Net Neutrality

[peggy]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_6133584.html

So, tea baggers are against it. Or rather Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell are against it. I think even most republicans are for it. At least the ones who understand it. How do y'all think this is going to play out?

Oh, if only Obama would be against swimming with a plastic bag over your head!

Not sure if this is the right forum but it is about the internet and really is very important.

[catherine]

I would be very upset to see the end of net neutrality. It's the last frontier of a democratic (small "d") media platform.

[kib]

My prediction: how it's going to play out is that we'll reach some absolutely moronic "compromise" between a few screamingly wealthy entities and the rest of the country, as if "compromise" is the only answer when the vote is about a million to one on the side of The People. Yes, by all means let's compromise and shell out more money to a few greedy manipulators of a formerly equitable and non-monetized process, it's only fair.

[bae]

I helped invent and implement the Internet, and I'm against "neutrality".

We anticipated and designed the Internet to allow for explicit specification of priority and handling of traffic - see section 3.1 of RFC 791. There are sound technical reasons for this - some things are "hard" without it. I designed and implemented several of the first IP/TCP and XNS protocol stacks, and the routers/gateways/bridges that used them, and went through the NCP -> TCP transition hoorah (see RFC 801). I made my fortune building this stuff and getting it into the hands of hundreds of vibrant innovative competitors who brought you today's Internet. I think I "understand" the technical issues, even though I don't tend to vote for Democrats.

I don't think this innovation would have happened if we'd had the government managing competition at the level that is being proposed in many of the net neutrality solutions that float to the surface every few years.

I also see regulatory capture as a real risk if we go down this road. I see it driving the current net neutrality lynch mob, behind the scenes. Big bandwidth users (Netflix, Youtube, ...) are trying to get the government to step in and foist their costs of doing business onto others (the carriers) under the banner of populism. This effort isn't about your brother's anti-whatever blog, it's about Netflix using the government to force Comcast to give them free cheese, at your expense.

Let 100 flowers bloom, let 100 schools of thought contend.

[kib]

Ok, I'll bite. Why is there a cost to bandwidth in the first place? And why, exactly, can someone claim to own it? Isn't that sort of like trying to claim I should pay you for ... use of ultraviolet light, because you have created a man made scheme by which you "own" the airspace above my house?

ETA: I do also feel like Catherine's point is really valid: even if this smacks of socialism in some way, isn't some protection of independent news a valid social goal worth protecting? Ok I'll enlarge on that ... to me, allowing corporations to buy my ear at the expense of allowing me to hear anyone else's POV is simply wrong. There's a reason for the "free" in free speech, and just because some crazy legislation has come down allowing people to buy the biggest political megaphone doesn't make drowning out voices with money ethical. That's my flower.

[bae]

Ok, I'll bite. Why is there a cost to bandwidth in the first place? And why, exactly, can someone claim to own it?

Well, if it is bandwidth delivered to your home via wires, routers, backbones, office space, electrical power, and man-hours belonging to someone else, it seems reasonable that they could lay claim to ownership of the service they are offering to sell you.

If it is bandwidth in the radio spectrum you are speaking of, that is a whole other can of worms, as the air waves "belong" to us all, or to no-one. Cue boring discussion of game theory and tragedy-of-commons and externalities. So far, the USA has decided that while the air waves "belong" to us all, the FCC should allocate frequency slices to users capable of putting that chunk to beneficial use, and charge them for the use of the public air waves. Much like the Federal government administers timber and mineral leases on our public lands.... With many of the same interesting and predictable results.

I'm sitting pretty though, I have access to huge amounts of insanely valuable spectrum, for personal non-profit use only, due to an accident of history. We're all pretty lucky here though - there was a pretty solid proposal in the Early Days of Radio for the US Navy to own this valuable strategic and tactical resource, we barely avoided that.

[mtnlaurel]

Oh, if only Obama would be against swimming with a plastic bag over your head!

That made me laugh out loud, thank you.

[catherine]

Thanks for the information, bae. You make some good points about owners' rights. But there are a lot of social/cultural questions that emerge in this case. I remember when cable TV first came out. Because you had to pay for the service there were no commercials, as opposed to the free TV where you had commercials you had to sit through, but there were no monthly charges. Well, now there's monthly charges and scads of commercials. Yes, this is free enterprise and we will get choked with our own desires, for the benefit of the people who dangled the carrot to begin with, but this is a parallel to the potential slippery slope of unregulated internet access.

Over the last couple of decades now, the internet has changed our lives--for the better for the most part. I love the internet. Love. Love. Thank you for your contribution to it! My world would be a lot smaller if I didn't have it. (I wouldn't know you guys for one thing) But with this net neutrality issue, I feel that if companies are allowed to tier their bandwidth and make more money, it will inevitably bias the information flow. Convince me I'm wrong. Convince me that the regular person who can barely afford a computer, or who has to go to a library to use one, will get the exact same level of information as the person who can afford all the bells and whistles. We have so much disparity in every aspect of our lives, I'd just hate to see the internet fall to the same curse.

Yes, someone invented the internet. Someone "owns" it (or at least pieces of it). To make money. To build capital. To make profits. I get it. But the internet isn't a Mercedes. It's become part of our way of living, learning, doing business, communicating. This is a a question of at what point does pursuit of profit conflict with the common good? There are a lot of analogies to our current healthcare debate here. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

[creaker]

I worry about net neutrality - the media talks about it possibly making sites slower, they don't talk much about the possibility of just blocking sites entirely. Using Comcast for an example, why should they allow internet sites through that compete with their business? Or if they "partner" up some other company, blocking that company's competitors?

Or tiering, like they do with cable TV - pay $ and you get access to X sites, pay $$ if you want access to more.

The one thing that really annoys me is the idea that you are being sold x Mbit of bandwidth - but there's a problem if you actually use it. If I am supposedly paying for a 20 Mbit connection, what difference does it make who I'm streaming data from? It's like having the gas and water to your house throttled based on what you are going to use it for. But maybe they'll decide to meter internet usage like they do with cell phones

Given most folks don't have many options for providers, we could end up in a really bad place. I'd hate to have to stop working from home just because I could no longer afford the internet charges for doing that.

[Alan]

The one thing that really annoys me is the idea that you are being sold x Mbit of bandwidth - but there's a problem if you actually use it. If I am supposedly paying for a 20 Mbit connection, what difference does it make who I'm streaming data from? It's like having the gas and water to your house throttled based on what you are going to use it for. But maybe they'll decide to meter internet usage like they do with cell phones

On the flip side, what about content providers such as Google, Yahoo, Netflix, Hulu or VOIP providers using Comcast's (or whoever) network to deliver their content. Should they be able to pay the various network owners for additional bandwidth to improve their user's quality of service?

My biggest problem with the government regulating the internet as a utility is simply that, the government is regulating the internet. We've seen our own government attempt to regulate talk radio and suggest putting overseers in newsrooms. We've seen other governments restrict access to social media and force search engines to hide results they don't want their citizens to have access to. I'd rather they not be involved in what I can access on public networks.