Category Archives: Net Neutrality

Grad Student Explains Net Neutrality to Elected Official

Rep. Lamar Smith (D-Austin) recently (9 Apr) said he didn’t understand net neutrality “I think it would be foolhardy to cement some fixed notion of “neutrality” – whatever that means – into the law.” So an Austinite explains it to him:
Net neutrality is the underlying principle of a free and open Internet that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. These Internet Service Provider companies, from whom you took at least $10,000 each from Verizon and AT&T just last year, will take away our ability to access information by charging higher prices and essentially squeezing out the “little guy” content providers who can’t afford to pay. These companies had nothing to do with inventing the Internet, the World Wide Web or Web browsers. While their infrastructure costs money, they were heavily subsidized for this with our tax dollars, and they already charge for both bandwidth and access. Don’t be fooled into thinking that these companies would not continue to provide these services and innovate if they did not have this additional revenue stream, which will only serve to enrich their shockingly high level of profits.

&mdash A lesson for Rep. Smith on net, Angie Yowell, Public affairs graduate student, 9 April 2007, The Firing Line, The Daily Texan, 11 April 2007

The rest of her post is also well worth reading. Continue reading →

Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Internet

Creative Voices sums up recent FTC and FCC actions (or lack thereof) on net neutrality:
With momentum in Congress building to pass Net Neutrality legislation, the FCC and even the Federal Trade Commission quickly swung into action. The FTC, which has been hostile to Net Neutrality since it emerged as a serious concern, held what it described as a “public workshop on ‘Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy.'” In giving heavily “favored carriage” to panelists hostile to NN, the FTC unintentionally but compellingly demonstrated why NN is so necessary; to preserve the ability of citizens to access all viewpoints over the Internet, including those of independent and diverse voices, and then make their own choices, rather than have the government or the cable and telco companies choose for them.

The FCC also mobilized, launching an official “inquiry” into Net Neutrality. An FCC “inquiry” is often a no-deadline, never-ending process that results in no action. As Brooks Boliek noted in The Hollywood Reporter, critics contend that the FCC “majority on the five-member panel is stalling because they don’t want to do anything to prevent such big network companies as Comcast or Verizon from turning the Internet into their own personal amusement park” That’s spot on; this is little more than an attempt to give NN opponents an argument to fend off calls for meaningful Congressional action to preserve the freedom of consumers to choose what websites they can visit on the Internet.

— Net Neutrality Update, Creative Voices’ 1Q 2007 Newsletter, April 10, 2007

And as we’ve already seen, net neutrality opponents are already using the FCC inquiry for that purpose, even though the inquiry isn’t complete. Continue reading →

Neutral Net Face

An online chili vendor gets political:
Now, Maricle is worried that the big boys might gain an edge on the virtual highway where he set up shop. That explains why he and five other Internet devotees from Albuquerque sat down with Republican Rep. Heather Wilson in late February to urge her to act on “Net neutrality,” legislation that aims to block telephone companies from providing a premium service to Internet customers who pay higher fees.

— The Human Face of Net Neutrality, By: Jeanne Cummings, The Politico, April 9, 2007 05:34 PM EST

Politicians respond to local constituents. Continue reading →

Imminent Death of the Internet Predicted (by net neutrality opponents)

Net neutrality opponents have apparently gotten up to predicting that net neutrality will cause the Internet to melt down due to traffic overload; for example, here’s an article in Forbes.

Someone has taken the time to research these claims, and finds them hollow:

Why the surge of sky-is-falling rhetoric in the early months of 2007? Three possible explanations include misapplication of anecdotal evidence, the conflation of long-term and short-term views, and political gamesmanship.

— The Future of the Internet: Scare Stories, CIO Insight, By Edward Cone, April 4, 2007

Anyone who’s been on the Internet for a while has seen Imminent Death stories over and over, since about 1974, that is, back in the ARPANET days before the Internet proper even existed. Various opponents of Internet technology or deployment seize on the glitch of the moment and build that molehill into a mountain. Continue reading →

Packet Shaping and Net Neutrality

Rogers, a prominent ISP in Canada, has done something interesting:
For the past 18 months, it has been open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Rogers denied the practice at first, but effectively acknowledged it in late 2005. Net neutrality advocates regularly point to traffic shaping as a concern since they fear that Rogers could limit bandwidth to competing content or services. In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets. This has led to a technical “cat and mouse” game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

— The Unintended Consequences of Rogers’ Packet Shaping, Michael Geist, Law Bytes, 5 April 2007

Why degrade encrypted traffic? Because traffic these days is encrypted to prevent flow shaping on it. Slowing down all encrypted traffic catches that, including unauthorized movie sharing and the like. However, it also catches legal and authorized encrypted traffic. For example, I always log in on my remote computers using ssh, which is encrypted. This is for privacy. So is Rogers now making privacy slow?

Packet shaping doesn’t have to be a problem with net neutrality, but in this case it looks like it is.

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Is It Broke?

I’ve seldom seen so many conclusions reached by pole vault in one paragraph:
Everybody agrees that there are no actual problems with net neutrality, and as our own Chris Wolf explained last week, it doesn’t make sense to fashion legislative remedies to situations that don’t actually need remedying. If anything, it just shows that the supporters of net neutrality laws are looking for any avenue possible to impose restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies. Whether through the Senate, through the FCC, through the state legislatures, it doesn’t really matter. Any opportunity to regulate the Internet is one they want to pursue.

— Ask Questions First, Change Policy Later, Hands Off the Internet, April 3, 2007 at 10:24 am

Everybody? Such confidence to be able to speak for everybody with no exceptions! Situations that don’t need remedying? I think the situation before August 2005 needed less remedying; now that the telcos have already gotten the FCC to abrogate net neutrality, the situation does need remedying. Restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies? Only in the sense of no new charges for something they’re already paying for, and restraints on the ISPs restriction content or speeds. “Any opportunity to regulate the Internet”; oh my. How dastardly those net neutrality proponents must be! Continue reading →

High-Tech Hillbillies

As Bruce Sterling says:
It’s Official: The Once High-Tech USA Has Been Reduced to Luddite Hillbillies
Here’s the more stodgy summary:
European countries and Singapore have surpassed the United States in their ability to exploit information and communication technology, according to a new survey.

The United States, which topped the World Economic Forum’s “networked readiness index” in 2006, slipped to seventh. The study, out Wednesday, largely blamed increased political and corporate interference in the judicial system.

U.S. Loses Top Spot in Global Tech Study, By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer, 28 March 2007

Remember, this happened while U.S. telcos were busy reconsolidating into Ma Bell, rather than deploying real broadband (countries such as Japan and Korea have speeds 10 times faster than in the U.S., and available to everbody).

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FCC Changes Rules

The FCC has modified the terms of the AT&T and Bellsouth merger:
AT&T is required to offer a reduced rate to other phone companies that use its networks to connect calls. That means former Bell phone companies Verizon and Qwest, which use AT&T networks in some U.S. regions, would also pay the lower rate.

AT&T had previously agreed to cut the rate on the condition that Verizon and Qwest do the same, incurring the wrath of Verizon and Qwest and raising questions among some lawmakers.

US FCC agrees to changed AT&T/BellSouth condition, Reuters, March 27, 2007; 2:56 PM

On the one hand, this seems to level the playing field somewhat. Continue reading →

Net Neutrality Would Promote Infrastructure Improvements

The telco party line as expressed by Mike McCurry is:
McCurry argued that letting regulators “engineer the future of the Internet would “dampen investor interest in building bigger, faster, smarter pipes.” Instead, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission should sit on the sidelines and see what competition could do.

— Study: Net neutrality law would spur infrastructure improvements, By Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica, March 11, 2007 – 05:39PM CT

I’d say we’ve already seen what competition with the few big telcos does: it results in lawsuits and competitors shut down. But what if there were net neutrality? Continue reading →

FCC Looking for Violations

The FCC is investigating whether there are any current violations of net neutrality on the part of U.S. broadband operators:
Advocates of such laws, proponents of what is known as Net neutrality, also don’t claim to have widespread reports of discriminatory Internet practices. “For the most part, the industry is on its best behavior,” says Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, an advocacy group and supporter of Net neutrality legislation. “If there is a cop sitting behind you, do you floor it and go 90? Not if you are smart.”

The issue for Net neutrality advocates isn’t so much what the broadband providers are currently doing—though they do point to a few instances where Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) Internet telephone providers, such as Vonage (VG), were blocked by smaller service providers. Their main concern is what the telecommunications companies may do in the future to make more money from the high-speed cable and telephone networks they have and are building.

Without any specific problems to investigate, it’s unclear what the FCC’s investigation will ultimately do. In a statement, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the purpose of the inquiry was to be fully informed. “Gathering this information will allow us to better monitor this market,” says Martin.

— FCC Probe: Net Neutrality Goose Chase? The regulator’s search for discriminatory pricing by broadband providers may turn up little—but that doesn’t mean the practice won’t ever occur, by Catherine Holahan, Business Week, 27 March 2007

Monitoring the market is good, and if that’s what the FCC is really doing, preparing to monitor the market longterm, that’s probably a good idea. However, given that the FCC-brokered agreement for the AT&T-Bellsouth merger said that the participants would not do anything against net neutrality for two years, that is, after 2008, discovering that there aren’t currently many violations could also prove useful for political purposes leading up to the 2008 elections. I guess we’ll see.

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