What is Digg?123 Comments
- RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35Only Senators are allowed to speak on the Senate floor. This guy was invited to speak before the members of the Commerce Committee, not the full Senate. It is common procedure for Senators to invite all sorts of interested parties to give little presentations. If you've ever seen this on C-Span, you'd hardly describe it as being "Hailed before the Senate."
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Wrong! Just a few examples, stolen directly from savetheinternet.com:
"In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose -- driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.
In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme." - echobucket, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10to the people who say "What keeps you from switching ISPs?" Well in my particular case, I have ONE and only ONE choice of ISP. You see, in most people's cases there are only one (monopoly) or two (duopoly) choices available. In my case, it's my phone company offering DSL. I can't get Cable where I live. So this limits me to exactly ONE ISP. No other ISPs can run wires to my house, because the government does not allow just anyone to run wires along the public roads and highways. In this way, nearly all ISPs have what are called "Natural monopolies (or duopolies in the case of Phone + Cable)" This severly limits competition. If all of the Phone and Cable companies decide that tiered pricing is in thier best interests, then we the public basically have no say in the matter except for trying to pass a neutrality regulation through the law.
- Coopjust, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Net neutrality? No offense, but have you been on digg for the past 1+ months?
- RCourtney, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I'm curious where you people live that are talking about "changing to another ISP"? I live in Los Angeles and I have the choice of only TWO broadband connections: AT&T DSL and Time Warner Cable. Both of which have aligned themselves against the general principles of net neutrality in both comments and actions. So exactly what choice do I have when I want to abandon ship and move to an 'alternative'? Dial-up?
The real problem is that we have so few choices in terms of broadband providers and last-mile connections that they can and often do exactly as they please because there is no alternative. That is really what needs to be changed, but the infrastructure is already in place, the monopolies already built (and yes... when I have one choice for landline service it is a monopoly no matter how you try to slice it), and the barrier to entry is so high that it will not change in the foreseeable future and thus regulation becomes necessary to balance things out.
And you want examples of where the problem is? How about the CEO of AT&T saying the Google's of the world shouldn't get a 'free ride' on his network, despite the fact that like consumers, Google pays more than its fair share for its internet connection to various peering points? Or various other comments by officials at Verizon and Qwest stipulating the same basic idea: that somehow they are getting ripped-off by the way the internet currently works and that they would love to change it? - Larsbot3000, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10This may be simplistic, but what costs are you talking about Argash? As far as I can tell, ISPs are getting paid by both ends here. I as a consumer pay for my home bandwidth and google and any other services/content providers pay for theirs. If traffic gets to be horrible on a highway, the solution is to build more highway, not tell people how to drive on it.
I'm paying for a service and I feel like the value of what I'm paying for goes down when my provider tells me what they feel is right. Do I think that the solution to society's ills is to regulate everything? No. But in this case, I can only hope (although I'm probably being a little too optimistic) that my gov't stands up to companties which I have no power over. - dako, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9What is this about?
This is about Internet freedom. "Network Neutrality" -- the First Amendment of the Internet -- ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing Internet companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites.
But Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to gut Net Neutrality. If Congress doesn't take action now to implement meaningful network neutrality provisions, the future of the Internet is at risk.
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Hope that's useful. For more information go here ==>http://savetheinternet.com/=faq - RCourtney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Comments like 'if they wanted to they could already' seem a bit inaccurate to me. It takes specialized infrastructure and equipment to implement traffic-shaping. And as far as I am aware, most US ISPs have not been equipped for that mostly. Blocking port 25 is not traffic-shaping - it's implementing a firewall rule on a router. ISPs in Canada on the other hand DO traffic-shape (see Azureus website for list of major Canadian ISPs which ALL shape traffic to degrade P2P requiring encrypted packets to overcome) which is why you are hearing of these sorts of things already happening in places like Canada.
It takes time, money, and planning to implement traffic-shaping over infrastructure that isn't already designed for specifically that purpose. That may well be why we have not seen it here... yet. - Coopjust, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Still, it's progress. With any issue, you have to start somewhere and make others aware of it.
Still, you're right; the commerce committe is not exactly the senate. - wyattearp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@argash, even here in the US, there are places that only have 1 high speed internet provider .... so it can be sort of preventing you from switching ISPs when the only other game in town is offering a blazing speed of 28.8 Kbps
- ripter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I'm amazed at your cluelessness on this issue, we already discussed the astroturfing that is dontregulate.org
http://digg.com/technology/Telcos_Secretly_Funding_Fake_Grassroots_Anti-Net_Neutrality_Websites - xedeon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10@argash your logic is flawed! Net Neutrality is for us "the consumers" and the big telcos are trying to suppress it.
http://dontregulate.org & http://handsoff.org are fake (trying to be "grassroots" sites) they are funded by telcos (AT&T Verizon & Comcast) to decieve consumers watch this movie and get the whole picture http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/307
and visit http://www/savetheinternet.com to learn more and how to get involved this is a VERY serious issue if you value your browsing and stuff you do online. - toad3k, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8What is with all these astroturfers. It amazes me that anyone could actually take the side of the telecom lobby in this. Morons.
- argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'm not the one saying that it's the NN supporters saying that. And it is not a "public resource" as a matter of fact there should never be "public resources." "Public Resources" is the same thing as Government owned business which is communism.
NN is the opposite of what you say. Supporting NN is asking the government to fix a PERCEIVED problem. - knupso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6They are probably from the telecoms marketing department.
- RCourtney, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@argash
AT&T owns the last-mile phone line that connects to my home. Time Warner owns the last-mile coaxial cable that connects to my home. I have alternatives of who does authentication for my username and password and who hosts my email, but they all lease capacity from one of the two choices above and therefore my traffic goes through their lines to their switching station and routes to get anywhere from my home. And I also get to pay more for that since I pay for the other ISPs services as well as their lease on capacity to AT&T or Time Warner.
But of course I can alternativly become my own ISP and pay $15,000 or more (depending on how far I am from anyone other than AT&T's POP) to have someone lay a T1 directly to my house and then pay $700-1400/month for the service. - skatingrox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Astroturfing is not just evil, it's despicable.
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I see you have bought into the big telco propaganda?
I was kind of curious if it would work on anyone.
Anyway you very much would pay - for a tiered Internet service based on how much you were prepared to pay for each part of the Internet you access, if net neutrality doesn't pass. It would be the equivalent of all of the telcos constructing tollgates on every major (and minor) road in the US and demanding you pay them whatever they felt like charging to let you pass.
For now your access is free and the roads are open - but if the big telcos have their way, this would come to an abrupt end.
GJ - BAKER, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If this passes in "Save the Internets" favor how much control would the government have over Internet access?
- netburnr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I would switch ISPs if I could. Right now there are no other options for me, cable modem is the only acceptable broadband available. Now lets say the telcos get their way, the tiered Internet goes into place, google says 'f-off' to them and builds their own network and offers superior bandwidth/ latency for the same price. Hell yes I would change.
I want the fastest, most reliable ISP I can have at the cheapest price, regardless if what is going on in the background - lnxaddct, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Argash is just ignorant and doesn' realize that it doesn't matter what ISP you use, if your packets touch a 3rd party's network, which happens nearly 100% of the time, that 3rd party can charge extra for the delivery. You switch to any ISP you want, but if the big 3 ISPs decide they want to charge, you're screwed. The consumer has little choice here, and the lines were built using government subsidies, so the ISPs have no right to do that.
- HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@nuvem
VOIP companies are not competing with the telcos on a level playing field, there is the problem.
If you were the existing widget factory in town and the cost to run your plant was 25% higher then it should be because of government regulations how would you feel if a new widget factory showed up who was not bound by the same regulations as you but was making the same widget as you?
Would that be fair?
If government regulations add 25% to the cost of your product and 0% to the cost of your competitor wouldn't you try to either:
a) get your cost reduced to 0%
OR
b) get your competitor's cost raised to 25%
What if (too make matters worse) you were being forced by the government to subsidies your competitor in the interest of "creating competition in the marketplace"? Let's say the government told you that your competitor needed some time before they had to build their plant so YOU would have to build all the widgets in town but would also have to sell them to your competitor (below cost) so they could turn a profit and "eventually" build their own plant...
That is what the 1996 Telecom act did. It forced the telcos to resell their services (below cost) to competitors (resellers) so the competitors could "bring competition to phone service."
What was the end result? These companies became "fly-by-night" operations. They would have a call center and that was it. Your phone service stayed on the exact same equipment it was on before. Only difference was that rather then telco getting profit from you some other company (with zero infrastructure costs) got the money...
So, the telcos fought to get out from being a "common carrier" as it was the only way out of this horrible busines model that was forced up on them "in the name of competition."
VOIP companies have little to no infrastructure cost. They do not maintain a nationwide network of cables and fibers and switches. They do not have to pay termination fees for the calls passing over other companies networks (the internet is free!!!) and the end result was they changed the face of telephony.
The telcos see this and they was to compete just like the VOIP guys do. They want either one of two things to occur:
a) Force the VOIP companies to operate under ALL of the rules a tradtional telco operates under
b) Get all of the regulations off of the telco so they can compete under the SAME rules the VOIP companies compete under.
The appearance of VOIP companies changed everything. The geenie is out of the bottle. Everyone sees the internet as a "free distribution system"... I don't know about the big companies, but my web hosting agreement only gives me XGB of transfers per month, if I go over I pay extra... I sure would love to have an unlimitted ammount of bandwidth usage (and not pay extra). I'd also love to have my customers get preferential packet treatment (at no extra cost) when they come to my website...
It's not going to happen. There is no financial incentive for the existing backbone companies to institute QOS UNLESS they can profit from it. THAT is what NN is all about, content providors want a better internet experience for their customers but they do not want to pay for it. Backbone companies want to SELL a better Internet experience but they do not want to give it away...
Let the free market decide. If no one buys QOS then it will be a failure. If companies buy into it then it will be a success.
It's funny how the anti-NN groups are using a dialog of logic to discuss the issue ("any compnay that blocked Google would bleed users") while the pro-NN groups are using a dialog of emotions ("They want to block your ability to visit websites") who is right? Who is wrong? Who is just spreading FUD?
That's up to you to decide, but please look at this issue from BOTH sides and look for the conflicts, and then decide. Don't be a lemming or a shill. Educate yourself! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7i hope to god that net neutrality passes,
- lnxaddct, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6What is up with argash and morganm? I've been reading about businesses paying people to astrotruf, but this is ridiculous. Either that or they're the most ignorant people I've ever met.
- lnxaddct, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Morganm,
It wasn't happening before because the internet wasn't mature enough. Most companies weren't in a position where the internet was 100% critical to them. Its only been in the past 5 years or so that this has been the case. The ISPs were pretty much waiting for one to make the first move, and ISPs already are starting to block competing services.. The internet was built using government sudsidies, they have no right to restrict what I can access, that isn't why we let them use the lines. There are similar regulations with the telcos and telephone service too, it is a good thing. Stop astroturfing for whatever corporation is paying you to do so. What a tool. - argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@nuvem THE OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT SPONSORSHIP OF MONOPOLIES!!!! What is this need you people have to pass more bad laws in an attempt to fix the existing bad laws?
- HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@ripter
"Ok, I don't think you quite understand how a free market works. A free market requires active healthy competition. Something the monopoly's don't have, therefor we don't have a free market when the company is a monopoly. (See: Oil, Telecom, Power, Microsoft, Railways, Steel). Next you tell us that you "have no problem with a “well-regulated” monopoly" well gee, what do you think the NN is trying to do? Its an attempt to keep this monopoly 'well-regulated', Isn't that what you just said your for?"
I believe there are certain situations that require a monopoly due to the shear size and scope of what is at hand. Telephony and energy are two areas that I would be willing to accept a "well-regulated" monopoly.
A monopoly IS contrary to a free market, I agree 100%!
NN is not about keeping a monopoly "well-regulated", NN is about regulating a free market business. If you want the telcos to become Ma Bell again, that is one thing. If Ma Bell was the monopoly and there was zero competition in telecom/ISP land then I would be for NN. But I can't support a measure to tie a company's hand behind it's back when it has to compete in a free market economy.
PS: Oil is NOT a monopoly, there are many oil companies out there, American ones are a minority. Look at the profits of state-owned companies... - chad78, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7argash is an ISP Shill. Report him.
- argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@nuvem No sir what your asking them to do is pay for their own competition that is NOT free market
- lnxaddct, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5argash,
Many times users don't have choices to swtich to. And because of the way the internet works, it doesn't matter if your ISP decides to do it or not. If your packets go across an ISP's network (which is very likely) while reaching its destination, that ISP would still charge money despite not being your ISP nor the destination's ISP. This Net Neutrality bill is critical because right now ISPs have the ability to throttle one of the largest economic forces in the nation. If they had built the network, maybe I'd feel differently about it, but we let them use public land, utilities and services along with government sudsidies so that they could provide us with a service. Since the internet was built in large part due to public funding, it is important that we enforce that private Internet Service Providers are there to provide us with access to the internet and not there to tell us where on the internet we can access. There were similar things happening with telephone companies years ago, but now there is legislation and things are good. Would you like your telephone company telling you what catalogues you can order things out of, or what politiicians you are allowed to call? Congress is actually trying to stop a problem before it gets out of hand, and they need to know that we support them. - argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@lnxaddct That right there is government control in the form of the government telling an ISP how to opperate.
- vermin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@argash
That's great for now, but thanks to new FCC classification of DSL they have dropped the 'common carrier' status, therefore all those 13 DSL companies (that all run on one telco's wires) will go out of business in 2007, leaving you with 2 cable companies and 1 DSL company. And to be frank having 2 cable companies available to you is quite rare. See this for more about the FCC reclassification: http://news.com.com/FAQ+What+is+Brand+X+really+about/2100-1034_3-5764187.html - EvilOtto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."
John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel.......
yes, since they haven't done anything yet they must have no ill intentions whatsoever - vermin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Would you or would you not switch ISPs if your current ISP introduced a tiered service?"
The majority of America has only 1 or 2 broadband ISP options in their area. In addition, the cost of entry to the ISP market is extremely high (it took billions of taxpayer dollars for existing telcos to lay down all that wire), this means that there's very very little competition. How would consumers switch ISP's when there's no alternatives? - netburnr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Its amazing seeing the negative comments some people are getting for debating an issue which noone knows the exact outcome of the bill.
Its all speculation until it happens and we get to see how the economy / buisiness leaders run w/ it. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Baker,
none. This bill is only about stopping your ISP from telling you what companies' websites you can visit."
No, the bill specifically prohibits telcom companies from charging more money for better QoS. We already allow ISP's to charge more for better bandwidth at the last mile. But, with net neutrality, it will be illegal to pay more for better QoS (bandwidth and throughput) though the whole system. So if I started a VoIP phone company, I couldn't use the internet under net neutrality if I wanted to guarantee no lag or dropouts, like a normal phone. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"well hello there shill?"
nice ad hominem attck. dugg down. Why don't you actually try countering some of his points rather than name calling. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Some organizations not mentioned in the Coalition section:
Microsoft
Google
Amazon
Yahoo
Is savetheinternet.com embarrassed to have these companies associated with their movement? They certainly have the same agenda, and would certainly give them a lot of money, if asked. - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What bandwidth rate does your contract provide for? Does it say you WILL get XMbs or does it say "up to" XMbs?
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"2. It's not 'their pipes' WE payed for them, well actually we paid for a lot more than we ever got. (which has been discussed on digg and elsewhere)"
WTF. No tax money has gone to the internet backbone since the early 90's. Quit spreading misinformation. Google, etc. only pays their ISP for last mile. All other flow of money to supporting the backbone is in peering agreements, which NN people want heavily regulated by the govt. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you support net neutrality, you will never get good QoS from a company like Vonage or Skype, because it will be illegal for them to pay telcom companies for such a guarantee.
Tiered service is good in that it give content providers choices for their specific business needs. - argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@drenei I would loose the option to sign up (if I want to) for an ISP that is cheaper because it charges content providers for some of the bandwidth.
Lets say they charge YouTube $20 a month per customer on its network that accesses youtube regularly (I'm ballbarking here). Because of this they can lower my monthly ISP fee from $40 to $20 (again just for examples sake).
I might be fine with that if I get tired of youtube and stop going there, I'll never notice the degredation to their site if I don't visit it. Or I might be Ok with slightly degraded service.
If later on I change my mind I would then still have the option to switch to another ISP that doesnt throttle. - argash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Ryosen really? Sure seems to me like you want to tell Hank Reardon who he can or cannot sell his metal to.
- tribecom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4argash said: "The net has been around for a very long time now and they've had plenty of time to do this if they wanted to."
Thats moronic. The revenue stream they want to tap is streaming content...just now coming into reality on a scale large enough to worry about.
Changing ISP's? The pipes are all connected, dude. If you double tier the major providers it impacts the downstream providers too. It's going to impact the little mom and pop ISP you move to. - anon52, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Is there any service that publishes speed/throughput/bandwidth reports between specified endpoints over fairly long intervals (weeks or months)?
These could be used as a representative sampling of how well traffic is being handled currently and may serve as an early-warning sign that someone (TELCO) may be messing with delivery.
I'd like to see an analysis done before, and if it happens, after the ISPs start to throttle service. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4argash, et al.:
"Why? So they can just pass the cost on to you and me?"
Isn't that what already happens? Whether the government taxes us for it, then gifts it to the telcos to sell back to us (which is what's been happening) or the telcos bill us directly, we pay for it. The difference is whether or not we get a crippled Internet or an egalitarian one.
You seem to suggest that, if my ISP (Verizon DSL) decides to not play fair, that I should just switch. Great idea. Unfortunately, I can't run my business on dial-up from home, and there's no other choice for broadband. Perhaps you feel I should simply move? "Free market" forces only exist where there is a free market. And "free markets" are entirely mythical. - br0ken1128, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@morganm "The argument for net neutrality is that the status quo will cause the telcos to charge people for transport over their networks. Since we're living with the status quo now, and since this is VERY serious, you'd think that the problem would already be happening. Unfortunately, the argument for the bill is couched in ominous future problems heading our way. It's not based on reality"
Are you an AT&T employee? or are you so short sighted and sheltered that you've not been paying attention to current events? Aren't you reading what some of these telcos have been saying? The infrastructure doesn't exactly exist right now to implement the changes that they've been talking about, but the fact remains that they've been threatening to charge the googles of the world more money even though they're already paying for their connection and I'm paying for mine.. sort of a toll road mentality..
As it stands today, if I'm a telco and you don't have your bandwidth directly with me (and therefore aren't paying me directly) you'll pass through my network for free, this is how the internet works.. this is how it's always worked.
What they WANT to do is start charging you to pass through their network, and if you don't pay them they'll slow that traffic down or block it entirely, that means that google would not only have to pay their upstream provider for the pipe, but they also have to pay a series of "tolls" to pass google traffic through their networks.
The fact is, this shouldn't be necessary, every network peered on the net should already be paying for their own pipes, and if they are using excessive bandwidth then their upstream peer should be charging them more, not the network 3 hops away.
So pay attention, the telcos are talking about changing the status quo, the bill is designed to prevent this.
Imagine also when telcos start getting more into VOIP and decide to slow down or block competing services? imagine them blocking or degrading the quality of Skype so much that they eliminate the competition or force Skype to pay them a hefty fee for passing the traffic? - noof, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5What's this all about? I've kinda missed it.
- boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Flash-only websites (or Flash intros, whatever that is) are evil.
- nakedcellist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4This must be the only coalition ever containing the aclu, gun owners of america and christian groups..
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