Lobby Congress for Network Neutrality

[KLB]

What single cause could bring groups as diverse as the Common Cause, Christian Coalition of America, American Civil Liberties Union, Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.Org, Feminist Majority, Consumers Union and hundreds of other wildly diverse groups together in one coalition?

 

You know anything that could bring some of these groups into agreement would have to be a very important issue and it is. That issue is Network Neutrality. Simply put it is the concept that the Internet service providers consumers use to connect to the Internet (e.g. AT&T, Verison, Comcast, TimeWarner, etc.) should not have the ability to control what websites consumers can access or what Internet services they can use.

 

Right now under the guise of grass roots consumer oriented political action groups the big telecommunications providers are spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to defeat or eliminate any network neutrality legislation that would prevent Internet service providers from controlling what website/web services consumers can access.

 

The only way American consumers can defend open access to the Internet is to lobby Congress to implement real Net Neutrality legislation that prohibits Internet service providers from playing favorites or controlling what websites consumers can access and how fast.

 

To learn more go to http://www.SaveTheInternet.com (the coalition that brought all those opposing groups mentioned above together).

[YT2095]

I agree 100%, and would sign the petition also, but as a UKer, My say wouldn`t count!

 

but the whole Big-Brother 1984 idea seems to be getting closer and closer, we`re ALL on a Very Slippery slope!

[Dak]

question: why is this allways put forth as an american issue? Does the UK allready have network-nutrality laws, or are only US companies desciding to abandon network-nutrality?

 

Either way, we brits could hassle our MPs to generate a request from the UK to the US to not allow screwing with the interweb, which we also have to use, like this i suppose.

[KLB]

In this case it is an American issue because our Congress is debating this issue. The reality is that it is a universial issue, but each country is going to have to address this issue independantly.

[Pangloss]

I haven't made up my mind on this one yet. I'm leaning towards the position put forth by KLB in this thread, but I think the telecoms have raised some legitimate concerns that have not been addressed. The content providers are clearly fueling the Net Neutrality argument, and if I'm just helping one multinational conglomerate versus another one, I'm less interested in that.

 

With that in mind, I want to add a bit of balance to this thread by pointing out that the position put forth by KLB is being supported by vast amounts of money from content providers like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, etc.

 

What I do think is a good thing is that this debate is coming to the fore, and that we'll hash it out in the general net populace. There's just a lot here that I don't fully grok yet, even though I've been reading about it for weeks, and I'm looking forward to more discussions on the subject.

 

My main concern here is that the issue may be more complicated than the simple "yea" or "nay" being debated at the moment.

 

I'm also concerned that by "neutrality" what they really mean is "yeah you can spend a lot of money installing a new router, but then we're going to tell you what content you can carry on it, and you don't get any say in the matter even though you paid for that router".

[ecoli]

psst. - this is a repeat of a thread that I made a few weeks ago... please use the search function before posting!!!

[KLB]

I haven't made up my mind on this one yet. I'm leaning towards the position put forth by KLB in this thread' date=' but I think the telecoms have raised some legitimate concerns that have not been addressed. The content providers are clearly fueling the Net Neutrality argument, and if I'm just helping one multinational conglomerate versus another one, I'm less interested in that.

 

I'm also concerned that by "neutrality" what they really mean is "yeah you can spend a lot of money installing a new router, but then we're going to tell you what content you can carry on it, and you don't get any say in the matter even though you paid for that router".[/quote']

 

The way I see it is that it is the Internet service providers' subscribers who pay for the network by way of their monthly subscription fees and they should be able to access what ever content they want. If Internet providers want to offered teired services so that they can push digital TV over IP, than this needs to sold and advertised as a seperate service. Anything that is advertised as Internet service needs to be done so under the principle of net neutrality.

 

This means that if AT&T wants to advertise broadband Internet service then they need to say how fast that service is and that service needs to be equal for all web services. I see no problems offering a broadband package of say 1 mbps down and 200 kbps up and offering a premium content delivery upgrade that allows AT&T to offer a super broad band content delivery service.

 

I think that as long as there is a reasonable minimum standard required delivery speed there wouldn't be problems. The problem comes when a provider sells Internet service but only allows the consumer to access select "partners" content/services at the advertised speed.

 

psst. - this is a repeat of a thread that I made a few weeks ago... please use the search function before posting!!!

 

Actually I did look through recent threads in this forum before posting and didn't see an active thread. I see no harm in starting a new thread when the old one is a few weeks old or older. In fact some forums I participate in don't want older threads dug up. Its not like there are two active threads on one topic.

 

Also a new thread can attract participation from people a running thread wouldn't attract attention from. I know I personally often don't post to threads once they have grown past a few pages as they are typically a running dialog from just a few people and new posters to those threads get ignored.

[Pangloss]

Interesting points.

[ecoli]

We should get SFN on this list... http://www.savetheinternet.com/=members

 

 

Cap'n Refsmmat said he tried to get Wisci on, but they asked for a phone number, which he didn't want to give.

[padren]

I think networks like AT&T should be in favor of being required of given their subscribers the whole internet. If they are put in the position of being able to block content, they'll get every darn group with a bone to pick running campaigns to make them change what content they provide.

 

Whether its boycotts and bad publicity for allowing gay rights and other "non family" material be accessed or even claims of liablility when they choose not to block a questionable site that later starts posting kiddie porn, or a kid learning to make bombs. Maybe we can sue libararies when a kid dies on LSD after signing out a book by Timothy Leary for not blocking that content.

 

It would be smarter for them to want the law require them not to police the net in the name of free speech, than take on such a thankless task.

 

 

Then you have the capacity to abuse it in a commercial sense: If someone sells widgets online, and AOL decides to make someone else their flagship widget people, would they have the right to block the sites of other widget sellers from their subscribers?

 

Seems like a really bad road to go down to me.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

This has nothing to do with blocking content.

[KLB]

This has nothing to do with blocking content.

Actually it could have a lot to do with blocking content/services. Take a look at the examples of this happening on http://SaveTheInternet.com. There are examples competing services being blocked/sabotaged. Cox cable has been screwing with "Craig's List" for around six months now claiming it is a technical problem with their security software yet Cox Cable runs a competing service.

[GutZ]

It's going to happen eventually. They did it with everything else. If that happens I just wont use that service, if all the services do it, I won't get internet.

 

If consumers had any self-control and dropped convience for a few minutes huge companies couldn't do this sort of thing, it would be economical suicide.

 

I don't care if companies make huge money but atleast do it with intelligence and technology, not cut throat tactics.

[Dak]

Actually it could have a lot to do with blocking content/services. Take a look at the examples of this happening on http://SaveTheInternet.com[/url']. There are examples competing services being blocked/sabotaged. Cox cable has been screwing with "Craig's List" for around six months now claiming it is a technical problem with their security software yet Cox Cable runs a competing service.

 

possibly not

[KLB]

possibly not

 

That is a very interesting theory. Why would Craig's list be sending out a zero length packet and why would Cox's security suite be responding in such a fashion to the zero length packet? Neither one make sense (if this is true)?

[Dak]

That is a very interesting theory. Why would Craig's list be sending out a zero length packet

 

I have absolutely no idea, but it seems as if it's a desision made by Craig's list, and nothing to do with Cox.

 

and why would Cox's security suite be responding in such a fashion to the zero length packet?

 

In the words of their product manager, "it's a glitch"

 

Neither one make sense (if this is true)?

 

Well, considering the blog i linked to is of a reputable anti-spyware company, i'm presuming that they checked that this post that they linked to was actually written by the product manager of authentum (from whom Cox licence their security suite), so i'd say it was.

[KLB]

In the words of their product manager, "it's a glitch"

That has taken over six months to fix. In light of Cox Cable's conflict of interest because of their competing service, the length of time it has taken to fix this "glitch" is suspicious at best.

[Dak]

Authentumn, however, are not the same company as Cox. It's a tad of a stretch to assume that Cox asked authentumn to build-in, and drag their feet over fixing, a glitch that would choke/prevent access to one web site for any of cox's subscribers who happened to use the suite. Not to mention that authentum presumably have other, non-cox clients, who would suffer from the same glitch, thus harming authentumn's reputation.

 

I think Cox deserve the benifit of the doubt in this instance.

[KLB]

Except that Cox hasn't presured Authentumn to make fixing this glitch a priortiy. It shouldn't be that hard to "flip the switch" on this zero byte behavior.

[Dak]

I don't really see why they should. the glitch only affects a small number of sites. and in any case, whilst the reaction by the firewall is a glitch, craig's list could allways stop sending out 0-byte windows. I have no idea what they are, but i gather that it's quite uncommon to send them, outside of server-overload. the problem seems to be a result of a glitch in authentumn software and an odd networking practice by craig's list.

 

note that, even were there laws enforsing network neutrality, that this situation would (likely) not be covered by it as it is a security application preventing access to a site, not the ISP.