McCain still completely out of touch...

[BradH]

Originally Posted by Left

who's really lobbying for these regulations? i thought the riaa and film industry were the big players, and i understand why. i'm 100% against piracy.

however, i'm borderline on whether isps should be responsible for closing pirating users' connections, i think they should have a flag system in place for automatically reporting piracy to the riaa and have them sort it out legally without the isp directly interfering.

obviously that won't be as direct or quick a way to fight piracy, but at least its better than screwing up access for those that don't download illegally.

This has little or nothing to do with piracy (although the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking BitTorrent traffic -- which would fall into a key piece of net neutrality doctrine).

The lobbyists are the telecoms themselves... (AT&T, etc).
They want to regulate their own users' traffic to certain sites, and offer "premium access" levels and shit like that. No no no no.

[PETA]

something before bed]

In summary, maintaining 'Net Neutrality' would mean preserving the internet as it is in today's world, and as it has been. e.g.: Everyone is free to access whatever information they desire, at their maximum speed. *NOT* preserving 'Net Neutrality' would mean that, for example, AT&T could decide they don't really have a great agreement with Hulu.com, therefore all it's subscribers might be limited to 50/kb data-stream. Again, this is just an example.[/quote]

But AT&T is a business not a public service. Why should you or me or anyone get to demand what AT&T offers to anyone?

Originally Posted by BradH

Net neutrality doesn't mean the government jumping in and regulating anything -- it simply means preserving the internet in its current form... open and 'free'.

That quite specifically contradicts your prior statement. You are asking the gov't to require AT&T to provide access to X Y or Z een if they do not wish to do so. That's regulation.

Originally Posted by BradH

Imposing regulations, e.g.: passing legislation forbidding 'Net Neutrality' would, in essence, allow ISPs to regulate the data-stream to certain services, networks, websites, etc, that they deem inappropriate or not worthy of the full capacity of your internet service.

That would merely be adecision made by AT&T as to what they provided access to and what they did not... that's the absence of regulation.

Originally Posted by BradH

They want to regulate their own users' traffic to certain sites, and offer "premium access" levels and shit like that. No no no no.

Again, by what right would you justify your demand that a business provide its services to you at the price you want?

Would demand the government tell Whole Foods that they have to stock live lobsters again.... and they have to sell them for $5.00 a pop?

How is your demand that AT&T provide what you want (and that they do not want to provide) at the price you want (rather then the premium they'd charge for offering that thing they didn't wish to offer)?


What this sounds like is you wanting to tell a business what products it will provide and at what price and you want the gov't to enforce that demand through regulation. How is that not the case?

[Left]

Originally Posted by BradH

This has little or nothing to do with piracy (although the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking BitTorrent traffic -- which would fall into a key piece of net neutrality doctrine).

The lobbyists are the telecoms themselves... (AT&T, etc).
They want to regulate their own users' traffic to certain sites, and offer "premium access" levels and shit like that. No no no no.

ah, thank you.
why can't they just charge more for access, period? it is free market, right?

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Left

ah, thank you.
why can't they just charge more for access, period? it is free market, right?

That's exactly what I was asking. Would seem a reasonable compromise on the issue wouldn't it?

[djetaine]

One of my largest issues with the tiered system is the effect it will have on innovation and small business.

Streaming content is here to stay. HD content is becoming more and more popular. The market for these types of services is huge at the moment and will continue to be. The same can be said for games.
Currently, anyone can access these services. As soon as a tiered system goes into effect people are going to start regulating the amount of bandwidth they use. These sites use massive amounts of bandwidth. When people start regulating it like that, the streaming sites and game developers will lose business. A LOT of business.
Now you can say that this is the way business works but that is basically allowing the the telecom companies to have a huge amount of control over other business ventures.
It puts way too much power into their hands.

Then you've got small time data centers, small businesses (50-100 people), heavy VPN users. All of these are going to have big problems as soon as a tiered system goes into effect.
I will definitely have problems as I have at least 2 PC's using VPN connections, multiple RDP connections and multiple VM's running at the same time. This is almost all business related. Unless my company starts paying for my internet, I'm at a huge loss there when I have to bump up my current 100 dollar internet bill up to a new tier.
You also have to consider that current technology allows for huge amounts of bandwidth to be distributed. The problem here is that there has been NO DISCLOSURE about how much of this bandwidth is actually being used. While companies like 1and1 (the largest webhost in the world) are UNCAPPING bandwidth, telecom companies are capping it, saying that they cant support it. It's one or the other, and I would really have to side with a webhosting company over the telecoms and cable companies and their lobbyists.

I'm not saying that heavy users shouldnt pay more. I am one of those users and I do agree that I should probably pay more than the average user. But not more than I pay now.
Internet is way to expensive as it is and without disclosure on:

• how much bandwidth people actually use

• how much bandwidth is available

• how much that bandwidth costs them

• how much the companies are paying to actually EXPAND their networks to STOP this kind of "clogging of the tubes" from happening

I can't support anything like this.

Take for example text messages. This is a prime example of the type of price gouging that is going on with the telecom companies.
With ATT, one text message is 160 charactors. Each of those char's is one byte. That's 160bytes per message.

On a pay per use plan you will pay .20cents per message. That is $1310.72 PER MEG.
Text messages are pushed through the same exact network that all other traffic goes through and yet the other pricing plans are different? If this is the model for SMS, what would lead us to believe that the model for normal internet would be any different.

[PETA]

but doesn't it come down to the gov't telling a provider what services they must provide?

Can't the market sort that out on its own?

How about technology rendering the point moot? Or is it likely to be a reoccuring problem?

[djetaine]

Originally Posted by PETA

but doesn't it come down to the gov't telling a provider what services they must provide?

Ay, theres the rub... I wish I had an answer for you there. The only possible thing I could think of is that the government needs to force a full disclosure so that consumers can be protected from price gouging. And yes, I know it's not that easy.

Originally Posted by PETA

Can't the market sort that out on its own?

Not without disclosure

Originally Posted by PETA

How about technology rendering the point moot? Or is it likely to be a reoccuring problem?

Compression is a mathematical equation, there comes a point where it just cant get any better. The only way technology could render the point moot is to design better compression, the problem is, it can only go so far before quality is degraded. This is why we are seeing larger harddrives LONG before we see better compression. It is much more cost effective and future proof to design devices with larger capacities. This is what needs to happen to the current broadband networks.

EDIT: As an afterthought... In the distant future, I could honestly see people trading bandwidth in a similar way that electricity is currently traded.

[tricky]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mo...-to-neutrality

[zerojunkie]

Originally Posted by PETA

but doesn't it come down to the gov't telling a provider what services they must provide?

The government (local municipalities) have given the providers right-of-way contracts in many areas. Given that, consumers don't really have the ability to "choose with their pocketbooks."

Originally Posted by PETA

Can't the market sort that out on its own?

No, free market logic is predicated on competition, and there's essentially a duopoly or even a monopoly in much of the country. There's a chart out there that calculated the average monthly household expenditure on telecom services in markets that had one, two, three, and four different options. The results were staggering, the markets that had three and four different options came in quite a bit lower than the others. It's only natural to assume that left without competition the telco will not invest in the infrastructure that's deemed necessary w/o some kind of government intervention.

Originally Posted by PETA

How about technology rendering the point moot? Or is it likely to be a reoccuring problem?

Technology is trying to catch up with the problem. Wireless 4g networks are promising speeds better than that of a lot of wired residential connections. So that would at least give another option to a lot of areas that are locked into one telco and cable provider. I wouldn't say that even three providers is enough to constitute real competition though.

Originally Posted by djetaine

Compression is a mathematical equation, there comes a point where it just cant get any better. The only way technology could render the point moot is to design better compression, the problem is, it can only go so far before quality is degraded. This is why we are seeing larger harddrives LONG before we see better compression. It is much more cost effective and future proof to design devices with larger capacities. This is what needs to happen to the current broadband networks.

EDIT: As an afterthought... In the distant future, I could honestly see people trading bandwidth in a similar way that electricity is currently traded.

It's interesting because most of the large providers (verizon, att, time warner...etc) own or lease fiber that connects their markets together. Fiber as a medium has a theoretical maximum throughput of 100 terabits per strand. When you consider that most markets on most decent networks are connected with OC-768's; we're only using .037% of that theoretical maximum. Of course, the processing and optics technology haven't come close to reaching that limit yet but they're getting better everyday. That's not to say that compression doesn't have it's place, but the woe is me excuses the providers are trotting out there are because of their own doing.

They're playing the game of lowering expenses (e.g. infrastructure investment) to increase shareholder profit. With that premise in mind their reaction to the explosion in p2p and HD content over the past few years has followed a logical progression. First they tried to get content providing sites to pay for "enhanced" treatment on their networks. In the case of p2p they tried choking it without considering the legitimate uses of the technology. When neither of those worked, they started playing with the idea of bilking their own customers by metering their bandwidth. It's nothing more than the exertion of the company's geographical monopoly.

I don't quite buy into the analogy of a telcom network to an electrical grid. Most of the cost associated with providing power goes to it's generation, and not it's distribution. Obviously an all-you-can-eat model wouldn't work for it. but if it's job was just to simply distribute a limitless supply of power...maybe.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by djetaine

Ay, theres the rub... I wish I had an answer for you there. The only possible thing I could think of is that the government needs to force a full disclosure so that consumers can be protected from price gouging. And yes, I know it's not that easy.

I'm all about transparency

Originally Posted by djetaine

Not without disclosure

Compression is a mathematical equation, there comes a point where it just cant get any better. The only way technology could render the point moot is to design better compression, the problem is, it can only go so far before quality is degraded. This is why we are seeing larger harddrives LONG before we see better compression. It is much more cost effective and future proof to design devices with larger capacities. This is what needs to happen to the current broadband networks.

I'm also all about regulation when it is needed to permit the market to function properly.

Originally Posted by djetaine

EDIT: As an afterthought... In the distant future, I could honestly see people trading bandwidth in a similar way that electricity is currently traded.

interesting

[tricky]

here's what the internet will look like without net neutrality

[djetaine]

Take a look at this arstechnica article.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...t-your-own.ars

A Minnesota town goes to their local Telco (TDS Communications) and ask them to implement direct fiber to the home.

TDS says, we have no plans to do so and shuts them out.

Town says, "fine, we will roll out our own municipal owned 50mb fiber connection direct to people's houses."

As soon as TDS hears about it... guess what, they offer fiber direct to the home at a HUGE price discount. 50 bucks a month.

When TDS was asked about the sudden change of heart, they replied with "We didnt know people REALLY wanted it" (nevermind the fact that city officials contacted TDS exec's directly)


This just goes to show that Telco/Cable companies DO have the means to expand their service at the drop of a hat, they just dont care to do it because of the lack of competition.

Why spend money on your network if people are going to pay more for what they already have?

[BradH]

Originally Posted by tricky

here's what the internet will look like without net neutrality

Good find. I like

[BradH]

[Dionysos]

Originally Posted by PETA

I'm also all about regulation when it is needed to permit the market to function properly.

In this case, Net Neutrality is necessary. What's happening is the law codifying what is already done as a best practice because some of the telcos are trying to find ways around it. The nature of the internet, the core of how it functions, is based on a logic of open-ness(for lack of a better term). From peering agreements(how your traffic goes from Time Warner to a site hosted on AT&T's space, for example) to route selection(the method routers use to direct your traffic) all functions best when the internet is unabated by unnecessary Quality of Service(QoS) functions that would be implemented by a telco setting you up not to receive hulu without paying a higher price. The opponents of Net Neutrality would actually be invoking a system similar to what China does on a national level in some respects. As others have mentioned, the lack of choice on your part is part of what makes this an issue the gov't is likely to need to step into.

As an aside, your analogy of the gov't forcing Walmart to let Target sell through their stores already happens today. Most ISPs are running off somebody else's fiber(like AT&T) because the government forced their hand. The result was increased competition and better prices for the consumer.