New 'Net Neutrality' Bill Introduced

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reps Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008' (HR 5353) this week. The proposed legislation [PDF] would not legislate what is and is not 'neutral'. Instead, it would add a section to the 'Broadband Policy' section of the Communications Act which spells out principles the FCC is expected to uphold, in addition to having them hold summits which would 'assess competition, consumer protection, and consumer choice issues related to broadband Internet access services' and make it easy for citizens to submit comments or complaints online."

...make it easy for citizens...

"... make it easy for citizens to submit comments or complaints online."

Those comments are always ignored, apparently.

This seems a bit toothless

As long as Comcast et al keep up with their regular "contributions" to the FCC, they'll just look the other way.

Enforce the laws we have?

What good are new laws or guidelines if they go unenforced? Man in the middle attacks are already illegal, but Comcast [slashdot.org] continues unabated. It's like having a Constitution that law makers ignore. Until someone goes to prison for ignoring it, its value becomes symbolic at best.

This is a good thing

Since there isn't yet a problem for Net Neutrality laws to fix, it seems a little early to define what is and isn't net neutrality. Such a law is quite likely to permit bad behaviour, and have undesirable side effects. Both problems that would take several years to fix legislatively.

By extending the scope of the FCC, changes can be made much more quickly. Bad rules can be repealled quickly. New guidelines issued. Explicit behaviour prevented as soon as it starts.

Re:This is a good thing

Since there isn't yet a problem for Net Neutrality laws to fix, it seems a little early to define what is and isn't net neutrality.

Net neutrality was the law of the land in the USA until just a couple of years ago.

In 2005 the supreme court reclassified ISPs as "information providers" rather than "telecommuniactions providers." Those terms have specific meaning under the tariffs that regulate the telecom industry. Essentially "telecommunications providers" have a set of rules they must abide by that include most of the concepts generally referred to under the umbrella of "network neutrality" while "information providers" are not so regulated.

Brand X [wikipedia.org]

Freedom this, freedom that...

Can politicians lay off the whitewashing of bill names? I'd like to request the "Freedom from freedom naming Act" which would mandate that all bills are simply numerically titled, so that for example, politicians and people will actually have to learn about bill #654934792 before voting on it.

I'm really sick of these 'patriotic names' which usually have little or nothing to do with what the bill encompasses,

Re:Freedom this, freedom that...

We'll attach that provision to my new happy fluffy kittens bill. I'm certain it will pass. Who would vote against happy fluffy kittens?

COMplaints are non-neutral so ...

be sure to expect the Comcasts of the world to mark that traffic as the lowest priority possible, thus taking forever to actually get to those sites to log a complaint.

"The remote server timed out. Try again later."

just a hypothetical...

the economist in me is wondering something... what would happen to broadband competition if instead of leaving the infrastructure in the hands of the telcos, it was put under the charge of a third party, who in turn sold bandwidth to ISPs, similar to how DSL providers were able to operate before Verizon and AT&T switched to fiber optics?

the way i'm seeing things right now, more choice would lower costs to consumers (which naturally the telcos would oppose), but if an ISP was caught doing something shaky (traffic shaping, etc), consumers would have other choices than their cable or phone company. having competing infrastructures strikes me as having to choice which company's sewers i flush my toilet into. it would make things simpler to have the one infrastructure.

Bill would put NET under FCC jurisdiction

This is more Washington Double speak. This bill would not ensure internet freedom anymore than the PATRIOT act is patriotic.

Re:Non news

Which is precisely why I wrote my congresscritter asking him to support it.

Why don't you do the same?

Re:Non news

the only thing that can make a difference is a mountain of mail, and it'll still be a mountain without my letter in it

That's dumb. Very, very, very dumb, because it won't be a mountain without people sending letters in, including you. If everyone on slashdot that cared about this issue sent a letter in it would be a mountain of mail, and it would be huge. So send the letter in and trust that others will do their job, or else nothing will ever happen.

Re:Non news

I can't deny your assertion that your vote makes no difference. You're entirely correct, because you said you don't vote.

No vote, no difference.

You may as well stop talking altogether, really, though--because if you choose not to vote, then you're letting all those people who do vote choose what to do with you. As such, you're going to have to live with what we say.

What do I say?

Put up or shut up. Unless you're prepared to get off your lazy duff and -do- something about it, don't bother complaining about it.

Vote. Write your congresscritter. Write letters to the editor. Participate in the system--yes, even if you disagree, because, frankly, unless you know how to work the current one, you've got no chance of making it better or changing it for something else.

Re:

The basic idea is, in a sufficiently large election, there's a fantastically low probability that the vote will be tied (or within 1 vote of a tie) but for your vote. Since this is the only case in which your vote actually makes a difference, the probabili

Bad definition of "counting"

The fallacy of your argument is that your definition of a vote "counting" is wrong. Not wrong in any intellectual or mathematical way, merely wrong in a philosophical or sociological way. It embodies the outlook that "what I do affects me and my surroundin

Re:Non news

I used to believe that my single vote couldn't possibly make a difference. Yet every couple months, I still hauled my ass over to the voting booths to vote on local issues, local representation, and a national leader, purely out of an interest in current events, rather than out of a desire to change how things worked or to right a wrong.

Every year, I would vote for the local school district levy, and every year it would fail. Ever since I first entered high school, I recognized how poorly the local public schools were doing: the books were falling apart, teachers were being laid off, extracurricular activities were being canceled, less teachers for classes meant more useless study hall periods, etc. For over ten years, the levies consistently failed, so the school failed to receive funding to support many of its most basic services.

During my senior year, I remember my homeroom adviser telling the class how the levy failed by a margin of only ~20-30 votes (I think it was). Since we were all of voting age, she said that if a single classroom of students would have just got off their asses and voted for the levy, it would have succeeded. That's a real, quantifiable number of people who could have made a change in a sea of tens of thousands of other voters.

Then the unthinkable happened. Last year, the levy passed by a margin of three votes. It was incredible, but then they issued a recount. After the recount, it still managed to pass by a margin of only TWO votes [enquirer.com].

Of course, there were only tens of thousands voting, rather than tens of millions. And yes, one vote didn't really matter--two did. I wasn't necessarily one of those two votes, nor possibly anyone in my family.

But that didn't stop my younger brother from marching into class the next day, staring at his history teacher from across the room, and boldly proclaiming, "You have MY family to thank for your pay-raise. We accept cash only."

Re:Non news

If you don't vote, then really, what cause do you have to complain? Go bugger off and stop talking about it if you're not even going to make a token effort to fix it.

Going beyond voting, every message that the congresscritter receives from his or her constituents supporting this bill will indicate to them that it is an important issue, and that if they want to be re-elected they may want to pay attention.

Yes, my opinion individually may not matter much, but it still contributes.

I do not need to stick out in a crowd. I have no desire to stick out of the crowd--it's more trouble than it's worth, frankly. But forming a part of the 'mountain'? That's worthwhile.

It doesn't take much time to send an email to your congresscritter (make sure to include your snail addy, o'course, and your name and phone number). If net neutrality isn't important enough for you to take a couple of minutes to support it, then don't complain when all you can get is throttled-to-hell packet-shaped crapwidth instead of decent broadband.

I vote. I write my congresscritter when I hear about something that I find important. My opinion has been heard on more than one occasion, and as a result, I am content to participate in this democracy.

Does it always go my way? Of course not. But that's the way these things work, and sometimes what is best for me is not best for everybody else.

Re:Non news

Less than 1% of the voting population ever writes to their representatives. That means, to an elected representative, each letter is assumed to represent at least 100 votes, often a few orders of magnitude more. Once my former local MP explained this to me, I started writing whenever an issue of importance to me came up.

Re:Non news

Last I checked, Libertarianism still required voting.

Or perhaps that's why the Libertarians can't ever get a candidate in office--because none of their alleged supporters bother voting?

Sorry. If you don't vote, you don't matter. What people see are the numbers--and if there's no opposition because of broken people like you who don't bother voting, then any opposition to the status quo that might exist will never show up.

So by all means, have your lofty pie-in-the-sky Libertarian ideals. Don't expect anyone else to give a flying bacon sandwich for 'em, though, if you don't put action to it and actually do something with it.

You don't vote? You don't matter.

You don't work with the system? Then you'll have to shut up and accept what the system--and all those people who support it--will do to you.

Re:Non news

Mods can do as they like. My karma's resilient enough for me to make the occasional 'controversial' statement.

So let me get this straight. Your philosophy depends on other people taking pity on you and reading your mind to figure out what you want?

You want everyone else to vote for someone whom you don't even really support, just so that you can have your opinions--which you'll never actually -tell- to anyone in charge--respected?

And somehow you don't see how broken that is?

This is why nobody will ever take your alleged 'political philosophy' seriously: you're unwilling to participate in a government, but want the government to magically do what you want it to do.

If you want to fix a system you see as broken, you'll have to get into the system to fix it. Ain't nobody yet who ever fixed a broken ethernet card by sulking in a corner--ain't nobody ever fixed a broken government by whining on slashdot.

Bullsh!t

congressmen aren't going to waste their time worrying about my one vote

1. If you put pen to paper and write a concise and reasonable paragraph or two about why it matters to you and send it to your representatives, you bet they will listen. Why? Because they know it's coming from a warm body as opposed to all of the anonymous electronic spam that Political Action Committees stir up. The letter becomes a bellwether of sorts if it is similar to other handwritten letters on the same topic.

2. The U.S. is a Republic, not a Democracy. Your one vote isn't really designed to matter as much as common knowledge would suggest.

3. Maintaining the Republic requires participation. Participation means putting pen to paper, talking to people in and out of the political system. Once you know a few people and have a couple of interests it can be very satisfying.

4. No, majority does not rule. More pablum that passes for common sense.

Making up excuses like yours is simply lazy and unpatriotic.

Re:

My wife described to me the hand-signing machines used by politicians. It uses a real pen, and copies the signature better than a geek like me can tell. That said, I agree with you and we should write letters. Even if your actual representative didn't r

Re:We need a new internet also

I think breaking up a few telecom monopolies would be a bit more of a realistic solution than scrapping the Internet...

Re:We need a new internet also

Make you a deal. If you write your congresscritter to talk about that and post your letter here, then I'll write something similar to mine.

Or are you all talk and no action?

Re:We need a new internet also

There's no way to win the bandwidth race at this point. The moment you start talking about "video", you move to a requirement that really is unrealistic.

To have the "Internet" (open access, bidirectional services and bandwidth, all-you-can eat buffet style bandwidth, unicast (or multicast)) with "Video" (continuous, "large" bandwidth streams), you have a problem.

OC-192's are the defacto standard in the Telecom industry. Even if you run multiple bonded OC-192, or have a faster standard, or any of the currently available technologies, you simply can't architect a network that could do what you suggest is so easy to do. Well, telepathy might work, but a workable implementation of mind-to-mind communications hasn't been demonstrated yet.

Now, saying that, the Telecom's are coping out with there current "traffic management", it's a pathetic implementation, and any real network engineer with more than a handful of years experience could create something better than manipulating TCP headers/windows/sessions (the minimum standard for MSS is 536 AT&T, or did you miss NewReno-IETF Standards 101 class?) or doing a DOS man in the middle attack on their customers. It's called Network Calculus, or Queueing theory, do a Google search and look it up, if you haven't blocked yourself from doing Google searches.

A simple queueing system that has a deficit round robin scheduler based on only src or dst IP address would do exactly what they are looking for (think WFQ, but only src or dst address based). With FQ, Cisco has been doing this for at least as long as I've been into networking, all that really needs to be done is for Cisco do change fair queueing to only include one parameter, the src or dst IP address. Problem solved. Customers happy. Multiflow file transfer applications running fine and not hogging the network. People browsing the web getting great performance. No lawsuits. Everybody wins.

It's so freakin' simple. Sometimes, the ISP's should just be slapped. All the Executives, managers, and engineers who go along with their BS. All in one big Three Stooges style line slap.

Oh... But you'll never truly get "Video" and the "Internet" to mix. If you think you can, I'd be glad for you to provide a potential architecture in this forum and prove me wrong.

multiplatformgeekbutmainlyjustnetworks