Democrats Pan Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal 156
GovTechGuy writes "Four House Democrats wrote to the Federal Communications Commission, urging them to write strict net neutrality rules and reject the framework put forward by Google and Verizon. The lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Eshoo, who represents the district containing Google HQ, said the Google-Verizon proposal increases the pressure on the FCC to come up with actual net neutrality rules, and characterize the deal as harmful to consumers and beneficial for the corporations. In particular, the letter took issue with two pieces of the Verizon-Google proposal: exemptions for managed services and wireless services from strict net-neutrality rules."
About time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I too jaded or did anyone else have the reaction to the parents comment that it should read more along the lines of:
"They're finally realizing that they can't let corporations that aren't paying them off for it have their way with the internet?"
That(to me) is the most likely reason for them not submitting their own plan. Whoever is paying the bills at their getaway condo in the bahamas is asking them for a stop gap while they come up with their own plan.
Oh, will you look at that... theres a tin foil hat on my head... maybe I'm just paranoid.
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The government put it there!
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're saying basically "Because this sounds like an intelligent reaction by politicians, it has to be fake. It simply must be a maneuver, rather than a real response. An actual response would be stupid. Intelligence is always a lie. Progress is always a lie."
No, that's not paranoia, any more than thinking the sun will come up tomorrow is paranoia.
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As far as I have been able to discern the only reason people are upset is basically because the proposal doesnt really touch wireless-- ie, "its good, but it doesnt regulate enough." Well fine then, make your own additional regulation, but do SOMETHING and stop talking about it.
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I'll have to agree, it is a bit like shooting the paramedic because you oppose hospital bills. If law/policy makers have a good idea support it. When that idea turns sour, shout to the heavens.
Politicians have always been susceptible to corruption, that is the nature of power. It is up to their constituents to keep them honest. I'd even go a step further and say that once a politician has been beaten up and often enough there is a chance that they evolve into decent politicians. Statesmen don't become state
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This is why I won't sign up for a slashdot account. No one reads the articles, and the summaries are just wrong.
True, but it's easier to bitch about it if you have an account.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to me the corporations have been doing a darn good job with it for awhile now. I don't have much in the way of complaints. But what the hell, I can't see how adding government regulations and control could hurt things. I mean, everybody I know loves the FCC. /s
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They -seemed- to be doing a good job, despite stonewalling and slowly rolling out service that is generally two steps behind most of the rest of the world even in the highest density regions of the states.
And now that they only see money these days, manipulating and destroying the openness that the internet offered for the sake of their other business interests (which are in direct conflict) only serves them. They'd happi
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Here is the problem with net neutrality and politicians.
All the net neutral laws have to say is that no ISP or network operator on the internet can limit or interfere with any internet communications to below what the customer paid for except in cases of physical damage to the network or actual attack and the ISP needs to be obvious in what they are selling with their advertising. Give the FCC power to field complaints with appeals going to a competent court in the jurisdiction of the effected customer and
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and
"This would prevent Comcast from screwing with torrent traffic"
I don't think it would prevent them for screwing with torrent traffic. Last I checked, most consumer-level cable connections such as what most have with comcast explicitly forbid running a "server" on the line in the contract. Torrents pretty much meet the definition of running a server. So comcast could completely block such traffic and still not be interferring with "what the customer paid for"
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Well, yes and no. IF the torrent user is not sharing, then it's not going to be considered a server by any stretch of the imagination. Most people don't even consider consumer apps like Bit torrent or P2P as actual servers. But that brings us to another problem, what is the definition of a server, if it's something that users connect to in order to get information or services, then it probably could be argued that the tracker is the server, and the node is no different then a distributed online backup servi
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IF the torrent user is not sharing
THEN the torrent user is getting dial-up speeds.
Most users will have an option to use another service provider where one is available and with truth in advertising, Comcast may be forced by market forces to back down from that position.
In may places, it's still either Comcast with a 250 GB/mo cap or any of six wireless service providers (two satellite and four cellular) with a 5 GB/mo cap.
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We never topped even 150gb.
That wasn't my point. My point is that in areas with no DSL, if you switch to any provider other than Comcast, you'll end up with a 5 GB/mo cap.
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Sounds like the Windows XP definition of a server, to me.
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> Last I checked, most consumer-level cable connections such as what most have with comcast explicitly forbid running a "server" on the line in the contract.
That would be one of the first things to be prohibited by any regulation worthy of the name "net neutrality".
The customer pays the ISP to transfer packets. Whether those packets belong to a connection initiated by the client or by another system is none of the ISP's goddamn business.
A net neutrality law should specify which parts of the IP header the
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explicitly forbid running a "server" on the line in the contract.
Can you carefully define "server"? Would that include things like dropbox? What about reverse VNC? What about VNC? Does it include running Google Chrome with gears enabled? What about running a domain controller that is on the LAN, but does not accept connections from the WAN-- thats a server, does it violate the terms?
Vague terms are vague.
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You can't let corporations that pay for the infrastructure decide how they can continue to pay for the infrastructure? Truth is, true net neutrality would bankrupt the providers of the network. I guess we need a public option for long haul internet and ISPs.
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I'm guessing the four House Democrats that wrote the letter have been on the side of neutrality for some time, rather than "finally realizing" anything. While their hasn't been a clear Congressional majority in favor of neutrality (in part because of differences over details, and in part because many members don't even want to address the issue and want to leave it in the FCCs court without directly dealing with it),
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Indeed, why not. So if I want to dig up all those wires under my yard I should be free to do so unless the various and sundry telecomm companies would care to pay me rent.
Or did you just mean that corporations should be allowed to control their property and a portion of mine?
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I think if their radio waves come into my yard they should pay me rent. We can work it out as trade - they give me access to the rest of their network and their radio waves can pass through my yard, home, and body.
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I don't think it is a different issue, not one bit. You just argued for giving more power and control to the very entity you declared corrupt. I for one think our government has too much power already.
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My prediction. (Score:2, Insightful)
Palms will be greased.
Lots of empty talk (Score:4, Insightful)
From the way I see it, if these politicians actually had the will to put their foot down on net neutrality then Google wouldn't even have to compromise and cut deals.
But what do I know.
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From the way I see it, if these politicians actually had the will to put their foot down on net neutrality then Google wouldn't even have to compromise and cut deals. But what do I know.
Evidently, not much about the US political system and current climate.
Four house members represent less than one percent of the 435 member body. A majority of which being the bare minimum required to pass a law.
More than a half of them regardless of party take money from content corporations or communication providers or both, and would probably block even a watered-down version of net neutrality. Add to this the fact that Republicans want to deny Democrats any "victories", or avoid seeming like both corr
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Yes, because four members of one house of Congress can, by sheer willpower, dictate the law.
Indeed.
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Google caved not because they didn't feel Net Neutrality wasn't possible, but because they stand to profit mightily by preventing it (at least on wireless). Never ascribe intention to corporations where a simply "follow the money" will suffice. Corporations are money-seeking entities at their core and are quite amoral despite the best intention of their founders or shareholders. Google is (slightly) different in that it was setup with a distinct co
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i've come to believe Page is slowly succumbing to the dark side.
Relief (Score:3, Funny)
Back in my day... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yeah because back 10 years ago, it was inconceivable that any one point on the network would start fucking with the other points; it was just... unthinkable.
Now, they're thinking about doing it because surprise bandwidth costs money(magically? I don't understand how the fuck this works).
Re:Back in my day... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, back in the day we fought so that nobody would control the Internet. Initially, corporations didn't have enough power to screw things up, so the only people we had to keep from abusing their power was the government. Now, they do, so we have to convince somebody more powerful (the government) to step in and keep them in check. It's about balancing one bad guy against another so that the harm cancels out....
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Re:Back in my day... (Score:5, Informative)
To keep the cable companies from blocking/throttling Netflix to boost PPV revenue. To keep the telcos from blocking/throttling VoIP to boost LD revenue. There are suspicions that some have tried similar things, and Comcast committed a man-in-the-middle attack against its customers to damage a particular protocol used heavily for movies that are on PPV. But Terry Childs gets 4 years in jail for a delay in handing over passwords, while an actual DoS attack that violates a number of state and federal laws done maliciously and deliberately goes unpunished.
Net neutrality is absurd and its proponents largely resort to fearmongering to sell it.
If they weren't intending to harm their customers in an underhanded manner to boost their own services, then they wouldn't be fighting it so hard. So I don't trust those against it. "We'd never do that" when they've already done it doesn't strike me as a good argument.
Now we have this new generation of Government Can Do, idealistic youngsters who think the government can protect our precious Internet without stomping all over it. Riiiight.
The government isn't going to "control" anything they don't already control. The Internet was built by the government and then opened up. It was pushed to what it is now by the government. Al Gore did invent the Internet as we know it by opening up the networks and getting the government out of the way. The government hasn't tried to directly control it (other than the parts they didn't yet get rid of) and isn't trying to with this either. It's nothing more than when they told AT&T that they couldn't require only AT&T hardware on the phone network. That wasn't government control of the phone network, but a restriction on the company that runs it in order to benefit the people. And that's what Net Neutrality is. A restriction on the corporations that have a profit motive to harm their customers to where Net Neutrality benefits anyone that doesn't own an ISP (and doesn't affect honorable ISPs).
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Show proof? They testified that's exactly what they were doing under oath to the federal government.
In an attempt to exert some basic management over their network, as is allowed per their contracts.
But let's fucking face it - you're a pirate.
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Only if you're on the lower end of data use. Verizon caps at 4 or 5gb. I typically burn through nearly that much just from internet radio and podcast streams during my commute.
I have no less than 6-7 obvious choices for broadband right now
I'm in a similar situation, good for us. But I'm also in a huge city. This is the first time that's ever been the cast for me. I've moved about ten times in my life, and all but this one wound up with me having a choice be
Re:Back in my day... (Score:4, Informative)
You are the closest I've come to repopulating my foes list since I cleared it a few years ago. I'm actually more concerned that adherents to the suicide pact of libertarianism still shock me when I come here.
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All I hear about are nebulous concepts of (gasp) charging people for bandwidth
No, what you hear are concepts of people being forced to pay every ISP between them and the computers connecting to them. Do you think Slashdot does not currently pay for its bandwidth? Now imagine if in addition to paying their own ISP, Slashdot also had to pay every intermediate ISP as well as your ISP.
If Slashdot did not pay that fee, then what? Slow service? No service, even though they are paying their ISP?
People keep taking about how few broadband choices we have
We can't all live in the big city. Some of us really do not have more than one broadb
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Do you not understand the idea that normally diverse interests can align on a particular issue? We get the idea that some corporations support net neutrality and some oppose it, but to imply that supporters are being led around all glassy-eyed and used purely for the ends of these corporations is a little simplistic. On this particular issue, supporters agree with some powerful corporations. On others, not so much.
Is everyone who doesn't agree with you a useful idiot?
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"This time it's different."
We don't want these bad guys controlling our lives and making all our choices for us. We need to get good guys to do that.
that's wingnut talk (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, because regulating food and drug safety meant a government takeover of our food and drug supplies....
Re:Back in my day... (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality is not government control of the Internet. It is government regulation of ISPs, in the form of a mandate that they continue to provide neutral access to the Internet. It is an assurance the free and open Internet remains free and open. That is all. Stop spreading the FUD.
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Forget it, friend.
You're trying to explain quite simple things to someone who can't understand that "government" in the US means "the people". These fools believe "founders" who wrote the constitution weren't politicians, but "patriots", who not only could do no wrong, and would never ever serve in public office because that's for "elites".
The Bill of Rights was handed down from God, you know, government and legislation had nothing to do with securing our rights from government.
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Best argument ever. (Score:2, Insightful)
said the Google-Verizon proposal increases the pressure on the FCC to come up with actual net neutrality rules, and characterize the deal as harmful to consumers and beneficial for the corporations.
"We think this is bad because it will force us to do work."
"We think this is bad because it will force consumers to pay money for something."
"We think this is bad because it means that corporations will make money."
Are you kidding me? Who is this lady and why is she not on a plane to Alaska?
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In this case, I'd rather see a completely level playing field and suffer some regulation than watch as the US falls even further behind in broadband and internet while corporations rake in cash.
Pardon my naivety, but I would like to better understand how exactly the US has fallen behind. Sure, the speeds at which we stream video and such aren't on par with those of Japan, etc, but I myself don't really have a problem watching a movie or whatever when I wish to do so. As far as I can tell, the Internet works pretty darn good all things considered. Is it essential that we have the fastest speeds in the world? I don't think so. We certainly don't get to work as fast as workers in other countries. Hav
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Listen, there is absolutely no reason to find yourself outside of the conservative fiscal policies or on an unfamiliar side of the fence. Free markets can only be free when people actually deliver what was paid for. In the same light, all that needs to happen for net neutrality is that people get what they paid for. If Time Warner has a peering agreement with SBC/ATT, and a customer requests information on another network that passes through SBC's before going to time warner, then SBC needs to honor it's ag
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What I can't understand is why this concept of just getting what you paid for is so damn difficult for people in office who seem to be championing Net Neutrality yet want to overly complicate things with regulation on top of regulation.
1. Creating long, complicated laws gives themselves (lawyers) and their best friends (lawyers) job security as they endlessly argue about what those long, complicated laws really prohibit or allow.
2. Creating long, complicated laws gives them an out when they choose not to follow them, AKA the Charlie "I didn't realize I was not in compliance because that stuff is complicated" Rangel excuse.
3. Unfortunately, society seems to believe that the proper measure of whether a particular Congress has been "effectiv
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You know what (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of neutrality for managed services is going to put an increased burden on IT companies. It will increase the costs where cloud services are already being proven to NOT lower costs.
The fact of the matter is that True Net Neutrality is beneficial to every company EXCEPT ISPs. ISPs being a set than includes broadband, T1, DSL and any provider as well as the increasing role mobile providers take. Basically a set of companies that receive quite a bit in government money ALREADY to fund construction of network infrastructure.
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It's a fair point. But does it necessarily make sense to give artificial power to businesses who know nothing about providing internet services to everyone while removing control from the businesses whose business is providing internet services?
Is this supposed to level the playing field or something? I know that part of me is an idealist when I say that a tiered internet will not enable shady back-room deals to occur. But I foresee NN analogous to giving a freight company transporting hazardous materials
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I agree that traffic should be tiered, but it should be tiered not on a pay-to-play basis, but rather on the technical merits of prioritizing a particular class of traffic. Traffic that requires low latency for correctness (live audio/video streaming) should have highest priority, followed by light web browsing, followed by long-running downloads that run for hours at a time, simply because delaying packets for those different types of traffic cause vastly different impact on the customer's experience.
If a
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I disagree.
If ISP's start to put the most common internet content close to the end users, they will use this as an excuse to no longer maintain the long distance lines because hardly anyone is using those anyway.
So in effect content providers pay ISP's to get their content on the ISP mirrors close to the users, and in return any other content is automtically less of a priority, simply because the long distance infrastructure demands are now lower.
You cannot improve speeds of some traffic without automatical
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Except that by moving that content closer to the users, the upstream bandwidth is freed, so that effectively makes everyone else's traffic faster, which means that it is okay for the ISP to take longer to upgrade their long haul links because they are under less load.
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Why not just pay based on how much you use?
The issue is that the ISPs feel that Google, iTunes, Amazon, etc. are getting to use "their" bandwidth for free. You won't be getting the bill for that 100GB of data, the websites you happened to visit will.
If we're going to allow that, I think I'll have to form an ISP and bill websites $100000 per KB my customers browse.
Don't worry, I'd still bill my customers for their internet access too.
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Yeah there might be a 2 in there somewhere.
Re:You know what (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality doesn't mean no traffic engineering at all, it just means that such engineering cannot be based on who did or didn't pay the double dipping fee.
Fundamentally, anything but net neutrality is fraud. Customers pay their ISP for a connection to the internet. The ISP is obligated to carry their traffic in exchange for the monthly fee. Charging another party to actually honor that commitment is fraud. It's the same reason UPS can't come to you and say "Amazon shipped a package to you. If you want to make sure *AHEM* nothing causes it to end up in Siberia, you could choose to pay us $5.00 in addition to what Amazon paid."
As for your analogy, show me a packet that can explode in the cable causing death and destruction all around it and I'll consider it.
Network neutrality says the minimum wage guy has just as much right to use the tunnel as the carload of trustfund babies.
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As for your analogy, show me a packet that can explode in the cable causing death and destruction all around it and I'll consider it.
Not quite an explosion [slashdot.org]
Network neutrality says the minimum wage guy has just as much right to use the tunnel as the carload of trustfund babies.
So what happens when the minimum wage guy is driving a P.O.S. that exhibits a danger to other travelers, while the trustifarians cruise up to Breck with their snazzy Audi? I know this is stretching the analogy a little far, but consider all of the things we have yet to learn about how the Internet will be used in 20, 30, 100 years. I'm sure there is still some pretty sophisticated malware yet to be developed.
How about the guy that pays his bill each and every month while others tap
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Are you ACTUALLY claiming that network neutrality and basic prevention of malware are mutually exclusive?
Do you REALLY think network neutrality laws will free killers to go around zapping people's pacemakers?
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The lack of neutrality for managed services is going to put an increased burden on IT companies.
Sounds like a prediction that might possibly come true. This might be a problem someday.
Call us back if it does. Meanwhile, hands off the Internet.
The best reason for net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
...doesn't exist yet.
When the internet first started...
There was no "cloud".
There was no streaming video.
There was no bittorrent.
There were no VPNs, no work-at-home over the net.
There wasn't even a web - though that came fairly quickly.
The internet was conceived as an open-ended transport mechanism, with no plans or constraints as to the data being transported, though there were some thoughts about QOS, recognizing that some data had to get there quickly, some reliably, some not particularly either.
Commercial deployments of anything, not just the internet, generally aren't open-ended. They tend to plan things, up-front, and put just as much thought into billing as they do into the rest of the job. (Ever see how much cell phone plumbing is dedicated to billing, as opposed to merely shuttling customers' data?)
The best reason for net neutrality is something we haven't done yet, something no company has planned for, and very likely something that would be hindered by default, because it doesn't fit into current plans. (Or can you say, "disruption not desired!"?)
Re:The best reason for net neutrality... (Score:5, Informative)
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You are crazy. Or a shill.
The best reason for net neutrality is something we haven't done yet, something no company has planned for, and very likely something that would be hindered by default, because it doesn't fit into current plans. (Or can you say, "disruption not desired!"?)
That is utter nonsense. Everyone wants control over what comes into your house because it can be monetized. The name of the game is profit and if they can get you to pay for access and then they can get someone else to pay for it too, they're going to do it. AT&T does it already, when my local WISP was first moved from some third party AT&T reseller to AT&T proper we were on a non-neutral network where we had good access to AT&T sites, good access to major media sit
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Why do you call me crazy or a shill? You seem to agree with me.
The real thrust of my post is that the internet for years now has been doing things not originally conceived, and that was by intent. By that same intent, new uses ought to come along in the future of which we don't conceive today. Some of those uses may turn out to make a lot of money, and provide major economic stimulus.
I acknowledge what you say about profit and monetization. I'll also say that that has nothing to do with the internet, an
Corruption is OUR job! (Score:2, Troll)
Google and Verizon really stepped in it. Their new pact doesn't have enough opportunity for government power brokers to choose winners and losers in exchange for campaign contributions. How dare these big companies decide to carve up the free Internet without giving the local warlords their due?
Expect a grand jury investigation of Google WIFI spying to begin sometime in the next 2 months. It's going to take a lot of campaign contributions and jobs for family members to call off those dogs.
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We have a winner!
Here's hoping that technological prowess always finds a way to trump political fandangling!
Managed services are a good idea, if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Managed services are a good idea, if they are run on top of a neutral network. As long as that physical network is developed by an unbiased entity and resold fairly with no oversubscription, ISPs should be free to carve out as much bandwidth as they can pay for. As demand increases, regardless of content, investment in additional capacity will follow.
The problem with the existing situation is that as long as the ISPs own the underlying physical network, the "manages services" aren't running on top of the Internet, but rather the Internet is transformed into a "managed service". There is no incentive whatsoever for the ISPs to invest in additional capacity beyond what they require for their own services, so investment in the Internet is dead, and its value for future innovation is lost.
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While I generally agree with your post, I'm curious to know what you mean by this:
How do you run an ISP without oversubscribing? If you provide 20Mbit DSL to 10,000 customers, does that mean you need 200 Gbit connections to all of your peers? Or just the anticipated peak traffic (100th percentile? 99th?)? Further, if you aren't oversubscribed, then, by definition, none of your links will ever become congested. With everything being served non-blocking, at line rates
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How do you run an ISP without oversubscribing? If you provide 20Mbit DSL to 10,000 customers, does that mean you need 200 Gbit connections to all of your peers? Or just the anticipated peak traffic (100th percentile? 99th?)? Further, if you aren't oversubscribed, then, by definition, none of your links will ever become congested. With everything being served non-blocking, at line rates, what would net neutrality even mean?
What I meant by "resold fairly with no oversubscription" only applies to the last mile natural monopoly where managed services requiring some form of QoS would be desirable and possible. As you point out, it wouldn't be practical elsewhere, and aggregate traffic would be treated as it is today.
The idea is that, for the last mile, the providers resell bandwidth to ISPs in terms of a minimum guaranteed rate. Above that, excess capacity will be subject to a fair queuing mechanism, so that it is utilized if a
Wait... (Score:2, Troll)
Somebody in Washington is actually STOPPING the maniacally evil corporations for once? I must be missing something. Either that or I'm going to fall over dead from a shock induced heart attack in 3, 2, 1.......
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Not just -somebody-, but the evil, maniacal, Federal Government (with spending growing at close to 20% a year).
If you let them, they'll take away a few more of those pesky freedoms or yours, and then have the gall to send you a non-contestable tax bill for their trouble.
Non-Local Government is the -Ultimate Monopoly-.
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Wait, so you are arguing that I should have the freedom to have throttled Internet but not the freedom to have the ability to choose unfiltered open Internet? What freedom do I lose when the government-created monopolies are prevented from abusing their monopolies to screw their customers?
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you let them, they'll take away a few more of those pesky freedoms or yours, and then have the gall to send you a non-contestable tax bill for their trouble. Wait, so you are arguing that I should have the freedom to have throttled Internet but not the freedom to have the ability to choose unfiltered open Internet? What freedom do I lose when the government-created monopolies are prevented from abusing their monopolies to screw their customers?
You do not understand the insights of the modern (anti-conservative) right wing and their Tea Party intellectual shock troops. Government is always evil in everything it does and private corporations never do wrong. This revelation frees you from needing to study such boring and old fashioned things as "facts" or "evidence" or to engage in elitist "rational thought".
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You do not understand the insights of the modern (anti-conservative) right wing and their Tea Party intellectual shock troops. Government is always evil in everything it does and private corporations never do wrong
That is only true when it does not gore their ox. For example, try to let the free market open a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero.
And to the Tea Party, government is OK when it is fighting wars or throwing foreigners out of the country (even if they are working for private corporations).
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Yeah, in my neighborhood the choice is Cox or..... COX! There is no choice in MOST neighborhoods in the nation.
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Somebody in Washington is actually STOPPING the maniacally evil corporations for once? I must be missing something. Either that or I'm going to fall over dead from a shock induced heart attack in 3, 2, 1.......
But do not fear! The Tea Party is riding to the rescue [talkingpointsmemo.com]! The glories of corporate control over every aspect of our lives, the right to be monetized and "revenue optimized" to the grave will be preserved by these courageous patriots!
Re:Translation of the translation (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't wrong. They wrote a fucking letter that says we don't like what Verizon and Google have proposed. It doesn't have any proposal of what the FCC policy should be. Just that Google and Verizon's shouldn't be adopted.
The closest they get is saying what concepts should be central in the policy that is adopted.
Since this is slashdot, we can make this a car analogy. Google and Verizon have designed and built a vehicle. They have presented it and it could be sent to the manufacturing line. These democrats have said "don't build it!" and instead are proposing that the factory make cars that have 4 tires, a steering wheel, some seats, and an engine. 4 cylinder? *shrug!* Comfy seats? Eh, if you like.
It would be one thing for a private organization to protest the Google/Verizon proposal. But these people are in the practice of legislation. If they object, why haven't they and their staff managed to come up with a proposal of their own? Its only been, you know, years.
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your car analogy is wrong in so many ways.
legislation affects everyone and should be thought out properly.
your choice of car affects only you (for the most part).
your analogy would be better if you changed cars to roads.
google (delivery company) and verizon (freeway road maker) have come up with a scheme to govern how all automobiles drive on all roads, and want legislation passed to make everyone follow it.
verizon wants to put tolls on all but one lane on the freeway, forcing
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A) This is slashdot. We don't have to have accuracy to make car analogies.
B) The analogy would be wrong if I was trying to show that everything about legislation and everything about car choice was the same. I wasn't.
C) My analogy wasn't about what car to buy. My analogy was about what car to make.
D) My analogy doesn't make any judgement, positive or negative, on the Google/Verizon "car". Just that the Democrats don't have one.
See, Google/Verizon and these Democrats are design teams and they push cars (poli
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verizon wants to put tolls on all but one lane on the freeway, forcing anyone who doesn't pay through the nose to use the slow lane.
It honestly worries me that you got modded insightful when you seem to have no clue what the proposal was saying. It has NOTHING TO DO with forcing tolls, metaphorical or otherwise, onto competitors.
If you had actually read ANY of the recent articles on the subject, you would know that the proposal from verizon and google would PREVENT any "fast lane" tolls from being applied to wired internet, and ensure net neutrality. It would also give FCC power to enforce it, which it desperately needs given the c
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One benefit to waiting would be that these mobile device exemptions might go away. As it stands now, I think anything relating to specific device classes should only be added to a proposal if it has a mandatory 3-5yr review built in.
I completely understand Verizon's desire to limit what they have to provide to their handsets (though customers should fight back on this and aim for a happ
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If they object, why haven't they and their staff managed to come up with a proposal of their own? Its only been, you know, years.
Because by definition any fair proposal on network neutrality that they could put together would anger their corporate sponsors. Any proposal that their corporate sponsors support is, by definition, not network neutrality.
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It doesn't have to say in the article. We've already seen the framework proposal from Google/Verizon. So have they, or they wouldn't be bitching and moaning. And it is immaterial that Google/Verizon are not forcing the FCC to do anything. I didn't assume, say, or otherw
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I'm not the only one that likes to pretend it doesn't exist. The article contains the full text of their letter to the FCC. You know how many times that act got mentioned? Not once. So I learned it exists. Woo.
Of course, you know what you didn't mention? The fact that the Internet Freedom Preservation Act got proposed to the previous Congress's Senate and House. And to the Senate in the 109th Congress. It died in committee each time. Its that good.
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I don't quite understand why a legislation on Net Neutrality would "lead to increased prices, decreased availability, and decreased access".
Right now, the market is solely in the hands of big corporations whose sole purpose is to maximize profit by:
- charging at the highest rate
- investing the less possible
In theory that works well for the customers in an opened market with enough competitors. But that's not what we are experiencing here.
I like the analogy of roads, infrastructure, and cars, content. Try to
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I don't quite understand why a legislation on Net Neutrality would "lead to increased prices, decreased availability, and decreased access".
I don't understand it, either. When they actually have a bill that contains *only* network neutrality (rules on fair practices regarding routing, throttling, etc) then we may know if it would. However, the legislation proposed so far is huge, and the actual "network neutrality" portions are but a small part. Maybe it's the many hundreds of pages of proposed law that hav
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Congress take the CISC approach to writing laws. They put as much in as possible so that they can get as much passed as possible with a 'single' law.
I wish they took the RISC approach. If the law has 15 parts, then pass 15 different laws. The laws could be shorter, and should be easier to understand. Something tells me they would still add pages and pages of confusing wording so that the average Joe can not make sense of the law anyway.
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I wish they took the RISC approach. If the law has 15 parts, then pass 15 different laws.
Then the Republicans would have to filibuster fifteen times as many bills.
Yeah! Those dirty Republocrats! Just wait until the Demopublicans get elected!
Step back, put down the partisan kool-aid both parties use to distract you, and open your eyes. The only real differences these days are "wedge" issues designed to inflame and divide without bringing about any real change in the direction the country is heading (hint; lo
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Of course you don't get it. These robber baron wannabes are just spouting mindlessly spouting Rand-isms.
The market is already stagnant and dominated by entrenched natural monopolies. Our prices and service levels are the laughing stock of the planet.
Not much damage can be done by telling monopolies to play nice.
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Sounds more like a certain 4 congresscritters didn't feel "included" enough in the drafting of policy. Nothing some campaign contributions couldn't rectify.
I kind of feel that the less regulation the better... too many ways for it to be misapplied. And there's still enough competition and alternatives out there to keep any one ISP from doing anything too nasty.
But I would love it if they found some way to prevent Verizon from blocking HTTP and SMTP ports on residential FiOS so I wouldn't have to sign up f
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