ACLU Says Net Neutrality Necessary For Free Speech 283
eldavojohn writes "The ACLU has recently identified Network Neutrality a key free speech issue and said in a lengthy PDF report: 'Freedom of expression isn't worth much if the forums where people actually make use of it are not themselves free. And the Internet is without doubt the primary place where Americans exercise their right to free expression. It's a newspaper, an entertainment medium, a reference work, a therapist's office, a soapbox, a debating stand. It is the closest thing ever invented to a true "free market" of ideas.' The report then goes on to argue that ISPs have incentive and capability of interfering with internet traffic. And not only that but the argument that it is only 'theoretical' are bogus given they list ten high profile cases of it actually happening. If the ACLU can successfully argue that Net Neutrality is a First Amendment Issue then it might not matter what businesses (who fall on either side of the issue) want the government to do."
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll all be perfectly free to say whatever we like...on whatever sites our ISP's let us access. And if you don't like what your ISP is doing, you can just switch to one of the hundreds of alternate broadband providers that we all have.
Wow, I think I just sprained my sarcasm tendon.
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Wow, I think I just sprained my sarcasm tendon.
Don't tell your doctor! He'll turn you over to the police!
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the back haul is neutral then people are free to start up community co-op ISPs. It's not provider neutrality that I see as most important but backbone neutrality. QoS is one thing but restricting what type of traffic or who the traffic comes from is ridiculous. All connections should permit all legal connections and come with proper management to permit continual usage of the link at an appropriate speed intended to provide the same transfer to all users who are attempting to use it, and to accurately divide the available bandwidth equally (or otherwise appropriately) between the customers who have paid for it.
With that said, there is literally one choice in my county for internet access, AT&T. Everyone else here resells them. I do not count satellite which is unacceptable in a broad variety of ways. I don't necessarily trust AT&T to carry my packets to their eventual destination. Indeed, immediately after my local WISP was moved from an AT&T reseller to AT&T directly, we were placed on some seriously non-neutral segment where we had fast access to many sites (of course including AT&T, but ALSO including non-AT&T sites, meaning that it wasn't simply fast access to AT&T internal resources) but where we had essentially no access to many other sites including Slashdot and Alternet. After we [the users] complained to them en masse (reportedly) they complained up the chain and we were placed on the "proper" network, which does not [appear to] have this problem. So clearly some AT&T customers are already living on a non-neutral net...
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Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
No, it wasn't a co-op [wikipedia.org] ISP, it was a municipal ISP [slashdot.org].
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>>>It's not provider neutrality that I see as most important but backbone neutrality.
Precisely.
In the ideal world the Internet line would be just like the telephone line, where you can choose from dozens of companies for service. Also I'm curious what the ACLU means by "Freedom of expression isn't worth much if the forums where people actually make use of it are not themselves free." Forums, like slashdot, are privately owned. You DON'T have a right to free speech. You have a right to obey the
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You do have the choice of thousands if not millions of sites to express your opinion and it has be proven time and time again when sites heavily censor posting to match their marketing and business goals participation dies rapidly and often permanently.
The internet however always hits numerous choke points starting at possible reasonably priced kerb connections to main backbone trunks and on global issues undersea cables.
Then there is slowing opposition response for day and, weeks while the for profit
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The point isn't that Slashot is a freespeach forum for users, it's that the net is a freespeach forum for sites like Slashdot.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Forums, like slashdot, are privately owned. You DON'T have a right to free speech. You have a right to obey the rules of the forum sysop, even if he's a tyrant. It's his domain; his rules.
Governments have massive power over the people, and so many states around the world have come to the conclusion that making the government have to tolerate what people have to say is best for everyone. Well, except the people running the government, but that's kinda the point - to reign in the power they wield.
The most powerful entities in society come and go over time, and this can be seen through the buildings that get built. The most powerful entity in a society tends to build the biggest buildings, to show of their power, assert dominance, whatever. These days corporations build most of the biggest buildings (skyscrapers), but not so long back governments the builders of the biggest places. Further back in history, and huge churches and cathedrals were being built, and during points of history when royal families were at the top, palaces and castles were the biggest buildings around.
My point is that any powerful groups are a threat to the liberty of an individual, and we are living in a time when corporations are gaining more and more power everyday. Yes, governments may still be more powerful in some ways, but that doesn't cancel out or negate the power corporations have, and so corporations should have to allow some things they may not like for the same reasons that the government has to allow things it may not like.
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The you're for... ok, how am I supposed to communicate freely when the ISPs own the internet and the phone companies own the phone lines?
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"Forums, like slashdot, are privately owned. You DON'T have a right to free speech. You have a right to obey the rules of the forum sysop, even if he's a tyrant. It's his domain; his rules."
I do have a right to free speech, even if the forum is privately owned. And the forum owner has the right to remove my message from his board.
His right to control what is posted does not negate my right to free speech. My Right to Free speech is god given and only god can remove it from me. However, his right to control
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All connections should permit all legal connections...
Who's in charge of legal connections? By your argument, ISPs should be able to deny you access to organizations that do not comply with the Government's PATRIOT laws. With such a distinction, you cannot have free speech.
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All connections should permit all legal connections...
Who's in charge of legal connections? By your argument, ISPs should be able to deny you access to organizations that do not comply with the Government's PATRIOT laws. With such a distinction, you cannot have free speech.
If it falls into the realm of the Government's laws dictating what organizations get access, doesn't that allow you to argue for things under the first ammendment, so you don't have to deal with the "Internet is a service provided by a private company who can do what they want with it" kind of stuff?
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As long as the back haul is neutral then people are free to start up community co-op ISPs. It's not provider neutrality that I see as most important but backbone neutrality.
I really think the key is to enforce a separation between the infrastructure provider and the service provider. Let's say Verizon builds the actual backbone and the line to your house-- the whole thing-- then they should be absolutely forbidden from acting as an ISP or cable company. They should have to lease use of their lines to other service providers at a consistent rate, with no special side deals.
In my opinion, vertical integration [wikipedia.org] is the culprit here. You get one company who owns the cables in th
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
And DNS has to go away.
That's an interesting take on Net Neutrality I've never seen before. Are you planning to replace it with something? Or just make everyone remember every IP address they want to visit? That should be especially entertaining when IPV6 eventually gets implemented. I can just see the billboards now "Eat at Joes! And visit our website at: 2001:db8:1f70::999:de8:7648:6e80/index.html!" (IP address stolen from example in Wikipedia entry on IPv6. I have no idea where, if anywhere it goes)
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I think the idea is that a centralized DNS has to go away. But frankly, I think that's stupid. There's NOTHING preventing anyone from simply not using the world's DNS, and attempting to manage on their own. The current means of splitting it up where each nation decides how to handle the problem is the best. If you don't like the results you get, stop using it.
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The problem, as I point out, is that the Internet is not just a method for people to make one-one connections with their friends, and IP addresses are a lot harder to memorize than phone numbers. IPv6 is on the horizon. Are you seriously advocating a system that would require me to memorize a 32 digit hexadecimal address everytime I see a site I might want to look at later?
Not to mention pain of coding for such a thing. Every address you code into a network enabled piece of software would have to be hard
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Fortunately for the proponents of net neutrality, there's never been a case of a government using its regulatory power to curtail free speech. Only private corporations do that.
Unfortunately for the shills and useful idiots there's plenty of cases where the government has used its regulatory power to protect free speech. Like the common-carrier laws which are part of the "network neutrality" we had for land-line telephones.
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Speaking of common carriers, why not make it a choice on the part of the ISPs -- let them either accept common carrier status which requires them to be a "dumb pipe" as it were (no restrictions beyond basic QoS) but accordingly frees them from responsibility for what goes over the line, or let them elect to do all the nefarious filtering and such, at which point they are responsible and liable for everything that goes across their lines in both directions.
I'm sorry MPAA, but my ISP is not a common carrier,
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Yeah, ISPs want to have it both ways. I don't see why they're able to get away with that.
Are they a telephone company, or are they a newspaper? Pick one. Don't get to be both.
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No has there ever been a case of the government using its authority to protect citizens' rights against the whims of private corporations.
Oop, just sprained the other one too.
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How do you remain standing? One must be rolling on the floor...preferably laughing rather than crying.
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Huh? I can think of 2 instances without even breaking a sweat: McCain-Feingold (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisan_Campaign_Reform_Act [wikipedia.org] and the "Fairness Doctrine" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine [wikipedia.org].
I wonder why the ACLU didn't fight those free-speech abrogations? Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question. The ACLU is only pro-free-speech when
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Actually, though, I am glad the ACLU came out in favor of net neutrality. They are a good litmus test for me. I have been torn on the issue, but now that they have taken a side I now know which position I support.
If they come out against jumping off bridges, will you jump off a bridge?
If that seems like a stupid question, consider the context.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
McCain-Feingold
Money is not speech. If it were, the rich would have more right to speech than the poor. We are supposed to be founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, but some men are created rich and most are not. Being rich buys you privilege, but it doesn't buy you rights that others lack.
Fairness Doctrine
Again, can I get a TV station? No, there are no open frequencies left. Again, this is not an infringement of free speech rights, just an inftringement of a monied class privilege. These are not free speech issues. The "speech zones" during the last decade are, though, and these "free speech" zones [wikipedia.org] are worrisome. "The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed, with various degrees of success and failure, a number of lawsuits on the issue."
Sorry, buddy, take your wealth and shove it, I'm on the ACLU's side here. Your money isn't speech, and if you have to pay for speech, it isn't free speech.
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I see you've fallen into the sarchasm. I'll get a rope...
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Um, in my area. I only have dial-up ISPs and cable. I can't get DSL, FIOS, etc. IDSL, ISDN, T*, satellite Internet, etc. are too expensive and/or slow.
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Hmm... (Score:2)
I'm not sure I fully agree. Unless providers would completely block certain websites instead of merely slowing them, there wouldn't be a supression of free speech.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast slows all access to "ComCastSucks.com" to 1 byte per second, as well as all it's competitors websites, any newspaper who it doesn't agree with, and also refuses to share peer traffic with any game-console service / MMORPG except for the Xbox unless the user pays extra. What's the matter?! I didn't *BLOCK* anything!
There's your problem right there. Being able to shape traffic (which is effectively a temporary denial, but on millisecond-scales) is the same as blocking it for a short period of time.
The problem with net-biased (what's the opposite of net-neutral?) ISP's is not their ability to block things. It's their ability to make a service 100% unusable in practical terms even if they are 100% fine in theory. If only 1% of my TCP packets get to the destination, that's not technically "blocking" any particular website / protocol / service, but you try forming a reliable connection and downloading a webpage, or a file, or interacting with other users of the service.
Imagine the net ran through a router with an iptables rule of:
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -m random --average 99 -j DROP
but ONLY on the websites / protocols that the ISP chooses (and / or is being paid by).
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Imagine the net ran through a router with an iptables rule of:
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -m random --average 99 -j DROP
but ONLY on the websites / protocols that the ISP chooses (and / or is being paid by).
Yea without pings they'll be a quakin' in their boots.
Dontcha mean something more like:
iptables -A INPUT -d 144.160.0.0/16 -m statistic --mode random --probability 0.01 -j DROP
(that ip block being their "psuedo-competitor" att as in ns1.attdns.att.net etc etc)
Or were you making it up not knowing its actually implemented in iptables?
If you're going to be an evil genius, at least do it right, not like Dr Doofenshmirtz
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Typo - the icmp stuff was in the example I copied / pasted but I edited it out for something that has [IP you don't like here]. Must've pasted it again over the top without realising.
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There's your problem right there. Being able to shape traffic (which is effectively a temporary denial, but on millisecond-scales) is the same as blocking it for a short period of time.
I worry that this begins to fall apart along the lines of BitTorrent. Some kinds of traffic, running contrary to the design of the network itself, is actually more harmful than the interference by the ISP. So who gets to decide? Nobody? Because that worries me.
I get the argument that BitTorrent might someday force the ISP to give what they advertised, but in the meantime those same small voices that we're worried about protecting are going to be suppressed by natural causes introduced via upside-down tr
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There's two schools of thought here.
1) Net neutrality is important to free speech because the ISPs will invariably abuse the rules (without breaking them, of course) laid out if they are allowed to slow down certain types of traffic. They will slow it to the point that it becomes unusable (file sharing, anyone?), or slow down access to competitor's sites (again to the point where they become unusble). The companaies will claim they won't, but history has proven otherwise.
2) Net neutrality is only good if
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Net Neutrality should mean that no content of the same type can have different priorities. You can have QoS that put VOIP > HTTP > Bittorrent, but not iTunes MP3 file > Jamendo MP3 file.
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There is this commonly perpetuated myth that you can't do any sort of network management without being "discriminatory".
It's pretty easy to manage protocols or customers and completely ignore the external endpoints.
It can also be done in a "blind" fashion that is neutral by any definition of that word you care to come up with.
Restricting grandpa because he's connecting to Picasa is another matter entirely.
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Yeah, and this is stupid anyway. It's pretty easy to start connections to sites fast and then gradually slow them slightly, so everyone's web browsing has blazing speeds...until they transfer more than 10 megs in a minute, at which point their speed get slightly slowed, or at least put second in the queue.
Or, even better, forget IPs...everyone gets QoS'd...except the first X packets every minute, which should be about 1/10th of the total bandwidth they have. The people still on the first 1/10th compete wit
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There's way too much gray area and too many opportunities for abuse if you say slowing something down is okay but stopping it isn't. The only pra
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At what point do you draw the line between "slowing" and "stopping"?
Simple. Enact legislation (yes yes, I know) that would would say ISPs have to provide a minimum of 1/3rd the advertised speed when throttling technology is used. No muss, no fuss.
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Simple. Enact legislation (yes yes, I know) that would would say ISPs have to provide a minimum of 1/3rd the advertised speed when throttling technology is used. No muss, no fuss.
Whom gets sued when whatever.com gets slashdotted or whatever and speeds drop to 1/3 of the advertised speeds due to poor peering rather than throttling?
Is it "throttling" if a "tier 1 ISP" in the default free zone decides they will only peer with the pirate bay directly using, say, a 56K DDS connection instead of 10gig ethernet, and forces their traffic thru that link using BGP (trivial)?
Because merely slowing traffic is the last step (Score:3, Interesting)
Because of course once it has become accepted that access to certain parts of the net should be slower because they don't pay, the next step of not providing access if they don't pay for it, or maybe don't meet the approval process... well that just won't enter anybody's head who ain't ... oops who ain't the sexiest man alive that all women crave to have sex with and men want to buy free beers.
As for, as long as the backbone remains free somebody else comments...
Yeah, because printing presses ain't restri
Death by ACLU association. (Score:2)
I can see the talking heads now...
"Does the ACLU want to allow Muslim extremists the right to terrorize your school's website? Find out more with our special report, Net Neutrality: Government Takeover"
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The ACLU has defended a lot of doucebags in their time, but one can't argue against their impartiality; they generally fall on the side of rights, regardless of how loony the person or group they are representing. Gotta give them credit for that.
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I don't want net neutrality to become a partisan issue
It's a little late for that :(
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I see the US political right as having a generally negative opinion of the ACLU
Responding authoritatively for exactly one former republican, they don't hate the ACLU because they hate four letter acronyms beginning with the letter "A", its much more like that tired old saying "they hate us for our freedom".
Back when the statists mostly hung out with the Ds and the libertarians mostly hung out with the Rs it wasn't so bad, but the religious loonies expelled all of us out of the R party hence my "former" self description. Then the statists invaded the Rs, so we really only have two sid
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Their reputation has been sullied by the mere fact of who they are. I am a huge supporter of them because they understand that the same rules that apply to unconvicted pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and terrorists also apply to every other US citizen.
Re:Death by ACLU association. (Score:5, Informative)
I often find it ironic how conservative talking heads bash the ACLU as defending "commies and left wing nuts", but when *they* want free expression they're happy to get the ACLU involved to help. The ACLU is a one issue group. They think you have a right to say... whatever stupid, crazy, brilliant, inspired, idiotic, hateful, useful, useless, or wonderful thing you want to say. Period. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum. I can respect that.
Re:Death by ACLU association. (Score:5, Informative)
As sibling says "Citation needed". The ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh. They've defended both the KKK *and* the Anti-Defamation league. Show me an instance of them turning down a legitimate freedom of expression case. You've been told that they only defend lunatic left wing causes, but so far as I've ever seen it's simply not true. A lot of their cases defend people with extremely liberal views, but that's mostly because right now the country itself, on the whole, is rather conservative. Most of the people asking the ACLU for help are left leaning, because they are most likely to both a) trust the ACLU and b) have need of the ACLU.
Summary is kind of...off (Score:2)
The only way making it a 1st Amendment issue would actually matter is if the government actually regulates them, which it continually shies away from doing. As they are in fact private businesses, we can only hope that the government actually goes through with regulating their government mandated monopoly and stops let
Not again. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. The First Amendment affirms your right to speak but not the right to demand a publicly-supplied soap box. On a side note, it's odd that all kinds of interest groups are pushing NN... Right Wing and Left Wing alike. The radicals realize NN can guarantee them an audience by law - not by earning it.
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Do you even understand what the word "rights" means? Providing internet access means just that: connecting you to a network which is in turn connected to other networks in ways worked out between all of the people that run those networks. Your ISP has to obey the laws of physics, and has to negotiate peering connections to other network
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Well put. "Rights" does not mean other people are slaves to your desires and wishes. It is an abused concept.
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Hmmm, does your ISP have a TOS? If so, then by using that service you are agreeing to the idea that they have the right to set terms for your service, that connecting to their pipes can come with limitations. Branding it "internet access" doesn't convey any special protected rights to you, only that you can access the internet, in accordance with their terms. Your TOS probably doesn't even spell out that you will be guaranteed access to the entire internet. As long as they are providing you access to pa
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I'm fairly sure they can claim jurisdiction using the interstate commerce clause. Most ISPs aren't state-specific, and they're accessing a nationwide network.
I don't have a choice of ISP. The vast majority of people who do have a choice have only two choices, usually Verizon/Comcast, AT&T/Cablevision or some other combination of gigantic, shitty companies. They can go fuck themselves if they want to restrict which sites are available through the pipe they provide; it's not their business to be doing so.
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We just need customer awareness. Customers will not accept weird corporate throttling when educated about it.
I agree. However, customer awareness only goes so far when there's a single broadband provider in many locations, and only two in the vast majority of the others.
See, customer awareness requires a free market in order to work properly as a deterrent. Without a free market, monopolies do whatever they want. That's why we need government to step in - to prevent abuses that would otherwise be without a method of remediation.
Seriously, ditch your ISP, as the free market would dictate is the proper response, in
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The answer to THAT is to end the franchise monopoly system, and allow real competition in the local last-mile marketplace. Free-markets for the win.
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Well, sure, one could argue that. But it would be a bad argument. The state of broadband provisioning is in constant flux, and is still in its relative infancy. It would be insane to upend the entire meaning of the most important amendment to the constitution just because it's temporarily expensive to string up a new netwo
Re:Not again. (Score:5, Insightful)
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My grandad used to tell black people who came in his restaurant the same thing. Damned government has no right to force private businesses to observe people's "civil rights." The niggers are always free to go to another restaurant if they don't like it.
Sounds like your granddad was a bigoted asshole. And correct about property rights.
"I hate what you say, but I would die for your right to say it."
(if the private business adopts corporate formation, all bets are off, of course)
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And correct about property rights.
Not after 1964 he wasn't.
Re:Not again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you Grandad also take their money THEN refuse them service?
Because thats what ISP's are doing.
Technically I think he's right. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have mod points that I wanted to use in this thread, but I decided I'd rather comment.
From a legal perspective, your grandad was right as far as I am concerned. I don't see anything in the constitution that grants the government the authority to enforce non-discrimination laws. The interstate commerce clause is laughable, as most of the discriminatory behavior is related to intrastate commerce. Application of the 14th amendment argument is also limited, as it only applies to cases where certain actions ag
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What's it like to read a compelling hypocrisy claim only to be able to apply a literal meaning to this situation rather than an analogous intent?
It's clear that corporations get a pass an are able to do whatever they want in this country with little consequence. Most in fact build into their budgets, money they expect to have to pay out in fines for violating regulations they don't want to observe. These fines are the equivalent to a late movie fine or a late book for these companies leaving them basicall
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So, just to clarify, here. If I form a publishing company in order to print a newsletter that I will distribute in my neighborhood, I must allow anyone who wants me to print their own communication - no matter what I think of it - to tell me how I should use the pages of my publication? And I
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Because in this case, the government contibuted a great deal of your tax money to building the network structure that stretches across the nation today. if we paid for it as a country then the first amendment applies fully and reduces an ISP fom being a 'platform'' to being a means to access the platform.
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Nonsense. If that were true, then you could say that every private print shop that has its physical operations reachable by public road must print anything that anyone demands they print. After all, if the taxpayers didn't maintain that road, the print shop could never have set up shop, right? Do you really think that's what the first amendment is about?
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So, in order to prevent a society made of government-enforced slavery, you're proposing private roads?
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The same mentality was going around when the company I work for told people that they basically could be let go for revealing internal operation details on social networking sites.
Some people think that having a Right means you are entitled to have it given to you ... thus my signature. (Though, some people have confused it for other meanings...)
Re:Not again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people confuse the first amendment's prohibition against the government limiting free expression with somehow mandating that private people and/or the companies they form being obliged to provide a platform for everything that everyone wants to say? The first amendment isn't about forcing a guy with a printing press to do what you say, it's about preventing the government from stopping you and the guy who owns the printing press from doing what you like on whatever terms you arrange between the two of you. Same thing goes with the guy who owns the DSL line you're using, or the WiFi hotspot and the network it's wired up to. And just like the printing press, if you don't like the terms of use, build your own or shop around.
Why? Because the Internet was created by "the government", is regulated by "the government", and subsidized by "the government". The lines that carry Internet traffic are run on public ("government"-owned) land using right of ways granted by "the government". Wireless carriers are granted licenses to use public airwaves, and must provide a public service to do so (not just rake in money). At the local level, most of the carriers are monopolies granted by "the government". These monopolies are free from having to worry about competition because "the government" has agreed to lock out anyone else from access to these same right-of-ways.
THAT'S why it's a First Amendment issue. You want to be free of government rules? Get off the government tit. The government has provided a source of huge income to these companies. If they don't like "the terms of use" associated with being a government-subsidized monopoly, they are free to "build their own" Internet and run the lines over their own land. The wireless carriers can just "build their own" airwaves, I guess.
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in a dictatorship country, that's the reason given by the ruler to control all media.
But that's a false equivalence because this isn't a dictatorship. The U.S. is a constitutional republic with checks and balances in place.
Furthermore, these are also the same reasons that the British government controls the BBC (created, regulated, and subsidized by the government). But in no way is the BBC nefarious, overtly biased, or used for propaganda. Personally, I find it favorable to most American media outlets in regards to quality and fairness. Government isn't intrinsically bad because dictatorsh
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in a dictatorship country, that's the reason given by the ruler to control all media.
So if these corporations don't get a big government handout and aren't allowed full control of the public lands and airwaves at the expense of the public that owns them, we're slipping towards dictatorship? Pure BS.
Here [wikipedia.org]is a decent reference of the term "dictatorship". I don't see anything about not giving huge corporate handouts as qualifying.
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Then the solution is that there needs to be some form of ammendment or additional legislation that prohibits anyone from limiting free expression on the internet along those 4 guidelines by the FCC*.
Much in the same way I as a person or private company cannot park my vehicle in an intersection to filter or deter traffic through a certain point - neither should any Internet Service Provider have the ability to discriminate against their traffic if the people are paying for the service. Or if they want that a
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Leave the internet alone (Score:2)
A tiered internet is just another way for greedy businesses to further suck money out of their customers, that's it.
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I think you just asked and answered your own question.
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It's working just fine the way it is, so why change it?
So you like the way Comcast and other ISP's have the ability to filter traffic with impunity? Because that is basically whats happening.
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So this means... (Score:2)
... free speech was impossible before the internet?
I'm missing something in this debate... (Score:2)
Seriously, what's wrong with a little bit of capitalism and money changing hands to give preferential treatment to companies willing to pay for it?
Let's say that I have a 10 Mb Comcast connection. Under net neutrality, I can use that bandwidth however I want. There's no QOS, so maybe my Netflix streaming stutters a bit or the resolution drops here and there. Now suppose Comcast enters into an agreement with Netflix (yes, they're arch enemies; this is just an example) whereby Netflix pays Comcast to reserve
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So basically, you want net neutrality only when it's beneficial to you.
What if you were accessing one of Netflix's competitors?
Read the PDF, it explains it well.
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Ahhh young padawan, you have much to learn.
What if you want to watch Hulu? Stuttering.
Or, the more likely scenario, what if Comcast launches a web-based video on demand service, and that gets the 4Mbit priority whereas Netflix is always relegated to stuttering speeds?
This is the real danger and it's already starting to happen. The large ISPs which have an effective oligarchy on the US market can reduce the internet to essentially a set of "preferred" sites by prioritizing the traffic, not based on load bala
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The Flip Side of the Coin (Score:2)
The ACLU report addresses the pro-net-neutrality arguments. The other side of the coin is the revenue requirements of the ISPs and their business models. Nobody can fairly judge this issue without consideration of both sides.
A few months ago, I got a Droid phone. I also downloaded a tether app (forbidden by Verizon's non-net-neutral terms) but I got it anyhow. I used them to catch up on a few TV programs I like (I don't have access to regular TV). I think I watched for 5 hours. It worked great and I
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The ACLU report addresses the pro-net-neutrality arguments. The other side of the coin is the revenue requirements of the ISPs and their business models. Nobody can fairly judge this issue without consideration of both sides.
There's a constitutional protection of free speech. There is no constitutional protection of corporate profits. Are you suggesting that corporate profits should trump constitutional protections, because if that's true then Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court should close up shop and just let a bunch of guys on Wall Street run the country.
Are there any win-win scenarios that maintain net-neutrality and also provide the vast amount of capital needed for wireless infrastructure? I don't see them.
That argument would hold water if AT&T and the other ISPs weren't immensely profitable already. So option 4 is: impose net neutrality, prices remain at or ne
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My internet
Invent rules and restictions to ensure freedom! (Score:2)
It seems like the stated goals of Net Neutrality are to impose lots and lots of regulations about what you can and can't do :-)
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Well...a lot of the infrastructure that's currently being used was funded by taxpayers, and ISPs are already granted "legal monopoly or duopoly" status, so...
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I've always wondered why communities don't run their own fiber optic/power cables and provide a several connection points where cable/telecom/electric companies hook into. People in the community can then buy services from any company that is able to connect to any of those access points. Of course it means funding access nodes as well as the cable with tax dollars, but if it encouraged competition in services I would sign on for that.
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And taxpayers helped pay for the roads to your house and work, does that mean they get to dictate what happens in either one?
Yes, they do. It's called voting for a representative.
are paid to deliver information, believing they will deliver less information is a bit of paranoia and is bad business
Right...because no ISP has ever blocked traffic, right? [torrentfreak.com]
Awareness is more prudent here than handing they keys over to the FCC
Us: "We're aware that you're throttling and charging extra for certain sites!"
ISP: "Awesome! Glad you're paying attention. By the way, here's your bill."
Yup. Awareness would solve everything.
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I'd rather have a government entity that can be influenced by elected representatives in control of the internet as opposed to the people who are only in it to seperate as much money from the customer as possible.
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You're trying to frame this as an "entitlement" issue when it's really a consumer protection issue.
This is no "entitlement" we are talking about because EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US PAY FOR THIS INFASTRUCTURE.
The ISPs don't just give it to us for free. WE PAY FOR EVERY BIT OF IT.
You're just trying to conflate the problem of me getting what I paid for as a consumer with welfare or some other nonsense.
The expectation that I get what I paid for is not "entitlement".
"Entitlement" is a term that's gotten abused like
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Net Neutrality is a free speech issue, and so is TV Neutrality. That we cannot all get a spot on TV to make our case just shows that we haven't really had free speech so far. And this is borne out by observation. Free speech is intended to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. Yet the messages we see on TV all conform to one narrative. By controlling the discourse, they control our collective thoughts and fears, even our minds.
The lack of TV and Newspaper neutrality is a major reason why the country is