The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic.
The agency said it was opposed to “network neutrality“, the idea that all data on the net is treated equally.
The agency submitted its comments to the Federal Communications Commission, which is investigating net access.
The Justice Department said imposing net neutrality regulations could hinder development of the internet and prevent ISPs from upgrading networks. “Regulators should be careful not to impose regulations that could limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities,” said Thomas Barnett, the department’s antitrust chief.
The agency’s stance is contrary to much of the internet community that believes in an open model for the internet.
What keeps the Internet from expanding in the US at a global rate is the country club fraternity of Telcos and politicians – and their willing flunkeys. The thing they fear most is equal opportunity and equal access.
As a Comcast bittorrent user… Bittorrent, we loved you while we had you, I will miss you!!! So long buddy! It was great while it lasted…
Dude, drop comcast not bittorrent!
When both the U.S. Justice Department and Ted Stevens are against net neutrality, it merely confirms my own convictions that continuing the policy of neutrality must be a good thing. It doesn’t appear to have greatly stifled development of the internet so far.
I find the language of their statement interesting, though. Rather than trying to make the case that moving to a tiered system would encourage greater development, they take the negative approach and argue that neutrality regulations would “limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities.”
Don’t forget that net-neutrality is still the status quo. The Justice Department and telcos are arguing for the removal of that policy.
Gary, net neutrality is not the status quo. All of the laws on net neutrality require making neutrality mandatory, changing the current setup. Comcast, SBC/ATT, etc can shape traffic however they want, and charge accordingly.
I think most of the issue would go away if these companies would copy the cell phones and charge based on bandwidth. People are willing to pay crazy amounts for little things like ringtones.
“I think most of the issue would go away if these companies would copy the cell phones and charge based on bandwidth.”
That’s the last thing they want to do. They clearly want to change the shape of what you access, control what you access, not how much you access.
If I pay for 1.5 Megabits/sec of unlimited bandwidth I should get 1.5 Megabits/sec of unlimited bandwidth. Truth in advertising; it’s that simple.
As far as Comcast is concerned they can suck a lemon and I say that from first hand experience in dealing with those idiots.
If they charged based on bandwidth 2 things would happen:
1. it would make even casual usage too expensive for most consumers
2. they would have to actually provide the level of service / bandwidth they are promising you. Now they can claim outrageous data speeds and only supply you with a fraction of it. If you paid according to any metric you would expect them to live up to it. And they cant possibly do that for all the current users, much less new ones.
Am I missing something? What does the justice department have to do with net nuetrality? They have nothing to do with commerce, at least they shouldnt and second of all what influence do they have with regards to the internet?
FOGGING BASSTURDS!!!!!!
What won’t these bassturds sell out?
Justice department is talking out of their collective asses. The real problem is everyone seems to have a different definition of what “net neutrality” is. A lot of people don’t even seem to understand what a “tiered internet” is supposed to be, and seem to mash up both meanings together.
Is it about paying X amount of money to get X amount of bandwidth from your ISP (that isn’t Net Neutrality), or is it about full access to everything available on the internet, as well as being able to USE all types of APPLICATIONS on the net, with out your ISP or your local government retarding your use of the net.
Back a couple weeks ago when everyone thought Comcast was packet shaping Bit Torrent data; this one schmuck started ranting on his blog that we are now on a “tiered internet.” Regardless if this was true or not, he was an idiot! That would imply that you could pay Comcast more money so you COULD freely use Bit Torrent.
Ummm… Bit Torrent still works on Comcast just fine.
#8 That was my first thought too.. but when an issue goes to court, whoever wins a “Net Neutrality” case will set a president for all future rulings on other “Net Neutrality” cases. Thing is I dunno why they have to say something about this NOW when there aren’t any litigations going on about “Net Neutrality”
If this doesn’t convince you that the politicos don’t get technology, I dunno what will.
We need a tech-savvy President. Heck, we need less Luddites on the net all across the board.
If this doesn’t convince you that the politicos don’t get technology, I dunno what will.
We need a tech-savvy President. Heck, we need less Luddites in office all across the board.
OK, maybe bandwidth is the wrong term. They already charge based on bandwidth, but I’m suggesting first 10GB for $x dollars then $1 per additional GB. This would also satisfy the MPAA which now sees people having to pay money for all those movie downloads and would reduce spam.
Since you want to mandate neutrality, that suggests you want to turn the web into a government utility. Well, you pay more based on how much you use for water, electricity, and sewer. Businesses have to pay 10s of thousands for a sewer tap fee.
Partly in response to #10:
“paying X amount of money to get X amount of bandwidth from your ISP” is a part of NetNeutrality issue. One should add “to access anything by any means” to it, but that is the essential part of what “providers” want to control. In even more plain words. ISP’s would like to provide you the best access to their own content and barely any access to whoever does not pay them anything (ex. Google vs. ATT) or to something where they are not earning anything in the process (ex. P2P). So, “bandwidth issues” and “application issues” are strongly intertwined in the NetNeutrality as “where” and “how” over which non-neutral ISP’s would want to divide the Internet.
It’s time for Urban pc meshes. Our network infrastructure is antiquated and obsolete.
Chances are that if you live in an urban area the data you want is available on a pc less than a mile from your current location.
If the ISPs insist on masochistic foot-shooting practices the hardware manufacturers(and marketing companies) will respond to a hungry consumer market.
Imagine Macintosh starts the ball rolling by bundling a wireless p2p mesh browser with file-sharing. Now take it a step further. They examine their sales statistics and set up a network of servers in the Cities which purchase the most macs.
All it would take is some transponders/cable/fibre/ between their servers and bam! Mac would own about 6% of the ISP business.
Every PC manufacturer would have to copy the model just to stay afloat and the existing ISPs would wither and die.
#4 MikeN, when the FCC approved AT&T’s acquisition of BellSouth, AT&T pledged not to provide “any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth’s wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination” for a period of 2 years.
That pledge would certainly seem to tie their hands from charging extra fees for timely delivery of content over AT&T’s backbone, as well as to their end user connections. It’s this fee-based prioritizing that’s at the crux of the net neutrality debate, not ordinary shaping of traffic during times of network congestion.
Although the prior FCC net neutrality rules that had been in place expired in 2006, so far the status quo practice still seems to be neutrality. Companies with deep pockets like Microsoft and Google aren’t yet being blackmailed into paying fees to make sure their packets don’t have “an unfortunate accident” along their network route (mafia phrasing for effect). But the telcos seem to feel it’s worth the high cost of Washington lobbying to make sure neutrality is not a mandate. Either they’re spending that money foolishly (not likely), or they have some changes in mind.
#17> “paying X amount of money to get X amount of bandwidth from your ISP” is a part of NetNeutrality issue.
No it isn’t. We are talking about using the internet, not how much you pay for your bandwidth. That’s a completely separate issue. “Control” as you went on to talk about is Net Neutrality, but that is an entirely separate issue from bill you get every month from your ISP.
Paying more for more services, or pay less for less service is NOT what net neutrality is, that is what a *Tiered* service is. And there’s nothing wrong or immoral about that, and it’s been going on long before any of us hand computers.
#16> Since you want to mandate neutrality,
No I’d perfer they just leave it well enough alone. But since THEY have lawyers to mandate US on how we use the internet, we need something that gives us some guarantees, before the internet is torn into separate networks.
#20 “Paying more for more services, or pay less for less service is NOT what net neutrality is, that is what a *Tiered* service is. And there’s nothing wrong or immoral about that, and it’s been going on long before any of us hand computers.”
Ahem… bullshit
I had access to a Commodore pet in 1979. I had a dial-up link to a University(with internet) in 1983. Now my parents were both computer programmers when input was done on punch-cards so perhaps my experience was a little different from yours. Hell, I remember ASCII pr0n!
I assure you there was no difference in the service available based on what you paid.
The fact of the matter is pay for internet is a relatively new phenomenon that has changed the very nature of the internet, and not for the better. Have you ever noticed the mountain of shit you must sort through to find what your actually looking for?
#21 nightstar… “Have you ever noticed the mountain of shit you must sort through to find what your actually looking for?”
Absolutely, and the irony isn’t lost on me that I contribute to the enormous amount of that data pollution every time I comment on this blog. When I search for certain types of information, I’m overwhelmed by the deluge of crapola from blogs and forums, often extremely unreliable, and virtually never usable as any sort of quotable source. The best you can usually hope for in the blog is a good link to a non-blog site. The phenomenon is sort of the equivalent of light pollution to an astronomer.
I’m still looking for the Google filter that screens out opinion but leaves the facts. I’ve often firmly resolved to contribute minimally to the overload, so I can be the guy who quietly throws stones at those of you who continue 😉
The practice seems to be neutrality, but it isn’t. Posters on this blog have mentioned Comcast blocking Vonage in places where they sell their own phone service. They will probably do whatever they do so
The practice seems to be neutrality, but it isn’t. Posters on this blog have mentioned Comcast blocking Vonage in places where they sell their own phone service. They will probably do whatever they do quietly.
#22 you call that quiet?
I’m pretty sure the opinion and fact are pretty tough to differentiate. Very few claims are supported with any sort of substantial evidence. I’d settle for a reduction of advertising keyword matches myself.
As we watch the internet become as spoon fed as televison, we will need find another way for freedom of speech to continue. Remember fido net?
Who the hell wrote this? Last time I checked there was not even a justice department. AG Gonzales and the top 6 people in the DOJ jumped ship last month, so some lobbyist hack must have written this and passed it off as a DOJ report right?
#22, Gary Marks “The phenomenon is sort of the equivalent of light pollution to an astronomer.”
At least there are narrow bandpass filters for that. With Google, sometimes you need the mythical “cloud filter.”
#27 ArianeB… “some lobbyist hack must have written this and passed it off as a DOJ report right?”
Hmmm, Ariane, you might be on to something after all. After John Ashcroft resigned as Attorney General, he became a lobbyist, and obviously a well-connected one at that. If you look at Ashcroft’s client list in this Washington Post article (below his photo), you’ll see that AT&T is indeed on his roster. I didn’t even think of a possible connection there until I saw your comment.
#28 BubbaRay, I had a hunch the “light pollution” phrasing would catch your eye if you were anywhere in the vicinity 😉
Despite what the FCC wrote to a single provider, net neutrality isnot the status quo. Having ISP’s give you their own e-mail accounts would be non-neutral vs Yahoo and Hotmail. Of course phone service could operate that way too.
Whether they can get Google to pay is another matter. I think most users may very well not take service from companies that don’t show the full set of websites. Nevertheless, right now companies can block google or other sites if they want. A few years ago, there was even a schism with one major backbone blocking another.