I’m one of those paranoid people who believes that, left to their own devices, broadband providers will eventually start degrading service to everything but Fox and Drudge, so I was happy to see this, though of course the devil is in the details:
Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to announce new so-called net neutrality rules Monday that would prevent wireless companies from blocking Internet applications, according to a source at the agency.
One principal would clearly state that operators of networks — including wireless firms — cannot discriminate what services and applications run on the Web, the source said.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thank you for the new thread. That last one was turning into a black hole.
Dave
OT, but I don’t have a blog to promote this thing:
Watch Maria Bartiromo flat out lie about what happened when she went head to head with Anthony Weiner and asked why he wasn’t on Medicare if it was such a good program.
Maria Bartiromo on Morning Joe
Calouste
There’s some rather disconcerning inaccuracy right there:
” operators of networks—including wireless firms—cannot discriminate what services and applications run on the Web”.
Well, of course they can’t. You can run whatever application you want on the Web on a server in the Bahamas or Russia or wherever. What is the important bit is that operators shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against what is delivered to their customer. There is loads of stuff that runs fine on the web, but isn’t delivered to web users behind the Great Firewall in China to use an example.
EnderWiggin
I too am one of those paranoid people, and so I too was happy to see this. More than I am afraid that we will be limited to Fox and Drudge, I think we will get limited to the MSM left to their devises. Then again there is an increasingly fine line between Drudge and the MSM.
Outside of politics, net neutrality is important from a free market perspective. Not the winger “free market”, but the actual free market. Holding down the barrier to entry to new companies as much as possible is truly needed, and one of they many example of how government regulation simulates the free market.
jibeaux
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Hee hee.
Keith
Guess I’ll go ahead and be OT to break the news: Irving Kristol died.
WARNING: Contains link to Weekly Standard.
Look for right-wing bloggers to demand respect for him in death regardless of political differences, and look for cherry-picked blog comments to represent the “disgusting” views of all Democrats and liberals.
JK
Doug,
This is valuable info. Would love to see Balloon Juice sprinkle some more science and technology related posts in between posts about the latest outrages coming from the wingnuts.
Good brief overviews on net neutrality
Access to Broadband Networks: The Net
Neutrality Debate
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40616_20090601.pdf
Seven Reasons: Why We Need Net Neutrality Now
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/08/03/seven-reasons-why-we-need-net-neutrality-now
In addition to savetheinternetdotcom, Benton Foundation (bentondotorg) is another good souce for info on net neutrality.
If CNN can broadcast 2 presidential candidate forums on faith and religion, it’s about fucking time they air a presidential candidate forum on science and technology.
Libby
I also share your paranoia Doug and am glad to see anything that protects neutrality. I don’t think it’s that paranoid actually considering some of the tricks they’re trying already, like launching tiered pricing in test regions.
JK
@Dave:
Maria Bartiromo has never served any useful purpose except for one instance when she provided the inspiration for a Ramones song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbJxMd3Pls8
joes527
The devil IS in the details. I’m not so concerned about outright blocking (maybe I should be, but I’m not) What I’m concerned about is Quality of Service.
Short of outright blocking, it is easy for the carriers to muck with QoS to make VoIP unusable (and then offer their own VoIP solution that has priority at all the routers) Or Make Netflix online viewing painful, while offering their own competing entertainment packages.
As long as the carriers are service providers themselves, how can you ensure that service providers that are not carriers themselves do not get shut out of the market by slightly degraded routing?
Calouste
@joes527:
That would be like an oil company that owns part of a railroad making sure that the railroad charges the oil company’s competitors higher rates for worse service. Now the invisible hand of the market ™ would surely ensure that such a horrible thing would never happen ?
John PM
I have been asked by a friend to be a guest speaker at a law school seminar on emerging technology and the law. Net Neutrality was one of the ideas that came to mind because I had seen it mentioned before here (Thanks, Balloon Juice!).
Would this make a good topic for a law review seminar presentation? If so, what should I read so that I get a good overview of the topic and avoid making an -ss out of myself?
Jamey
Sorry about the delay to this post. It took about an hour for the site to load…
/rimshot.
arguingwithsignposts
@John PM:
You might start with the EFF.
There’s also a burgeoning controversy over defamation in online comments and turning over the IP addresses of those commenters to the aggrieved. A paper in Wisconsin just turned over one person’s IP to another party with no court order or anything.
I could seriously see congress overturning or revisiting the CDA 230 protections at some point in the future based on hateful anonymous comments.
JK
@John PM:
The Brian Lehrer show which airs on WNYC in NY ran a segment covering net neutrality during the presidential campaign as part of a series called 30 issues in 30 days.
Internet and Broadcast Regulation
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/09/26/segments/110656
http://issues.wnyc.org/wiki/index.php/Internet_and_Broadcast_Regulation
Also see links in my earlier post #7. Save the Internet and the Benton Fdn are doing a very good job covering this issue.
Warren Terra
Does that include VOIP applications on modern internet-enabled cell phones? Because that would be pretty sweet …
My father claims that Sprint will let him run Google’s VOIP on his Palm Pre (although he hasn’t yet gotten it to work …), and this development more broadly would be a Good Thing – but then I see what AT&T has been doing to people who want to use VOIP on their iPhones …
mistermix
@Warren Terra: Hell yes.
But, as DougJ says, I’ll believe it when I see it.
TheFountainHead
@Warren Terra: Well, the bigger issue here is wether AT&T and the other major plays can be allowed to treat wireless networks differently than wired ones. So far, they are getting away with it. The other large issue is how much longer congress will continue to subsidize the cable companies as they have been for decades.
Richard Bennett
Network neutrality is the doctrine that any carrier of IP packets has to treat all packets the same from the standpoint of delay and price. It is by far the most idiotic idea ever put forward in the field of telecom regulation. Only morons and owners of large content-delivery networks (Google, for example) support it.
The other large corporate interests who support it are playing on the fears of the morons.
leo
“Paranoid”? You’re not the only one. We’ve gone through this kind of process in a number of our communication media.