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Darcy Burner has a diary up at Daily Kos today that talks about Net Neutrality and furthers our opinion that she has an understanding of the internets beyond the "series of tubes" imagery of other nameless (ahem, look up there, ahem, Alaska) state politicians.
The strengths of the Internet lie in its decentralized, organic nature. It is non-proprietary and open. It is remarkable because it is so democratic, embodying the ideals our nation was founded on.An essential element of democracy is the marketplace of ideas: the best ideas, well-expressed, will win. The Internet makes that more true than it has ever been before in all of human history. Anyone with an idea and the courage to speak it can harness the Internet to create waves of change.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, there is a fantastic example of that in the Northwest Progressive Institute. By conventional measures of money and corporate backing it wouldn't have had a chance. But it has become a real force in local politics due to the merit of the ideas espoused and the hard work invested. It was founded by someone who, at the time he began, was not yet old enough to vote.
But there are those who want to distort this marketplace for their own advantage.
Some of America's biggest internet service providers, like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, see the Internet as something they want to own for their own benefit and profit.
They think that owning the pipes (or "tubes", according to Senator Stevens) means they should get to control what goes through them.
Defending the equality of the marketplace of ideas is why net neutrality is so important. Sites like YouTube or Wikipedia, which are not owned by huge corporations, would be threatened, and could likely disappear under a tiered Internet.
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I freaking love Darcy Burner. She is exactly the kind of new leadership that we need in congress.
For someone from Microsoft she really has a poor grasp on the issue (which could be deliberate to appease her netroots contributors): net neutrality is nothing but a scam to impose government regulation on what is a free market right now, provided by firms that have an incentive to add richer features to the network precisely because they can get paid for it. It requires all packets be treated the same, which is not the case now and yet YouTube and Wikipedia certainly exist now and can continue to exist if their users care enough to ensure that they can pay for the correct amount and type of bandwidth.
So now, firms can easily survive, and yet we are told that the only way the firms that clearly exist now could actually come into existence is if regulations are put into place to ensure a notion of fairness that squelches the reason for the infrastructure innovator to improve their service and prevents the content provider who wants their customers to have the best experience with premium content from being able to do so? Where do I sign up (not!)? Want perfect quality rich media from the internet under net neutrality? Sorry--net neutrality means that every packet must be treated the same so schemes to ensure that video quality improve to that level would be either illegal or would require the providers to massively overbuild their networks with no hope of recompense. I don't know what must be smoked to think that Comcast, who fought for almost a decade against expanding into digital cable, would graciously expand their network out of the goodness of their heart, but whatever it is I want some.
Some interesting concepts, but the proof is in the pudding. To take one of your examples -
"most Internet Service Providers do not pay for a connection to the Internet that equals the bandwidth they sell to their users in aggregate. In other words, if 1,000 customers each pay for 1.5 Mb/s bandwidth, the ISP isn’t buying 1.5 Gb/s access to the Internet backbone. Rather, the ISP is buying a fraction of that, figuring that nowhere near everyone is going to connect at the same time"...
if the users download speeds did NOT slow down to a craw, then there is excess bandwidth available by the ISP. The marketplace already prevails in that if people are fairly comfortable with their download speeds - then there is adequate bandwidth available. It is true that there is a formula that the ISP's use - I know I was an Admin for a ISP - but there is a term: over-running your equipment which is where the routers and bandwidth are exceeded by customer demand - and ISPs constantly monitor this to prevent a consumer mutiny to another provider when Internet access “bottlenecks” with demand out-pacing supply. Most people I know that use the Internet excessively -have MAXIMUM speed connections already through their ISP to compensate for there above average needs of speed and bandwidth and the multi-tier pricing is already in place. ISPs are out to make money through value added services in the classic pyramid Internet business model.
The current proposal on the table with the Broadband reform bill takes this classic pyramid business model and turns it upside down with the big TELCOs now being the value-added providers and the bandwidth wholesalers - that has the likes of ANTI-TRUST as they have an unusually unfair advantage being the wholesalers of bandwidth. Google is already a value added provider - COMCAST is trying to be one with their already huge customer base, AT&T is also trying to be one offering TV over the Internet. No wonder Google is crazy with the up-ending of the classic business model. Furthermore - users by in large DO NOT WANT TO VIEW TV on their computers - see latest study
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060920-7785.html
A refresher on how the total Laissez Faire (deregulation) ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire of the cable industry benefited the consumer - http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/lessondc201.htm
Additionally - most people do not know what Net Neutrality is, as this complex issue has not been
portrayed accurately in the media. The actual S. 2917 Senate Net Neutrality Bill is here -
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-2917 , introduced by a Republican Senator.
The net neutrality debate is not really about money - except for possible anti-trust turning the classic Internet model pyramid upside down. Net neutrality is about the TELCOMs that will be in the drivers seat controlling everything on the Internet - wholesale bandwidth - hugh customer base they gained unfairly OVERNIGHT with the broadband reform bill - S. 2686: Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 -
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-2686 and control over what they will allow the consumer to see through 2 tier pricing which is a smoke screen for their Internet control. If the consumer would take the time to read the two bills and hear the arguments (without emotion), they will embrace Net Neutrality with open arms.
Thank you MrInternet for the useful and informative information! Net neutrality is about maintaining access to different types of information on the internet. And to the above poster, Marc, I hope you get those drugs you were hoping for. Maybe they'll help you get the grounding you need.