Net Neutrality Supporters Hammered In Elections 402
Pickens writes "Gigi Sohn writes in the Huffington Post that one of the results of the mid-term elections was the defeat of Representative Rick Boucher, the current Chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, widely recognized as one of the most tech-savvy and intelligent members of Congress, and long an advocate for consumers on a wide variety of communications and intellectual property issues. Boucher has been the best friend of fair use on Capitol Hill writes Sohn. In 2002, 2003 and 2007, Boucher introduced legislation to allow consumers to break digital locks for lawful purposes, a fair use exception to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and while the odds against that legislation passing were always great, Boucher understood the symbolic importance of standing up for consumers' rights to use technology lawfully. 'As important, he served as a moderating force both on the House Energy & Commerce and Judiciary Committees against those many members of Congress willing to give large media companies virtually everything on their copyright wish lists.'"
One step forward (Score:5, Insightful)
"net neutrality" is control play (Score:3, Insightful)
long an advocate for consumers on a wide variety of communications and intellectual property issues.
The loss of a friend for fair use was sad, but I think a few others may have come in so perhaps that will balance out. On the whole the Democrats were always befriended by Hollywood in ways Republicans were not, so I would hope a lot of new Republicans would be cool to the MPAA and other organizations...
That said, "Net Neutrality" is not about what people think. It's about bringing the internet, and specifically ISP's, under more regulation to solve a problem that doesn't exist. How you you carefully craft regulation to solve a problem that doesn't exist?
The biggest ISP no-no we have seen was Comcast and torrent tomfoolery. But no net neutrality ideas under discussions would have stopped that, because in that case Comcast forged traffic, they didn't limit anything. It was your network's stack response to forged packets that caused a slowdown.
So even if you support regulation of the internet and the foot in the door for greater control over allowable traffic that brings with it, even if you support that - shouldn't we at least wait and see IF issues arise so we can construct regulation that actually solves a problem instead of just being there to make us all feel warm and fuzzy?
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"net neutrality" is control play (Score:5, Insightful)
because in that case Comcast forged traffic, they didn't limit anything. It was your network's stack response to forged packets that caused a slowdown.
To a reasonable person, that's like saying "My plastic bag over your head isn't keeping you from breathing. It's your body's response to increasing levels of carbon dioxide that's causing you to black out."
It's a cryin' shame our country is run by lawyers, rather than reasonable people.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
No they were not (Score:5, Insightful)
Net Neutrality was not on the radar of these voters. Support for net neutrality didn't hurt or save anyone.
NN is incompatible with "unlimited" data plans (Score:4, Insightful)
With "unlimited" data plans, the incentive for the ISP is to find ways to keep you from saturating the network connection. Making the network non-neutral is one way to accomplish this.
With pay-as-you-go data plans, the incentive for the ISP is to eliminate anything that prevents you from saturating your network connection. This means not slowing down traffic based on origin or destination (in other words, making the network completely neutral), and upgrading the infrastructure when it makes economic sense for them.
We can't have our cake and eat it, too.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea wasn't a corporocracy.
Also, 'another provider' won't work if:
1. Its the only provider in your area
2. The large companies agree with each other on what they're blocking
I'm pretty sure the RIAA/MPAA have enough resources to turn the larger ISPs over to their side, then certain sites and technologies magically start disappearing.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Voter understanding of Net Neutrality is nil. (Score:5, Insightful)
Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Government Control, Government Sponsored, Government, or whatever, then the general consensus is to hate it.
We don't want no government controlling MY internet. I'd rather trust big-company-x-with-no-ulterior-motives-whatsoever. God Bless America.
Re:Voter understanding of Net Neutrality is nil. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideally, the company gets maximum profits possible in the market - the best companies are the ones which reap the most money.
There is no reason for a company to do anything which will hurt its bottom line permanently. Always keep that in mind. If a company decides that it is supporting self-regulated net neutrality, its doing it to 1-up the competitors and get more money.
Now I realise that the government representing the 'people' has long gone - but at least you are allowed to fight back if you want to. Try complaining against large-company-X-which-supplies-the-only-internet-in-the-area and see where that gets you.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, if you live anywhere besides the city, its pretty common (out of the five towns I've lived in the past two years, all except one) to have only two providers - and one is often dial-up. So without net neutrality your choices are "slow for non-corporate websites" and "slow for all websites"
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you don't like it, get a another provider"
Like the one that doesn't exist? Access to a stable internet connection has become important to the lives of many (some even having jobs that revolve around it). Competition has failed (no surprise there). I mean, sure, the government having complete control over it isn't good either, but something must be done.
Break digital locks for lawful purposes (Score:2, Insightful)
So they pass laws that outlaw breaking locks on things you physically own, and now they're being oh-so-gracious to "allow" us to break them, without putting us in jail for it?
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No they were not (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. You actually believe that voters voted on substantive issues?
These candidates were targeted by the corporations who don't want net neutrality. They heavily funded their opponents, no matter what nonsense the candidate's campaign advisors chose to use as campaign propaganda.
You can bet none of the candidates even mentioned net neutrality. The supporters avoid it because it's complicated and will get them only a few votes. The opponents because it's complicated and if they actually explained it it would actually drive votes to the supporters.
But while net neutrality was never an issue to the voters, you can bet it was the issue to some of the biggest donors.
Elections following the Citizens United decision will absolutely not be about the issues, and will only resemble democracy in form.
Re:One step forward (Score:2, Insightful)
The Lobbyists aren't howling at the door, they're inside, having tea and biscuits.
That's the PEOPLE howling at the door, like a dog begging to be let back in, but stuck out in the rain to starve.
Re:left-wing Huffington Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Right... rather than simply treat the article on its factual merits, go after the source of the article. Brilliant! Did you invent that strategy yourself?
Not: it's called ad hominem. It's also a debate tactic used to implement tribalism/partisanism/racism/sexism/prejudice: self-hypnotic words to delude yourself into believing your opponent is less-than-human; once you've managed that stunt, why bother to listen to any of his arguments, even the otherwise cogent ones? Even better if you can also delude and convince others at the same time, because there's great strength in delusional numbers.
Congratulations to you for learning another trick to maintain your bias and mislead others.
Re:One step forward (Score:5, Insightful)
We need politicians to keep our political parties going strong.
We need politicians to bring home the bacon: giving our hard-spent tax dollars back to us in the form of gigantic projects named after themselves.
We need politicians to take the lead on critical issues like "family values" and gays in the military.
We need politicians to look after us and protect us from hurting ourselves.
We need politicians to do whatever the richest corporations want them to do.
Where would we be without politicians?
Re:Voter understanding of Net Neutrality is nil. (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet works in a rather different manner to many services - not only because we're basing a lot of technology, comminication et cet upon it - but also because its more of a gateway thing - its a means to an end.
The fact that its such a vital area - similar to electricity, the road network, plumbing et cetera makes me think that it shouldn't be handed over on a silver platter to just anyone's whims.
What if the electrical company (assume the only one present in that region) randomly decided that people with more than 2 people in the family should pay more? That's the sort of thing. How do you protest against that? Except for lighting candles , there is no way.
In conclusion - its a very important connection, which you are handing over as a monopoly in certain regions - which are a 'gateway' of means to the end - they're not really supplying any content themselves. Therefore it shouldn't be treated in the same way as any other service.
Re:"net neutrality" is control play (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, "Net Neutrality" is not about what people think. It's about bringing the internet, and specifically ISP's, under more regulation to solve a problem that doesn't exist. How you you carefully craft regulation to solve a problem that doesn't exist?
This.
If I was to set up a hundred different machines all over the internet to hammer a single IP address with packets, usually that would be considered a Denial of Service (DoS) attack (even if it doesnt succeed in denying service.) Well thats exactly what Bittorrent does, right?
Even if ISP's gave each of their users 10 times as bunch bandwidth as they do now, the problem would remain. Bittorrent's goal would still be to fully saturate the receiving pipe, and the only barrier to that happening in a lack of popularity for the specific torrent.
It is no surprise at all that some ISP's tried to do something about it, even if they were morally wrong to do so. No surprise at all.
Throttling torrents has to do with peak usage, not neutrality. Your ISP can't deliver the maximum rated bandwidth to all of its subscribers simultaneously. Thats the fact of the matter. How much would an ISP have to charge to REALLY support a fully saturated 10Mbit/1Mbit for everyone at the same time? My guess is a lot more that double the current rates.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nothing neutral on either side (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about forcing anyone to do anything, it's about forcing corps(which aren't a person) to do nothing based on some rules.
Want to see slashdot*, google, youtube, hulu, farmville, and facebook, those are available on the super ++good platinum package that is an extra $300 a month and requires a special "router" that will require you to lease it at $45 a month, and to use that router you will need the professional internet package, only $70/month but you can watch all the "ondemand" you want from ondemand.comcast.net for the low price of $30 a month with a free modem. XBox live and PSN are only $100 a month if you want those services.
*Includes goatse.cx for the full slashdot experiance
Don't think it will happen? I'm sure it will if we let them.
Worst PR EVER (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic problem with the net neutrality battle is that it is called "net neutrality". The average American hears this when you say net neutrality:
net = COMPLICATED COMPUTER THINGY
neutrality = Switzerland
So it's no surprise at all that people don't care, and the Republicans don't get it. Want to change the game? Make this all about Online Freedom and make the story how greedy carriers want to take away freedom / violate my rights. It's about explaining how carriers want to LIMIT WHERE YOU CAN GO, CHARGE YOU FOR ACCESS TO THINGS YOU HAVE NOW, AND TAKE AWAY YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO DO BUSINESS ONLINE.
People aren't that stupid, but they are not that well educated. If you make your case using language that the average Wal*Mart consumer can understand, you can get anything you want out of Washington because those are the people that change their minds in elections and cause congresspeople to lose their jobs as they did yesterday. Nine out of ten times when you see voters support something that is bad for them, it's because one side used language like "net neutrality" to sell their side of the story.
Re:Huffington Post (Score:1, Insightful)
All political/legislative efforts can be summed up as devoted toward one or more of just 3 goals: Rape the world; Rob the people pseudo-legally; and Enslave the people to debt. That's all they did for 8000+ years, and that's what they will continue trying to do. Mark my words, and just wait and see how right I am!
FTFY
Re:Huffington Post (Score:4, Insightful)
Curious about where you live... You have only cable as an option, no DSL, no 3G, no satellite, no WiMAX? Just - cable?
I'm not sure that even matters. Imagine a future where an ISP can charge you monthly and also charge Google/Facebook/etc. to get on their high-speed list. What other ISP in my area, no matter how they deliver the data to me, is going to pass on maximizing their profits by doing the same?
Re:No they were not (Score:3, Insightful)
Net Neutrality was not on the radar of these voters. Support for net neutrality didn't hurt or save anyone.
Due to the Supreme Court ruling regarding corporate sponsored advertising and donations - any stance against a heavily moneyed interest hurt a politician holding that stance. Since Net Neutrality was something of particular important to AT&T I would not be surprised if they funded a number of attack ads against Boucher on other topics to increase his chances of losing. Similarly any politician who expressed opinions contrary to Net Neutrality when their opponent did not, likely was the beneficiary of attack ads against their opponent.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:left-wing Huffington Post (Score:2, Insightful)
1) If a news source has marketed itself as a source of with a liberal bias (huffpo) or conservative bias (Fox News) then it is completely rational to double-check anything they say. Ad hominem attacks are perfectly acceptable and warranted if the source has explicit motives for it's speech. Read up a little more on the nuances of what an ad hominem attack really implies.
2) Your response is entirely premised on terrible logical fallacies. You link the OP with "tribalism/partisanism/racism/sexism/prejudice" as a method to disparage his/her opinion. In my opinion, that is about 10x worse than what the OP did.
3) Browsing through your comment history, it's clear this sort of hogwash is your MO and you need to chill out rather than attacking people all the time.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Competition has failed (no surprise there).
It failed because of a regulatory environment that was specifically crafted to discourage or eliminate it.
Re:yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. Crying "racism" to every substantive issue seems to me "going after the stupid voters". You know, the left wing says "The Tea Party are racists" and it works, because stupid people think Marco Rubio and Tim Scott are white??? (both won).
Suffice it to say, there are STUPID people on BOTH sides of the isle. And it is anti intellectualism that denies that both sides are doing the same thing. They do it, because it works. BOTH SIDES.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
no one(well almost no one) is discussing having a govt ISP. just having the govt own the wires, like they do the roads, and letting anyone provide services(cars) for them.
You could do that, but it's entirely unncessary.
The simplest and best solution is to force current ISPs to separate into two companies.
One company owns the wires and leases them to anyone at cost + x% profit.
The other company has to compete like everyone else.
It'd bring actual competition to the internet/tv/VOIP market.
Re:left-wing Huffington Post (Score:3, Insightful)
I "linked the OP" with that behavior because it's precisely how he was behaving. I didn't disparage the person, I criticized his behavior. Get your semantics straight.
Whether a source advertises a particular bias is largely irrelevant to its credibility. A source is in fact being more forthright by advertising it. Knowing the bias of a source in advance, it's easier to weigh the veracity of its statements. It's the ones that don't advertise it that are deserving of scorn. Regardless, ad hominem is NEVER ACCEPTABLE and NEVER WARRANTED.
Some people might perceive use of blanket terms like "hogwash" to describe EVERYTHING a person says as more deserving of the term ad hominem than anything I said in my previous comment.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people would love to offer WISP type services to compete with landlines, or even to purchase land to construct new landlines to compete with the local telecom infrastructure.
Sadly, this often results in being sued for violation of artificial monopolies granted through franchise agreements. Additionally, there is natural scarity in the EM spectrum which limits the former option in regard to the FCC, and already existant providers who purchase spectrum even if they dont intend to use it, since it prevents others from using it.
Due to these two mitigating factors, some form of artificial control must be exerted over these industries to prevent them from absuing their natural monopolistic positions, (Such as Verizon charging "mystery data fees", like it recently got wrist-slapped for.)
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
No
Libertarians think that REGULATING an entire INDUSTRY because of POTENTIAL problems is tyranny. IT is no different than "security theater" in the airports. You don't like it when it applies to you, but you're so willing to apply it to everyone else as long as it doesn't apply to you (never mind that it eventually will).
Cable, Telephone are monopolies because people in government have no clue how to manage natural monopolies (utilities). City should own the INFRASTRUCTURE and auction the lease off to the utility company for 5, 10, 15, or 25 years (depending on type) and define the proper "service level agreement" they want for their citizens.
IF we did ... say TELCO this way, I'd have Fiber to my house already, because it would be installed per city regulations and service would be give to the company that offered me the best service bits for my price range.
Re:This was not an election where... (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'will of the people' that caused generic 'voting against whoever is in office' was no more specific than 'we want economy to be better'. It really didn't matter who was in office, 'the other guys' were going in since since voters have no confidence in the economy. It's not like the people in office said 'you know what, let's willfully aim for no improvement of the economy'. In fact, I doubt any particular measure by the government would have helped the economy that much. Between private industry being particularly unhelpful and the media constantly shooting down any optimism over the economy, not much can be done IMO.
If you say the 'will of the people' was wholly represented by the extremely vocal 'tea party' activitsts, I'd say you are too easily influenced by who speaks loudest. With or without those voices, the incumbents were going to lose.
The simple, sad fact is that the majority of people who voted blindly did straight ticket one way or another, moved to action more by the drama created around politics by the media rather than informed awareness of all the facts and evaluating whose ideas seem the most plausible way to get what the voter wants. This is not anti-republican, Democrats won last time largely on the vague charisma of Obama rather than anything else, and this time the Republicans had wins as 'the other guys' set up as opponents to the establishment that hasn't given them their expected unicorns.
Re:left-wing Huffington Post (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that you only find it rational to double check a source that has marketed itself as a source of bias is disturbing.
Re:Worst PR EVER (Score:1, Insightful)
This is perhaps one of the greatest points made in this entire thread.
Re:"net neutrality" is control play (Score:2, Insightful)
Quality of Service is not what "Net Neutrality" is about. You've described a QoS system, which, while some people may not like, is not the fundamental threat of a non-neutral net. In the world of the non-neutral net, AT&T wants Google to pay them money for the right to be viewed by their customers. In a non-neutral net, Yahoo could partner with AT&T and together say that AT&T customers cannot access Google search, but rather only Yahoo search. Or if they're not so evil as to block Google search, they will just purposefully send Google queries over a slower pipe than Yahoo queries, making people think that Google is slow, when in reality it's an artificial speed degradation meant to line AT&T's pockets by blackmailing content providers to pay them more.
Throttling on the application layer (BitTorrent packets can arrive out of order, or arrive later, than Skype packets since P2P doesn't need real-time access) is one thing. But the big ISPs want to throttle on the end-point, in order to extract money from Google, Hulu, Netflix or any random new web service that provides cool new content.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
That said the reason you only have 1 provider is probably because one company was granted a local monopoly by the government
That said, in most places the reason you have ANY provider is because the government promised they wouldn't have to compete.
Re:One step forward (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Want a list?
There are probably a few other things I'm not thinking of, but that's enough.
This isn't at all like municipal Wi-Fi. Municipal Wi-Fi doesn't work (except if it is free) for three reasons:
Thus, except for people who regularly use a laptop for a significant amount of time in a place that provides no free Wi-Fi, municipal Wi-Fi doesn't make sense as a paid service, and certainly not as an alternative to existing ISPs. Fiber, by contrast, does not have any of these fundamental problems. Its only real downside is the cost of infrastructure construction and maintenance. This sort of scheme has been tried for fiber in several communities around the U.S., and last I was aware, it was working remarkably well everywhere it has been tried.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
You're sounding as though any regulations are the epitome of evil.
Most if not all businesses are regulated in some way, and it's a damn good thing they are. Otherwise, you'd get gas stations selling gallons of gas that were less than the standard gallon as a way of making prices appear low, you'd buy groceries and get human meat marketed as beef, or you'd go to the bank and find that the contents of your bank account had disappeared because the bank was going under. And these aren't theoretical, but exactly what was going on when there weren't regulations to the contrary.
In industries where these techniques for cheating customers become commonplace, it became difficult-to-impossible for sellers who weren't cheating their customers to compete, because they could always have their price undercut by the cheaters and an average customer couldn't easily tell the difference between the sellers who cheated and the sellers who didn't.
Re:Net neutrality is not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he was being facetious.
It's hard to tell. So many libertarians are on the cusp of self-parody.