Net Neutrality Voted Down in U.S. House Committee 354
Ana10g writes "Business Week provides a look at the recent vote by the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, in which the FCC would have been given the power to prohibit discrimination of Internet traffic. The battlefield seems to be centered around which group has the better funded lobbyists, with companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and many others competing against the well funded Telecommunications lobbysts. The committee voted the amendment down, 34 to 22."
Re:Anyone Suprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone Suprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's something so wrong with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as we're clear: it's just big companies with lots of money fighting each other for the right to make money off of us. God for-fucking-bid the "battlefield" should in anyway involve some kind of consideration of what might be best for the human constitutents the congresscritters are elected to serve.
I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
As an aside, doesn't the whole "tiered Internet" concept that the telco's are trying to float violate the concept of "common carrier"? Anyone know?
Re:Hmm... Technicalities. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
DEMAND your rights! (Score:5, Insightful)
The shame is that we (the voters) don't stand up and say "ENOUGH!" Is it because we don't think what we want is right, or is it because we expect political special interests to win despite what we, the voters want?
The game is rigged, sure enough, just as long as we sit down, shut up, and don't vote. I don't care if you disagree with me, I just want you to vote.
Re:I'd love to see this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm so torn (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole reason the Internet has been the way it has is because of the FCC regulation.
This got voted down....THIS IS BAD.
Companies like Barnes and Noble would have the cash to have their page served to you fast, while your local library would run slower then a 56k modem. (Analogy from http://www.savetheinternet.com/ [savetheinternet.com] This creates a Walmart effect!
Free? How so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm so torn (Score:1, Insightful)
That's up to the constituents (Score:5, Insightful)
If they spend their time watching TV and vote based on what they see in expensive TV campaign ads then Congress will respond to whoever donates money.
Re:DEMAND your rights! (Score:4, Insightful)
How to accomplish that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good, the Internet will continue to be free (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC is desperately needed to regulate the internet. The FCC needs to ensure a level playing field when it comes to net traffic, whether that traffic is for google or microsoft, or my own server. I don't want to access my mail at dial-up speeds because the provider between me and it decides to that their uncompressed HD content is more important then my 5k file. I don't want my connection to time out to an independant site because verizon decided to shift all their traffic onto "the internet" thus freeing up some of their private lines to save maintanance costs.
Ensuring that the net stays neutral keeps the net more like a town hall and less like disney land. Allowing the telecoms to start charging prices ensures that they only peolpe who can truely serve content are those that have the money, not neccassarily the ones with the best content.
I'm not a fan of regulation, but it's better that the FCC does it then the telecoms.
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
On the bright side, it's nice to see MS money going to a good cause. I bet Bill Gates is rolling over in his coffin at the thought.
Such Damage... (Score:5, Insightful)
This may very well mean those content providers and other businesses will move operations outside the USA. Hopefully, this might (not sure on this) make it difficult for US-based major telecoms and ISPs to discriminate against foreign traffic because of international treaties and agreements.
Combined with restrictive IP laws and high taxes, this could add significantly to pressure forcing innovative technologies and the corporations behind them to base themselves outside US control.
As Princess Leia said about a possible future powergrab..
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Once more, it seems (relatively) short-term profits win out over longer-term strategies that would benefit everyone in many ways, including even themselves, and to a much greater degree over time than this self-defeating quick cash grab.
Seems they never learned the old adage about not crapping in ones' own nest.
Cheers!
Strat
Re:DEMAND your rights! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Insights * 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
The only guy on the panel who felt net neutrality was unnecessary was the telco guy 'McCormick' who repeatedly assured the panel they would never 'limit, degrade, or block service' to anyone - all while agreeing that one congressman's analogy that suggested exactly that was 'apropos.' How bout that.
Meanwhile republican bobble-heads were nodding in agreement nearly the entire time with the 4 other panelists who FAVORED net neutrality and seemed to understand the issue. Vote time comes - only one republican voted for it. Another 'gee, how bout that' moment. What I think surprised me the most is that they actually seemed to grasp the necessity of net neutrality throughout - but they're such whores they voted against it anyways when the attention was elsewhere (see gas prices.)
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:3, Insightful)
The Atlantic ocean. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tech-Regulation Bills are *seldom* well written (Score:5, Insightful)
In most big technical companies, it's tough enough to get your *management* to understand the critical technical issues. (If you work in a small startup, there's a good chance that some of the main players do understand, but if you're big enough to have VC-funded management and an HR department, it's pretty likely that have the management aren't technical enough.) Getting *Congresscritters* to understand anything technical is much tougher, and the FCC are a variable set of political hacks, ranging from occasional people who are outstandingly good to other people who are more concerned about regulating TV coverage of Janet Jackson's boobs.
The MoveOn.org petition-distributors don't understand the real issues, so the things they're telling the Democrat Congresscritters aren't helping their ignorance any. Some of the big customers understand some of the real issues. The telecom company managers have demonstrated that while they may understand some of the issues, they'd rather do a bone-headed arrogant "It's Our Money" regulatory play than try to talk technology to the public.
Cool idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm...
I want one that is MINE to configure (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care if I got 1GB speed when accessing a port 80 (http) server, when at the same time I get 50kbit for streaming content, P2P or secure copy.
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:3, Insightful)
* you excluded
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:3, Insightful)
Some^H^H^H^H Most districts are so overwhelmingly gerrymandered that there is a snowball's chance in hell that the incumbent will lose. A friend mentioned that an incumbent is more likely to lose his/her seat by death or resignation than due to being voted out. I never got a source for that, but it seems to be correct over the past few elections.
For instance, Stephanie Tubbs Jones represents a district designed to elect a Democrat. I can guarantee you that if she did not campaign or raise any campaign contributions, she would still win at the very least by a 2-1 margin. She wins by default. Ohio (where I live) is among the worst gerrymandered states in the nation. I recall seeing a statistic that said something like 51% of all House of Representative votes across all districts went to Republicans, but they ended up with 66% of the delegation.
My rep (Dave Hobson) doesn't ever have to listen to a thing his constituents say. He's in a safe district. Quite a few Republicans and nearly all independents would have to vote for the Democratic challenger him to lose. It simply doesn't happen.
Re:Anyone Suprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you want to subsidize Google? (Score:0, Insightful)
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/ma
Democrats are just constantly reinventing Econ 101 in the wrong way.
Telcos can not cut off the traffic, because connectivity is the very thing
they sell. Candy store refusing to sell candy situation.
They obviously would like to prioritize and discriminate traffic on basis
of profitability. The point is, if they can't do it, but are forced to
essentially subsidize cheap bandwidth, they will cut it. It's the same
situation as 'rolling blackouts' in California, where energy companies
forced to provide energy below costs have been doing "maintenance" of
their generators for 25% of operation time (right).
Bandwidth is cheap, but not free. You can "overgraze" bandwidth, just like
you can overuse energy. The years of overinvestment during dotcom mania
and subsequent glut in the bandwidth have indeed created abundance of
bandwidth, but simultaneously stopped investment and development of this
market. The bandwidth and fiber will be utilized; but the moment will come
when it will be necessary to invest further into it. If companies cannot
increase their revenues dependent on who uses how much bandwidth,
clearly discriminating depending on usage, we're going to find ourselves
in situation of overcrowded public road. Being stuck in traffic jams is a
pack of fun!
Bandwidth hogs obviously love he situation - at expense of the rest of the
users. Their traffic willget through - they are smart enough to arrange this
to happen. The legislation intended to help start-up garage will eventually
end up as a massive, politically forced subsidy from users to Google.
Bandwidth becomes public good. And every half-witted economist is
capable to demonstrate that scarce public goods that are used up tend to
be overused and unverinvested (there are public goods like time signal
or tech standard that do not get used up the more people use them, but
bandwidth is not this type of a public good).
The classic countermeasure against overgrazing such public goods is - you
guessed it - subsidizing it from taxes.
The half-witted wonkish instinct is to subsidize the public road while
neglecting the cost of subsidy to the opportunity cost: ok, we took that
much money on taxes for public roads; hmm, people are unable to pay the
energy bills now; ok, we'll increase taxes and subsidize energy; hmm, for
unclear reason now people somehow find it increasingly difficult to buy
housing; ok, let's subsidize housing for the least wealthy by taxing
You get the idea? The doogooder instinct of a wonk requires that at all
times implementing the sum of his good intentions would have to cost, say,
150% of GDP. The higher level of wealth and GDP, the more he exceeds it by
more or less the same ratio.
This, of course, is impossible in the long run: you can't sustainably
spend more than 100% of GDP unless the foreign loaners are willing to
subsidize you (something that current Bush administration should take into
account - in spite of being formally conservative, they spend taxpayer's
money like a drunk sailor).
Our beloved Dems again demonstrate Reagan was right: if it moves, tax it;
if it still moves, regulate it; if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Charging the consumer surplus (Score:5, Insightful)
When you think of Google, Amazon, Ebay etc. ... their whole business depends on telecommunication, so that what it's worth to them to have their data sent is basically their entire profit margin, which is non-zero. So ... at the moment they are enjoying a benefit which is known as "consumer surplus". Consumer surplus is the area between a demand curve and a given (fixed) price (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_surplus [wikipedia.org]).
Any marketeer knows that to get the maximum amount of money out of a market, you have to deal with each consumer individually, and price your goods to exactly what he's willing to pay. You can do that if his negotiation position is completely transparant to you, i.e. if you know his demand curve.
Now that extreme is too bothersome, so what do you do? You segment the market into sections that have approximately the same willingness to pay. For each segment you then negotiate a price close to the minimum willingness to pay for that segment. You won't get all the revenue you would have if you were able to charge each consumer the maximum price they're willing to pay, but you're getting close.
The trick is to identify the segments in the first place, and to gain a strong negotiating position. Identifying your customers is the basic step to figuring out their willingness to pay, and of late we have seen Cisco routers that do exactly that. So that's one hole plugged.
The second issue is to gain a strong negotiating position. That's all taken care of because the telecom companies have ensured that all electronic traffic must pass through their infrastructure.
The only remaining problem was that it wasn't legal for them to bluntly start pricing each individual customer what they would pay. Now with the removal of "net-neutrality" this is taken care of as well. Telecom companies can simply induce unacceptable delays as follows:
- (1) allocate reserved bandwidth channels on their infrastructure for customers that are prepared to pay more (got to provide superior service if we're going to charge more, right?)
- (2) route traffic in those channels with priority over existing infrastructure
- (3) watch natural traffic growth of priority traffic squeeze the performance of the non-priority traffic
- (4) politely but firmly negotiate large price increases with large customers such as Google, Ebay, Amazon who can't live with the now much reduced performance of their services
All legal, all neat. Telcos increase their profits at the expense of the (large corporate) users of telecoms facilities. Of course it won't stop there. Individual consumers and small businesses are next. Not satisfied with your Internet performance? (hehehe) Subscribe to our Deluxe service!
If you think I'm making any of this up, then see Cisco's pitch of its routers that can identify traffic here http://www.corecom.com/ftpdir/pub/corecom/iprev-bi lling.ppt [corecom.com]. as powerpoint and here as html: http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:dt-ljUr4k5QJ:w ww.corecom.com/ftpdir/pub/corecom/iprev-billing.pp t+cisco+routers+identify+traffic+tiered+charge&hl= en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=8 [66.249.93.104]
The only cloud in the sky is the fact that the Telecoms companies don't create value in this way. They simply take away consumer surplus. Gi
Re:Getting a little sick of this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ain't no other country want your lazy ass, and even if it did; name any that ain't already as corrupt and bought out as america is.
Ain't no where to run to, so you might as well bite that pillow.
Re:Good, the Internet will continue to be free (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:3, Insightful)
But a week or so back, I saw a show (on the History Channel?) about Carnegie and his right-hand man, and about how they squashed a steel strike in Pittsburgh in the late 1800's and destroyed the union there. They painted a pretty grim picture of life in Pittsburgh at that time for ordinary working people.
Please tell me what about our nation's current legislative direction doesn't appear to hold that condition as a desirable end.
Re:Do you want to subsidize Google? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody pays for their bandwidth already-- the price of connectivity is pegged to how much traffic you generate. If Google, Amazon, et al. create more traffic, they buy more bandwidth to carry it. Payment scales with use right now. There's no such thing as more or less profitable traffic, for a telco-- traffic is traffic-- and there's no reason there should be.
This is not about making payment scale with use. This is a shakedown.
The analogy you draw to the California energy companies is surprisingly apt-- that was a shakedown [wikipedia.org], too.
Re:So, would you say this is right or wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. But only in the same way we're violating the power companies' right to property when we tell them that they're not allowed to charge the telecomms and cable companies for all the traffic going through those wires they stuck up on all of the power companies' big, expensive, wooden poles.
And the same way we're violating my property rights by not allowing me to charge the power companies rent for the parts of my property they've stuck those poles into.
Oh wait, am I not buying into Ayn Rand's syphilitic delusion of corporate self-reliance?
Re:Charging the consumer surplus (Score:1, Insightful)
Prices are set by the market (generally) not "_costs_". A rational buyer will pay a price equal to or less than the worth of a good/service - preferably less even under cost if possible (ever buy a used car?).
What is more amazing than that idiot, armchair economists is all the dumbshits here crying to congress to save them. Let the big companies act like asshats and the market will sort things out. It might be a _good_ thing if incentives, _strong_ incentives developed to route around them. P2P connectivity or whathaveyou. Encrypted, proxied networks by default so the telecos don't know what you are doing.
As to VOIP. BFD, seriously. It is not "killer". V-traffic will continue to fall in price for the simple reason that most people don't want or need to talk to more than one person at once and seen that one person's ugly mug during the conversation is value-subtracted not value-added. V is dying as a profit center. Nevermind the death throlls.
Why is it that now government is the answer to this non-existant "problem"? Good thing the whacko religious nuthats weren't pro-active in preventing all the porn "probs" you people enabled.
Re:There's something so wrong with this story (Score:3, Insightful)
Right on the money. And there is nothing to prevent content providers from charging ISPs now either. So, Google could turn around and block access to its content from certain ISPs, after all at some point if the content provider is going to be blamed for poor performance, then why bother pretending that your content is available from a certain ISP. Just let everyone from Verizon or Comcast or whomever is engaging in anti competitive mafia like behavior that their ISP is to blame for trying to shake down the content providers or enaging in bandwidth fixing for its partners.
Could just turn into one big fiasco like cable tv, where some channels pay the cable company, some channels the cable company pays and the customer always pays for everything and has to sit through commercials on top. Of course, it doesn't matter too much for a broadcast entertainment medium like cable tv, but a fragmented communications infrastructure is a disaster which should see regulation to prevent, unless of course these type of exclusionary business arrangements are already covered by competition laws.
Re:Tech-Regulation Bills are *seldom* well written (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Charging the consumer surplus (Score:2, Insightful)
Right, true - market will sort it out - even if its solution is second-best, the parlament will come up with solution that in practice will be fifth-best. If not the worst of all possible outcomes.
The problem is that there are lots of markets that are skewed towards one of the market parties.
You're just amateurishly abusing economics of public goods and economics of welfare. This is bullshit. Look up Pareto or Pigou.
As reflected in the prices. Given that we, the public, are in last instance the ones who have to live with what the markets come up with, I submit that we have evry right and reason to set some restrictions on what type of market we wish to see.
Oh yes, let's have your and whacko's sentiments rule!
Our intents are pure and the goal is good, hooray!
Haven't we seen that before? Great Society? Stagflation? War on poverty that poverty won? Fuckups of New Deal? Breakup of Bretton Woods? Econ stagnation in Europe now?
How do you know that your regulation will not produce effects that are WORSE than whatever market brings? Is politics SANE and RATIONAL and WELL INFORMED in your world? Maybe it's planet Zurgundia where you live?
Your explanations are dandy in the mind of zealous, simpleton morons. That's the only place where they work.
Yes, there is category of market formations known as oligopolies, vertical monopolies or things like "market failures". So what. Political volatility and systematic errors that are standard element of basically all policies are per saldo even worse from my point of view. The cure is worse than disease.
The public have a legitimate interest too, which may at times set limits to what markets are allowed to do.
The public doesn't understand a squat of it all, and the feeble-minded morons in parliaments understand even less.
Telecom suits vs. Internet hackers (Score:2, Insightful)
A fact that the general public does not realize that if oil wasn't so high that the government is now taking action against the Big Oil companies (who have anally raped consumers at the gas pump while raking in record profits), the government would be taking action against Big Telecom (which has been leaving dirty messages in our voice mail like a drunken Pat O'Brien [newgrounds.com]).
Given that the House Committee on Energy & Commerce has done little to stop Big Oil from buttf*cking us, it is more than certain that they will allow Big Telecom to do the same.
Big Telecom's arguments for wanting to make the Internet it's b*tch.
First, they tell us that they "want to provide more services to consumers" and "are woking hard to bring it to consumers." For those who were not born yesterday, this is BS. The telecom industry generally says these things because they are also trying to take over the entire cable industry, not just part of it which they already own. They don't want a slice of pie, they want to whole thing.
Secondly, they tell us that they "want to help the government apprehend online predators". It sounds like a noble objective, but what Big Telecom doesn't tell the goverment is that this goal is at the bottom of thier list of things to do, which probably looks like this:
When I was in the kindergarden and first grade, AT&T and some energy gave the school these fliers to pass out to children to teach children about energy conservation and tell children about some of the technology that is out there that AT&T used to help others especially the disabled and the deaf. In retrospect, this is nothing more than corporate propoganda. If you have children who come home with this sort of materal, file a complaint against the school board for allowing major corporations to sell out your children!
Generally, Big Telecom does not report any records of predators who work for Big Telecom. They also won't report anyone who works for any government agency in order to influence the government, at the right price no less. They will also hide any evidence that they themselves are engaging in these illict acts. Industries often use altrusism to coverup any corruption they are currently engaging in (see Big Tobacco).
Finaly, Big telecom also tells us that they "want to pr
is this event good or bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. We can agree that it's bad if the telcos achieve a monopoly. But does this laissez faire move on Congress' part help, hinder, or neither? If the markets work, then I feel hands off is best. I think the markets are working currently. Even that Whitacre character of SBC has conceded that forcing discriminatory service on customers would be economic suicide.
If the market doesn't work, then it seems to me Congress' best move is whatever is required to allow the market to function. It may be as simple as a requiring a little daylight, so the telcos cannot hide things and customers can inform themselves. That's how sales tax is done in the US on everything except gas. A store must mark items with the price _before_ taxes are added, so that when we get to the cash register, we see exactly how heavily we are being taxed. A bad law has many edges and unintended consequences. Think "chilling effects". It would be the height of irony if we passed a law intended to preserve net neutrality, but which had the opposite effect by perhaps unwittingly raising the barriers so high there is no competition because only the biggest can afford to comply with all the regulations. Think SOX.