Net Neutrality Bill in Congress 254
hip2b2 writes "The US Congress is finally doing something to prevent large bandwidth providers and network operators from charging (or putting restrictions on) competing web and other Internet media content providers. According to this NetworkWorld article, the new bill sponsored by Democratic Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Anna Eshoo of California and Rick Boucher of Virginia in the House and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in the Senate. I am not a big fan of legislation, but, I hope this bill keeps the Internet a freer place." Here is our coverage of the first round.
This is what laws are _supposed_ to do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Is not the legislative branch of the US government the body that is supposed to be responsible for passing laws to protect our freedom and liberty?
The mere statement made gives me the impression that this type of thing is not the norm. And this makes me sad.
Re:Won't make it out of committee (Score:2, Interesting)
And yes, we are biased. Our demographic likes our bias. So piss off about that.
Not just content provider neutrality is at stake (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just content provider neutrality is at stak (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legislation != Free (Score:2, Interesting)
Look. If they don't lie, how do you expect them to get any customers? Do you expect a politician who doesn't lie to actually win an election? Of course not. You might hope for that, but you know it won't happen. We are definitely a masochistic society. We like being hurt and lied to. We crave it. And then we come back and ask for more. Metaphorically, we are very kinky(or maybe not so metaphorically). And we'll react very negatively to anybody who would try to tell us that the whore stole our wallets. Another good example of an industry that lives on lies is the cell phone business. They promised secure, private connections. How? By providing secure encryption? Nope. They had the feds instigate a prohibition on full band scanners. And we liked it! "Please sir, can I have another?"
Re:governmental interference (Score:3, Interesting)
> Smith!) is based upon assumptions that do not hold in the real world. If we want an economy
> that even approximates a 'free-market', then we need legislation.
No we don't. We need a government to do the job it was tasked with. That means a Federal Givernment about 10-20% of it's present size.
> Look at Microsoft, or AT&T.
Yes, look at them. Both are monopolies which were mostly CREATED by the government. AT&T was explicitly given a government monopoy grant because it was believed (perhaps with some merit) that only a single monopoly could solve the problem of the chaos that existed at the time with dozens of phone companies none of which could interoperate with the others.
The whole present problem has a very simple solution, which is why no politician will consider it. (solve the problem permanently and you lose the 'campaign contributions' from both sides every couple of years as you pass band-aid fixes, much like what would happen to Microsoft if they ever published a version of Windows that 'just worked'.)
The problem is the government. Specifically their grants of monopoly to the telcos and cable companies. Even if we could say it was a bad idea to do it it is now done, they have billions of plant & equipment which was subsidized by the power of the State so a level playing field can't exist. But there is a solution. The AT&T breakup was stupid, as all should now realize, because it didn't attack the problem; the government subsidized monopolies on the local loops. So force the phone company into one more government mandated reorg. Company A gets the local loops and the monopoly that goes with them. They (and the Public service commissions in each state) set a rate for a loop but can't so much as run a current through one other than for testing. They don't charge the subscriber, they charge carriers. Company B is that part of their current business. So long as they buy at the same rate as any other carrier they (and the other carriers) would be 100% free of ALL government interferrence. Not subject to public service commissions, the FCC or Congress.
As for your example of Microsoft, notice that the Government couldn't fix that problem. And no it wasn't Bush's fault. The case had pretty much collapsed by election day 2000. David Bois (of SCO fame) had already managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory months before Bush & Ashcroft were in office. And if Microsoft is going to be dislodged it will be by the Free Software movement, not some farcical court case. And anyway, Microsoft derives most of their power from the government. Office is the government standard, which pretty much forces anyone doing business (and nowadays that is almost everyone, the government's tentacles are everywhere) with the government to run Office which pretty much means Windows. And it is the government Copyright monopoly, DMCA and other crap that makes anyone afraid of cloning Windows.
This farce of a network neutrality bill will solve nothing and almost certainly make matters worse. Watch how many evil things slither in with it even if it passes. And if we allow the government to start regulating how ISPs run their network I can promise you it won't stop where you guys supporting this idea would like it to.
Just wait. No, you can't throttle VoIP traffic..... so long as it is unencrypted and the long distance tariffs are being paid. No you can't throttle traffic.... unless it is P2P and the RIAA doesn't like it.. oh wait they don't like ANY of it so block it. No you can't block VPN traffic..... well ok you can require 'business grade service'. And once the regulation genie is out of the bottle just wait until the state public service commissions get into it. If you think Congress is clueless just wait until the REAL idiots start micromanaging the infrastructure.
Re:Network "neutrality" is bad (Score:3, Interesting)