How Washington Will Shape the Internet 373
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, 'The most potent force shaping the future of the Internet is neither Mountain View's Googleplex nor the Microsoft campus in Redmond. It's rather a small army of Gucci-shod lobbyists on Washington's K Street and the powerful legislators whose favor they curry.' The article examines several pieces of legislation and lobbying initiatives which are poised to affect you and your rights online. Topics covered include Net Neutrality, fiber to the home, the Universal Service Fund, codecs, and WiFi bandwidth usage." From the article: "After years of benign neglect, the Federal government is finally involved in the Internet — big time. And the decisions being made over the next few months will impact not just the future of the Web, but that of mass media and consumer electronics as well. Yet it's safe to say that far more Americans have heard about flag burning than the laws that may soon reshape cyberspace."
Down the Tubes (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong Title. (Score:1, Informative)
But since Washington only sells out the general public these days to the whores, opps I mean corporations, this title it probably redundant.
Re:The rest of the world has no choice. (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, I think you should have a look at the rest of the world and realize that we don't "import" laws from the US. Most of Europe and Canada are Socialist countries... you don't see us adapting US education and healthcare do you?
The Canadian Privacy Commissioner is currently reviewing cross-border data flow because Canadians' privacy is being compromised by the Patriot Act. If anything, we're seperating ourselves from the US, not the other way around.
Re:Question... (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all. The market has three components. The core is an oligopoly with only a couple of major players. They get paid either way. The end user edge is a bunch of local or regional monopolies or oligopolies with millions of users. The content provider edge is a bunch of local or regional oligopolies that rarely overlap with the end user edge.
As I understand it, traffic billing from one backbone to another is based on the balance of incoming versus outgoing connections. Making an outgoing connection costs money, while receiving a connection gets money back. The theory is that the content provider is not the one benefitting from the content. With advertising, that's not always the case, but it certainly makes sense from a network utilization perspective that the party that causes the traffic to be introduced into the network should pay for it.
If two networks are fairly comparable in terms of how many outbound requests they spew into the other network, they set up an unmetered peering agreement in which the two parties don't bother keeping up with who makes more requests. It's just easier that way. If the two networks are imbalanced, the larger (generally more backbone-ish) network generally gets more requests from the smaller one than it sends to it, and thus, the other network ends up having to enter into a metered peering agreement.
Now the problem is this: most content providers do not introduce a large amount of traffic into the backbones. With the exception of outbound email, almost all content providers return data in response to a request. Thus, ISPs with a higher percentage of content providers tend to have more favorable peering arrangements, while ISPs with a higher percentage of end users tend to have less favorable peering arrangements, since they generally produce the vast majority of requests. The ISPs that have a greater percentage of end users don't like this arrangement.
The solution proposed by largely end-user ISPs is that they should be able to charge the content providers themselves for preferential access to their users, and that companies that didn't pay would get lower speed access. You will note that those content providers are not customers of those ISPs. They are customers of a different ISP that peers with a backbone provider, which in turn peers with those ISPs. You should quickly see why this is silly.
A more fair solution would be for both ends of the communication to pay equally, as both are equal parties in the communication. In such a scheme, an ISP pays if either endpoint of a connection is within their network. This money is paid to the first backbone. Because the backbones are all considered somewhat equal and all pass traffic for each other, no additional transfers are needed. In effect, this would work the same way as the internet does now, only the backbone providers would get paid in part by both ends.
The net effect of such a design would be that content providers would pay more of their fair share of the cost of operating the backbones, while end users would pay a less disproportionately large share of the cost. The most important part of my suggestion here, however, is that ISPs should only be allowed to bill their customers and peers, not the customers and peers of other ISPs. In other words, I am in favor of net neutrality laws, albeit laws that are more carefully crafted not only to prevent the end user ISPs from following through on their threat but also to reduce the disparity between the proportion of costs paid by end users and those paid by content providers.
Re:Question... (Score:3, Informative)
Slight correction: the content provider edge does overlap significantly with the end user edge, but most ISPs tend to heavily favor either end users or content providers, depending on which market they primarily cater to. For example, Comcast is heavily biased towards end users, while AT&T is probably biased more heavily towards business (though admittedly less so since the merger with SBC).
Re:First (Score:3, Informative)
This upstream limit that you site, the 2 and 5 megabit limits, those are artificial. They are implemented to ensure that consumers aren't running data centers from their homes and sucking up all of the bandwidth. They in no way measure the speed capabilities of the line you are on. In addition, the "max out at 30 megabit" limit that you think is there is not due to cable or fiber issue, it is due to the long haul available bandwidth from the aggregate connecting point, which may very well be fiber already.
Before you start engineering our future, you should probably do your homework.
what we really need (Score:3, Informative)
I would like to see our government completely wiped out from top to bottom and start from a bunch of young people who actually do give a shit about our country and our future. There is a huge damn generational gap that is happening. All the old people are making decisions that they have no idea what the consequences will be or they just don't care completely because they will be dead by the time those consequences happen (ie. global warming, internet, pirating, etc.)
The problem with America is that there is too much business. Because people are rich, they seem to have the most pull, which is bullshit because being rich doesn't make you intelligent. Too many things get passed through our congress and our senate because these assholes don't read anything, why? because they are on their damn big ass boats fishing or doing something other than coming up with new ways to help society. I hope all of our politicians burn in hell if there is one...because they are all evil....every single one of them. No one has the balls to stick up for what is right any more.
You know, we could of have been atleast one step closer to getting a better energy source. You take the worlds top scientists and stick them in a lab and give them whatever they want, and you will have your new, cleaner, better energy. How do you think the atom bomb was made? exactly the same way. We could of spent that $300 billion it is costing us for the fuckin retarded ass war in Iraq for R&D of new technology to HELP society on a global level instead of hurting society. I will be damn surprise if humans will make it another 100 years because of the retarded people in high up places will do something like nuke another country, which will set off a huge train wreck through out the world. How do we have the power to wipe the human race over and over again, and the person at the helm is no other than the guy who choked on a pretzel, the guy who fumbles words constantly, the guy who says he will not change his path even though everyone says he is a moron and he is wrong, the guy who probably doesn't know what 10 x 10 is?
Something needs to be done. We really need a good revolution of our government. Even though it won't happen, we really need one. This is what our second amendment right is for, to stand up against this bullshit when our government gets out of hand. Hell I am sure some of our military would even fight for the people, well whats left of it here in the US. I honestly don't think America could take another huge attack on American soil, and it shouldn't. Too many people in America are comfortable in their life driving their damn H3 hummers and as long as they can have their gas we are alright. I won't even go into all the BS oil and how that is going to end. America better get its act together or it will end up a 3rd world country in no time. And it all starts now with this damn goverment we have. This government has shifted America in a dir
The article is full of telco propaganda (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and if Lucy holds the football I can come running up to kick it. Telcos have spent *decades* saying "give us this break and we'll lay fiber', "give us that break and we'll lay fiber", then taking the money and doing nothing.
>abolition of the USF altogether -- but that seems unlikely, as that would impose an immediate and costly burden on many rural Americans.
The USF money is not accounted for and when rural areas get service the telcos raise the rates by the amount of the subsidy [pulver.com].
At least this one isn't telco propaganda:
>electronic versions of anonymous cash
That was the cypherpunk dream from the previous millenium, but if you look around at all the anonymous payment systems that used to exist they've all been shut down by the requirements of USAPATRIOT.