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Net neutrality, as it's often called, is the principle that all content transmitted over a cable or a phone company's network be treated equally and without preference. Last year, several consumer groups and Internet companies banded together to lobby Congress to pass a law to protect this principle. But those attempts failed.
Now Net neutrality is back in the political spotlight after a string of potential abuses have come to light. Last month, the Associated Press reported that it had carried out experiments across the country proving that Comcast prevented some users from uploading content to peer-to-peer networks including BitTorrent. Comcast disputed the results.
Over the summer, during a Webcast of the Lollapalooza concert in Chicago, AT&T bleeped portions of the Pearl Jam song "Daughter," in which singer Eddie Vedder altered lyrics to include anti-Bush sentiments. Other bands had also been censored on AT&T's Webcasts, including the John Butler Trio and Flaming Lips. AT&T admitted that these remarks had been deleted, but the company said these were mistakes made by an overzealous contractor hired to monitor the performances for obscene language.
Cell phone companies have also been accused of limiting access to their networks. In September, Verizon Wireless denied a request from an abortion rights group to use its mobile network for a new text-messaging campaign. After The New York Times wrote an article about the denial, Verizon changed its mind.
The Net neutrality issue has even crept into the 2008 presidential race with Sen. Barack Obama publicly saying earlier this week that the issue would rank high on his list of priorities in the first year of his administration. Obama added he would make Net neutrality support among appointed Federal Communications Commissioners a priority.
"The broadband market is really at an inflection point," said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School and a supporter of Net neutrality legislation. "And it's important to establish laws now because it will essentially set the ground rules for how the market will play out in the future."
Some supporters of Net neutrality claim that a 2005 Supreme Court decision that changed the regulatory environment for DSL and cable modem service gave too much freedom and control to the Internet service providers.
In the Brand X case the court refused to recognize cable modem service as a "telecommunications" service. Instead, it classified it as an "information" service. This ruling meant that cable operators were not bound to a requirement in the telecommunications service regulation that forced phone companies to provide open access to competitors on their networks. To keep cable and phone companies on equal footing, the FCC changed the classification of DSL service to also be an information service.
Net neutrality supporters say that this change in regulation gives cable operators and phone companies too much control over what applications and content travel across their networks. Large phone companies and cable operators, however, say that no new laws or regulations are needed to explicitly grant protection for Net neutrality. Instead, they believe that a free market is the best protection against abuse. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin agrees that no new regulation is needed.
But Net neutrality supporters point to these recent incidents as evidence that something needs to be done. The most glaring accusation of abuse is Comcast, which critics say is filtering and blocking BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic. Sites that use the protocol have been targeted by the movie industry to stop the illegal distribution of copyrighted video. But there are also many legal uses of BitTorrent.
See more CNET content tagged:
Net Neutrality, Comcast Corp., cable company, supporter, Barack Obama
The carriers' plans are obvious. Is the FCC completely bought and paid for by the telco lobbyists? The answer is obvious even to a casual observer.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/10/comcasts-world-without-network.html
Who gets to make use of future changes to the internet infastructre.
How to make everything work in realtime and how to satisfy all our demands.
Adopting internet 2 advances into the internet at large.
How much should local governent make use of the future internet world to extend the commons.
Is it best to run everything from a giant central cluster or can the internet be so much more.
Should anything have a central server point at all.
How well can you make full use of global P2P systems and does making it hybrid with central servers help it.
To know how this should all unfold technically america needs atleast a 6 year of engagment
during which telecommunications companies should be allow to experiment and certian neutrality issues should be upheld amounst other mesures to ensure fainess and a really engagment towards the best future solution.
The probblem is mistakes will cost the potential extendend economy improvments can make orand cost potential growth and economy of systems allready in place.
This current wangle is just the tip of the iceberg.
intervention is needed and it's about making the right desisions to ensure the best possible future.
All you can do is send pictures via P2P with windows or mac os basic software and all the wesites are having to pay to give you access to their vids.
This does still let you produce youtube vids but dosen't really let anyone small compete properly nor does it let you get all the stuff you want.
What do you do?, your tied down at your connecting.
Even to have a vid on your web site you now have to pay youtube.
Horrid ain't it, horrid little horris rules again rest assure you'll only see of comming wars what your supposed to.
Surley there must be a clever way round such a problem.
Well compression is all about curves and that power you'll have in your home computer you'll be able to curve that data up loads more effectivley than you can today.
So you may have a little peice of software that reads special lossless pictures ona site as a video.
The software might also collect and send pictures similar to how bit torrent works allowing you to do all the stuff you could before the crack down on neutrality.
The software could also change things that it does to stop people stopping it doing what it does.
The flaw with controling people who have computers as opposed to people who have TV's is that they have computers not TV's and so long as theres data going round theres a loop hole in the control actions of others and no law can ever come out that can preempt your technical way around the law and the system.
Does the electric company ask what you are using the electricity
for? No. Does the phone company ask what I'm going to be talking
about? No. Why should my supplier of Internet data ask what I'm
doing with the bits? It's not their responsibility.
I admit, Comcast was dumb about this. If they had just stuck with restricting BT uploads and been forthcoming about it, no one would have made a big stink about it, since its their right to monitor and control the bandwidth on their network. However, they were idiotic enough to try and hide what they were doing, plus going the extra step and forging customers id's and sending abort msg's to both ends of a BT upload.
However, as being part of the telecommunications industry, I do not want to see the ISP's lose the right to manage their network, and on the flip side I dont want them to get too much control over what and how they control on their network. It all comes down to a balance, not one side over the other. But, this is American politics, so you know thats not gonna happen.
The rest of use unless we want to pay millions will be out out of business and basically told who's information we can read and who we can do business with because gaining access to everything else will be slow and problamatic. This will set up the perfect environment also for blackmail and extortion type setups. If you don't think big companies would do things like this then you need to pull your heads out of the sand. Remember Enron, Health South, etc. etc.
Companies who's only goal is to make money can not be trusted to keep the web open and accessible for everyone. Greed will always win out this is why Comcast has increased their cable prices 93% over the last few years. Not because they give more, but because they just simply want more of your money. Greed will always win out over honesty and fairness.
Unfortunately, this also applies to the US government who is just run by a bunch of old idiot's. Who will do whatever the biggest contributor will ask them to do. As an example the DMCA!
Robert
nuff said
http://****************.blogspot.com
You have bad service from 1 provider and thus you conclude that the Federal Government must come to the rescue?
Wrong. Capitalism works. And if you don't like Verizon's service, you'll go to another provider, and Verizon will lose money. Why do you need the federal government to solve all your problems? Haven't you realized yet that government regulation of the Internet is a "Bad Thing?"
Where you go wrong.. is that you only consider your own freedoms. It is a very selfish perspective. Essentially, what you are saying is... "I know exactly what kind of service I want, and I want the government to force ABC Company to give me that service."
Well... what just happened to ABC Company's freedom? You stomped all over it, didn't you. Providers need to be free to run their own networks. If you don't like their service, you'll find a new provider. Its just that simple. If a provider loses too much business, they'll be forced to switch strategies. It is sad that you thin "Saving" the Internet is somethign the Federal government can do. The Internet matured w/o government interaction, and will survive as a robust and ever-changing platform, so long as we keep government's meddling hands out of it.
Support freedom of the Internet. If I build MY network, and you connect to it, then I get to make the rules. If its your network, you make the rules. If you don't like my rules, pay somebody who has better rules. This is the essence of freedom. What you suggest is the opposite. You suggest government revocation of the rights of network owners. Why should you enjoy freedom while the people who build businesses to service you are forced into regulation?
http://****************.blogspot.com
- WTF! Thanks to Comcast . . .
- by criticny December 1, 2007 12:26 AM PST
- The headlines for this article are so biased, I won't even bother to read it.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(33 Comments)Who decided to attribute Comcast's recent bad behavior to a P2P app that's been around for years? Pheh. Pteui. Ach.
As for "Eating up bandwidth . . .", not even worth commenting on.