Net Neutrality champion Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)
By on Dec 1st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Net Neutrality champion Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)
has announced he will seek to chair the House Telecom and Internet Subcommittee next year. Art Brodsky says it’s still “no slam dunk that Net Neutrality will be approved by the new Congress. But, the odds got better with Rep. Ed Markey’s decision.”
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With the right person leading all things are possible. I believe Nancy is smart enough to realize it and she will do the right thing.
If she doesn’t, I will be the first to let her know I am not happy, and I think there will be others who will also do so.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:50 pmNet Neutrality is one element that allows these posts w/o cost.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:03 pmCorporate America is pissed they’re not able to collect fees for access.
This is the same bunch of telecoms & ISPs that promised fiber access by now, & 100mbs download speeds. Right!
America is somewhere in the middle globally for download speeds.
Shame on us!
The same telecoms & ISPs managed tax breaks / credits to provide that infastructure. They took the money, routed it to the CEOs and
did nothing. Nada.
Folks, coroporate greed has no limits or boundaries. That’s why you speak to a person in India with a help desk call, but when you want to download a large file you watch you life passing by in slow motion.
Let’s all hope Rep. Markey can help defeat this proposition of greed.
I’m a bit behind on this issue, so I would appreciate some help. What exactly is the Net Neutrality bill supposed to do? Isn’t the Internet already neutral?
I don’t think I’m the only one who is suspicious of bills with common sense names that usually turn out to do the exact opposite of what they say. “Clear Skies”, “Healthy Forests”, “No Child Left Behind”, “Patriot Act”, and the rest.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:09 pmThank God there are some things the Republicans haven’t had time to screw up!
December 1st, 2006 at 3:10 pm3. I was asking pretty much the same thing on the last thread about Net Neutrality and am still uncertain of the intention of the actual bill.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:22 pmAnyone see the new tv ad against net neutrality? all it does is say net neutrality will cost consumers more money, but fails to back up any of the claims it makes nor does it explain what the opposite of net neutrality is. also it makes net neutrality seem like something new rather than something that has been in place.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:24 pm#3 Tuber
You are correct. The net is neutral for now. The phone companies and Internet Service Providers (ISP) want to change that.
“Net Neutrality” basically says that regradless of how much bandwith someone or a company uses, the net just transfers the package of information without giving one priority over another.
Opponents want to change that. They want large institutional clients to get priority over the smaller users.
Example: A large GOP blog that gets more hits, would get priority over a smaller Liberal blog when it comes to transferring the information. In other words it will a lot easier and faster to post onto a GOP blog that a Liberal one. The same will applly to business and individual website.
So if you are a smaller website, you would have to pay more for your service in order to get priority, while larger clients will probably get a volume discount.
This does not affect cabel modems, only those that work over the telephone lines (DSL, ADSL, T1)
This is how I understand it. Maybe someone else more familiar with it can give both of us better information
December 1st, 2006 at 3:33 pmThey want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.
And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:42 pmRebel,
But how does the bill prevent that? Not trying to be cynical but I want to make sure that the bill doesn’t pass based on its feel good heading but then have a Section 100, paragraph 18, sub-paragraph C that states that I have to provide a DNA sample and sign a life-long contract.
Not that I don’t trust these guys…uh, actually it is that I don’t trust these guys.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:47 pm#7 Admirable attempt, but you are a bit off.
See for an extensive overview.
The problem is, this is actually a very complex issue. There are some valid technical arguments for not having net neutrality (wouldn’t it be nice if Voice over IP packets had higher priority, for better sound?), as well as some stinky business reasons (deep pockets get priority).
On balance, though, net neutrality is a good thing. I’m not sure if the strong or weak version of net neutrality (see the Wikipedia article) is to be preferred, but I do know that moving away from net neutrality is a slippery slope that will harm the small business and private citizen.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:54 pmOops forgot to close that link! Well, it’s a pretty good link, go read it!
December 1st, 2006 at 3:54 pmagain…
9 search results for ‘net neutrality’ on ThinkProgress alone…
http://thinkprogress.org/?s=net+neutrality
good explanation here, from that list:
…
For now, let’s talk about net neutrality and how the campaign against it is being somewhat astroturfed by the telecom industry. I’ve explained before what net neutrality means. It’s a standard which says that no telecom company can discriminate against content that flows over its pipes. Allowing telecom outfits to treat content differently will basically turn the internet into another cable TV system, with telecom companies deciding who can effectively publish a web site and who can’t.
…
http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/20/161813/254
follow the links… here’s one:
Net Neutrality: The First Amendment for the Internet
by Matt Stoller, Wed Apr 19, 2006 at 02:12:11 PM EST
Cory Doctorow posted on net neutrality yesterday. Net neutrality is the provision that says all speech on the internet must be treated equally, and no data packets get favored just because the data is traveling over different pipes. It’s the first amendment transferred to the internet.
The telcos want to end net neutrality. They want to turn the internet into another TV where those who pay a lot have the ability to broadcast, and those that don’t get inferior degraded service. It’s dressed up in a lot of spin with Clinton hacks like Mike McCurry working for the telcos, but that’s the basic dynamic.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:54 pm…
http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/19/141211/031
.
*
December 1st, 2006 at 3:58 pmhttp://www.savetheinternet.com/
*
#9
See post no 10 from BBC. Thanks BBC
The bill as I understand it says that there will be no discrimination on the web. Everyone is equal.
As to your DNA sample, you would have to ask covicted Iran-Contra criminal Admiral Pointdexter and his Total Information Awarness program. LOL :-)
December 1st, 2006 at 4:42 pmThanks Rebel and Katy. Anyone have a link to the actual bill(s)? I’ve had insomnia recently and reading through them might help. Also, besides the DNA thing I want to make sure that it doesn’t require rights to my first-born. I already had to promise him or her to my cell phone provider.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:55 pmThe net nuetrality debate is only confusing, because the teleco companies confuse it by using the words “bandwidth” and “pipes” when those words have nothing to do with it!
I host a website and the amount I pay each month already varies according to how much bandwidth I want to pay for!
I pay $100 for the lowest tier, but have the option of paying more for more bandwith, where bandwith is how many bytes you are allowed to receive and send per second, and for my $100 a month I can receive 700,000 bits per second and I can send at 1,000,000 bits per second, and there are 8 bits in a byte.
Google pays much more than me for the highest tier, and can send and receive many more bits per second than I can, but our bits while traveling on the network are treated equally and get routed to their destination using the exact same rules at the exact same speed, and this is what the telcos want to change.
What the teleco and cable companies REALLY want is to treat the “bytes†of their content to have a higher priorty when it comes to being delivered while in transit on the network versus the “bytes†of content they do not own!
They want a “byte†from their content webservers and their high paying customer’s webservers, to make my “byte†wait to get routed, even though my byte entered the network first.
Obviously this is unfair, so they cannot come right out and say that they want this, so they use the smoke screen about large users “hogging†bandwidth, to hide the “apartied†network that they want .
I repeat, large users already pay more for the larger bandwith they use, and the “bandwidth” argument is just a smoke screen!
December 1st, 2006 at 5:10 pmMy concern with a multi-tiered network is that it opens the door to pervasive censorship. When preferential transport is offered to those who can pony-up the cash, then a certain level of censorship has already been achieved. That is obviously the case when you already have a society with such massive wealth differentials. And, as we have already learned from studying the Republican electioneering practices, you only need a small differential to swing the balance of public opinion. So, I think it is pretty clear that retaining net neutrality is the next battleground in the New American Civil War.
Furthermore, as I already reported in the previous thread concerning bloggers, there is another really big issue which threatens internet freedom. Some of the more recent RIAA suits are bordering on setting legal precedents for implementing massive internet surveillance and censorship. Even though it looks like these cases are fraudulent, the RIAA may win simply because the defendants have no money to mount an effective legal defense. In my opinion, this kind of creeping radicalization is a very significant threat. See GlobalResearch for more.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:22 pmIf neutrality goes overboard into the corporate realm and out of the hands of “we the people”, freedom of speach will be one step closer “death”.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:15 pmCorporations have NO right to infringe on OUR airspace any further. When “we the people” regain the rights that corporate America has fleased from us “in their name”, America will once again start to move foward.
Why have corporations been able to take on the facade of a human face? Are we as citizens deprived of protections that are easily granted to our “corporate partners”?
Is walmart in our total control?
Are Americans lacking in their desire to speak out?
net neutrality is a good thing
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:11 pm