Last night the house struck a blow against net neutrality by a 3 to 1 margin.
The truly outrageous thing about this is that polls show that most Americans (70%) are “concerned about providers blocking or impairing their access to Internet services or sites”, which is exactly what net neutrality laws are meant to prevent.
IMHO, this is a blatant illustration of congress members choosing to represent the interests of their lobbyists rather than their constituency, who they are charged and elected to represent. It would seem that it’s going to be difficult to ensure net neutrality when the large corporations battling against it already have achieved congress non-neutrality via corruption.
People being concerned doesn’t necessarily translate into support for a particular bill. I understand why people are concerned. I am even a little concerned myself, but I’m still apprehensive of government intervention. I don’t think there is anything outrageous about this.
I also understand being wary of giving the government control of the internet, but a net neutrality law could be crafted that would explicitly prevent that, while maintaining the internet as a free and open system.
I’d much rather have a governmental regulation that prohibits internet filtering and preferential treatment (including from the government) than allowing other parties to gain that control, (namely large corporations) because they are not subject to control by the people, as the government is, or should be.
Any abuse that you could imagine the government doing could just as easily be done by the large corporations if net neutrality is not preserved, so it’s a lesser of two evils situation, in my book.
Allowing large corporations to have that kind of control over the internet is a much worse possibility than having the government establish laws against that level of control, so for me, it’s a no-brainer.
This page on savetheinternet.com does a pretty good job of addressing some of the most common anti-neutrality arguments.
I like the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
I’m not overly worried about the gov. or any corps. being abusive and evil. I’m just worried about somebody doing something dumb and solving problems in a brain dead way. And I trust the market to not do that more then the government.
Unfortunately, we already have real world examples of exactly the kind of abuses that these corporations will undoubtedly continue to attempt. Most of these examples are perfect illustrations of the companies involved trying to rig “the market” to their advantage, and preventing free and open competition.
I’m not sure why you would tend to trust the market to not do stuff like this (or to not do brain-dead things, but that’s another matter). The very nature of it would force these companies to make every attempt to exercise their advantage of being able to pay for more bandwidth and ultimately silence the voices and online presence of their smaller competitors.
The net neutrality legislation does not put *content* control in the hands of the government, it is only designed to prevent it from being taken over by private interests.
There are many examples in which it is necessary for the government to regulate services. Do you oppose governmental organizations such as the FCC, because the “market” should be allowed to control these things themselves? You were a pilot; what do you think of getting rid of the FAA and letting the airlines handle it on their own? How about the FDA?
Wow, those are kind of goofy examples of abuse from an activist web site. Not very convincing for me.
The internet is in its infancy and I think its problems may not be understood well enough to start signing legislation. This I think makes it a lot different than the problem of air traffic control or drug approval. There are lots of (unknown even) applications for the internet that require a gaurenteed quality of service that can’t be achieved with net neutrality. I’m not taking a strong stance either way on this issue, I’m just inclined to trust the market to make the internet better than the gov would. And I’m just saying not singing the bill isn’t that outrageous.
I’m not sure if there are any examples that I could find that would “convince” you, but they serve to illustrate the tip of the iceberg of the kind of censorship and abusive practices that would easily become commonplace without net neutrality. Just because they are found on a pro-neutrality web site does not make them false in any way; they just happen to be collected and linked to from that convenient page. Would it be more credible if I extracted the individual news story links and posted them directly? As far as I’m concerned (unless you’d like to try and discredit them in some way), they stand as valid examples of what companies (in “the market”) have done and are likely to do with this power. Just saying that you choose not to believe them arbitrarily is pretty weak.
I’m curious what you mean when you say that a guaranteed level of quality of service can’t be achieved with net neutrality? I would disagree. I’m assuming that by quality of service you’re referring to a guarantee of a specific amount of bandwidth needed by certain applications, since that’s what the term QOS usually refers to in this context.
Many applications of that nature (such as VOIP) are running perfectly well right now with the de facto neutrality that we have in place, and this will only improve as access speeds increase. ISPs can offer their customers any guarantees on their level of service that they feel they can provide them, and neutrality does absolutely nothing to hinder them in this regard. It’s only when the corporations want to step in and give priority to certain traffic and put caps on (or completely censor) other types that you lose that quality of service. You may argue that that particular company is ensuring QOS for the particular traffic they are paying to boost, but that is only at the expense of the QOS for others who cannot afford to pay as much.
Signing a bill to preserve net neutrality is not handing control of the internet over to the government. Net neutrality gives the government no more control than it currently has, so it’s not a matter of “trusting” the government to make the internet better than “the market” would. The government would be doing nothing other than legislating that large corporations should never be given the power to totally jack up the way the internet works right now (which is well, by the way). To even acknowledge that the government COULD pass such a law is already inherently indicating that they have some jurisdiction over this matter, and legislation to guarantee net neutrality would do nothing to further extend this level of authority.
I guess I should concede that the failure to sign one particular bill is not necessarily “outrageous”, but I do believe that some legislation of its kind is a vital necessity if we want to preserve the integrity of the internet.
Personally, I believe that there has never been a more powerful tool for facilitating free speech than the internet. I believe that in the light of eventual history, it will far surpass even the printing press as the most important vehicle for the expression of ideas that we have, in terms of it’s availably to large numbers of “average” people. Of course, many places globally do not yet have this level of access, but they probably don’t have any other means of publishing either. The fact that any person (in the US at least), has the ability to walk into a public library and publish their thoughts for the world to see, even if they have no money is a huge step forward in the progress of freedom of speech.
Sure, it’s in it’s infancy, but that’s all the more reason to put safeguards in place to make sure that it does not become overwhelmed by corporate interests at the expense of drowning out independent speech. The United States of America was in its infancy (younger than the internet is now) when the constitution was drafted and ratified. Was this a premature measure? Should we have waited around to see how things turned out before taking this step? No, it was vitally important that it be in place as the country grew, not after. Later, it was amended when necessary, just as any net neutrality law passed today could easily be.
I’m not saying I don’t believe those stories or that there not valid. I just think they weren’t the serious (and two were from Canada) and they didn’t convince me that a the US government needs to do anything with net neutrality. The only one that I thought sounded somewhat serious was the DSL company in N.C. forcing their customers hand but I’m not sure that net neutrality would be right solution to preventing things like that.
As far as *guaranteed* quality of service in this case I think it refers to both bandwidth and latency and in some uses for the Internet it will have to be guaranteed. Meaning that it can’t just work pretty good most of the time like a VOIP service or some Internet entertainment foo but must work perfectly *all* the time. The example in my head right now is something like remote surgery where peoples lives would be on the line. There can’t be jitter or degraded service while the good doctor is performing emergency brain surgery because the latest version of Ubuntu just hit the net!
I think the Internet is pretty cool and works pretty good right now too, but I also am pretty sure it can be used in much cooler ways way beyond our imagination. It can be so much more than a tool for free speech. And again, I understand and can identify with your arguments for net neutrality but in general I think we should be very cautious to give the government any control becuse it won’t have the necessary foresight to not cripple progress.
Like I said in my last comment (not sure if you read the whole thing):
1. Net neutrality does absolutely nothing to hider reliable guarantees of quality of service, to the extent that the ISPs could ever provide them. What I mean to say is that the kinds of QOS tweaking that net neutrality would seek to prevent would still never guarantee it to work perfectly all the time, to the life-and-death critical levels you’ve described, so that argument is irrelevant.
2. Net neutrality does not grant any new power or control over the internet to the government, it seeks to prevent that control from being bought by the highest bidder.
The only scenario which would result in any party gaining more control than they have now, along with the potential to cause the stifling of progress that you fear would be if the wealthiest corporations are allowed to dictate what content is important and what should be silenced.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is an abundance of yet-to-be-realized potential in the internet, far beyond what we can currently imagine. Some of those important advances are also sure to have their opponents, and usually in the case of technology it is the stakeholders in the previous generation of products or services that attempt to do everything they can to stand in the way of that progress, in order to protect their own financial interests.
Additionally, even if every big corp. out there is kindhearted enough not to act in this manner, they will still be buying up pieces of the pie that are so large as to box out the smaller players (small businesses or individuals) from having any chance to make use of the medium. Whether that result is intentional or not doesn’t matter too much for the people that lose out. Over the last decade, so many of these smaller groups or individuals have leveraged the internet to level the playing field (to some degree) with their larger competitors (economically and otherwise), and this revolutionary change would certainly be deterred without net neutrality.
This is why I think it is vital that we preserve the current state of governance of the net, which has allowed it to grow so well this far – NOT give more control to other parties, be they the government or corporations. This is exactly what net neutrality does.
I’m reading your comments, and trying to respond to them. I guess I’m not being clear about my understanding.
1. If you aren’t shaping bandwidth and giving priority to certain types of data it isn’t a possible to make the guarantees necessary for certain applications. If you are doing it you and you set aside a certain amount of bandwidth for a specific purpose then it is possible give quality of service guarantees. Another way that I look at it. If the Ubuntu downloads and the remote surgery feed have the same priority on the network and the bandwidth limits are being reached then both suffer under net neutrality. If the remote surgery feed is *always* given highest priority then it is possible to say that it will *never* drop below a certain qos.
2. It does give the government control over how the Internet is run. If in the future there is a mind-blowing, world-changing idea that requires a certain type of data to be given higher priority the government will have to be petitioned to allow it to happen. That’s having control, and the type that can slow innovation.
1. I understood your point and agree that the ISPs could not offer that kind of guarantee with net neutrality. My point is that they can’t offer it without it either – not to the degree of certainty that would be necessary in the case you describe. Providers can only “guarantee” blocks or percentages of the connections they’ve got, which are still subject to many possible failures beyond their control. QOS gives them control over the internet traffic only after it gets to their own network.
Since this (IMHO) invalidates that kind of life and death argument, it really just boils down to saying that someone should be able to decide what traffic has higher priority, which is exactly the kind of CONTROL that you and I agree could lead to very bad outcomes.
2. No, I disagree. It simply puts rules in place to prevent future abuse. If you’re trying to say that the mere fact that such a abuse-prevention law would be in place is an undue level of control, then I would come right back and say that the fact that such a law is possible already inherently acknowledges that level of control, so passing it gives them no more than they have now.
Government can and does use their power to place limits on how businesses operate, for many good reasons, and I think net neutrality should be one of them. Of course, there should be checks and provisions to ensure that the government (nor any other party) is ever given the kind of content control that the lack of net neutrality would surely result in.
If the government truly had no power to do this, then this debate would not be happening. I maintain that the fact that they could pass such a law already means that they have a certain degree of control, and I’m trying to say that net neutrality does not extend that.
Also, if that mind-blowing, world changing idea does come about and we don’t have net neutrality, then the only difference would be that instead of petitioning the government to allow the extra bandwidth allocation they would have to petition (and pay exorbitant rates to) the large corporations who have already bought all of it up, which would slow innovation just as much, if not more.
1. I think it is possible. Especially if certain classes of data are given priority across networks. Anyways, this is a good example of the type of problem that companies with economic interest can work together to solve.
2. I disagree on all counts, but that’s because we wear different labels. On a bit of a tangent, Congress continually makes laws, has hearings, does whatever they do about stuff outside their jurisdiction. If they do pass a bill and it’s outside their power it gets challenged in court. Happens all the time.
1. How is an ISP like AT&T going to guarantee a level of service (for regular consumer internet service, which is what we’re talking about) when it only controls one end of a connection? Factors on the other end, or anywhere along the line which they don’t control (if the packets do traverse the actual internet) would make it impossible for them to offer such guarantees. If they truly want a guaranteed level of service they would have to get dedicated service from point A to point B, which the traditional internet infrastructure does not and should not offer.
Service providers have already solved this problem, by the way. Companies can buy expensive “WAN” type setups from providers which give this kind of dedicated connection service, and that’s where it belongs; not at the expense of consumer level internet services.
2. How about explaining why you disagree. What level of control *over the internet* does net neutrality grant to the government that they don’t already have?
Yes, the laws get challenged in court and overturned if they are invalid or unconstitutional. My point was that there are all sorts of existing rules in place that the government places limits on how businesses can operate (health & safety, minimum wage and other labor laws, etc.) That is all net neutrality is doing.
I think I pretty well debunked your net surgery example, so what I’d like to hear is a description of any situation in which net neutrality could in any way hinder future progress, which couldn’t also just as easily happen if the large corporations were to gain control of the internet.
My point is there is a long list of negative things that can and will happen without net neutrality, and I have yet to see one good positive example in opposing it.
Even if something did come up in the future, as you said laws can be overturned if the need arises. I say that we need to protect what we have now. If there does turn out to be some sort of downside to net neutrality (which I have yet to see) in the future, the laws can be reevaluated at that time in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the very nature of what the internet is today.
It’s interesting that you are so paranoid about any level of government control (which I still argue that net neutrality is not), but you are so willing to blindly accept corporate control of the internet without question. Any negative action taken by the government if they were to theoretically gain “control” of the internet could just as easily be taken by corporations, who would be in a much stronger position of control. As for me, I’d much rather have NEITHER the government nor corporations be given content control of the internet, and that is exactly what net neutrality is all about.
“The market” is not an all powerful force. Most sane people (even diehard capitalists) would agree that a government which can make laws about how people live and even how businesses are run is a necessity. All I’m saying is this is one of those cases.
Companies that control the intranet infrastructure could easily have contracts with each other to provide and end to end quality of service guarantee to customers. I think your being short sighted by thinking it’s an impossibility. Therefore you haven’t debunked my example, but I have shown that it is impossible to give such a guarantee under a neutral net policy. Dedicated lines are way to expensive and a poor solution for many customers compared to clever data priority scheme.
I’m not paranoid. I’m pragmatic. See my previous comments for how its giving government control. Almost 100% of the time the market is the driving force behind innovation. Extra bureaucratic red tape that may only serve to hinder new ideas and hurt the economy is bad policy. There are already lots of laws that the can be used to prevent the kind of abuse that you are so afraid of. For example–even though the activist website didn’t mention it–I found out that the Madison County ISP that tried to block competition was fined $15,000 by the FCC. Why not use that laws that already exist or find some other solution other then causing stagnation by forcing net neutrality.
There is not a long list of negative things that will absolutely happen. Why do you think net neutrality is the only option? That’s being dangerously narrow minded with a technology that is still in its infancy. As for bad things that can happen with net neutrality. There is always unforeseen consequences when the government is needlessly involved.
I don’t know why your trying to make me out to be some sort of radical in your the last two paragraphs. I think their tone in saying things like “blindly accept corporate control” and “most sane people” are counterproductive to what I thought was a entertaining debate. To respond to them I’ll just say I don’t think this is one of those cases.
P.S. It would be easier to respond to comments if we kept them short and sweet.
Not to encroach on your fun/debate/conversation I’m hoping for Google to just buy up all the dark fiber across the US and create their own backbone to the internet, a backbone that they would never be charged to used by the telcos. Maybe that’s just were the entire internet will go, Google, M$, Yahoo! and others will just be their own internet providers sub-leasing from the telcos and supporting the cost by ads. I would love free internet as long as the “ads” are done in a semi-transparent way like GMail. Then the real QOS for the “innovation” that Nate talks about would be paid directly through the telcos. But then what about the start-ups?
I’d have to say I wish I knew more about net neutrality but from what I understand I’d have to agree with a “neutrality”. I’d love to see all the future dreams that QOS would bring without NN but who’s to say it wouldn’t come without it. Look at Verizon FEOS, it’s quality internet service that you pay more for, the user pays for it not the user and the companies that profit from the user using the internet.
And I thought that is what this was all about. The ISPs charging internet companies for QOS. In my opinion this is horrible. Putting QOS in the hands of corporations that can afford it only monopolizes the internet. And for Google to stand up and say they want NN is commendable in my eyes because corporate greed would have them say no to NN so then they could push the competition out. Other online application providers would fail because if you could use GMail with great speed and QOS the start-up that pushes a “better” product with poor QOS because they can’t afford it would break all start-ups.
No NN = no progress. To me.
The way I see the internet going would greatly suffer if there were no NN. I want start-ups to create great online apps that change our life, like what 37 signals has done.
Another topic barely associated with NN is the fact we paid for the internet through our tax dollars. All that fiber we paid for and it not being used or being provided to us is something we should also petition. Instead we have cable internet being the fastest ISP which is not near what was promised to my parents or my younger ignorant self.
[...] Not to bring the conversation here, I just wanted my very large comment to be hear for others to see as well. Not to encroach on your fun/debate/conversation I’m hoping for Google to just buy up all the dark fiber across the US and create their own backbone to the internet, a backbone that they would never be charged to used by the telcos. Maybe that’s just were the entire internet will go, Google, M$, Yahoo! and others will just be their own internet providers sub-leasing from the telcos and supporting the cost by ads. I would love free internet as long as the “ads� are done in a semi-transparent way like GMail. Then the real QOS for the “innovation� that Nate talks about would be paid directly through the telcos. But then what about the start-ups? I’d have to say I wish I knew more about net neutrality but from what I understand I’d have to agree with a “neutrality�. I’d love to see all the future dreams that QOS would bring without NN but who’s to say it wouldn’t come without it. Look at Verizon FEOS, it’s quality internet service that you pay more for, the user pays for it not the user and the companies that profit from the user using the internet. And I thought that is what this was all about. The ISPs charging internet companies for QOS. In my opinion this is horrible. Putting QOS in the hands of corporations that can afford it only monopolizes the internet. And for Google to stand up and say they want NN is commendable in my eyes because corporate greed would have them say no to NN so then they could push the competition out. Other online application providers would fail because if you could use GMail with great speed and QOS the start-up that pushes a “better� product with poor QOS because they can’t afford it would break all start-ups. No NN = no progress. To me. The way I see the internet going would greatly suffer if there were no NN. I want start-ups to create great online apps that change our life, like what 37 signals has done. Another topic barely associated with NN is the fact we paid for the internet through our tax dollars. All that fiber we paid for and it not being used or being provided to us is something we should also petition. Instead we have cable internet being the fastest ISP which is not near what was promised to my parents or my younger ignorant self. [...]
Crap that’s a long trackback.
Here’s some good commentary.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702108.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=243&page=1
Something intersting I learned from the second link:
The Markey ammendment did allow for data prioritization. It just can’t cost extra:
SECTION 201. NETWORK NEUTRALITY.
(b) IN GENERAL.—Each broadband network provider has the duty—
(3) if the provider prioritizes or offers enhanced quality of service to data of a particular type, to prioritize or offer enhanced quality of service to all data of that type (regardless of the origin of such data) without imposing a surcharge or other consideration for such prioritization or enhanced quality of service;
Yes, this is getting a bit long, so I’ll try to keep this one short. Being brief is sometimes difficult when you have a strong opinion on something, because I sometimes find short comments to be lacking in the depth that is necessary in a good debate.
I’m definitely not trying to make you out to be any kind of radical. You do certainly seem to have no problem with large corporations having the same kind of control (actually more) that you are so opposed to the government having, and I don’t understand why. My point is that I don’t want either of them to have control of the content of the internet, and I believe that a sensible net neutrality bill is needed in order to guarantee that.
The “most sane people” reference was referring to you as being sane. I was making the point that almost everyone agrees that there are times that it is necessary for government to regulate business practices. We just differ on whether we think this is one of those times.
I still think it’s an entertaining debate, and I certainly didn’t mean either of those statements as an insult.
I’m also not saying that *this particular* neutrality bill is the only option (especially in light of those last few links), only that I think we need some sort of safeguard in place to ensure that the freedom we have on the internet today is not lost. It’s the exact same reason we needed to have a first amendment in the constitution. Sure, they could have just taken the position that those freedoms were inherent in the constitution, and let the courts decide on cases in which it was violated, but sometimes it’s a much better idea to add a specific law that clearly forbids that kind of abuse and is not open to broad interpretation.
Well, maybe I’m having trouble paying attention since I don’t have a strong opinion. Somehow I managed to take a side though.
It’s been a good learning exercise for me, there is a lot of noise out there on this subject as far as I can tell and a lot of arguments make sense in the big picture but the devil will be in the details. Congress will probably end up doing or not doing something which is broken in the most surprising ways. Hopefully it doesn’t do too much damage and can be fixed.
We can probably end this one well by totally agreeing on those last two sentences.