Good day for Net Neutrality

[Galileo Galilei]

Good day for Net Neutrality

The FCC today began making rules aimed at limiting the ability of telecommunications companies to offer special services or cut access to elements of the Internet, a key goal of Google and online libertarians, intensely opposed by big telecom companies.

Chairman Julius Genachowski said the rules will be aimed at promoting a "free and open Internet," and pushed back specifically on the telecoms central argument: That new rules could cut investment in broadban technology:

I reject the notion that we must choose between open Internet rules and investment by service providers in their networks. This argument is somewhat routinely made when the FCC considers rules on any variety of topics. History tells us that this, too, is a false choice. FCC rules over the years have been a powerful spur to investment and innovation—especially when the agency focuses on promoting competition and choice. And in the context of net neutrality, notwithstanding the issuance in 2005 and enforcement in 2008 of the Commission’s openness principles, as well as the adoption of openness conditions in important mergers during that period, Internet service providers have continued to invest heavily in their networks. As an increasing numbers of stakeholders agree, investment in advanced and open networks is essential to our broadband future.

Posted by Ben Smith 02:34 PM

comments (4)

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1009/Good_day_for_Net_Neutrality.html?showall

[Epic]

terrible.

government making move to interfere more with the internet.

http://mises.org/story/2139

[Galileo Galilei]

terrible.

government making move to interfere more with the internet.

http://mises.org/story/2139

The Internet is a fascist creation. You can't separate it from the government.

For one thing, it uses public assets. Unless the Internet ceases and desists from using public assets for its operation, then the public has free use of the Internet.

Are you adviocating the Internet desist from using public assets for its operation?

Doesn't look like it, as you hypocriticaly use the Internet.

[Galileo Galilei]

terrible.

government making move to interfere more with the internet.

http://mises.org/story/2139

The article you linked to is really bad.

Take this paragrapgh:

"The only reason AT&T (formerly SBC), BellSouth, Cox Communications, and other incumbents have the large user bases they currently do is because they were granted geographic monopolies for communications.[5] [6] They were legally insulated from outside competition for much of the past century. And, by and large, this protected status still continues unabated, shielded by the current FCC regulatory regime.[7]"

To implemet a freemarket Internet, these corporations would have to refund the fair market value of these monopolies, with interest, back to the government. Then the government would have to refund this money back to the taxpayers.

Basically, what you and the author of the article are advocating is a situation like this:

Corporation X bribes the govenment and steals money from you, to build something. At the time they are stealing, they claim that you, the person being stolen from, will get free use of whatever they are building. Then Corporation X waits a few dozen years, and then claims what they built with YOUR money belongs to them, not you or the govenment, and that they support the "free market" and that you can't use it anymore.

Go take a look. When the Internet was built, the government subsidies were all granted under the guise that the Internet would be free.

Again, if private corporations or Mises.org wants to get rid of Net Neutrality, then they need to get all the telephone poles off public land for starters. They also need to get telephone poles off private land as well, unless they are paying for it.

The article you posted is basically just a bunch of ill-thought out idealististic b*llsh**, that is completely divorced from reality.

[Dionysus]

The article you linked to is really bad.

Take this paragrapgh:

"The only reason AT&T (formerly SBC), BellSouth, Cox Communications, and other incumbents have the large user bases they currently do is because they were granted geographic monopolies for communications.[5] [6] They were legally insulated from outside competition for much of the past century. And, by and large, this protected status still continues unabated, shielded by the current FCC regulatory regime.[7]"

To implemet a freemarket Internet, these corporations would have to refund the fair market value of these monopolies, with interest, back to the government. Then the government would have to refund this money back to the taxpayers.

Basically, what you and the author of the article are advocating is a situation like this:

Corporation X bribes the govenment and steals money from you, to build something. At the time they are stealing, they claim that you, the person being stolen from, will get free use of whatever they are building. Then Corporation X waits a few dozen years, and then claims what they built with YOUR money belongs to them, not you or the govenment, and that they support the "free market" and that you can't use it anymore.

Go take a look. When the Internet was built, the government subsidies were all granted under the guise that the Internet would be free.

Again, if private corporations or Mises.org wants to get rid of Net Neutrality, then they need to get all the telephone poles off public land for starters. They also need to get telephone poles off private land as well, unless they are paying for it.

The article you posted is basically just a bunch of ill-thought out idealististic b*llsh**, that is completely divorced from reality.

I'm with you on net neutrality, but it's controversial around here cause people fear it's just an excuse to add other government regs later on and they're highly idealistic. What are you gonna do? We all want the internet to remain as free as possible.

[heavenlyboy34]

The Internet is a fascist creation. You can't separate it from the government.

For one thing, it uses public assets. Unless the Internet ceases and desists from using public assets for its operation, then the public has free use of the Internet.

Are you adviocating the Internet desist from using public assets for its operation?

Doesn't look like it, as you hypocriticaly use the Internet.


Is this a joke? :confused:

[familydog]

The approval of net neutrality or the defeat of such actions....

Either way liberty loses.

[Galileo Galilei]

Is this a joke? :confused:

Fascism is a partnership between big government and big business.

That is exactly how the Internet was created.

Go ahead and try to seperate them out.

[teacherone]

Fascism is a partnership between big government and big business.

That is exactly how the Internet was created.

Go ahead and try to seperate them out.

so you want to give more power over the internet to a fascist government?:confused:

[Deborah K]

Ron Paul on net neutrality: http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-11/ron-paul-and-reddit-com/

[heavenlyboy34]

Fascism is a partnership between big government and big business.

That is exactly how the Internet was created.

Go ahead and try to seperate them out.

There is some truth to your story, but you're thinking of ARPAnet. The internet as we know it was privately invented. You have to try REALLY hard to consider the internet "fascist", IMO.

[heavenlyboy34]

Ron Paul on net neutrality: http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-11/ron-paul-and-reddit-com/ (http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-11/ron-paul-and-reddit-com/)

w00t! :cool:

[mczerone]

Again, if private corporations or Mises.org wants to get rid of Net Neutrality, then they need to get all the telephone poles off public land for starters.

I don't see any link between the paragraph you quoted and public funds, and if you want to be technical about "public resource investment", then the govt should be able to (1) issue shares of ownership to all those investments, (2) allow private enterprise to purchase shares/ownership of those resources from the citizen shareholders, and (3) allow private enterprise to benefit from existing utility easements that are restricted to the monopoly holders.

The acquisition, formation, and continued possession of these resources by govt, and govt favored entities are aggressions against us all.

Net Neutrality is treating a symptom, inadequately and contradictorily - and to oppose new regulation in a currently well-ordered industry does not equate to wanting to destroy the entire system as it has developed to this point.

What do you suggest one use in making policy decisions, but idealism? Comparing goals to the current situation is how progress is made.

NN is the equivalent of not allowing the Pennsylvania turnpike to ban pedestrians from the fast lane. You don't need to idealistically agree with the idea of having state privilege determine who runs the road, but you must allow each road manager to set some use limits (and in the govt system these limits are (ideally) prescribed by the Constitution's grants of power and restriction on abridging rights).

[angelatc]

There is absolutely no good reason to have the government dictating what internet companies can and can't do. This absolutely kills innovation as well as competition.

If you want your internet to be faster, switch providers. If you want it to be cheaper, switch providers. If you don't like the color of their logo, switch providers. If you're rural, too bad. That's why they call it rural.

[mczerone]

There is some truth to your story, but you're thinking of ARPAnet. The internet as we know it was privately invented. You have to try REALLY hard to consider the internet "fascist", IMO.

That was going to be my reply to him, but in a later post he mentioned telephone polls: He isn't talking about the private development of servers and software, but merely the telephony required and how that has always been run either by a state-granted monopoly or the state itself.

It makes his a harder point to refute - but not impossible.

[Galileo Galilei]

There is absolutely no good reason to have the government dictating what internet companies can and can't do. This absolutely kills innovation as well as competition.



That would be true if the Internet did not use public assets for its operation.

It would also be true, if the private corporations that built the Internet did not get government subsidies to build it.

As I said before, the private companies would have to give back the fair market value of all governments grants they have received over the past 100 years, plus interest, and then the govenrment would have to refund this money back to the taxpayers.

[Galileo Galilei]

I don't see any link between the paragraph you quoted and public funds, and if you want to be technical about "public resource investment", then the govt should be able to (1) issue shares of ownership to all those investments, (2) allow private enterprise to purchase shares/ownership of those resources from the citizen shareholders, and (3) allow private enterprise to benefit from existing utility easements that are restricted to the monopoly holders.

The acquisition, formation, and continued possession of these resources by govt, and govt favored entities are aggressions against us all.

Net Neutrality is treating a symptom, inadequately and contradictorily - and to oppose new regulation in a currently well-ordered industry does not equate to wanting to destroy the entire system as it has developed to this point.

What do you suggest one use in making policy decisions, but idealism? Comparing goals to the current situation is how progress is made.

NN is the equivalent of not allowing the Pennsylvania turnpike to ban pedestrians from the fast lane. You don't need to idealistically agree with the idea of having state privilege determine who runs the road, but you must allow each road manager to set some use limits (and in the govt system these limits are (ideally) prescribed by the Constitution's grants of power and restriction on abridging rights).

When the government offered subsidies to private corporations to build the Internet, part of the deal was Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality already exists.

If you are going to change the deal in midstream, you need to compensate all the taxpayers who paid for the Internet under a false pretense.

If you can come up with a plan to make the Internet a free market enterprise, then have at it.

But in a free market, the Internet cannot use any public assets, like telephone poles on public land or airspace above private homes.

[Galileo Galilei]

so you want to give more power over the internet to a fascist government?:confused:

The fascist government already has total control over the Internet. The FCC tinkering with Net Neutrality rules does change how much "power" they have. The FCC already has all the power.

[Galileo Galilei]

Ron Paul on net neutrality: http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-11/ron-paul-and-reddit-com/

I've heard Ron Paul say more on the subject than this. I have heard him speak about all the monopolies granted to the telecommunicatiosn giants.

[dannno]

If you're rural, too bad. That's why they call it rural.

Could always go with satellite internet as well.

If there are no good satellite options, you could always launch your own satellite and try to get others to subscribe to your service.

Probably tough to get a satellite launched with all the govt. regulations, tho..

[dannno]

As I said before, the private companies would have to give back the fair market value of all governments grants they have received over the past 100 years, plus interest, and then the govenrment would have to refund this money back to the taxpayers.

The past is the past. I'd be happy if they just stopped all the madness right now, stop propping up telecom companies and perpetuating monopolies. You'd be surprised at how well the free market can recover on its own. This is not "idealistic BS", this could be done tomorrow.

If the government still owns it, then sell it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder probably sucks right now, but there is DEMAND for an open and free internet, and somebody will provide that whether it is linked to the 'fascist' corporate internet or not. If the "free" internet is too slow and the "fascist" corporate internet runs faster, then maybe that is how it should be.. or maybe people who want the "free" internet need to consider paying more money for a faster service.

As soon as the govt. gets out of the way, it will happen. There is nothing that a single corporation or set of corporations can do to affect an internet in the free market because the market is much bigger than these companies.

[ClayTrainor]

Probably tough to get a satellite launched with all the govt. regulations, tho..

I remember hearing a couple years ago that some private company was working on a new form of satelite technology that is the size of a toaster and fairly cheap to produce. I also remember reading about a story of some students who managed to launch a digital camera to the edge of the atmosphere, and take a picture for about $100.

2+2=4.... There is an affordable free-market solution for sure, it really just depends on how much government tries to limit it.

[Galileo Galilei]

The past is the past. I'd be happy if they just stopped all the madness right now, stop propping up telecom companies and perpetuating monopolies. You'd be surprised at how well the free market can recover on its own. This is not "idealistic BS", this could be done tomorrow.

If the government still owns it, then sell it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder probably sucks right now, but there is DEMAND for an open and free internet, and somebody will provide that whether it is linked to the 'fascist' corporate internet or not. If the "free" internet is too slow and the "fascist" corporate internet runs faster, then maybe that is how it should be.. or maybe people who want the "free" internet need to consider paying more money for a faster service.

As soon as the govt. gets out of the way, it will happen. There is nothing that a single corporation or set of corporations can do to affect an internet in the free market because the market is much bigger than these companies.

You say the market is bigger than these companies. That is true, but in a fascist state, the companies work hand in hand with the government to subdue the people and the free market. The large corporatations use profits form special (non-free market) deals, and then funnel it back to political chiefs.

In our system under the Constitution, we, the people have a lot of say in the government and can oppose fascism to some extent.

But mass ignorance over the Constitution has prevailed, especially since the FCC was established in 1922. A free Internet is our one hope of helping the people to wake up.

[dannno]

You say the market is bigger than these companies. That is true, but in a fascist state, the companies work hand in hand with the government to subdue the people and the free market. The large corporatations use profits form special (non-free market) deals, and then funnel it back to political chiefs.

In our system under the Constitution, we, the people have a lot of say in the government and can oppose fascism to some extent.

But mass ignorance over the Constitution has prevailed, especially since the FCC was established in 1922. A free Internet is our one hope of helping the people to wake up.

Well your argument seems to be that if we can't have freedom from government then we may as well try to push "good" regulations through government for protection.

I would tend to agree with you, except that there is no way that good regulations can come through our current government run by lobbyists. They would never let a "good" net neutrality bill pass.. They are going to pass a bill that benefits them, in the end.

It seems futile, I know.. but the only way around this is to take away the incentive for lobbyists to buy off politicians in the first place. If politicians were actually held accountable to the Constitution, then the lobbyists would have no incentive to go to Washington. At that point the government MIGHT be able to pass a "good" net neutrality bill that benefits the people over corporations, but at that point we have freedom from government and freedom from overbearing corporations so there would be no need for it.

I know freedom sounds really idealistic and unachievable, but I have concluded that it is the only real solution to our problems. Everything else is going to be disguised as protection but will ultimately benefit those who we are fighting.

The problem with NN for libertarians is that it sounds like Communism for the internet.. it sounds like something that the government would take a very serious commitment to uphold, but their main goal would actually be to control the internet further.

[Naraku]

NN is the equivalent of not allowing the Pennsylvania turnpike to ban pedestrians from the fast lane.

Actually it's more like allowing them to ban certain communities from using the road or insuring that it is more difficult for them to do so unless they pay extra. People can say it opens the way for government regulation, but private institutions are far more easily swayed and have more legal cover than government in isolating and targeting certain sites.

If a bunch of customers complain about a site because it has objectionable political views a telecom company would be able to freely restrict or deny access to that site. If government did the same it would become a matter of constitutional rights.

I think the rights in the Constitution are protected from business, but it would be a much harder case to make than against the government.

Also this is a matter of anti-trust actions. The Internet is a series of servers connected together. Sites are hosted on servers and usually whoever runs the site pays the people who run the servers. So a telecom company denying or restricting access to a site is also making it more likely whoever runs the site will move to another server and take money away from the company hosting the site.

Consider also the importance of information. Surely there's a great deal of information accessed by users here which would not be as economical for a major telecom company as bubblegum pop garbage or pro-establishment content. Public libraries exists because most recognize that individuals not only have a right to information, but a need for it in order to have a functional democratic system.

Since all the big telecoms de facto endorse candidates who then take action beneficial for their business there is an incentive to restrict access to sites which may discredit those people in government who assist the corporations.

In comparison as long as your constitutional liberties remain net neutrality cannot result in the restriction of anti-government sentiment. However, an Internet free to be controlled by telecom corporations will insure monopolistic business practice and the restriction of anything which is seen as detrimental including content which may offend customers.

[LibertyMage]

I work for a MSO so I have a little bit of perspective to comment on this.

For those of you who don't see it coming, know that media delivery is about to become totally decentralized. A common term I hear used in the industry is "anywhere to anywhere". As people become disconnected from conventional media delivery (cable) the internet pipes will become more important (and more congested). This trend creates two arguments against "net neutrality".

Prioritization - People are against the idea of traffic prioritization, in general. However, any person who has works in diverse parts of IT knows not only that prioritization is important, but that it is and increasingly will be necessary.

There are - in reality - different levels of importance that traffic should be given. When you experience packet loss in a "live" service such as voice over IP, gaming, video streaming, audio streaming or conferencing, you experience a degraded level of service, and potentially a loss of service. This is a stark contrast against general communication like HTTP or FTP traffic where packet loss is compensated for by TCP/IP and is essentially transparent.

I haven't seen much use of this, beyond the few cases of the blocking of particular services, which were justifiably stopped when consumers flipped out. However, as life increasingly revolves around the internet, it may be justified to prioritize where necessary.

Bandwidth Throttling - Bandwidth throttling is necessary to keep costs down and let me show you why.

Important - this specific graph is not pertinent to what I am talking about. I have included it to give a general visible representation. I could not find a more accurate graph to link anywhere so I have used this.

http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/uploads/Image/ip_2008_03_15/ip_0308t_c_4.jpg

The above graph shows, generally, how internet traffic changes over a particular point in the internet at a given in a day. As far as internet traffic goes, it varies from this graph. General usage is higher across the day and has been since the invention of the bit torrent protocols. Also, the peak times happen from 5PM to 8PM as people get home from work/school and utilize the internet.

The point to focus on is the top most "peak". This peak is the highest level of utilization for a particular "link" on the internet. The points of usage under the peak are irrelevant; it is the peak which must be accounted for. Every link across the entire internet must be built to handle peak traffic at that particular point. This means that there must be a "capacity team" handling the monitoring and upgrading of every service, on every link across the entire internet. My company has a team for high speed data (consumer internet access), business data (business internet access), video on demand, phone and general network traffic.

Now, that top 15% only happens once a week but you still have to build your entire network to handle it. The top 25% of capacity work is what makes services expensive. If you can mitigate that top few percent you can slow consumer costs from increasing (you really can't stop it as additional subscribers and new bandwidth using services will continue to drive usage up).

Here is where traffic mitigation gets controversial. There are different ways to mitigate traffic and different companies have different strategies. My opinion is that you allow for dynamic bandwidth throttling on certain services when you reach that once or twice a week scenario. If implemented correctly, there would be a few percent degradation of speed for select high-bandwidth consumption/low priority services. Overall this would save quite a bit of money for the consumers.

You really wouldn't notice this change unless you were sitting and staring at a bandwidth meter. That is really what is driving this - special interests with a thirst for bandwidth. To their credit they have publicized a lot of skeptical business practices and stopped quite a few. However, when they compare us places like Japan, where bandwidth availability is ultra high, they show their true colors.

The utter majority of internet subscribers aren't bandwidth zealots. They probably use less bandwidth then you and I. Their interests don't pertain to downloading at 100megs/second. Their interests pertain to cost. These people constitute the utter majority of subscribers. Mitigation schemes can save the average person money.

The language that is constantly used in support of net neutrality is way misguided and ultimately vague, which should surprise nobody here. If the government gets involved you can expect the same unintended consequences they offer at every other point in the economy. Specifically, you can expect exploding prices for internet service.

[angelatc]

That would be true if the Internet did not use public assets for its operation.

It would also be true, if the private corporations that built the Internet did not get government subsidies to build it.

As I said before, the private companies would have to give back the fair market value of all governments grants they have received over the past 100 years, plus interest, and then the govenrment would have to refund this money back to the taxpayers.

Two wrongs don't make a right. I dare say nobody here thought that federal funding of the nation's communications infrastructure was a good idea.

This is exactly why. When you get in bed with government, you catch diseases. Unfortunately, we're the people that have to live with the consequences.

[LibertyMage]

In our system under the Constitution, we, the people have a lot of say in the government and can oppose fascism to some extent.

But mass ignorance over the Constitution has prevailed, especially since the FCC was established in 1922. A free Internet is our one hope of helping the people to wake up.

That is one of the most laughable quotes I have read on these forums in a long time. It should be obvious that the constitution means nothing. If it did, net neutrality wouldn't even be on the table. Things haven't worked out in the interests of the people for a long time. They have worked out for special interests and the last 12 months is a pretty good indicator of that.

The government ruins every system it touches. Now they are proposing a bill to allow the president to turn off the internet in a cyber security threat. I have been in IT for nine years. I have seen some pretty hairy situations but I have never experienced anything that would justifying turning off the internet.

The writing is on the wall. Open your eyes up and you will see it. net neutrality is another way of saying "the government is getting their foot in the door".

[Galileo Galilei]

That is one of the most laughable quotes I have read on these forums in a long time. It should be obvious that the constitution means nothing. If it did, net neutrality wouldn't even be on the table. Things haven't worked out in the interests of the people for a long time. They have worked out for special interests and the last 12 months is a pretty good indicator of that.

The government ruins every system it touches. Now they are proposing a bill to allow the president to turn off the internet in a cyber security threat. I have been in IT for nine years. I have seen some pretty hairy situations but I have never experienced anything that would justifying turning off the internet.

The writing is on the wall. Open your eyes up and you will see it. net neutrality is another way of saying "the government is getting their foot in the door".

Net Neutrality is nothing new, it has existed since the Internet started. The government had "their foot in the door" from day one.

What I am saying this that when the Internet was being created, private corporations got special monoplies and special rights to use public and private for this. This was sold to the public because paired with it was Net Neutrality.

You say things aren't working out, but I say the Internet is working out, so far.

Because of the Internet, Ron Paul became a star. Because of the Internet, the 9/11 Truth movement has gained traction. Because of the Internet, Obama's poll numbers are dropping.

The Internet and government are intertwined in a very very complex way.

Simple answers do not exist to gain a free market.

But I do know one thing; if Net Neutrality is suddenly pulled, it will be a disaster.

[tpreitzel]

Well, let the disaster begin. Let's drain the taxpayer-funded swamp! Sure, we may have to log off the internet and wait until better alternatives * arise.

* Note the plural form. Government doesn't like competition. ;)

[Naraku]

That is one of the most laughable quotes I have read on these forums in a long time. It should be obvious that the constitution means nothing. If it did, net neutrality wouldn't even be on the table. Things haven't worked out in the interests of the people for a long time. They have worked out for special interests and the last 12 months is a pretty good indicator of that.

The government ruins every system it touches. Now they are proposing a bill to allow the president to turn off the internet in a cyber security threat. I have been in IT for nine years. I have seen some pretty hairy situations but I have never experienced anything that would justifying turning off the internet.

The writing is on the wall. Open your eyes up and you will see it. net neutrality is another way of saying "the government is getting their foot in the door".

You should think about the consequences of this. Absolutely no net neutrality means the telecom companies can treat the Internet like they treat landline and cellular phones.

Meaning they could say only servers using their internet service can communicate with each other. They could also say that you have to pay more to access sites over seas. After all, it takes more money to be able to access a server in another country than one here in the U.S. They could also limit how much time you spend on the Internet for a certain price making you pay extra just to use the Internet more.

[demolama]

You should think about the consequences of this. Absolutely no net neutrality means the telecom companies can treat the Internet like they treat landline and cellular phones.

Meaning they could say only servers using their internet service can communicate with each other. They could also say that you have to pay more to access sites over seas. After all, it takes more money to be able to access a server in another country than one here in the U.S. They could also limit how much time you spend on the Internet for a certain price making you pay extra just to use the Internet more.

There is always netzero

[Expatriate]

I work for a MSO so I have a little bit of perspective to comment on this.

For those of you who don't see it coming, know that media delivery is about to become totally decentralized. A common term I hear used in the industry is "anywhere to anywhere". As people become disconnected from conventional media delivery (cable) the internet pipes will become more important (and more congested). This trend creates two arguments against "net neutrality".

Prioritization - People are against the idea of traffic prioritization, in general. However, any person who has works in diverse parts of IT knows not only that prioritization is important, but that it is and increasingly will be necessary.

There are - in reality - different levels of importance that traffic should be given. When you experience packet loss in a "live" service such as voice over IP, gaming, video streaming, audio streaming or conferencing, you experience a degraded level of service, and potentially a loss of service. This is a stark contrast against general communication like HTTP or FTP traffic where packet loss is compensated for by TCP/IP and is essentially transparent.

I haven't seen much use of this, beyond the few cases of the blocking of particular services, which were justifiably stopped when consumers flipped out. However, as life increasingly revolves around the internet, it may be justified to prioritize where necessary.

Bandwidth Throttling - Bandwidth throttling is necessary to keep costs down and let me show you why.

Important - this specific graph is not pertinent to what I am talking about. I have included it to give a general visible representation. I could not find a more accurate graph to link anywhere so I have used this.

http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/uploads/Image/ip_2008_03_15/ip_0308t_c_4.jpg

The above graph shows, generally, how internet traffic changes over a particular point in the internet at a given in a day. As far as internet traffic goes, it varies from this graph. General usage is higher across the day and has been since the invention of the bit torrent protocols. Also, the peak times happen from 5PM to 8PM as people get home from work/school and utilize the internet.

The point to focus on is the top most "peak". This peak is the highest level of utilization for a particular "link" on the internet. The points of usage under the peak are irrelevant; it is the peak which must be accounted for. Every link across the entire internet must be built to handle peak traffic at that particular point. This means that there must be a "capacity team" handling the monitoring and upgrading of every service, on every link across the entire internet. My company has a team for high speed data (consumer internet access), business data (business internet access), video on demand, phone and general network traffic.

Now, that top 15% only happens once a week but you still have to build your entire network to handle it. The top 25% of capacity work is what makes services expensive. If you can mitigate that top few percent you can slow consumer costs from increasing (you really can't stop it as additional subscribers and new bandwidth using services will continue to drive usage up).

Here is where traffic mitigation gets controversial. There are different ways to mitigate traffic and different companies have different strategies. My opinion is that you allow for dynamic bandwidth throttling on certain services when you reach that once or twice a week scenario. If implemented correctly, there would be a few percent degradation of speed for select high-bandwidth consumption/low priority services. Overall this would save quite a bit of money for the consumers.

You really wouldn't notice this change unless you were sitting and staring at a bandwidth meter. That is really what is driving this - special interests with a thirst for bandwidth. To their credit they have publicized a lot of skeptical business practices and stopped quite a few. However, when they compare us places like Japan, where bandwidth availability is ultra high, they show their true colors.

The utter majority of internet subscribers aren't bandwidth zealots. They probably use less bandwidth then you and I. Their interests don't pertain to downloading at 100megs/second. Their interests pertain to cost. These people constitute the utter majority of subscribers. Mitigation schemes can save the average person money.

The language that is constantly used in support of net neutrality is way misguided and ultimately vague, which should surprise nobody here. If the government gets involved you can expect the same unintended consequences they offer at every other point in the economy. Specifically, you can expect exploding prices for internet service.


Interesting post. Thanks for the info.

[heavenlyboy34]

You should think about the consequences of this. Absolutely no net neutrality means the telecom companies can treat the Internet like they treat landline and cellular phones.

Meaning they could say only servers using their internet service can communicate with each other. They could also say that you have to pay more to access sites over seas. After all, it takes more money to be able to access a server in another country than one here in the U.S. They could also limit how much time you spend on the Internet for a certain price making you pay extra just to use the Internet more.


For a short time, yes. Kind of like how the model T used to be available "in any color, as long as it's black" (as Ford said). Eventually, people would want something better, and entrepreneurs would prevail (maybe even black market at first). The important thing is keeping the market as free as possible to allow innovation.

Just my 2 cents. :cool:

[Galileo Galilei]

Well, let the disaster begin. Let's drain the taxpayer-funded swamp! Sure, we may have to log off the internet and wait until better alternatives * arise.

* Note the plural form. Government doesn't like competition. ;)

Good idea! Let's kill off the Ron Paul movement just as it is beginning!

[heavenlyboy34]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Wiki says that the precursors to the web were not government related at all: Before the wide spread of internetworking that led to the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet), most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the local network and the prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer) model. Several research programs began to explore and articulate principles of networking between physically separate networks, leading to the development of the packet switching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching) model of digital networking. These research efforts included those of the laboratories of Donald Davies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davies) (NPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Physical_Laboratory)), Paul Baran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran) (RAND (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND) Corporation), and Leonard Kleinrock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Kleinrock) at MIT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT) and at UCLA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA).


Methinks the OP is trying to start trouble ;)

[LibertyMage]

You should think about the consequences of this. Absolutely no net neutrality means the telecom companies can treat the Internet like they treat landline and cellular phones.

Meaning they could say only servers using their internet service can communicate with each other. They could also say that you have to pay more to access sites over seas. After all, it takes more money to be able to access a server in another country than one here in the U.S. They could also limit how much time you spend on the Internet for a certain price making you pay extra just to use the Internet more.

They could also grow laser beams for eyes and take over the entire world!

Do you have any examples to back your seemingly arbitrary argument of "could"? This baseless and arbitrary "could" is what is used in every bit of central planning and intervention into the markets by the government.

The unintended consequences of market intervention are not worth it, my friend. I have seen their very impact on the internet service industry. You remember the subsides that the government provided the larger MSOs in the 90s with the intent of expanding broadband coverage? Look at how many MSOs there were at that point and look at how many there are now. My company bought about 17 other companies in my state alone. Now the only competition is Verizon. As it just happens, when Verizon enters a market, our customers get a speed increase within a week without even asking as a competitive action. Competition is the answer.

Look back across history at the propaganda caused by the collusion of media and state. That collusion is the very source of state control. The internet is the freest exchange in the world. I would gladly pay for it three times over its current cost to keep the government out of it. Look at how ingrained they are in the traditional media. Look at their first set of regulations: taxes, what traffic can pass and how it should pass, and when the government can turn it off. This is insanity.

The principle you are putting forward is that government needs to protect us from the evil internet service providers. This is antithetical to our whole movement. I cannot given anecdotes about every market intervention gone wrong but I sure can give examples in the internet service industry. I guarantee you, you don't want net neutrality.

Throughout history people have realized, sadly only after the fact, that they have been hustled. Don't fall prey to this.

[Liberty Rebellion]

They could also grow laser beams for eyes and take over the entire world!

Do you have any examples to back your seemingly arbitrary argument of "could"? This baseless and arbitrary "could" is what is used in every bit of central planning and intervention into the markets by the government.

The unintended consequences of market intervention are not worth it, my friend. I have seen their very impact on the internet service industry. You remember the subsides that the government provided the larger MSOs in the 90s with the intent of expanding broadband coverage? Look at how many MSOs there were at that point and look at how many there are now. My company bought about 17 other companies in my state alone. Now the only competition is Verizon. As it just happens, when Verizon enters a market, our customers get a speed increase within a week without even asking as a competitive action. Competition is the answer.

Look back across history at the propaganda caused by the collusion of media and state. That collusion is the very source of state control. The internet is the freest exchange in the world. I would gladly pay for it three times over its current cost to keep the government out of it. Look at how ingrained they are in the traditional media. Look at their first set of regulations: taxes, what traffic can pass and how it should pass, and when the government can turn it off. This is insanity.

The principle you are putting forward is that government needs to protect us from the evil internet service providers. This is antithetical to our whole movement. I cannot given anecdotes about every market intervention gone wrong but I sure can give examples in the internet service industry. I guarantee you, you don't want net neutrality.

Throughout history people have realized, sadly only after the fact, that they have been hustled. Don't fall prey to this.

I work for an MSO as well and I agree. Prioritization of traffic is going to be a big deal goign forward with the Internet and from what I have seen of Net Neutrality is that the government will dictate that all traffic be treated equal which is nonsense.

On the MSO end, I think they need to clean up their advertising for consumers as some think that 10Mbps means that they should always get 10Mbps down and they point to that and say that MSO's shouldn't prioritize traffic and shuold either increase their backbone capacity or not advertise a 10Mbps package. Frankly, if you are expecting 10Mbps constantly you should get a business account.

Aside, from that what ISP is going to sell Internet service where you can only access servers on their network? That's just a nonsense scenario. My employer is tripping over itself [EDIT: where there is competition] to offer you more services and faster speeds in order to be a better competitor on the market.

[tpreitzel]

Good idea! Let's kill off the Ron Paul movement just as it is beginning!

If we could force the government to follow my suggestion, we wouldn't NEED the Ron Paul "movement", would we? ;) Assuming we need the Ron Paul "movement" to force the government to follow my suggestion, we still don't need to patch the dam with more silly putty. The Ron Paul "movement" would survive just fine without the internet, probably better since participants would likely spend more time off-line and active locally. Yes, some national coordination is needed for survival of the Ron Paul "movement", but alternatives already exist for national coordination until privately funded inventors develop something better. Don't you think it's about time junior left home and made it on his own initiative without begging peers or his parents for more money?

[Naraku]

They could also grow laser beams for eyes and take over the entire world!

Another member of the forums decides it is better to sow dissent than show respect. You should realize that net neutrality has more than one meaning.

[LibertyMage]

Another member of the forums decides it is better to sow dissent than show respect. You should realize that net neutrality has more than one meaning.

Politicians constantly use the arbitrary qualifier "could" to scare people into backing legislation. It happened with 9/11 and the Patriot Act. It happened with the economy and the bailouts. It is happening with health care costs and socialized medicine.

When this kind of inanity seeps its way into the minds of people who support the ideas of liberty it is important to identify it - and crush it - immediately. Damn right I am willing to sow dissent.

If you read this thread objectively you will see the absolute validity of my sarcasm. Some people are backing government intervention into markets in which they have no place. They are accomplishing this not by illustrating historical precedent or because of any real problem. No, they are accomplishing this because the central planners have pushed into the heads of people that we cannot live without their intervention.

I know exactly why net neutrality has more then one meaning - corporatism. That is a fact that is purely based on historical precedent.

[jmdrake]

Two wrongs don't make a right. I dare say nobody here thought that federal funding of the nation's communications infrastructure was a good idea.

This is exactly why. When you get in bed with government, you catch diseases. Unfortunately, we're the people that have to live with the consequences.

It's more than an issue of funding. In order to build the telecommunications infrastructure private property interests had to be taken through imminent domain. (Usually in terms of easements).

See: http://www.jurispro.com/uploadArticles/Warren.pdf

And I know. In a totally free market eminent domain wouldn't exist either. But we've had that since the dawn of the constitution.

[Brian4Liberty]

"Asked what she thought about regulation of the web, she said it was inevitable that there would be more regulation of it. Why, for instance, is there no protection of women and children on the Internet, when there is plenty in real life. She said this duality — where anything goes on the wild wild west of the Internet — would have to end." - Carly Fiorina (RINO-CA)

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=216035

[jmdrake]

"Asked what she thought about regulation of the web, she said it was inevitable that there would be more regulation of it. Why, for instance, is there no protection of women and children on the Internet, when there is plenty in real life. She said this duality — where anything goes on the wild wild west of the Internet — would have to end." - Carly Fiorina (RINO-CA)

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=216035

http://skepticalteacher.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/facepalm.jpg

[pcosmar]

Net Neutrality
What a nice name.

Too bad it is a lie.

[NYgs23]

The FCC today began making rules aimed at limiting the ability of telecommunications companies to offer special services or cut access to elements of the Internet, a key goal of Google and online libertarians, intensely opposed by big telecom companies.

Who are these "libertarians"??? They are sneakily trying to portray net neutrality as "pro-freedom," more regulation protecting us from the evil corporations. Who regulates the regulators??? More freedom would involve abolishing the FCC and privatizing the airwaves and all telecommunications infrastructure. And notice how the Verizon, et al are "big telecom companies," but Google isn't described as "big search engine companies." No bias here. Nope, none at all.

[ClayTrainor]

Net Neutrality
What a nice name.

Too bad it is a lie.

Gotta love how Washington sells their bills... "Patriot Act" "No Child Left Behind" "Neturality"

Such con-artists...

[Elwar]

I'm getting my masters in IT and was in middle of one class where we brought up net neutrality and the teacher and most of the students were all for it...

I was arguing with all of them and I had to bring up the history of AT&T as an example of how a simple government intrusion into the telephone industry stifled innovation for 60 years...one of the girl's started calling bullshit and saying that I was making things up...the teacher had to point out to her that I'd written a very good essay on AT&T earlier in the year and that it was quite good...then other students piped up that they'd read it and that it was good...it kinda shut her up.

I put the essay here for your reading pleasure:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=213517&highlight=monopoly

Actually, if you read it and replace AT&T with "National Health Care" or "Net Neutrality"...you'll see a lot of parallels and an idea of our future if either of them pass.

[awake]

The Bill name simply encompasses the good intentions of the crafter; But, like anything government force sets out to accomplish, the opposite is the result. If "The highway to hell is paved with good intentions", then unmistakeably, the top coat is paved with pieces of paper called bills.

[Brian4Liberty]

one of the girl's started calling bullshit and saying that I was making things up...

Better be nice to her. She will probably be your future Senator... :rolleyes: :D

Or even worse, and more likely, your boss...

[kahless]

We may have not needed "Net Neutrality" since the threat of it is keeping the telcos in line. However with the newspaper industry in decline and so threatened by internet news sites you know eventually the telcos would institute prioritization in favor of the newspapers sites. They have the deep pockets to pay for prioritized traffic while smaller sites would not and would eventually shutdown being unable to afford being double billed for the equal playing field they had been paying for.

Would sites such as this exist in the future without "Net Neutrality"? I have my doubts. This is what "Net Neutrality" is intended to protect.

Lets not forget the internet was built with our taxpayer dollars. It is only right that our free speech be protected from the telcos making a decision otherwise.

[NYgs23]

We may have not needed "Net Neutrality" since the threat of it is keeping the telcos in line. However with the newspaper industry in decline and so threatened by internet news sites you know eventually the telcos would institute prioritization in favor of the newspapers sites. They have the deep pockets to pay for prioritized traffic while smaller sites would not and would eventually shutdown being unable to afford being double billed for the equal playing field they had been paying for.

Like all other proponents of this, you seem to forget that these are competing companies not a single monopolistic institution. If one institutes unfair practices it will lose business to another. The government, on the other hand, is a monopoly and goodness knows why you'd trust it to institute and maintain "fair" practices. In any case, the whole thing is a violation of both natural property rights and constitutional law.


Lets not forget the internet was built with our taxpayer dollars. It is only right that our free speech be protected from the telcos making a decision otherwise.

It was built through the marketplace. Just because the government was squatting on ARPANET for a short time doesn't mean anything. For all you know, if we had had a free market for the past hundred years we might have had something like the Internet by the 1950s. Government redistribution of resources stifles innovation; it doesn't improve it.

[kahless]

Like all other proponents of this, you seem to forget that these are competing companies not a single monopolistic institution. If one institutes unfair practices it will lose business to another. The government, on the other hand, is a monopoly and goodness knows why you'd trust it to institute and maintain "fair" practices. In any case, the whole thing is a violation of both natural property rights and constitutional law.

You seem to forget that "Net Neutrality" does not change anything. It prevents the telcos in the future from restricting traffic thus restricting access to content -free speech. Areas without competition would suffer.



It was built through the marketplace. Just because the government was squatting on ARPANET for a short time doesn't mean anything. For all you know, if we had had a free market for the past hundred years we might have had something like the Internet by the 1950s. Government redistribution of resources stifles innovation; it doesn't improve it.

Correction. It was built through the marketplace and billions of taxpayer dollars.

[Naraku]

Politicians constantly use the arbitrary qualifier "could" to scare people into backing legislation.

I'm not paying attention to anything the politicians are saying. You're also playing the exact same game only worse. Rather than say what could happen you're saying net neutrality will result in government regulating everything on the Internet. Also claiming that regulation will lead to the Internet crashing or set us back decades and all other sorts of garbage.


If you read this thread objectively you will see the absolute validity of my sarcasm.

I am always objective in how I consider a subject, but you are clearly not. Nothing you have said even remotely suggests objectivity.


No, they are accomplishing this because the central planners have pushed into the heads of people that we cannot live without their intervention.

Just out of curiosity, are you opposed to public libraries?


I know exactly why net neutrality has more then one meaning - corporatism. That is a fact that is purely based on historical precedent.

So government regulation of any sort is fascism, but giving the corporations free rein is liberty. I think you need to reconsider history.

[kahless]

If Republicans like John McCain and his buddies at AT&T have their way imagine this. You put up a site and you pay your provider for bandwidth but still certain part of the country users are unable to access your site. That is until you determine the provider and pay their traffic prioritization fee. You have something like this the internet as it is now will just be a place for large corporations and the little guy will be shut out. You can the effectively forget about sites like this unless the admin has deep pockets.

[dannno]

you know eventually the telcos would institute prioritization in favor of the newspapers sites. They have the deep pockets to pay for prioritized traffic while smaller sites would not and would eventually shutdown being unable to afford being double billed for the equal playing field they had been paying for.

Traffic should be prioritized for sites that get more traffic.. but who gets more traffic, a single newspaper site or a hosting company that hosts tens of thousands of individual webpages?

Ultimately whoever pays the most money will get the highest priority and fastest speeds, which is the way it should be...

[kahless]

Traffic should be prioritized for sites that get more traffic.. but who gets more traffic, a single newspaper site or a hosting company that hosts tens of thousands of individual webpages?

Ultimately whoever pays the most money will get the highest priority and fastest speeds, which is the way it should be...

Companies already pay for a pipe. They should not be doubled charged. It would be a billing and mangement nightmare for web hosts to manage all the ISPs in the country and pay them to ensure traffic gets to their users.

[pcosmar]

So much misunderstanding around this issue.
Let me simplify it.
As soon as the Government gets it's sticky grimy fingers on it they will fuck it up.
That is a Guarantee.

[Liberty Rebellion]

We may have not needed "Net Neutrality" since the threat of it is keeping the telcos in line. However with the newspaper industry in decline and so threatened by internet news sites you know eventually the telcos would institute prioritization in favor of the newspapers sites. They have the deep pockets to pay for prioritized traffic while smaller sites would not and would eventually shutdown being unable to afford being double billed for the equal playing field they had been paying for.

Would sites such as this exist in the future without "Net Neutrality"? I have my doubts. This is what "Net Neutrality" is intended to protect.

Lets not forget the internet was built with our taxpayer dollars. It is only right that our free speech be protected from the telcos making a decision otherwise.

That doesn't even make any sense. Let's say the New York times pays for prioritization of traffic, meaning their traffic is treated first and foremost on a providers network where other industry competitors' traffic is best effort, that will not generate any new traffic for the Times, it will simply get the packets there faster if there is congestion on the path

That's not how it works anyways. A website already pays for bandwidth to web-hosting companies or, in the case of larger conglomerates on the web, they peer directly with multiple ISPs. If one ISP directly peering with google.com decided to axe their bandwidth (which would more than likely violate the peering contract they entered into with google) so that people would instead go to yahoo (which isn't even guaranteed as their are other search engines out there) for a search not only would that ISP get bombarded with irrate customers trying to access google, their customers would also look at switching providers to ones that have a better connection with google.

Aside from being a breech of contract, peering with large private networks on the Internet is mutually beneficial to the ISP and its peers. Most ISPs pay large transport carriers (AT&T, Qwest, Level3, WV Fiber, etc) to carry traffic to destinations on the Internet. These carriers charge per kilobit and usually have a minimum amount of traffic that must be utilized at all times on the circuit else the ISPs are charged more. When you peer with other private networks, they may have a path to wherever you are trying to get to on the Internet in which case it costs the ISP nothing to transport that traffic across that peer.

Whenever we are reaching capacity on circuits we have with our peers (google, facebook, etc) we throw up another circuit and load-balance across it. There is no bias for our Internet traffic. The only time you will see a decrease in latency accessing a site (at least for my company) is when your we are peering directly with whichever entity you are trying to reach in which case your traffic to get there traverses our network straight to whomever we peer with.

As far as prioritization, there is no way we will be able to provide advanced services to our customers that request it if we are to treat all traffic equally. For example, a business customer of ours, a hospital let's say, needs to conduct teleconfrences with its other sites across the US. In order to do this, they multicast video streams across our national backbone. Live video/audio is very sensitive to jitter and delay. To ensure delivery with minimal delay and jitter, their traffic is treated with a higher priority than customers that don't pay for this level of service.

Voice and video traffic needs to be given priority while normal data traffic can be best effort and TCP will handle re-transmissions for dropped packets, or whatever.

Also, with caps being implemented by seemingly all cable companies, (or at least have tried and stopped due to legal concerns) the tech they use for that basically allows them to see everything you do on the Internet so long as it passes through one of these devices. What web site you visit, how often, etc etc. That in the hands of the government scares me more than anything and if it ever comes to the US blocking certain cites similar to Australia web censorship, it will be through more power attained through Network Neutrality or mission creep thereof.

[kahless]

So much misunderstanding around this issue.
Let me simplify it.
As soon as the Government gets it's sticky grimy fingers on it they will fuck it up.
That is a Guarantee.

This is why I do not understand how people can be against "Net Neutrality" but be for John McCain's "Internet Freedom" bill.

[dannno]

Companies already pay for a pipe. They should not be doubled charged. It would be a billing and mangement nightmare for web hosts to manage all the ISPs in the country and pay them to ensure traffic gets to their users.

They won't be double charged, they will be charged the fair market price.

As long as there is more space in the toobs, the space will be sold for profit. That is the best interest of the telecoms. They can increase their profits by offering more tube space to some customers than others and charging more. They can buy up all the tube space for their buddies over at CNN.com if they want to, and restrict it from other competitors who want the tube space, but why would they do that when they could collect more money from competitors by not restricting the free tube space?

[Brian4Liberty]

This whole thread is depressing me. The more it is discussed, the more I see a future where there are only two websites, and you have to pay every time you want to post anything...

[Liberty Rebellion]

Traffic should be prioritized for sites that get more traffic.. but who gets more traffic, a single newspaper site or a hosting company that hosts tens of thousands of individual webpages?

Ultimately whoever pays the most money will get the highest priority and fastest speeds, which is the way it should be...

You don't need prioritization for a site that gets more traffic. It's data traffic that is all best effort. If you are using voice services over your ISP internet connection, you expect it to not be vey reliable because it is being treated as data and not voice by your ISP. To have that voice traffic from a web provider be treated with a higher priority to increase its reliability, you would need to pay your ISP more for that.

Our peers have equal priority in terms of getting to their site. If they have more traffic destined for it, it simply means that they will need more bandwidth, in which case, you fire up another TenGigE port (or GigE whatever the case may be) and load balance across that. You only do that if you are reaching the 95th precentile on link utilization.

[dannno]

This whole thread is depressing me. The more it is discussed, the more I see a future where there are only two websites, and you have to pay every time you want to post anything...

There are plenty of techies and capital out there to ensure that won't happen... Unless, of course, the government takes over the internet and restricts it with the force of guns.

[dannno]

This is why I do not understand how people can be against "Net Neutrality" but be for John McCain's "Internet Freedom" bill.

You're kinda right, it's like a bill that prevents the net neutrality bill.. and I don't trust the author.. I don't know that people here know enough about McCain's bill to argue for it. I'd rather see a bill written by Ron Paul that plainly says the government has no authority to regulate privately owned networks.

[kahless]

That doesn't even make any sense. Let's say the New York times pays for prioritization of traffic, meaning their traffic is treated first and foremost on a providers network where other industry competitors' traffic is best effort, that will not generate any new traffic for the Times, it will simply get the packets there faster.

That's not how it works anyways. A website already pays for bandwidth to web-hosting companies or, in the case of larger conglomerates on the web, they peer directly with multiple ISPs. If one ISP directly peering with google.com decided to axe their bandwidth (which would more than likely violate the peering contract they entered into with google) so that people would instead go to yahoo (which isn't even guaranteed as their are other search engines out there) for a search not only would that ISP get bombarded with irrate customers trying to access google, their customers would also look at switching providers to ones that have a better connection with google.

Aside from being a breech of contract, peering with large private networks on the Internet is mutually beneficial to the ISP and its peers. Most ISPs pay large transport carriers (AT&T, Qwest, Level3, WV Fiber, etc) to carry traffic to destinations on the Internet. These carriers charge per kilobit and usually have a minimum amount of traffic that must be utilized at all times on the circuit else the ISPs are charged more. When you peer with other private networks, they may have a path to wherever you are trying to get to on the Internet in which case it costs the ISP nothing to transport that traffic across that peer.

Whenever we are reaching capacity on circuits we have with our peers (google, facebook, etc) we throw up another circuit and load-balance across it. There is no bias for our Internet traffic. The only time you will see a decrease in latency accessing a site (at least for my company) is when your we are peering directly with whichever entity you are trying to reach in which case your traffic to get there traverses our network straight to whomever we peer with.

As far as prioritization, there is no way we will be able to provide advanced services to our customers that request it if we are to treat all traffic equally. For example, a business customer of ours, a hospital let's say, needs to conduct teleconfrences with its other sites across the US. In order to do this, they multicast video streams across our national backbone. Live video/audio is very sensitive to jitter and delay. To ensure delivery with minimal delay and jitter, their traffic is treated with a higher priority than customers that don't pay for this level of service.

Voice and video traffic needs to be given priority while normal data traffic can be best effort and TCP will handle re-transmissions for dropped packets, or whatever.

Also, with caps being implemented by seemingly all cable companies, (or at least have tried and stopped due to legal concerns) the tech they use for that basically allows them to see everything you do on the Internet so long as it passes through one of these devices. What web site you visit, how often, etc etc. That in the hands of the government scares me more than anything and if it ever comes to the US blocking certain cites similar to Australia web censorship, it will be through more power attained through Network Neutrality or mission creep thereof.

You are describing basic traffic management which was not the point I was making. If each ISP suddenly decides to start billing the web host for what you describe. That currently does not happen now and would be a nightmare if AT&T had their way and decided to do this.

Most small web hosts would not be able to afford the cost and management involved in paying each ISPs additional fees.


http://www.savetheinternet.com/faq


Net Neutrality has been part of the Internet since its inception. Pioneers like Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, always intended the Internet to be a neutral network. And non-discrimination provisions like Net Neutrality have governed the nation's communications networks since the 1920s.

Writing Net Neutrality into law would preserve the freedoms we currently enjoy on the Internet. For all their talk about "deregulation," the cable and phone giants don't want real competition. They want special rules written in their favor.

On the Internet, consumers are in ultimate control -- deciding between content, applications and services available anywhere, no matter who owns the network. There's no middleman. But without Net Neutrality, the Internet will look more like cable TV. Network owners will decide which channels, content and applications are available; consumers will have to choose from their menu.

[Liberty Rebellion]

You are describing basic traffic management which was not the point I was making. If each ISP suddenly decides to start billing the web host for what you describe. That currently does not happen now and would be a nightmare if AT&T had their way and decided to do this.

Most small web hosts would not be able to afford the cost and management involved in paying each ISPs additional fees.


http://www.savetheinternet.com/faq

We are talking about basic traffic management. That's all prioritization is.

Why would they start billing hosts for what I describe? There is no reason to.

[kahless]

They won't be double charged, they will be charged the fair market price.

As long as there is more space in the toobs, the space will be sold for profit. That is the best interest of the telecoms. They can increase their profits by offering more tube space to some customers than others and charging more. They can buy up all the tube space for their buddies over at CNN.com if they want to, and restrict it from other competitors who want the tube space, but why would they do that when they could collect more money from competitors by not restricting the free tube space?

So lets see I have 3 colocation data centers scattered in the US which I pay combined 10k to different providers. Without "Net Neutrality" at some point in the future I would need a list of all ISPs in the country and pay each of them a few to ensure my companies traffic is on par with lets say Google, and Yahoo.

So effectively my costs go from 10k a month to 30k month where we effectively see this is no longer a profitable business and it is time to shut it down. If John McCain and his buddies at AT&T have their way this is the scenario that will be played out all over the country.

[kahless]

We are talking about basic traffic management. That's all prioritization is.

Why would they start billing hosts for what I describe? There is no reason to.

You are right there is no reason for that. This is why the telcos are against "Net Neutrality" since that is exactly what they want to do.

[Liberty Rebellion]

And to clarify my earlier point, prioritizing traffic wouldn't even necessarily get the data traffic there faster; it would simply ensure it would not be dropped and processed first in the event that there is congestion on any of the links in the path.

[Liberty Rebellion]

You are right there is no reason for that. This is why the telcos are against "Net Neutrality" since that is exactly what they want to do.

I don't see any evidence of that where I work. We are turning up more peers everyday. If what you suggest is true we would be doing the opposite.

[NYgs23]

You seem to forget that "Net Neutrality" does not change anything. It prevents the telcos in the future from restricting traffic thus restricting access to content -free speech.

Presumably, these companies own this infrastructure. Therefore, they possess absolute sovereign property rights to manage it however they like as far as I'm concerned. And if they don't own it, then the true owner should push his claim to in court to regain his stolen property, and he should possess absolute sovereign property rights to manage however he likes. The government has no authority here, you don't, I don't, only the own of the true owner of the property, whoever that is, has any authority whatsoever.


Areas without competition would suffer.

In a free market, if there's an area without competition, where consumers want more competition, then there is a profit opportunity for an entrepreneur to come along and provide that competition.


It was built through the marketplace and billions of taxpayer dollars.

Any tax subsidies invested anywhere were illegitimate and don't justify even more state involvement. One act of aggression doesn't justify another.


...imagine this. You put up a site and you pay your provider for bandwidth but still certain part of the country users are unable to access your site. That is until you determine the provider and pay their traffic prioritization fee. You have something like this the internet as it is now will just be a place for large corporations and the little guy will be shut out.

Where is this happening? It's just a hypothetical problem. And, if it did happen, you should switch providers. And if you couldn't switch providers, some entrepreneur would be missing a profit opportunity. But you can't demand some third party come in to dictate how your ISP manages its own property. Sorry.

[kahless]

Presumably, these companies own this infrastructure. Therefore, they possess absolute sovereign property rights to manage it however they like as far as I'm concerned. .

Taking this Libertarian aspect to the extreme is like saying they have a right to shut off your phone service for whatever reason even if it is during a 911 call.
In this kind of world the US would have internet and phone service as bad as the third world. In many areas competition does not exist and if it did in the kind of world you speak of what difference would it make.

In Missouri for example Ron Paul supporters made some sort of terrorist watch list. I can see that as a good example for someone with an opposing view to deny service or restrict internet access. Something that would be prevented under "Net Neutrality".

Phone companies would not have been able to provide service in the first place if it was not for a partnership with federal, state and local governments providing funds and exclusive property easements.



Where is this happening?

It has been discussed as a business model by companies like AT&T. The threat of "Net Neutrality" I believe has kept them at bay from doing so. Not sure if McCains bill will encourage it.

[pcosmar]

Taking this Libertarian aspect to the extreme is like saying they have a right to shut off your phone service for whatever reason even if it is during a 911 call.
In this kind of world the US would have internet and phone service as bad as the third world. In many areas competition does not exist and if it did in the kind of world you speak of what difference would it make.

In Missouri for example Ron Paul supporters made some sort of terrorist watch list. I can see that as a good example for someone with an opposing view to deny service or restrict internet access. Something that would be prevented under "Net Neutrality".

Phone companies would not have been able to provide service in the first place if it was not for a partnership with federal, state and local governments providing funds and exclusive property easements.

Incredibly bad example. It was not just in Missouri, It was nation wide, Missouri just got caught.
You are giving this power to the same Federal Authorities that were responsible for the MIAC report and others.
Do you really see that as a good thing?

[kahless]

Incredibly bad example. It was not just in Missouri, It was nation wide, Missouri just got caught.
You are giving this power to the same Federal Authorities that were responsible for the MIAC report and others.
Do you really see that as a good thing?

Not giving them any power. Net Neutrality keeps the internet free and open like it always has been.

Do you really want to see ISP's start blocking access to this site, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Becks web streams? But allow only Olbermann, Maddow, Huffington Post and the Daily Kos? This kind of favoritism is what it is intended to prevent.

The fact that John McCain who has received over 800k from the telcos worries me that whatever is in his bill will encourage this kind of egregious restrictions and billing.

[pcosmar]

Not giving them any power. Net Neutrality keeps the internet free and open like it always has been.

.

No, it doesn't. That is the lie they are using to sell this.

But hell, it will probably go through. And just like all the other Government promises it will show it's true color in a short time.

Enjoy what we had, while we have it.

[GunnyFreedom]

Ron Paul on net neutrality: http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-11/ron-paul-and-reddit-com/

Glad to see that I still agree with Dr Paul even when I (apparently) disagree with the majority of posters in this thread.

[eOs]

I have not read a single post on this thread, but I thought it important to say that I am against net neutrality for obvious reasons, and I am sure Dr. Paul is too.

[kahless]

No, it doesn't. That is the lie they are using to sell this.


Convince me otherwise, since I do not see it. I want to keep things as they are rather than I and other business owners paying ISPs all over the country to maintain equal access on their networks. (which would effectively put many of us out of business and is unmanagable for small companies)

Granted we do not have that now but AT&T and others have eluded to doing so at some point in the future.

[eOs]

Convince me otherwise, since I do not see it. I want to keep things as they are rather than I and other business owners paying ISPs all over the country to maintain equal access on their networks. (which would effectively put many of us out of business and is unmanagable for small companies)

Granted we do not have that now but AT&T and others have eluded to doing so at some point in the future.

convince you otherwise? Things are the way they are right now and they're good. The free market can handle this better than anything.

[GunnyFreedom]

I have read every single post in this thread, and I am now even MORE adamantly against "Net Neutrality" than I even was before. All the argument in favor of it reminds me of the neocon arguments in favor of the PATRIOT Act.

[dannno]

convince you otherwise? Things are the way they are right now and they're good. The free market can handle this better than anything.

Ya know, you have a great point.


I don't know why I didn't see this before. Maybe it's your pirate avatar and the fact that I just watched G. Edward Griffin's speech about the pirate ship (best speech ever..)


I think I just finally realized what's going on here.


Other posters in the thread have been talking about how the telecoms have been hinting at greater costs for consumers and degraded service.. then suddenly this "net neutrality" movement comes along and tries to convince everyone that we need not a free internet, but an equal internet.. Don't you all see?? This is completely manufactured by the media and the telecoms. They are creating a panic like JP Morgan did in 1907, which lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve!! History repeats itself, don't fall for it!! The government will always use a crisis to attempt to gain more control. In this case they don't even have to cause the crisis, they are just pulling a future crisis out of their asses!

[kahless]

convince you otherwise? Things are the way they are right now and they're good. The free market can handle this better than anything.

They are good probably since they do not dare cross that line since it would encourage "Net Neutrality" regulation that has been looming for years. Which would have been fine the way it is but I am concerned with what the detractors are saying about what John McCain's "internet freedom" bill would do to change that. I am reading through McCains version but it is throughly confusing.


Don't you all see?? This is completely manufactured by the media and the telecoms. They are creating a panic like JP Morgan did in 1907, which lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve!! History repeats itself, don't fall for it!! The government will always use a crisis to attempt to gain more control. In this case they don't even have to cause the crisis, they are just pulling a future crisis out of their asses!

Net Neutrality has been debated since the late 1990s. It is only coming to fruition now due to the increasing threat from some telcos like AT&T.

[Vessol]

I'm heavily divided on net neutrality :\.

[Vessol]

THe way I think about this is like bitching about a steak.

Everyone deserves the same steak no matter what. It doesn't matter of this particular cut costs more and this cut is a cheap piece of beef, it all needs to cost the same to everyone who is eating steak.

Internet is a service provided by a private enterprise. If you don't like it or a good majority of people don't like it then in a free market, competition would emerge. However thanks to government regulation, it is very hard to start your own ISP. I know in my town there is only one ISP choice.

In a free market you wouldn't have the bandwith restrictions that many ISPs have now because of regulation and lack of competition. If you had a free market system, then the sky would be the limit as technology develops ISPs would provide higher bandwith and cheaper rates in order to win your dollar. Voting with your dollar is much more effective then voting in a ballot.

So until we can get a free market approach to ISPs, then I am going to apprehensively support net neutrality.

[Liberty Rebellion]

meh... I will have to read up on the legislation and see what it actually says and what is being proposed. I was a proponent for this before I became an an-cap; now I'm opposed to it on principle alone.

The government is already heavily involved in telecommunications which explains why it is so fucked up and this ALMOST sounds appealing given that reality. However, I'd rather tear it all down and have no government involved rather than band-aiding one government intervention with another.

People on both sides of this argument need to be better educated on how the Internet market works in terms of contracts between consumers and private networks alike; how the Internet operates in general; and on what is actually being proposed via legislation (myself included on the last point).

I read tonight on Google how ATT is proposing charging more for web hosts using certain content which I find to be an asinine argument. On our (my employer's) network, all Internet traffic is best effort; there is no preference for video or audio, all packets from normal residential accounts destined for the Internetz are treated equally - best effort. That's why if you get Vonage and it sucks balls, it's because your VoIP packets are being treated like normal data packets and are not given a higher priority than web site data traffic.

I will research the legislation and get back to you guys with what I find and my opinions on it (if you care!).

BTW prioritizing traffic on a network is just traffic management as was pointed out earlier. Marking and prioritizing traffic is really only beneficial during times of congestion on a network.

The method I could see some telcos using to regulate what sites you go to would be http://www.sandvine.com/ Those devices can throttle your traffic dependent upon a number of conditions; what port you're accessing, data rate per second, websites you visit, etc

However, I find ATT usign the above method to destroy competition ridiculous as consumers would simply get a different ISP. The only way this would be effective is if ATT had nation-wide monopoly or if every ISP acted in collusion to implement the same policies on all their networks.

W/o looking at the legislation, I can tell you that competition is the answer to all of our telecommunication problems.:cool:

[dannno]

Net Neutrality has been debated since the late 1990s. It is only coming to fruition now due to the increasing threat from some telcos like AT&T.

The Federal Reserve wasn't created until 1913.

[demolama]

I look at it this way... I'd rather have zero FCC regulations and let the free market come up with a solution to pay as you go. I understand telecoms wanting to change the model... too many people suck up so much bandwidth downloading stupid crap like movies that often it is very slow for everyone else.

I may never like the change to my connection speed by going to an alternative service but at least what I'll be seeing will be uncensored by the government. I will not stand for censorship

There are alternatives in a free market... just not fantastic ones.

I'd go back to dialup over a censored web.

[eOs]

Ya know, you have a great point.


I don't know why I didn't see this before. Maybe it's your pirate avatar and the fact that I just watched G. Edward Griffin's speech about the pirate ship (best speech ever..)


hahahaha



Other posters in the thread have been talking about how the telecoms have been hinting at greater costs for consumers and degraded service.. then suddenly this "net neutrality" movement comes along and tries to convince everyone that we need not a free internet, but an equal internet.. Don't you all see?? This is completely manufactured by the media and the telecoms. They are creating a panic like JP Morgan did in 1907, which lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve!! History repeats itself, don't fall for it!! The government will always use a crisis to attempt to gain more control. In this case they don't even have to cause the crisis, they are just pulling a future crisis out of their asses!

Good analogy, yes, lets keep it free, the only thing I'm concerned with now is the ability for telecommunication companies to work together in a duopoly attempt to further their money reaping goals. I think the internet is too precious, too great, the people that use it are too smart to fall for such schemes. In any event, we here at RPF would just moneybomb our own business into existence. Wait a minute, that's not a bad idea...


Net Neutrality has been debated since the late 1990s. It is only coming to fruition now due to the increasing threat from some telcos like AT&T.
What threat? Threat of AT& errr...I mean the patriot act arm of DHS?
Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/

[Elwar]

The only thing that Net Neutrality does is attack some non-existant boogie man that is "The telcos are going to do X (even though haven't done it yet) and it will ruin the Internet!"

I guarantee that if AT&T tried to do something stupid like only allow AT&T phone subscribers to use their pipes, then sure...it might suck for about a year or so...then whatdoyaknow someone else will provide an alternative that will make AT&T's pipe useless.

I had an idea once to create an ISP that was completely wireless, an ad-hoc backbone made up of homes with wireless transievers...each home would get a discount on their bill (or get paid) based upon the amount of traffic going over their line (encouraging people to buy bigger and better transievers to pass more traffic). With Net Neutrality I'd run into crazy laws that wouldn't make it worth trying.

Or, paying for private highways by running fiber cables under the roads and charging for access. That's out the door.

Net Neutrality freezes technology to what we have right now. Nobody wants to lose their precious Internet so they want to put a halt to innovation to freeze things to the way they are.

We're only in the Internet's infancy...it can grow into so much more. To stiffle it now based on some unfounded fear of what "could" be done is as intelligent as the FCC freezing the phone networks in 1933 giving AT&T a virtual monopoly and killing communications innovation for a whole generation. Sure, phone technology stayed the same and nobody lost out on being able to make phone calls...but look at what we have now that the monopoly was broken and innovation was allowed to flourish.

If, in 1933, someone had told the FCC to stay out of the telecom business because if they stayed out of the way then the technology would get to the point where you can take pictures and listen to music on your phone, they would've said you're crazy and talked about how they need to make sure that everyone has equal access to phones so they need to regulate the phone industry.

This is history repeating itself. Supporting Net Neutrality is the wrong side of history.

[eOs]

The only thing that Net Neutrality does is attack some non-existant boogie man that is "The telcos are going to do X (even though haven't done it yet) and it will ruin the Internet!"

I guarantee that if AT&T tried to do something stupid like only allow AT&T phone subscribers to use their pipes, then sure...it might suck for about a year or so...then whatdoyaknow someone else will provide an alternative that will make AT&T's pipe useless.

I had an idea once to create an ISP that was completely wireless, an ad-hoc backbone made up of homes with wireless transievers...each home would get a discount on their bill (or get paid) based upon the amount of traffic going over their line (encouraging people to buy bigger and better transievers to pass more traffic). With Net Neutrality I'd run into crazy laws that wouldn't make it worth trying.

Or, paying for private highways by running fiber cables under the roads and charging for access. That's out the door.

Net Neutrality freezes technology to what we have right now. Nobody wants to lose their precious Internet so they want to put a halt to innovation to freeze things to the way they are.

We're only in the Internet's infancy...it can grow into so much more. To stiffle it now based on some unfounded fear of what "could" be done is as intelligent as the FCC freezing the phone networks in 1933 giving AT&T a virtual monopoly and killing communications innovation for a whole generation. Sure, phone technology stayed the same and nobody lost out on being able to make phone calls...but look at what we have now that the monopoly was broken and innovation was allowed to flourish.

If, in 1933, someone had told the FCC to stay out of the telecom business because if they stayed out of the way then the technology would get to the point where you can take pictures and listen to music on your phone, they would've said you're crazy and talked about how they need to make sure that everyone has equal access to phones so they need to regulate the phone industry.

This is history repeating itself. Supporting Net Neutrality is the wrong side of history.

good post elwar, although I'm not sure I understand your rockwell sig, the left is the state!

[Elwar]

good post elwar, although I'm not sure I understand your rockwell sig, the left is the state!

Not to sidetrack but...

The left: "No PATRIOT ACT", "Legalize Marijuana", "No War in Iraq".
The Right: "Stupid liberals...tougher PATRIOT ACT!, crack down on those pot smokers!, more troops!"

[Galileo Galilei]

I have read every single post in this thread, and I am now even MORE adamantly against "Net Neutrality" than I even was before. All the argument in favor of it reminds me of the neocon arguments in favor of the PATRIOT Act.

Are you against Net Neutrality of this BEFORE or AFTER the taxpayers are refunded the mulit billions of dollars they have been taxed to build the Internet?

[NYgs23]

Taking this Libertarian aspect to the extreme is like saying they have a right to shut off your phone service for whatever reason even if it is during a 911 call.

Why would it do that? If it did such things, it would lose business; no one would trust it. Apparently, you don't trust individual voluntary exchange. This is the same nonsense that makes people lobby for FDA regulations, FTC regulations, OSHA, and other idiocy.



In many areas competition does not exist

In a free market, there's open entry and increased demand for competition leads to increased competition. Right now, such things as the FCC and the government's nationalization of the radio spectrum inhibit competition. The market is also distorted by the fact that there was a govt-protected telephone monopoly for fifty years. Abolish the FCC and privatize the airwaves.


...if it did in the kind of world you speak of what difference would it make.

If you don't understand that, I'm at a loss how to explain it to you. What difference does competition make? Do you understand economics at all?


In Missouri for example Ron Paul supporters made some sort of terrorist watch list.

Abolish the terrorist watch list.


Phone companies would not have been able to provide service in the first place if it was not for a partnership with federal, state and local governments providing funds and exclusive property easements.

If that were so, too bad. You sound just like every other statist I've ever heard: "Look at this list of all the wonderful stuff the gooberment's given us, schools, parks, roads, firefighters in shiny red helmets, merry-go-rounds, petting zoos, nuclear weapons..." Poppycock! Those resources would have been allocated more efficiently according to market demand than by government fiat; they always are. Why do you trust a monopolistic ruling class over voluntary interaction between free individuals?


It has been discussed as a business model by companies like AT&T. The threat of "Net Neutrality" I believe has kept them at bay from doing so.

I'm sure they fear free market competition more than their friends at the FCC.

[NYgs23]

Are you against Net Neutrality of this BEFORE or AFTER the taxpayers are refunded the mulit billions of dollars they have been taxed to build the Internet?

Yet another lame excuse to continue dragging us down the path of more aggression. One aggression doesn't justify another. I'm a tax-victim just as much as you, and I want the state to take it's fingers out of the Internet, along with everything else.

[torchbearer]

just say no to government control over the internet.

[Galileo Galilei]

Yet another lame excuse to continue dragging us down the path of more aggression. One aggression doesn't justify another. I'm a tax-victim just as much as you, and I want the state to take it's fingers out of the Internet, along with everything else.

paying back stolen money is aggression?

[NYgs23]

paying back stolen money is agression?

Supporting "net neutrality" on the basis the Internet was subsidized with taxes in its early stages, as you seem to be doing, is piling on aggression on top of another.

Also, you'd never be able to figure out how to give back all stolen tax money and stolen property to the rightful original owners. It's gone just like the money of Bernie Madoff's victims is gone. So cut your losses.

[GunnyFreedom]

Are you against Net Neutrality of this BEFORE or AFTER the taxpayers are refunded the mulit billions of dollars they have been taxed to build the Internet?

Not sure who built YOUR 'tubes, but the 'tubes I use were built by Cisco and purchased/installed by TWC and AT&T. LOL!

DARPANET and ARPANET are long extinct, and no longer have any kinds of property or equipment in the public domain whatsoever.

Unless your multi-billions argument is an "intellectual property" argument that they came up with the idea for DARPANET and therefore they own the whole internet forever? lol!

I've never used the DOD interconnected networks, except for when I was on active duty in the Marine Corps, and then for official use only.

Even when the Internet was in it's most nascent form I focused primarily...even EXCLUSIVELY... on private networks within the web infrastructure.

So given that I have never privately trafficked on these "multi billions of taxpayer dollars" then I have pretty much zero motivation to affect my traffic over exclusively private networks on account of some public network somewhere was once built by someone else for completely completely different purposes unrelated to myself and my activities whatsoever.

I am opposed to government regulation of private information networks.

If the government wants to impose "Net Neutrality" specifically on any equipment which THEY OWN then I say GO FOR IT! After all, it is THEIRS...

But the servers, routers, switches, and cabling that *I* use, were all purchased from revenues gained through private sales transactions of which I, by contract was a party to. So keep that nonsense off my equipment!

[Elwar]

Are you against Net Neutrality of this BEFORE or AFTER the taxpayers are refunded the mulit billions of dollars they have been taxed to build the Internet?

No. When we make a mistake — when we make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people through their representatives to correct the mistake, not to continue the mistake!

[GunnyFreedom]

And I have no doubt that all those major ISP NOC's lean very heavily on those old government issue 1970's era sub kilobit switches on account of during the last 40 years we have never really figured out how to make anything faster :rolleyes:

[Galileo Galilei]

Also, you'd never be able to figure out how to give back all stolen tax money and stolen property to the rightful original owners.

The leave things as-is. Or re-pay each taxpayer with private ownership stock in the Internet.

[NYgs23]

The leave things as-is. Or re-pay each taxpayer with private ownership stock in the Internet.

"Repaying taxpayers" in any way is impossible to do fairly. Who knows how much of which taxpayer's money went into infrastructure that eventually helped construct the Internet? Taxpayers pay different amounts in taxes and there are many different kinds of taxes and the money's put into a big pool for all sorts of different invenstments. Many of the taxpayers in the 1970s or whenever are dead now, and it would theoretically have to go to their inheritors. And there are many new taxpayers who's money didn't go to the Internet. Absolutely impossible, just like getting Madoff's victims' money back is impossible.

So, generally speaking, yes, you should leave things as-is, except in areas in which the government is currently involved. There, get the government out.

[kahless]

Net Neutrality freezes technology to what we have right now. Nobody wants to lose their precious Internet so they want to put a halt to innovation to freeze things to the way they are.


Where did you read that, some Neocon conspiracy blog? Show me where in the proposed legislation? :rolleyes:

Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from putting toll boths on their network. I already pay for multiple pipes. I should not have to pay AT&T to maintain traffic across their network. They have publicly stated in the past for doing this as a business model which would effectively destroy the internet we have now.

[torchbearer]

Where did you read that, some Neocon conspiracy blog? Show me where in the proposed legislation? :rolleyes:

Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from putting toll boths on their network. I already pay for multiple pipes. I should not have to pay AT&T to maintain traffic across their network. They have publicly stated in the past for doing this as a business model which would effectively destroy the internet we have now.

I really dislike the idea that government has the authority to tell businesses what to do with their property,

[LibertyMage]

So government regulation of any sort is fascism, but giving the corporations free rein is liberty. I think you need to reconsider history.

I used to be what you would call a "liberal". At one point I opened up my mind to the truths of history. What I found is that every society that was based around central planning has failed. Imperialist Rome, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Communist China. The cost of Communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism) across the world was 75 million people or more. Some of these deaths were due to dictator governments but most were due to centrally planned economies which couldn't even produce enough food to feed their people.

On the other side of the coin, every society that was based off of capitalism has flourished. Ironically, Communist China is now on the path of becoming the worlds leading economy because it has so greatly adopted capitalism. Communist leader Deng Xiaoping is known for reportedly saying "To Get Rich Is Glorious". The Chinese still suffer from a large intrusion on their personal liberties. They are not allowed to view many websites that their government finds disagreeable as the government has banned public access to those sites through internet regulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_ China

One of us has incorrectly accessed history - and it is not myself. Open your mind and do your homework again. Then again, you very well may have an agenda and are here trolling.


No. When we make a mistake — when we make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people through their representatives to correct the mistake, not to continue the mistake!

It is great to see how principles arguments can move from topic to topic and still hold the same truth. Well played. A few points:

1. Alan Grayson came out the other day saying "Fox News is an enemy of America". S. 773 would allow the president to turn off the entire internet. Most of the mainstream media today is just a series of echo chambers. Since the beginning of social history governments have integrated a propaganda machine into media. Other governments prohibit the access of certain sites in their countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_ China). These things considered, do you think the business or the government is more likely to prevent you from accessing sites on a political basis?

2. "Network neutrality" steps on private property rights, which are the basis of liberty. Do you support private property rights?

3. If you support "network neutrality" you will never have a free market approach to ISPs.

[LibertyMage]

Where did you read that, some Neocon conspiracy blog? Show me where in the proposed legislation? :rolleyes:

Companies are currently using products such as Sandvine (http://sandvine.com/) to handle high bandwidth periods of usage to keep costs low by not having to build throughput that is scarcely utilized (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=215801&page=3). The first clause (http://www.publicknowledge.org/pdf/FCC-05-151A1.pdf) of "network neutrality" says it can't do that. How is that unclear?

[kahless]

Apparently, you don't trust individual voluntary exchange.

You are right I do not trust monopolies. AT&T could effectively cripple access hundreds of thousands of websites if they implement their plan to put toll boths at their peering points.

I am all for privatization but sometimes you do need some form of minimal regulation. You are living in a complete fairy tale world believing that private enterprise will never harm public safety. Without regulation we had chemical companies polluting our estuaries. I may not agree with some FDA regulations but regulation is needed when drug companies put profits before safety. For example putting toxic fillers in childrens vaccines to cut costs while knowing it would increase the percentage of childrens deaths)

Have you ever heard of Love Canal? Is that what you want ten fold everywhere in the US without some form of regulation. You are living in an Disney Libertarian fairy tale world instead of looking at the reality of the way things actually work in this world.

[kahless]

I really dislike the idea that government has the authority to tell businesses what to do with their property,

I do not believe it is completely their property. We paid for it with our taxpayer dollars and I am not talking about when it was originally built. It is the billions of dollars of hands outs the telcos have received since then.

It is likely going to pass anyway so you will still be posting here. I could not say the same 5 to 10 years from now if it does not pass. I would suspect the only sites would be Fortune 500 companies that would have the deep pockets to pay every single ISP in the country and management that kind of billing.

[torchbearer]

I do not believe it is completely their property. We paid for it with our taxpayer dollars and I am not talking about when it was originally built. It is the billions of dollars of hands outs the telcos have received since then.

It is likely going to pass anyway so you will still be posting here. I could not say the same 5 to 10 years from now if it does not pass. I would suspect the only sites would be Fortune 500 companies that would have the deep pockets to pay every single ISP in the country and management that kind of billing.

I don't want a nationalized internet, i don't care how much of our money AT&T gets from the public trough.
The answer is to cut at&t off the dole- not to nationalize our fucking infrastructure.

You people are bat-shit insane if you think anything good will come out of giving the government authority over the internet.

[kahless]

I don't want a nationalized internet, i don't care how much of our money AT&T gets from the public trough.
The answer is to cut at&t off the dole- not to nationalize our fucking infrastructure.

Then explain how is "Net Neutrality" nationalizing the internet? Have you read it or have the Neocons scared you into believing that?

[torchbearer]

Then explain how is "Net Neutrality" nationalizing the internet? Have you read it or have the Neocons scared you into believing that?

when the government dictates to a company how it operates, it has taken ownership of that company. The person with the right, has ultimate authority in decision making.
In a world based on property rights, the owners have final say.
So if the government has the final say on how AT&T conducts business, the government is the owner and shareholders are wards to the state.
That is nationalizing the internet.

[kahless]

when the government dictates to a company how it operates, it has taken ownership of that company.

Really. If I had to apply this to reality then the government, whether local, state or federal already owns every company in the US.

The internet is already a private and public partnership. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services and I believe it should stay that way. Like I said earlier I thought the threat of "Net Neutrality" without ever being passed would keep the telcos inline from changing the model we have now. However it looks to me that some day the telcos would totally destroy what we have now due to public comments executives at AT&T have made.

[eOs]

Really. If I had to apply this to reality then the government, whether local, state or federal already owns every company in the US.

The internet is already a private and public partnership. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services and I believe it should stay that way. Like I said earlier I thought the threat of "Net Neutrality" without ever being passed would keep the telcos inline from changing the model we have now. However it looks to me that some day the telcos would totally destroy what we have now due to public comments executives at AT&T have made.

You are in fact putting a gatekeeper in charge of...not allowing gatekeeping. Let me remind you that an article was put out about how Obama wanted 'full control' of the internet in times of emergency. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html) And let me tell you, they define 'emergency' pretty loosely. The war on terror is a national emergency, the H1N1 is a national emergency, just go look at any DHS website and tell me what color code we're on, be afraid, be very afraid of the free market! Regardless of that fact, there is no reason to regulate something for an issue that is non-existent.

[GunnyFreedom]

I am in shock, nay "shock and awe" at finding people on these forums advocating for government regulation of the ONLY PLACE WE HAVE LEFT where we are free to speak our mind and be heard.

Still there is this repeated myth that the government owns taxpayer funded equipment upon which the internet currently resides. That's just absurd! The ONLY thing that the modern Internet continues to rely on from the 50's and 60's ARPANET and the 60's and 70's DARPANET, are the PROTOCOLS that were developed for interconnecting networks, such as tcp/ip and http.

Neither the infrastructure nor the backbone of the Internet has anything to do with these government funded projects from 40, 50, and 60 years ago. ONLY the transfer and hypertext protocol formats continue to exist from that era.

That would mean that the ONLY connection between the modern day Internet and the original ARPA and DARPA interconnected networks would come in the form of "intellectual property" or in other words, 'the idea itself' for interconnecting local networks across a wide area.

So on what basis is this argument that we are Internetting on the backs of multi billions of dollars in taxpayer monies? The fact that we still use "http" in our web addresses? The fact that address are still linked via an "ip" based addressing system?

There is no infrastructure here, no backbone here, only concepts. Intellectual concepts. Even the most ardent supporters of patent law for intellectual properties do not propose that IP patent law cover 50+ years of ownership rights ROFL!

This is like saying "Henry Ford invented the assembly line, so therefore any company in America which uses an assembly line will thus be subject to the manufacturing dicta and regulations of Ford, Inc."

The argument is nonsense on it's face. Mind you, I have zero expectation of NN proponents actually revising their positions -- members of these forums historically are set in their ways and will not change their minds come hell or high water.

Nevertheless, I cannot for the life of me comprehend why people would just invent made up fictitious "facts" (such as the notion that we are traveling on the backs of multiple billions of taxpayer dollars to use the Internet today) in order to advance an argument that we need the government to regulate the very last bastion of free expression that remains on the planet today.

[GunnyFreedom]

The internet is already a private and public partnership.

Do please locate and identify ANY Federal taxpayer-funded equipment which currently comprises portions of the Internet infrastructure and/or backbone. Can you point to ANY single piece of hardware AT ALL that is taxpayer/government owned, and upon which the Internet relies to function?

Just one little NAP? One little server, router, or switch? ANYTHING???

Or is this notion that "[t]he internet is already a private and public partnership" just something from out of the realms of your imagination?

[kahless]

You are in fact putting a gatekeeper in charge of...not allowing gatekeeping. Let me remind you that an article was put out about how Obama wanted 'full control' of the internet in times of emergency. And let me tell you, they define 'emergency' pretty loosely.

"Net Neutrality" has been around long before Obama. Having a bill of rights kind of thing for the internet is one thing but I am very much against any form of control such as you describe. I do not see how one has to do with the other than the Neocons and Beck are now using "Net Neutrality" as just another attack on Obama. Beck is right on many things but here is where I do not believe to two are related.

[NYgs23]

You are right I do not trust monopolies.

There are no "monopolies" in a free market because there is open entry for competition. Come on, kahless, this is Economic Fallacies 101.



AT&T could effectively cripple access hundreds of thousands of websites if they implement their plan to put toll boths at their peering points.


And, assuming a free market, go bankrupt when it loses all its business to Verizon and Comcast.


I am all for privatization but sometimes you do need some form of minimal regulation. You are living in a complete fairy tale world believing that private enterprise will never harm public safety.

I mean I could go to the Huffington Post for this hackneyed old statist rhetoric. If you need "minimal" regulation, why not even more than minimal regulation? If some regulation is good, why not a lot? Who decides? Who has this authority to run other peoples' lives? And please don't say it's the government representing "the people." Even if we did have a "democracy," even if it were possible to have a democracy, that would still be tyranny of the majority. Forget democracy; support individual liberty. No one is allowed to run anyone else's life nor control anyone else's property.

Furthermore, no private institution will ever harm "public safety" (whatever that is), unless the private institution acts aggressively. If there's no aggression, there's no crime, there's no problem that you can correct using force, practically or morally.


Without regulation we had chemical companies polluting our estuaries. I may not agree with some FDA regulations but regulation is needed when drug companies put profits before safety. For example putting toxic fillers in childrens vaccines to cut costs while knowing it would increase the percentage of childrens deaths)

I am so tired of refuting this stuff over and over again. Even here. There is no "our estuaries." If an estuary or other resource is privately owned, it's the owner's right to pollute it. When a resource is held in "common," when everyone owns it, everyone fights over it, and no one cares for it. As for "negative externalities," dumping garbage upstream that pollutes peoples' water downstream, that's just another act of aggression, assuming the people downstream starting using the clean water first; it's an infringement of property rights, a nuisance, and the injured party can sue for payment of damages according to the common law. The same thing with a drug-maker that fraudulently adulterates his medicines with alien substances. Of course, if it is open knowledge that the vaccine contains a toxic filler, why is it the drug-maker's fault if someone knowingly chooses to take it or to have their kid take it.
One-size-fits-all regulations punish the innocent with the guilty, infringe on private property, typically benefit large, favored businesses while shutting out new and small businesses that can't fulfill the regulation, and the government has no more authority to impose its will on other people like this than you or I.


You are living in an Disney Libertarian fairy tale world instead of looking at the reality of the way things actually work in this world.

The old "I'm a realist" argument for statism. You're such a realist/pragmatist that you want to give some arbitrary selection of people a monopoly of aggression over the rest of us, confident that they'll exercise that power justly and competently. I'm sure it will work; it's worked so well for the last 5000 years of human history.



I do not believe it is completely their property. We paid for it with our taxpayer dollars and I am not talking about when it was originally built. It is the billions of dollars of hands outs the telcos have received since then.

If so, then stop giving them handouts. One act of aggression doesn't justify another. It was the government that stole the money. So the fact that the state stole money to help build the Internet gives the state the authority to rule the Internet. I suppose is the state gives stolen money to McDonald's, it therefore has the authority to run McDonald's.


I would suspect the only sites would be Fortune 500 companies that would have the deep pockets to pay every single ISP in the country and management that kind of billing.

Sounds like a great opportunity for a new entrepreneur to come in and found a new ISP for the rest of us.

[eOs]

"Net Neutrality" has been around long before Obama. Having a bill of rights kind of thing for the internet is one thing but I am very much against any form of control such as you describe. I do not see how one has to do with the other than the Neocons and Beck are now using "Net Neutrality" as just another attack on Obama. Beck is right on many things but here is where I do not believe to two are related.

Kahless, address my post(s) when you quote them!.

[kahless]

Do please locate and identify ANY Federal taxpayer-funded equipment which currently comprises portions of the Internet infrastructure and/or backbone. Can you point to ANY single piece of hardware AT ALL that is taxpayer/government owned, and upon which the Internet relies to function?

Just one little NAP? One little server, router, or switch? ANYTHING???

Or is this notion that "[t]he internet is already a private and public partnership" just something from out of the realms of your imagination?

Have not read it but you asked for links and a simple google search shows.

300 Billion Broadband Scandal
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm



Net Neutrality Fact vs Fiction
http://www.freepress.net/files/nn_fact_v_fiction_final.pdf

FACT 6: Telephone companies have received billion of dollars in public subsidies
and private incentives to support network build-out. The phone companies say they
should be able to do as they like with “their pipes.” But they ignore the billions of
dollars in public subsidies and incentives they’ve received over the years that allow
them to dig up public rights-of-way, build rural networks, and write off the
depreciation of their wires. If they gave back even a fraction of the public money they’ve
received, we could build fiber to every home in America.


I have been watching these hand outs since the early 90s. It was like one big black hole and never getting anything in return. We gave them the internet, billions of dollars. and pay them for access. But you think they have a right to start raping us for every transaction on top of that rather than saying to hey keep it open?

We already pay our providers. Can you imagine having to pay every ISP in the country and consumers having to pay depending on type of transaction that crosses AT&Ts network. Imagine in the future checking your bank statement and being hit with a service fee because the network hop you passed crossed over to AT&T who suddenly decides to charge you for SSL traffic.

I am really amazed at Beck. You would think this guy would be the first standing up for "Net Neutrality" since without it I can see his web streams being the first to take a hit from a telco without "Net Neutrality".

[kahless]

Kahless, address my post(s) when you quote them!.

I did :confused: Did you edit something out?

[GunnyFreedom]

I have been watching these hand outs since the early 90s. It was like one big black hole and never getting anything in return. We gave them the internet, billions of dollars. and pay them for access. But you think they have a right to start raping us for every transaction on top of that?

We already pay our providers. Can you imagine having to pay every ISP in the country and consumers having to pay depending on type of transaction that crosses AT&Ts network. Imagine in the future checking your bank statement and being hit with a service fee because the network hop you passed crossed over to AT&T who suddenly decides to charge you for SSL traffic.

I am really amazed at Beck. You would think this guy would be the first standing up for "Net Neutrality" since without it I can see his web streams being the first to take a hit from a telco without "Net Neutrality".

Um. What does Beck have to do with anything?

Here is a map of every router connected to the internet (public side of ISP terminations) in the entirety of North America:

http://www.glenbradley.net/files/materials/Internet_map_labels_0.pdf

Any GSE equipment in there? If so, could you please point it out to me?

And with regards to the PDF you posted, as a self employed network technician, I can write off my work vehicle depreciation on my taxes at the end of every year, does that mean that you, the taxpayer owns my truck?

It looks like the vast vast majority of these multi-billion dollar "handouts" described therein come from write-offs for depreciation, and access to property easements to bury/hang cable.

Of course what fails to get mentioned is that these easements already existed for power and telephone cabling, and that very few (if any!) new easements have been granted. It is, of course, disingenuous to assert that burying privately-purchased cable in a PREEXISTING power easement be treated as a brand-new easement for valuation purposes.

Your argument that because telcos got 'bailed out' under Clinton means we need to regulate the hell out of them reminds me of this notion that because GM got 'bailed out' under Obama means the government should own and run Chrysler.

The truth is that there are no GSE's involved in the internet, the vast majority of handouts came in the form of tax reductions (bad enough as it is, but decidedly NOT an influx of taxpayer monies) and the use-grants of largely PREEXISTING easements for power and telephone (again, bad enough for what it is, but decidedly NOT new grants of eminent domain) and whatever bad policies led Clinton/Gore to provide cash bailouts for telcos in the 90's were paid back when the dot.com bubble they created, burst, and that investment evaporated into the thin air from whence it came.

The very notion that we should regulate the internet...let me say this again, the LAST AREA OF COMPLETELY FREE EXPRESSION LEFT TO AMERICANS, is positively abhorrent!

[LibertyMage]

I have been watching these hand outs since the early 90s. It was like one big black hole and never getting anything in return. We gave them the internet, billions of dollars. and pay them for access. But you think they have a right to start raping us for every transaction on top of that rather than saying to hey keep it open?

We already pay our providers. Can you imagine having to pay every ISP in the country and consumers having to pay depending on type of transaction that crosses AT&Ts network. Imagine in the future checking your bank statement and being hit with a service fee because the network hop you passed crossed over to AT&T who suddenly decides to charge you for SSL traffic.

I am really amazed at Beck. You would think this guy would be the first standing up for "Net Neutrality" since without it I can see his web streams being the first to take a hit from a telco without "Net Neutrality".

Wrong! You got something in return for you tax dollars...local monopolies!

I work for an internet providing MSO and I have never seen a business model in which different users paid different prices for different content. "Unlimited access" has been the motto for 15 years and it won't change anytime soon. You are chasing ghosts.

You ignore every political and economic precedent in history when you argue that government market intervention should only beget more government intervention...until we have a free market. That is logical non-sense.

The fact of the matter is this:

No questionable practice or product has been tolerated on the market. Consumers have been able to change business policy every time.

No practice of censorship has been challenged or knocked down in countries where governments censor content. Citizens have been able to do nothing.

Which reality do you want to live under?

[kahless]

No practice of censorship has been challenged or knocked down in countries where governments censor content.

Where did you read in any proposed bill "censorship of content"? Without "Net Neutrality" or some form on internet bill of rights we risk the telcos instituting policies that result in censorship.

To GunnyFreedom. Those routers would not exist if it was not for the taxpayers giving away the internet and the billions in upgrades.

300 Billion Broadband Scandal
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm

[eOs]

I spyyyyyyy a hidden agenda

[kahless]

I spyyyyyyy a hidden agenda

LibertyMage has been open clearly stating who he works for therefore I would not call it hidden.


I work for an internet providing MSO...

He however denies the business model his employers or that of his competitors have been speaking of to completely transform the internet in the future.

[eOs]

LibertyMage has been open clearly stating who he works for therefore I would not call it hidden.



He however denies the business model his employers or that of his competitors have been speaking of to completely transform the internet in the future.

actually I was talking about you. This entire forum is in line with open free markets, why come here and debate an underlying principle of ron paul and this forum?

[torchbearer]

Gunny, Mage, and myself are all in the network business. Maybe you should listen to people who know what they are talking about?
Our hands keep the internet running, not the governments benevolent hand of godliness.

[morran]

I didn't expect to see blind trust in government and socialist nonsense on RPF. I don't really mind it, it's good to see some counter-arguments presented against the freedom case.

[GunnyFreedom]

Where did you read in any proposed bill "censorship of content"? Without "Net Neutrality" or some form on internet bill of rights we risk the telcos instituting policies that result in censorship.

To GunnyFreedom. Those routers would not exist if it was not for the taxpayers giving away the internet and the billions in upgrades.

300 Billion Broadband Scandal
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm

Per your link, "The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household." That's higher phone rates and tax perks. That's obviously a lot different than a cash bailout, which is what you CONTINUE to insinuate. And it seems that the link you provided is so certain of their facts that they cannot actually decide whether it was $200 BN or $300 BN in these increased rates and tax breaks.

And apparently this abject failure in government policy (re: higher rates and tax breaks in exchange for an agreement to install more fiber) was the direct result of FCC incompetence. So your answer to abject FCC incompetence is to grant the FCC even MORE power to regulate private Internet Service Providers?? ROFL!

It should be a no-brainer that it would be a bad idea reward FCC incompetence with more power so that they can be incompetent on a much larger level. LOL!

And with regards to whether or not this will lead to content censorship, remember that the ORIGINAL charter of the FCC was to regulate the basic usage of airwaves and broadcast frequencies. Clearly they regulate broadcast content today, despite the original intent of the agency. Likewise if the allow the FCC access to regulate the Internet "access only" (pretty much identical to the FCC's original purpose WRT broadcast media) then just like they have come to censor content on broadcast radio and television, so also will they come to censor content over the Internet.

To fail to see the parallels between the FCC being granted original authority over broadcast media and what has happened subsequently over the years, and the FCC being given the same access over Internetworked media without at least anticipating the likelihood of following the same course, is mind-boggling in the extreme.

[LibertyMage]

Where did you read in any proposed bill "censorship of content"? Without "Net Neutrality" or some form on internet bill of rights we risk the telcos instituting policies that result in censorship.

To GunnyFreedom. Those routers would not exist if it was not for the taxpayers giving away the internet and the billions in upgrades.

300 Billion Broadband Scandal
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm

I commented on two different realities: one where the businesses put forth questionable practices (and were defeated by consumers) and one where the government controlled the media its citizens consumed (and has never been defeated). This is one of the linchpins of the entire argument and you continue to ignore it, a key sign your argument is weak.

I am not going to continue to make points on this thread just to have you ignore them. This is an internet forum and my return on investment will eventually go to zero if you are just going to avoid facts.

Just know this: the principle of acting before there is a problem can be used to justify every intrusion into our liberties that you can think of. Terrorists are going to kill us so we need the Patriot Act. The economy is going to crash so we need to be robbed to bail out billionaires. People are going to die of H1N1 so we need mandatory immunizations. Insurance companies are going kill grandma so we need public health care and rationing. This list could go on forever.

You have no internet bill of rights just like you have no health care bill of rights. This principle is at the very heart of liberty and every proponent of liberty going back 100 years has supported it. The is certainly a century of economic and political precedent to show that reasoning. I think you need to consider that it is possible you are wrong and do some more reading on the topic.

[Vessol]

I'd be against net neutrality if it actually threatened the free market. But considering that the ISP market is anything but free, net neutrality is the lesser evil.

[dannno]

I'd be against net neutrality if it actually threatened the free market. But considering that the ISP market is anything but free, net neutrality is the lesser evil.

The person who writes the net neutrality bill and the legislation that it will make way for will not be unlike the character in your avatar. That should be reason enough to be against it.

[dannno]

I had an idea once to create an ISP that was completely wireless, an ad-hoc backbone made up of homes with wireless transievers...each home would get a discount on their bill (or get paid) based upon the amount of traffic going over their line (encouraging people to buy bigger and better transievers to pass more traffic). With Net Neutrality I'd run into crazy laws that wouldn't make it worth trying.



That's an excellent idea, though you'd have to deal with security of the data going over other people's lines I guess some sort of encryption could be developed (or maybe already has been)..

But ya, you're right, net neutrality would put a freeze on many emerging technologies that could ultimately make the internet better and less expensive.

[GunnyFreedom]

Actually, some regulations on ham-band broadcast signals were recently relaxed, and I was toying with the idea of setting up a kind of quasi ad-hoc ham-band community based WAN with distributed supercomputing options and "shared connection" based wide pipes.

Say take the nucleus of a neighborhood and set up a ham-band internet being fed from the NOC by a T1. Everybody within direct range of the nucleus can set up a XMIT/RCV radio box on channel and connect to the community WAN, install a cycle sharing app to grant access to a virtual supercomputer, and anybody who wanted to maintain an independent ISP cnx could have user fees reduced in the system by sharing their bandwidth to the nucleus.

It's kind of a "distributed supercomputing/distributed supernetworking" model, and if you assume that 30% of the users in a system of 1500 residences will choose to maintain their own ISP and contribute to the bandwidth, while maybe 60% of users will contribute idle cycles, then those who fully participate will have access to something like T3 or even T4 (for communities of 5000 or more) level bandwidth, and a virtual supercomputer in the tens of terahertz.

Of course, as mentioned above, there would be some security considerations...

[Pants]

I guess I have mixed feelings about this.. I have a work at home job that REQUIRES an internet connection. I am sure more people will be in the work at home industry in the near future. There are certain types of internet providers that will simply not work with my system.. (blocked ports, certain applications blocked, and other connectivity issues).. The only gripe I have is internet providers should tell you what they are blocking before you order service.. It should not be order service and use trial and error if the service works for you or not..

The person taking my order and answering the phone at the internet provider has absolutely no idea what I am talking about when I ask if the service is open.. or what ports they block.


I am not a huge nut for regulations.. But Cable and satellite tv is regulated. They can't suddenly shut off a channel with no notice. They must give you 30 days notice. If an internet provider decides to shut off a port.. They should give you 30 days notification the port will be shut off. There are a lot of businesses and individuals who now depend on the internet for revenue.. One port being blocked without notice can totally shut down a company.. And it usually takes days to change providers.


I am not really into internet regulations.. but I think an internet provider should be required to give a direct answer before you order service or sign a contract what is blocked. When you call customer service they should freely have that information available. I think an internet provider should notify you in writing and give 30 days notice before they block something. Also I feel that if they block a port and your internet is no longer useful, that should be ground to terminate your contract. Those are the only regulations that should be enacted.

[NYgs23]

I don't understand why it's so hard for so many folks to understand that if there were a free market in telecommunications, you could change your provider if you didn't like the one you had. That would render this hypothetical problem that doesn't even exist even in the current market totally moot.

[GunnyFreedom]

The person taking my order and answering the phone at the internet provider has absolutely no idea what I am talking about when I ask if the service is open.. or what ports they block.

Oh I've been through it before, it's not all that hard. I can't imagine an ISP actually willfully /refusing/ to disclose which services they offer before selling you a package. It's just a matter of talking to a technician instead of a billing/sales/admin worker bee.

"Thank you for calling megacorp intarwebz, can I interest you in our premium package?"

"Hello, maybe, I am considering purchasing your internet service. Can you tell me if you block downstream access to port 6425?"

"I don't know what that means to be honest, but our premium package is only $59.95 a month for a limited time if you sign up RIGHT NOW!"

"I'm sorry, but I require port 6425 to operate my home business, and internet service is useless to me without it, whether premium or otherwise. I suggest if you actually want my business that you connect me immediately with someone who knows what 'port 6425' means and is familiar with whether or not you are blocking it."

"Certainly sir, please hold while I connect you with technical support."


ETA:

In fact, most of the "bigger" ISP's and Telco's will have a separate "pre-sales" tech support department, entirely separate from their "post-sales" tech support department, for just that very purpose. Mind you the rationale for splitting the support departments is actually to streamline BACK into sales once your question is answered, but even the smaller ISP's will send you to their ordinary support staff if they do not have a separate division.

[kahless]

I don't understand why it's so hard for so many folks to understand that if there were a free market in telecommunications, you could change your provider if you didn't like the one you had. That would render this hypothetical problem that doesn't even exist even in the current market totally moot.

No, since what they are proposing as a future business model will effect you regardless of switching providers. You can switch providers all you like but if the site I am accessing or the user that is trying to access my site at some point hops across the AT&T network I could be billed for that access or have to setup some agreement so my traffic would pass. If every ISP implements this plan you would need agreements with hundreds if not thousands of providers to maintain the access you have now.

If the telcos did not start threatening to transform the internet with this new business model you likely would not have Amazon.com, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo and thousands of other sites promoting "Net Neutrality" bills.

[Pants]

What if your phone company decided to block you from calling certain phone numbers for your business? When you call.. You hear a recording saying the number you dialed is restricted.. Its not YOUR network.
I do feel that an internet provider should be required to provide you with a list of blocked ports. It should be provided in writing with the agreement you sign when you initiate service. Changes to your service should be notified in writing and give you time to either close out your contract, fix the problem on your own, or move to another provider. Those are the only restrictions I approve of.

I had an internet provider all of a sudden add a spam filter without notice. I had dozens of business related emails go into a spam filter. I didn't realize it until several weeks later when I logged into the web based e-mail program and saw a spam folder. I actually had some lost revenue over it. Shouldn't it be fair the provider notifies you of that change? But this is probably going into territory the Net Neutrality law doesn't cover.. :)








Oh I've been through it before, it's not all that hard. I can't imagine an ISP actually willfully /refusing/ to disclose which services they offer before selling you a package. It's just a matter of talking to a technician instead of a billing/sales/admin worker bee.

"Thank you for calling megacorp intarwebz, can I interest you in our premium package?"

"Hello, maybe, I am considering purchasing your internet service. Can you tell me if you block downstream access to port 6425?"

"I don't know what that means to be honest, but our premium package is only $59.95 a month for a limited time if you sign up RIGHT NOW!"

"I'm sorry, but I require port 6425 to operate my home business, and internet service is useless to me without it, whether premium or otherwise. I suggest if you actually want my business that you connect me immediately with someone who knows what 'port 6425' means and is familiar with whether or not you are blocking it."

"Certainly sir, please hold while I connect you with technical support."


ETA:

In fact, most of the "bigger" ISP's and Telco's will have a separate "pre-sales" tech support department, entirely separate from their "post-sales" tech support department, for just that very purpose. Mind you the rationale for splitting the support departments is actually to streamline BACK into sales once your question is answered, but even the smaller ISP's will send you to their ordinary support staff if they do not have a separate division.

[silverhandorder]

No, since what they are proposing as a future business model will effect you regardless of switching providers. You can switch providers all you like but if the site I am accessing or the user that is trying to access my site at some point hops across the AT&T network I could be billed for that access or have to setup some agreement so my traffic would pass. If every ISP implements this plan you would need agreements with hundreds if not thousands of providers to maintain the access you have now.

If the telcos did not start threatening to transform the internet with this new business model you likely would not have Amazon.com, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo and thousands of other sites promoting "Net Neutrality" bills.

That would devastate their sales across the board. You do realize they work with each other now for that very reason. If they were denying each other passage then all of them would need networks everywhere. They can't achieve that. For AT&T to use that approach it would effectively end AT&T.

[silverhandorder]

What if your phone company decided to block you from calling certain phone numbers for your business? When you call.. You hear a recording saying the number you dialed is restricted.. Its not YOUR network.
I do feel that an internet provider should be required to provide you with a list of blocked ports. It should be provided in writing with the agreement you sign when you initiate service. Changes to your service should be notified in writing and give you time to either close out your contract, fix the problem on your own, or move to another provider. Those are the only restrictions I approve of.

I had an internet provider all of a sudden add a spam filter without notice. I had dozens of business related emails go into a spam filter. I didn't realize it until several weeks later when I logged into the web based e-mail program and saw a spam folder. I actually had some lost revenue over it. Shouldn't it be fair the provider notifies you of that change? But this is probably going into territory the Net Neutrality law doesn't cover.. :)

Aw common these problems are not because of the provider but because you are inexperienced in this area. If anything this is the learning curve for you. These things can easily be avoided on your side.

Of course you can take offense to what the internet provider did. But I hardly think your gripe is viable. I don't think most consumers would care.

However if you are right about more people taking their business to internet it may very well result in internet providers adopting what you suggested. Or consumer groups developing to assist you with this.

[dwdollar]

The government tries to fix things that aren't broken. Then when something does break after the government "fixed" it, they point the finger at everyone else.

How hard is this to understand???

[NYgs23]

No, since what they are proposing as a future business model will effect you regardless of switching providers. You can switch providers all you like but if the site I am accessing or the user that is trying to access my site at some point hops across the AT&T network I could be billed for that access or have to setup some agreement so my traffic would pass. If every ISP implements this plan you would need agreements with hundreds if not thousands of providers to maintain the access you have now.

I already responded to you on this and you didn't reply to that post. I said that if, assuming a free market, AT&T tried that, they'd lose business to their competitors. So would any other provider. And, yes, a realize we don't have a free market in telecommunications, but the way to solve that problem isn't by moving even further away from a free market, but towards one!

I also keep bringing up the morality of property rights. Assuming that AT&T legitimately owns that infrastructure, it has the right, the absolute, sovereign authority, to manage how it wants, and, therefore, no one else has the right to dictate to it how to manage its own property, anymore than I have the right to force you to allow or not to allow certain people on your own property. And if AT&T is not the legitimate owner of that infrastructure, then the actual owner to that property should be found, and he will have absolute, sovereign authority over it. And if the true legitimate owner cannot be found, if no one dispute AT&T's claim, then the property must be assumed to be abandoned and therefore open to new ownership on a first use basis, and the first user will, of course, be AT&T and AT&T will be the the owner anyway. So no matter how you slice it, there is an owner, and the owner has the absolute right to boot whoever he wants off of his property. And if his customers do not like it, they will have the freedom to take their business elsewhere. Case closed.

[kahless]

I already responded to you on this and you didn't reply to that post. I said that if, assuming a free market, AT&T tried that, they'd lose business to their competitors. So would any other provider. And, yes, a realize we don't have a free market in telecommunications, but the way to solve that
problem isn't by moving even further away from a free market, but towards one!


You obviously do not understand how internet routing works. If they own one point in the network or part of the backbone switching competitors does nothing for you since you may still need to traverse the AT&T network to get to or from the target destination. You could go through 20 hops (encountering 10 different companies) to get to or from a destination and at any time may or may not traverse the AT&T network.

You cannot have one company claiming they own the internet and institute their own policies. If every company on each hop decided to do that the internet as we know would cease to function as it is now. This is what needs to be prevented or you and I would not have the ability to be posting here.

[GunnyFreedom]

You obviously do not understand how internet routing works. If they own one point in the network or part of the backbone switching competitors does nothing for you since you may still need to traverse the AT&T network to get to or from the target destination. You could go through 20 hops (encountering 10 different companies) to get to or from a destination and at any time may or may not traverse the AT&T network.

You cannot have one company claiming they own the internet and institute their own policies. If every company on each hop decided to do that the internet as we know would cease to function as it is now. This is what needs to be prevented or you and I would not have the ability to be posting here.

ROFL! who doesn't know how the internet works, exactly? If AT&T starts charging special fees for for transient traffic, then packets will just get routed through Sprint instead, with pretty much zero loss. Other ISP's will stop peering with AT&T because they have started charging for transient traffic, and AT&T customers will go elsewhere as their customers start getting messages like "Destination host unreachable"

It's not as though any one company holds the only paths in or out of any area of the Internet EXCEPT for their own hosting clients, and the ONLY people that would be affected by your scenario is AT&T's own clients who would very quickly go elsewhere, and AT&T -- yes, even AT&T would go bankrupt.

The internet backbone is more correctly described as a "cloud" and not a 'spine' as some people might imagine from the name. There are a dozen different paths to from a client to ANY given server, and if one starts misbehaving, then you can bet your bottom dollar they will lose their peers.

Say your scenario is true, and AT&T starts charging an extra premium for packets traversing their equipment. Mind you there is no reason to do this as such traffic is in no danger of overwhelming anybodies bandwidth, but let's just say for the sake of argument that they do start doing this for whatever reason. The ISP's that AT&T are attempting to charge for extra peering service just blacklist the AT&T IP ranges and now packets travel across Qwest instead. The end user notices zero difference (well, maybe a few milliseconds latency measurable only by meters and equipment), the server they are accessing notices no difference, and the users ISP continues on their merry way without paying AT&T a dime -- plus they will probably pull their peering curcuits and tell AT&T to go stuff themselves and see how their customers like being isolated to the AT&T networks.

You just don't seem to get it. Peering /adds/ value, and the idea of charging extra fees for peering is insane.

How many times do you have to be told the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over?

Would I charge my coffeeshop a fee because they provided a wireless for my laptop? Would I demand that they hand me a dollar because I intend to use their cream and sugar in my coffee? Would I charge another website for linking to my blog? OH NOES! I MIGHT GET TRAFFIC!

You've got it all upside down and backwards, fella, and for you to charge someone else as though they "obviously don't know how the internet works" is chutzpa at best, and probably something a lot darker than that.

I'd LOVE to see AT&T try and start charging for traversing traffic across their peer networks. They are long overdue for a chapter eleven...

[NYgs23]

You obviously do not understand how internet routing works. If they own one point in the network or part of the backbone switching competitors does nothing for you since you may still need to traverse the AT&T network to get to or from the target destination. You could go through 20 hops (encountering 10 different companies) to get to or from a destination and at any time may or may not traverse the AT&T network.

I admit I'm not an expert on Internet technology. However, I do not accept that any new technology transcends the laws of economics. So let's say AT&T decides to restrict its routing infrastructure to Verizon and Comcast users. Verizon quickly finds ways around AT&T's restrictions. Comcast does not. Guess which one gets all the business between them?

The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ever will. I can't tell you exactly what solutions it would come up with in all circumstances, but human beings are terrific problem solvers. If there is a large enough demand for a completely open Internet (and I think there is), clever entrepreneurs will find a way to provide a completely open Internet. Otherwise, an excellent profit opportunity is being missed.

Aggression, on the other hand, just begets more aggression, sows dissension, creates inefficiencies, and makes things more expensive. Always. And even if not, even with aggression could make something faster or cheaper or more efficient, it wouldn't matter because aggression is always immoral, and the ends don't justify the means.

[dannno]

You obviously do not understand how internet routing works. If they own one point in the network or part of the backbone switching competitors does nothing for you since you may still need to traverse the AT&T network to get to or from the target destination. You could go through 20 hops (encountering 10 different companies) to get to or from a destination and at any time may or may not traverse the AT&T network.

You cannot have one company claiming they own the internet and institute their own policies. If every company on each hop decided to do that the internet as we know would cease to function as it is now. This is what needs to be prevented or you and I would not have the ability to be posting here.

No, you don't understand how agile the internet is. If AT&T starts charging too much for bandwidth, people will just switch to another service. The other services can increase their capacity and instead of having traffic go through AT&T's backbone, it will go through new backbones that will spring up out of demand. It's just hardware. Remember the internet is a web. It doesn't HAVE to go through anywhere, unless the government says so..Or people who are downloading bit torrents in the background will just have to suffer a little so that real-time services like VOIP can become more valuable for the telcoms as well as consumers.

[Naraku]

The problem here is everyone assumes the only agenda of the telecoms is to make money. In fact, all the major corporations have political interests and implement corporate policies to aid those interests.

While a telecom corporation could cut access to a site or server with unpopular political views and cite business interests, regardless of whether it was actually about bandwidth, similar government action would not be allowed on constitutional ground.

Something like the Internet should not be free for anyone to control and while the Constitution limits the government, no similar limitations exist for business.

[LibertyMage]

The problem here is everyone assumes the only agenda of the telecoms is to make money. In fact, all the major corporations have political interests and implement corporate policies to aid those interests.

While a telecom corporation could cut access to a site or server with unpopular political views and cite business interests, regardless of whether it was actually about bandwidth, similar government action would not be allowed on constitutional ground.

Something like the Internet should not be free for anyone to control and while the Constitution limits the government, no similar limitations exist for business.

The telecoms did block content and people lost their minds until the companies stopped. Nobody has ever stopped government censorship.

No business or individual can "control" the internet. You can only "control" the servers or pipes that you own. That is the nature of the internet. The government, on the other hand, can control the entire internet with a single law, which they are trying to do with S. 773.

The constitution does not limit the government. That fact that they are even considering "net neutrality" is proof of that. See the thread about Pelosi's recent comments in this very forum for another example.

The power is in the hands of the people only if property rights are protected. The companies tried blocking content and we told them we wouldn't stand for it. Have the Chinese ever been able to stand up against their government censorship? Nope.

[TastyWheat]

You think ISPs do this just to be dicks or because they're getting pressured from outside groups? People that watch HD video streams, listen to HD radio, and run BitTorrent all day long are costing the ISPs a lot of money. They'll have no choice but to charge by the megabyte instead of flat rates. Not to mention up and coming ISPs will have a harder time offering comparable service if they can't discriminate against certain types of wasteful traffic.

[kahless]

You think ISPs do this just to be dicks or because they're getting pressured from outside groups? People that watch HD video streams, listen to HD radio, and run BitTorrent all day long are costing the ISPs a lot of money. They'll have no choice but to charge by the megabyte instead of flat rates. Not to mention up and coming ISPs will have a harder time offering comparable service if they can't discriminate against certain types of wasteful traffic.

What do you think the internet is used for? Customers are using the internet for what it was intended. If you advertise to your users unlimited access and video streaming what do you expect the users to do. I am not going to cry if the bandwidth shell game is a failure for some ISPs that did not build to handle capacity and are unable to compete. I am not buying into it when we see companies like Verizon and Cablevision here furiously competing for subscribers here NY to provide exactly what you describe. If Cablevision instituted metered billing they would bleed even more subscribers to Verizon FIOS who has the capacity. Instead they are continually upgrading their network to stay competitive with Verizon. In this scenario the real threat is if both parties institute metered billing and through regulation shut out any competition.

[torchbearer]

I remember a time when ISPs charged by the email sent.
Consumers won the battle.
Free markets work. Government force in the private sector does not work.

[kahless]

Furthermore, no private institution will ever harm "public safety" (whatever that is), unless the private institution acts aggressively. If there's no aggression, there's no crime, there's no problem that you can correct using force, practically or morally.

I am so tired of refuting this stuff over and over again. Even here. There is no "our estuaries." If an estuary or other resource is privately owned, it's the owner's right to pollute it. When a resource is held in "common," when everyone owns it, everyone fights over it, and no one cares for it. As for "negative externalities," dumping garbage upstream that pollutes peoples' water downstream, that's just another act of aggression, assuming the people downstream starting using the clean water first; it's an infringement of property rights, a nuisance, and the injured party can sue for payment of damages according to the common law.

.. snipped remaining collectivist rant....


You are living in a fairly tale world if you actually believe that. In the real world the injured party cannot do crap since the company all too often declares bankruptcy protection or goes out of business. If that is not the case the company is in the back pocket of the political parties or crime syndicate. So ultimately there is no recourse or recourse plays out and never gets resolved - tied up in courts for a lifetime. Meanwhile the local water supply or wells are contaminated for a life time or more.

The clean up effort then gets left to the towns which means I end up paying for their mess through higher property taxes. If have seen this scenario played out repeatedly here in NY with big name corporations and the local crime syndicates.

In the real world basic common sense environmental regulation is needed. Without the rule of law you end up with mob rule whether it is the local crime syndicate or just a bunch of guys in suits that have a nice familiar corporate name.

[dannno]

You can't pollute an estuary... they have outlets to the ocean.

You can't pollute a watershed or even alter a watershed as it can damage and alter the entire coastline to which it leads.

I believe we need to have private ownership of LAND, for the purpose of living and agriculture, but there is no reason to own a beach, bluffs directly above said beach (to be used for transportation along the coastline) or estuaries. You can build a dock on one. You can build a pier. You can build an oil rig. You treat all of those things like boats. Just because you own a boat on the ocean, doesn't mean you own the part of the ocean you are on. A person can own a dock, but not the beach it is on. They have private property rights as far as who can go onto the dock, but not who can walk along the beach by the dock. They can own a oil rig, but not the ocean floor they built it on. Somebody can buy the rig and tear it down, but they no longer own the ocean property it was on, they just own the parts of the rig they bought..so if somebody wants to put up a better oil rig than what is there, they can buy the old rig and tear it down and put in a new one.

This is where the state, who represents the people, should protect these resources through the people. I should be able to go to court and say, "Yo, these people are polluting this river that leads to the ocean".. The Judge should be able to understand plain english, and if I prove my case then I as an individual or individuals represent the state and can sue the polluter at no cost, so long as I can provide evidence up front. I shouldn't need a lawyer to speak fancy language. I might need a scientist. The polluter might want a lawyer and he better get a scientist. But it's really that easy for us to protect that which cannot be owned. I live on the coast, and owning beach property or property anywhere near the beach is often disastrous for the coastline, which is a shared resource.

It's very difficult to pollute your own land without eventually have that pollution seep to other people's land. If you can contain the pollution indefinitely, then you can pollute the land.

[Galileo Galilei]

Free markets work. Government force in the private sector does not work.

The New World Order also works. Central control of the communications networks is the most important element of the New World Order.

[torchbearer]

The New World Order also works. Central control of the communications networks is the most important element of the New World Order.

central planning doesn't work. eventually the mis-direction of resources will force it to end. You should know that- history tells this lesson over and over.

[kahless]

You can't pollute an estuary... they have outlets to the ocean.

You can't pollute a watershed or even alter a watershed as it can damage and alter the entire coastline to which it leads.

I believe we need to have private ownership of LAND, for the purpose of living and agriculture, but there is no reason to own a beach, bluffs directly above said beach (to be used for transportation along the coastline) or estuaries. You can build a dock on one. You can build a pier. You can build an oil rig. You treat all of those things like boats. Just because you own a boat on the ocean, doesn't mean you own the part of the ocean you are on. A person can own a dock, but not the beach it is on. They have private property rights as far as who can go onto the dock, but not who can walk along the beach by the dock. They can own a oil rig, but not the ocean floor they built it on. Somebody can buy the rig and tear it down, but they no longer own the ocean property it was on, they just own the parts of the rig they bought..so if somebody wants to put up a better oil rig than what is there, they can buy the old rig and tear it down and put in a new one.

This is where the state, who represents the people, should protect these resources through the people. I should be able to go to court and say, "Yo, these people are polluting this river that leads to the ocean".. The Judge should be able to understand plain english, and if I prove my case then I as and individual represent the state and can sue the polluter at no cost. I shouldn't need a lawyer to speak fancy language. I might need a scientist. The polluter might want a lawyer. But it's really that easy for us to protect that which cannot be owned. I live on the coast, and owning beach property or property anywhere near the beach is often disastrous for the coastline, which is a shared resource.

It's very difficult to pollute your own land without eventually have that pollution seep to other people's land. If you can contain the pollution indefinitely, then you can pollute the land.

I was generalizing and probably should have picked a better example of body of water rather than an estuary. However contaminants can build up in the sediment of an estuary and result in higher levels of the contaminent in some aquatic life.

As to your point, General Electric for example uses the defense that there were no environmental laws in place when they polluted so there is no reason for them to clean anything up. This is what you avoid when you have environmental regulation. The example you describe the polluter can still use that as a defense.
.

[Galileo Galilei]

central planning doesn't work. eventually the mis-direction of resources will force it to end. You should know that- history tells this lesson over and over.

You are right, central planning doesn't work.

But the New World Order does central planning anyway. Part of their plan is to fleece taxpayers under the guise of Net Neutrality, then pull the rug out from under the carpet, and yell "free market"!

[dannno]

As to your point, General Electric for example uses the defense that there were no environmental laws in place when they polluted so there is no reason for them to clean anything up. This is what you avoid when you have environmental regulation. The example you describe the polluter can still use that as a defense.
.

No, no, no, it's PRECISELY the opposite!!

If you depend on government to 'regulate' the environment, then even if they are benevolent regulators they will STILL always be behind the ball, trying to play catch up with polluters.. So you will get this scenario you have above, where GE claims that there were no regulations against what they were doing, so they weren't doing anything wrong..

In a society with property rights being protected, you don't NEED a law saying that GE can't pollute a specific toxic or a certain way, because they are damaging other people's property so they can be prosecuted no matter what type of pollution is being caused. Regulation is actually what the polluters stand behind to defend their polluting ways!!

Not only that the regulations become centralized and end up being written by GE.. So they are following their own regulations.. they are self-regulated when we should be protecting the property rights of everyone!

[Elwar]

In the real world basic common sense environmental regulation is needed. Without the rule of law you end up with mob rule whether it is the local crime syndicate or just a bunch of guys in suits that have a nice familiar corporate name.

Ok, I think I see what's going on here...

do you believe in private property? Or are you a big fan of the "commons"

Who did you support in 2008?

[JeNNiF00F00]

Anyone that believes in the NWO and Net Neutrality is only asking for a death wish.

[Galileo Galilei]

Anyone that believes in the NWO and Net Neutrality is only asking for a death wish.

The NWO is not an organization. It is a label.

The NWO opposes a free market, that is why they oppose Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Lew Rockwell, the Libertarian Party, etc.

The NWO does use free market rhetoric occassionally, when it is convenient for them; and one case is their opposition to Net Neutrality. They basically oppose one minor regulation that already exists, while forgetting the millions of other regulations that will go on.

You've been duped.

[dannno]

The NWO does use free market rhetoric occassionally, when it is convenient for them; and one case is their opposition to Net Neutrality. They basically oppose one minor regulation that already exists, while forgetting the millions of other regulations that will go on.

You've been duped.

No, the NWO is for Net Neutrality, you've been duped. They play this game all the time.. They make the big bad corporate giants appear to support the free market alternative so that the masses will get behind government legislation that will ultimately be written by the telecoms.

[Galileo Galilei]

No, the NWO is for Net Neutrality, you've been duped. They play this game all the time.. They make the big bad corporate giants appear to support the free market alternative so that the masses will get behind government legislation that will ultimately be written by the telecoms.

No, you have been duped. Alex Jones is the leading expert on the NWO. He says the NWO opposes Net Neutrality.

[teacherone]

No, you have been duped. Alex Jones is the leading expert on the NWO. He says the NWO opposes Net Neutrality.

lol:D

[dannno]

No, you have been duped. Alex Jones is the leading expert on the NWO. He says the NWO opposes Net Neutrality.

Are you sure about that??

http://www.infowars.com/obama-plans-internet-grab-fcc-to-embrace-net-neutrality/

[kahless]

Ok, I think I see what's going on here...

do you believe in private property? Or are you a big fan of the "commons"

Who did you support in 2008?

I believe in private property that I actually own and not rent from government through property taxes. I also want to be able to drink my well water, breath fresh air on my property and live off the land without it being permanently polluted by my neighbor.

When I use the internet which is basically a co-op I should not be subject to censorship of my beliefs from government or any company. This may at some point need to be protected under some form of an internet bill of rights by the government. The government created the internet and it is critical infrastructure. This rather than an independent organization with possibly foreign influence or decision making power that can put our critical infrastructure at risk or civil liberties at risk.

I am going to catch hell for the above but these same pure Libertarians that would shoot that down sound like they could apply the same argument for tearing up the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As for who I supported in 2008, I supported Ron Paul in the primary and voted for Barr in the Presidential election.


Anyone that believes in the NWO and Net Neutrality is only asking for a death wish.

Who believes in the NWO or Net Neutrality? First of all I think this is the first mention of NWO in this thread and do not see how it applies here.

My first posts on "Net Neutrality" I said it may not be needed yet and that the threat of it is keeping the telcos in line from heavily censoring content, restricting access and double billing customers who have already paid for bandwidth with their provider.

I am not an expert on the details of it and are not 100% convinced either way. I have tried to read through it and posted here to see if someone can pull out something in that is actually a concern and not a conspiracy theory. There are some things that sound vague to me that I believe would be a serious concern and what also scares me is the fact that it would be handled by the FCC.

People in this thread bring up competition however monopolies do a good job keeping out the competition. This is why some areas one telco is the only game allowed in town. I am therefore likely leaning more on the side of "Net Neutrality" since IMHO without it I fear a telco heavily censored internet where the only sites that can afford a future new bandwidth billing model are Fortune 500 companies. (a second dot com bust). But we do not seem to be anywhere near this being a problem yet so I would rather just let it continued to be debated until it is.

[Galileo Galilei]

Are you sure about that??

http://www.infowars.com/obama-plans-internet-grab-fcc-to-embrace-net-neutrality/

Net Neutrality Bill Passes

George Washington’s Blog
Friday, Jan 16, 2009

Net neutrality provisions were snuck into the bill signed by Congress today releasing the last $350 billion of the Tarp bailout money.

The $350 billion will probably do about as much good as the first $350 (in other words, none), but – instead of rum and wooden arrow regulations – at least we got something useful this time in the form of net neutrality.

Lobbyists and attorneys will no doubt attempt to create loopholes in the net neutrality bill, and the fight to keep the net free is probably just beginning. But it is an important victory, nonetheless.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/net-neutrality-bill-passes.html

____

[dannno]

Net Neutrality Bill Passes

George Washington’s Blog
Friday, Jan 16, 2009

Net neutrality provisions were snuck into the bill signed by Congress today releasing the last $350 billion of the Tarp bailout money.

The $350 billion will probably do about as much good as the first $350 (in other words, none), but – instead of rum and wooden arrow regulations – at least we got something useful this time in the form of net neutrality.

Lobbyists and attorneys will no doubt attempt to create loopholes in the net neutrality bill, and the fight to keep the net free is probably just beginning. But it is an important victory, nonetheless.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/net-neutrality-bill-passes.html

____


So where is this saying that Alex Jones supports net neutrality? Sounds to me like he's opposed :confused:

[Galileo Galilei]

FCC commissioners support open Internet rule

John Poirier and Sinead Carew
Reuters
October 23, 2009

U.S. communications regulators voted unanimously Thursday to support an open Internet rule that would prevent telecom network operators from barring or blocking content based on the revenue it generates.

The proposed rule now goes to the public for comment until Jan. 14, after which the Federal Communications Commissions will review the feedback and possibly seek more comment. A final rule is not expected until the spring of next year.

“I am pleased that there is broad agreement inside the commission that we should move forward with a healthy and transparent process on an open Internet,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said.

The vote came despite a flurry of lobbying against the net neutrality rule by telecommunications service providers like AT&T Inc (T.N), Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) and Qwest Communications International Inc (Q.N), which say it would strip them of the ability to manage their networks effectively and would stifle innovation and competition.

http://www.infowars.com/fcc-commissioners-support-open-internet-rule/

[Galileo Galilei]

So where is this saying that Alex Jones supports net neutrality? Sounds to me like he's opposed :confused:

He ran the article. The author is afraid Net neutrality could be skirted with loopholes.

[pcosmar]

Net Neutrality would be a good goal, if that was what this is. It is not (but it sounds good)
In reality,
Net Neutrality= Regulation

That does not sound good to me.

But it will likely pass in some form, and then be amended and altered, eventually to be turned over to some UN agency. For the Global good.

[Galileo Galilei]

Net Neutrality would be a good goal, if that was what this is. It is not (but it sounds good)
In reality,
Net Neutrality= Regulation

That does not sound good to me.

But it will likely pass in some form, and then be amended and altered, eventually to be turned over to some UN agency. For the Global good.

Net Neutrality already exists. The taxpayers were fleeced to help build it, and it was sold politically because of Net Neutrality.

Furthermore, the FCC already has control over the Internet. Whether they drop Net Neutrality or leave it be, they will still have the same amount of control.

You don't understand, the real power in not in the law. You need to go and reseach what real power is.

[NYgs23]

You are living in a fairly tale world if you actually believe that. In the real world the injured party cannot do crap since the company all too often declares bankruptcy protection or goes out of business. If that is not the case the company is in the back pocket of the political parties or crime syndicate. So ultimately there is no recourse or recourse plays out and never gets resolved - tied up in courts for a lifetime. Meanwhile the local water supply or wells are contaminated for a life time or more.

The clean up effort then gets left to the towns which means I end up paying for their mess through higher property taxes. If have seen this scenario played out repeatedly here in NY with big name corporations and the local crime syndicates.

In the real world basic common sense environmental regulation is needed. Without the rule of law you end up with mob rule whether it is the local crime syndicate or just a bunch of guys in suits that have a nice familiar corporate name.

Clearly, your path of aggression hasn't worked. Clearly, aggression, coercion, putting a gun to someone's temple, has failed. Yes, it has; it's failed, it's failed, it's failed. In the mean time, it's been responsible for most of the misery in the world. And yet you want to go on, continuing with this, looking for every excuse possible to avoid seeking voluntary means. Don't you understand that in a voluntary society there would be no taxes? No monopolistic system of dispute resolution? No, it's you who lives in a fairy tale world in which setting up a oligarchic cabal that threatens to throw people in cages, seize their property, and shoot them if they don't comply, works and is perfectly ethical. And what a nightmarish fairy tale that is.

You're not going to understand until you understand that aggression is always wrong, always fails, always creates misery. Until you are motivated to seek voluntary, consenting means of interaction to replace it, you're just going to think up new excuses to cling to aggression. I will repeat what I said before:

"The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ever will. I can't tell you exactly what solutions it would come up with in all circumstances, but human beings are terrific problem solvers. If there is a large enough demand for a completely open Internet (and I think there is), clever entrepreneurs will find a way to provide a completely open Internet. Otherwise, an excellent profit opportunity is being missed.

Aggression, on the other hand, just begets more aggression, sows dissension, creates inefficiencies, and makes things more expensive. Always. And even if not, even with aggression could make something faster or cheaper or more efficient, it wouldn't matter because aggression is always immoral, and the ends don't justify the means."

[pcosmar]

You don't understand, the real power in not in the law. You need to go and reseach what real power is.

He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
Muad'Dib

I know a little. :rolleyes:

[Galileo Galilei]

"The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ever will. I can't tell you exactly what solutions it would come up with in all circumstances, but human beings are terrific problem solvers. If there is a large enough demand for a completely open Internet (and I think there is), clever entrepreneurs will find a way to provide a completely open Internet. Otherwise, an excellent profit opportunity is being missed.

Aggression, on the other hand, just begets more aggression, sows dissension, creates inefficiencies, and makes things more expensive. Always. And even if not, even with aggression could make something faster or cheaper or more efficient, it wouldn't matter because aggression is always immoral, and the ends don't justify the means."

The market often takes hundreds or thousands of years to work, when the NWO is at work.

The market and the NWO have always been at war. We can get rid of Net Neutrality in a few years, after the NWO has been defeated. For now, a free Internet is needed for Patriots to communicate. The NWO wants to control the transmission of information on the Internet, just like they do with our "free market" of radio and TV stations.

[kahless]

Clearly, your path of aggression hasn't worked. Clearly, aggression, coercion, putting a gun to someone's temple, has failed. Yes, it has; it's failed, it's failed, it's failed. In the mean time, it's been responsible for most of the misery in the world. And yet you want to go on, continuing with this, looking for every excuse possible to avoid seeking voluntary means. Don't you understand that in a voluntary society there would be no taxes? No monopolistic system of dispute resolution? No, it's you who lives in a fairy tale world in which setting up a oligarchic cabal that threatens to throw people in cages, seize their property, and shoot them if they don't comply, works and is perfectly ethical. And what a nightmarish fairy tale that is.

You're not going to understand until you understand that aggression is always wrong, always fails, always creates misery. Until you are motivated to seek voluntary, consenting means of interaction to replace it, you're just going to think up new excuses to cling to aggression. I will repeat what I said before:

"The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ever will. I can't tell you exactly what solutions it would come up with in all circumstances, but human beings are terrific problem solvers. If there is a large enough demand for a completely open Internet (and I think there is), clever entrepreneurs will find a way to provide a completely open Internet. Otherwise, an excellent profit opportunity is being missed.

Aggression, on the other hand, just begets more aggression, sows dissension, creates inefficiencies, and makes things more expensive. Always. And even if not, even with aggression could make something faster or cheaper or more efficient, it wouldn't matter because aggression is always immoral, and the ends don't justify the means."

Just what I expected. :rolleyes: How about actually formulating a response to what you quoted.

In your ideal world you said the injured party should take the polluter to court. I responded to you in that quote that the polluter completely destroyed my property and has no ability the rectify it. Either I or the taxpayers are stuck with the cleanup bill and/or have unusable property or water source. This which I said could have been avoided with common sense environmental regulation that would have prevented them from doing so in the first place.

You say that "The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ". What then is your answer to the above?

[kahless]

The market often takes hundreds or thousands of years to work, when the NWO is at work.

The market and the NWO have always been at war. We can get rid of Net Neutrality in a few years, after the NWO has been defeated. For now, a free Internet is needed for Patriots to communicate. The NWO wants to control the transmission of information on the Internet, just like they do with our "free market" of radio and TV stations.

Ok, I tried to take a stab at who is doing the NWO business in this picture and guess it all depends on your perspective who favors or is the NWO in this picture.

1. Telco companies - You have the global elite oligarchs that own and run the telco companies which if I had to pick would be a good call as to favoring an NWO agenda. "Net Neutrality" would stop them from controlling the message. But others here believe the opposite and seem to believe they are the bastions of freedom.

2. Politicians that support "Net Neutrality" to prevent censorship. Some believe "Net Neutrality" is not what it seems and the NWO - government has a hidden future agenda to control content.

3. Google and major web companies are for "Net Neutrality" to prevent censorship and thus should be against the NWO agenda. But alas they also lean liberal-Democrat which is pro-NWO.

[NYgs23]

The market and the NWO have always been at war. We can get rid of Net Neutrality in a few years, after the NWO has been defeated. For now, a free Internet is needed for Patriots to communicate. The NWO wants to control the transmission of information on the Internet, just like they do with our "free market" of radio and TV stations.

I don't know why you'd expect the New World Order order to regulate the Internet in such a way that it would benefits us. Are they stupid or something? This, to me, is like the argument that we need the state to control the border to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and voting to give the state more power. Well, why would the state ever control the border in such a way that would cause it to lose power? If anything, it would try to keep out any immigrants who might want to take away its power.

[NYgs23]

In your ideal world you said the injured party should take the polluter to court. I responded to you in that quote that the polluter completely destroyed my property and has no ability the rectify it. Either I or the taxpayers are stuck with the cleanup bill and/or have unusable property or water source. This which I said could have been avoided with common sense environmental regulation that would have prevented them from doing so in the first place.

You say that "The market--voluntary interaction between individuals--will find a way to get around any problem better, sooner, cheaper, and more ethically than aggression ". What then is your answer to the above?

First of all, I don't think there is any such thing as "common sense regulation" in the sense that you use the term "regulation." All such regulation involves top-down, one-size-fits-all dictates that sweep up the innocent along with guilty, that end up being too lenient some situations and too strict in others and fail to address all situations that might arise. Society is too complex for such regulation; no human being, no supercomputer, nothing other than God could possibly possess the knowledge, the intelligence, or the lack of bias necessary to design a truly beneficial regulation. And even if they could, it would be impossible promulgate and enforce, since it would involve different responses to every individual circumstance that would ever arise. Disputes must be handled on a case-by-case basis and can only justly be handled on case-by-case, since every situation is different.

Secondly, in my ideal world, it would be a voluntary, free market court. Or even more specifically, both the accuser (you) and the defendant (the alleged polluter) would settle on a mutually agreed upon third party. Probably, you'd have a lawyer and the defendant would have a lawyer and they would agree upon some third party to arbitrate or mediate the dispute. This wouldn't be that different from the defense and prosecution mutually agreeing upon jury members as is done today.

In any case, if the defendant is found have unjustly damaged your property, he would indeed be liable to compensate you for whatever damage he's done. You say, "Well, what if he doesn't have enough money to compensate me for the full extant of the damages?" That's a tough question, but my own speculation is that he would have to liquidate whatever property he had and perhaps be in indebted to the victim for whatever he in unable to pay and would have to work to pay off his debts. But, in principle, all justice should be compensatory in nature, and if the defendant is unable to fully compensate, that's unfortunate--nothing will ever be perfect--but that still doesn't justify other acts of aggression on top of it.

More to the point, how is this problem solved in the system we have today? It isn't. Regulations will never prevent all acts of aggression and will necessarily prevent many voluntary actions as well (and therefore regulations are themselves aggressive and cause damage) Furthermore, usually defendants are thrown in prison, where they are a burden on society, a burden on the taxpayers, including you! Thus, under the current system, victims are often not only not compensated, but their forced to pay twice, once for the damage and once to "punish" the perpetrator by keeping him locked in a cage for no worthwhile reason. You should be more worried about the deranged, unjust, coercive, failing, impossible system we have today, instead of looking for ways to defend it. You want me to explain how every detail in a voluntary society would work. I don't know, but I want you to explain how the current aggressive system of regulation and imprisonment can possibly work. For all evidence and logic shows that is hasn't worked and can never work.

[LibertyMage]

I'm sorry, but this thread just went full retarded.







Never go full retarded.

YouTube - Tropic Thunder - Never go full retarded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilKntXQbmV4)

[kahless]

First of all, I don't think there is any such thing as "common sense regulation" in the sense that you use the term "regulation." All such regulation involves top-down, one-size-fits-all dictates that sweep up the innocent along with guilty, that end up being too lenient some situations and too strict in others and fail to address all situations that might arise. Society is too complex for such regulation; no human being, no supercomputer, nothing other than God could possibly possess the knowledge, the intelligence, or the lack of bias necessary to design a truly beneficial regulation. And even if they could, it would be impossible promulgate and enforce, since it would involve different responses to every individual circumstance that would ever arise. Disputes must be handled on a case-by-case basis and can only justly be handled on case-by-case, since every situation is different.

Secondly, in my ideal world, it would be a voluntary, free market court. Or even more specifically, both the accuser (you) and the defendant (the alleged polluter) would settle on a mutually agreed upon third party. Probably, you'd have a lawyer and the defendant would have a lawyer and they would agree upon some third party to arbitrate or mediate the dispute. This wouldn't be that different from the defense and prosecution mutually agreeing upon jury members as is done today.

In any case, if the defendant is found have unjustly damaged your property, he would indeed be liable to compensate you for whatever damage he's done. You say, "Well, what if he doesn't have enough money to compensate me for the full extant of the damages?" That's a tough question, but my own speculation is that he would have to liquidate whatever property he had and perhaps be in indebted to the victim for whatever he in unable to pay and would have to work to pay off his debts. But, in principle, all justice should be compensatory in nature, and if the defendant is unable to fully compensate, that's unfortunate--nothing will ever be perfect--but that still doesn't justify other acts of aggression on top of it.

More to the point, how is this problem solved in the system we have today? It isn't. Regulations will never prevent all acts of aggression and will necessarily prevent many voluntary actions as well (and therefore regulations are themselves aggressive and cause damage) Furthermore, usually defendants are thrown in prison, where they are a burden on society, a burden on the taxpayers, including you! Thus, under the current system, victims are often not only not compensated, but their forced to pay twice, once for the damage and once to "punish" the perpetrator by keeping him locked in a cage for no worthwhile reason. You should be more worried about the deranged, unjust, coercive, failing, impossible system we have today, instead of looking for ways to defend it. You want me to explain how every detail in a voluntary society would work. I don't know, but I want you to explain how the current aggressive system of regulation and imprisonment can possibly work. For all evidence and logic shows that is hasn't worked and can never work.

So what you are saying is in your ideal society people can be as destructive as they wish without any consequences. This all due to irrational fear of any rule of law. The aggressor can therefore destroy my property rather than a regulatory agency stepping in and serving him with a cease and desist. We also cannot send him to jail since that is burden on taxpayers and I cannot collect since he is broke. Sounds like a lose lose situation for the property owner.

This is just like the irrational fear of an internet bill of rights to prevent any ISP from blocking access to free speech from paying subscribers.

[NYgs23]

So what you are saying is in your ideal society people can be as destructive as they wish without any consequences. This all due to irrational fear of any rule of law. The aggressor can therefore destroy my property rather than a regulatory agency stepping in and serving him with a cease and desist. We also cannot send him to jail since that is burden on taxpayers and I cannot collect since he is broke. Sounds like a lose lose situation for the property owner.

No, the current situation, in which the victim is not compensated and pays for the aggressor's punishment, is a losing situation. I already explained that the aggressor should compensate as much as his can, and then he will be in debt to the victim for the rest. How much more just can you get?

Forget about "regulators" and "regulatory agencies." They suck. They're a terrible way of attempting to achieve justice for anything. They are are inherently aggressive themselves, imposing rules upon people who have committed no acts of aggression, which is, itself, aggressive. They're are run by flawed, fallible, biased, self-interested human beings, and you want these human beings to have more power than anyone else. How can that work? How can that function? Explain this to me. Who is there to step in and serve these regulators with a "cease and desist" when they destroy property? Who regulates them? The politicians? So who regulates the politicians? The voters? So who regulates the voters?

[kahless]

No, the current situation, in which the victim is not compensated and pays for the aggressor's punishment, is a losing situation. I already explained that the aggressor should compensate as much as his can, and then he will be in debt to the victim for the rest. How much more just can you get?

Forget about "regulators" and "regulatory agencies." They suck. They're a terrible way of attempting to achieve justice for anything. They are are inherently aggressive themselves, imposing rules upon people who have committed no acts of aggression, which is, itself, aggressive. They're are run by flawed, fallible, biased, self-interested human beings, and you want these human beings to have more power than anyone else. How can that work? How can that function? Explain this to me. Who is there to step in and serve these regulators with a "cease and desist" when they destroy property? Who regulates them? The politicians? So who regulates the politicians? The voters? So who regulates the voters?

At that point you let the courts decide. This rather than allowing the aggressor to continue to be allowed to destroy the victims private property or in the case of "Net Neutrality" limit that persons free speech rights years on end.

The only way I see your scenario work without regulation is if we had a complete overhaul of the courts that has a branch that deals just with internet policy. This since Judges in this country have continually demonstrated their ignorance in regards to internet and technology. What would you rather have, a regulator that is familiar with internet or a Judge that has never used a computer.

[NYgs23]

At that point you let the courts decide. This rather than allowing the aggressor to continue to be allowed to destroy the victims private property or in the case of "Net Neutrality" limit that persons free speech rights years on end.

No, for the third time, he would be indebted to you. Let's say he destroyed $100k and only had enough wealth to compensate you for $60k, after the liquidation of all his property. He would then still be liable for $40k, and I suspect he would have to work to pay back the debt. Probably, you could also get restraining orders and things of that nature. Perhaps the arbitrator would find some other way to resolve the dispute that nobody's thought of yet. But each dispute should be handled individually and should only be between the accuser and the defendant.

No one has a "free speech right" on someone else's property because the property owner has the authority to remove a guest from his property.


The only way I see your scenario work without regulation is if we had a complete overhaul of the courts that has a branch that deals just with internet policy. This since Judges in this country have continually demonstrated their ignorance in regards to internet and technology. What would you rather have, a regulator that is familiar with internet or a Judge that has never used a computer.

I don't think you read my posts very closely. I already said this:

"Secondly, in my ideal world, it would be a voluntary, free market court. Or even more specifically, both the accuser (you) and the defendant (the alleged polluter) would settle on a mutually agreed upon third party. Probably, you'd have a lawyer and the defendant would have a lawyer and they would agree upon some third party to arbitrate or mediate the dispute. This wouldn't be that different from the defense and prosecution mutually agreeing upon jury members as is done today."

Potentially you could have free market courts or other dispute resolution organizations (arbitrators, mediators, etc) dealing specifically with Internet issues. Why not? But regulators who impose one-size-fits-all decrees on the entire population before anyone has even accused anyone else of committing on act of aggression? That is not the path to justice.

[Galileo Galilei]

I don't know why you'd expect the New World Order order to regulate the Internet in such a way that it would benefits us. Are they stupid or something? This, to me, is like the argument that we need the state to control the border to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and voting to give the state more power. Well, why would the state ever control the border in such a way that would cause it to lose power? If anything, it would try to keep out any immigrants who might want to take away its power.

The Internet is basically quasi-public, quasi-private. The NWO is losing the info war right now. The Internet will remain free, unless Obama shuts it down.

[NYgs23]

The Internet is basically quasi-public, quasi-private.

I would then suggest making it fully private.


The Internet will remain free, unless Obama shuts it down.

He might also try to restrict and regulate it to death.

[LibertyMage]

My comment about this on a previous thread.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=215801&page=3




I work for a MSO so I have a little bit of perspective to comment on this.

For those of you who don't see it coming, know that media delivery is about to become totally decentralized. A common term I hear used in the industry is "anywhere to anywhere". As people become disconnected from conventional media delivery (cable) the internet pipes will become more important (and more congested). This trend creates two arguments against "net neutrality".

Prioritization - People are against the idea of traffic prioritization, in general. However, any person who has works in diverse parts of IT knows not only that prioritization is important, but that it is and increasingly will be necessary.

There are - in reality - different levels of importance that traffic should be given. When you experience packet loss in a "live" service such as voice over IP, gaming, video streaming, audio streaming or conferencing, you experience a degraded level of service, and potentially a loss of service. This is a stark contrast against general communication like HTTP or FTP traffic where packet loss is compensated for by TCP/IP and is essentially transparent.

I haven't seen much use of this, beyond the few cases of the blocking of particular services, which were justifiably stopped when consumers flipped out. However, as life increasingly revolves around the internet, it may be justified to prioritize where necessary.

Bandwidth Throttling - Bandwidth throttling is necessary to keep costs down and let me show you why.

Important - this specific graph is not pertinent to what I am talking about. I have included it to give a general visible representation. I could not find a more accurate graph to link anywhere so I have used this.

http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/uploads/Image/ip_2008_03_15/ip_0308t_c_4.jpg

The above graph shows, generally, how internet traffic changes over a particular point in the internet at a given in a day. As far as internet traffic goes, it varies from this graph. General usage is higher across the day and has been since the invention of the bit torrent protocols. Also, the peak times happen from 5PM to 8PM as people get home from work/school and utilize the internet.

The point to focus on is the top most "peak". This peak is the highest level of utilization for a particular "link" on the internet. The points of usage under the peak are irrelevant; it is the peak which must be accounted for. Every link across the entire internet must be built to handle peak traffic at that particular point. This means that there must be a "capacity team" handling the monitoring and upgrading of every service, on every link across the entire internet. My company has a team for high speed data (consumer internet access), business data (business internet access), video on demand, phone and general network traffic.

Now, that top 15% only happens once a week but you still have to build your entire network to handle it. The top 25% of capacity work is what makes services expensive. If you can mitigate that top few percent you can slow consumer costs from increasing (you really can't stop it as additional subscribers and new bandwidth using services will continue to drive usage up).

Here is where traffic mitigation gets controversial. There are different ways to mitigate traffic and different companies have different strategies. My opinion is that you allow for dynamic bandwidth throttling on certain services when you reach that once or twice a week scenario. If implemented correctly, there would be a few percent degradation of speed for select high-bandwidth consumption/low priority services. Overall this would save quite a bit of money for the consumers.

You really wouldn't notice this change unless you were sitting and staring at a bandwidth meter. That is really what is driving this - special interests with a thirst for bandwidth. To their credit they have publicized a lot of skeptical business practices and stopped quite a few. However, when they compare us places like Japan, where bandwidth availability is ultra high, they show their true colors.

The utter majority of internet subscribers aren't bandwidth zealots. They probably use less bandwidth then you and I. Their interests don't pertain to downloading at 100megs/second. Their interests pertain to cost. These people constitute the utter majority of subscribers. Mitigation schemes can save the average person money.

The language that is constantly used in support of net neutrality is way misguided and ultimately vague, which should surprise nobody here. If the government gets involved you can expect the same unintended consequences they offer at every other point in the economy. Specifically, you can expect exploding prices for internet service.

I could go on about how the cause of this is government subsides, but that will have to wait for another time.

[Matt Collins]

YouTube - The Open Internet and Lessons from the Ma Bell Era (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS_udd5K91o&feature=player_embedded)

[jbuttell]

Good day for Net Neutrality

The FCC today began making rules aimed at limiting the ability of telecommunications companies to offer special services or cut access to elements of the Internet, a key goal of Google and online libertarians, intensely opposed by big telecom companies.

Chairman Julius Genachowski said the rules will be aimed at promoting a "free and open Internet," and pushed back specifically on the telecoms central argument: That new rules could cut investment in broadban technology:

I reject the notion that we must choose between open Internet rules and investment by service providers in their networks. This argument is somewhat routinely made when the FCC considers rules on any variety of topics. History tells us that this, too, is a false choice. FCC rules over the years have been a powerful spur to investment and innovation—especially when the agency focuses on promoting competition and choice. And in the context of net neutrality, notwithstanding the issuance in 2005 and enforcement in 2008 of the Commission’s openness principles, as well as the adoption of openness conditions in important mergers during that period, Internet service providers have continued to invest heavily in their networks. As an increasing numbers of stakeholders agree, investment in advanced and open networks is essential to our broadband future.

Posted by Ben Smith 02:34 PM

comments (4)

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1009/Good_day_for_Net_Neutrality.html?showall

Am i at the right forum? I cant believe how many people here want more gov control. So very sad.

[low preference guy]

Am i at the right forum? I cant believe how many people here want more gov control. So very sad.

There are some statist trolls that belong to the Democratic Underground and shouldn't be here. But I think the majority considers Net Neutrality an idiotic policy that gives more power to the government.

[BenIsForRon]

There are some statist trolls that belong to the Democratic Underground and shouldn't be here. But I think the majority considers Net Neutrality an idiotic policy that gives more power to the government.

You would call Ron Paul a statist if he posted on this forum. Who cares what you say.

[low preference guy]

You would call Ron Paul a statist if he posted on this forum. Who cares what you say.

Right. I defend Ron Paul's positions. And that, according to Ben's reasoning, implies that I would attack Ron Paul. Bright observation, Ben.

[Matt Collins]

Internet Cop (http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/08/internet-cop)

President Obama’s top man at the Federal Communications Commission tries to regulate the Net.

March 2011 Reason Magazine article here:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/08/internet-cop