Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push 200
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Soulskill
from the not-so-usual-suspects dept.
from the not-so-usual-suspects dept.
uuddlrlrab writes "A group of 72 Democratic lawmakers is the latest to question the US Federal Communications Commission's move to create new net neutrality regulations. Democrats, including US President Barack Obama, have generally supported new rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content, but the group of 72 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks. A coalition of minority groups made their objections known as well, saying, 'We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind.' This follows news from earlier in the week that similar letters were sent by a group of 44 tech companies and a group of 18 Republican senators."
It's worth noting that the FCC is receiving letters in support of the net neutrality regulations as well. One such is from a group of internet pioneers, which includes Vint Cerf and Stephen Crocker.
Headline != article (Score:3, Interesting)
"Democrats, Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push"
Except that's not true. The second sentence says that Democrats, including the President, generally support Net Neutrality. Also, the phrase "minority groups" is misleading because it is generally referred to groups of traditionally underrepresented peoples.
It's the equivalent of writing:
Slashdot supports Microsoft Windows 7 over Linux.
One of the people who works for Slashdot uses Windows 7 at home. Here is his story.
Re:Uh.... -1 Nitpicking and Wrong? (Score:1, Interesting)
So what you're saying is, the headline ought to read, "72 Senate Democrats and a Coalition of Minority Groups Question Net Neutrality Push?"
I mean, any time you refer to "the Democrats" or "minority groups" you are referring to a fictitious whole, sure. But democrats (plural) did question the push, and the minority groups in the article are in fact groups that claim to represent traditionally underrepresented peoples... groups with names like "Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership," "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)," and "Asian American Justice Center."
So... yeah. I'm grumpy on Saturday mornings, too, but geeze.
Well, if you are going to pick nits, you should at least realize these are 72 HOUSE Democrats. Not even in Howard Dean's wettest dreams are there 72 Democrats in the Senta.
Re:Government parties against neutrality (Score:5, Interesting)
The article and letter could use about 15 [citation needed] tags. I can't seem to find anything to back up the "could slow investments in broadband and slow minorities' access to telemedicine, distance learning and other services" either.
It's all speculation propagated by the AT&T Artificial Turf(TM) fanclub. The argument is that network neutrality will make the Internet "more expensive" to poor people because there won't be any discounts for the people who "want" all of their Internet traffic other than the ISP's walled garden to be degraded into the abyss.
The argument ignores the fact that the absence of network neutrality in the presence of a monopoly/duopoly landscape will only result in higher prices for the people who want the "no DPI" option (if it's available at all) rather than any sort of lower prices for anybody else.
My letter to my congressmen. (Score:2, Interesting)
Time to get off our collective butts. Emails, Letters, and phone calls! Keep it short, sweet, clean, well reasoned, and SIMPLE. Remember their attention span isn't all that long. Here's my letter I just fired off to my senators and congressman.
Senator/Congress(man/woman) --------,
Please support net-neutrality.
When Cisco and cable/phone companies say "innovation" it is not my idea of innovation. Cisco means rather than competing with cheap, commodity hardware they can sell expensive traffic shaping hardware. The cable/phone companies mean rather than expanding their networks, they can reap more profit from the existing network. That may be an innovative way of generating profit, but it's not bringing innovative technology and services to the consumer.
Net-neutrality will protect truly innovative startup businesses like NetFlicks and Vonage from unfair and anti-competitive tatics by the cable/phone companies. Please support net-neutrality.
Sincerely,
----------
Re:slow down investment in broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
I read that as 'if we cant control content distribution and restrict our competition, and screw our own customers out of more money, we don't want any part of it'.
That's one way to read it. The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks. Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?
Re:Oh please (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apt analogy using telcos (Score:5, Interesting)
"Should calls to the emergency call center be of the same priority as calls from telemarketers?"
Under the current proposals all ports and message types have to be treated at the same priority, so DoS attack would have the same priority as E-mail.
Re:Net Neutrality must be forced on companies (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, business shouldn't rightfully have anything to do with the Internet at all.
I remember the net before business came here. I also remember that when business came, government came after it. Then came spam.
The corporate world destroys everything it touches, one way or another. The profit motive leads ultimately to nothing but corruption and death.
It cannot be allowed to dictate the Internet. It's bad enough that the fucking suits exist; there must be some places where their rule is not recognised.
Re:How will this slow down investment in BB networ (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And now a word from our sponsors (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apt analogy using telcos (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not correct. HR3458 [govtrack.us] does not propose ANY specific regulations. It authorizes the FCC to create regulations and specifies a set of guiding principles for those regulations.
Further, it says that ISPs have the duty to:
Emphasis mine. DOS attacks are presumptively not lawful until proven otherwise.
Finally, it leaves a specific exemption for any reasonable QoS.
Again, emphasis mine. You can pretty much skip everything not in bold and you'll get the gist of the paragraph.
In other words, injecting TCP resets into BitTorrent traffic: banned; throttling bandwidth of excessive users only during periods of heavy load on the network and only to the extent necessary to give reasonable bandwidth to people just browsing the web casually: allowed. For once, the government got the regulation almost exactly right.
Re:For Certain Crazy Values of The Fairness Doctri (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me hit all of your points, as you completely missed the mark.
First, yes, we all know that the original fairness doctrine applied to broadcasters. Considering that distributing content via the internet didn't even exist when it was in place, that's completely rational. What ISN'T rational is the belief that, if TFD were to be reinstated, that the internet would be ignored. The point that I was making is that, since there is a push among Democrats to reinstate TFD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine#Reinstatement_considered), it's likely that they are also thinking about the Internet as well.
As far as parsing between "broadcast medium" and the internet, the model is outmoded. Previously, differentiating between "broadcast" and "private" made sense regarding the radio spectrum. But now there's this medium that the FCC has _some_ control over, that isn't exactly like broadcasting and isn't like a private phone call, either. So we've started using a new model - content provider vs. service provider. In that sense, a new Fairness Doctrine\ne would apply to content providers, would it not?
Regarding my comparison, I'd compliment the straw man you set up, but for its idiocy. What do their radio shows have to do with internet traffic? If you thought I was just mistaken and talking about radio, I'd have thought my use of the words "throttle", "traffic", and "website" would have set you straight. But that's OK - I'll just use Alexa numbers instead.
rushlimbaugh.com - Rank: 5,710, Category: Arts > Radio
PRI.org - Rank: 166,719, Category: Arts > Radio
Yep - PRI is just crushing Rush on the web. But that's unfair, because PRI is a news service, and Rush is opinion. Alright, lets look at Pacifica Radio, which is unabashedly liberal.
pacifica.org - Rank: 1,647,109. Really putting teh beat down on Limbaugh, aren't they?
As for your last comment, it really gets down to the heart of it. In your dismissive recital of what we "all" think, you reveal how shallow your understanding really is. The ENTIRE reason Democrats have been pushing the return of TFD is the utter dominance of conservative talk radio. See the Wikipedia article I cited - it has quotes. Those quotes show that the goal is to get rid of conservative talk radio. How? By forcing broadcasters - aka content providers - to carry liberal shows as well. Which sucks in the ratings. So they're much more likely just to ditch political talk altogether.
How does this work on the internet? Well, since ATT/Comcast etc. are trying to be classified as "content providers" because they can make more money that way, that would make them responsible for political opinion that comes through their network. And by looking at those website stats, Pacifica could easily claim that ATT/Comcast has stepped over the threshold of neutrality, given that Rush's traffic is greater than Pacifica's by a couple orders of magnitude. Now, since the "content providers" can't force people to visit the Pacifica website, what to they do? The only practical course would be to throttle rushlimbaugh.com. Sure, people could get to it, but it would be so slow that it would have the effect of limiting the content.
None of that would be remotely as easy if the ATT/Comcast were forced to treat traffic equally regardless of the source. It's the Dems deal with the devil - they'll support the big ISP's effort to manipulate traffic to make money, because it also leaves an opening to manipulate traffic politically.
Re:slow down investment in broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
The other way to read it is the legitimate concern that potential investors have when people start throwing around ideas like forcing the ILECs/cableco's to open up their networks to companies that didn't help fund the roll out of those networks. Why should I invest my money to build out a broadband network when I can just wait a few years until Congress forces them to let me use it?
I live and work in a country which recently introduced exactly these measures. The incumbent monopoly Internet provider has been fighting tooth and nail against what a past CEO called a 'cuckoo's egg' - a business that leverages someone else's infrastructure to compete directly with them.
On the face of it, it seems like a reasonable concern, but the moment you begin unpacking the implications, you realise that it's actually quite the opposite. Under the new law, network resources that are unlikely (or impossible) to duplicate are known as 'bottleneck resources'. The Telecommunications Regulator has the right to designate a particular carrier dominant in a given area, and to require them to negotiate in good faith with anyone who comes calling. In fact, the telco's license requires that they provide a 'reference contract' that other businesses can use to prepare themselves.
In practice, what happens is that, far from losing money, the telco actually gains. There are two main reasons for this:
Rather than reducing profits and creating burdensome regulatory overhead, enforced competition has the reverse effect. In truth, if the government is imposing anything on the telco, it's market forces. By requiring an open, competitive environment, they're allowing the Adam Smith-ian principles to apply themselves. This ensures that the network as a whole is run in the most efficient, most profitable manner possible.
And that is good for everyone.
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[*] I live in a developing country where Internet reaches less than 15% of the population. This argument does not apply to the same extent in an already saturated market, though I suspect that it remains an influence.