NYT: Congress Should Pass Net Neutrality Laws Now
May 19th, 2008 by megantadyToday, the New York Times weighs in again on the Net Neutrality debate, calling on Congress to pass legislation that would prohibit content discrimination. Currently, three Net Neutrality bills are snaking their way through Congress.
The Times’ editorial remarks on why an unfettered Internet is vital: “If you type in the domain name of a large corporation or a small blog, a government Web site or a radical political party, the pages are sent to your computer with equal speed. Like a telephone line, an Internet connection does not play favorites — it simply transmits the words and images.”
But the big cable and telephone companies have a vested interest in changing the rules. “They have realized that they could make a lot of money by charging some Web sites a premium to have their content delivered faster than that of other sites,” the Times writes.
The editors, who have chimed in for Net Neutrality in the past, agree that the time to safeguard it is now.
“Cable and telecommunications companies are fighting net neutrality with lobbyists and campaign contributions, but these special interests should not be allowed to set Internet policy,” says the Times. “It is the job of Congress to protect the Internet’s democratic form.”
May 21st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
The writer of this Times editorial is showing his or her ignorance of how the Internet works. The editorial says,
“If you type in the domain name of a large corporation or a small blog, a government Web site or a radical political party, the pages are sent to your computer with equal speed.”
This is simply untrue. Google, for example, is likely to pop up much faster than that “small blog.” Why? Because it’s buying more backbone capacity. To deny someone the right to buy faster service would be akin to making Federal Express overnight delivery illegal, claiming that it was “unfair” to let someone pay more to get a package delivered more quickly. And would be just as nonsensical.
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:13 am
Another red herring.
The critical point is that content should be delivered without discrimination from a middle entity, based on the decisions we make at the edges of the network.
I can choose to buy a faster connection to the Internet. (I did when I pitched my DSL line for the premium cable connection I have now). Now, the content I choose to upload or download does so more quickly.
Also, I can choose to pay more for a robust server to deliver my online photographs, blog, videos or other content to people who request them. If I don’t want to pay I can use free online hosts like Flickr, Blogger or YouTube.
I make a similar choice when I decide to have a letter delivered by Fed-Ex as opposed to USPS. These services will deliver them based upon a choice I made. Moreover, Fed-Ex won’t open my packets and decide: “Tim is sending a book we don’t like, were going to put this one in the dead letter bin.”
Again, It’s important to respect decisions made at the edges of the network. Net Neutrality legislation does not prevent that sort of end-user choice.
What it does prevent is the sort of unreasonable and discriminatory throttling or blocking of content in the middle — when, for example, Comcast secretly prevents a customer from connecting to another to share files because it doesn’t like the application being used.
The New York Times correctly states that this sort of discrimination allows ISPs to interfere with innovation and censor speech. That’s a real problem.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 am
You’re contradicting yourself, Tim. First, you say:
“The critical point is that content should be delivered without discrimination from a middle entity, based on the decisions we make at the edges of the network.”
And then you say:
“I make a similar choice when I decide to have a letter delivered by Fed-Ex as opposed to USPS. These services will deliver them based upon a choice I made.”
But how, exactly, can you choose to have your content delivered faster if you do not pay for that special service, and unless all of the “middle entities” understand that you’ve paid for faster delivery, and get compensated for doing that? The answer: you can’t.
You must do more than “make decisions” by fiat at the edge of the network. You must make arrangements with the owners of the various parts of the network (and it isn’t just one network, like the postal service) so that they are properly compensated for giving you special service. That’s simply fair. If you try to use BitTorrent to “hack” the network into giving you faster delivery for free, the network providers are quite justified in stopping this practice.
You also write:
Fed-Ex won’t open my packets and decide: “Tim is sending a book we don’t like, were going to put this one in the dead letter bin.”
Actually, if you have ever shipped something via UPS, you should know that you are asked for a description of the content. And if it’s dangerous — or something that is otherwise impermissible to ship — they will turn it down. They will also refuse to ship items unless they are properly packaged. And suspicious packages ARE inspected in transit by all carriers, including the postal service. This is to protect the network (which in this case consists of people handling the packages), as well as the recipient, from abusive behavior.
Now, obviously, these carriers do not open every package. But if a package is suspicious, they do engage in “deep package inspection” — that is, they open the box. This is reasonable. It’s important to identify bombs or other malicious packages before they do harm. Mail sent to the Federal government is even irradiated before delivery to prevent biological attacks.
So, your analogy is apt, even though what you are saying above is not correct.
As for blocking of content that someone “doesn’t like:” this is not happening. Comcast is not blocking access to this Web site, for example, even though it is slandering them.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
Hey,
I think we should all fight for net neutrality, since it is not fair for big companies to exploit internet users! In this world where democracy is very important an infringement on internet freedom cannot be accepted. I think it is a great initiative to fight against the infringement of net neutrality.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
BitTorrent, which is a corporation funded by rich venture capitalists, is exploiting Internet users by hogging bandwidth and slowing down their connections. This is indeed an infringement of Internet freedom. We should fight it and allow ISPs to help us fight it.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I noticed most of the imagery on this site shows grassroots individuals looking more on the liberal side, when in fact there are many true conservatives, like me, who vehemently oppose any degradation of service or boardroom agreements that would make the internet a confusing and expensive al carte process.
Average citizens could only afford bread and water from the menu of services they would offer.
If TDR were alive today, he would break these assholes up like he did the JP Morgans of his time.
My point is that the images of people spotlighted on this site should depict the diverse spectrum, political, social, and religious who oppose these media giants… who are trying to create a second cable system and further dumb down civic discourse in this STUPID land of ours.
Wee are the guys in Brooks Brothers suits who strongly opposed the COPE ACT.
Grass roots doesn’t mean long hair and jeans
May 27th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
The internet was created to be able to give every person freedom to interact with others all across the globe. The longer we let people take away the things that we have some freedom the sooner it will become that every aspect of our lives will be monitored and we will need permission to do everyday things. The internet is the symbol of what democracy stands for.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
This is and always has been an issue of discrimination. The internet should be free without restriction of personal use, no matter what that individuals choice of destination may be.
To use an analogy that came to my mind recently:
Packet Inspection is to Racial Profiling
as
Deep Packet Inspection is to Genetic Profiling
May 27th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Actually, packet inspection is analogous to inspection of suspicious packages by the postal service. Without it, biological weapons and bombs would get through.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Brett, alalyzing a packet to ensure it contains malware, is OK. However, analyzing packets to see where they are coming from and where they’re going to and decide to give them priority is not OK. BitTorrent may be funded by VCs, but fact is they are bringing to us the content we want. Hogging bandwidth happens not only when a BitTorrent gets us the content we need, also when we watch a video off you tube, send emails and use our IM. Fact is, we love to eat up free content. So there will be services that will continue based on the concepts of “Freeconomics” to offer us these free services. And if bandwidth is so rare, why not upgrade the infrastructure? The telecom companies were offered huge subsidies to build their wires, money paid by the taxpayer. So in a way, these services are not really free for us.
Liberty920, noone is saying your service will be degraded, just that you’ll have to pay more to get the QoS you desire.
My name is not relevant and I am the Angry Indian
http://www.AngryIndian.com
May 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Brett, I know you care deeply about your business and the service you provide. However, I also think that battling bitttorrent is a bit like trying to put the genie back in the bottle, especially since there are many legitimate uses of it, whether you want to admit it or not.
If Local Loop Unbundling was reinstituted the way it was originally envisioned, and implemented so that the Verizons and AT&Ts and other large networks couldn’t raise the wholesale prices higher than retail, would that be better? Personally I think it would.
France and other countries who took this idea from the US (ironic, huh?) and made it work, now beat our butts on speed, fiber buildout, pricing both wholesale and retail, competition, etc etc etc.
I’d be curious, Brett, if you feel that would be the better direction for Save the Internet to take, since true competition in this space would preclude the need for Net Neut legislation, since we’d all then have a choice if there was an ISP not giving us what we needed. I’ll also point out that Senator Kerry, in one of his blogposts, did comment in the comment/discussion about LLU that it would be tough to go back to, though it’s hard to understand why, if the law is changed and made more bulletproof against court challenges (the bane of the first version in 1996), this couldn’t work.
June 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I happen to be a proponent of local loop unbundling, and I think it’s a fine idea for Free Press and “Save the Internet” to pursue it. The legislation which these groups (actually, they’re really the same group under different names) are now pursuing will actually hurt competition and consumers. Structural separation and unbundling would help them. So would making the backbone providers common carriers, since without reasonably priced wholesale access there could be no competition at the retail level.