Content Filtering Pulled From Free Broadband Proposal 111
huzur79 writes "Electronista is reporting that Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has dropped the content filtering provisions from the proposal for free wireless broadband service, according to an interview with Ars Technica. Previous drafts of the plan required protection methods to prevent users from accessing objectionable content, such as pornography. 'I'm saying if this is a problem for people, let's take it away,' Martin said.
The proposal has received criticism and opposition from a variety of groups including the Bush administration, wireless companies, and consumer interest organizations. T-Mobile has argued that communicating data on the allocated frequency bands will cause interference and quality degradation. Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
The FCC doing something vaguely intelligent? (Score:5, Funny)
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Not really, it is still only a proposal, meaning there is still time to modify it to be stupid before it becomes official policy.
Re:The FCC doing something vaguely intelligent? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would absolutely love to be called a conspiracy theorist, and have that supported by a complete lack of the above happening.
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Sure, watch where I tunnel my SSH traffic and the rates I send it at. I don't care. You're providing me free internet.
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Yes... Not entirely unlike the speed limits [wikipedia.org] put in place on national highways after the Interstate grid was built.
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Regulating interstate commerce? That seems a stretch...where is the interstate commerce in regulating airwaves or content on tv?
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Likewise, most shows are filmed in other states anyways...
Same for radio.
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By this logic every product/service is within the federal government's reach — because if something still was not, they would just need one person to drive across a State's border and buy it.
Fortunately, this logic is not applied to much — but it is already applied to radio and TV. Which is an outrage.
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Unfortunately, that ship sailed long ago:
Wickard thus establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself "commercial," in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes t
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Radio waves naturally cross state lines. QED.
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That's a much better thing than having the filtering tied directly to the proposal.
I am reasonably confidant the supreme court will shoot down anything involving content filtering. If free broadband and content filtering are separate, we don't need to lose one along with the other.
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Yeah, but the problem is, the US Gov't excells at doing senseless, stupid things in record time. Logical, intelligent things, that takes decades to accomplish.
Don't worry, they'll make it even dumber in no time.
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Just remember, whenever the government does something stupid, you are part of the stupidity as their employer (assuming you're American.)
You use that word a lot... (Score:2)
"They were both poisoned. I have spent the last several years developing an immunity..."
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Another historical discovery for mankind no doubt.
yes, but... (Score:2)
The FCC is on the way into history - don't these groups read the papers...?
FC Isn't Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, the FCC is not an evil agency by any stretch. It does have a legitimate role in issues like frequency allocations - there is only so much spectrum to go around.
It also has a great role in the enforcement of technical standards like those that prevent one user from interfering with another's use of the airwaves.
Only if the FCC interferes in the actual content of the communications can it be considered to be entering the category of "evil". Or if they mandate the use of a patented "standard" as a condition of use of the public airwaves, they are certainly at least in bed with "evil".
That said, I actually applaud the dropping of a well-meaning but ill-concieved idea.
It looks like the Chairman haas understood that what he originally wanted was impractical, infeasible, and really a bad idea.
It's okay to propose something stupid, so long as one listens to the reasons for those who object to it and doesn't respond by a "digg in the heels, fight, and whine" attitude when the suggestion and it's rationale is challenged.
But wait a minute... (Score:3, Informative)
Aside from the contradiction (which I do not think you intended), I say that the idea that it was well-intentioned is giving Martin and friends far too much benefit of doubt. On the contrary, it was a political move, for the blatantly obvious purpose of sucking up to a certain group of voters and businesspeople.
Martin has been called out before for doing exactly the same kind of thing... and di
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you say yourself that interfering with content is "evil", then you say that the concept was well-intentioned.
Aside from the contradiction (which I do not think you intended)
You might have heard the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
Good intentions and evil are not mutually exclusive. There is no contradiction there.
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If you want to pretend that Martin is "ignorant" of the possible negative consequences, then I have a bridge I would like to sell that you might be interested in buying. It's a good investment. Really.
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I think you missed my point. The whole intent of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is to illustrate the evil that can be done by people who intend good but are ignorant of the possible negative consequences.
If you want to pretend that Martin is "ignorant" of the possible negative consequences,
I didn't miss your point, neither do I think his intentions are good. However I point out your use of the word "aside":
"Aside from the contradiction (which I do not think you intended), I say that the idea that it was well-intentioned is giving Martin and friends far too much benefit of doubt."
I don't think I was unreasonable to take the "contradiction" statement as a separate point to the goodness or otherwise of Martin and friends intentions. To clarify, it is my opinion that (1) there is no contradic
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In any case, it sounds like a misunderstanding to me.
I warrant my bridge to be free of vampires. However, I make no promises about how many there may be under it.
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Aus to follow? (Score:2)
Overstepping? (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC has been overstepping it's authority for a LONG time.
The FCC exists to dole out a limited public resource, content (and esp obscenity) has never been part of it's mandate and represents little more then a moral power grab.
Re:Overstepping? (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Section 5, item (D), bullet (d) of the Radio Act of 1927, which created the Federal Radio Commission. The FRC morphed into the FCC in 1934. Specifically, the Secretary of Commerce is given the right to terminate the license of operators who transmit "profane or obscene words of language". You can view the text of the act here [netins.net]
This has been part of the FCC's mandate from the very beginning. It has been upheld by the courts, for instance in "FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation".
How do they make money? (Score:2)
The whole free wireless internet access is not going to be all that cheap to build to the requirements of 95% of the population in 10 years.
If you give free 768k access, it is going to be enough for quite a lot of people. For people who need more, you are normally competing with existing solutions in the market, thus you will have hard time selling them.
Maybe FCC hopes for someone to be stupid enough to build it and go bankrupt and then someone else to buy it for a small fraction of the building cost. In su
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Re:How do they make money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing that I'll be able to get online when I'm on the road (even with a low-quality-but-better-than-dialup connection) is worth a minuscule portion of my tax dollars. Government ventures aren't supposed to be profitable, they're supposed to be beneficial. Not paying ten bucks a day for net access at a hotel definitely falls under 'beneficial' in my books.
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I'll agree. Heck my home connection is only 1Mbps and while I wouldn't mind some extra speed, it suffices for me just fine. 768Kbps would probably work just as well for me on a permanent basis - having it available on the road would be just awesome.
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Mod up.
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What people don't seem to notice is that many times "a minuscle portion of my tax dollars" ends up in working up to (or over) 6 mo/yr just to pay taxes. ... also come to mind those "universal services" that work like cr*p.
This means half of a citizen's income goes to keep universal services that aren't free as in freedom nor as in beer. Just think of tolls, entry fees at museums, public transportation fees, the cost of snail mail
And, no, rich people DON'T pay a bigger percentage of taxes. They pay accountan
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And, no, rich people DON'T pay a bigger percentage of taxes. They pay accountants (or politicians, if they're big enough) to cut their taxes in half or even get subsidies (out of the middle man's taxes, of course).
Then, isn't that sort of the fault of us "middle people" for allowing the rich to squirm out of paying their fair share for the common resources that they consume?
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Yes they do, actually. That they don't is a myth, perpetrated by groups that want to further class warfare. There are a small number of rich people that pay less due to loopholes deliberately created by a congress that wants to encourage certain types of behavior and investment... but if you simply look at data from the IRS that lists per capita tax revenue from individuals broken out by income, you'll find that rich people in general pay a m
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Knowing that I'll be able to get online when I'm on the road (even with a low-quality-but-better-than-dialup connection)
If anybody can use it the connection will be much slower than dialup. Blocking porn would have done a bit to cut down on demand. It would be nice to have a pervasive network for embedded systems deployed city wide.
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From what I can understand they're hoping to dish out 10-100mbps speeds on the same bands as analog TV were once on.
For once, I'd say the tax payers on both sides of the border should help pay for this, but that it remains government-managed (or whatever is best for a public service).
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I would think dial-up companies would be hurt the most, then DSL users, and maybe some small businesses and a few comcast u
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Use NAT. Or is it possible to configure some router to somehow detect NAT and deny service for its users?
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I can't bring myself to cry too much for dial-up companies - they're the VHS of the internet: fantastic in their day, but completely overshadowed by current tech.
Plus, they'll have more than enough warning to transition to whatever else they're going to do. (For starters, people will still need email addresses, webspace, and all the other whizbangs that go along with the 'net)
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This Kevin Martin, (Score:2)
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> does he want a job as a communications minister? seems Australia needs a competent one.
It'd be a pretty easy job, wouldn't it? From what I understand, most communications in Australia are variations on "Oh sweet Jesus, there's a spider the size of a dinner plate on my leg, but at least it's killing the poisonous octopus that's eating the incredibly toxic jellyfish that was stinging me to death".
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Everything else is transmitted via wallaby...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I think "broadband" in most politician's minds is ``has access to email''---I doubt they're intending for customers to view youtube or download stuff (or play WoW :-)
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That's simply not enough to provide a significant number of people with broadband internet, at least not with the kind of network topography this band is proposed for.
I bet it will kill the market for text messages with 1000x markups though.
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I don't quite understand how any of it works, but I don't think its all that simple to run a good push service over a shitty public IP network.
Not to mention that you would need some sort of good 2 way gateway in order for it to see any sort of wide adoption. Look at all of people with iPhones that come with "unlimited" data, but some tiny limit on text messages. You don't see too many of them using email to SMS gateways to get out of paying for texts do you?
The fact that people still use SMS
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You don't see too many of them using email to SMS gateways to get out of paying for texts do you?
I dunno anyone with an iphone. But I know a few non-tech girls who have regular phones with basic internet functionality who have practically stopped texting in favor of IMing each other.
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which, depending on carrier/application, may still use sms to transport the messages...
It's quite possible, but their carriers don't charge them same as regular sms, which is why they go to the effort.
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Not always correct...
Verizon Wireless charges the same for SMS whether it's to a phone or using an IM service
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Nice to know, but irrelevant to the topic of "do people use alternate means to communicate when cheaper options are available?"
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Right, because people who are looking for a cheaper option are not smart enough to figure out if the choices available to them really are cheaper.
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Most people aren't smart enough to figure things out on their own...
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Right, the free market system doesn't work for shit. Got it.
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How much throughput that could equal is going to depend on the way that the system is set up, how much noise there is on a given frequency, dopler shift and what kind of spectrum management is used, but no matter how you cut it it won't be much. Assuming only one to one overlapping of cells (which is very generous) and very low noise you might get a total of 4 megabits combined up and downstream to be shared by all users in a given area.
You mention doppler shift, despite the fact these are electromagnetic waves, and you have to be in something moving very very fast to observe this effect. Anything land based won't get near those speeds
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Going from fast to slow effects measured terrestrially: You can hear the doppler shift of a carrier transmitted by LEO satalite using a SSB receiver and it is significant enough to require continuous tuning. GPS receivers correct for doppler shift from the 12 hour orbit GPS satalites. A common police radar
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low bandwidth only (Score:3, Interesting)
But now lots of legitimate services need high bandwidth, netflix, iTunes, even youtube, and most kids are used high speed connections that let them play games and watch videos. They need the bandwidth. So many would say we can no longer use bandwidth as a proxy, and need filtering. I disagree.
To me the best way to make sure that the most people can use this, and not just for play, is to limit the speed to .5 Mb/sec. Those who need the service will appreciate it, and those who can afford something faster will buy it. I would love to have free, reliable internet access even at 300 kb/sec. It might be a bummer for people who just want to play, but for most work it is fast enough.
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Man, if CableOne would raise my upstream cap from 32k to something toward 100k I would have no complaints.
It sucks trying to restore a decent sized hosting service using Virtualmin after a server upgrade with only 32kps (max, not constant).
Is sucks big time.
Your problems of low bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Blocking the bandwidth of others (except in your own small local area) will not make your own performance better.
"You cannot embiggen the small by shortening the tall. You cannot enrich the poor by impoverishing the rich." - Abraham Lincoln
Last mile connection and "internet access"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Last mile network connections, wired or wireless, are pretty close to natural monopolies. On the wireless side, there is only so much spectrum, and it isn't exactly a fluid market, and there are only so many locations where you can get zoning permission and whatnot for a tower. On the wired side, legacy environments are duopolies at best, phone company and cable company; while any new deployments run into the fact that(considering the pull itself, plus right-of-way hassles and all the rest) the fixed cost of doing a pull of any bandwidth capacity is huge, while the cost of pulling a high bandwidth line as opposed to a low bandwidth line is much smaller. It isn't quite as bad as roads, where multiple runs are generally not even physically possible; but still an oligopoly at best, monopoly at worst.
Internet access, on the other hand, has the potential to be a properly competitive market, once enough end users are aggregated at a central point. If all relevant structures in a town or geographic region are connected to a peering point, choosing any service from any provider who reaches that point is literally a matter of switch configuration, and could be largely automated.
The trouble is, as long as the two distinct services are provided by the same entity, you have massive incentives for the people who own the last mile connection to mess with the internet access, hence all the net neutrality issues, and this content filtering stuff. We need to separate the two: treat the network link between you and the peering point as a natural monopoly similar to water mains, roads, or electrical lines(whether this means regulated private monopoly, public utility administered by private contractors, or public utility administered by public employees is a matter of implementation). This portion would be simple: dumb pipe of X speed between you and the peering point. Anything from the peering point to the internet at large would be pure free market, internet access at higher or lower speeds, quotas or no, filtering or not, various numbers of static IPs, access to various other things over IP, etc.
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You presume the copper/fibre and labour to lay that cable is cheap, not to mention right-of-ways, head-end equipment, etc.
You propose that having to build all that infrastructure from scratch, you would be able to effectively compete with someone who already has all that in place (and got tax breaks, etc. while doing so over a span of decades), and thus is able to undercut you severely while still turning a profit.
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The fact that running a new cable isn't cheap does not mean that the enterprise of running cable is a natural monopoly.
You think building a nationwide wireless network, with backhaul and everything, is cheap? No, it's actually extremely expensive, yet we have at least 4 separate nationwide cellular networks. The strangest part: they all make a decent profit, at least for the most part.
In the current climate, with greedy and corrupt city councils that make it prohibitively expensive for all but the most deep
Take it away (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: We can always put it back in later.
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Do I Have To? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government wants to gives us free wireless broadband, now without content restriction.
This is the same government that conducted warrantless wiretapping. If they own the bitwaves, there's less barrier to the same occurring.
If there's restrictions, people wanting privacy will go elsewhere. If the restrictions are lifted, people will be more likely to feel safe using it for more sensitive matters. The government will be more able to catch more people.
Can anyone conceive of a better way for the government to maximize its chances of catching people doing things they find undesirable while minimizing its chances of getting in trouble and so having to stop?
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Re:How Bad is Filtering? - Very Bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Credit where credit is due (Score:2)
Before the bile starts pouring in, let's take a moment to thank the FCC for having a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense. That they listened is nothing short of incredible, and we should savor this moment and reward them for it, before we start tearing down the proposal for everything _else_ we each think is wrong with it. :-)
It's FREE! It's FREE! (Score:1)
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Many companies advertise a "free bonus" if you purchase a product - when I see those, I know that the companies products have been marked up enough to pay for the "free" bonus.
Organizations at my university often offer "free" pizza at their meetings - when I see posters advertising this fact, I know that my tuition pays for them, and thus there is still a cost attached to it.
I don't see how the language is inappropriate in either case, nor in the case of federally subsidized internet access. I can see how
Gov't content regulation wouldn't end well. (Score:1)
violate the Constitution -Oh My (Score:1)
"Civil liberties groups argue that the FCC would overstep its authority and violate the Constitution."
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Hey, everybody violates the U.S. Constitution. Even SCOTUS. I say go for it!
A little polemical documentation
The Constitutional Relationship Between the People and the Law
http://tinyurl.com/3du9ec [tinyurl.com]
I_Voter
My New Web Site:
(Under Construction)
Political Power in the U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/2sdtvk [tinyurl.com]
huzzah!? (Score:1)
Re:Degradation (Score:4, Insightful)
which is why the telecom industry tried to dissuade the government from pursuing plans for a free public wireless network. first they claimed that public wireless wasn't viable, and that all attempts to create such networks by governments have been huge failures. and now they're changing the reason for their opposition to claims of "interference and quality degradation."
it's ridiculous that they're even given a voice on this issue when they have such a conflict of interest. the only people whose opinions should be solicited is the public. just hold a nationwide referendum. if people want a public national wireless infrastructure, then it should be created. the technology has been available for a while and has been proven to be sound. San Francisco and many other smaller cities here in California already have open wireless networks, and there's no evidence that it has any impact on cellphone networks or any other communication systems.
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Yes. We may also hold a referendum on whether "the public" wants free food and beer vending machines in each corner.
If we had the technology to do it for a relatively small amount of money? Hell yes. We have water fountains that are free for anyone to drink from.