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Net Neutrality Act On the Agenda Again
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 30, 2007 08:27 PM
from the end-to-end-tubes dept.
from the end-to-end-tubes dept.
blue234 writes "On January 9th, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and Democrat Byron Dorgan reintroduced the bill popularly known as the Net Neutrality Act, and officially called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill was killed in the Senate last year in a vote split along party lines (Democrats yea, Republicans no), with the exception of Senator Snowe, who voted with the Democrats. Now that the Democrats have a slight majority in the Senate, the bill certainly has a better chance, but it still needs 60 votes to prevent a Republican filibuster.
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Wait and see, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait and see, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd hope it would be possible, but it would certainly have to be carefully worded. However, and I'm sure this may put me in the minority here, but I don't think any Network Neutrality laws should be passed at this time. Any type of such regulations will add to costs (if nothing else than from an administrative/legal perspective) and of course those costs will be passed on to
Re:Wait and see, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say allowing the cable companies to charge people for delivery of content would halt it entirely- there'd be no more small innovations, you would have to be a big player to have a website, period. Nothing new would be possible from the average person- only from the large corporations.
Parent
You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a lot more faith in the invisible hand
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
You are trusting that your cable IP service won't also have tiered access. Of course, both cable and telephone companies currently provide tiered services (DSL, DSL-Lite, voicemail, premium channels, VOIP, etc) why wouldn't they charge for access to third-party media providers.
It takes more than two sources of broadband to create a free market.
Parent
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:4, Informative)
Here [dslreports.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is that the major players in any given market often collude with each other on one level or another for their own mutual benefit and the government goes along with it. In fact, governmental int
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:5, Interesting)
In the real world, the free market is gummed up by many things, such as collusion, friction, well-meaning government interference, and bribery-motivated government interference. What is truly remarkable is how well it works in spite of such problems.
Parent
QUOTE OF THE DAY (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, I'm going to have to remember that one.
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You chose force, I choose the free market (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and when a scientific theory doesn't match experiment, it's not the theory that's failed, it's the universe's fault.
Look, what use is a theory if it doesn't match the real world? Free market capitalism's desirable results come from specific predictions about how consumers behave. And if those predictions doesn't match up with how consumers really behave, then the theory has little or no use. A good economic theory shouldn't make demands on how we spend out money, it should take that as a given and develop the rest accordingly.
After all, the economy exists to benefit US, not the corporations. Corporations are just a tool that are supposedly designed to maximize useful economic output.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As well as the "entire Internet" will attract customers, you could have 100,000 local customers but if you can't get anyone to peer with you, you basically have a city-wide Intranet.
I'm not saying those would happen or even could happen, but a n
Hello theory, meet reality (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus they are gambling on consumer apathy, as in if Youtube is slow because they're not paying the extortion fee, the customer doesn't know that Youtube is slow because it's de-prioritized, so the consumer just forgets Youtube and moves on. You know what's happening to Youtube but no one wants to hear your
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no free market when it comes to internet access. The cable and DSL companies have their lines and equipment strung all over public and private property which is all made possible through government granted rights-of-way.
There they go again... (Score:2)
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Oh, wait a minute....
As a North Dakotan (Score:2)
Re:As a North Dakotan (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"The prioritization of types of content, applications, or services would be allowed under the condition that it is done free of charge, and that it is done for all types of that particular content. For example, the prioritization of packets to insure Quality of Service for Voice over IP must be done for all VoIP providers free of charge to them."
Now since virtually every telco is also an IP carrier you can kiss skype goodby. Anything that competes with POTS is likely to be degraded to death.
Parent
Re:As a North Dakotan (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it sounds like you're coming from the other side of things - those ISPs who don't have VOIP services are going to send them to the bottom of the stack. Still, I take some comfort in knowing that they're going to have to either screw themselves or help their competitors (or, rather, not abuse their position of power and screw their competitors while helping themselves) whenever there's some new market that they want to enter. I see no reason to be racist towards bits, but then again I think I'd put up with slightly slower pira^H^H^H^H Linux
Parent
Hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Operation Preserve Freedom (Score:5, Funny)
It's funny. In this day and age I hear a bill title like that and I automatically assume it's some tyrannical euphemistic horror-show and that I should immediately call my representatives and insist they opppose it.
Incidentally this bill really is evil, because apparently all consumers and businesses currently use tremendous bandwidth without paying for it! I for one think it's about time the internet service providers were paid a monthly bill for the courtesies they provide!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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It's not gunna happen.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My friend sends me a link to a clip on Google Video.
I go to the link, get my clip and laugh at the money drinkin' its own urine, or whatever.
Google gets a bill from my Internet service provider for bandwidth usage.
Google rips up the bill and tells my ISP to go fuck themselves.
My ISP reduces the available bandwidth to connections to Google's ip range.
Great, so then what happens?
My friend sends me another link to a clip on Google Video.
I go to the link and discover that the clip is too slow (or completely blocked).
I moan to my ISP that I can't play these important movie clips from Google Video.
My ISP tells me that I can't play them because Google hasn't paid their bandwidth charges.
I tell my ISP to go fuck themselves and switch to a provider that honours net neutrality.
Everyone else does this too because we really like Google Video.
And there goes the backhanded stupidity caused by ISPs temporarily forgetting that we, the consumers, control exactly how much money they make.
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Re:It's not gunna happen.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly, if you're so sure that ISPs are price fixing, in clear violation of the law, then why bother supporting a new law? Won't they just break that one too?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
It seems to strange to me that the US has become the land of the monopolies and very few people stand up and declare that it aint right.
Re: (Score:2)
Why should they pay twice?
Not to mention that such an arrangement would freeze
out smaller businesses that cannot afford the
bandwidth pirate fees. And note that the unpredicablity
of such fees will make that especially troublesome
for a small business.
If the ISPs and Telcos cant make ends meet on what
they charge, then there is an easy, direct, non-extortionate
solution to that problem.
Another post in reply to yours has covered the concept
that companies can an
Re: (Score:2)
(why they haven't already attempted to solve the piracy problem this way I have no idea)
Re: (Score:3)
I live in a major city, and have only one option for bandwidth (besides dialup): Comcast. Or somebody else, Earthlink or something, that also goes through Comcast (when I used them, I still had to call Comcast for my tech support). I can't use DSL, my building doesn't support it. Actually, despite living in a number of large urban/suburban areas, I have never yet lived in a single place where I had the option of DSL, or more than one cable network.
I see some variant of your post almost every time net neut
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2 Senators appeal to YouTube community for support (Score:5, Interesting)
Kennedy's video [youtube.com] (3 min, 22 sec)
Dorgan's video [youtube.com] (1 min, 48 sec)
Dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is a dangerous practice. Yes it is a reasonable strategy for a party or special interest group - because if they are persistent enough the bill might just pass. However it is dangerous for the rest of us - since once this bill passes - even if it is merely through insistance and momentum, we are stuck with it. It is much harder to get a law repealed than to get one approved. So we end up with laws that got approved through sheer bloody-mindedness, and are stuck with them because no one dares repeal it. I mean, if it is a law - it must be right, right? People must have agreed with it, right?
Sigh, another pebble is eroded off of the cliff of democracy...
Re:Dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
Under your ideal government, reform would be impossible, since one could only pass things by consensus - and anything that could not pass a few years earlier would be considered bad.
Change happens in a democracy. We vote in new leaders precisely for the reason that we want them to pass the things that the old ones wouldn't.
Parent
Concern (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You want band width, you pay for band width. But don't come telling me my use of the bandwidth I pay for is somehow less important than yours and therefore I can't watch baseball or view youtube so you and your suits can crack wise across the continent.
principally i cant see how anyone could support enforcing a lowest common denominator upon everyone.
How is it that
Be very wary (Score:2, Insightful)
1. All backbone providers must allow other providers to connect to them on a naked pipe
2. All providers must use standard protocols
3. Providers may only throttle data/bandwidth based on protocol, not orgin/destination
I believe anything more is harmful to the free market.
Net Neutrality is the wrong focus, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT is where the free speech comes from: the people. The NN debate seems to be rather focused on the ability to choose between large companies that want to profit through our expression. Even though there may be more options it still represents a consolidation of content. If we want information we must get it from these providers; if we want to share it we must share it through the providers. As a group they become the gatekeepers.
It doesn't have to be this way. If more ISPs would let us use even our measly aDSL uplinks (that we pay for) to legally serve our own content, people would be able to self-publish in all sorts of new ways. Once we can participate directly in the internet without the middleman of some company with servers we'll unleash an amazing amount of potential and innovation.
Software would be created to deal with the technical challenges that would arise, perhaps with legitimate P2P providing interesting solutions to some of these problems. Network-centric computing would get a huge boost too. In any case, that small change in SOP has the potential to really change the way people view and use the Internet.
Network Neutrality proponents love to talk about a level playing field... lets level the playing field between the consumers and the providers as a whole.
mod parent up +1 Insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
After all, America
Re:Why the split? (Score:5, Informative)
Think about it this way. This bill is a proposal to regulate the internet itself. Specifically, to regulate how an ISP and network backbone company can allocate bandwidth.
Republicans: Regulation mostly bad.
Democrats: Regulation mostly good.
Capiche?
Parent
Re:SAVE TEH INTERNETS!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The bill came up after the head of ATT complained
about how "google was using his 'pipes' for free".
And how he wanted to correct that, so that google
was paying him.
Never mind that google paid their ISP, and their
ISP and ATT ( if they are not the same, I presume
not, or he would not have cause to complain
( course, I am stupid, he doesnt have cause to
complain then, but still he did ) ) have either
a peering arrangement or a cash arrangement to
carry each other's traffic ( you know, the
arrangements that make the interconnects between
each telco/isp's networks worth much of anything
in the first place... )
But, yes, the Democrats backed the bill.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is my recollection as well. I also recall that after the bill was proposed, the big cable/telcos started running counter-factual advertisements in TV and newspapers, essentially saying "Google wants to raise your Internet bill! Stop them!" -- which even those who oppose net neutrality ought to agree is not really correct. But this widespread dishonest behavior does suggest that, even if the major bandwidth providers had not yet started the tiered bandwidth charges the bill was meant to prevent, they st