Two-Tier Internet & The End of Freedom of Speech 364
Max Fomitchev writes "The proposed Two-Tier Internet bill threatens not only to raise prices on goods and services served online but also to seriously hamper free speech on Internet by allowing telecom providers choking user pages and blogs not associated with major content providers. What a perfect way of censorship..."
Two steps to anarchy (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what idiotic government officials while having their pockets greased will do their emails no longer come in but instead they receive a hostage notification from their provider: Dear Mr. President, under subsection 1(a)(b)(c)(d)(e) of the Draconian Telecommunications Act, we cannot deliver today's messages. Please pay the sum of a) bandwidth b) tax fees c) attorney fees d) greaser fees in order to release your messages.
Two Questions (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Does this form of content limitation take away any of the rights you had before the dawn of email? Back in the day, we wrote pen & paper letters because it was the only option. Today, although letters are (probably) more secure, because they are not subject to the kind of keyword data mining that can be conducted on electronic communications, we seem stuck on email. Do we need to be?
Re:Backwards into time... (Score:2, Interesting)
I look forward to killing you. (Score:3, Interesting)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:To Network Neutrality Opponents: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:REDACTED (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes me think that there is already a two-tier internet - as this case obviously demonstrates. It seems that their wholesale traffic/customers aren't as important as its own. Nice way to wipe out tens of thousands of users off a network.
Food for thought.
Re:Backwards into time... (Score:2, Interesting)
Under a two-tiered Internet, the content providers pay extra, not the "peasants" who are merely browsing in the "library."
Nope. The "peasants" will pay more. It will cost more to push the information out to the peasants, so the "peasants" will pay more by increased cost for the products or a reduction in information/services.Hyperbole (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To Network Neutrality Opponents: (Score:3, Interesting)
The ISPs bought their equipment with their money, yes?
Yes... mostly
Why should they not run their equipment how they choose
It's where they put that equipment that fuzzes the issue. The old school telco's also were allowed to run cables through public right of way, i.e. land that belongs to you and me. They were not charged for this, the cable is still there and is still used.
Also, part of your phone bill is required to go towards the cost of providing phone service to rural areas where it's not as profitable (thus probably wouldn't get any service at all.)
This is arguably a tax, thus making it public funds. Therefore part of the equipment in use is paid for my you and me.
I think a big part of the problem is access (cable, towers, etc...) is bundled with service (phone switches, ISP equipment,etc...)
If access were separate from service then we could pay for bytes from any service. Pay my access provider (perhaps my municipality or local coop) and have hookups with multiple services (ISP,phone,cable...) and pay for what I want.
=Shreak
EBay are fighting this (Score:3, Interesting)
Paying for better service, and fighting back (Score:3, Interesting)
On your end, you have bandwidth and pipe limits imposed by your ISP. If you want more, you pay for the bigger package. Again, it depends on what service contract you choose.
What should not happen, is that the client's ISP will bill you (after the client is already paying for service) not to choke off your access. This also applies to the midpoints in the connection, and somebody has already footed the bill.
It's double-dipping, and it's extortion. It also strays far from the concept of an ISP being somewhat of a common carrier, and shows blatently that the can (and will abuse the ability to) monitor and/or restrict specific traffic.
If this passes it will be a dark day for the internet indeed... but if it does my hopes are that the first ones to try it will be hammered so mercilessly (lost customers, complaints, legislation, and banner ads everywhere proclaiming to existing customers that their ISP is evil) that the idea will quickly lose it's appeal.
That being said, perhaps we can create a master-pool of ISP's that use said service. In that case we could create something similiar to an anti-spam list wherein customers will get a memo stating "connections to this site will suffer extremely slowness and loss of quality because your ISP 'ASSHATINTERNETCO' is limiting your connection. Click here [link] for more information". I'd be happy to pop those up on my site, and it's easy enough with SHTML, etc.
Anyone in?
Let's examine the "freedom" claim (Score:2, Interesting)
If it were up to this guy, bookstores couldn't charge different prices for different books--that would amount to abridging "freedom to read" by his logic.
Freedom of speech means you can speak freely. It DOES NOT mean that you are entitled to be provided with the means (internet, microphone, megaphone) to speak.
Also: at the 3rd paragraph, this guy admits he's a socialist, so his credibility to talk about freedom is GONE.
Re:Two Questions (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet was built with US public tax dollars. Most of the private carriers you mention are regulated (phone companies and cable companies). ISPs themselves rarely own the wires, they're owned by cable or phone companies. They are often third parties, although in the US broadband ISPs are usually phone or cable companies thanks to US regulations of open access to wires being thrown out.
If one thinks of the Internet as a system, public infrastructure or utility then one can understand many (but not all!) of the characterstics of the Internet. Those entities are regulated for the good of all citizens and participants.
The phone and cable companies want to frame this issue as one of private ownership. The Internet must remain as a space that is not owned by any one industry or consortium of iindustries. Doing so will eliminate meritocracy for all groups be they political, economic, or social in nature.
Off topic, but in the US phone companies were deregulated in the 90s and allowed to compete in the long distance marketplace. The phone companies promised to build out their networks yet they reneged on that promise. There is plenty of "dark fiber" in the major networks and backbones, but the real profit area is "the last mile" which is where broadband customers are most vulnerable.
I see no reason to trust phone and cable companies when they spend millions of dollars on advertising trying to frame this debate as one of regulation of private property. History shows that neither industry serves the best interests of their customers, but of their shareholders and executives.
Re:Backwards into time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing is that I imagine that colo companies may pay for tiering and advertise that to their customers. This would allow any old blog to get special handling at a large colo.
It seems to me that very few people have actually thought more than two steps ahead on the economics of a tiered Internet. Personally, I would be interested to see how the marketplace would work out. I suspect it will not be like the FUD says it will be.
What's good for the Goose.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The difference? (Score:2, Interesting)
It is not economically feasible to run pipes to everyone. Most places in the US have such an arrangement (tax subsidies/etc). Once the pipes are in place however the carriers want to start abusing the situation. Since possession is 9/10-ths, for the most part they get their way.
It is disingenuous to imply that anyone could go out tomorrow and just recreate much of this infrastructure with private funds.
The several competing providers who have chosen to set up in my area are trying very hard to win me over, always offering better deals and counter-deals on bandwidth.
Understand your situation is unique, not the norm. I have lived in several major cities, and several different urban areas in the last few years. The most I have ever seen in any place at once is 2. The phone carrier (about whom you had no choice), and the cable operator (who you also had no choice about). Most places I have lived had just one choice.
ou have only your locally elected people to blame for a less competitive environment
To be fair, it has more to do with population density than elected officials. When your local government subsidizes pipe because it is uneconomical for a company to do it, it is not reasonable that the company then gets a monopoly over it. Through lobbying, and because it is prohibitively expensive to lay down extra lines, most companies have managed to get a monopoly in any given area.
Recognizing that a third party is routing an enormous portion of their traffic over your finite network, and making a lot of money doing so, does make talking to that user about traffic optimization a very legitimate objective.
This logic is flawed. Without their content no one would want your pipes. It seems to me equally fair that the ISP should have to pay Google for helping it's customers find what they want on the network. Google is providing your customers incentive to buy your product at no cost to you. How is that fair? If all these terrible content production companies were not creating content, no one would want your network.
A common carrier like UPS, you mean?
Exactly like UPS. UPS does not get to double charge everyone. One side pays the price, they deliver the product. UPS does not get to collect my $10 shipping fee, then tell Amazon that if they do not also pay them they will intentionally delay the delivery of my package. If it costs more to deliver my package to me in one place than another, UPS will charge me more, not go to Amazon.
You suffer from the delusion that Google is the local ISP's customer. They are not. The user requesting the information is your customer, and he is already paying you for that service. Google owes you nothing.
If your customers want Google to be tiered then that is between you and the customers. It is in your best interest to give your customers better access to the content they want, not visa-versa.
The reason ISP's want this is for the opposite reason. It gives them bundling control many of them are traditionally used to having. Bundling phone service for example. Either Vonage pays us to provide phone service to our customers (and we make money by leveraging one product for another), or we drop you and get someone else (or themselves) to do it.
It is never in the customers best interest to be told what is best for them based on who gives the carrier the most amount of money. The only reason they can get away with this is because most of them do have a monopoly in any given area so the customers can't choose something less draconian. If this were not the case I would agree that market forces would work this out.
It's a battle between businesses (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't love my ISP any more than the next guy, but let me make a brief counter to all the propaganda from Google and Ebay and MSN about the "greedy" ISPs (of course, Google etc. are just in business to extend love and butterflies and puppies throughout the world).
The way people pay for and get charged for the Internet has changed over time. It used to be that many of us had to pay by the minute, or even by the byte. That has mostly disappeared, but we still pay more for better service. Not everyone has the same options for Internet access, and even if they do have the same options not everyone can afford the same access. Internet access is a business, and a relatively new one. Business models are evolving and there is no guarantee that today's model is the perfectly optimal, best possible way that people could pay for Internet access.
It might be that if ISPs could get some money from content providers, they would charge their customers less. Of course, they would not do this out of the goodness of their hearts (they have no hearts!), but rather for the same business reasons that they stopped their per-minute and per-byte charges. ISPs exist in a competitive business environment like other companies and ultimately they need to satisfy their customers.
It might even be that in the future, Internet access could be free. It would effectively be subsidized by the big content companies, which ultimately get their income from ads. Free access to Internet content could be supported by advertising. It has worked with other media and it's possible it could work for the net too. But the only way it can happen is if ISPs, which bear the cost of end-user access, are able to get some of the revenues from the companies that are offering the ads.
That's really what this battle is all about. I don't know how it will come out, but I do know that when good ol' Meg from Ebay suddenly wants me to write my congresswoman about an issue that, coincidentally, would protect the huge profits Meg is earning, her motive is not to benefit me. Meg doesn't actually ask my opinion all that often. She's not on the phone wishing me happy birthday or asking how's the family. No, her interests are not mine. She is looking to protect her company's profits and she is trying to influence me and use me in this political battle against Comcast and other ISPs.
Re:The devil's advocate case for the two-tier net (Score:3, Interesting)
That is already the case: try out the following.
Call up your local telco, introduce yourself as Joe Schmoe geek that wants a real connection. Call again as the CIO of Schmoe.com Inc. and order the exact same thing.
The difference is usually upwards of 5x the price, simply for being a company. The future you fear is already business as usual. Welcome to the real world.