Comments on: Politicos propose new action on Net neutrality

House bill aims to make the concept enforceable under antitrust law, while senators continue to ponder their own action.
Musician Moby raises voice for Net neutrality

[bstein]

This article is FALSE

I am the FreedomWorks staff member who was assaulted by the MoveOn thug.

The sound was his sign hitting my face. There were plenty of witnesses. I reported the incident to the Capitol Police, but did not ask them to arrest the guy.

CNET needs to correct this error.

Also, I was not blocking his sign, he was blocking mine. Your reporting is woefully mistaken.

Net neutrality - absolutely necessary. Here's why...

According to Wikipedia, the history of the carriers with respect to innovative Internet services is not proud:

About ten years ago, as new devices and applications arose on the Internet, the reaction of many broadband operators was truly frightening. According to Wikipedia:

- AT&T, as a cable operator, warned customers that using a Wi-Fi service for home-networking constituted "theft of service" and a federal crime
- Cox Cable disciplined users of virtual private networks
- Comcast blocked ports of VPNs, preventing government workers from telecommuting
- In the Madison River case, a local telco was found to be blocking voice-over-IP (VoIP) service and was fined by the FCC

Without strong net neutrality rules and FCC enforcement tools, the carriers could very likely return to the days of blocking any innovative service in the hope that they could control and monetize it.

Are regulations necessary? Damn right - until there are true choices for last-mile services. If nothing else, the carriers' past behavior teaches us just that.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com

[freemarket--2008]

Nanny state mentality

Why is the government the first stop to solve any problem? All it will do is add more red tape, regulations and government intrusion to yet another industry.

I imagine there will need to be records kept to insure compliance. The NSA will of course be glad to help with that...

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Comcast is degrading my VoIP!

I hope our law makers don't screw this one up too. My $145 a month Packet8 VoIP hosted PBX is nothing more than a glorified answering maching with extensions because I can no longer use one of the extensions on my Comcast line. It worked fine until a couple of months ago. Now if I run speed tests between me and a server of mine on an ISPs rack, VoIP packets have higher latency than http, ftp, etc.

[steyraug96]

Comcast.

Sorry to say, THEY are the problem, and all the government regs in the world won't change it. They've got a virtual monopoly, and they don't really give a <censored> about anything else... And I'm in the civilized section of the world... I think it's worse as you get farther from the city / town.
So far, I've had issues with the Cable system, issues with the modem, issues with the phone, issues with the phone line, issues with the cabling, and then there's the transmission trouble that shouldn't be occurring.... Drops in service, drops in programming, wrong schedules, etc, etc, etc... And I think I've gotten off lucky so far...

It's like running Winblows.... We don't have a lot of choice, if we want to actually communicate with others; we either use Word or some sort of plain text editor, or we don't talk to everyone else... (Open Office not withstanding...)

[schubb]

WHAT?

HTH did some idiot come up with this amazing line:

"deprive parents of new technologies they may use to protect their families from online harm."

So by making sure AT&T can't block me from a site that offers online, real-time filtering, without paying a premium, I am deprived?

Only a Congress full of drunks, tax evaders, and liars could possibly come up with inane garbage like this.

[ender.krum]

Regulate Only When Necessary

The proponents for "net neutrality" are fighting against something which MIGHT happen. The argument is ourely a hypothetical/theoretical argument. We simply do not know that a free market in this area will, overall, hurt internet users. In fact, the hypothetical arguments against net neutrality are also theoretically convincing.

Since the government's track record is to decrease inovation and increase cost, we should be cautious when asking them to regulate technological advancement. Perhaps we should let this go for now and see what the market does. If it acts up, then maybe we should regulate it. But then it would be based on actual events...not hypothetical, worst-case-scenario arguments.

[Vurk]

Regulating after-the fact

Is like giving New Orleans levees *after* Hurricane Katrina hits. Once the telco's have it their way, there will be *no* going back.
Once they have the infrastructure in, they will be able to convince Congress that it makes "economic sense" to keep it that way.
And by the way, these scenarios are *not* hypothetical; there are already cases where telco's and ISP's have blocked or degraded service to third party applications and services (like VOIP) that have competed with the ISP's own product.
AT&T cant wait to force Vonage users to move to AT&T's CallVantage(which is priced more like normal phone service instead of a cost-saving phone service). Comcast has been seen degrading the service of all third party VOIP providers so that their customers must switch to "Comcasticall" phone service.
In the free market, monopolies win. And what do the phone and cable companies have? Thats right, a *monopoly*.
The NN legislation will merely put the former Net Neutrality rules back in force. This way small businesses can continue to innovate.
But, it sounds to me like you dont shop at Amazon, or look up movies times and reviews online, or book travel without a travel agent, even read email. So AT&T's policies wont affect you.
But it will affect us, so either join with us to save the internet(savetheinternet.com) or get out of the way.

[slippytoad]

Guess what -- it's necessary

"We simply do not know that a free market in this area will, overall, hurt internet users."

Past history of telcos, especially the companies in question such as AT&T shows that it will. Without legal restraint or significant market pressure (which just about doesn't exist after the recent round of mergers) they will abuse their monopoly status as much as possible. Therefore it is now neecessary.

"In fact, the hypothetical arguments against net neutrality are also theoretically convincing."

False. Hypothetical arguments that are theoretically convincing are just hot smelly air.

"Since the government's track record is to decrease inovation and increase cost, we should be cautious when asking them to regulate technological advancement."

The Net Neutrality statues that have arisen are being requested by people, who are the government. They are a direct response to lobbying efforts by the telcos to be granted the right to perform extortion on successful Internet businesses, and by the way shut out smaller players. It's an attempt to wall off the Internet and freeze its current configuration as-is, before any other upstart players figure out ways to make business.

[ericblr0716]

It will limit choice

It's called Democrats trying to stick their corrupted noses where
it does not belong. They are trying hard to grow this socialist
idea and it supposedly is supposed to "help the little people".
What net neautrality is going to do is force the Broadband
providiers to offer up the fastest service they can pump out.
Sounds great until you examine further. Take Time Warner for
instance, they offer Roadrunner light for $24.95 at 3 MBPS,
Regular Roadrunner for $39.99 at 5 MBPS, and premium service
for $89.95 at 8 MBPS. Not everybody needs 8 MBPS or even 5
MBPS. Heck 3 MBPS is plenty for even streaming radio and
video. The only time you ever really need anything beyond that
is if you do ALOT of downloading. Also SBC offers plain DSL for
as low as $14.95 (with a Phone Line service package and a year
or so agreement) with a standard bitrate of 1.5MBPS. For many
who already have phone service and just want something faster
than dialup and maybe would like a dedicated internet line, that
is a steal! The permium DSL service runs at 3 MBPS and only
costs $24.95 (with a qualifing package and contract of course).
Now imagine a world where congress now suddenly dictated to
the companies that they are only going to be allowed to pump
the fastest possible speeds and they wont be allowed "to cap for
users of less bandwidth" or charge for a premium service for
"users of greater bandwidth", well all SBC, Time Warner,
Comcast, and all of the others have to do is give you the
Premium service. If you think that by automatically getting the
premium service is going to save you money???? Think again.
SBC and Time warner will still charge the premium price for the
premium service that they will be "forced to provide". The
consumer will not be able to lower their costs by subscribing to
a lower grade service even if they dont need all that bandwidth.
So Now Cable is going to cost $89.95 and DSL is going to cost
anywhere from $24.95 regardless. No more $14.95 for web
surfers and email checkers... no more $29.95 for no contract
required fast cable. All this because the Socialist Democrats
thought this would be "in our best Interest". This is what
Socialism vs a free market is about! I can only hope this
measure to be defeated!

[Chris Baumgardt]

You have it backwards

That is not at all what net neutrality bills are working to stop. It has nothing to do with what services and speeds an ISP can offer to an end user. What the backbone providers want to do is charge sites like Google that have heavy traffic to their sites additional fees to guarentee that their traffic continues to flow at top speed. If they don't pay the premium, they can have their traffic choked off, effectively limiting or killing their access to their customers. The real reason they want to do this is not to ensure they get paid for the infrastructure they provided, it is so they can limit other companies that compete with services they want to provide. If allowed to tier access to the backbone, they can ensure their service flows fast and the competitions service flows slow knowing that customers will then switch to the providers service. These bills aren't forcing providers to only provide the fastest speed possible to end users or limiting the choice of plans they can subsribe to. These bills are protecting consumers from predatory providers interested in hijaking the internet so they become monopoly providers of all net services.

[danes75]

You're kidding, right?

How will it limit choice? Broadband providers already throttle usage based upon your billing plan. If I pay for 8Mbps with Time Warner, I should be able to use my 8Mbps for anything I want and as often as I want. If I want to download 24/7, then thats my choice. Likewise, if someone only wants to use it for email, then pay for that package. SBC/AT&T's Chairman said they are his lines and that he should make money from them before somone else, but isn't that what I pay 90 bucks a month for? Aren't I paying him to use them????

Your statements, all of them, are just moronic.

Furthermore, I think the corruption tally board is heavy on the Republican side. A Republican calling a Democrat corrupt? Pot? Meet Kettle.

[newcreation]

net neutrality? more like could be politically bias?

next thing you know they will be blocking peoples access to prolife sights or any conservative sights.

[ShoutingLoudly]

Here's why we need net neutrality

Several knee-jerk reactions on these boards have wrongly
equated net neutrality with everything from unnecessary
bureaucracy to communism. But network neutrality is the only
way to continue the status quo of common carrier requirements
that made the dial-up era of the internet such an explosive
success.

For more, read:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=902071

[ender.krum]

Offensive Comparison

I cannot believe someone stooped so low as to compare this isue with Hurricane Katrina. That is offensive and hyper-emotional.