If they want Title II they should promise Wheeler a job that pays more than head Comcast lobbyist. That's the cheapest and easiest way to get net neutrality.
It's surprising that these companies aren't openly supporting net neutrality (instead of "behind closed doors"). It seems like the only companies openly against it are telecoms and cable companies - generally the most hated companies in the country.
I have been working with my employer to use our lobbying resources to push net neutrality. It took me months of work to even get it started. Getting the company to take a stance publicly would be years of work.
What they are doing right now is nothing short of monumental in a large corporate environment where the same telecoms you are opposing may be your customers, suppliers, or partners.
"It’s not surprising that these companies don’t want to talk openly about net neutrality. They have little to gain by alienating business partners such as Verizon, AT&T (T), and Comcast. Groups like the Telecommunications Users Committee exist to shield them from those conflicts, even as the companies quietly pursue policy goals in talks with the FCC."
“Every retailer with an online catalogue, every manufacturer with online product specifications, every insurance company with online claims processing, every bank offering online account management, every company with a website–every business in America interacting with its customers online is dependent upon an open Internet.”
I am worried that the net neutrality rules the president is now pushing will eventually kill the free and open internet.
ISPs will be required to not block traffic that is lawful but what is the definition of lawful? Would wikileaks be considered lawful? What about the Snowden documents? What about encryption?
Like all questions of regulation, it comes down to who you trust more - the FCC, or the telecoms. One of those two is going to end up dictating policy, since the current ISPs are a de facto if not natural monopoly or, at best, oligopoly, depending on where you live.
No matter how cynical you want to be about the FCC, Comcast, Verizon, et al. have already proven themselves to be actively harmful. Anything restrictions the FCC creates can hardly be worse than the "fast lane" plans. The FCC is also answerable to elected officials, for better or for worse - even at worst, I think that's better than being answerable to no one but a pocketbook.
I'm in favor of Net Neutrality, but from what I've read and discussed, Title II sounds like a bad path to go down. Basically it would give the FCC all sorts of regulatory powers we'd just have to trust they wouldn't enforce. Yeah, I got no faith on that topic.
The legality question is pretty much where we have always been: DMCA, FBI seizing of servers etc. etc. If it's illegal, the government can, has, and will continue to try to stop it.
From what I've read, the regulation prohibits ISPs from blocking lawful traffic, but it doesn't require them to block unlawful traffic, or give them any greater ability to block unlawful traffic than they already have.
I'm missing something. The author writes: and all four deny advocating for net neutrality behind closed doors with the FCC. Okay, so does the author know about this?!
The article points outs that the FCC is required to disclose what was discussed at those meetings, and even has links to the slides of the presentation that the representatives made to the FCC while they were there. If you click on those links, you can view the PDFs that were presented, and they clearly outline strong support for net neutrality.
Businesses will push for anything that can make them profit. For these companies Net Neutrality happen to fall into their profit domain so they push for it. But fundamental rights and values should not be up for anyone to debate or lobby. Net Neutrality should be part of the constitution.
> Net Neutrality should be part of the constitution.
I think comcast and verizon are villainous scum that should be crushed like bugs, and still I am uncomfortable with legislating for net neutrality at this point, and especially uncomfortable with the idea of putting it in the constitution (even presuming that that's a bit of hyperbole on your part).
My problem is that NN is a "I know it when I see it" issue. But do I? When I first saw bitterness I thought it was a bad actor at the TCP/IP level (it isn't!). Streaming live events over the network? Madness -- my first impression was that we have several other broadcast media for that already! (now I realize: "so what?"). My understanding evolves over time.
Consider: differentiated carriage is clearly of interest to me -- I'd be happy to pay (as long as it's me making the decision, not my carrier) for differentiated QoS to make sure my call or game traffic were isochronous, that that big file I want now came quickly, but that my background app & OS updates, or disk pickup transmissions, were deprioritized, or even especially scheduled for periods of low contention. I'm delighted if my ISP has a cache so that common pages many people in my topological area may preload pages I want to see two, improving my access. Oh and I do with that that DDOS attack aimed at you doesn't catch me in the crossfire.
Finally, we know that when legislation is made, especially by people who lack the domain knowledge, all sorts of corner cases get screwed up both maliciously or though ignorance. What's network management vs rentier opportunism vs disadvantaging the poor vs a mistake can be twisted by someone with a buck to make, and the old carriers are past masters at such games. And they will surely swap the right to stop spam and layer 3 attacks for the right to monitor and censor.
If you do want a constitutional amendment, make it a general one about right of carriage and passage. I.e. it should apply equally to trucks driving down the road (which still have to meet some technical constraints for safety) to sending parcels, transmitting bits and the like. So that it can still be applicable when we consider packet switching as obsolete as the carrier pigeon.
>Businesses will push for anything that can make them profit
That's kind of a simplification. The pushing is controlled by the CEO and similar people at the companies and they can in practice push for pretty much what they like using the companies money. While they are kind of supposed to maximise shareholders interests they don't always do so in practice (see excessive company jets, vanity takeovers). I doubt Ford and BoA are pushing neutrality because they think it will increase their profits, they are probably just pushing it because the boss likes the idea.
What worries me is, how do you define what the internet is? If I fork the IP stack and call it IP2, and it is different in some significant way, does that still fall under Title II?
It's quite simple: If you sell carriage of data between two parties, are responsible for the loss of said data, and sell to the general public, then yes, you should be considered a common carrier of data.
[+] [-] smutticus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsl|11 years ago|reply
What they are doing right now is nothing short of monumental in a large corporate environment where the same telecoms you are opposing may be your customers, suppliers, or partners.
[+] [-] Robadob|11 years ago|reply
"It’s not surprising that these companies don’t want to talk openly about net neutrality. They have little to gain by alienating business partners such as Verizon, AT&T (T), and Comcast. Groups like the Telecommunications Users Committee exist to shield them from those conflicts, even as the companies quietly pursue policy goals in talks with the FCC."
[+] [-] shkkmo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|11 years ago|reply
ISPs will be required to not block traffic that is lawful but what is the definition of lawful? Would wikileaks be considered lawful? What about the Snowden documents? What about encryption?
This is a dangerous road we are going down.
[+] [-] GeneralMayhem|11 years ago|reply
No matter how cynical you want to be about the FCC, Comcast, Verizon, et al. have already proven themselves to be actively harmful. Anything restrictions the FCC creates can hardly be worse than the "fast lane" plans. The FCC is also answerable to elected officials, for better or for worse - even at worst, I think that's better than being answerable to no one but a pocketbook.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splitrocket|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learc83|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanhuff|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frederickf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hristov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atmosx|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apayan|11 years ago|reply
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000979857
edit: added a link to the PDF of slides
[+] [-] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 31reasons|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|11 years ago|reply
I think comcast and verizon are villainous scum that should be crushed like bugs, and still I am uncomfortable with legislating for net neutrality at this point, and especially uncomfortable with the idea of putting it in the constitution (even presuming that that's a bit of hyperbole on your part).
My problem is that NN is a "I know it when I see it" issue. But do I? When I first saw bitterness I thought it was a bad actor at the TCP/IP level (it isn't!). Streaming live events over the network? Madness -- my first impression was that we have several other broadcast media for that already! (now I realize: "so what?"). My understanding evolves over time.
Consider: differentiated carriage is clearly of interest to me -- I'd be happy to pay (as long as it's me making the decision, not my carrier) for differentiated QoS to make sure my call or game traffic were isochronous, that that big file I want now came quickly, but that my background app & OS updates, or disk pickup transmissions, were deprioritized, or even especially scheduled for periods of low contention. I'm delighted if my ISP has a cache so that common pages many people in my topological area may preload pages I want to see two, improving my access. Oh and I do with that that DDOS attack aimed at you doesn't catch me in the crossfire.
Finally, we know that when legislation is made, especially by people who lack the domain knowledge, all sorts of corner cases get screwed up both maliciously or though ignorance. What's network management vs rentier opportunism vs disadvantaging the poor vs a mistake can be twisted by someone with a buck to make, and the old carriers are past masters at such games. And they will surely swap the right to stop spam and layer 3 attacks for the right to monitor and censor.
If you do want a constitutional amendment, make it a general one about right of carriage and passage. I.e. it should apply equally to trucks driving down the road (which still have to meet some technical constraints for safety) to sending parcels, transmitting bits and the like. So that it can still be applicable when we consider packet switching as obsolete as the carrier pigeon.
[+] [-] tim333|11 years ago|reply
That's kind of a simplification. The pushing is controlled by the CEO and similar people at the companies and they can in practice push for pretty much what they like using the companies money. While they are kind of supposed to maximise shareholders interests they don't always do so in practice (see excessive company jets, vanity takeovers). I doubt Ford and BoA are pushing neutrality because they think it will increase their profits, they are probably just pushing it because the boss likes the idea.
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userisme|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GabrielF00|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kchoudhu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaekwon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splitrocket|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
[+] [-] simplemath|11 years ago|reply