Network Neutrality Back In Congress For 3rd Time 248
suraj.sun writes "Ed Markey has introduced his plan to legislate network neutrality into a third consecutive Congress, and he has a message for ISPs: upgrade your infrastructure and don't even think about blocking or degrading traffic. The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week's introduction of the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009' [PDF] means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to 'block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade' access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device. Rulemaking and enforcement of network neutrality would be given to the Federal Communications Commission, which would also be given the unenviable job of hashing out what constitutes 'reasonable network management' — something explicitly allowed by the bill. Neutrality would also not apply to the access and transfer of unlawful information, including 'theft of content,' so a mythical deep packet inspection device that could block illegal P2P transfers with 100 percent accuracy would still be allowed. If enacted, the bill would allow any US Internet user to file a neutrality complaint with the FCC and receive a ruling within 90 days."
i may agree, but ... (Score:3, Interesting)
President Obama has repeatedly called for Net Neutrality...
If enacted, the bill would allow any US Internet user to file a neutrality complaint with the FCC and receive a ruling within 90 days.
Re:well (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand that the cable companies want to preserve some bandwidth for their own use. However, I think that net neutrality is too heavy handed, and doing nothing is even worse.
How about this as a compromise: the cable companies have to guarantee a certain "net neutral" bandwidth. Then, this is the bandwidth that they are allowed to advertise.
Therefore, if they have a 20-Gbps link to your house, but they offer 7-Mbps of open bandwidth, with 13-Mpbs reserved for their own downloadable movies, they can only advertise 7-Mpbs service.
This would kind of solve the whole thing. The cable companies can partition the bandwidth any way they like. They can reserve bandwidth for their own movie services. The customer still gets what is advertised.
Makes sense to me... Can anybody poke any logical holes in this (other than "Cable sucks, let's screw them")?
Too much regulation as it is. (Score:4, Interesting)
The most effective way to address this problem and foster competition is to break up the existing structure and excessive regulation that makes it next to impossible for new competitors to enter the market. If this means wresting control of the last mile from providers, so be it.
This wont necessarily guarantee quality, but at least it should ensure that you have a number of competitors to choose from when you want to switch. When I was overseas the quality of the cable service I originally had was utter crap, barely better than dialup. I then switched to DSL, which was a good deal better, but still not as good as I have now. But at least, I had options which forced these companies to lower prices or improve service. I don't remember what I was paying now, but I think it was in the range of $15 a month or so, which is a far cry from the $50 I pay now.
What always happens with these damn regulations? The government steps in to regulate something obvious to appease the masses and then turn around and make concessions to companies in some other way which ends up screwing people up in the long run. And the irony here is that a lot of this is done for the sake of the "small guy" but the end result is that it really ensures that those already established have the resources to survive and thrive. It pretty much helps guarantee monopolistic control for some companies.
At least I happen to be living in an area where there is some level of competition, which basically means one provider for cable and one provider for DSL. So like most other service providers it's like they compete in a vacuum and basically only acknowledge each other by ensuring their prices match. Which reminds me, one thing I'd like to see abolished is this bullshit with contracts.
Re:well (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. If it weren't for the near-monopoly on broadband, the market would theoretically be able to weed out the bad companies that don't adopt a neutral stance.
You are making a lot of assumptions here without even stating them, let alone proving them.
For instance, you assume that the marginal cost of maintaining a neutral network is identical to a non-neutral one, which might not be true. If the non-neutral one has significantly lower upkeep, it might win out as an inferior but cheaper product. That is, even if consumers prefer neutral ISPs to non-neutral ones, that preference only goes so far towards convincing them to pay a higher rate.
Another important assumption is that the consumer preference function really distinguishes between neutral and non-neutral. For the vast majority of consumers this might not be the case -- especially with less-tech savvy older folks that use the net mostly for email/light web and don't notice any filtering. For those consumers, there is no product differentiation being neutral and non-neutral at all.
So yeah, if the costs stack up right and the consumer preference actually does favor neutrality, then a free market would deliver it. Those are some pretty big caveats though.
I gave up moderation in this thread to reply to this post.
First, there's nothing to suggest either (a) net-neutrality will present a higher marginal cost or (b) net-neutrality will present a lower marginal cost on the same. Given this, it's logical to assume no change.
Second, consumer preference is moot if there is no outlet to express said preference. Few consumers--slashdot crowds included--will opt to forego internet to flex their meager muscle against the monopoly; internet is such a necessity that people are going to choose some internet over none, even if it's sole-sourced. Moreover, this point piggybacks on your earlier point, which seems to assume that neutrality carries higher costs, and therefore there is a cost function impacting consumer decisions in a hypothetical neutral vs non-neutral decision.
Ultimately, lets first get to a free market, and then we can take a look at your points.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>Cable companies want to prop up their outdated business model (television content) by blocking video content over the internet
Sorry to break the news, but it's already too late. Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox have negotiated with the cable channels to put all video content behind a subscriber wall. So if you want to watch Eureka at scifi.com, you can't because it will be locked. Want to watch Mokn on usa.com or Kyle XY on abcfamily.com? Nope. Again you'll be blocked.
CC, TW, and Cox claim they pay for these programs, therefore they should be able to limit streamed cable programs to only their customers, and that's what will take effect this Fall 2009.
So the only video content that will still be available for free are the broadcast nets (NBC, FOX, CW, etc) and the older reruns like Bewitched or Munsters or M*A*S*H on hulu.com
This will kill P2P (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah I know - I'm being pessimistic, but I've seen what happens to new technologies. DAT (digital audio tape) was killed in the 80s because even though it had legitimate purposes, the courts decided it would mainly be used to steal music, so it was blocked from entering the U.S. for retail sale. Only the professionals had access to DAT machines.
I expect P2P to suffer the same fate as DAT did -
- "Yes these programs like Utorrent have legitimate purposes, but 99% of the traffic is illegal content, so I've decided it's okay for the Megacorp ISP to block these peer-to-peer packets." - Signed, Judge Clueless
Re:Spammer's delight? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is NOT network neutrality, it's a kludge! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll repeat the same thing I told both the FCC (re: National Broadband Plan) and Rep. Markey regarding his bill:
Re:Don't forget the telco(s) (Score:3, Interesting)
Just one thing I'd like to point out:
Politicians are known for building a tower of lies. However, regardless as to how well you engineer the tower from the beginning, the materials you build the tower with can only support so much, and will only go so high before they come crashing down.
The way I see it, they're the ones falling from the top of the damn thing. It's gonna hurt when they hit the ground.
Re:"reasonable network management" LOL (Score:3, Interesting)
"In 1960, Robert Menard was a commander aboard the USS Constellation when he was part of a meeting between United States Navy personnel and their counterparts in the Japanese Defense Forces. Fifteen years had passed since VJ Day, most of those at the meeting were WWII veterans, and men who had fought each other to the death at sea were now comrades in battle who could confide in each other.
Someone at the table asked a Japanese admiral why, with the Pacific Fleet devastated at Pearl Harbor and the mainland U.S. forces in what Japan had to know was a pathetic state of unreadiness, Japan had not simply invaded the West Coast. Commander Menard would never forget the crafty look on the Japanese commander's face as he frankly answered the question.
'You are right,' he told the Americans. 'We did indeed know much about your preparedness. We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand.'"
The above was excerpted from the Wikiquote page [wikiquote.org] on Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto [wikipedia.org], commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet during WWII. The discussion explains how a particular quote concerning a "rifle behind every blade of grass" may have been erroneously attributed to Yamamoto who had indeed expressed reservations about entering into war with the United States in other well-attributed quotes, even if he made no specific mention of private gun ownership.
However, the above quote is good second-hand (i.e. better than hearsay) evidence that private gun ownership was and is a substantial deterrent against foreign invasion. In fact, it is also known that Hitler was deterred from invading Switzerland for similar reasons (i.e. a rifle in every home), comparing Switzerland to a 'porcupine'.
As for the military stripping recruits of everything they know, I cannot speak from first hand experience. However, there is a certain familiarity and practice with ones muscle memory and hand-eye coordination that comes from frequent handling and firing of rifles that would undoubtedly be useful when later qualifying at the rifle range. One might expect that recruits who grew up shooting with proper instruction (NOT gangbangers who shoot sideways and are lucky if they don't shoot their own foot) and were more familiar with guns would have better initial scores than those who did not. Perhaps someone else can confirm this?