Posted on 06/07/2006 6:46:13 AM PDT by bstein80
Check out the new website on Hillary's attempt at a federal Internet grab!
http://www.neuters.net/
What is Really Going On Here?
Net Neutrality legislation is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist.
That’s why the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act" (H.R. 5417) is opposed by nearly every conservative and free market organization, from FreedomWorks to the Heritage Foundation to the CATO Institute.
As Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), and opponent of the bill, declared, "This is a regulator's dream, but an entrepreneur's nightmare."
The idea driving the pro-Net Neutrality camp is that some companies may want to block users from competing web sites or services. Like most socialist notions, the idea of Net Neutrality protections is appealing. After all, most people want unfettered access to Internet sites and services (Although some people may prefer a family friendly ISP—and Net Neutrality mandates may eliminate this kind of choice from the market.)
So what’s the problem? Well, while the idea of Net Neutrality sounds reasonable, it will be far-reaching and disastrous in practice.
First, it is unclear how exactly broadband providers would comply with the vague rules in H.R. 5417. Second, it locks in a single network design, instead of allowing alternative services to develop.
Most importantly, Net Neutrality mandates will be the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent.” Once federal regulators, politicians, and business lobbyists have regulatory leverage over the Internet, the Washington parlor game will ensue. And the Internet will never be the same again. Growth, investment, and innovation will all decline.
There are, or course, some problems today. Existing federal and state laws limit competition among broadband providers—especially in cable broadband. Congress should act to bring in more competing broadband providers. Letting the market give consumers seven or more broadband choices will eliminate concerns about any one provider abusing its market power.
The Internet is growing—over a billion people are online worldwide-- and the people and firms who constitute the ‘Net community should be free to continue to build and innovate. There is no cause for new federal regulations that will neuter the Internet.
Please join us in telling Congress: Don’t Neuter the Internet!
But their billions of bits, that they are making $billions on, are ferried through all the switches of the backbone with the same "quality of service" that your few bits are, for no additional charge, in spite of its mass…
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the distinctions you are making. Paying at the point of connection is also paying for the backbone. The companies that build the pipes charge for it - at the point of connection. (Albeit through several layers.)
I also don't see the distinction between my bits and their bits. We both pay for bandwidth - whether serving it or receiving it.
But this bill is not even about this. It's about third parties charging more for content the providers have already paid for.
Why are you opposed to the Christian Coalition and the Gun Owners of America? Obviously, you are a gun-grabbing atheist....
The moment they went whining to Big Daddy Gummint (WAAAA! We don't wanna pay people to run wires over their land! WAAAA! We don't want anybody else allowed to run wires that compete with us!!), they gave up any right to be treated as if they were a legitimate free-market business.
Well, then, the law would say that the owner of a local last-mile monopoly cannot decree that they'll sell a DSL line to DU but only a dialup line to FR (as long as each offers the advertised payment for the service they want to buy).
The politicians who have been pushing for an "oil company windfall profits tax" called... something about suing you for plaigarism....
Well, duh. They only pay the people who provide them with service, and who hold a contract obliging them to pay.
Next, I suppose you'll be whining about how "unfair" it is that I only pay Burger King when I buy myself a Whopper, and don't toss so much as a penny into the McDonald's and Wendy's drive-thrus I pass on the way.
The address bar says FR, but the content says DU.
Gun Owners of America
Christian Coalition of America
Freedom Watch
Instapundit
Shall I continue?
Of course not, but I wouold have nothing wrong with Burger King telling Google that if it wants immediate service when it drops in with 10,000 customers at a single pop, that Wendy's will be happy to oblige, provided Google helps pay for the ability for Wendy's to be able to do that.
Which is, by comparison, what the telecoms will be asking the very profitable Googles of the world to do. The profit centers of the Internet continue to add zillions of new bits every month to the "content" that floods the pipelines of the telecoms backbone, profiting immensely from it, while paying no more than a "connection point" fee to that backbone; while your land-line phone fees continue to support the economic viability of that backbone.
It is about time the profit centers of the Internet starting paying full freight for the backbone that makes the Internet, and their profits possible, as surely the day will come when your land-line telephone fees become nearly non-existent.
If the backbone and the technologies that make it work are all to continue to develope and innovate then the profit centers of the Internet are going to have to start contributing to the revenue stream that will make that possible.
And that is what the telecoms will do, by no longer pretending that you and Google are the same kind of customer, with the same standard of cost and revenue requirements. Google thinks it can shelter its profits behind a phony "nuetrality" that is nothing other than a socialist regulatory scheme to shelter its commercial profits.
There is no regulations needed. Let the telecoms and the Googles and their markets and technologies work it out, without protecting Google's and Yahoo's current business plans from possible changes that the industry needs.
Get a copy of todays Wall Street Journal and read the editorial "Nuetrality Check" by Charles H Giancarlo. He's in the industry and he knows what he's talking about and he knows that congressional regulation and interference in the Internet is not a solution.
What he's too polite to say is that by locking in certain current practices, we are locking in cost and revenue basis of those practices, and in that regulatory fashion we are telling the telecoms that they are locked into those practices while others, outside the telecoms are free to exploit technologies that avoid the practices the telecoms are, by regulation locked into.
The telecoms will say, with good moral reason: "fine, restrict how we can develope the revenue stream of the backbone so that it can continue to be technologically innovative and we too will quit investing in it, start buying up the unregulated cable and wireless compainies and develope their revenue possibilities to sustain technological innovation.
You need to get your socialist head out of this.
You can have local phone service from any local phone service company that will provide. There is not last-mile monopoly any longer, that was taken away from the telecoms. They are required to let other, third party providers, provide services on that "last mile".
Sorry, every major commercial enterprise in the world has multi-layered services; with differences, in costs and revenues between similar services to commercial enterprises vs individual/residential customers. So, no, there is no moral or economic or rational basis for telecoms NOT charging "premium" rates to large commercial customers who want premium services for the large/mass/bulk of product for which those services are needed.
That is analogous to buying a bundle of T1 lines instead of a single copper-pair line, and paying accordingly... which is what Google already does.
...the very profitable Googles of the world to do. The profit centers of the Internet...
Like, dude, repeat after me, "Down with the evil Profit Centers!"
Ya gotta get the line down pat if ya wanna score with the hippie chicks.
continue to add zillions of new bits every month to the "content" that floods the pipelines of the telecoms backbone
Amazingly, they don't charge the telecoms a cent for providing the content that makes it possible for the telecoms to sell residential broadband.
And that is what the telecoms will do, by no longer pretending that you and Google are the same kind of customer, with the same standard of cost and revenue requirements.
There is simply so point arguing this issue with someone so mired in ignorance that he thinks that, under the current economic model, Google pays $19.95/month or so just like Joe Sixpack.
If the backbone and the technologies that make it work are all to continue to develope and innovate then the profit centers of the Internet are going to have to start contributing to the revenue stream that will make that possible.
Again, they already do so.
Google thinks it can shelter its profits
Preach it, brother! Down with The Man and his sheltered profits!
There is no regulations needed.
So, from now on I can make Verizon pay me rent for running its lines through my front yard... and rip them up if they don't pay up? Cool!
Get a copy of todays Wall Street Journal and read the editorial "Nuetrality Check" by Charles H Giancarlo.
I think the inventor of the Internet* has more credibility on the subject.
*Since you've already revealed an appalling degree of ignorance, perhaps I should clarify that I refer to Tim Berners-Lee, not Al Gore.
You just don't get it do you.
I am not opposed to Google's profits at all. I think its great.
What I oppose is them trying to protect their profit model, which they seek to protect by getting our Congress to regulate the idea that the telecoms cannot distinguish their services, in class and revenue expectation, with regard to the traffic on the backbone for Internet communications, between highly profitable commercial enterprises and YOU.
Google wants to be treated by the telecoms, with respect to the Internet, in an equal, "revenue" nuetral manner as ar5e you.
Sorry. I am not a profit-center, the telecoms know that and they know that my ability to supply a revenue stream for advancing the technology that the massive increases in content are demanding, from content providers, will not ever come from me, or the millions like me. As in past telecommunications developments, including the building of the backbone to begin with, alot of the revenue will have to come from the "profit centers" that make use of that backbone. Just as it was the business services divisions of the old phone companies that became the engines of technological innovation and change it will be revenue from the new "Internet" based business services that will have to be tapped to keep the backbone developing.
That was what the Googles et al are resisting, by trying to link their business plan to you, as you are and should be treated no differently by the telecoms. Sorry Google. I'm glad your profitable. Now, pay your own way.
"From each according to his ability...."
It what is done now and has always been done on your land-line phone services - commercial services and commercial rates and residential services and residential rates. Google wants there be to be no distinction between you and them, on how we are all charged for "the Internet". Sorry Google, ain't gonna continue that way; you are big enough and your industries are robust enough, and demanding enough, that the telecoms will start to distinguish between services for the Googles and services for me. That's a normal, moral business practice.
A large-scale bandwidth user such as Google already pays a great deal more money than a normal residential user for connectivity (a large number of dedicated T1 lines or the equivalent for the former case; a single dialup/DSL/cable account in the latter case). This would not be at all affected by network neutrality.
What the incumbent telcos wish to do is impose additional charges when one of their customers connects to content sources other than those which have obtained preferred status from the telco (even though the content source is not getting any service from the telco) by leveraging its ability to stand between the two and block service -- the Tony Soprano business model.
You have it backwards.
Their intent is not to charge you, their ISP own customer for connecting to a content provider, of certain types and volumes of content, if you connect to a content provider which has not agreed to pay for the type of premium service that they, the backbone supplier, believe is deserving of such premium service.
That content supplier will simply not get the fastest possible throughput of that type and volume of content. So, in new technologies like HDTV-over-the-net - an extremely-volume-high-rate-content feature - the HDTV-over-the-net content providers who will "make the grade" will be those whose business model produces the success that will provide the kind of revenue that will support the premium backbone services that will make that content viewed most favorably by its customers. The telcos are not going to invest in continued enhancements to the backbone that are not born susbstantially by revenue from the commercial outfits that want and need those advancements.
The "Internet" is no longer a baby. It is and needs to be run more on standard business practices where the commercial ventures that profit from it take more of a role in paying, directly, for its constant technological upgrading, out of the revenue from new content derived from their desired enhancements.
It is no different than any other line of business. The content provider will get what they pay for.
Which is exactly why it's called the Tony Soprano business model. The telecoms essentially want the Googles and future Googles of the world to pay protection money. Meaning, people like you and me will have great access to some content and crappy access to other content, depending on which content providers have/haven't paid the bagman the extra bucks. Sure, Google and Ebay et al. could probably afford the the extra bucks, but that's money that would otherwise be invested in innovation, better quality content, etc. Do you think Google and Ebay started out as the powerhouses that they currently are? Of course not. They got where they are by sweat and innovation. And now the telecoms want to be able to punish them for their success.
It's the equivalent of taxing the rich to supposedly help the little guy. But it doesn't help the little guy. Taxing the rich helps nobody more than it helps the taxman (which would be the quasi-monopolistic telecoms in this instance). Innovation will take a nosedive--not just because content providers will have less *money* to invest in better product--but because they'll have less *incentive* to invest in better product. When what you and I access no longer depends on which companies actually offer the best content but instead depends on which companies make the best deals with the telecoms, why would a company bother making a better product when all it'd have to do is make a better deal with the telecoms?
Oh, and the new guy with the great product but no clout? He'll be sleeping with the fishes.
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