Net Neutrality to Win Big on Capitol Hill?

The New York Times has weighed in again on Net Neutrality, this time with a hopeful message of change in the near future due to the shift of power in the House and Senate. The opinion piece takes a look at Ron Wyden in the Senate and Edward Markey in the House who have both promised to lead the charge to pass a net neutrality bill in the coming months. Lessig, on the other hand, has a somewhat more cynical view of the new Congress.

We really should start thinking of the 'net...

[PurifyYourMind]

...as less a commercial/military enterprise and more as a public utility that everyone should have a right to access, just like water or electricity.

Nobody knows/cares

[packeteer]

It is sad but true that most people dont even know what net nuetrality is or they dont care if they do know. There are a ton of people that all they know is that there are gays out there, somewhere, in some city, and they dont like them getting married. This is a topic that will effect MANY people who are mostly oblivious to the topic.

There is a lot of money AGAINT net nuetrality and not enough for it. On an issue that the average person doesn't care about few senator's are going to give up their potential re-election money just for a few informed techies. I am pessemistic about this like Lawrence Lessig, very fews things change in congress.

Vital to net existance

[Warbringer87]

2 tiers is a step backward, not a step forward. Internet companies didn't create this content, in fact the content is the reason people pay them, to be able to access it. If you couldn't access the net for the stuff that you want, why bother with it? Companies that do this run the risk of users migrating to companies that don't, but not everyone has an alternative(ie, the whole wikipedia/qatar thing recently)

From TFA

The cable and telephone companies have fought net neutrality with a lavishly financed and misleading lobbying campaign

A good reminder that every politician is in someone's pocket, regardless of political affiliation.

Re:I see little change coming

[BCW2]

That goes with what I've said for years: party doesn't matter when they are all bought and paid for. There isn't one 2 term Democrat that is any cleaner than any 2 term Republican. In the first term a minority of politicians think they can actually change things, by the end of their second term, they know better. The system is so bad that it corrupts everyone sooner or later. Every now and then someone stays straight but is ignored by the media and their peers and dissapears into the corner of irrelevance.

That's because of signing statements

[BitterAndDrunk]

He doesn't have to veto, as he uses signing statements as a pseudo-line-item veto.

More signing statements in history than any other president, including gems such as (paraphrased) "I'm signing this bill into law but I don't like it so it won't be enforced"

I'm probably way off on grammar as the statement shouldn't be in quotes as it's not exact. . . but the gist is there.

Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored.

[Kadin2048]

I would thoroughly support a Constitutional amendment that did something like this for the Federal legislature; there's no reason those people need to be sitting in the same room together more than once about every five years or so. Maybe ten. At least then, by the time they got around to making laws, they'd have a nice thick stack of citizen complaints to work though and problems to solve. The real problems always seem to occur when you have politicians looking for things to do, to make themselves look useful.

It's ironic that although the Founders of this country realized the dangers that having a standing Army presented, they evidently never realized those posed by a sitting Legislature.

Re:We really should start thinking of the 'net...

[paranode]

And the phone and cable companies too? Like how the government essentially creates monopolies through subsidies and then 20-30 years later decides that the monopolies are bad and to disband them to create actual capitalistic competition again? Keep the government away, please.

Re:I see little change coming

[drinkypoo]

The system is so bad that it corrupts everyone sooner or later. Every now and then someone stays straight but is ignored by the media and their peers and dissapears into the corner of irrelevance.

Welcome to the kleptocracy. This is of course what many of us have been saying all along. It's impossible to fight the system from within because - gasp - you're PART of the damned thing. You have to fight it from without.

What does that actually mean? It means making yourself as independent from all things government-regulated as possible. Carry out all of the exchange of work you can by barter instead of through cash - that's a great example. Work as little as possible! That way you pay the minimum amount of taxes. Run your vehicle on waste vegetable oil or biodiesel produced from same. Roast your own coffee. Hire mexicans out of the parking lot at home depot whenever you can.

This is the biggest single threat to the system because the system depends on bleeding you dry for the benefit of the rich. The vast majority of U.S. military actions have been to secure financial interests, starting with sending ships down to south america to bombard towns with cannon fire to force them to continue to sell fruit to the United Fruit Company. I won't even go into the whole middle east issue.

The only way to fight the system is to make it irrelevant.

Why Net Neutrality will remain.

[the Gray Mouser]

All that is required for Net Neutrality to remain is for Congress to do nothing.

They are remarkably good at that, especially with the divided government we have now: remember, it takes 60 senators to pass legislation, and the dems only have 51.

Re:We really should start thinking of the 'net...

[drinkypoo]

Well this is now off-topic but there are private highways near where I live and they are better-maintained and if you added up how much of your income/state/sales/fuel taxes go to roads and such you might be shocked at your return on investment.

The problem, of course, is graft. I live in California which seems to have the worst roads in the nation. This is especially pathetic because most of California doesn't have the extreme weather problems that account for road problems in much of the rest of the US. Furthermore, I live in Lake County which has the worst roads I have ever seen anywhere. There are residential streets on a grid in Clearlake (city of) that are unpaved, ungraveled, and have potholes large enough to lose a small vehicle in. Main street in Lakeport, which really is the main street, has actually gotten MORE lumpy each time I've seen them surface it - which has been about four times in the last twenty years.

I don't think the answer is to privatize. I think the answer is more transparency and citizen oversight. Citizen oversight works - but first you have to be able to institute it. Santa Cruz, for example, has long has a citizen's police review board, but here in Lake county there's just no fucking way it could ever happen and if it did, it wouldn't be effective. I've personally been arrested for vandalism in Lakeport by a cop who was later cited for statutory rape - he was demoted slightly, but not canned, and this is hardly the first time he's been caught being naughty. Mind you, I wasn't vandalising anything. He was just a power-abusing asshole.

As citizens we must demand transparency and oversight. Everything else is just jerking off because let's face it, there's no real difference between democrats and republicans. They're both populists.

Still not a fan of the idea

[91degrees]

Net Neutrality is a solution to a hypothetical problem that could exist. Not one that does exist. And it's not even the right solution to it. The right solution is to increase competition. On the other hand, any legislation will risk unintended consequences.

I am never going to approve of stopping people from doing what we want them to do just to stop them from doing what they're not going to do.

Russ Feingold

[Chris Burke]

That's who I thought of when I read your last sentence. The only Senator who stood up and said "Hey guys, maybe we should, you know, read this so-called USAPATRIOT Act before voting on it?" Of course he was ignored. He has gotten involved with various committees and bills, like McCain's campaign finance reform bill, but yeah, a single Senator can't really change much.

Re:I see little change coming

[morgan_greywolf]

The only way to fight the system is to make it irrelevant.

If I were you, I'd quit making sense. You don't want to know what happens to people who make sense and actually get people to listen to them. ;)

Re:I see little change coming

[BCW2]

There is another way. Starting at the local level only elect people to office that have done real work. Doctors, nurses, teachers, contractors, anyone who has actually had to pay bills with what they earn. No more Ted Kennedys who have never had a real job in their life. No professional politicians of any kind at any level. The intent of the Consitution was to have a CITIZEN legislature that went to Washington, got the job done and returned home to the jobs that allowed them to survive. We were not supposed to have a permanent ruling class. Start at the state level, get the legislature to pass a Constitutional ammendment that makes the pay for members of the House & Senate the median wage of the country. It only takes 37 states to make the change no matter what the clowns in DC say about it.

Re:Still not a fan of the idea

[hey!]

Actually, you've got it backwards. Net neutrality is the "state of nature" for Internet services. Non-net neutrality is the hypothetical solution. The problem is imposing your choices on users so you can lock them into your proprietary services.

If you want to see how a non-neutral net works, look no further than your cell phone. Chances are it has a camera, and for many users the camera can only be used with your network provider's lame "picture mail" service. You may even access your own email service from your phone, but it still doesn't matter. You have to use their picture mail service to ship the picture to your regular email, then use your regular email to forward it to where you want it to go.

Try getting basic information on how to use your phone to give your laptop network access. Sure, it's on the feature bullet list, but if you call tech support to find out how, you'll get an earful of bad attitude. Seriously, I had to go through several levels of technical support to find out the number to dial to access network service, and the guy I got literally screamed at me as soon as the world "Bluetooth" was out of my mouth. Now at the time I worked for a company that resold this vendor's service, so I called a manager we worked with to report a serious breach of professionalism. As soon as he found out what it was about, his attitude was anybody to tried to access Internet services other than his company's was on their own, even though Internet data access was a listed feature of their cell service.

This shows you what the network provider's natural attitude is towards interoperability, when they start to get into the content business. They want to lock you into their inferior proprietary services, and put road blocks up to your accessing the services you want, then grudgingly allow you to use the services you paid for if you can beat the basic information you need out of them.

A non-neutral net is the beginning of the end of competition in Internet content services. It will soon become like broadcast radio: a wasteland of redundant "formats".

Good luck.

[/dev/trash]

Pelosi says it'll be a 100 hours of legislation to get the country back on track. What every one forgets is that a) the President can still veto 2) even if the veto is overriden, who will enforce it?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Government is a puppy: Dangerous when bored.

[MillionthMonkey]

No Congressional legislative action or Congressional oversight for ten years? Sounds like a great idea. You could fit two whole presidential terms in there!

If the country were only facing Texas-sized problems, this would be a good idea. Unfortunately our real problems are bigger than the ones they have in Texas.

The real problems always seem to occur when you have politicians looking for things to do, to make themselves look useful.

Look at us right now. We currently have a lot of stuff that needs doing. No politician needs to be looking very far. Just think of all the things we need to get moving on yesterday- federal budget deficits, global warming and environmental issues, water shortages, accelerating economic stratification, trade deficits, housing bubbles, energy crises, a pending transition from an oil-based economy, etc. And what has Congress been up to during this time?

This is what the 109th Congress thought was important:

• Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act [vote-smart.org]
• Randy Cunningham's Flag Desecration Resolution [vote-smart.org] (thanks, Randy!) [wikipedia.org]
• Public Expression of Religion Act of 2006 [vote-smart.org]
• Pledge Protection Act of 2006 [vote-smart.org]
• The CheeseBurger Bill [vote-smart.org]
• Terri Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Protection Bill [vote-smart.org]
• Independent Review of OSHA Act of 2005 [vote-smart.org]

And that's not even counting their legislation that actually addresses real problems but incompetently, like the Medicare prescription drug bill. The problem isn't that we have a Congress in session; it's that we elect Congresses that like to pander to us on stupid issues while Rome burns.

But the 109th Congress shares your opinion that the 110th Congress is best tied up. So they closed their doors after the election without doing their mandated job of closing out their own spending bills. They left behind a half-trillion dollar mess of budget bills so that the next Congress will have to waste time unraveling all of it. Good work if you can get it.

Re:Balance of power

[24-bit Voxel]

I think the problem with idiots such as yourself is that you never seem to realize that both sides are screwing you equally. The GP makes a general statement about politics and you turn around like the retard you are and make it an us vs. them partisan debate.

The best part is that idiots such as yourself always seem to point at the other side as to why things don't get done, regardless of who controls the government at any given time.

And to make matters even worse you wasted a mod point on your real account modding up an AC comment. A real winner you are sir!

Stay out of politics, you don't have the head for it. Stick to things you have the brain for, like Jenga or American Idol.

Re:Balance of power

[dgatwood]

Prioritizing traffic can be a good thing when properly applied. For example, VoIP services work much better when there is a guarantee that the packet will make it to its destination in a specified period of time. (A bit like how RTOSes guarantee a time slice to a program.) The only reason why we have a problem is because some telco exec got the bright idea of selling this prioritization service in a general-purpose fashion. (Thus negating the purpose of such a service. Genius, pure genius.) They then tried to ram it through as part of Senator Steven's Internet Consumer Right Bill thingymatube

Net neutrality legislation isn't fighting against prioritization of service types (e.g. VoIP versus HTTP). here is not and should not be any legislation preventing giving VoIP traffic priority over bulk traffic. Similarly, net neutrality is not fighting against the notion of tiered service classes (e.g. someone paying more for 3Mbps than for 1.5Mbps).

No, the reason we have a problem is that the telco execs got the bright idea to try to extort money out of content-providers (who are not their customers) under threat of degraded performance when their content is downloaded by the telco's customers. The goal of net neutrality legislation is to prevent prioritization of services in an unequal way depending on which non-customer entity is sending/receiving it.

For example, Skype might pays protection money to Comcast, so their VoIP traffic gets priority, while Vonage doesn't pay them protection money, so their traffic gets prioritized somewhere just below bittorrent downloads. Since neither Skype nor Vonage are customers of Comcast, that sort of behavior would be highly inappropriate, and the people who would inevitably lose in this example would be Comcast's customers. Worse, since most parts of the country are only served by one or two high speed internet providers (and satellite internet is not particularly viable due to extreme latency), many of those customers could not reasonably avoid such harm. That is the scenario that net neutrality legislation is trying to prevent.