What is Digg?245 Comments
- 16x9, on 10/12/2007, -13/+78I'm surprised this hasn't received a LOT more Diggs. This is an important issue! And it looks like we're about to be screwed. Our (the U.S.) political system sure needs to be brought back into balance.
- hometoast, on 10/12/2007, -6/+61I know. This and the other stories of the submitted legislation by Markey and Wyden also did not receive much attention. I feel like we're screaming at the top of our lungs, THIS WILL RUIN EVERYTHING, and the majority of folks respond with, "ooh seventh heaven is on!"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+34No Internet Packet Left Behind
On a serious note, people really should get involved with this if you really care about the state of the net. I'm sure all the major content providers will defend as they know how, but nothing speaks louder than a market, or a voting populace.
Write your senator's about this.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Write your representatives about this
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
See Common's Cause's page on it
http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1372975&action=5382&template=x.ascx
My take on this is that this is only the begining. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and the like will one day offer similar services to Google, Amazon, Ebay, etc. Now if the consumer has a slow time reaching googe, but ..can use the new and improved fast Verizon search..
see where this is going? It's not just about about putting content providers through a bit of extortion. It's a move to simly wipe them out.
Digg for freedom. - gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -9/+35WTF are you all talking about? George Bush is not a member of congress. Blaming everything that goes wrong in Congress on the President is just stupid and continues the ignorant perception that Bush is the cause of all our troubles. This is America. We have checks and balances. You didn't elect a King, you elected a President. Whatever he wants does not always happen. Much of the blame also falls on Congress here.
BTW, I'm not trying to say that Bush is good, I'm just trying to get you guys to think a little more about how to actually fix the political situation, instead of just assuming that all our problems will go away if we got a new President. - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -8/+31What does Bush have to do with the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee?
- xocomil, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26I think this underscores more of what I perceive as the issue in our current congress. It doesn't matter what the bill is. If it is proposed and supported by the opposing party, you have to oppose it. Congressional leaders don't care about the people they represent. They are more worried about making the other guys look bad to increase the power of their party and in turn increase their personal power. Everywhere you go, you see the same thing. One party proposes a bill that just might make things better for their constituents, but the other party doesn't want things to get better because heaven forbid, they might vote for the other guys next time...
I've got this thought that would be hilarious. I wish I could convince every person in the US to vote against the incumbent representative in every election from mayor to president (although this doesn't matter because GW can't run again). I guarantee that the political shake-up from every person in the US voting against all this crap happening right now by kicking their current representatives out of office. I think it would make John Q. Representative think twice about accepting that "informational trip" to the Bahamas from the telco company. Might make it harder for the *AA to push their newest DRM tactic through... Oh well... One can only dream - theragu40, on 10/12/2007, -8/+29I agree with jasonmanty. I almost didn't click on this because the title showed clear political bias, which really irritates me. However, I was already familiar with the issue, so I wanted to read it to see the particulars. It was a good article, but I was not surprised to find that as I had expected the article said it was a bipartisan defeat of the bill, not just republicans. Had you titled it something that didn't make it look like your typical uninformed partisan babble, more people would digg it...though it seems that now it has finally made the front page anyway, and it will probably pick up steam there.
As far as the issue in the article, I'm not sure what to think. While I agree that the idea of charging companies for better bandwidth is a ***** idea, I also agree that perhaps heavy government regulation is not the best idea. I'm not so sure if I want to constantly be hearing about petty lawsuits from websites claiming they are getting screwed over just because they're looking at some obscurity in the new laws. I agree with some of the people below that perhaps a better way for this to work would be for consumers just to not use the networks that try to favor their partners. If consumers aren't intelligent enough as a whole to fiscally punish companies with illegitimate policies, then I guess we shouldn't really be worrying about any of this anyway. - syberghost, on 10/12/2007, -18/+37Headline is misleading and biased. Could also be phrased:
"Republicans propose less reactionary solution to net neutrality problem by using existing agencies and laws with minor tweaks, instead of knee-jerk addition of new laws. Democrats phrase it to make it seem like Republicans are opposed to fixing problem at all. Digg and Slashdot readers fall for it." - jasonmantey, on 10/12/2007, -13/+31@liquidedge
You might have gotten more diggs had you titled it differently. I know for myself, I rarely digg stories that deal with politics because quite frankly, politics are boring to me. Many political diggs just start an uproar of party bashing (as your title implies you might have been thinking - whether or not you were). imho political hating just gets in the way of discussion about topics, and that is the first thing I was expecting when I saw the title. Nice find though. If this ever gets through, our lives are over as internet consumers. Hopefully google's nationwide WIFI will be all over by then (and we wont have to rely on ATT, Verizon, etc.) At least googles sites will be fast :) - lasermike026, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Hey listen, if you're a Republican you are now the government. If you can't take the criticism that comes with being in charge then your not ready for a leadership position. The Republican party votes in lock step and they the voted net neutrality bill down. The problem with being in charge is your responsible.
If you have a Republican representative and you care about net neutrality, call your rep and tell him/her to vote and support net neutrality. My representative is Democratic so all I can tell him to do is turn up the heat. - manitcor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16This is what sickens me:
Internet industry is being outspent in Washington by more than a 3-to-1 margin.
I'm so freaking tired of hearing about how the industry that dumps the most money into Washington get its bills through. Anytime you see a bill get passed you can find some massive corporate intrest behind it that is dumping money ad various reps. Whatever happened to all the talk about campaign finance reform? Lets decrease the power of the lobbyists and lets remove soft money completely from the system. Our representatives should represent the people who elected them and not the corporation that wrote them a check last week.
As I have been saying for years, no man in America is truly free until he has enough money to buy a senator or at least rent one from time to time. - Jorenko, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I just can't believe that anyone who actually understands the technology and the way the billing is currently set up could support allowing this tiered crap. Here's an analogy for you guys:
You own a small country out in the middle of nowhere (Jorentania). You build and maintain your own highway system, and you want to connect it to an international highway that's maintained by the UN. But, to do that, you have to go through some much larger country (Mabellvania). They charge you money to use their road as an intermediary road to the UN superhighway. Your original agreement with Mabellvania is that any traffic traveling between Jorentania and the superhighway is covered by your fees.
A few years later, it's apparent that the majority of the vehicles headed into Jorentania are semi trucks carrying cargo that you import from a certain company, GoogCorp. Mabellvania sets up checkpoints on their highways. Every GoogCorp truck going through their country must either pay a fee, or be pulled off to the side of the road and wait a few hours before continuing.
This is what AT&T, Verizon, et. all want to do. The net neutrality bill, in this example, is a UN act stating that all traffic coming of the UN superhighway is to be treated equally, and that the originally agreed upon fee provides for all of the traffic with no discriminitory delays. - theragu40, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Powercow, did you even read the article? Or wait, my guess is you read it, but only the parts that said "DEMOCRATS ARE TEH SWEET", am I right? The article clearly states that it was a bipartisan defeat of the bill. Yes, probably more Republicans voted against it, but think for a moment what conservative ideals are: smaller government. Most conservative politicians would vote against regulations that allowed greater government control over the market. So get out of here with your partisan slander, unless you plan on actually reading the whole article and having an intelligent debate.
- inkninja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Backbones for what? The Internet, our citizens or our politicians?
- ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13From what I understand, the telcos that own the actual fiber optic cable backbones of the internet want to add on a sort of QoS feature to where certain traffic gets higher priority and is therefore faster (think VoIP, video streaming, ect.) and want to change a fee for this service. From what they've said, they wouldnt be making any traffic slower, just offering faster, prioritized traffic for a fee.
Opponents want to keep all traffic "neutral" and not allow the telco's to offer this service and charge a fee. - headcase, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18Someone should do something about this......I'm looking at you Google.
- longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19"Republicans are also the bought and paid for party of big business" yes verizon and sbc are big businesses, but so are yahoo, google, and microsoft, and because of this fact one cannot say they ruled in a way that you don't like because they favor big business.
- kajoob, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16Since submitter shamelessly ripped the misleading headline from Slashdot, I will shamelessly rip the correction posted by C-Diddy:
A transparently lame and misleading headline. Read the story. The story says the "republican controlled committee" defeated the proposed amendment. According to the story:
"By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed "Net neutrality" amendment to a current piece of telecommunications legislation.
The story does not mention which "subcommittee" of the House Energy and Commerce committee took the action, but the story does say several democrats voted against the measure:
The vote on the amendment itself did not occur strictly along party lines, with one Republican voting in favor and four Democrats voting against it.
Interestingly, the final measure, sans the amendment, was passed by an overwhelming 24-7 vote.
Reported as Innaccurate. - BSpolice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11All three.
- newevilmind, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18Republicans aren't typically known for being very well versed in anything, now days.
none of their current platform makes any sense.
-they say they stand for smaller government but waste more $ than anyone has ever dreamed of.
-they say they are conservative, but are actually trying to do away with all current laws making Democrats look conservative to the new republican radicalism.
- they say they follow Christ, yet hate anyone deemed "different" from them. not very Christ-like - fgiDangeresque, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11We need people to get some serious earmarking done against the interests of companies like these. The internet as we know it is being tugged out of our hands by people who dont care about society; only profit.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9it means bellsouth cant let there users access yahoo faster than google.. it would really suck for google if millions of people got choppy video on google videos yet all the videos on yahoo stream fine..
or like bellsouth limiting VOIP, making your calls staticy and drop in and out... then offereing to sell you there oiwn static free service for a bit more. - drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Why things are:
AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo spent only a combined $71.2 million. (Those figures include lobbying expenditures, individual contributions, political action committees and soft money.) - jayadelson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I'm not sure what my take on this is yet. I think concerns either way are warranted, but it's not clear the way it is written helps or hurts. I need to spend more time on it. However, one thing is clear: RBOCs/MSOs are definitely fooling themselves if they think they can prioritize content without losing customers. The "neutral networks" that bring you content from a larger, international base will win out as a higher quality service provider, versus the walled garden approach. We've seen this already in the past, and it will happen again. The market itself should drive behavior.
When you look back, it was BellSouth's comments on this that really made this headline news for a while, and I'm sure that these statements were made as a competitive statement. For example, if an MSO has their own VOD systems, and tells Netflix or someone else that they will "deprioritize" their downloads, the customers will find alternative MSOs. - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9it was shot down 8-23. Something tells me there's more than 8 dems on the committee.
- UGM2099, on 10/12/2007, -18/+26let's vote these ***** out of office.
- drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Right before service based gaming was going online. darn. Imagine indie gaming markets able to compete with the EA game cable of the future online (3d full downloadable clients FAST download). Ok not don't because... the indie market won't even be able to host a single server becasue there is no money to pay the internet tolls on the fast lane. The small business world lost today, launching competing high content services online just got alot more capital intensive.
- twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10This issue is a direct result of the ***** up financial aspects of the political process. The telcos have a lot of money to give to politicians.
Anyone who is at all concerned about this should have a good hard think about what we can do to fix that. - brandonvan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Can someone help me out with fully understanding this article by defining the frequently used term "Net Neutrality"?
- redcard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8A few geeks in Silicon Valley?
The net was based on government projects, and was indeed built by Government Contractors for use in a nuclear war and military communications. It was called Arpanet. The computers used were supplied by major companies all who had vested interests. The thing was turned over for research purposes to Universities, and then eventually to the common citizen. At no point was this thing EVER a bunch of geeks in a garage. It was always big business. Always. Please don't rewrite history to fit in with a leftist agenda. (Says a leftist from Tennessee). - crodragn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7In the face of so much money being thrown around, I honestly fail to see how simply writing can have any affect. $290 million? I know writing is supposed to have an effect, but as corrupt as politicians are now days, any position higher than the local level is bought. In the past, I have tried it, only to receive form letters that clearly showed no one had actually read what I had written. It actually thanked me for support in a matter that was the exact opposite of what I was saying.
- jayadelson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7When AOL restricted access to the Internet years ago, the users demanded connectivity. When that connectivity to the rest of the Internet wasn't high quality, they demanded high quality and AOL delivered, building an OC-192 backbone and establishing themselves as a Tier-1 transit-free network. The have never deprioritized extra-net content. So therefore, I'm not sure this is a good example.
- Dinosaurus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13But but... it's still Bush's fault though right?
- boushley, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Voting for Bush would have nothing to do with this. This is the senators and congressman that you votd for. Even if Congress passed this... the president would still have a chance to veto it. This is like 5th grade government stuff. Don't you guys know anything?
Didn't any of you see the school house rock video about the Bill on the Hill... man that was an amazing video :) - Arevos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Exactly, skyshock21. I don't know what everyone's so worried about. Monopolistic practices are inevitably combatted by market forces. Look at Microsoft: it had a monopoly over the OS on PCs, but the market sorted itself out and now they don't have a monopoly anymore... oh wait, they still do.
Free markets are not a magic bullet. Given the right circumstances, a company can maintain a monopoly over a market at the expense of consumers for a significantly long time. It's up to the government to intervene and prevent a company from using it's power to affect competition in its own market, or in other markets as is the case here. The telecoms are trying to run an extortion scheme, which will benefit no-one but themselves. This isn't good for the market, and isn't good for consumers. - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Thats what happens when you rip off slashdot on a political story. Have they ever had an accurate headline for those?
- inkninja, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7QUOTE: Last week, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton said: "Before we get too far down the road, I want to let the market kind of sort itself out, and I'm not convinced that we really have a problem with Net neutrality."
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HULK SMASH!!!!!!!! - drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Markey warned: '"There is a fundamental choice. It's the choice between the bottleneck designs of a...small handful of very large companies and the dreams and innovations of thousands of online companies and innovators."
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6SHow them we are serious, vote everyone out.. start over from scratch.. no senority, no lobby friends.. and then in 4 years do it all again.
- enforcerpsu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I love all these knee jerk reactions (as said above). 98% of you have no idea what you are talking about. This is insane.
The only thing I see getting posted now is..
"zomg!1111 look what the republicns did111 They are taking my intrerweb away!111 zomg!"
Most of you have NO IDEA what the article means. Also, for the last time, it was a COMMITTEE, not republicans. - nnonix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The article should read "Republicans defeat Liberal play to regulate the Internet".
The Internet up to this point has been unregulated and should stay that way. - emrventures, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This whole thread is missing a major point, if not the major point, in this debate.
This is not a question of "free market", because there is no "free market" for utility providers. Companies like Verizon and the cable companies have been granted government monopolies to build their systems (along with enormous subsidies). The reason for this is simple -- in order to build a provider network, these companies have to run their lines across enormous amounts of public and private land they do not own. They are granted billions upon billions of dollars worth of liens, in exchange for a promise to serve everyone equally.
Think about it -- you may have a Comcast or Cablevision line running across your own property. You didn't ask to have it there, nor were you paid for the imposition. But if say, "Heck, I'm not a Cablevision customer, I don't want this on my property" and you go cut down their line, you're gonna get arrested. Similarly, if you plant a tree that interferes with the lines, the tree is going to get cut down.
The deal that is made is called "common carrier" -- in exchange for the right to use the land necessary to build their systems, the provider agrees not to discriminate. It was done with the railroads, the telegraph companies, the phone system, cable, TV, radio. So, railroads were given the land to build their tracks, with the promise that they wouldn't put some grain companies or cattle companies out of business by charging different rates or providing different service based on who paid them off.
Now, the telcos want to abandon common carrier. They want to keep their monopolies and their liens, but take upon themselves the right to discriminate as to who gets the best service from their system. At the extreme, this gives them the power to decide who does and does not stay in business (i.e. Skype or YouTube), by virtue of the power they've been granted over public and private property.
Verizon wants "tiered" service -- fine, they can have it, as soon as they come to my house and get their line off my property or pay me for the privilege, since I'm not a customer of theirs anyway. - Brian48216, on 10/12/2007, -16/+21Shame on you.
But to be fair, it's not like the democrats are showing any backbone either. So we're stuck between a bunch of republican pricks who like to ***** over everybody who makes less then 250k/year, and spineless democrats who have nothing better to do but get angry over GTA.
If we could do a transplant of balls from republicans to democrats we'd be straight. - theragu40, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Oh come on guys, don't mod him down for that! Al Gore DID say that he invented the internet. It WAS hilarious, was it not? Al Gore was man enough to go on SNL and make fun of himself for what he said, at least we can be man enough not to mod down someone making the same joke. :)
- gweedo767, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Why is everyone shocked that Republican's voted down a bill that gave the governement more power over the free market?
While I don't like what AT&T/Verizon wants to do here, I don't think this is an area were we want goverment regulation. Speak with your pocket book. My DSL contract with AT&T ends in May, I will be moving away from them at that time. - liquidedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Everyone says I'm trolling with the topic title, RTFA and you'll see all I did was copy the headline over.
- tannergdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It isn't about Dem or Republican.
News flash folks... %YourGovernment% is for sale to the highest bidder. Money talks.
"AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo spent only a combined $71.2 million. (Those figures include lobbying expenditures, individual contributions, political action committees and soft money.)" - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11"I almost didn't click on this because the title showed clear political bias"
um, the title isn't biased, it is relating what factually happened... the article says how a committee with a republican majority voted down the proposal, with the vote split along party lines... therefore, a group of republicans defeated the proposal... thing for a second before you get your panties in a bunch... if the title was "F*ing repulicans defeat proposal", that would have been biased, the current title is just describing the contents of the article... - joerao, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I do have a problem being charged per/post, per/download, etc... But in a free market I will be able to choose a provider that will deliver a service that I WANT... not that the govermentment wants me to have.
From what I have read, so far there is no problem with Net neutrality. Until there is, I hope the goverment backs-off on any regulation. Its not necessary. They have better things to do... - exipolar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6didn't I hear rumors awhile ago that Google was buying a ton of fiberopti.
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