A partisan divide pitting Republicans against Democrats on the question of Internet regulation appears to be deepening.
By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed “Net neutrality” amendment to a current piece of telecommunications legislation. The amendment had attracted support from companies including Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and their chief executives wrote a last-minute letter to the committee on Wednesday saying such a change to the legislation was “critical.”
What this means is that your ISP will be able to block any competing website and hold up any website for ransom. For example, your DSL provider will legally be able to slow down Vonage to make it unworkable, leaving their own VoIP service as the only option. And all ISPs will be able to force Google or Amazon to pay for access to you. Heck, isn’t that what we’re paying our monthly fee for?! To access the internet? Not any more! We’ll be paying for bandwidth but won’t be able to use it.
John has written about this before.
Update: It’s already happening…
VoIP customers around the world are discovering that their calls cannot be connected because telecom companies are blocking the movement of such traffic across the net.
“I contacted the ISP and was told it did not support third party VoIP,” explains Peckler. “Vonage ran a test. It seems the ISP was blocking the cable modem when the Vonage adapter went into use. I ran a test of my own. I ran pingplotter for 10 minutes: no blockage, then I picked up my Vonage phone and placed a call: immediately there was a 100% blockage on the cable modem. This was a continuous loss as long as the phone was used.”
Peckler is not alone. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including Qatar and Mexico, have been noting similar problems since last year. For while VoIP might seem like a great deal for the average person, entrenched interests in the telecoms industry see it differently – and are taking action against it.
I know this has been discussed before, but why can’t Google just send AT&T a bill for all of the AT&T subscribers who access their services?
It’s the customers who are accessing the services, not the services pushing themselves out to the customers.
It’s crap like this that explains why the U.S. is falling further and further behind other countries when it comes to Internet service. It’s sad when you have to move to Canada just to get decent broadband.
This makes me Sick. I can’t believe our government is willingto sell us down the river like this. The telcos shpuld be put out of business.
It is a sad day. I can not even begin to explain how this hurts my image of the future.
While I’m not eager to see this happen, I’m also not too keen about telling the companies who built and own the infrastructure, how they can charge for its use.
Realize, folks, the politicians in Congress and the creeps who pull their strings consider communications and the ability to communicate just another commodity. The level of profit to be derived is all that counts.
Public utility in the most basic sense is not their concern.
Whoa… chill people… This does not mean the end of net neutrality. All it means is that this particular version of it was not pallitable to some polititians. My personal feeling is that net neutraility is here to stay and it would be political suicide to vote against it.
That being said, in general, there is something ironic about the fact that the telcos internet division is competing with their voice division. Sort of in the old communist slogan of “We will sell the West the rope that they will use to hang themselves with”.
Either way, lets not get to “commie” about it. If there is a new ISP created from private money, I think they have a perfect right to decide any limitations on what and how they will carry data, AS LONG AS THEY DISCLOSE IT CLEARLY. Let the market decide.
Once again, LET THE MARKET DECIDE! In almost all cases, it will decide more rationally then any governmental body.
Just wait until the municipalities decide that since they own the right-of-way the poles and lines are on, they can control access to them. Now the cable and phone companies will have to dish out even more money to all the local politicians who want some of this fat cash they are throwing round in Washington.
All politics is local, and if enough small cities decide to stick it to AT&T and Time-Warner, then they will see the error of theri ways as they start bleeding cash.
Well, Moss, in a very general sense, do you think it’s an acceptable practice, in the name of public utility, to let a private company built up most or all of the infrastructure and then come in afterwards and seize control of how they operate it?
“do you think it’s an acceptable practice… afterwards and seize control of how they operate it?”
People always make this BS argument, and guess what?! It’s BS. What you’re forgetting is that all of those cables travel over OTHER PEOPLE’S PROPERTY!
Now if AT&T and the other Telcos want to buy easements over every inch of property their cables lay, that’s fine. When that happens I’ll agree with you. But because they are using the public’s property, they have to submit to the public’s demands.
SN, those lines weren’t put in without first being requested by the people they service. That does not remove the fact that the lines are still the property of the company who owns them. You are of course free to have them removed them from your property if you wish.
None of that has anything to do with the traffic that is going through the switches and routers located on their property.
“SN, those lines weren’t put in without first being requested by the people they service”
I’m not talking about the lines going to my house. I’m talking about all the lines running everywhere. Go outside and look at the telephone poles. Start digging in a ditch and you’ll eventually start hitting cables.
The companies that laid those cables never obtained any sort of easement to run them. They made a deal with the people of this country. They could lay them but in exchange we’d get some control. The telcos and the cable companies were more than happy to make that deal because it would have been impossibly expensive to work out property easements with the millions of people, companies, cities, townships, counties, etc., involved.
Thus, those cables are not solely the Telcos. They are our lines. It’s just that you pro-corporate fanatics have completely forgotten that.
And if you think the Telcos have a right to block the use of “their” cables because they are “their” property, then why don’t I have the same right to block those cables running over and under my land?!
Oh, I forgot, all you right wingers believe that corporations should always get what they want while the common citizens should always get screwed.
or …. like complacent, pacifistic North Americans we can all sit on our ass and do nothing. We will watch things fall out from under our feet and then bitch and complain to each other about it. Then the government will give us back one inch of the 12 inches they took in the first place and we will think they are great people for doing such. We should actually do something about this (and other things) while we still can ?!?!
I live in Canada, so I’ve got nothing to bitch about yet …. but in due time whatever happens south of us, happens here.
never has a party and its president worked so hard so hand in hand with greedy corporations to destroy the working middle class of this country. does anyone even think there would even be an internet if left up to the telcos?? its a dark time for the republic
If there is a new ISP created from private money,…
An amusing thought. 🙂
Would they be a wireless-only ISP, contract with Comcast or Verizon to connnect to me on the existing wires, or run their own new wires?
The market has decided it wants a share of the money Google and Amazon et. al. are raking in…
Everything is a revenue stream. Everything. Why let “the other guy” make money via “my” infrastructure – without giving me a piece of the action?
LET THE MARKET DECIDE!
If it was a free & open market, I would agree.
A story in the Oregonian, dated April 6, detailed Verizon’s plans to expand its FIOS network around Portland – but not in Portland…
Within two years, Verizon also hopes to use the network to offer cable television service in the suburbs east and west of Portland and compete directly with Comcast Corp., the regional cable monopoly. Verizon has no plans to build a network in Portland, which is outside the company’s historic service area.
Qwest, which controls the local phone market in Portland and much of the rest of Oregon, plans to boost Internet access speeds incrementally rather than exponentially.
So between the “regional cable monopoly”, and the telcos “historic service areas”, I have the choice of whatever Verizon or Comcast offer…
If I lived in Portland, my choices ould be Comcast or Quest…
How would a “new ISP created with private money” change this reality??
Hmmm… Remember the old days when Republicans were for “free market competition” and no regulation?…
It is just more proof that these Repuglicans are not about conservative morals. We got government intrusion into private lives, wanton abuse of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, destruction of the separation of powers (especially in the doctine of the “unitary executive”), BIG governement, BIG defecits… how much more can I say (a lot, but my fingers are hurting, especially the middle one I flash towards Washington).
The worst part of all this is that to the Repuglicans a corporate entitiy seems to have much more rights than a human enitity (they restricted a person’s ability to go bankrupt, but not a corporations, for example).
For a long time the telcos have been fighting the internet because they are at a crossroads: completely transform their business model or die; instead they enlist the government to legislate the ability for the telcos to have illegitimite means to protect their business.
Whatever happened to the trust busters? Theodore Roosevelt was, IMHO, the best President ever. He was a Republican that broke up the trusts like Standard Oil. He protected the land. He foight for the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. He was a Republican. To hell with these bastards.
#8 – Let the market decide? The free marketeer’s mantra and still spurious. There’s never been a free market and there never will be. Somebody always has sway. One of the government’s functions is to prevent this sway from hurting the populace. If we let the market decide, I’d be able (among other things) to buy reefer at Walgreen’s.
You are aware that corporations do not exist on their own, and are in fact comprised of and run by “citizens”?
There are a number of arguments that could be made against their desires to double charge service providers for bandwidth, but the argument that because they have to go through our land to provide us with a service, we can claim control over them is not at the top of the list of good ones. Like I said, if you don’t like the physical requirments of the service, then don’t use it and ask them to remove the lines. I’m sure you’ll find few in your town who are willing to go along with you though.
In any case, check out the terms of service, and if they aren’t providing the services they have agreed to provide, take them to court. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but who knows…
So, I guess we can set the price of a vote at around $10 million dollars:
Votes: 8-to-23
Money: $71-to-$230 million
I blame Google for not paying more.
#5 Yes david, trains were more efficient…that is if you happened to actually live near one. If not, it was very inefficient. In fact, it was practically the stone age.
Not to mention there is now a brief filed by the EFF that claims AT&T has been forwarding internet traffic directly into the hands of the NSA.
From the article: ‘More than just threatening individuals’ privacy, AT&T’s apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans’ Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.'”
Seems that the government is giving AT&T what it wants and AT&T is giving the government what it wants.
I suggest reading Is the Internet Apocalypse Near?.
The general view at The Technology Liberation front is that, unless all of the ISPs available to the consumer simultaneously implement idiotic charges, doing so is financial suicide because people will simply switch to different providers. I agree. (It also helps that I’m not American)
>Remember the old days when Republicans were for “free market >competition” and no regulation?…
That’s what this is. The Republicans voted for no regulation. It’s the bill that calls for more regulation.
Meanwhile, the most important news from the left is that a house member slapped some cop. Way to get your message out, Dems.
While it seems bad – I don’t see what the big deal is. The market will win.
Just as BellSouth could charge Google for access, Google could say they won’t send any responses to BellSouth customers unless BellSouth pays. Beyond that, most of us would jump ISPs if we found out that they were screwing with our services (you do have a choice – it’s not like the days of ‘get TV service from one provider / get phone service from another provider – live with it’.
Why create legislation that really doesn’t matter?
Sure – it’ll probably be tested (some ISP will likely try some crap). I don’t see it holding up, though, financially.
Brad
If the companies controlling the communication networks will be able to decide what content they are allowed to carry, will they also be able to control what I write in an email or speak over a telephone? Then, how will AT&T demand that some site in Denmark pay them for being carried over their lines?
“I blame Google for not paying more.”
That’s if you make the leap and say that, all other things remaining the same, Google would have had a different outcome if they had paid more. I’m not cinical or naive enough to come to that conclusion.
I think that a majority of political decisions still have more to do with pre-existing ideological leanings than how much money one group or another gives you. If I was in Congress, I would vote in favor of pro gun ownership legislation regardless of how little the NRA gave me or how much I was given from the gun control lobby. Voting against your own conscience is much worse, in my opinion, than accepting money from people you agree with and would vote to support anyway.
Having said that, I also don’t discount the affect that money has on politics.
this is the beginning of the end.
Ok instead of wasting our time squabbling about the da$# politics of this why dont some of the braniacs around here FIX IT.
It is a DMCA violation to unencrypt encrypted data unless you have the right to FINE.
Encrypted tunneling of data to distributed proxy servers around the net. Simple, elegant etc. Its a system that could work with some thought, lets just get it done. Granted they could degrade every packet but their own but at that point customers will abosloutely leave.