Skip to comments.

Net Neutrality: Treating the Internet Like a Utility

pajamas media ^ | 12/8/10 | Patrick Richardson

Posted on by Nachum

According to a story on PJM by Charlie Martin, in 2004 Comcast and some of the other big providers started looking at what data was being sent, and decided to start throttling down how much data of certain types  most notably streaming audio and video  people could receive. This tended to irritate people who watch their favorite shows on Hulu or movies on Netflix (I happen to be one of the people who prefers his shows this way). Thus, the push for net neutrality began.

On its face, the idea of net neutrality seems like a good one: internet service providers, such as Comcast, should move all data equally regardless of its source or type. ISPs arent allowed to look at whats in a data packet; they just have to move it to whoever requested it. This would also prevent networks from blocking voice-over IP services like Skype, or favoring their own data over that from rival networks.



(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...

TOPICS:

News/Current Events

KEYWORDS:

internet

net

neutrality

utility





To: Nachum

Would it be more accurate to say, Net Neutrality, treating the Internet like a Liberal Police State???



To: Nachum

If comcast limits Netflix and Hulu they risk losing customers to the DSL providers. But we couldn’t have a free market solution could we???



To: ExTexasRedhead

I’m not sure what if it continues, but book hawkers in NYC could not be ordered from the sidewalk because it violated free speech. These people would roll out a blanket, sometimes half the width of the sidewalk. Sometimes you had to walk in the street to get around the bottleneck. Seems like somebody should have come up with an idea:sell your books, but you have to use shelves to limit obstruction to traffic.



To: Nachum; All

Who stands to make money?



To: ExTexasRedhead

Liberal Police State!!!! Worth repeating....exactly what our Founders were trying to prevent with the first and second Amendments. We are almost there. Why do we stand for government intervention of every aspect of our lives? The judicial system was perverted back in the 20’s and 30’s. Most people are not educated. They have no idea how fascist states occur—although our Founders understood private property/freedom implicitly—our schools quit educating children and started conditioning/brainwashing after Dewey curricula which is nothing but cultural Marxism. Ayers, Davis, etc., all Marxists.....they were working with the educational system....get your kids OUT of public schools and teach them real history—not Howard Zinn’s revisionist history which teaches HATE America. As if any people were ever more fantastic and free than the American people....it is a joke to think Marxist ideology creates a utopia—biggest joke in the history of man. Well, it would be a joke, if it was not fatal to the human species. It is a sad, sad day to think people actually can believe in Marxist ideology—the system where only fear and slavery exist. “God or man”.....as Whittaker Chambers said and he made the right choice (God) because he had lived as a communist and understood the terror and evil. We are finally at the crossroads. God is the choice of hope and happiness....the other is the pit of hell.



To: rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; GodGunsandGuts; CyberCowboy777; Salo; Bobsat; JosephW; ...





by 7 posted onby ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)

To: Nachum

Richardson is on the side of the thieves: While it is apparent some sort of regulation is needed, what form it should take is less so. < Net neutrality is theft. The end user did not build the network. The end user does not own the network. The end user does not control the network. As a result, the end user has no reasonable expectation of privacy for the data the network delivers. The relatrionship between the end user and the network access provider is contractual only. Yet, through the force law, the end user demands that the network access provider comply with certain terms, because it is "reasonable" or "fair" - the very definition of common law extortion.



by 8 posted onby frithguild (The Democrat Party Brand - Big Government protecting Entrenched Interests from Competition)

To: Nachum

But I can’t get my cable a la carte. Go figger.



by 9 posted onby mewzilla (Hey, Schumer, how's that Lockerbie bomber deal investigation coming along?)

To: frithguild

Net neutrality is theft. The end user did not build the network. The end user does not own the network. The end user does not control the network. As a result, the end user has no reasonable expectation of privacy for the data the network delivers. The relatrionship between the end user and the network access provider is contractual only. I pay for a stream of bits. If the cable/phone companies were to state in bold type in their contracts that they would charge me more for competitive bit streams than for their own, or if they were make it clear that they would randomly drop connection on competitors to make it difficult to use their products, then you could argue that it was merely a contractual issue. But then they also might run into anti-trust laws and unfair trade practices. Instead they don't put that into the contract, or put it into small type at the end that they "might limit some traffic for the health of the network". The actions the high speed ISPs have started trying (before it was publicized and the call for net-neutrality started) are more similar to the phone company hanging up any calls you make to a competitor or the postman tearing up UPS advertisements and bills to screw up your account with them. Have no doubt about it, the ISPs want to force you to use their expensive internal services rather than letting you access the net freely. If they say you are using too much bandwidth, then they should put that limit into the contract and have it and any surcharges apply equally to their own bit streams along with external ones, so they don't kill Netflix's price advantage.



by 10 posted onby KarlInOhio (All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education. -Frederic Bastiat)

To: GraceG

If comcast limits Netflix and Hulu they risk losing customers to the DSL providers. Where DSL exists with sufficient speed. Everybody else is screwed.



To: frithguild

The end user did not build the network. The end user does not own the network. The end user does not control the network. It is not as simple as you think it to be. Because of their lobbying, we the taxpayers (end users) gave billions of dollars to the telcos in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, write-offs, easements and other considerations, and even gave them local monopolies to provide service to areas. We did that so the telcos would build out a great public service to us in the form of 40 Mbps broadband to every household. Oh, we don't all have that yet? What a rip off. And now the telcos want to squeeze even more by eliminating net neutrality. You don't want the government involved? The telcos asked the government to get involved a long time ago in order to fatten their wallets. They lost any right to complain.



To: Nachum

internet service providers, such as Comcast, should move all data equally regardless of its source or type. ISPs arent allowed to look at whats in a data packet; they just have to move it to whoever requested it. This is overly simplistic. Proposals for net neutrality allow for reasonable network management. If a packet is email, then it can be "slowed down" because it doesn't need low latency. Nobody's going to complain if an email arrives one fifth of a second later than it could have. Telcos do this with limited resources in order to provide low latency for packets that do need it, like gaming, VOIP or VPN. The telcos can't do this type of smart network management without looking at the packets. The problem comes from the fact that these smart management tools can also be used to interfere with traffic to the detriment of the customer or content producers. Is this a VOIP packet? It's not from our VOIP service, so let's slow it down. When the user complains, we can tell them to switch to our "better" VOIP service. Is this a streaming video packet? It's from Netflix, and Netflix refuses to pay us, so we'll drop it. Is this peer-to-peer (legal or not)? We don't like the bandwidth that uses even though the user has paid for his bandwidth, so we'll falsely send TCP reset packets to kill the connection. Maybe the user will give up.



To: KarlInOhio

the phone company hanging up any calls you make to a competitor or the postman tearing up UPS advertisements and bills to screw up your account with them. Your old phone company provided a contractual obligation to connect the calls you dialed, which did not permit examination of the content of the communications. As a result, courts found an expectation of privacy that surrounded the transaction of a pots call. You have no expectation of privacy to a cellular call or with a wireless handset transmittion to a base station connected to pots. Likewise, there is no expectation of privacy for internet communications, unless you bargain for it. As for the mail, the parcel is tangible property, not owned by the postal service. Intentional damage to the parcel is trespass. In a communication network, there are only electrons passing through it, which are fungible and not capable of being deemed tangible property. If you don't like the contract that includes "might limit some traffic for the health of the network" language, do not enter into the contract. There will be other providers with new and better networks that will fill the demand, but only if there is no net neutrality, which will guarantee that crappy old networks will remain in place far longer than they should be. The best analogy is how pots has been regulated and the fits we had in building out the last mile.



by 14 posted onby frithguild (The Democrat Party Brand - Big Government protecting Entrenched Interests from Competition)

To: antiRepublicrat

The telcos asked the government to get involved a long time ago in order to fatten their wallets. They lost any right to complain. Once the regulation began, the only logical path for the telcos to take was to influence the regulatory scheme. Once the network was built out, the regulatory scheme insured that increases in access speed came out in drips, with each ramp up costing a little bit more. Net neutrality will result in the same type of unintended consequences, with the dripping being how "neutral" the net will be. The result will be crappy old networks. Without net neutrality, somebody will figure out how much sniffing a provider is doing and market a different method of access over a newer network that satisfies a consumer demand. A new network where you can watch all the Hulu and Netflix you want. Net neutrality is more regulation to correct unintended consequences of bad regulation. How can that possibly end well?



by 15 posted onby frithguild (The Democrat Party Brand - Big Government protecting Entrenched Interests from Competition)

To: frithguild

Once the regulation began Began? Thanks. One of the arguments against net neutrality is slippery slope, that once you let them regulate they'll go onto fairness doctrine. This admits regulation already exists. Net neutrality will result in the same type of unintended consequences With a few known exceptions, net neutrality is the current state. The desire is to maintain this state that allowed commerce to grow in the Internet so quickly. Net neutrality is more regulation to correct unintended consequences of bad regulation. Net neutrality enforcement is to correct the telcos desiring to balkanize the Internet for their profit. It doesn't correct any previous regulation.



To: frithguild

In a communication network, there are only electrons passing through it, which are fungible and not capable of being deemed tangible property. Tell that to the RIAA suing all those people for downloading music. If I intercept a VOIP phone call, I'm guilty of illegal wiretapping same as if I intercepted a POTS phone call.



To: antiRepublicrat

Tell that to the RIAA suing all those people for downloading music. It becomes tangible property once it is stored on a device owned by the end user. It is not property while it is in transmission in the network.



by 18 posted onby frithguild (The Democrat Party Brand - Big Government protecting Entrenched Interests from Competition)

To: frithguild

It becomes tangible property once it is stored on a device owned by the end user. So if I tapped music stream somebody else paid for, playing it live for a commercial public audience without storing it, the publisher and owner of copyright for said music can't do anything about it?



To: savagesusie

Call every single new GOP House member!!! Call 24/7 and protest the police state on the Internet, at the airport, at WalMart (Big Sis’s latest gig).



Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794

FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson