FCC poised to adopt network neutrality rules

Any rightwing whiny sheep want to complain, just because?

You can argue that you, as 'conservative repubs' want the Obama Admin to police the internet for your Bristol-like young'ens. And you, as 'conservative repubs' want businesses to become gatekeepers against all the stuff you deem bad.

...Or, you can say, you agree with the current Admin.

Of course your head would explode if you choose the latter.(thats the 2nd choice for you teabaggers types)

"FCC poised"?

Americans are poised to dump the marxist Kenyan's stooge's end-around the Constitution.

It's an American blitz, and the hapless sellout Reich chancellor kenyan stooge and his National Socialist Democratic Party are on their way to a date with hooks and wire.

More GOP opposite speak.

HeadCheese wrote:

Any rightwing whiny sheep want to complain, just because?
You can argue that you, as 'conservative repubs' want the Obama Admin to police the internet for your Bristol-like young'ens. And you, as 'conservative repubs' want businesses to become gatekeepers against all the stuff you deem bad.
...Or, you can say, you agree with the current Admin.
Of course your head would explode if you choose the latter.(thats the 2nd choice for you teabaggers types)

;)

HeadCheese wrote:

Any rightwing whiny sheep want to complain, just because?
You can argue that you, as 'conservative repubs' want the Obama Admin to police the internet for your Bristol-like young'ens. And you, as 'conservative repubs' want businesses to become gatekeepers against all the stuff you deem bad.
...Or, you can say, you agree with the current Admin.
Of course your head would explode if you choose the latter.(thats the 2nd choice for you teabaggers types)

Leave it to us to be concerned about this. You'll find the cons on threads that they think is important to America..like the president celebrating Christmas with his family in Hawaii.

The Obama administration is opening every door for the Bandwidth for Birthers movement.

Some Internet companies and Republican lawmakers say the FCC's new regulations will restrict network operators, making it harder for Internet service providers to invest in faster networks that reach more homes.

Rebecca Arbogast, an investment analyst for Stifel Nicolaus, said that the rules are written so they can be broadly interpreted and that questions remain about the real impact on Internet video. It's unclear whether a company such as Comcast could in effect give its video-on-demand service priority over competitors such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon by charging them more to transmit high volumes of data, she said.

As usual, more government tinkering could have adverse effects.

Jim Trebowski wrote:

<quoted text> Leave it to us to be concerned about this. I don't know what this means either but with a catchy name like net neutrality, it's got to be good, right? I mean, it's all in the name, image is everything!

Not Exactly.

Network neutrality also is bad for competition.

Differential pricing of content allows competition among ISPs. If a company wants to adopt a policy of network neutrality, it is free to do so and win market share from consumers who find this attractive. If a company wants to favor video or voice content, it can find consumers and applications providers who use the Internet primarily for this purpose.

Niche companies that want to offer only a small fraction of the Internet can flourish, too. Imagine, for example, a company that allowed cell phone users to access sports scores and only sports scores through its Internet portal. If that company were upfront about restricting its service to a limited part of the Internet, this would not be a nefarious idea. Many people would find it quite convenient. But it would nonetheless be banned if network neutrality legislation were passed.

Network neutrality will destroy many entrepreneurial ideas like this one.

Network neutrality would constitute a major government initiative to regulate how the Internet as a commercial vehicle operates.

Today, in America, Congress has virtually no power over how the Internet is run. Network neutrality is a sweeping and intrusive restriction. It would set a horrible precedent in terms of the government’s ability to meddle with the architecture and operation of the Internet. It also would create a spider web of laws and restrictions that generate uncertainty and open the floodgates for bureaucrats and lawyers to exploit semantic loopholes. We have done well enough without the government’s intrusion in the Internet, there’s no reason to start now.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that the government shouldn’t create rules that preemptively close off technological and business evolution. Doing so will lead to unintended consequences ... usually bad ones.

Equality is nice in theory, but when we have the “equality” of a monopoly, that’s not so great, is it? At the end of the day, let consumers decide. Part of letting consumers decide is letting businesses experiment with new technological and pricing models, which is exactly what network neutrality forbids.

Bush Orwel wrote:

<quoted text>
;)

I noticed you aren't even able to offer any thought, just a smiley. Wow.

1. It’s a complicated issue. A really complicated technical issue. The simplistic rhetoric of “demanding that ISPs treat all traffic equally” is a nonstarter, because ISPs have never done that. Peering arrangements, cacheing networks like Akamai, even the fact that you can get slow DSL for an average of $38/month or faster cable service for $41 or a really fast T1 for $250 all point to tons of variation in the way that Net traffic is handled, charged for, optimized, and delivered.

Until you understand how this works you can’t even talk intelligently about net neutrality.

2. In an environment where ordinary folks can barely understand the issue, and congressmen even less, legislation is a bad idea. Even if it’s well-intentioned, legislation that attempts to control the course of technological development can have unintended consequences down the line. So today’s defeat of a Net neutrality amendment is probably a good thing, not a setback for democracy.

3. The Internet is not going to end tomorrow if ISPs start prejudicially carrying IP traffic. It may get harder for, say, AOL users or Cox Cable subscribers to do certain things. But break the Internet? Not so easy to do. There are always alternate ways of getting your data from point A to point B.

4. It may not be that urgent. Even AT&T’s Ed Whitacre, who kicked off this whole firestorm with some stupid comments a few months back about charging Google to deliver video, is backing off and says that AT&T isn’t planning to prioritize packet delivery.

http://dylan.tweney.com/2006/06/09/5-problems...

Net Neutrality: Solving Nonexistent Problems the Old-Fashioned Way

Posted on December 6, 2010
by Patrick Maines

For all the reaction it elicited, Chairman Genachowski’s plan for codification of the so-called net neutrality rules, as suggested in a speech he gave Dec. 1, amounts to too little revealed, much less resolved, to allow for fully confident assessment.

This said, it’s not too early to observe that any public policy that is roundly condemned by Free Press, the Media Access Project, and the Nation magazine can’t be all bad. And condemn it they have. Under headlines like “Is FCC Peddling Fake Net Neutrality?” and “FCC Chair Genachowski’s ‘Fake Net Neutrality’ Scheme Threatens Internet Freedom, Digital Democracy,” the left’s unhappiness is as loud as it is music to the ears.

On the other hand, the chairman’s proposal has also attracted heavy fire from members of Congress, many but not all of them Republicans, and from the two Republican commissioners at the FCC. In Congress, the general animus centers on the feeling that the FCC should at least consult with, if not defer to, the members about such things, while Republicans are especially angry that the chairman’s plan anticipates action before the newly elected members of the House and Senate are even seated.

Meanwhile, the service providers are somewhat divided, with some of them content to wrap things up in a way that falls far short of what they had feared, while others are troubled by the apparent lack of a sunset provision, and by the unsettled nature of many important details.

So philosophy on parade it is not. It is, instead, equal parts partisan politics, an acknowledgment of the way the world works, and 100-proof deal making. As such, it’s unsatisfying – like taking a shower with your socks on – but it’s not a complete surprise. As reported here, it’s always been clear that Genachowski had the inclination, and the votes, to proceed with some kind of “net neutrality” scheme, even as it also has looked ever more problematical for him to go the whole nine yards, as in Title II “reclassification.”

More than this, there are aspects of the apparent plan – like its embrace of consumption-based billing – that are deeply satisfying. It wasn’t all that long ago that Time Warner Cable had to abandon plans, in consequence of noisy opposition from the usual troglodytes, to do some trials of this kind of thing. Charging more of those who use more is the way we price most things, of course, but that didn’t prevent groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge from piling on in opposition to TWC’s plans, nor from gloating when the company withdrew its proposed trials.

For now, the whole of this matter can be reduced to some questions, not all of them answerable. Is Title I regulation better than Title II? Yes. Is this the best result one could reasonably expect from this FCC? Probably. Is it wise public policy? No. Will the FCC’s action, whatever it is, be the end of the matter? Depends. If, sometime in the future, a party with standing decides to sue the agency on the claim that it lacks authority to regulate the Internet in this way, it will have a viable argument with some case law to back it up. And if that lawsuit were to be resolved in a way that (once again) ordered the FCC out of the Internet regulation business, well, so much the better.

http://www.mediacompolicy.org/2010/12/article...

So in case you haven't guess, when bush was president, this idea of internet policing by government was scary & wrong, But in a lame duck democrats mind, with a partisan, divisive, heavy handed socialist like obama president, it's suddenly a good idea for government intervention.

Experienced thinkers of the world can only chuckle at the absurdity of allowing one of the worst institutions, the us congress, to wreck. strangle more industry at a time when more invention should be encouraged.

Obama's close connection to Google is the key (remember Enron)

Why should Google and whoever else be allowed to profit off the Internet Service Providers’ networks? Why should, say, Time Warner, subsidize Google’s online applications with its broadband network when it (Time Warner) doesn’t stand to make any money?

The WSJ says that people like Google (I keep bringing up Google because it stands to benefit the most from an open Internet) want to maintain the status quo: it doesn’t want to have to pay Time Warner (or whoever) hand over fist just to keep it from shutting off access to Google Maps.

The WSJ also brings up how one of Google’s top lobbyists, Andrew McLaughlin, recently got a job in the Obama Administration as deputy head of telecom policy.

The real implication, of course, is that now Google will get whatever the hell it wants because one of its former guys is now in a proper policy-making position.

Follow the networks!

Neutering the 'Net

The real agenda of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other status-quo web powers behind the Obama administration's Net Neutrality campaign.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR

Like Chekhov's gun, "net neutrality" gets dragged down from the mantel for every act of the broadband rollout. It's getting dragged down now for the rollout of wireless broadband.

Yet everything you need to know was contained in the first act, when AOL began bleating about "open access" when broadband first threatened its dial-up empire. AOL's business model depended on free riding on the infrastructure paid for by phone users. AOL users were dialing up and keeping a line open for days or even weeks at a time—yet faced no cost for the disproportionate capacity they used up...

This is the basic pricing model the biggest Web companies (especially Google) seek to preserve on the Internet. Their business models are built on a Web that makes their services appear "free" to users.

On Monday, Obama's FCC Chief Julius Genachowski obliged by offering a sweeping new net-neut initiative aimed at wireless. He sounded all the usual fears about the "companies that control access to the Internet." Yet the idea of broadband carriers nefariously blocking access to Web sites, for all its longevity, is perhaps the most talked-about, least-seen bogeyman in the history of bogeymen. Here's why:

Broadband growth is leveling out in the U.S., and suppliers increasingly grow only by stealing customers from each other. Two-thirds of Comcast's new broadband subscribers signed up in a recent quarter were defectors from DSL. "Churn" is the biggest challenge to broadband profitability, especially as competition drives down margins. According to Arbor Networks, the cost of fielding a single call to customer service can wipe out three years' profitability for a customer's broadband account.

This is hardly an environment in which broadband suppliers can run their systems on any basis other than trying to keep customers maximally happy.

Wireless networks, it's true, have traditionally been run to provide voice communications, but are slowly merging with the broadband Internet. Yet for all the billions of investment, their capacity is far from being able to support, say, unrestricted file sharing or video streaming—as AT&T's struggle to keep Apple and its iPhone users maximally happy has been demonstrating.

But customers know about these restrictions when they sign up. There's also zero doubt that competition will eventually drive providers to supply the same unrestricted access that users get at home, making the FCC's intervention dubious at best.

The mask really slipped earlier this year when Time Warner Cable began experimenting with usage-based pricing to protect the average broadband customers from the 20% of users who create 80% of the traffic. A lobby called Free Press, the most extreme of the pro-net neutrality interests, went ballistic, calling metered pricing a "price-gouging scheme" and backing a bill in Congress to ban it.

Never mind that Free Press had previously argued just the opposite, saying usage-based pricing was a fairer way to deal with congestion than, say, by selectively slowing down file-sharing sites that gobble up disproportionate broadband capacity.

Never mind, too, the irony that the net-neut campaign against the selective slowing of non-urgent traffic has left only differential pricing as a way to bring a modicum of efficiency to network usage...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297...

Here's where the real fight begins. Google has been one of the most influential net-neut proponents. It recently secreted its top lobbyist, Andrew McLaughlin, into a White House job as deputy head of telecom policy. But Google also understands, as its chief Eric Schmidt recently put it, "It's very, very important that the telecom operators have enough capital to continue the build-outs."

Google's trick will be to lobby for the optimum of Internet socialism—"tiered" pricing may be OK, in which some consumers pay extra for a bigger pipe. But usage-based pricing that would give consumers a reason to think twice before clicking on a Google-sponsored ad?

It would be the end of Google's business model.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297...

Once again, the stench of Lobbyist embedding themselves into the Obama administration rears its ugly head.

Democrats suddenly embracing the status quo? I smell a Lobbyist! Googles top lobbyist, Andrew McLaughlin burrows into the Obama admin.

And Google has allies. The greatest fear of Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo is having to plumb their deep pockets and offer competing payments to broadband carriers to speed their bits to consumers. They much prefer spending their money to sprinkle server farms around the globe, assuring fast, reliable access for their customers in a way that no newcomer can easily replicate.

What if some startup Google sought to achieve the same goal by outsourcing its data management to the telcos, say, by mounting servers in their premises to help deliver Web applications more quickly? This would be a win-win for both parties. Data that travels within a carrier's system is cheaper to deliver than data that must be handed off between two or more carriers. Would such an arrangement be a violation of net neutrality? Google would likely shriek so.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297...
But then, for all the grass-roots pose, net neut has always been a weapon in the hands of status-quo companies trying to protect themselves against technological change. First AOL, now Google: A lot of things may be new under the sun, but regulatory incentives aren't one of them.

Al Gore wants Net Neutrality. He's one of the biggest shills alive.

Here's a short explanation of Net Neutrality and why the legislation is a bad idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Google and the Problem With 'Net Neutrality'

Broadband has been a rare bright spot in the economy. Why discourage new investment?

OCTOBER 4, 2009
By BRET SWANSON

On Sept. 25, AT&T accused Google of violating the very "net neutrality" principles the world's dominant search company has righteously sought for others.

Net neutrality conjures the benign notion of an open and fair Web, where all applications and data packets are treated equally. Net reality is much more complicated. Google says it doesn't have to abide by rules meant for telecom companies. But with the Internet obliterating such distinctions, this defense exposes net neutrality's inherent flaws.

The controversy involves Google Voice, a new service that rings all of a user's phone lines simultaneously and provides other conference-calling and voice-mail features. Like myriad digital applications, the service is possible because the Web and phone lines have in many ways converged. Google can thus offer "free" services over the world's vast, expensive broadband networks.

Google thinks net neutrality should regulate only traditional phone and cable companies. Phone carriers have long been ordered to connect all calls. And open Internet principles agreed to by all sides in 2005 offer similar guidance for the Web: no blocking of Web sites or applications.

But Google Voice does not connect all calls. It blocks access, for example, to some rural areas and conferencing services that would impose heavier interconnection fees on Google. AT&T thus charged Google with cherry-picking.

Why, AT&T asks, can Google exploit expensive communications networks when it's profitable but refuse neutral service to all customers when it's not?

This row unmasks something far more important than Google's hypocrisy: the deep structural flaws of net neutrality itself...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274...

Defenders of a free & open internet should see government control as a big, big problem. Especially when the FCC judges each case individually and not by a single set of rules.

This sets the stage for Google lobbyist and other deep pockets to manipulate outcomes.

Why have government in control of the internet? Seriously ask yourself this question.