Net neutrality
I think I am switching sides on this issue after having thought about it a bit. I was on the omg don't charge for access to websites argument for a bit, but then I realized what complete nonesense this argument was, and that I was relying on some idea about what was convient for me.
It the infrastructure belongs to the ISP, if they can charge for preferred packet transfers, then they shouldn't be stopped by a law. It's not like it is life threatening or anything. Consumers have the option of responding by switching to another ISP. Thoughts? |
Re: Net neutrality
I've not been following the issue recent what has been happening, how did the US vote go ? Did it pass or did the big business lobbyists get their way ?
I think the idea of a non neutral Internet goes against the original ethos, if the law didn't pass and cable companies could discriminate the Internet will become much more skewed in favour of big companies who can pay the premium fees, it will no doubt stifle innovation and perhaps free speech. From a consumers perspective I don't think it's a case of switching ISP, you'll get differing response times to the pages you want to view regardless of your ISP, so Disney a big company will load instantly since they can pay the premium fee but say Planetarion which may not be able to afford the fee will take longer to load (COMMERCIAL BREAK TIME). All a system like that does is favour the cable operators (Who are laughing at their new profits) and the big companies who can pay the fees for premium service, the rest of the Internet loses out with slower service than what consumers pay for now. I guess you could argue that maybe subscription fees will drop if they were allowed to charge companies a premium fee since they pass on some of the profits but I wouldn't count on it. Is that fairly accurate given the situation or have I totally misunderstood the issue ? I haven’t read much it to be honest. |
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Can't the company restrict speach ? Would it be a selling point of something like AOL if they could filter out all the nasty hate sites or at least slow them down a hell of a lot ? Surely that could restrict free speach on the Internet ? It's the same with innovation, if a network favours some product they could effectively freeze or slow down innovation, what if all the major networks had favoured Lycos seach over Google, people would be slow to or maybe not ever adopt Google.
The companies don't provide these services for free, customers pay a subscription fee for them, anything that allows this sort of premium pricing would lead to a loss of service for the consumer for the same price, I'm not going to want to pay the same price for a loss of service (Since most of the sites I visit wouldn't be able to pay Premium fees) while they're getting fat off Premium rates ! |
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In the US, the constitution protects citizenry from the government. Government laws and regulation protect the citizen from companies. Companies cannot not impede free speech, because they do not create laws that will restrict it. If a megaphone manufacturer charges less for their megaphone + loudspeaker + soapbox setup for coporate customer than a private customer, it is not a violation of free speech rights. I don't think it would be in the interest of private property rights, and commerce, to create regulation that forces the megaphone company to charge equal prices for its megaphones and soapboxes on the basis of free speech.
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Its like a company who uses a road paid for by the government suddently saying " we're keeping this lane all for ourselves. If you want to use it you have to pay us " - regardless of if that lane is actually theirs to restrict or not. If they wanted to build their own network specially for things like voip and route that traffic over such a network instead of the current backbone then fair enough - they bought it and they can do what they want with that one. Just not the backbone which taxpayers money paid for. Its inevitable in america though,that companies will discriminate on the basis of traffic. the politicians there are far too corrupt and narrow minded to see anything beyond their own , or their corporate master's petty interests. the only hope you lot have is if companies on the pro-net-neutrality side of it set up a significant backbone of their own, and services to rival that of the current ISPs and essentially become a signifiant rival to them |
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I don't think that analogy really applies to something like the Internet, the Internet is something which is quite unique, imagine a private company ran the library system, if they wanted to they could remove all the books they didn't like from all the libraries in the country, it wouldn't impede free speech since it's not illegal but it would certainly be to its detriment making literature on certain controversial subjects far harder to access. It would be the same on the Internet, the Internet is a great tool for reading about and expressing new ideas, that's probably the best thing about it (And the porn is pretty good too) but if a company could come in and start restricting what you could view (By pricing at the moment but opening the door later to pricing by content ?), or worse that all the companies started to do that where would that leave us ? While it wouldn't impede free speech it would certainly be too it's detriment.
I think the point about certain innovations if far more important to be addressed anyway. Technology and ideas is the driving force of economic growth is that something governments would want to be impeding ? Also Phil makes a good point I never really thought of, do the companies own the backbone or do they just pay for access to it ? Even if they do own it and built it themselves I think you put too much stock in it being their own property, there's often restrictions on the way companies act and behave with their own property, I don't see why it wouldn’t be the case in this case ? |
Re: Net neutrality
its not free speech which is threatened by net neutrality. the content will still get through - just at a slower rate since bandwidth would be prioritised for paid-for sites or services.
Granted it could be made slow enough as to make it essentially useless though |
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Hicks, I agree with you, but I think that consumers can vote with their pocketbook. It doesn't require legislation.
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As far as im aware, there is a monopoly situation in several cities where one provider has a stranglehold over other competitors. |
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It's the same in the UK too, I'm not an expert but I think your choice of ISP is more dicated by where you live rather than pricing.
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dialup is useless pretty much and is hopefully dying out in favour of better connections :)
wireless networks are being set up, the one by google in mountain view for instance is a pilot project and im sure it will spread to other cities. the main problem is, when the providers all have to use the same backbone - on which there is this packet discrimination, how can anyone offer a true net-neutral service when its out of their hands. the only way to do it would be to build a backbone of their own - something that is hideously expensive. Chances are the ISPs wont bother, and all will simply apply the packet filtering - leaving consumers with no choice at all |
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If BT for instance did this packet discrimination then all ISPs that use their network would be affected. |
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'First they came for the Jews' and all that... Secondly, voting with money is so hideously undemocratic it is repulsive. You are also assuming that these companies will be undercutting each other for no real reason when they can all just accept the same payment scheme and be done with it and make more money. |
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But why should a private company be forced to use its property and its services in a certain way? The fact that a lot of the wiring was paid for by taxpayers is not really convincing me. Whose property is it now? And who owns the servers? Who owns and maintains the software? If you can address my concern with why a private company should be forced to skew their services for some imagined public good, that isn't even life threatening or an essential thing such as power or emergency phone service, I would be happy.
I totally agree that losing net neutrality would probably not be a good thing overall, but I don't see the cause to legislate. |
Re: Net neutrality
So some are wanting the government to enact laws to regulate the non-regulation of the internet?
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If nothing is done, telephone providers will start to charge for use of their lines. This will be regressive. It will limit the availability of the internet to those who can afford it. I don't believe that such a situation is acceptable. That's why I'm in favour of net neutrality. |
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s|k:
Please get on the other side of the argument from me. I feel severly disoriented. |
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The more I think about it, and the more that all of you argue against it, the more it makes sense to me. A consumer of internet access has a browser, a client that that sends packets of information, requests for information, out over the line to a specific location. The location then sends packets of information back. Right now the consumer pays for having the ability to send requests, and receiving responses, but it makes sense to me that a location on the internet like Google is disproportinately benefiting from this service. Sending packets to the user, across the infrastructure of the users IP at least, costs them nothing. Yes google pays to maintain servers and pays for bandwidth, etc. Of course it doesn't make sense for the ISP to send a bill out to websites for having used their services, but it does make sense for the ISP's to create a system of preferred packet routing, in order to gain revenue from traffic flow from both directions (clients and websites). |
Re: Net neutrality
It has to do with seperation of markets. ISP's are in the business of selling internet access, most of them are really big, slow-moving and cumbersome.
Do you really want them to have the power to strangle/kill any business they want on the internet; just because they found a lucrative corner of the market they want? Also, we already occasionally see cases of some ISPs doing really weird routing (presumably to balance-load) to some specific sites causing them to be laggy and unresponsive. Any user (except the anal-retentive ones who traceroute everything) will assume it's the other end which is the problem. Voting with your pockects ain't going to work as long as nobody notices the crap they're pulling.. except the people they're pulling crap against. |
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If that's equivalent to nationalising the phone lines, so be it. |
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These ISP fees should cover any costs, and its their own fault for not charging enough to their customers if they dont. there are also peering agreements between ISPs which stipulate that they wont charge each other for carrying traffic across each others networks - They can cancel them if they wish and directly charge the ISP - but not the content providers. The costs ofc will be passed on to consumers in the end. There is no need then to use packet filtering to discriminate between 'paid service' and 'unpaid service'. For things like voip where network latency has a fairly large effect - they can build their own dedicated network to ensure the packets arrive promptly without adversely affecting other network traffic. As things stand, they want to reprioritise packets on the existing networks so that voip etc get through - but at the cost to the other network traffic. There is limited bandwidth available so thats the only way to do it without building a dedicated network for it Further food for thought : If ISPs start charging content providers for the network usage that their own customers request, would it be equally fair for the content providers to charge the ISPs the same, if not more for the content they provide to their customers? |
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I don't understand why you can't see the importance that the internet is playing in everyone's lives. To restrict access at source, whether financially or 'physically', isn't something that should be happening in my eyes. |
Re: Net neutrality
its sort of like a choice between the lesser of two evils isnt it :)
In this case, i think that there should be some regulation saying that if they want to break net neutrality - they cannot do it on lines which were paid for with taxpayers money. Let them build their own if they *must* do that ( and let the market decide between paid-for, dedicated lines and free, general purpose lines ). If they arent making enough money as it is - then increase subscription charges instead of trying to undermine the principles the internet was built on. |
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