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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Unless you work for Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T or some other large ISP – you would have to be a complete idiot to NOT want Net Neutrality. Period. I would think that the people at this site would not want their liberties squashed by others. The FCC regulation is actually trying to protect your liberty here – not take it away.
If the net becomes “Non-Neutral”, then companies can take your liberty at will and Bias/Non-Neutralize whatever they wish. scary…
Oh boy, Internet Socialism, equal bandwidth for all websites! Even ones that get little to no traffic! I am sure that wont collectively slow down the internet at all.
Joel Shore,
“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.”
It was not my intention to assign the cause of the crisis to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, merely to point to an example of a regulation making a bad situation worse. I believe the seeds were sown by the Greenspan loose monetary policy – low interest rates that fueled a speculative boom. First the dot.com bubble and then the Bush attempt to reflate the economy leading to the asset inflationary bubble across the board. Real estate was but one – the most dramatic – but still one of many assets. Again, these are examples of Government interference in market mechanisms that send false price signals.
The First Amendment Blues
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/12/first-amendment-blue.html
@ur momisugly Jeff Alberts says:
December 22, 2010 at 7:46 am
Oh, and remember folks, there wouldn’t be an “internet” if not for the government.
Yes, there would be. It was a foregone conclusion from the moment the first electronic computer was created, and probably from the first time somebody figured out how to send signals via telegraph wire. It may very well have been built differently without DARPA , CERN, etc. , but it would have been built nonetheless.
Republicans think BigGovernment is The Big Enemy. They tend to get that notion from a study of History.
Democrats think Big Business (Wall Stret, the Banks) are The Big Enemy. They tend to get that notion from a study of current events, or from particular shoddy products.
If they ever find out that Corporations (any size) ARE a Government Creation–watch out!
Big corporations can only exist with the help of a LOT of BigGuv regulation to eliminate smaller local competitors.
If we value the Freedom that is threatened by this web regulation, we would do well to realize this.
Re James Sexton
If done well and scrutinised, the FCC has more power. Much of the ‘net is largely self-regulated and why there are regular peering/settlement disputes and the occasional lawsuit regarding content blocking or degradation. Those are almost always economic disputes rather than moral. So in theory, the FCC may be a better arbiter regarding how traffic can be prioritised or any differential pricing proposals. The debate is still very polarised. Content companies don’t want any changes that increase their costs, telcos want content companies to pay carriage.
Rural users are probably the worst off as some point out here with those services. Some of those are subsidised by telcos, content providers like Google or Netflix contribute nothing towards them other than increasing the costs of providing services to meet customer expectations.
The ‘net needs prioritisation, but that shouldn’t mean discriminatory or predatory pricing, which is where better regulation may actually protect the customer.
The right to filter presented media content belongs to the individual and his/her dependents. Period. Though I do submit that child-porn, either making or possessing, should be outlawed under decency laws. However, WHENEVER we allow the government to enact such laws, we, the citizens, must always be vigilant regarding oversight creep and courtroom law making.
I also believe that to be vigilant, those who make laws should be on a short leash, hold a regular job put on hold during their time-limited stint at elected or appointed government office, and returned to their former job (no lobbying allowed) forthwith when their time is up. There should be no such thing as a career politician.
From reading the comments, I can see that the majority of the posters have no idea how the network works, so I put most of their comments down to BS and ignorance. as we say in the network business, “used to be I couldn’t spell engineer now I are one,”
johanna, another way to think of it is that the rural users in my area represent a resource. If we are connected to the net we buy things and use net services. If providers were smart (which often they are not), they would “sell” their good customer base to service providers and e-retailers like Amazon. Instead compensation is done through roundabout ways like peering agreements and business alliances. But the providers often get short sighted and greedy and figure they can provide retail opportunities and services to their customers themselves. The most famous case in the past was AOL. After not too long it provided what were probably the world’s worst services in a closed environment. Shoddy services by bandwidth providers are the sure way to kill the golden goose.
The other potential problem is that those who want to spend decent amounts of money on goods and services online can be disrupted by teenagers on youtube. So those less profitable users must be throttled to protect the profit opportunities in the other users.
The questions are can the government fix that problem and should they? The second should answer should be obvious from this thread, government control is a very slippery slope, they create (no nukes) or invent (global warming) problems, then propose more spurious government intervention (energy rationing and worldwide socialism) to pretend to solve those. The first answer is also no, the marketplace can provide services to people like me who want bandwidth that works. But we consumers must be nimble, flexible, and vigilant. Far too many people want life to be easy and ask the government to intervene on their behalf not realizing the long term consequences.
The fact that there are 134+1 responses to this article is proof positive that there are way too many people with too much time on their hands and they are accessing too much (mis)information. Too much information is dangerous for a democratic society, the (she)people get too confused. =;)
Most Americans say that the chief duty of the government is to protect individual rights.
That means protecting individuals from a suffocating, overbearing, partisan, meddlesome government bureaucracy like the FCC, which we could replace with a single page of regulations.
The claims of minority rights, womens rights, illegal aliens’ rights, teachers rights, etc. all come at the expense of individual rights at the direct expense of individual rights.
No wonder voters are so disgusted with craven ‘collectivist rights’ politicians like Bower-in-Chief Obama and his anti-free speech FCC appointees.
Vince Causey says:
I agree that the real estate boom set the stage. But, lack of regulation of the mortgage / financial industries made the bust much worse than it had to be (and also probably contributed to the boom itself). Look, by comparison, to what happened in Canada: http://www.dsnews.com/articles/report-how-did-canadas-housing-market-dodge-bullet-2010-09-18
Lady Life Grows says:
Sort of…although this is an oversimplification. For one thing, it fails to account for the fact that Republicans welcome government intrusion in certain non-economic sectors, like abortion and sexuality.
Secondly, in practice, Democrats are not really anti-business; they are just that way in comparison to the Republicans…I.e., they are only about 75% in the control of big business rather than 100%.
True enough. This is one of the reasons why the cries of “redistribution” are pretty non-nonsensical. There are already a lot of decisions being made that impact the distribution of wealth in our society. People who complain about “redistribution” usually just mean that they like the mechanisms (like corporations) that are built in to allow a few people to become fantastically wealthy but they don’t like any mechanisms that make sure that at least a small fraction of the benefits accrued benefit society as a whole rather than just a select few.
I wouldn’t say that’s entirely true (no FCC/Gov’t intervention). Initially, network transmission lines were put in place by the common carriers, the “telcos”, which were, and still are, pretty regulated.
Then that’s a problem of the ISP overpromising what they can deliver. Sue them for false advertising.
I’m assuming you meant “couldn’t care less”, since saying “could care less” means you care to some degree. Again, we already have tiered pricing, depending on the ISP. When I had satellite, I could have paid exorbitant prices for a business connection, with a fixed IP and no bandwidth cap (or a significantly higher cap). I couldn’t afford that on a long term basis, and even higher satellite speeds were crap compared to cable.
I prefer not to have a knee-jerk reaction, but still maintain a healthy level of skepticism.
@Eric
No. Common carrier is what we had already until the FCC gave “high speed” operators special status. That was why you had fifty different dial-up services back in the day. If you didn’t like the phone company’s Internet service, you could sign up with any of the others. If the phone company was interfering with your use, you could switch to any other service instead. It was common carrier that gave us a free market in dial-up Internet access. And it was the FCC’s mistake that removed that free market in high speed Internet access.
You are right in one thing: the current “service provider is the boss” system is a fairly recent creation of the FCC (through regulatory capture). It is highly likely that the new ruling will be overturned in court. Maybe then, they’ll go back and fix their mistake and make true free markets possible again.
Wow, just wow.
The FCC regulates and censors broadcasts because impressionable eyes and ears may be in the viewing audience. We want this. This is a historical role for the FCC because broadcast TV and radio go everywhere. The web is completely different, you have to choose to go.
The FCC does not censor (but does regulate) content that an end user actively subscribes to, such as HBO or Sirius XM. This is because the consumer chose to expose themselves to this content. Very different than a broadcast.
Web sites would be actively subscribed to by virtue of the end user’s actions in locating the site.
The FCC regulating the Internet is exactly the right thing (and if it proves to not be legal I hope a law is passed allowing for what the FCC wants to do).
The FCC wants to prevent your ISP from deciding where you can go on the Internet and what you can do.
This is possible due to the advent of technology that allows for deep packet inspection.
Those of us in the networking industry have been concerned about this for years. This predates Obama. It isn’t an Obama thing.
Deep packet inspection allows for something that was not possible before.
A packet has four basic components: a source address, a destination address, ports, and payload (content).
Routers/switches/firewalls have not been historically fast and powerful enough to do much other than direct traffic where it wants to go and apply rules on source and destination address and ports. Ports are how you can determine what the content is (usually) VOIP uses different ports than http traffic. Encrypted traffic uses different ports than traffic in the clear such as http.
So, now we have technology that allows for what was not possible before: the service providers can look at your packets and determine their contents and make yes/no decisions based on your intent.
Should we allow that? NO NO NO and that’s what the FCC is saying: NO! ISP’s cannot filter my traffic based on my intent.
ISPs are simply tubes (lols to a certain dead Alaskan senator) and shouldn’t make discriminatory decisions based on my packet payload. Just route it where it needs to go.
This isn’t about censorship of content.
This isn’t about possibly blocking website names (you could get there anyway by IP address). And if you’re super paranoid you can always use a proxy service.
This isn’t about Obama.
This isn’t a government takeover, this is the government applying the First Amendment to the Tubes.
This is absolutely what we want. We do not want businesses blocking content on the Internet just because we transit their pipes. I pay my service provider for service, just because deep packet inspection technologies are now a reality does not mean my ISP should be able to capitalize on them. The service provider is the service provider, that is it. The service provider is not a content supplier. Everyone pays for Internet access already, the service providers should not be a checkpoint/roadblock simply because they can be. If Netflix is using bandwidth, so what? Netflix pays for its pipes and users are paying their ISP to access the service.
The networking illiteracy in this thread is astounding, if you used the term “bandwidth hog” I have to say you just simply do not understand how it works.
The issue with so called “bandwidth hogs” is down to the concept of “over subscribing”. An ISP will not have the capacity to provide the level of service it contracts with its customers. An ISP or cellular company makes an assumption that not all of the users will be on the network at once and sells more customers access than can be provided at any one time.
This is how it works.
Business models of yesteryear did not forecast Netflix, etc. and the businesses haven’t invested in the capacity to allow for all of us to do what we want all the time.
Tough cookies. Up the bandwidth, spend the capital. Don’t use propaganda to confuse the populace. This isn’t a freedom issue, this is an issue with over subscribing the network. The FCC wants to say, “tough”, and the ISPs want to not build
the infrastructure.
Arstechnica and The Register have good write ups on this issue for those concerned.
Speculation. The web we have now is owed to government funding of military and science projects. It’s tough to say if a private company would have felt it cost effective to try and create one without all the R&D already paid for by the government.
Re Atomic Hairdryer
December 22, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Re James Sexton
Usually, when I respond to a comment, I like to post the particulars of the comment I’m responding. Yours is almost in its entirety so I’ll forgo and hope you understand the particulars.
Your first paragraph, I agree, except, …….“So in theory, the FCC may be a better arbiter regarding how traffic can be prioritised or any differential pricing proposals.”…..I disagree. The internet has done quite well without the interference of the FCC in this regard and there is no reason to expect that it wouldn’t continue to do so. Every time the market has confronted the internet with a challenge, the internet community has responded, and well. As you stated, there have been a few law suits, but none that have significantly altered much, although others may disagree. I don’t know how the FCC could do better when they’ve proven to be a detriment to advancement. The FCC is a regulator. That in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is sometimes needed. That said, the definition of regulate is, “to keep from exceeding a desirable degree.” We haven’t met a desirable degree, yet. But we’re going to regulate it anyway? No one can legitimately say the internet hasn’t significantly advanced in very short time and it should be assumed it will continue to do so,(check Moore’s law and consider how it may apply) especially in the rural communities. Which, I’m proud to say, I am a part.
Thoughts not specifically aimed at Atomic.
I have a great wireless high-speed internet connection through a rural carrier 15 miles away. The problem is that most people aren’t aware of the bandwidth they’re taking. For the bit-torrent fans, I have a few torrents. Don’t pretend that most of it is legal. That’s a lie and you know it. The problem isn’t what you’re downloading, the problem is what others(and how many) are uploading from you, and all of the cyber diseases you are spreading. This is reminiscent of the bath houses, back in the day. Sorry if this offends, but it is still true. It places your desires and wants over the needs of your fellow man. But, hey, you paid for it! Thank God for the FCC and the CDC! Feel free and freak freely! No way that kicks us in the butt!
If it comes down to tiered pricing, the people in the rural areas take up hard. I’ve no desire to get into a bidding war for bandwidth, nor do I believe this would, in any way, be beneficial to our society, in its whole. I can easily see where the FCC ruling will take us from a $40-50/month payment to a $100. People that insist on still paying $40 will regress to near dial-up speed. Or we can let the internet market continue to take care of the wants of the people like it always has.
For you Skype users. How much telco line has Skype run or maintained? How does this end? Bringing the whole discussion back to energy and a common subject to WUWT, how is this, the Skype endeavor, different than a home energy producer that sells back to the utility? Are you paying for line maintenance? Who will? What pays for advancement of technology? Smart grid? Not really. Brought to you by the same people that think the FCC will help the internet.
To recap. I live in a rural setting. Don’t use me as an excuse for government interference regarding something doesn’t need interfered with. For the people whining about living in the rural community. Get over it or move. I’m sure there’s more welfare money in the city than there is here.
@Scott Ramsdell
Thank you. I was surprised at how many people here should know better, but don’t.
As for the over-subscription issue, in monopolies and oligopolies, companies tend not to invest in improving the products or services. Instead, the look for ways to bundle additional (over-charged) services and tie other business lines’ (probably unwanted) products to the original one. So, for example, cable co A will poison VOIP, not because it takes too much bandwidth, but because they want you to buy the higher-priced bundle which includes their own VOIP service. Cable co B will poison Bittorrent downloads, not because it takes too much bandwidth, but because they want you to pay extra for faster downloads and higher caps. In either case, if you try to use the capacity you’re paying for, they will eventually terminate you, because you’re hindering their ability to re-sell that same capacity to your entire neighborhood.
The monopoly position granted by the FCC, then, is the reason why user #1 can’t view this site when user #2’s teen is playing XBox online. In effect, they can raise their profits without taking on the long-term financing that adding capacity would cause.
Scott Ramsdell says:
December 22, 2010 at 6:06 pm
NO, NO, NO!!!! You’re going to let the FCC decide what you can decide for yourself? You don’t like what your ISP is doing, switch. Even if it means kicking in a few extra bucks. Once the FCC gets involved, we are all done. Your federal government will be the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Not you, not your ISP(which is entirely dependent upon your continuous monthly check), not any one other than the federal government.
Your choices…… You don’t like what AT&T is doing? Switch to Comcast. You don’t like what Comcast is doing? Switch to Verizon. You don’t like what Verizon is doing? Switch to WildBlue…..and so on. Contrast that with, you don’t like what the FCC is doing?……………????????? Suck it up, and pay for it while you don’t like it. But, hey, that’s democracy, even if we lie and call it freedom.
Jeff Alberts says:
December 22, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Curiousgeorge says:
December 22, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Yes, there would be. It was a foregone conclusion from the moment the first electronic computer was created, and probably from the first time somebody figured out how to send signals via telegraph wire. It may very well have been built differently without DARPA , CERN, etc. , but it would have been built nonetheless.
Speculation. The web we have now is owed to government funding of military and science projects. It’s tough to say if a private company would have felt it cost effective to try and create one without all the R&D already paid for by the government.
======================================================
The original R&D notwithstanding, it is the telcom’s lines which all of this goes through. All of the investments and maintenance and upgrades. Not to mention all of the R&D that has gone on afterward. Yeh, it probably would have happened, but not in the essence that it is today. Its not perfect, but its damned good! It is one of the many things I look at with awe and pride. No, I had nothing to do with it, yes, this is my county that did it!!!
W^L+ says:
December 22, 2010 at 7:18 pm
“The monopoly position granted by the FCC, then, is the reason why user #1 can’t view this site when user #2′s teen is playing XBox online.”
No.
“In effect, they can raise their profits without taking on the long-term financing that adding capacity would cause.”
Yes.
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in this thread regarding the difference between a wireless broadcast technology and a wired backhaul technology.
If user #1 cannot access Internet resources while user #2 does something, that is an over subscription issue, not a problem with anything user #1 has chosen to do.
Maybe that was your point and I misunderstood as your follow-up comment nails it.
Even in a wireless situation though, the issue is simply the wavelength available vs. the wavelength sold. No business saw the always-on immediate download desire of users 10 years ago when these networks were built. CEOs and execs are clueless, go figure.
@James Baldwin Sexton
In much of the country, there is no such choice. There will be one or possibly two providers, a high-priced higher-speed cable company and a somewhat lower-priced medium-speed telco DSL offering. In some places, even satellite providers don’t work.
So when your provider decides that they have the right to terminate you if you post about negative experiences with them in any online forum (if you have Verizon Internet, read your TOS), you don’t have the option of going elsewhere.
Now, to be sure, I’m not wanting any government agency to decide what sites or protocols (http = web, xmpp = chat, sip = Internet phone (VOIP), smtp/pop/imap = e-mail, etc) should be available. What I’m wanting is for the FCC to undo its previous bonehead ruling that so-called high-speed providers are a special case and allowed to have monopoly rights. They made this ruling less than ten years ago, and except for areas where fiber-to-the-home is available, net speeds haven’t improved much since. (This is a common effect of a monopoly. The company ceases to invest in improvements, since they are already receiving close to the highest possible profit. See Internet Explorer 6 for a very clear example.)
So when you pay for a connection, you’re given a rated speed (download speed typically faster than upload speed) and “unlimited” content. All that Net Neutrality is about is making sure that your provider, to whom you are a captive customer doesn’t misuse that position to prevent you from accessing the services you are paying for the ability to access.
James Sexton says:
December 22, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Scott Ramsdell says:
December 22, 2010 at 6:06 pm
“NO, NO, NO!!!! You’re going to let the FCC decide what you can decide for yourself?”
The FCC isn’t going to decide anything other than that the ISPs can’t decide what you can do online.
The FCC is not going to regulate where you choose to go, First Amendment and all that. The FCC is saying to the ISPs that they cannot monetize the new technologies that allow for deep packet inspection.
Jeff Alberts says:
“Oh, and remember folks, there wouldn’t be an “internet” if not for
the governmentAl Gore.” Fixed!☺Jeff also comments, “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’.”
So, in a relatively short time we’ve gone from 1200 baud to 100 mps downloads, and the cost has dropped all along the way. Given a little more time, technology and the money to be made will resolve the bandwidth problem. It always has, and this is no different.
I bought a 160 megabyte hard drive for $600 in the mid-90’s. Now you can buy a terabyte HD for a hundred bucks. The market will completely solve the bandwidth problem.
Now instead, think about having the government step in to save the day. First, we will never get that monkey off our backs. Like any bureaucracy it will grow and grow. Those of us who remember when President Nixon created his new Environmental Protection Agency didn’t think it was anything but a way to buy some votes. Look at the ravenous monster it has become.
And an unnecessary Department of Education seemed a little silly at the time, since education was traditionally a local affair. Now it’s another out of control monster, gobbling up national wealth in order to give fat pensions to unfirable teachers, many of whom are incompetent layabouts. Government education costs have skyrocketed, while kids are passed from grade to grade, regardless of whether they can even read or do arithmetic.
If you’re too impatient to wait for technology to catch up – which won’t take long, according to Moore’s Law – you are handing (y)our heads on a platter to another government agency that will grow just like the EPA and Dep’t of Education. They will formulate more and more onerous new rules, until free speech will become a joke. No matter how well-meaning the FCC appears today, like any bureaucracy it craves power and growth. And it sees net neutrality as its opportunity.
There is no need for the FCC to regulate the internet any more than it already is. The internet is doing just fine. These are minor growing pains, and the internet will do fine without any more government meddling.