Net neutrality is the principle that says all information flowing across the Internet should be treated equally. But with more people streaming data-rich video and playing online games, the Internet faces congestion concerns. Should carriers be able to sell multi-tiered access to heavy users? Should sites that generate massive traffic -- like Google and Yahoo! -- pay extra fees? The U.S. Government is examining Net Neutrality and its financial, legal and social implications. Do we need federal intervention to ensure fairness, or is this an issue for the market to work out?
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No government tampering with the net and the data-flow is the Internet's first ammendment!!!
- zebrab September 4, 2008 12:29AM
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The government has already tipped the scale away from net neutrality, by granting "exclusive" territories to Comcast and other companies that choose not to give the consumer fair services for the fees charged. You are obviously NOT a customer of Comcast, unless you are a Comcast marketing employee.
I for one resent having 6-8Mb download speeds being paraded as the fiber optic level of service Comcast chooses to parade in their advertising. The upload speeds are a joke as well. There is no reason upload speeds should be any less than download speeds. This garbage hearkens back to the days that the ISP's were blocking people from hosting their own web sites. The dynamic IP addresses are actually an increase in the ISP's work to provide services. It allows them to charge twice the going rates to the business customers. The result is that no user will be allowed to host their own blog or web site. This is allowed to happen by dint of regulation.
Hate to say it, but we are already the victims of Government (FCC) regulation.
- tomcat2200
September 14, 2008 12:09AM
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I agree that Comcast has a HORRIBLE track record when it comes to things like Customer Service and other things.
However, it is a very common in the broadband industry to have a download to upload speed disparity. This is because people download almost 10 times as much as they upload. In reality only those operating servers and such require equal amounts of bandwidth for upload and download. Partly because your download pipe is so much larger than your upload pipe is why when you download big files like say a Linux .iso (600mb-4gb) it comes to you so quickly.
Everything else is scummy though including not allowing people to run their own servers. As long as they are paying for the connection and their machine hasnt been turned into a Zombie and attacking other machines then it should be fine.
- Concerned Citizen
May 17, 2009 9:10PM
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The Internet is not a public resource. The networks, machines and know how that make all of it possible are privately owned. By forcing an ISP to run their networks a certain way you are violating their rights of ownership. You chatter on about your rights to be able to see a certain web site a certain way. You have no rights in this respect. There can be no right to a good or service that must be created by another.
If you don't like the policies of your ISP you are free to start your own, or use another one. To use a few analogies:
A mall owner can eject you from his property if he chooses, this does not violate your rights or the rights of the stores who pay him rent. The mall owner can choose to charge a cover to enter his property if he wishes, he is not violating your rights nor the rights of the store owners. A privately owned road can, and do, charge tolls. Using the road means you can access certain stores on the other side of the road faster than taking the long way around. This does not violate anyone's rights. If, however, in any of the analogies above the government, under penalty of force, requires the owners of property to allow you to remain or not charge a cover or not collect tolls. The rights of the owner are most definitely violated.
If for some reason all the ISPs in the world go totally irrational and decide to break the Internet as in your doomsday, strawman, arguments, that would be unfortunate. But any one of us is free to raise the money to create a new internet that has whatever policies we wish. The internet is not an entity in and of itself. It is an emergent phenomenon based on contractual peering services and circuits that are bought and paid for by every participant. Every one of them has the right to try and maximize their profit in the relationship. But this profit motive is exactly what would keep your so-called "neutrality" safe. For every ISP that would try and squeeze some undue profit by altering the paths, three more will rise up and compete with them because they will open the door of opportunity for a "free" internet.
You claim you have a right to a free internet, but you intentionally blank out the fact that the internet is created by individuals who own the pieces. They have rights. You have whatever contractual rights that have been agreed to in your user agreement. None of those is the right to point a gun at the ISP and force them to do your bidding.
Every one of these issues is an issue of contract. When you sign up for an ISP you enter into a contract, if you are able you can convince the ISPs to write into their contract some type of equal treatment of traffic clause, then that is how to handle this. You don't go running to the nanny (government) to force the ISP to give you some of their toys to play with.
- McLazarus September 4, 2008 7:55AM
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Before Al Gore invented the Internet, it was called DARPAnet. It was not "created by individuals," if by that you mean private entities without government assistance. This fact is conveniently omitted by NN opponents, who like to paint the Internet as some sort of libertarian utopia where rugged individuals made the sandbox ("created by individuals who own the pieces,") we just play in it ("You have whatever contractual rights that been agreed to in your user agreement,") and the gubmint is the stupid dumb playground supervisor who tries to ruin the fun for everyone ("running to the nanny (government) to force the ISP to give you some of their toys to play with.")
For more fun with analogies, consider McLazarus' hypothetical mall. What if the mall received a gigantic public subsidy to be built, and continues to receive favorable tax treatment that costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year? As a resident of the Twin Cities, home of the Mall of America, this is a reality that I am familiar with. "Owners" of malls (and Internet business, I might add) are happy to paint themselves as providing a public service, or even a public space in the case of malls, when it suits their interest in courting taxpayer subsidies. But when the public insists on the rights of equal access or even some access to that space for the purpose of exercising their free speech rights, the owner will claim to have a property right to exclude speech that they don't like.
As the media landscape is increasingly transformed by the meta-medium of the Internet, we should pay close attention to those who wish to obscure this, since the public backbone of the Internet is something that is akin to the public ownership of the airwaves in broadcasting. The ginormous initial subsidy that created the Internet's backbone (Al Gore notwithstanding) is relevant to this discussion.
- TheK September 8, 2008 6:53AM
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No one forced the companies into hosting the internet. You need to realize that when the FCC allocated the internet territories, it was a public resource. Just like the airwaves are a public resource. Your arguement is broken as there are many companies willing to provide services. If Comcast wants to go home and take their routers and cable connections with them, then more power to them. It is one tear I would not shed.
You are not free to start your own ISP as you imply. There are many regulatory territories divvied out as exclusives by the FCC. The problems are that companies such as Comcast refuse to play nice in their zones exclusive control. Customers are their exclusive resource to do with as they please, and it hasn't been a nice experience for the customers. The Comcast mantra is to rely on customers not being aware of other communities around their exclusive territories.
- tomcat2200 September 14, 2008 12:17AM
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The cables/infrastructure used by people to connect to the internet belong to Comcast. They're not modifying the internet itself, as you seem to make it out.
- pdethier March 16, 2009 6:26PM
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Actually the Internet IS a public resource. The underlying structure that was the phone companies and later the fiber optic backbones were actually paid for by the taxpayer giving money to these telecommunications and cable companies to make the infrastructure. Also it must cross vast distances of public land which I doubt they have bought and/or pay rent for so in a way taxpayers are still subsidizing the ISPs.
A mall owner can eject you from their property only if you do something to warrant it. If there is a general public invitation to entry. If he decides to charge a cover then it might infringe on the rights of the stores that pay him rent. After all he is changing the rules mid-lease.
Also what about all those government issued monopolies. You know the kind of internet area where you ONLY have Comcast or only have AT&T or maybe a duopoly of one DSL provider and one Cable provider. When they enter into back room deals the customer is the only one left to get screwed.
- Concerned Citizen May 17, 2009 9:33PM
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The internet began as a connection between research computers both in Europe and the US. Much of the infrastructure was created and regulated by the government and research organizations. When these resources were originally opened to the public it was with the understanding that Net Neutrality would be observed (although the specific term had not yet been invented). The World Wide Web, which many people think of when speaking of the internet was also intended to be free since its inception. All of this was to facilitate the free and easy transfer of ideas and information.
For a corporation to charge based on the content or origin or a piece of information is to go against everything that the internet was intended. Many research organizations that were instrumental in the development of the internet still depend on its openness and ease of use. For example the LHC at CERN, birthplace of the World Wide Web, will generate 15 Petabytes of data annually that will then be sent out to about dozen other sites, which will then be divided into smaller pieces and then sent to 140 more locations, from which end users will then pull the data needed. If that data was slowed or charged based on not being in the preferred network their analysis would be impossible.
Disabling scientific discourse and innovation in this manner would be a terrible disservice to the world and in most cases would seem unethical since many ISPs and telecoms use these government and research networks to pass their information. Since so much of all traffic passes though federally funded and operated networks (many research networks fall under government jurisdiction) it would seem more than reasonable for the government to mandate that traffic not be filtered or slowed.
If these government and research networks were to turn around and suddenly start doing what is being proposed by some of the corporations, the corporations would be outraged. In either case (the government or a corporation) discrimination of information would be severely detrimental to the way the internet currently works.
- tdhowe September 8, 2008 12:18PM
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The issue is not whether we should regulate neutrality on the internet because many Americans don't have a choice. The issue is that we don't HAVE internet choice. There is no compelling reason at this point for governments to be imposing monopoly via cable and telephone "utilities" on the public. Europe is doing quite well without that regulation, as is most of the rest of the world.
- Benjamin Tuttle September 2, 2008 6:13AM
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Network Neutrality should be a cornerstone of the Internet. It is born out of the principle of 'Common Carrier' during the days of the Telecom giants. Telecommunications companies were given monopolies over the physical resources (telephone poles/lines) in exchange for maintaining certain levels of service. Now when the internet came along the Telecom companies were in the best position to deliver the internet to the masses. Just because the information transmitted has changed does not mean that the original deal should change as well.
Europe is also doing well because there is strong competition in their markets.
- Concerned Citizen September 2, 2008 2:46PM
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The truth of the matter is that it is an issue of urgency. Not necessarily immediate earth-shattering urgency but of an urgency that preemptive action would save many headaches in the future when means and methods of 'Traffic Shaping' or 'Throttling' become commonplace and accepted. If governments of the world do not mandate network neutality you can expect many more actions like those that Comcast has done in limiting peoples network traffic.
I would not necessarily call Comcast's interferance 'Minor'. Their method of interference was out and out FORGERY of of RST packets to force both ends to drop the connection, a bonafide Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack by an agent who is tasked with the delivery of packets from point A to point B. If trust between us, the ISPs and the backbone providers breaks down then the internet as it stands becomes a much more hostile place to do business. How can we not trust the providers along the way not to perform MITM attacks when its convenient for them. Can we trust these ISPs not to poison DNS entries so that we cannot reach their compeditor's sites (if there are even compeditors). And Comcast has not actually stopped their traffic shaping/throttling practices but have instead tried to sidestep or do an end run around the Network Neutrality debate by applying their traffic shaping/throttling measures to ALL high bandwidth uses such as streaming audio and video which services like the popular Youtube deliver.
I also fail to see how a SMS shortcode has anything to do with the Internet. Cellular Phones that receive SMS messages tend to be a wireless telecommunications issue and NOT an Internet issue.
The thing is that in the US you have typically 1 or 2 broadband providers in any given area. A monopoly or duopoly does not provide the necessary amount of choice that a customer would be empowered to effect change on these big corporations. In fact it is more likely than not less beneficial for the customer because the ones that should be competing can easily enact backroom deals to perform similar methods on their own networks then anyone in that geograhical area has no option but to goto a company that is utilizing traffic shaping/throttling. It would be diffcult or impossible to prove but everyone knows these sorts of actions happen like with the price of gas it is almost impossible to prove but everyone can see its effects.
If you want other evidence of network neutrality being broken or abused it might be hard to find them in the US presently but all you need to do is look north of the border to Rogers Communications Inc. who instead of trying to throttle bittorrent or find out traffic patterns and what not has decided to enact a draconian throttling solution that chokes your speed when it detects ANY encrypted sessions (VPN Tunnels which businesses rely on for Telecommuting employees, Some versions of Bittorrent, TOR, sites that have judicious use of HTTPS). From my personal experience speeds will drop from 500kb/s down to maybe 20kb/s if you are lucky, a decrease in bandwidth of approximately 96%. I have no idea what Bell Canada's is like but both Rogers AND Bell Canada (the cable and DSL duopoly north of the border in most cases) have forced these traffic shaping/throttling measures down to 3rd party ISPs that are supposed to be competing with them.
I am not saying all traffic shaping is necessarily bad. The thing is that GOOD traffic shaping is generally not noticed by the users of the network and will generally improve the experience for everyone involved. Prioritizing protocols where latency is a serious impact on performance such as VOIP and some gaming applications where latency or 'lag' really degrades the performance will vastly improve performance of those protocols. Giving web pages and email protocols the next rung of priority where interactivity is present (human at the keyboard/screen) but where latency is not a serious factor and where a bit of transmission speed/bandwidth helps out will make it so that the internet doesnt seem slow for your typical mom and pop user. I can also understand putting streaming video a step below that since once the downloads are started all it does need is a little bit of bandwidth to keep a decent buffer and that Bittorrent would be the lowest priority since quite often there is not a person at the keyboard. In general people dont care as long as Bittorrent works and gets things sent/received with little to no interference.
- Concerned Citizen September 3, 2008 7:59AM
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What you cite as priorities is already built into the internet. The schemes for low latency for VOIP, has always been a design feature of all of the equipment manufactured and the software produced to drive such systems. Other services are already tiered for priority, and email comes much lower on the list than you have placed it. You haven't read about the packet prioritization that is in place, and you don't realize what traffic management ala Comcast means.
Traffic shaping, goes one step beyond the normal traffic routing, to try to reduce the shared data flow one provider has to exchange with other ISP's. This makes for a new profit centers for the likes of Comcast. They pay out less in exchange for data handling coming into their territories. It's a net profit, if they can reduce the outflow, by managing their customer use, outside their territories. It is even a managed situation if the data has to cross other territories to reach another Comcast territory.
Canada is not a good comparison. They had to beg the companies to give more general covwerage as the population density was very low on average in Canada. In the US, the population centers almost everywhere are sufficient to support a provider. Only a small subset of the US population has no internet coverage. This should all disappear as the white space products come on to the market, assuming the FCC QUITS DRAGGING THEIR FEET.
Canada is in their own nightmare, by granting exclusives to the two companies. One owns the wires and the other owns the services. They will continue to bleed Canada for as long as they can.
- tomcat2200 September 14, 2008 12:51AM
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In this article, Cato has basically made the case in favor of Network Neutrality, and is simply worried about how it ought to be enshrined.
Few golfers hit the ball into the hole on the first swing, so the fear that we might not get a Network Neutrality bill exactly right on the first attempt is not a reason to wait. It's almost guaranteed that it will be wrong in some ways, but the chances are good that such a bill will be right in most ways.
And while Network Neutrality is rooted in how the Internet traditionally treated packets that were crossing it, this tradition was also enshrined in part of that design. Now, with Deep Packet Inspection, triple-play packages, and carefully crafted bandwidth limits -- assumptions based upon that neutral design and tradition are out the window.
Since Cato's author writes "that this principle has been crucial to the Internet’s success over the last decade, and I would like to see it preserved," I'm very Interested in Cato's proposal of how to do that given consumers current lack of choices, the heavy push for network vendors to get wire-speed "monetizing" DPI products into the ISP chain to "enhance the experience," and the natural desire for ISPs to spend as little as possible on network upgrades by using DPI as a substitute for some of it.
- Robb Topolski August 31, 2008 4:45PM
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I completely disagree with the statement "...chances are good that such a bill will be right in most ways." I've never known a piece of regulation like Net Neutrality to be "right in most ways". Odds are quite the opposite. For instance: Cato brings up the ICC in a later argument, and more recently, there is the whole ethanol subsidy that causes food to be more expensive in order to pursue an energy-inefficient alternative to oil.
To answer your question "Why is this on the No side?":
You precede from a false assumption - Cato is a libertarian organization and its default position is to oppose the creation of most new laws (and supports removal of many existing laws). Thus, the libertarian aim is to "enshrine" as little as possible in law, for the very reason that is extremely hard to change once enacted, most laws tend to have adverse side effects, and that most laws have no business being laws in the first place under the Constitution. "Enshrining" is the domain of religion, not good, limited government anyway.
Net Neutrality, in all it's ill-defined incarnations, should never be law.
- strawhatguy August 31, 2008 6:20PM
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Net Neutrality is not ill-defined. It is quite well defined as not adversely affecting the packets transiting an ISPs network in an excessively negative way.
Comcast's forgery of RST (Reset) packets to both source and destination is one such example of adversely affecting the packets. They are basically performing a Man-in-the-Middle attack with their forging of packets and disrupting traffic flow across their portion of the internet.
The principle does not say you cant give priority where such would be beneficial for all users but it does say that you should not be willfully interfering the delivery of packets. Packets can and should get to their destination eventually. What does not matter is that VOIP packets get the fast lane while Bittorrent gets the slow lane, what does matter is when you throw up a roadblock in front of the slow lane and only let traffic in the middle and fast lanes to go through.
- Concerned Citizen September 3, 2008 8:18AM
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So who decides what is to benefit all users? Some government body? How about when this stifles innovation because innovation is not good for all users?
Also what about the owners? Comcast owns their network. They built it with their money, brains and hard work. They have the right to decide how to regulate their network. Period. They did not build it to benefit anyone but themselves, and they certainly didn't pluck it from a tree. All arguments for net neutrality blank out the owners and builders and pre-suppose the network.
Without the builders, those who actually have a profit motive to see the internet continuing to operate, there is no network for the net neutrality advocates to attempt to seize control. In the areas where there is only one low cost provider, and that provider could limit access. Those people are free to act, they can move, they can raise capital and build a competing service, they can get a T1 run to their house (at considerable but insignificant compared to what Comcast spent to build out and maintain a network to their house) or they can have no internet.
Governments role is the protection of rights. There can be no right to a good or service that must be created by another. Your comment shows some technical proficiency. So let me assume you are a network professional. You probably build networks or systems for money. This is how you survive. If a customer of yours stops paying you, or only wants to pay you to come on site for 4 hours a month, do they have the right to demand the same service a customer who pays you for 24x7 retainer? They can have no right to the fruit of your labor and mind except as agreed to voluntarily by you. If you change your rates to require payment for working with one set of equipment or software versus another they have no right to demand to pay the lower rate and get the better service. This analogy applies directly to what you are demanding of Comcast and every other ISP.
- McLazarus September 4, 2008 8:17AM
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The portions of the network owned by Comcast and other ISPs are classic examples of bottleneck assets and, as such, are justly regulated as any other bottleneck is (think bridges, highways and, yes, local loops owned by telcos).
Your analysis is flawed as it applies to the earlier commenter: unless he is the only or one of a few such professionals, he doesn't represent a bottleneck.
- JKFriedman September 4, 2008 11:08AM
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Many home consumers have the option of Verizon FiOS, Comcast cable, DSL from many providers. But you said even a few would indicate a bottleneck. As such does that mean that the best brain surgeon in the world must become my slave if I need brain surgery because he is a bottleneck between me and my right to life? I know this is a further stretch of my analogy, but it is the same thing violating the rights of one person for the benefit of another.
Where did these "assets" come from? The were produced, by Comcast for their purposes. Your term of them as assets tries to smuggle in the idea that I have a right to dictate terms on their property because they were they only ones to build that bridge to the internet in my neighborhood.
The discussion is further muddied by things like common carrier and all the other governmental involvement and public property and public rights of way. But there is an excellent article about the power grid that addresses most of this and shows how government regulation has hindered not helped in this matter, that can be found here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/property-rights-electric-grid.asp As the analysis is detailed and completely applies to internet I recommend anyone really interested, not just looking for handouts, in net neutrality dig into this.
- McLazarus September 4, 2008 11:48AM
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You make some excellent points and thanks for the link to the article. I will read it when I get a chance -- hopefully this weekend.
However, your analysis ignores history and, as such, fails since the vast majority of US government economic regulation is based on history -- the history of abuse.
A brain surgeon is a person; an ISP is a corporation. Government typically requires more of the latter than the former. I'm not trying to "smuggle" anything: corporate assets that are bottlenecks are properly the target of regulation. NOT because they are bottlenecks, per se, but because history has proven (again, and again, and again, and, if NN isn't codified, it will be proven yet again) that all corporate actors are would-be monopolists. Most simply haven't the effective opportunity to live up to their desire. Because of the massive sunk costs involved with building communications networks, however, the actors capable of marshalling such resources are provided with an effective opportunity. And, as history shows, when opportunity and desire coincide . . . well, the Bell System and Standard Oil are telling stories of how corporate desire and opportunity, unchecked by effective regulation, permit the big to beat the small, the rapacious to overwhelm the modest, the bottleneck to be used as a brickbat. Thus common carriage (which isn't muddying anything -- the provision of 'net services by ISPs is so close to common carriage that the FCC had to declare that it wasn't common carriage -- and we all know that when the government insists that some thing "is" or "isn't" that the truth is usually 180 degrees away from the government's description (see, e.g., the statutory prohibition against labeling universal service "subsidies" as "taxes" -- they're clearly taxes as they are government-mandated payments (the very essence of taxation)). I apologize for the nested parens -- I get carried away!. Title II of the Communications Act governing common carriage was a response to the formation of the Bell System by the means employed by its managers -- not a response to the Bell System per se. Same with NN. Your arguement would be stronger if Comcast hadn't lied and hemmed and hawed about its cloning of reset packets.
Brain surgeons, unlike corporations, are generally motivated by doing good. Corporations, properly, are interested in maximizing profits. They serve different societal purposes. Sure, the former can abhor any societal purpose and dedicated his/her life to the consumption of epic quantities of alcohol or heroin. But corporations are purely creatures of society -- they exist only due to statutory provision. They cannot, therefore, abandon society's benefit. They can abhor it, but they can't flee it (not successfully anyway).
- JKFriedman September 4, 2008 12:14PM
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Well I would presume a panel of experts that are not necessarily bound to the companies that are the cause of many net neutrality problems.
Comcast may 'own' the network but I do believe if you do digging that they were either given public money directly for many of the projects for building their network or alternatively were given 'monopoly' rights over cable in a given geographic region which has the same effect as giving public money to them to build their network. There is no question about profit since theoretically they can set their prices as high or as low as they feel like and people will have to deal with it.
The problem with your suggestion to built a competing service also falls on its face. You will not be permitted to build a cable network where one already exists. Just like you probably wont be permitted to build your own phone network where one already exists to provide DSL as many DSL providers have 'Monopoly Rights' agreements with places they service as well.
I have a degree in an IT discipline so you could consider me to have some technical proficiency. The thing is if someone stops paying then they wont get any service barring extenuating circumstances (things such as having a record as a good customer or someone who's given us lots of referrals). Also the customer who pays you for 4 hours a day vs the one who pays you for 24x7 service get the same service for the hours they've paid for. So the person with 4 hours will get 4 hours of high quality service but the person with 24x7 service will get high quality service whenever they need it. Naturally I'd have enough employees on hand to deal with 24x7 clients as well as the 4 hour a month ones.
Why would I change my rates to require payment for different types of software except as a requirement for purchasing the software/licenses in the first place (which is another topic of debate all together)? Software is software is software. I'm not out to screw my customer because screwed customers do not come back (unless you're a monopoly, see above) and do not refer you to friends and business associates.
- Concerned Citizen September 4, 2008 7:28PM
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You seem to agree that neutrality principle (technical principle, yes, sure!) has played a very important role in getting the Internet to where it is. It has fostered innovation, created wealth, boosted free-speech, and has made people more aware of the world. We both seem to agree on this point. But your concerns, while being legitimate legal concerns, does nothing to further the case for or against the neutrality principle. Just because the legal language might be open to interpretations does not mean we should give up on neutrality. Instead, we should work harder to create unambiguous laws that protect the rights of the people on Internet.
- digitaleye September 3, 2008 9:46AM
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The attraction of the internet to technologists and entrepreneurs alike is the freeness and openness enjoyed on the internet. It is this freedom which has lead to enormous technological advances, distributed knowledge and influential paradigm shifts in how we interact and socialize. As such, we should do everything in our power to maintain that openness and freedom currently enjoyed, otherwise, we run the risk of regressing back a few steps in the wrong direction.
The concern regarding capacity has been raised. However, it should be remembered that technology is being developed at an incredible rate to overcome these hurdles. Right now, in the USA researchers are involved in creating the Internet 2.0. There are worldwide organisations researching new means of data transfer. Overcoming legislation, on the other hand, is a much slower process. Issues involving capacity will sort themselves out. It is my opinion that it would be a terrible mistake to trow a political spanner in the works.
- Ralfe Poisson
August 31, 2008 10:26AM
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Net Neutrality has been the standard for the significant portion of the history of the Internet. Traffic on the Internet during that time has increased exponentially. How can you argue that the current state of the Internet presents some drastic difference over the past that requires a re-examining of this fundamental principle?
In addition, the argument about litigious fleets of lawyers using Net Neutrality as a barrier of entry into the market doesn't make sense unless you believe that a) violating Net Neutrality is somehow necessary for a new player to come to market, or b) there is something fundamental about Net Neutrality that makes frivolous lawsuits attractive. You haven't made any attempt to back up either of those, and in fact the entire argument seems like it is just a generic argument that all regulation is bad, with really no thought given to the current topic.
- tojo2000 August 31, 2008 3:46PM
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The argument isn't that it will be necessary to violate Net Neutrality for a new player to come to market (although that may be the case too), but that those already entrenched players will use such laws in order to make new claims against such new players whether or not those claims are what was "intended" under Net Neutrality. Naturally, the already-entrenched player will have more resources and will often succeed in driving the newcomers out of business, thereby ensuring higher costs on everyone, even consumers whom Net Neutrality "protects". Basically I think this is your choice (b), although in the eyes of the law they won't be "frivolous".
I think Cato did a good job of backing that up too, bringing the precedent of the ICC, and how it was intended to protect consumers like Net Neutrality is intended, and yet was easily abused to stifle competition.
I am confused by the statement "Net Neutrality has been the standard...". If it has been the standard, why is it then necessary to propose this new Net Neutrality legislation? My only guess is that you may not realize that it is, in fact, the pro-Net-Neutrality crowd that's proposing new legislation, not its opposition. Net Neutrality is the "standard" only in the sense that Cato mentions in an earlier argument - that is enforced via technology. There is no current law.
Let's keep it that way. Net Neutrality as new regulation is a very bad idea.
- strawhatguy August 31, 2008 5:36PM
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Side: No
You need to go back and look at the history of this issue. The laws that enforced Net Neutrality have lapsed, and that's the only reason why we're even talking about this now.
Both you and Cato's poster have made a general argument about how a completely unrelated regulation went bad and used it as a reason why well-meaning regulations can be subverted by regulators as a theoretical exercise not that this regulation was bad, but that corrupt people can subvert the process. The fact is that corrupt people were already subverting the process, and that's why the ICC was created in the first place. The argument is, once again, that regulations and regulators are bad, not that Net Neutrality isn't something we need.
We already have cases where telecom companies have been caught blocking Voice Over IP technologies to their customers because they were selling a competing product. Bad people behave badly sometimes, whether they're business owners, consumers, or regulators.
Do you have an actual argument for why Net Neutrality is a bad idea?
- tojo2000 August 31, 2008 6:48PM
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Okay, so certain provisions in FCC regulations have lapsed or rather the status of broadband has changed sections of the Communications Act or whatever.
Regardless, the fact is the Save the Internet group wants to make this (and new sets of regulations) more permanent in a bill by Congress under the rubric of "Net Neutrality". As regulations and regulators are bad as you say (and I agree), and "Net Neutrality" is a bill of regulations to be passed in Congress, how is this not the very essence of the argument against Net Neutrality? This is, after all, an OV Debate between Save the Internet and Cato Institute primarily after all.
The other possibility is the "idea" of Net Neutrality, which is that, irrespective of government interference in general, should broadband providers be anything other than mere forwarders of IP packets along their networks? If that's what you're debating, that the idea of Net Neutrality is good or not in the absence of government, I don't believe that is what this OV debate is about.
As for what I think on this, I would say that there would certainly be an argument for prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others. For instance, it would not be good for any real-time (or close approximation thereof) type of traffic (TV/movies over the Internet, or VOIP calls, etc.) to be delayed (or dropped altogether) because of some web traffic or file transfer packets got there first. As for outright blocking or slowing of competitors offerings, well, that may be a shame, but then again it *is* the providers' network. They may do it, and they will also run the risk of retaliation by their customers over it. Who knows? If more and more providers enter the fray, possibilities of completely free (to consumers anyway) broadband services might be possible, costs being paid solely by the content providers like Google (kinda like over the air TV - free, paid with ads), with pay models having a more "neutral" packet delivery. Would that happen? Maybe not, but at least it's possible without an imposed Net Neutrality, and there may be other possibilities unimaginable right now.
But, getting back to the OV debate topic as I read it, there is no reason to codify this into law, which effectively hands (more) power over the Internet to the FCC. It's plenty powerful enough already.
- strawhatguy August 31, 2008 9:22PM
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Side: No
--Quote--
"Net Neutrality has been the standard...". If it has been the standard, why is it then necessary to propose this new Net Neutrality legislation?
--endQuote--
Partly, the laws are responsible. In 2005, the Supreme Court and the FCC largely deregulated Cable-provided and Telco-provided broadband services calling the "Information Services" vs. "Common Carriers." The FCC made a policy, probably to replace some of the user protections that this switch caused, and it was that policy that the FCC recently enforced.
Partly, the very nature of the early Internet is responsible. Network hardware lacked the power to look deeply into the packets -- it only looked at the first 20 bytes (the IP header) and then acted upon what it found. Moore's Law has changed all that, and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) can now react to traffic based on many factors within the whole packet, including patterns across several packets. In so much as service providers don't use this new power wrongly, then no big deal. But like most things, the rush to beat competitors surpasses careful consideration of whether certain things are actually appropriate on the Internet.
New, but limited legislation is necessary to keep Internet Standards bodies in charge of defining the base protocols and services on the Internet. ISPs have the choice of following these standards, or getting out of the Internet business, but they don't have the right to redefine the Internet in their own twisted image.
- Robb Topolski September 1, 2008 6:49PM
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In the recent FCC decision against Comcast, the is no new Federal monitoring regime. Instead, the opposite has occurred. The FCC told Comcast that it cannot snoop into its customers packets and discriminate service delivery based upon what it finds inside.
Network Neutrality means less monitoring, not more.
- Robb Topolski September 1, 2008 6:32PM
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The fact that there has been Network Neutrality present has not stopped the government from monitoring the Internet. Things such as Carnivore, CALEA, ECHELON and the recent Warrantless Wiretapping scandal.
Claiming that Net Neutrality will increase Government Monitoring of Internet Traffic is moot when they are already monitoring the Internet Traffic anyways.
- Concerned Citizen September 2, 2008 2:56PM
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The Communications Act of 1939 has been superseded by both the Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Telecommunications act of 2005 and/or the COPE Act of 2006. Referencing a 70+ year old legislation as protection when it has been amended numerous times.
Initially DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) were under the auspices of 'Common Carrier' legislation which *IS* the original definition of 'Network Neutrality'. However, since the FCC reclassified DSL service from a telecommunication service to an 'Information Service' the protections offered by 'Common Carrier' statues are no longer enforced. Cable internet services have never been classified as 'Common Carrier' and have never enjoyed such protection under the law .
It should be noted that the 'Hands off the Internet' organization is a front group performing astroturfing (that is making a fake grass roots campaign) for major telecom interests who stand to gain the most from network neutrality . Just look where their funding comes from ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hands_Off_the_Internet ) and AT&T is a major contributor to them.
- Concerned Citizen May 17, 2009 8:45PM
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I want to pay for my traffic. I always have. I don't want some tiered internet. I don't want to have things like "Pay $2.99 for our YouTube Hi-Speed package!" because given the chance to charge exorbitant fees for something simple and cheap to provide, companies will. Especially telecom companies.
Look at cellphones. My cellphone provider charges me 5 cents a text message. Looking at that in bandwidth, it's something like a few hundred dollars per megabyte. This is not their cost, not even close to their cost but, because they control the platform, the servers and they even extend this to control how the cellphone makers do the features on the phones themselves.
Even though my phone has memory banks for litterally millions of text messages, I can only store 30 on my phone without deleting them so I can receive more. There are many more examples of them extracting money for duplicate or artificial restrictions on my data or communications.
This is a result of creating an environment where a utility (something I need) is allowed to be locked down and controlled by one party. I wouldn't advocate Net Neutrality but, I would advocate something along the lines of DSL connection sharing rules for Cable and other internet providers. Basically, these rules said that DSL companies had to share their lines with competitors and the price of a DSL connection shot through the floor, many additional features were given to customers all because companies had to compete. I think Cable companies should have to compete like DSL companies do and that would assure true Net Neutrality in a far more effective and legally free way than passing laws.
This would change the main objection to creating laws being that companies aren't going to self regulate and market pressures can't happen when there are either one or a few providers. By creating rules that force cable companies to provide a way for their competitors to lease their lines like DSL companies, places where only cable is available will have the market pressure for ensuring their freedom and pushing market prices.
Another thing that makes me mad is that telecom companies are data providers. They increasingly want to hold my data and personal information to leverage it against me, make me pay for access to it. Cell phone companies do this when they store you photos online and then charge you data access fees to see your photos from your phone when you have plenty of storage on that phone to locally hold those picture files. Restrict data access programs that can send text messages or voip applications that can send voice calls through a data line instead of paying higher fees for voice calls through the provider even though they are using voip technology on their end to reap the same discounts and benefits.
Without competition, this will naturally occur because it is more profitable for these companies. Regulations should be in place to spur competition rather than forcing the content to be delivered in a certain way.
- slack September 4, 2008 11:16AM
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Side: No
Poor union protected workers that can't keep a real job. What are they crying about? We will need to build up the net in coming years not less workers but more workers. More pipelines will be built, perhaps by better workers that work for a real living not a union jacked up wage.
- purelabor September 26, 2008 12:19AM
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Side: No
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Should the Government Regulate Net Neutrality?
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Net neutrality is a stalking horse for government controlled internet
The groups pushing for net neutrality are just using that concept as a way to gain acceptance for the idea of removing private corporations' control of the Internet's infrastructure. At heart these groups are really statists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statist ). They think that government( a liberal government only) control of the Internet is the only acceptable method of managing what they are pushing as a utility necessary to human rights.
I subscribe to the Cato Institutes take on this - keep government's fingers out of the pie or we will have a real mess on our hands. http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/beware-the-unintended-consequences-of-regulation
- tkjunkmail
August 31, 2008 3:46PM
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Side: No
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Beware of any Single Power, not just the Government
I think it's wise to consider the wisdom of getting the government involved in traditionally private business dealings. The end result usually is less free, less efficient, and -- as you said -- a real mess.
Freedom and efficiency are the results of good choices and a strong market. It's not government that makes something bad, it's the lack of consumer choice and consumer influence that occurs when government gets involved that makes it bad. All the power is held by that single entity.
The single entity can also be an insurance company used by your employer, a cartel of oil companies that behave as one, a cell phone company that locks you into a long contract -- these create the same limits on freedom and efficiency as government control can.
I support Network Neutrality on broadband because I see the competitive landscape continue to contract. AT&T just bought SBC, Comcast took over Insight and wants even more, both Telcos and CableCos go lawsuit-happy whenever a 3rd-party wants to intrude onto "their" territory, and they even fight each-other for trying to reach one-another's customers. About a fourth of us have only Cable as a provider choice, about a fourth of us has DSL or FIOS, about a fourth of us fortunately have both to choose between, and about a fourth of us has no provider at all.
Most of us are stuck with a single provider -- the single power.
Network Neutrality isn't a government take-over. It's a check-and-balance against abuse by a monopolistic power. The moment it threatens to grow to become a take-over, I'll be on your side of this argument.
Given the choice to leave the protection of our Internet freedoms in the hands of a single and powerful for-profit company -- or have it double-checked by a government by, for, and of the people -- I'm okay with some reasonable Network Neutrality.provisions.
- Robb Topolski
August 31, 2008 5:35PM
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Side: Yes
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we already suffer from FCC intervention
Why would the CATO institute ignore the premise that the FCC has already breached the public trust by handing out territorial exclusives to many of the companies?
This isn't about government regulation, that horse has already been beaten. The "exclusive" territorial regulations need to be repealed, and competition needs to be made available to the customer. Until then, can groups like CATO stop giving out misdirected recommendations.
Even many of the republicans see what is broken about the "regulations" the FCC has put in place.
We already have a government regulation created mess on our hands.
- tomcat2200
September 14, 2008 12:25AM
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Side: Yes
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Net neutrality can't exist yet, the FCC has already blown it away
As long as the FCC gives Comcast and other bad actors reserved markets, that no one else can compete in, then there will be no market forces to force them to comply with good faith operations.
I live in Portland, and no one other than Quest who offers low, or no speed, services is allowed to compete in the market. Just 2 miles south of the city, Verizon offers rural users 50Mb down and 20 Mb up speeds,all the while Comcast trumpets their fiber optic networks while giving customers 6Mb and 8 Mb down speeds, and up speeds not much better than DSL.
Comcast burns off more resources on line trying to "manage" its customers than the customers are allowed to use themselves. Comcast is trying to turn net traffic sharing with other ISP's into a profit center in the name of "managing" their network traffic.
Quite litterally the government is already regulating out the net neutrality, by giving Comcast free reign in a false regulatory economy created by FCC regulations and restrictions for any others to compete in the market.
I find it astounding, that a market the size of the city of Portland, is allowed to be the sole domain of Comcast. All the while Comcast has a marketing team for determining the least amount of services for the maximum prices. This should have been an open market years ago.
Comcast cries network congestion, with a user density many times higher than the rural towns to the south, yet can't or won't convert the revenues into services as other companies have with less of a user base. What is ironic, is that Comcast could clear the congestion by providing the higher speeds, and less "management" by Comcast marketing. Internet data flow agreements were not designed to be turned into profit centers for the ISP's. Comcast is already charging their customers more than they need to for the inferior services they provide, even withiout having to layer on top of that, some contrived "management" of its users.
Comcast will always seek to provide the least for the most revenue. They are a bad corporate actor in American business. They will never do anything in good faith, and they will never seek to provide services based on merit.
Until the Comcast markets are opened up to real competition, by the FCC revoking their "exclusive" regulatory territories, then there cannot be any semblance of anything like net neutrality. The government needs to open the territories to competition. At least for the city of Portland they do. It is the government regulation that has already created this sad state of affairs. As long as the government regulation has kept this in place, it requires government regulation to fix it.
- tomcat2200
September 13, 2008 11:52PM
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Side: Yes
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Net-neutrality framework on the Internet Model
AT&T opposes proposals to regulate its move to speed up certain services and slow down some other.
Business Corporations are highly skilled in drafting arguments as part of their lobbying exercise. Traditionally, large business corporations are known to devote time and resources to lobby for a policy framework most favourable to their own interests.
While it may be true that there are some micro-aspects of a company such as AT&T having to choose to prioritize services, there is a danger of such freedom leading to such situations - to throw names for a hypothetical illustration - as msn slowing down You Tube downloads or Google sending messages originating from yahoo.com to its spam folders.
There are several technical and non-technical aspects that make it impertive to strengthen a frame work for net-neutrality. Traditional opposition from Business is on the grounds that Net Neutrality regulations would pave way for Government intervention. Government intervention may not be the only way by which Net Neutrality could be achieved. The various aspects related to Net Neutrality need to be elaborately agreed upon and brought into force by evloution of standards and conventions by the Internet Community.
There are two different aspects that I wish to emphaize. One is that a Net Neutrality framework is imperative. The other aspect is that the need for such a framework ought not to be exploited by those who want to "regulate" the Internet.
An effective Net Neutrality framework has to emerge, without compromising on the present Internet Model which is a user-centric, community model.
All the arguments that I see against Net Neutrality are arguments that attempt to scare the proponents o the concept of Net Neutrality that say that Net Neutrality would mean complex legislations, which in turn would lead to higher legal costs and higher cost of access to the user !!! It is a very imaginative argument that propogates an anti-NN campaign, equating NN with an Internet of Legislation.
In the Internet Model Net Neutality can be established and managed with least interference from Governments.
- Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
October 19, 2008 9:28AM
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Governement stay away
My vote is for the government to keep their nose out of it. The government has its hands full and has some old problems it needs to take care of first. This is a task for the people to handle. If companies start charging more and if the American people do not approve; the answer is quite simple. Stop doing business with those companies. The American people run to the government way too much nowadays to fix our problems instead of us handling them ourselves. We ourselves can fix a lot of problems without any help. All we have to do is quit doing business with the corporate greed mongers. When their wallets start shriveling up because we quit doing business with them they will get the message that we are not screwing around anymore.
- rkm
June 18, 2009 8:35AM
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Side: No
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Net neutrality is needed
Normally, I'm one to tell government to stay out of people's business. However, given the recent practices of ISPs throttling our connection speeds when we go over some arbitrary cap, I'm forced to conclude that they are greedy and cannot be trusted. Net neutrality would force all the ISPs to be dumb pipelines and restrict neither speed nor content online.
- silverfang838 August 5, 2009 7:31PM
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Side: Yes
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