you'll notice there is a REASON the special forces work in small groups, never bigger than 12 (a teams) or 11 (b teams)... why is that I wonder? Huge societies are bullshit. They are simply a way of turning the stronger and fierce packs into livestock for a privileged few to milk. Frankly, judging by the eagerness of the majority to be milk
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I've decided. I'm going to stop being a dick to individualist anarchists [wikipedia.org] just because I'm a social anarchist [wikipedia.org]. You individualist anarchists always take me for a statist tool just because I think a cooperative society provides a vital defense against tyranny that pure individualism lacks.
I partially agree with your analysis of group behavior, the natural small group size is 8-15. But the natural large group size is 80-150. And people can be taught to extrapolate to mu
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I'm curious, how will 30000 peace loving, unarmed, untrained, unskilled hippies fight against a batallion of any nation's marines, backed up with artillery and air support? Wow, all of a sudden you're even worse off than the individualists.
Snickers bars as mediums of exch
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Food at Rainbow is paid for by people like me, who choose to donate our time, money, and effort to make it a fun party for everyone else. But the secret is that the real party is for those who plug in and help. The more you give, the more you get from the experience. In a purely selfish sense, that is.
Your claim of being worse off than you individualists in the face of artillery and air support is lau
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You and I are in agreement here. On all points. A party is a damn fine thing to have, and have as often as pos
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I would think that the ISP's would be on their best behavior until after the elections.
Check ComCast, /. has done a number of items about them throttling P2P applications.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
And then laugh maniacally as Comcast cries.
And then laugh maniacally as Comcast cries. (Score:2)
I'd like to see that, however I think ComCast would trot out it's lawyers and lobbyists.
FalconRe:Should I stop holding my breath? (Score:4, Funny)
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FCC claims authority over internet (Score:3, Informative)
They don't claim light, but I guess fiber optic cables would loosely fall under "cable". Nor do they claim authority over intrastate traffic.
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What amuses me here is the BBB 'thinks' my issue with Comcast has a positive resolution when in reality it hasn't made ANY progress.
And they refuse to change the case to unresolved.
The BBB is a waste of time. In the future I'll deal with the city directly when working on issues with a company.
Oh and it seems Qwest will be rolling out fibe
they have other plans (Score:5, Insightful)
FTC and the definition of "Internet Access" (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar to:
"USDA Organic"
Or
"This product has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
Yes, if it's to be regulated it's an F*T*C job. (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that the issue is a proper job for the FTC, not the FCC.
Network neutrality can mean "Treat all packets the same." Or it can mean "Don't favor one player's packets over anothers'."
There are valid, pro-consumer reasons to give some packets different treatment than others. One of the biggest: Streams and file transfers have very different requirements for good service. Optimizing routing for one
who regulates ISPs? (Score:2)
I agree that the issue is a proper job for the FTC, not the FCC.
Why the FTC and not FCC? Afterall they are the Federal "Trade" Commission and the Federal "Communications" Commission. While trade takes place on the net, the net is all about communications.
So the real issues of "Network Neutrality" is anticompetitive and rent-seeking
It already is anticompetitive. Forgetting the fact that telcoms and cablecos already got hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to upgrade their networks, but didn't
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There are valid, pro-consumer reasons to give some packets different treatment than others.
How true. Unfortunately(?) this can be interpreted so that AnInternetVideoRental is given priority over everybody else as the ISP has made a good deal with them: customers of said ISP get faster and cheaper video rentals.
Good for the ISP and the video rental? Yes. Good for vast majority of customers? Yes. But bad for net neutrality and a very small (but loud) minority of the customers. And bad for other video rentals.
Perhaps better example is state IPTV (think BBC). Giving it guaranteed bandwidth would be
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--Robb Topolski
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web only access / internet accesss. what the heck did you expect? web access is internet access. do you even pretend to know what you are talking about?
labels dont do crap. And they wont help the consumer. sorry. Look at labels for harddrives; they dont tell you much at all.. whats a gig these days?
george carlin said it best; labels are just things schmu
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There were wireless internet providers that only allowed you to access the Web via a browser instead of the whole internet. Meaning you could not have email except in a web browser, or ssh, or, your favorite, eMule.
They said they provided "Internet access" when really, it was only WWW access. Understand now?
I do believe that many carriers will find it quite inconvenient if they can not label themselves as an ISP or providing Internet access, and
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You are all of you insane (Score:1, Funny)
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Government granted monopolies (Score:3, Insightful)
There possibly, might be *one* alternative, but it's complicated and gene
Re:Government granted monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
the government *could* bid out such monopolies to companies based on who guarantees the best service/price ratio.
Or government could separate ownership of infrastructure from ownership of those who provide services the infrastructure can provide and require the owner to allow open access.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Option 2 can't work (Score:2)
That might help *some* of the issues (specifically, net neutrality, because I could maybe pick an Internet 'gateway' provider who uses routing policies I like), but it still doesn't solve the problem that, fundamentally, someone still has a monopoly on the last mile. I've used a DSL ISP that had to depend on the local incumbent telc
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That might help *some* of the issues (specifically, net neutrality, because I could maybe pick an Internet 'gateway' provider who uses routing policies I like), but it still doesn't solve the problem that, fundamentally, someone still has a monopoly on the last mile. I've used a DSL ISP that had to depend on the local incumbent telco for the actual physical regional network, and you know what? While I loved that ISP, they couldn't survive. And you know why? Because customers who used the local incumbent pay
Guess I should clarify (Score:2)
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The government's sole responsibility is to collect money from you as taxes.
And to spend them on $449 toilet seats and $1 trillion on a war only 28% of people approve.
without government regulation (Score:1)
Well, why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they don't show up . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Couple of comments to that effect from the head of the FCC, and I'll betcha they'll all be at the next conference.
Re:If they don't show up . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . they obviously don't believe that pretty little college debates are going to have anything to do with the outcome, and don't think the FCC chief is going to have much more. There's a pretty good chance they're right.
If they actually had a valid position... (Score:3, Insightful)
Memories? (Score:3, Interesting)
Open and Neutral Character (Score:1)
win by default (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:win by default (Score:5, Insightful)
If that happened, they would likely sue blah blah blah unfair hearing etcetera. I don't think I have to spell out what would happen if the FCC gave "they didn't show up to a debate at a college" as their reason.
That said, I expect that Stanford was going to have a properly moderated and timed debate on the issue. That's about as fair of a discussion on the subject as you can get, and that's exactly why the ISPs did not show up. Fairness is neither in their favor nor their business practices.
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Hollow victory (Score:1)
Too bad that while advocates of net neutrality were here making their case, the rest of the fight was being lost as the ISP's went about putting in more and more subtle things that were making net neutrality an old vision.
net neutrallity is the most important thing ever! (Score:1, Interesting)
And meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
Add your voice (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/04/21/sen-kerry-i-need-your-feedback-on-net-neutrality/ [savetheinternet.com]
https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?alertId=103&pg=makeACall [freepress.net]
Leave the net (un)regulated as our private life (Score:1)
It shall be better (un)regulated like our private life.
Not until the net is matured enough, and let all the things happened, and fully understand all people's response to these, regulation should be introduced.
Do not play god.
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Gee (Score:5, Interesting)
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Who? (Score:2)
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
last-mile ISPs suck (Score:2)
Then maybe we could have had some industry insights from major Internet backbone companies who aren't monopoly scum saying sensible things instead of whatever lawyer-hobbled stuff an at&t rep would have been able to say.
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Telecoms to consumers: We don't care (Score:2)
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Comcast & the P2P blocking side effects (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in late '06 and early to mid '07, I would use P2P to download some music very sparingly. It always worked and would complete in a matter of minutes/hours with no side effects. I remember first seeing news of the Comcast P2P blocking in the Summer of '07, but it never affected me when I would use Bittorrent. However, one day in September of '07, a couple friends of mine were over and one of them wanted to watch a show. He logged into a torrent tracker that he's a member of and we started downloading a couple episodes. One finished, but the other one froze and would not transfer at all. Actually, at this point my entire Internet connection was dead and I couldn't even browse websites! After about 30 minutes, the Internet connection returned... mostly. I could do most things on the Internet, but strangely enough my Vonage VoIP phone line was dead. If I tried starting a Bittorrent download, the entire Internet connection would die again for about 30 minutes. If I rebooted the Vonage router (gateway router for our home network), the Internet connection would remain dead for 30 minutes then come back, but the Vonage line stayed dead.
Of course, a call to Comcast's tech support line was not helpful at all. They denied that it was due to P2P blocking and sent me on my merry way. At this point I didn't have enough evidence to argue to the contrary, so I tried troubleshooting it with Vonage.
Since the Internet connection was working again and only the Vonage line had problems, I guessed that the Vonage router had somehow been damaged. Vonage tech support logged into the router, could communicate with it, but it just wasn't able to connect to their servers to establish a VoIP phone line connection. I ended up sending them the router back and got a replacement, which worked and gave me VoIP connectivity again immediately.
Fast forward to November. I try another P2P download and sure enough, the Internet connection dies again! Same thing... 30 minutes later, everything returns except for my VoIP line. Now, I'm pissed because I know it's Comcast. What if I needed to dial 911? As a side effect of their P2P blocking, they blocked my ability to dial anybody, including 911, from my home phone. 3 days later, the VoIP line inexplicably returns.
I'm a network engineer by day, grad student and dad by evening/night. I would have hooked up another PC with sniffing software on it to further troubleshoot the problem but I simply didn't have time to do so. With the information I have, it is obvious that Comcast was doing something to my Internet connection. It is highly unlikely that the Vonage routers were the problem. Let's review the facts:
- Router #1 worked for a year with P2P downloads.
- Then Comcast hits the news sites about blocking P2P.
- Then I try P2P download, my connection gets screwy and my Vonage phone line dies for a week.
- Two months later I try another P2P download with a different, newly shipped Vonage router and the exact same thing happens!
A month or so later, I read that Comcast was backing off on their P2P blocking a bit so I try another download. Finally, it's back to normal like in '06 and early '07; the download worked and there were no side effects. However, the whole experience of not having a usable home phone line for a total of 1.5 weeks left me quite bitter and I switched ISPs to Verizon Fios the week that it became available here. When the FCC had that comments page up for the Comcast P2P blocking investigation, I posted my story on there as well. From what I under
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And if your power goes out, do you still have phone? For how long?
I say (Score:2)
If done collectively, this would mean that customers will switch away from that ISP.. and creating that tool should not take more than few lines of code.
of course this would hurt initially to the owners of website (depending on the kind of website) but should benefit in longer term
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Last weekend... (Score:1)
Never mind...
At least (Score:2)
Nice spin on the story... (Score:2, Interesting)
No ISPs there? Really? I must have hallucinated. (Score:2)