From the WSJ:
Even HuffPo thinks this is a bad idea:
According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow’s FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.
The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it’s become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users.
You and I are one of those tens of millions. So the immediate question: With this newfound power, how long before it mutates beyond original scope, and websites that are critical of the government begin to be shut down, or simply IP throttled out of meaningful existence?
I would imaging that site like this one would be a target, since we don’t report what the government line on climate change is.
I can only imagine the future where I’ll be typing some story, like this one, and there will be a knock at the door and
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The UK government has also proposed taking its first steps down the slippery slope to complete internet censorship. As with any regulation imposed by a government it is only a matter of a week or two before the powers given by that regulation become subject to regular and growing abuse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8214908/Internet-porn-block-plans-not-feasible-ISPs-tell-Government.html
George Orwell must be chuckling away watching all this. Here in the UK we are already browbeaten and subjugated, CCTV’d 100 times in a normal day as you go about your daily routine. You guys on your side of the pond, will be politely led down the same path.
Look mate, it’s already happening. Google searches are now a joke. I know there’s masses of stuff on the internet that Google just doesn’t list anymore.
You need to think about a new search engine before worrying about this new law……Google’s got 80%+ of the market and it’s already the de facto world censor.
Think about that………
Similar moves afoot in UK. Here the pretext is porn. Porn apparently should be opt-in and ISP are being forced to filter content. “We must protect the children”.
Once the mechanism is in place it is obvious there will be “mission creep” and it will rapidly be global censorship.
My feeling is WikiLeaks has scared (and pissed off) some at the top of government.
Free speech is OK is a right … as long as don’t try to use it.
This must be stamped out now before we end up like China.
Eric, I am a little confused about your comments about ‘bandwidth hogs’ in the context of a free market. Surely the owner or supplier of the bandwidth has an incentive to maximise the return from that bandwidth. Calling people who use a lot of bandwidth ‘hogs’ implies some sort of obligation by the supplier to ration it so that you get what you consider to be your share.
It doesn’t sound like unfettered market forces that you are advocating at all. It sounds more like those who call people who choose to use a lot of energy in their homes or businesses ‘hogs’ who should be penalised, because consumption is evil.
As you say, you can change your supplier (although why another supplier wouldn’t also have ‘hogs’ as customers is a moot point). But, in areas where there are few (if any) real choices of supplier, and insufficient bandwidth infrastructure, consumers are likely to be trapped in the last century as far as internet services are concerned. That is the policy problem I raised.
The idea that Wall Street has the GOP in its pocket is simply ignorant. The Dems have been the largest recipient of Wall Street cash for the last decade and certainly since 2006 …
As far as the members of the parties the Democrats have the higher per capita income and have had for at least a decade …
If a company sells a product off a shelf in a store they should be free to do what they want as long as health and safety. When a company tears up roads and puts up poles on my property claiming right of way and demands free access to my land there is a utility relationship.
If a power company decided to use right of way rip up public and private lands to lay cable only to provide 40 amp electric service to private homes I would have a problem with that especially being that in some cases their build outs are paid for by my tax dollars.
If my ISP promises me 10mbs service, I want 10mbs service. I do not want my ISP to reap huge profits from tax funded subsidies because they overbook their network. The Internet is more than email to a multitude of individuals and businesses. Allowing bottlenecks on the information highway is short sighted. Allowing a greedy tax-rent seeking ISP that demands access to my backyard to maintain their equipment on my property to selectively choose what protocols, applications or destinations I choose to utilize my 10mbs bandwidth that I have contracted is just wrong. (BTW I have just heard that broadband is now available in the New England town back in the states where I still have a house and property.)
The Internet should be open. Households should pay for their 10mbs or 100mbs service and receive it. Business should pay for bigger pipes to their ISPs and more powerful servers to provide adequate service to their customers.
JohnQPublic@live.ca says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm
How anyone can believe that Obama should be running the US is simply beyond me. Has he done a single thing good for the country?
Hey give the guy a break, he wrote 2 “must read” books about himself. If Al gore invented the Internet, Obama can regulate it. Here come the solar and wind, server farms….
Welcome big brother….
The fight was over the minute somehow the FCC was appointed defender of internet access.
Firstly, I don’t want my ISP to manipulate my access. And the access they want isn’t just bandwidth, but also content as well. As for that not being all ‘free marketie’, tough. Talk to me about free market when I have more than one cable company and one dish provider competing to be my ISP.
But setting up the FCC as opposing content manipulation is such a sham. 95% of how the FCC spends its time is regulating content.
Either way the fix is in. My content is going to be regulated. Either the FCC will be regulating it by decree or my ISP will regulated it out of a combination of their own self-interest or fear of being sued for copyright infringement or what have you.
The established media, from ‘all hail Obama’ NBC to FoxNews owner Rupert ‘I want copyright enforced on the internet’ Murdoch want the internet regulated. By setting the stage the way its been set, we’ve already lost. They are just quibbling over how it will be done.
Joel Shore,
“Unfortunately, one of the lessons that many have not learned from the latest financial crisis is that insufficient regulation doesn’t bring freedom…rather it brings corporate control and economic disaster.”
You mean insufficient regulation like when G. W. Bush announced that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were henceforth ‘compelled to provide mortgages to everyone so that even those with poor credit ratings would be able to enjoy property ownership.’
Remind me again, how that piece of ‘insufficient regulation’ turn out?
Vince Causey says:
Yes, I am aware that some conservatives have made up fanciful myths about how the whole crisis was caused by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae even though there is absolutely no basis in reality to these claims. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae got into the bad mortgage game only near the end, well after the private market was neck deep in it.
That said, having “companies” like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae where the profits were privatized and the risks were socialized was a bad idea for which both political parties share responsibility. Of course, the same can be true for the large private companies since they can effectively hold the nation hostage (“Bail us out or watch your entire financial system collapse”) which is (one of the reasons) why regulation is necessary to prevent abuses.
Anthony says:
Yes, but they think it is a bad idea for opposite reasons. Sometimes making both sides of the spectrum unhappy means that you actually have found a good middle ground. I am not saying that is true in this case…I think the supporters of net neutrality are more right than those who want the FCC not to regulate the service providers and just let them set up “slow lanes” and “fast lanes” as they see fit. But, just mixing together the fact that two sides are unhappy as some sort of evidence that the ruling must be bad does not make sense.
And, the whole title of your post is confusing. It reads “Obama caves on promise, Internet to be regulated by FCC” which would imply to many that letting the FCC regulate the service providers is the caving. However, those who feel that he “caved” are those who think the FCC should have been given broader authority to preserve net neutrality, not less.
REPLY: No matter what article I write, someone somewhere will take issue with it. You in particular take issue with almost everything written here, so forgive me if I really don’t give a hoot if you don’t like this one. – Anthony
Net Neutrality is like global warming. So many issues in so few words, and another area where ignorance, politics and enlightened self-interest run rife. Having been designing, building, running and selling IP networks for over 20 years now, here’s my take. There are three main aspects.
1) Political. The desire to control something and regulate it or influence it. The ‘net has managed to be mostly self-regulated and mostly worked. As it became more commercial, that got more challenging. One political aspect is censorship. In the UK in the mid-90’s, there was an infamous ‘French letter’ sent by our police to ISP’s asking for a slew of newsfeeds to be blocked for carrying potentially illegal content. If ISP’s refused, the police would prosecute the ISPs. As a consequence, ISP’s created an alternative, the IWF. That initially acted as a central point of contact between law enforcement, the ISPs and users to block and notify child abuse content. Everyone agreed that’s a bad thing and the IWF’s done a good job.
Problem then was ‘if you can block that, what else can you block?’ so pressure applied to expand the IWF mandate to include harder to define and more controversial content like ‘hate speech’ or ‘incitement to racial hatred’, or as one of our politicians put it ‘criminal websites’. Which puts a non-judicial group in a position to act as judge on a whole slew of more complex legal issues. The US probably has fewer problems with this (currently) due to more free speech protections but still has the challenge of managing the process. Just because it’s technically feasible for an ISP to drop a website, it doesn’t necessarily mean the ISP should be responsible, but many people (eg MPAA or RIAA) are anti-net neutrality or common carrier and seem to expect the ISP’s to act as judges. Without any compensation, naturally. Normal legal process should apply. If a crime is suspected, report it to law enforcement and let the law take it’s course. If they determine content is illegal, they can request it’s removal, or monitor and prosecute. Civil processes should stay the same, but industry groups lobby for ISP’s to help their business models, not the justice system. But for this site, providing kooks don’t get their way and make climate scepticism a crime against humanity, nothing much should change.
2) Technical. Not all content is created equal, so traffic prioritisation is arguably necessary to deliver a good user experience. The basic ‘net doesn’t differentiate traffic between time insensitive and time critical apps. So voice, video or interactive apps are treated the same as file or email downloads. Prioritisation makes sense and is widely used on private IP networks with MPLS to prioritise traffic based on business or application needs. It’s often misunderstood though and mostly really only works when there’s congestion.
So anti-neutrality would allow ISP’s to prioritise traffic based on needs. You want to make a phone call because your house is on fire. Because VOIP gets prioritised, you can even if everyone else in your neighbourhood is downloading Windows patches or movies. Or you’ve paid $10 to watch a sports game online, and if video streaming is prioritised, you’ll get fewer pauses or dropouts. Again arguably a good thing and improves the ‘net experience. But..
3) Economics. Which is the biggest challenge, and the most contentious. Currently ‘net economics don’t really work. The costs of building and running an access network, ie cable or xDSL to households are way higher than the costs of content provision. The demands for increased bandwidth are generated by content, but content providers don’t pay anything to access ISP’s most of the time, and in many cases the access ISP’s costs are increased having to pay for more capacity to content providers. Which is slightly bonkers, but the way content providers like it and why they’re mostly pro-neutrality. They do not want to have to pay more for content delivery. If ISP’s can’t charge content providers, then the only person they can charge is their customer, so ‘net access costs inevitably have to increase. If people aren’t willing to pay, then they’ll have to accept lower quality service and poor experiences watching that 1080p HD live stream you’ve just bought. You may have paid the content provider to watch that stream, but chances are they’ve not paid your ISP anything to deliver it. Why should the ISP invest to make that stream watchable, or how can they invest, unless they charge you more?
The fact of the matter is that if the internut can be controlled like this, THEN IT IS ALREADY BROKEN AND NEEDS FIXING ! (pardon the shouting of the obvious).
Which means the more clever of us need to go back to the drawing board and work on a new kind of internut that operates beyond a reliance upon ISPs and Big Business.
Certainly in large population areas and the proliferation of wireless devices, such a thing should be quite achievable on a more local level, and what with the freeing up of frequencies formerly dedicated to analog TV, a pretty good amateur national network might also be managed. Again.
I say “again” because I’m from the old innovative days of FIDOnet where we used to write our own software and volunteer an extra phoneline to run BBSs.
Sure, we need more than that sort of thing from modern communications, but it does get me a little sad and cross that the first reaction from the end user when faced with a layer of obstruction is to simple go “waa, my rights, my rights”, rather than “frak this, let’s build something better that the frakers can’t control and collect rent off and make victims of us so easily”.
After all, politics (particularly LEFT politics) is the problem, not the solution.
So, rather than worry about what the government may or may not do, why not instead work on creating something “the government” (those publicly funded people temporarily elected to do a job for us, who are accountable to us, and not us to them) can do very little about without doing a lot of damage to itself ?
If the right kind of internut was built, ISPs and big business that relies upon rent received from it, could be done out of a job.
And wouldn’t that be a good thing ?
regarDS
They can have my Netflix when they pry it from my cold, dead, hands.
Interesting – all these responses and no-one mentions the 10th Amendment.
Perhaps someone can point out where in the constitution there is a duty for the Federal authorities to manage communications in this way?
The ‘Commerce Clause’ would appear to need the opposite action to the one the FCC are taking.
We already have that, James. I pay Comcast an extra amount per month for the highest speed they offer in my area. And why shouldn’t I be allowed to use all of that speed all of the time? Anf FYI, I don’t. I’m only on my computer for a few hours in the evening after I get home from work (I no longer do IT from home). I DO play games on Xbox Live, I DON’T watch movies over the web, though I do occasionally download them and watch them. From the complaints about “hogs”, apparently I shouldn’t be allowed to do that because it interferes with others who AREN’T hogs, in their opinions. And if they’re NOT hogs, why would they have bandwidth issues? Is it because the web page they want to view loads in 2.2 seconds instead of 2?
I’m in a rural area. A neighbor and I paid Comcast $900 between us to lay cable from the main road to our houses. I absolutely HAD to have cable, since satellite was preventing me from effectively conducting business. But, I have no other choices. Sometimes speed is slow, most of the time it’s not. I get over it. If it was consistently slow I would complain to Comcast that I’m not getting what I’m paying for. That’s your recourse.
I’ve worked in Network operations for a major telecom from 1989 to 2000. As many others have here, I’ve gone from 1200bps modem access to what I have now with Comcast. I remember when T-1 was THE big thing, and only after a few years it was blase’. The only problem here is that infrastructure hasn’t kept up with demand, but it’s still growing, and always will be as long as the demand is there. So if you didn’t have the gamers, movie watchers, etc, you wouldn’t have a high-speed infrastructure at all, we’d still be doing 1200 baud.
I’m not saying gov’t regulation is always or ever the answer, but I am saying that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to stranglehold the web. Anti-trust comes to mind, especially in areas where there are limited or no choices.
Oh, and remember folks, there wouldn’t be an “internet” if not for the government.
Joel Shore: “Unfortunately, one of the lessons that many have not learned from the latest financial crisis is that insufficient regulation doesn’t bring freedom…rather it brings corporate control and economic disaster.”
Vince Causey says: December 22, 2010 at 6:05 am
You mean insufficient regulation like when G. W. Bush announced that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were henceforth ‘compelled to provide mortgages to everyone so that even those with poor credit ratings would be able to enjoy property ownership.’
Actually, It was Barney Frank and Chuck Shumer who caused that fiasco. And Joel you have made some interesting comments on AGW, but that comment is just asinine.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/barney_frank_the_teflon_congre.html
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html
“the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf. “….Thomas Paine
People in support of this measure have just been “back doored”.
I wonder how so many could have missed the point that government arms seek not to embrace and protect you, but rather, to constrain you. Does it make any sense to turn control of the internet to the FCC, to allow them be the arbiter of what is just, so the content can remain free and open? Does anyone really believe bit torrents, (legal or otherwise) will survive the FCC? Or VOIP phone service will continue at its pricing?
Many here have voiced concerns about larger ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T and their practices and cheered the FCC’s decision. They played right into their hands. This action all but assures limits and higher prices.
Obama administration seeking to place controls on the Internet, United Nations is trying to establish mechanisms for global governance of the Internet
Barack Obama And The United Nations Will Be Watching The Internet For You
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31307
“Obama caves”
Oh, puh-leese. Like anything that comes out of that man’s mouth means diddly-squat.
Chicago Pol
“We don’ wanna talk to nobody what nobody sent”
Here is a list of the groups that “greased the skids” for the FCC, using the Orwellian language of net neutrality, to claim a legislative mandate to regulate the internet:
1. Ford Foundation
2. McArthur Foundation
3. Joyce Foundation
4. Open Society Institute
5. Schumann Center for Media and Democracy
6. Pew Trust
The Free Press outfit founded by Joel Silver and Robert McChesney, funded in part by Moveon.org, along with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, was allowed to astroturf a fake consumer campaign begging for FCC regulation. I wish someone would dig deeper into the relationships between these groups and the FCC. I wonder if the government funded these groups illegally.
In any event, it’s quite obvious that net neutrality is the last thing these totalitarian front groups have on their mind. This is the trojan horse that puts these creeps into the door, and they will demand more and more control if this is allowed to stand. I’ll bet money on that.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 22, 2010 at 7:45 am
James Sexton says:
December 21, 2010 at 11:00 pm
“We already have that, James. I pay Comcast an extra amount per month for the highest speed they offer in my area….”
======================================================
Jeff, I agree with most of what you’ve stated. One of your statements is very pertinent to the discussion, “The only problem here is that infrastructure hasn’t kept up with demand, but it’s still growing, and always will be as long as the demand is there.
I agree, currently, the infrastructure can not facilitate all the wants and needs of every subscriber. But it continues to grow. Oddly, it has done so without FCC interjections.
The argument that “you paid for it, why shouldn’t you get it” seems invalidated when if you get what you paid for, it comes at the expense of what someone else paid for. I can’t for the life of me understand why people think the FCC has a magic wand that will make the situation any better. Content filters are only a response to limited resources.
Comcast or AT&T or my wireless ISP could care less what I’m doing as long as it doesn’t interfere with their ability to accommodate their other customers. Going forward, I don’t see the FCC being that ambivalent. If the FCC bans content filters, then a premium will be set on bandwidth resulting in higher prices for everyone and limited access for many.
It may be my views are tinted with skepticism, but I see no positive outcome with the FCC’s ruling and many pratfalls easily slipped into.