The Daily Show Takes on Stevens and His Bill
July 13th, 2006 by tkarr |
During last night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart questioned Senator Ted Stevens’ grasp of the Internet, calling into doubt the telecommunications legislation that bears the Senator’s signature.
To clarify Net Neutrality, Stewart goes to Stevens’ “dump truck-tubes symposium,” a 10-minute monologue in support of the Senator’s own anti-Net Neutrality bill. Check out the show:
“Why didn’t Senator Stevens get it?” asks Stewart. Well… you’ll have to watch the clip for the “Daily Show” host’s interpretation.
Hey, why should the good Senator have to understand “an Internet” when there’s an army of telco lobbyists on hand to define it for him?
An electronic firestorm followed the Stewart skit. The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times and other mainstream newspapers subsequently reported on Stevens’ gaffe.
To find out where your senator stands on Net Neutrality and take action, visit our Senate Map.
July 13th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
This website needs to be updated, seriously. The Commerce Committee passed S 2686 on June 28th, 2006; this bill removes regulatory barriers that keep the private sector from investing in infrastructure and preserves consumer Internet experiences.
The bill includes an extensive section entitled the “Internet Consumer Bill of Rights.” Under this section, Internet service providers would be required, with limited exceptions, to allow consumers access to: 1) any lawful internet content 2) any web page of consumers’ choosing 3) any voice application, software, or service 4) any video application, software, or service 5) any email application, software, or service 6) any search engine of the consumers’ choosing; and 7) any other application, software, or service.
Moreover, consumers would be free to connect any legal device to the broadband network, as long as it does not cause harm to the network, and they would receive clear and conspicuous information about their broadband service. The FCC would be given extensive authority to adjudicate any complaints involving a violation of these provisions and take swift enforcement action.
July 13th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
S 2686 is not law, it has merely been passed out of committee. It is another competing method to solve the neutrality problem. But this one seems, at least to me, to be a better example of Senate turf warfare than a legitimate attempt to fashion comprehensive and consistent legislation that will withstand judicial scrutiny.
That’s the next step in all this. If the phone companies don’t get their way in Congress, you can bet they’ll use the courts to go after any legislation that forces them to play fairly. If that legislation is a seperate act sounding in a different area of law, it will be much easier to get it overturned leaving the telcom legislation just the way the big players wanted it all along.
July 13th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Stevens bill doesn’t address Internet discrimination, or prevent the telcos from their stated plans to create tiered access based on which companies pay them the most.
Here’s a good — albeit somewhat technical — definition of Net Neutrality and the discrimination problems that Stevens’ bill does not solve.
Don’t believe the telco hype. The private sector is planning to invest in infrastructure with or without Stevens bill. Here’s where you can go to learn more about that.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
[…] Stewart on the Internet … and Internet Gambling TDS: Ted Stevens and those internet Tubes Jon Stewart checked out Ted Steven’s understanding about Net Neutrality. It isn’t very deep. Video-WMP Video-QT Save the Internet has more… […]
July 13th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Actually, Tim, the Stevens Bill does address “discrimination”, as the Sean points out:
It simply stops short of banning legitimate services, such as QoS. That’s where your employer has gone over the deep end.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Stepping away for a moment. All hail Jon Stewart!
Chorus: All hail Jon Stewart…
Very nice…
July 13th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Does it address the notion that an internet provider may enter into a contractual agreement with site X with the desire to have its page load faster (”speedier”) than site Y? What about services? Say AT&T rolls its own VOIP service. What would stop AT&T from providing its VOIP service at a better QoS than Vonage? Could AT&T “degrade” Vonage’s service to such a point that it is inoperable? Does this not leave open the possibility for favoritism, censorship, and other wonderful things?
I pay for 7 Mbps. I expect to connect to sites at or near 7 Mbps. I don’t want my connection artificially (i.e. intentionally) degraded, for any reason. I don’t want to pay for 7 Mbps and end up with 2 Mbps because Google forgot to pay its QoS fee.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Here’s an example of “discrimination” the bill fails to address:
Jane and Joe independently develop an amazing new application that’s very bandwidth-intensive. They both want to pay for QoS to assure their products have a chance to succeed in the marketplace. An ISP comes along (let’s call it VT&T), sees the two start-ups, and then decides to buy Jane’s version — even though it’s not quite as cool as Joe’s, it costs less for them to buy Jane out. Jane, as a part of VT&T, finds her application performing well and succeeding. Joe sees himself losing out, so he calls VT&T to see if he can pay extra to improve his application’s QoS so he can outperform Jane. VT&T tells him, “sorry, that tier of quality is unavailable to you.” After a year, Joe is SOL and his superior application dies.
In this scenario, VT&T has not disallowed consumers access to Joe’s innovation. They have behaved in accordance with S 2686 as written. But they have still used their gatekeeper capability to bias the “free” marketplace outcome in their favor.
“Allowing consumers access” to content, applications, services et al is a pretty low place to set the bar. It still gives pipe owners tremendous power to affect the marketplace. They can easily play favorites without blocking anything. I’m sure a network guy like Richard can verify that technologically speaking this kind of throttling wouldn’t be a problem in the least. In fact, Verizon is banking on it.
The pipe owners aren’t interested in developing the widest pipes, the best technology, or the fairest QoS. They’re only interested in doing those things insofar as they help them make more money. They have a responsibility to their shareholders that trumps any responsibility to network engineers, consumers, or society as a whole. And if they find that they can make more though tactics like I’ve outlined here, to the detriment of innovation on higher layers on their network, they won’t hesitate to do it.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Hypothetically speaking, there are lots of things a network operator could do to cause grief to those who use his network to reach his customers when they don’t have any sort of contractual relationship with the network operator. And all the things you can imagine have been legal for cable-modem-based networks as long as they’ve existed.
Yet none of them has ever happened. DearAOL? Spam filter gone wild; Rogers Cable? Canada; Craig’s List? A total scam that Criaig’s people have now corrected.
And if some of them did start to happen, there would be a torrent of complaints from customers, and a legitimate clamber for laws to stop these practices. The Congress meets every year, and lawmakers are just dying for the opportunity to step up to the spotlight and champion consumer rights. So why act right now, with this horribly written legislation, to correct a “problem” that’s never happened?
This is simply an exercise in election-year grandstanding, and the net result of it is simply to deny cable TV customers - the real focus of the Stevens and Blanton bills - a second choice.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Dick Bennet-Ramsey is so boring.
How many times do you have to explain to him that you haven’t seen egrigious violations of net neutrality is simply because:
1) NN currently governs all telecom broadband, and will until it begins to phase out in August.
2) Cable companies have been on their best behavior because of concerns about regulatory approval for various endeavours, in particular, today’s Adelphia approval.
3) God knows Dick Bennet-Ramsey stands to make a bundle off of discrimination, and well, God just doesn’t like dick.
July 13th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Those with the desire to abuse their power will make every effort toward that end regardless of whether it is legal or not. Even so, it’s not in our (citizens, and consumers) best interest to simply deal with it. Instead, enact laws which put the people in control, completely. I do not wish to gain choice in cable TV at the expense of the Internet (even if the supposed doomsay scenario is hypothetical).
July 13th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
That’s all fine, but how do you define “abuse” in the law such that you prevent the capitalistic telcos from doing bad things but don’t prevent them from doing good things?
The approach in Snowe-Dorgan bans perfectly legitimate practices along with all the things its authors fear.
That’s not really a good way to write laws. It reminds me of the way the drug laws are written, banning perfectly good drugs like pot and bad ones like crack all in one fell swoop.
That’s not too smart, comrades, and we should all know better.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:56 am
RichardBennet,
QoS can be used in both discriminatory and nondiscriminatory ways. As you know the pay for QoS model you support is very discriminatory and S 2686 offers no protection against it. QoS can be used in nondiscriminatory ways if it used to guarantee QoS to real-time applications and provide best-effort delivery to best effort applications. Using QoS in this nondiscriminatory manner has tremendous potential for the future of the Internet by making it suitable for real-time applications in addition to best-effort applications, which among other things would greatly improve VoIP reliability and quality, which would greatly accelerate VoIP adoption. In order to achieve the full potential of QoS when deployed in this manner, it would have to be deployed end-to-end, including across network boundaries. The network neutrality legislation savetheinternet.com is pushing for DOES NOT prohibit this type of QoS deployment. However, your proposed type of QoS deployment would make this impossible because QoS could not be achieved end-to-end if entities pay for QoS to gain a competitive advantage over competitors.
Yes, some of the people in the net neutrality debate work for entities that have interests in the debate. But let’s debate this issue on its merits not by accusing each other of bowing down to the institutions they are affiliated with. Also, may I point out, that based on your resume, you have worked for a company which is extremely ant-net neutrality, Cisco!
The things you refer to as being legal have not been legal. See the link to the report I gave in a previous post a while back.
As far as the torrent of complaints goes, even if the torrents of complaints occurs why would the telcos respond when their customers have no other option as discussed in previous posts?
And you think Congress is going to defend consumer rights! Look at their track record so far.
And you call this a problem which has not happened. Just consider Comcast guaranteeing QoS for their VoIP service and not for other VoIP services!
July 14th, 2006 at 5:24 am
That’s not a satisfactory answer on the technical merits, rossmpersonal. Membership in the voice-grade QoS queue has to be limited or the latency distribution scheme falls apart, just as letting big carts into the chick-check line at the supermarket would. You’re also demanding a valuable service be given away for free, which would only shift the costs of QoS users onto QoS non-users in any event. That’s not the American way.
We pay more for broadband than we do for dial-up, so this notion of paying more to get more shouldn’t be all that foreign to us.
And by the way, it’s false to claim that cable modem access has ever been governed by telco law. It’s an “information service” and always has been.
I appreciate your desire to focus the debate on issues instead of personalities, but would suggest you forward that complaint to the editor of this blog, who is after all, debating with cute little videos, folk songs, and cartoons.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Again, nice attempt to claim moral high ground Richard.
These “cute little videos, folk songs and cartoons” have been watched by millions and are standard practice in any grassroots campaign.
Check out any of the cartoons being created by the fake grassroots groups at “Hand off the Internet” and “NetCompetition.” Your astroturf allies created these by drawing from a multi-million-dollar slush fund provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. Ours were created by real people who took time out of their lives to create something about an issue that they care about.
We honor their efforts by showing the videos and cartoons here. You do a disservice by dismissing them — and the more than one million people who have taken action on this campaign — as “morons” and “pedophiles”.
You claim to prefer honest debate over character assassination. This is laughable to those of us who are familiar with the ad hominem attacks, outright lies and other smear tactics that you pepper throughout this blog and elsewhere.
As I have said to you on countless prior occasions, if you’re interested in having an honest debate of the issues, you’re more than welcome at this site. But let’s not pretend to be something that you’re not.
July 14th, 2006 at 10:21 am
More on Stewart’s Net Neutrality gig here:
Web Pro News.
Keep those hits coming.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Save the Internet: Network Neutrality…
I’ve mentioned the bill(s) trundling through Congress at the moment in various places, including this blog. There’s a tussle going on between the telcos/cable cos (operators) and the internet community. There’s a lot of misleading information out th…
July 14th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
I have two complaints with Free Press’ Save the Internet campaign, Tim, and pedophiles isn’t one of them. They are:
1. The legislation your employer pays you to promote bans legitimate network services such as for-fee QoS.
2. Your campaign constantly attacks the other side as “astroturf” but you’re being paid to edit this blog.
You’ve said I’m lying and spreading misinformation.
Show me a so-called lie, or retract your claim.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
According to Richard Bennett:
1. Free Press produced “Outfoxed.” (wrong)
2. Matt Stoller is a paid to blog on behalf of Net Neutrality. (wrong)
3. Google funds SavetheInternet; Google funds MoveOn. (wrong; wrong)
4. Free Press is not a membership group. (wrong)
5. SavetheInternet is a fake grassroots organization. (wrong)
6. SavetheInternet faked its million signatures. (wrong)
And most of those are just in the last 48 hours. I can go on. But I’ll put all that aside to address your two primary complaints.
1. You’re right to debate the QOS issue. We have legitimately different views on how that should be implemented and whether one regulatory solution is better than the other. BTW-This is your strongest suit in this debate.
2. The coalition receives no corporate or political party money to operate this campaign. We have been up front about that from the start. The coalition has spent less than $20,000 on this effort — additional resources have been in-kind contributions like staff time from many of the member organizations.
That pales by comparison to the millions being dumped by AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and others into astroturf orgs like “Hands off the Internet,” “Freedomworks,” “TV4uS” and “NetCompetition.”
Where the telcos spend millions to create a facade of public consensus, we respond with real grassroots organizing. Our unprecedented alliance represents more than 750 groups from across the political spectrum – including the ACLU, the Christian Coalition, the American Library Association and every major consumer group in the country.
Again, SavetheInternet.com hasn’t taken a penny of corporate money from the big Internet companies or anybody else. Yet more than a million real people have signed a petition supporting Net Neutrality at SavetheInternet.com or the Web sites of coalition members, generating hundreds of thousands of calls and letters to Congress.
Thousands of bloggers have linked to the site — many of them posting free ads to counteract the expensive misinformation campaign launched by the Astroturf groups. Creative individuals have submitted their own videos and songs about Net Neutrality — and nobody paid them to do it.
Others have taken it upon themselves to organize others in their communities designing and printing out fliers and handing them out at high school soccer matches, on college campuses and in front of grocery stores.
This is the very definition of a grassroots effort.
The untold story here is of a word-of-mouth campaign that has lifted the crucial issue of Net Neutrality from obscurity and thrown a wrench in the phone and cable giants’ plan to overhaul our telecommunications laws behind closed doors.
You’re free to criticize that all you like, but please don’t just make random sh*t up.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
As I thought, your list of my “lies” primarily consists of things I never said, with a couple of things I retracted thrown in the mix to make it look credible. Free Press is a corporation, and you’re their employee. You get a paycheck for editing this blog, among other things. The Telcos are corporations, and they’re fighting corporations Google, Yahoo, eBay, So this whole “Grass roots vs. the Corporations” framing is misleading and irrelevant.
The issue isn’t who’s about who’s fighting whom, it’s about which regulations are good and which are bad, and you don’t seem to have any interest in discussing that because you’re so busy waving your “Grass Roots Purity” banner.
Frankly, Tim, this a technical issue, and the Grass Roots have no particular expertise and no particular credibility, no matter how organic they are or how numerous.
A million sincere and clueless souls are worth less than one man with knowledge on his side.
July 14th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Nice dodge Richard. But the record speaks for itself.
And to call a million people “clueless souls” (and I assume you’re referring to yourself on the “man with knowledge” bit) typifies your arrogant approach to this issue.
This is a grassroots issue at its very core. The Internet is the most democratic medium in the history of human communications. We seek to preserve that and foster its growth and openness going forward. We seek to accomplish that through better public engagement in policy making.
This also has long-ranging economic ramifications. To couch it as merely a technical issue best resolved by network engineers is a mistake.
We think our regulations are better — more public-interest oriented — than yours. We’re fighting against great odds to win.
July 14th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
I asked for more rational dialog on the regulations, and you responded by attacking me and once more waving your Grass Roots Purity banner. This is getting awfully tiresome.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your million sincere and earnest Lovers of Democracy are right, that the Internet does need to be protected from potential abuse by the Telcos (but not by potential abuse from Google and Yahoo), and therefore some new regulations need to be written.
We’re not a step closer to knowing how to write those regulations than we were a year ago, or a year before that, or a year before that. We just have a bunch of people yelling. It takes people with technical knowledge of the Internet’s peering arrangments and SLAs to draft the regulations.
Your employer has consistently denied regulating the Internet requires a new and unique approach any different than the ones that were used for dial-up communications, telegraphs, and ox carts.
To make a sensible and helpful contribution to the discussion you at least have to admit that regulating Internet routing and service plans is virgin territory. When you’re willing to take that step, I’ll take you seriously.
July 14th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
It’s awfully hard to be civil to someone who’s threatening the American peoples’ right to free speech to satisfy his own selfish goals. Should we have dropped our muskets and invited the British to tea during the Revolutionary War? No, I don’t think so.
You keep crowing that we should trust the internet to the tender mercies of the corporations, which have only one goal: get more money. If they feel that free speech will impede their ability to make more money, they’ll put an end to it. Rupert Murdoch demonstrated this when he tried to censor content on MySpace that embarassed the senator he has tucked firmly in his pocket.
The ISPs will follow his lead the minute they’re given the opportunity. They’re already using the “compelled speech” argument to defend their actions, and if that argument holds in Congress or the Supreme Court, they can suppress any and all information that isn’t in their best interests.
In twenty years, all the content online will be owned by the ISPs or corporations who’ve paid for sponsorship… you won’t be able to get that quirky Flash cartoon or video broadcast online without selling the intellectual property to Comcast or Verizon first.
It’s happened in the music, video, and television industries… if you don’t sell the rights to your work to a media giant like Fox or Paramount, it will never see the light of day. If net neutrality is defeated, the internet will become a closed road of communication as well. Count on it.
In this age of information, data should be treated just like any other utility. Your water supply isn’t cut off because you cooked the wrong brand of ramen noodles. You’re not denied electricity because you don’t own a GE television set. Then why should access to your favorite web sites and services be blocked simply because your ISP doesn’t have a controlling interest in them?
The freedom of the American people in the 21st century relies on an unrestricted internet… and a fair and just government would guarantee that freedom, rather than caving in to large corporations. The governments of several other countries, including Great Britain, South Korea, and Japan, already have defended the rights of their citizens. Will America follow in their footsteps? For the sake of this nation and its people, I hope so.
JR
July 14th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
You say: The freedom of the American people in the 21st century relies on an unrestricted internet…
An odd way to argue for government restrictions on Internet services. So while that’s all very nice, but it doesn’t get us any closer to understanding how to write regulations that prohibit bad practices without stifling the development of new services.
When you’re ready to come down off your high horse and lend a hand, let me know.
And incidentally, VoIP is blocked on Korean broadband if it’s not provided by the right ISP. Whoops.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:02 am
RichardBennet. I did not say that anyone could choose what content would have a QoS guarantee. I indicated that whether traffic is real-time or best-effort would determine whether it would get a QoS guarantee NOT whether someone paid for QoS. For example VoIP, RTP, RTSP, Skype, Vonage, Gizmo, and IP/TV traffic would receive QoS end-to-end whereas web surfing traffic and BitTorrent would be considered best effort. This is allowed under S 2686. However, it does not allow pay-for QoS schemes.
I do not understand why my response was technically insufficient without more detail.
It’s obvious that you didn’t read the report I refered to in the previous post since you claim that internet access has always been an “information service” which is factually erroneous. Read the report before responding to this comment.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:51 am
Cable modem access has always been an “information service”; DSL was classified differently until last year. That’s a simple matter of fact.
Why is for-fee QoS worse than QoS for free, in your opinion? I’ve yet to see a rational justification for that.
July 15th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
> Cable modem access has always been an “information service”; DSL was classified
> differently until last year. That’s a simple matter of fact.
It is clear you did not read the report at http://static.publicknowledge.org/pdf/pk-net-neutrality-whitep-20060206.pdf . Please read this before replying.
> Why is for-fee QoS worse than QoS for free, in your opinion? I’ve yet to see a rational
> justification for that.
I think the answer to the previous question may help answer this so let us address the previous question first.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Did page 10 confuse you, ross? Perhaps it was meant to:
Like I said, cable modem access has never been a telecom service, it’s always been treated as an information service, bundled with the cable operators’ ISP.
This has nothing to do with the proposed ban on for-fee QoS, by the way, so I’m still waiting for your rationalization.
July 16th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
HIS STAFF SENT HIM THE INTERNET. It took two days to get there.
Stevens has no idea what he is talking about. Wow!
July 17th, 2006 at 3:31 am
But like Jon Stewart said, he doesn’t need to know jack about computers or the Internet! He’s only in charge of regulating it!
JR
July 18th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Because I don’t understand all of the nuances surrounding this debate, I tend to find articles, or they are sent to me, about the issue in an effort to cut through the politics and hyperbole surrounding net neutrality.
I found the following “E-Week” article today about the Cerf/Farber debate 7/17 very interesting, although it left me with a lot of questions…primary among them is the contention by Cerf that, “other avenues to prevent abuse by broadband providers do exist. ‘The Federal Trade Commission, the FCC and the Department of Justice all have jurisdiction in this.’”
If that’s the case, why are we even HAVING this debate?
Net Neutrality Advocates Face Off
July 17, 2006
By Wayne Rash
WASHINGTON—What was billed as the great net neutrality debate of the season started off with the participants in complete agreement. Fortunately for the audience, it didn’t stay that way. Yet by the time the debate was over, the most startling fact was how close the two sides were in their positions.
The debaters were Vinton Cerf, called by many the “Father of the Internet.” Cerf, now chief internet evangelist for Google, is credited with inventing the TCP/IP protocol that makes the Internet work.
On the other side was Professor David Farber, frequently called the “Grandfather of the Internet.” Farber’s students went on to invent most of the critical aspects of the Internet today.
The initial statements at the debate—which was sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank—bemoaned what both sides call a “Bumper Sticker war.”
Both debaters agreed that the nearly constant stream of television and newspaper ads surrounding this issue really work to reduce understanding in the issues and do a lot to reduce the debate on net neutrality to a series of slogans.
Cerf said that the primary reason that he, and Google, are concerned about the net neutrality issue is because of a series of threats made by AT&T CEO Ed Whittaker to refuse carriage of traffic bound for sites such as Google if the company didn’t pay for the privilege.
Cerf said that if people had a wide choice of Internet providers, this wouldn’t matter. But he said that the fact is, most people have a choice of only one or two broadband providers.
“Most people have a choice of DSL or cable, but not both,” Cerf said. He noted that things had changed greatly since the days of dial-up access when users could access the Internet using many different ISPs.
“At best it’s a duopoly,” he said.
Cerf did admit that other avenues to prevent abuse by broadband providers do exist. “The Federal Trade Commission, the FCC and the Department of Justice all have jurisdiction in this,” Cerf said.
“If a broadband supplier abused their control by limiting choice, consumers could file complaints,” he said.
Cerf said that he thought things were better before 2005 when broadband providers were controlled by common carriage rules that prevented providers from discriminating in terms of what traffic was carried. “It protected the Internet,” he said.
Professor Farber, on the other hand, said that he worried about too much
Congressional meddling, if only because it might prevent the next major innovations from coming to the Internet.
He noted that he agreed with Cerf that there are plenty of mechanisms in place now to protect against abuse by broadband providers.
He did note, however that he doesn’t believe that the FCC has an unblemished record in such protection. He also noted that the FCC can have its decisions tied up in courts for a very long time, delaying enforcement.
But he also noted that the FCC can act quickly, such as when it acted to require phone companies that provided Internet service to also allow VOIP (voice over IP) calls.
What Farber is most worried about, he said, is poorly drafted legislation that would leave regulation of the Internet open to broad interpretations that could lead to unintended restrictions on the use of the Internet .
He said that regulators, in an attempt to somehow make the Internet more fair, could actually end up restricting access. “The net work never has been a fair place,” he said.
Cerf responded, saying that the Internet flourished when common carriage rules applied, but Farber argued that such regulation could become a slippery slope if Congress gets involved.
He said that while he agreed that it made some sense to use what he called an “active net work,” he said that the question then would become who controls it.
And, he said, “who controls the controllers?” He noted that the Internet is not an entity that the U.S. can control; it has become a global resource.
Cerf then agreed with Farber’s concern about poorly conceived and drafted legislation. He said that he wanted to see laws that were precise in what theyrequired, and that the process be transparent “if only as a warning to others,” he said.
Farber agreed. “What I want is to make sure that what Congress does doesn’t make matters worse,” he said.
He then joined Cerf in criticizing the statements by AT&T’s Whittaker that kicked off the whole net neutrality controversy. “It’s beyond me why Whittaker stirred up this hornet’s nest,” Cerf said, adding that it helped make much of the proposed legislation too broad, in his opinion.
“The Congress seems to be very confused,” Farber said. “They don’t understand what the net work does.”
He said that as a result, the bill is in danger of becoming what he called a “garbage dump” of overly broad and miscast legislation that could cause damage to the Internet .
“They always pile stuff on, usually at the last minute, that can do harm,” Farber said.
Cerf agreed that whatever legislation is introduced about net neutrality—if any is introduced at all—must be unambiguous. And both speakers agreed that they hated the term net neutrality, if only because of the “Bumper Sticker War.”
Check out eWEEK.com’s Government Center for the latest news, views and analysis
of technology’s impact on government and politics.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Netjunkie, the jurisdiction issue is a little foggier than what Mr. Cerf suggested.
The FCC: The FCC claimed to have jurisdiction under Title I of the Communications Act to impose some net neutrality principles. Indeed, the FCC adopted a policy statement to that effect in August 2005. FCC Commissioner Copps has claimed further that the FCC has authority under Title I to impose a non-discrimination principle, which is missing from the August 2005 policy statement. And the Supreme Court has stated in dicta in the Brand X case that the FCC has some authority to regulate in this area under Title I. However, the Supreme Court’s statement was dicta (and, therefore, non-binding) and was not clear that Title I gives the FCC jurisdiction to impose a non-discrimination principle. Further, Professor Speta has made a good argument to doubt the FCC’s authority in this area. Of course, this FCC jurisdiction debate would be rendered moot by some of the proposed legislation, which would restrict the FCC’s ability to adopt or enforce a non-discrimination principle.
The DOJ and the FTC: These agencies have jurisdiction to enforce the antitrust laws (under the Sherman Act and/or the FTC Act), but it is unclear what antitrust theory could be brought against a wireline owner for using QoS or other tactics to disadvantage rival content providers. Trinko cast into doubt the “essential facilities” doctrine, which might not apply anyway. That pretty much leaves a price/margin squeeze theory, which has received luke warm treatment by the courts at best. The underlying reason is that the courts generally do not have the expertise to implement price controls that would make a forced access regime (potentially) more efficient. The courts generally would rather defer to the FCC to regulate this area.
The next problem, which is particularly problematic for the FCC, is agency capture. Even if the FCC has jurisdiction, it might be unwilling to correct the problem, either because it believes there is no problem, because it believes any solution would be worse than the problem, or (more pessimistically) because its interests have become aligned with the wireline owners.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
[…] Last week it was Jon Stewart on The Daily Show spoofing on Senator Stevens‘ internet explanation. Now you know when the comedians start ragging on an issue it’s hit the big time. […]
July 19th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
RichardBennett,
I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I have been insanely busy.
Yes, you are right that cable modem service has always been legally considered an “information service” for as long as its legal classification has been clear. However, there has never been any reason it should not been classified the same way as other means of Internet access. The entire justification for that classification is baloney. There is no technological reason for that. The telephone companies figured out how the telephone system could work without one telco being at the top of a hierarchy of control of the telephone system. The cable companies could have done the same.
Why is for-fee QoS worse than QoS for free? For-fee QoS as you call it, makes fulfilling the tremendous positive potential of QoS impossible because it makes end-to-end QoS impossible. For example, if RichardBennett owned an internet-based videoconferencing service, which of course, is a real-time application, it would need a QoS guarantee. If you paid Comcast for appropriate QoS, what would Verizon and other telcos do? The best-case scenario would be that Verizon would consider traffic from your service as best-effort traffic. The most likely scenario would be that Verizon would consider traffic from your service as lower-priority-than-best-effort traffic to retaliate against Comcast and/or force you to pay Verizon for QoS. In the either scenario, the necessary QoS guarantee could not produce the necessary effect needed for the service to operate. The potential of QoS fulfilling the promise of making the Internet suitable for real-time applications and providing reliability, predictability, and “guaranteeability” for traffic that needs it could not be realized in either scenario. In order for the potential of QoS to become reality for your service, QoS would have to be deployed end-to-end. Clearly, this example shows how end-to-end QoS is needed for the potential of QoS to be fulfilled and how this cannot happen under a pay-for QoS scheme.
July 20th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Look, ChadB, you repeatedly made the false claim that some crazy document from Free Press proved I was lying about cable modem access, and now you’re forced to admit you were wrong.
Just leave it at that. Your analysis of for-fee QoS makes no more sense than your reading of the Free Press document. If an ISP can charge for QoS, they can share the fees they collect with the other NSPs and ISPs that are involved in building the route, and they’re likely to do that because there’s money in it for them. If there’s no money, there’s no incentive to work out a billing arrangement.
How do you think long-distance calls get paid for? One thing that network carriers know how to do is collect money and spread it around.
Now consider this, now that you know cable Internet has never been subject to common carrier regulations: we have a (historically) heavily regulated service, DSL, competing with an unregulated service, Cable modem. The unregulated service is faster and cheaper.
And you want to subject cable modem to the same regulations as (historical) DSL. Why, are you a glutton for punishment?
July 20th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Richard, I assume you meant to direct that last comment to rossmpersonal or someone else. I have never accused you of lying–about the classification of cable modem access or anyting else.
For the record, the FCC did not decide how to classify cable modem access from the mid-to-late 90s when it made cable modem service appeared until the FCC’s decision in 2002, which was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then reinstated by the Supreme Court in 2005.
As for end-to-end QoS, I suspect that you are right, Richard. If an ISP is going to guarantee enhanced QoS end-to-end, the ISP will have to work out an arrangement with backbone providers, who will have to work out arrangements with other backbone providers, who will have to work out arrangements with other ISPs. As you hinted, it might be handled akin to the way traffic is handled now, through peering arrangements and for-fee arrangements depending on the size of the players. Of course, if an ISP or backbone provider decides not to offer QoS, you have some problems guaranteeing end-to-end QoS.
Whether the ISPs have an incentive to offer enhanced QoS without being able to charge for it is a factual question. On the one hand, as you point out, if an ISP is able to charge for providing enhanced QoS, the ISP will likely be able to get a return on investing in QoS. On the other hand, if the ability to charge for QoS is prohibited (as some NN legislation would have it), the ISP might still be able to get a reasonable return in providing QoS because (1) QoS increases the value of Internet access (so ISPs can charge more) by supporting more time-sensitive services more reliably, and (2) more people will subscribe to the ISP’s own time-sensitive applications. The problem, of course, is that over time more competitors in these time-sensitive applications will compete with the ISP, driving down the ISP’s incentive to provide QoS, and the QoS queues will eventually become full, thereby making the QoS feature less effective and less valuable to consumers. This possibility might prevent the ISP from offering QoS in the first place. (I think we agree on this, too, Richard.)
The issue is how much time will lapse before the value of QoS falls. If it takes a while, the ISP might have incentive to offer QoS, especially if the “no QoS fees” regulation sunsets. Further, if BPL or wireless providers have entered the market by then, the NN regulations could be abandoned and we could avoid the problem. After all, NN proponents are (or perhaps should be) looking only for a patch until other platforms and competitors enter the market. But maybe those platforms won’t be available fast enough for “no QoS fees” to be a good solution.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
You’re right, I was thinking of rossmpersonal and not you. ChadB. You’re cool.
Charging for QoS means that there’s an incentive to keep the facilities that provide it up-to-snuff. So if there comes a time when so many people are using QoS that their performance starts to suffer, the Telco can take the QoS fees they’ve collected and invest them in an equipment upgrade.
Problem solved.
If there’s no QoS fee, when we reach that point it’s just tough bananas, right?
July 20th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
I am sorry that I said cable modem service has always have been subject to common carrier rules. I was wrong but I admitted it.
Please prove that cable modem service is always cheaper and faster than DSL service. Also if you can prove that, please prove that a difference in the amount of regulation is responsible for that.
Also, you talked about telcos allowing inter-carrier calls and paying each other for that. What is responsible for that? The Telecommunications Act of 1934. If it were not for that act, clearly, the telcos would not have interconnected in order to use differences in caller accessibility between services as a competitive advantage. The same is true with QoS. Net neutrality rules are necessary for inter-telco QoS. Example: Comcast guarantees QoS on its network only for its VoIP service but not its competitors.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:17 am
Richard Bennet… could you be any more arrogant?
“It takes people with technical knowledge of the Internet’s peering arrangments and SLAs to draft the regulations.”
“Frankly, Tim, this a technical issue, and the Grass Roots have no particular expertise and no particular credibility, no matter how organic they are or how numerous.”
I know the big telco’s were cringing when Ted Stevens decided to become
their spokesperson but they should really be cringing now to have you as
their tech pundit (do they actually pay you to do this?). You’ve broken
the golden rule among the elites… never talk down to and piss off those
who have the real power like the millions of concerned citizens (like myself) or the Congressional leaders representing us (or were you including our representatives in your technologically savvy club?).
The issue before us does not require a sophisticated understanding of QoS, peering arrangments or SLAs.
The issue before us is real simple: Do we want to allow the big telco companies to take enormous advantage of their duopoly (for many citizens its a monopoly) by allowing them to shape packet handling based on who is sending/receiving data rather then just on the type of data?
My unsophisticated and technologically stupid self says HELL NO! to the above question.
If the big telco’s need to charge extra money to the end user for some upgraded broadband connection then so be it. There are plenty of end users out there that would be willing to pay extra money for a spruced up QoS that allows improved delivery of some new innovative content/service that EVERY individual or company has the ability to take full advantage of without paying some toll fee that individuals or small companies can ill afford to pay to the big telcos.
It has been and should always be the end user who decides which of these new startup innovations is a success. Putting this power in the hands of the big telco’s will stifle innovation and competition.
July 21st, 2006 at 6:32 pm
You agree with me, Raz:
You see, the Snowe-Dorgan and Markey Amendments prohibit end users from paying extra for spruced-up QoS. So you and I agree that Save the Internet’s ideal legislation is bad.
July 21st, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Actually Snowe-Dorgan does NOT prohibit any such thing:
(5) only prioritize content, applications, or services accessed by a user that is made available via the Internet within the network of such broadband service provider based on the type of content, applications, or services and the level of service purchased by the user, without charge for such prioritization.
Perhaps your not as technical as I thought if you believe the above statement from the Snowe-Dorgan amendment prohibits a broadband provider from offering an upgraded “pipe” (hehe god bless Ted Stevens) to its end users. As long as the “level of service purchased by the user” (i.e. the upgraded broadband with improved QoS) applies its QoS rules in a non-discrminatory manner (i.e. looks only at the type of data rather then on who is sending/recieving) then broadband providers can offer these upgraded internet connections until there greedy little fingers bleed.
What Snowe-Dorgan says Broadband providers can NOT do is apply QoS rules based on who is sending the data (which would be discriminatory).
Clearly the “spruced up” QoS that you have in mind would be changing its rules within the same level of service based on who is sending/recieving the data. Thats a toll booth we the citzens don’t need and don’t want.
So no, you and I do not agree. Perhaps we can agree to disagree?
July 21st, 2006 at 9:44 pm
RichardBennett,
You did not respond to my comment.
Raz, I think you are bit confused. I think you mean:
There are plenty of end users out there that would be willing to pay extra money for a spruced up BANDWIDTH that allows improved delivery of some new innovative content/service that EVERY individual or company has the ability to take full advantage of without paying some toll fee that individuals or small companies can ill afford to pay to the big telcos.
Keep in mind BANDWIDTH refers to the capacity of a connection. QoS refers to how traffic is prioritized over a connection that does not have enough bandwidth to carry all the traffic which needs to be transmitted over it. Since prioritization implies that in order to raise something up, you have to push something else down, I don’t see how your statement:
There are plenty of end users out there that would be willing to pay extra money for a spruced up QoS that allows improved delivery of some new innovative content/service that EVERY individual or company has the ability to take full advantage of without paying some toll fee that individuals or small companies can ill afford to pay to the big telcos.
cannot be contradictory.
July 21st, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Hmm… perhaps I do mean “spruced up” bandwidth. However, are you saying that QoS rules are only applied when there is not enough bandwidth to handle the traffic? From my understanding there is a wide range of QoS rules made use of at all times and not simply when there is not enough bandwidth. Even if I’m wrong about that (and I’m not sure that I am) my statement above is only contradictory if the bandwidth offered on different services is shared between all the different service levels.
If the users are sold a new level of service which has different QoS rules they would need their bandwidth segregated from any plan which does not share the same QoS rules otherwise the QoS rules would be applied (out of necessity) based on WHO is sending/receiving in order to achieve the different service levels which is discriminatory and would not be permitted by Snowe-Dorgan.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:47 pm
rossmpersonal, I’m not going to answer your questions. Feel free to do your own research.
Raz, the key phrase is: “without charge for such prioritization.” That kills the whole deal, because it says that people who don’t need QoS have to provide it to the people who do. That’s not the American way; “you get the service you pay for” is.
July 22nd, 2006 at 3:55 am
Richard, if by the whole deal you mean allowing broadband providers to impliment QoS in a discriminatory way then yes it does kill the whole deal but thats a good thing. And bringing out the patriotic card is just lame lol.
Whats good for the big telco’s is simply not good for the rest of us whether its a home user or a large content provider or a start up innovator struggling to make it big.
And the pricing model that broadband providers use is based on the knowledge that some users use more bandwidth then others (telco’s are very good at figuring out how much bandwidth will be needed to meet overall demand) and some users require more QoS then others (once again, they are quite good at figuring out how much bandwidth is needed to meet demand). There is nothing wrong with this pricing model and I have yet to hear any end users complain about having to foot the bill for the heavier users.
Also, QoS is a tool which allows internet providers to make much more effecient use of their network. You talk about QoS as if it costs providers more money when in fact without QoS providers would need a whole lot more bandwidth to provide the same level of service. So ultimately QoS is a very cheap means by which providers increase their effective bandwidth.
What I don’t want to see happen is for QoS to be turned into a tool that the big telco’s can abuse by blackmailing content providers (not that anyone is concerned for the giants like google, ebay, msn, amazon) and stifling the small startup innovators. The telco duopoly has too much power already. Their current efforts to grab even more power is simply obscene.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Raz, clearly you disagree with RichardBennett and as a result should support the Snowe-Dorgan and Markey Amendments. Let me know if you need any clarification.
RichardBennett,
It is okay if you did not respond to the paragraph requesting you prove your statements. However, please respond to the paragraphs after that which I am quoting here:
Also, you talked about telcos allowing inter-carrier calls and paying each other for that. What is responsible for that? The Telecommunications Act of 1934. If it were not for that act, clearly, the telcos would not have interconnected in order to use differences in caller accessibility between services as a competitive advantage. The same is true with QoS. Net neutrality rules are necessary for inter-telco QoS. Example: Comcast guarantees QoS on its network only for its VoIP service but not its competitors.
July 23rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Their current efforts to grab even more power is simply obscene.
Actually, they’re simply imaginary. The argument for Net Neutrality is based on the idea that the telcos want to commit commerical suicide, and only strong government regulations can keep the profitable.
I’ll believe it when I see it happen in real life, and I don’t care what Ed Whitacre says when he’s drunk.
Show me a *real* problem, and I’ll tell you how to fix it.
July 23rd, 2006 at 11:06 pm
I doubt you will find many people on this site who believe that incredibly powerful corporations will act for the greater good. Richard, do you look anything like Michael Douglas? The Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” speech came to mind after reading what you wrote above.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Google is a big corporation too, Raz. Do you buy their argument that they want these regulations in order to help their competitors get off the ground?
ISPs don’t make their money by denying access to web sites.
July 24th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hell no I don’t believe much of anything google has to say lol. If the cope act in some way favored google then you can bet your last dollar they
would be singing another tune. I’m just thankful to have some big corporations fighting in my corner for a change.
You speak as if ISP’s operate within a competitive environment and would actually have to worry about losing business if they did block content or services. The main thing ISP’s would worry about in blocking a site or service would be a strong public outcry that resulted in NN laws being passed. Its not as if there is no precedent for ISP’s blocking content however I don’t think ISP’s would block very much content but I really don’t want them to have the legal right to do so.
ISP’s don’t have to deny access to a service or web site, all they have to
do is stick it in the slow lane so that their own product or those that can afford to pay the fast lane toll have a huge advantage. Google and the other internet giants will not be overly hurt by the cope act cause they can afford to pay for the fast lane. Innovative startup companies can ill afford to pay a fast lane toll.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
You’re simply parroting Google’s arguments.
The COPE Act makes it a crime to block access to any legal web site, and so does the Stevens bill.
July 25th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
I’m parroting? Richard, your like the telco posterboy for anti NN.
Like I said, the telco’s would most likely not block much access to content/services regardless of any law making it illegal since doing so to any great extent would cause a huge public backlash. However lets compare the wording of the cope act vs. snowe-dorgan to determine which one offers better protection for the consumer:
Snowe-Dorgan: “`(1) not block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use a broadband service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service made available via the Internet;”
COPE act: “To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of
their choice.”
Hmmm… I wonder which one I would want if I was a consumer that had just had a site blocked by my ISP?
Blocking sites is an afterthought. The telco’s are focused on having a legal right to use a discriminatory QoS so they can blackmail large content/service providers, play favorites with competing services (esp. if they own the competing service lol) and decide the fate of startup innovators. All good for the ISP’s (and perhaps for companies developing discriminatory QoS architecture) but all bad for the rest of us.
July 26th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
I’m not sure that “discriminatory QoS” is a bad thing. Web-based services can use services such as Akamai today that give them faster load times than conventional hosting, so the only thing we’re really arguing about is whether the carriers should be allowed to compete with Akamai.
I don’t see that as the end of the Internet as we know it, frankly.
July 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Does anyone know whether Akamai enters into exclusive deals with Internet content providers or plays favorites in some other way (by, for example, serving Google but not Yahoo)?
Also, how competitive is the “on-ramp” market? Does Akamai have competition (so that Yahoo would have an alternative provider if Akamai turned them down)? Can Internet content providers create their own on-ramps (like I think Google has)?
And do these on-ramps effectively solve the jitter and latency problems with time-sensitive content, even as the Internet becomes more congested?
July 26th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
This is my understanding of what Akamai does:
- They have placed a bunch of servers (20,000) all over the internet (71 countries) for the purpose of distrubuted processing and optimised routing of data for their customers (Yahoo! presumably is their bread and butter).
- They do not have any special priortization tag provided to them by ISP’s to speed up content delivery over the “last mile” to end users.
- They have to go over shared internet traffic like everybody else (when not using one of their many smaller private networks) with the only advantage being improved routing not better prioritization.
From what I can see, without Snowe-Dorgan Akamai will be charged a toll fee along with all the other large content/service providers who can afford to pay and I promise you Akamai would pay (they would go out of business if they didn’t). The big telco’s should not be given carte blanche discriminatory QoS no matter how many “neat” things they can do with it. Its too much power.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:25 am
Here are some of Akamai’s competitors:
http://www.pantherexpress.net/
http://www.savvis.net/corp/Products+Services/Digital+Content+Services/
http://www.vitalstream.com/content/index.html
July 27th, 2006 at 6:16 am
The point is that with these services like Akamai in the mix, the Internet is not a level playing field where all you need is a server in a garage to compete. Akamai provides high-performance web site access by eliminating the middle man. What the telcos are suggesting they’d like to do is provide an alternative to Akamai. I don’t see that as presaging the end of the Internet, but I look at the results of these things, not their aesthetics.
July 27th, 2006 at 9:15 am
The “world”, not just the internet, is not a level playing field for the little guy as long as large companies exist however all kinds of laws, rules and regulations are in place to protect the little guy and to try and make the playing field more level. Thats what Snowe-Dorgan is all about. Why would the little guy want to tip the scale so massively in favor of a duopoly?
From my view if I was the CEO of AT&T I would be doing exactly what he is dong now. But I’m the little guy and so I am fighting for laws that will keep the playing field more level. But yeah the big companies will always have an advantage.
Btw, I don’t think there is anything in Snowe-Dorgan that would prevent the telco’s from putting 20,000 servers all over globe and competing with Akamai in a fair manner.