Net neutrality means different things. I am not sure which one it means here. Some are clearly bad, some look good. I don't know which one this is.

Where I think it is important is in cases like the following. I used to have highspeed through a company no defunct (I think comcast own the lines now). Anyway, they started there on voip phone service on the cable lines and those had higher priority than other traffic. There own service was favored. It was never proven...heck, it was never really investigated by one other than the users because apparently if they were, that broke no laws though may have broken some contracts with end-users.

Here is were the free market falls down... there is little competition. I am looking as right were I am at there is competition, but not at many places. At my parents house, you get cable (only one option) - the dsl is so slow that it is hardly better than dial up because they are so far from the central office and the lines are old. My brother's place is similar though the DSL is a bit better.

If there were "phone neutrality," the government would be demanding that I pay the same rate as the heaviest users.

In all the versions I have seen about cost, it would mean you pay the same rate - say 10cents/minute. Not that you would both pay $100/month regardless of how many minutes you use. The net is a bit different - mine is always on whether I am using it or not.

How about leaving it as is, because there's nothing wrong with it? As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke..."

You purchased the internet access with the understanding that whether you used it a lot, a little or not at all, your rate would be the same. Knowing this, you did it any way. Having accepted this, it's too late for you to grumble about adjusted rates and changing the rules.

You bought it this way. You can live with it this way. Then do so.

The youtube video pointed to makes dishonest arguments. First of
all, it devotes half of the clip to setting up a straw man and
then demolishing it. As far as I know, nobody outside this
slanted clip has tried to equate network neutrality with
flat-rate pricing.

Network neutrality means ISPs aren't allowed to discriminate
aginst their competitors's data. It keeps them from blocking
that data, giving their own packets better service (or their
non-preferred sources worse service), or charging extra to access
their competitors. The Youtube clip claims that this kind of
discrimination has never happened in the U.S. That's a clear
lie, as Comcast has admitted throttling traffic that identified
itself as being peer-to-peer.

Read the FCC report on this and about neutrality:
http://www.fcc.gov/broadband_network_management/fp_et_al_nn_declaratory_ruling.pdf

@Ron -

And as soon as Comcast was threatened with losing their common carrier status, they backed down.

Existing regulations took care of it. No need for more. The legal understanding now is that if they decide to filter traffic based upon content or origin, that they are accepting responsibility for the traffic on their pipes, and are liable for any infringement or criminal activity therein. They won't do anything other than traffic shaping, which is a necessary evil in any large network.

If any form of "Net Neutrality" goes into effect, you will see a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet next. Because that's the real goal of those who are pushing this in DC.

Annnd here comes the consistency checker.

You got the TSA to make sure everything was going to be all right on the airplane. Your alternative to putting up with them is to avoid flying.

You get monitoring for "net neutrality"... Do any of you recognize that Congress routinely names new laws after the effect their law prevents? Does this name really represent what is going on?

Does this mean that since I paid for 6Gbit DSL, I will now have a manufactured "right" to everything the modem can handle?

Was ComCast punished for throttling Pirate Bay-type traffic? Do you recognize that torrent traffic can use up all available bandwidth?

Brian and I are on the same side of an issue...albeit for different reasons. Someone call Ripley's. I'd do it myself, but the shock is overwhelming.

That aside, this idea would be a hardsell to the American people anyway. You can't provide a service for a tolerable fee, then start changing the rules about how people are going to pay for this service.

Didn't the opposition to Obamacare teach you anything? People will be actually be convinced to vote against their best interest if it means changing the established order.

This idea will not sell. Drop it.

Jim Harper at CATO on net neutrality here:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-fcc-should-not-regulate-the-internet/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatoHomepageHeadlines+%28Cato+Headlines%29&utm_content=Twitter

The arguments against government regulation in the name of “net neutrality” have not changed: A good engineering principle is not made better if dogmatized and given to lawyers and bureaucrats to enforce as law. The FCC and its regulatory regime are almost sure to be captured by major ISPs and turned to their benefit, used to suppress competition and blunt innovation.

A premise of net neutrality regulation—and much other regulation—is that consumers can’t be relied on to defend their own interests. Taking that premise, which I don’t, it follows that regulators must step in. But that syllogism skips over an additional premise: that regulators can do a better job.

The Istituto Bruno Leoni (Italy) recently published a terrific paper by Slavisa Tasic (a former Cato intern) that applies the insights of behavioral economics to regulators. Academics have typically used behavioral economics to illustrate the fallibility of market actors, but Tasic turns the tables. The paper is called “Are Regulators Rational?”, and it examines the cognitive biases that are likely to produce flawed decision-making on the part of regulators.

Yes, it’s tit-for-tat to the attack on markets implicit in behavioral economics, but it’s a sound and fair paper that opens new insights onto regulation. This is a good time to do that. Too many take it as an article of faith that the FCC will do better than consumers at protecting consumers’ interests.

Link to paper is at the link above.

@brian:
That's not the way I remember it. Instead, they went to
court and said the FCC doesn't have the authority to
regulate net neutrality. They won, too.

They backed down from this specific practice because they'd been
caught discriminating against this type of data without actually
disclosing the fact to their customers.

Cite:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html

Also note the line:
"consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of
their choice." But the principles also permit providers'
"reasonable network management"

"A premise of net neutrality regulation-and much other regulation-is
that consumers can't be relied on to defend their own interests."

I'd phrase it a little differently in this case. How about "lack
the power to defend their own interests"?

If you want broadband in much of the country, your choices are
limited. If your phone line isn't fiber, and you live too far from
the central office to get DSL, you're pretty much reliant on the
cable company monopoly. If you do have the phone company as an
alternative, then that's a total of two providers. It's better than
no choice at all, but it's not a lot of choices, either.

@Patrick -

Well, we aren't on the same side then.

Voting against Obamacare was NOT against our best interest. Obamacare is going to cost me between $5,000 and $10,000 a year once it's fully implemented. As a bonus, my doctor is probably going to retire and I'm totally fucked.

Net Neutrality (as described) is a non-issue. Comcast was blocking torrent traffic because it was fucking their network and they couldn't be bothered to do proper QoS management. Also, they continue to sell "Unlimited" Internet plans. People seem to be selling Net Neutrality as some way to force the cable and telephone companies to provide unlimited bandwidth for some at the expense of all.

Net Neutrality is REALLY about getting the government's foot in the door and allowing for content regulation on the net like Australia has. And once that precedent's set, they move on to getting content controls over satellite and cable TV. Which finally allows Ted Stevens and Michael Copps to relieve the hard-ons they've had for Howard Stern by shutting him down forever.

I'd phrase it a little differently in this case. How about "lack the power to defend their own interests"?

How's that working for you in the ball-check lane at the TSA?

The mistake is the assumption that government defends your interests.

Government has made America fat. As Gary Taubes writes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, an aide to George McGovern was behind "the food pyramid" -- an aide with zero science background. Eating according to that food pyramid -- eating a high-carb, low-fat diet -- has made America fat. Finally, finally, an increasing number of people are starting to eat according to scientific evidence instead of the "science" promoted by the government.

Government likewise did not protect you -- with existing regulations -- from salmonella in eggs. This did not stop government from passing more regulations. Meanwhile, schools cannot have bake sales anymore and my neighbor is selling her homemade jams (which her friends have eaten without dying or getting sick for 20-plus years) as if she's selling heroin. (You have to have a connection through a friend, and then she'll hook you up with a jar.) Ridiculous.

Ron, the real problem is that the presented argument is specious. It's a red herring. The FCC isn't really that concerned about carriers giving preferential treatment to certain traffic, except as much as they can use it as a political cudgel. The real purpose is to give the FCC the power to regulate content on the Internet. Everything else is a red herring.

Patrick writes: "That aside, this idea would be a hardsell to the American people anyway. " Patrick, I don't think they have any intention of trying to sell it. They're just going to impose it. Because, obviously they know what's good for us more than we do.

@Ron -

The tacit threat that made Comcast back down was this:

"If you can filter traffic for network management, then you can filter traffic for content management, and therefore you are responsible for any infringing traffic on your network."

Essentially, they were threatened with losing "Safe Harbor" under DMCA (a ridiculous law that should never have passed).

And people have plenty of power to defend their interests. If enough people decide to say "Fuck the internet", Comcast's gonna notice. Now that people are saying "Fuck TV", they are noticing. You think they got on the DVR and streaming anywhere bandwagons because they wanted to? Hells no. Hulu comes along, and all of a sudden cable companies are offering streaming on-demand to their customers for when they're traveling.

The market works, bitches.

Oh, and just like "Global Warming", you can tell a lot about a movement by those that paid for it: John Fund shows the leftist links.

The net is a bit different - mine is always on whether I am using it or not.

It's always "on" in the same sense a cell tower is always on: the provider is ready and able to provide service almost instantaneously.

Right. "On" and "Active" are very different states.

Unlike many other commodities, bandwidth is a fixed quantity. If someone is using it, it's not available for someone else.

ISPs rely on the fact that most users are not going to be 100% "Active" when they size their networks.

The advent of NetFlix is going to alter those calculations, and they are either going to have to throttle or cap usage in order to get people to self-regulate.

Or they are going to have to build out more capacity and charge more to everyone.

Your choice.

I haven't understood why people think it's a good thing that the government would demand heavy users of the Internet pay the same rate as light users

This isn't what net neutrality is about. It's about making sure that you Comcast, for example, can't decide to prioritize some traffic (like NBC streaming video) and slow down other traffic (like ABC streaming video). People can still be charged for faster overall access, or for how many GB of data they download.

The Internet was built upon the principle that all packets are treated the same way by ISPs. Net Neutrality is about protecting that principle.

, and whether regulating cell phones along similar lines is next.

No. Cell phones got exempted, using the silly language that because Android is "open source", this means that mobile need not be regulated similarly to wired Internet connections. It makes no sense that the success of an OS (that is not really open source, at least not if you want the goodies that make it useful) should matter when it comes to prioritizing traffic; unless you remember that Verizon and Google were making this exact case several months ago, and have been spending huge money to lobby the FCC on it. The language of the mobile section of the ruling is nearly a verbatim quotation of the Google-Verizon join statement.

Net neutrality is about internet regulation and ALL of the forms that those regulations may take. It's about forcing providers to make decisions about their services based not on economics, but on altruism.

Of course net neutrality was invented by the liberals who fear that big, bad business will control our lives. They've conveniently forgotten (or have never believed) that it's the consumer who drives the direction of business. That businesses will fail without the approval of their customers (unless of course the government props them up because they are "too big to fail.")

The regulations will come fast and furious and at the moment cover things such as the prevention of content blocking, the inability to create tiered service rate plans, the inability to throttle bandwidth to heavy users, etc., etc. The irony is the same as with all regulation ... it will increase prices, eliminate competition, reduce choices, and stifle research. Who would you rather have making choices about the path of the web ... consumers or some arbitrary and partisan government panel? In the end net neutrality will make the internet a very non-neutral place.

As far as I know, nobody outside this
slanted clip has tried to equate network neutrality with
flat-rate pricing.

They have. As you've recognized, there are various arguments under NN. Flat rate is one of them. I've been following this issue for several years, because it impacts my work. NN has come to mean many things to many people. One of those things is that network providers shouldn't be allowed to impose differential pricing for QOS or bandwidth tiers, or quotas. This position is what animates parties like Google, who want to force ISP's to carry their video and VOIP traffic for free as an undifferentiated OTT ( Over The Top ) service.

Truthfully NN campaigns have largely been astroturf for Google and other industry players whose business models rely on free carriage. They've been successful in packaging their advocacy as a free speech campaign by tricking people into thinking that the ISP's intend to censor content on a discretionary basis, by title or originator. Actually it's the Googles who are discriminating in this way.

The MSOs do want to establish walled gardens for their own service packages. They still think like monopolies. It's competition w/ the telcos and wireless that's kept them from doing this in a discriminatory manner. Because otherwise, cable providers have mastered regulatory capture. That's how they became local monopolies while avoiding common carrier obligations. If this becomes a game of who the FCC likes best, they'll eventually win, even if that means crippling BB services to do so.

This isn't what net neutrality is about. It's about making sure that you Comcast, for example, can't decide to prioritize some traffic (like NBC streaming video) and slow down other traffic (like ABC streaming video).

The thing is that this has never happened, and nobody's ever proposed it.

And the fury over the whole Level 3/Comcast fight would never have been addressed by any of the proposed legislation or rulemakings.

Look, that kind of "preferential" treatment isn't likely to happen precisely because consumers are watching. Shit, if the incredible minority of torrent-pirates were able to get Comcast to back down, do you honestly think that people trying to watch ABC content aren't gonna notice that they get stifled but NBC works fine?

The only "agreements" going on right now have to do with Content Delivery Networks, and colocation. So if Comcast makes a deal with NBC but not ABC to colocate, then yeah, NBC traffic will be faster.

Net Neutrality will prevent that, and all traffic will have mediocre performance because colocation would be "preferential".

Brian: Voting against Obamacare was NOT against our best interest.

Not in mine, either, but speak for yourself. There are people in this country who would have stood to gain with Obamacare, such as those who can't get insurance, no way, no how.

Anyway, Obamacare was not what I was citing as the issue we agreed upon. So, let's not get into your outraged tirades again.

@Patrick -

Well, the two issues do have something in common - there are few who would benefit from their imposition at the cost of the many, and advocates for both are using subterfuge to get us to support self-injury.

The simple fact that "Net Neutrality" means so many things to so many people is reason enough to ditch any and all attempts at it.

Wait until there is actually a problem and then deal with it as narrowly as possible.

"The Internet was built upon the principle that all packets are treated the same way by ISPs. "

That's not really true, though; TCP packets get all kinds of little favors that UDP packets don't get. And it was never really the intent of the Internet protocol designers; they clearly intended that the net be able to give different treatment to different kinds of traffic. There are several features to specify the type of handling in the IP and TCP protocols. The fact that they weren't implemented in the early Internet was more because circa-1980 minicomputers just didn't have the computing horsepower to support them. Similarly, there are a bunch of alternate transport protocols for specialized traffic types that have never been widely implemented because the early net infrastructure simply wasn't up to it.

The Internet was built around the principle that "the packet must get through". It is descended from ARPANET, which had a design goal of facilitating traffic in a post-nuclear attack.

Which is where we get the colloquialism "The Internet detects censorship as a failure and routes around it."

You bought it this way. You can live with it this way. Then do so.

Amen, Patrick! Of course, I feel the same way about people who paid a lot for their homes, and are now walking away from their mortgages, squatting in their homes. See how much good that does me?

TFB: Yes, but nobody sells internet access by "is it on?" - because being "on" costs the provider essentially nothing.

What costs is data transfer, from end users to the backbones themselves. Having your IP link "on" uses essentially zero bandwidth, and very nearly literally zero outside of your ISP's network.

Whereas someone who connects to download a file via BitTorrent and then drops their link can use a few gigabytes of transfer, almost all of it out of the ISP's network.

Ron said: Network neutrality means ISPs aren't allowed to discriminate aginst their competitors's data. It keeps them from blocking
that data, giving their own packets better service (or their non-preferred sources worse service), or charging extra to access their competitors.

Well, not quite - at least depending on who you ask what "Neutrality" means.

Many of the suggested regulations have ended up being written such that QoS is simply not acceptable - which means that my VOIP will be crushed and made useless by your BitTorrent, all in the name of "treat every packed identically".

The specter of "Comcast blocking Netflix" or "AT+T keeping me from using Vonage" has so far always existed only in the fevered mind of Google executives trying to push through an effective subsidy, or clueless (to be charitable) ideologues who want to think they're Saving Freedom On The Internet.

Net Neutrality of the sort pushed by the people pushing it now, and of any sort enforceable by the FCC, is destructive, not helpful.

It's one thing to live out a 2 year internet contract, whole nother to live out the remaining 28 years on a mortgage. Also, with the ARMs and whatnot, after the reset it is not what it was when you bought it.

"TFB: Yes, but nobody sells internet access by "is it on?" - because being "on" costs the provider essentially nothing."

Actually fixed costs are rather high for utilities.

It's one thing to live out a 2 year internet contract, whole nother to live out the remaining 28 years on a mortgage.

Then don't buy the mortgage. Especially not an ARM. Of course it's too late to sell the average dumbshit on that idea now ... I guess they don't teach basic financial management in school anymore, and heaven forbid you expect people (who nevertheless think they are smart enough to be paents) to teach their kids.

@smurfy -

The maintenance costs for the wires are minimal, and are easily covered by the subscription fees. Headend equipment is more expensive, so there is a cost there.

The big thing is what it costs to go to the next level of throughput on the backbone side. Which is why Comcast has agreements with companies like Akamai. If Comcast's customers didn't want data from Akamai's customers, then Comcast would need significantly less bandwidth on their backbone feed(s).

Of course, that's what is leading to more colocation. Akamai uploads the stuff for, say, Microsoft Update to the server in Comcasts NOC once, and all of Comcast's customers get it from there, keeping the bandwidth in Comcast's network, and not costing more money on backbone.

The market is already figuring this out.

When I first got out of the Army I got a job as a loan 'officer' at a mortgage broker.

So, this is in the summer of 2004, I get this nice little old lady a loan. She has 20 yrs left on the term, I get her a 4.5% fixed rate 15 yr loan.

Using the increased equity in her house I roll in all her creit card debt and work in her car loan which still has 8yrs of payments @ $300 a month.

Her minimum payments on the cards were about $25 each and she had 5 of them, but with the outstanding ballacne at 24% she wouldnt have paidthem off before she died.

After wipeing out ALL of her debt and reducing the term of her loan by FIVE years I still got her a monthly home loan payment in at $50 dollers LESS then she was currently paying.

Let that sink in a moment OK, $300 less each month on her car payment, $125 less each month in credit cards, with all of her balances wiped out, and $50 dollars less each month on her house payment.

I gave this lady a loan pakage gaurentted to save her nearly FIVE HUNNDERED DOLLARS a month, plus the thousands save by shaving years off of her loan term.

So after getting all the paperwork lined up I give her a call, seems she was talking to her local bank teller the week before about her new home loan, so they made her an offer as well.

By the time I called her back she had already signed documents with her bank, who promised not to charge her closing costs as a bonus for being a long time bank customer.

I tried talking her out of it not realizing she had already signed the documents with her bank. The deal she got from them?

A 6.5% 30 year loan
1 yr fixed 29yr ARM with a 3 yr pre payment penalty
Her house paymet went up by $50 a month due to them rolling in the credit cards, but they didnt roll in the car as they held the loan for that as well.

SO in order to save $2000 in closing costs(something which I was very upfront about and would have come out of her home's equity) she took a deal that cost her $4,200 dollars in the first year alone and $25,000 over the next 7 yrs afer that on just her car - and how knows how many times her rates have ajusted since the fall of 2004.

So quite frankly I feel little simpathy for the people who wound up upside down in their homes.

I've been a techie forever and web user since the mid 90's. I can still code HTML 1 if needed. SGML I never did -- but have seen it. I remember the alt and BBS networks (their loss is both good and bad -- but that is another story.)

The argument that VOIP doesn't need a Quality of Service (QoS) level is total bullshit. I have lived with it back when you could try it on dialup. Never worked worth crap.

As far as prioritizing or blocking stuff -- GoDaddy.com needs to die. It took 17 days, 50 calls and essentially threatening corporate management with a lawsuit to get our legitimate companies' email's off their subscriber's spam list. (Five users said spam instead of using the legitimate unsubscribe link in the e-mail.)

As far as being locked into a provider. My last company's headquarters was literally looking out at the runway for DHL's headquarters. (Before they shuttered.) The local provider was Verizon. Time Warner ran in black fibre (about 300% overcapacity) to our company, essentially at cost, hoping to get the DHL contract.

I have the choice at home of dial-up, satellite, or tethered cell. Dial-up is dead slow. Satellite has essentially one choice (www.hughesnet.com). They made the choice to tier their plans to whether you are a light home user or a business power user. I don't want to pay the money -- but that is my choice.

So I use a tethered cell phone. That is my choice. Slower, but it gets it done. I can't really watch multiple Hulu or download Netflix. But again it is my choice. BTW all the cell phone companies now have tiered downloads/rates for MB usage for months. I got my contract before it kicked in -- so I get 5GB a month.

None of the ISP companies really have a monopoly these days. If you don't like your local cable company's service, your local telco (even if they have a monopoly for the city, town, region) will offer an alternative. Then you still have your cell and satellite as options. And you still have a dial-up option almost everywhere. You might even be able to get ISDN if you ask nicely.

The whole point to this long topic -- you really can't strangle info in this day and age. Look at Assange's text bomb that just needs a key. Every country in the world has tried to block it. It is just a matter of time until someone cracks it.

We don't need the FCC on the internet. SCOTUS has already said the FCC doesn't have merit. This is another try at getting them there.

We need the government to protect us from bad guys who want to hurt us (terrorists, criminals), and up to a point, if they want to protect us by making sure we have the info we need to make an informed choice, that seems ok, but this seems unreasonably intrusive from the govt.

If people (like Obama and friends) like the socialist policies of other countries so much, why don't they move to one of them? Let the rest of us have choices.

We need the government to protect us from bad guys who want to hurt us (terrorists, criminals), and up to a point,

I haven't needed a nanny since I turned ten and that was long ago. I need effective law or military defense. Such as when I tell the government that I'm worried my son may do something dangerous.

if they want to protect us by making sure we have the info we need to make an informed choice, that seems ok, but this seems unreasonably intrusive from the govt.

Who makes the decision of what we can be informed with? What if the government says you, as a broadcaster or talk show host, has to have a democratic commenter on the show every day?

Sounds reasonable.

What if the government says you are not allowed to ask the democrat about health care?

What if the government says you are not allowed to ask the democrat about taxes?

Where is the infringement on the first amendment acceptable?

Net neutrality is not acceptable because the government is trying to guarantee both content and access. If access were the only issue --tell me where access is being denied. If it is content, then tell me you want to regulate Amy's viewpoint because she disagrees with the Governator? Why -- because she has a different viewpoint?