Netz!

Fitz!
Turing!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane – it’s a busted rape gurney!

at first, the picture looked like a glowing ram’s horn, used to sound an electronic alarum …

Jane, Christy and the FDL crew… you all rock!

The Snowe-Dorgan vote is slated for 6/22. That gives us a week to craft our messages and get them to the public in every avenue possible.

Dover Bitch….I love that name.
Great post….Thanks.

falciparum!

and fitz!

Here’s an analogy to get things started:

You are craving a delicious In ‘N’ Out burger. So you get on the road and drive to the local In ‘N’ Out, only to find that the road is blocked off with a detour to McDonald’s. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like McDonald’s. The people who maintain the road made a deal with McDonald’s and now that’s all you can have.

That’s how opponents of Net Neutrality want the Internet to function. They want large corporations to decide what websites you can visit. You don’t get to decide for yourself.

Obviously, you can substitute anything for In ‘N’ Out and McDonald’s, but this was just the first analogy that came to my mind. FDL has the sharpest readers around. Can’t wait to see what everybody comes up with.

Awesome post. (And, thanks to the last one of “those ads,” I was able to go to YKos. So thank you for wasting your money at blogs that want to fight you tooth and nail — we’d rather you spend it here than somewhere that might do you good. We promise to put your fundage to good use. *g*)

Just want to mention that it’s “into the breach” rather than “breech.”

Tax payer money. You hit the nail on the head. How will this affect public entities that have internet access? How will this affect schools, police stations, libraries, universities, court houses, etc. Are they going to have to pony up to get “good” internet access? There’s still locations that can only get dial-up. How will this affect the private sector that doesn’t have ties to the telecoms? How much are they going to have to push onto customers to cover their costs? Money is the issue. This can’t be a battle about John Q. Public against the telecoms because with this Admin, Johnny never wins. This needs to be framed in larger standards.

There needs to be a way to show how the slowing of the dissemination of information is detrimental to society. Scientific diciplines are finally and slowly integrating into each other. I really feel society is on the brink of a scientific revolution but who knows what will happen if the flow of information is distracted, interrupted, and/or manipulated for the sole purpose of greed.

It’s a hard one to explain, that’s for sure. I usually resort to the toll booth analogy — everyone has used eBay, and there’s a reason eBay is opposed to this. If you’re a little guy, do you want to wind up paying a toll for cyberspace? Because that’s what the telcos want you to do – and they’ll wind up sticking you into the traffic-congested slow lane. Right now those roads are free. The telcos talk about “freedom” but what they mean is they want to be free to create another profit center. Most people don’t respond to positively to the notion.

Here are a few, some with a business slant. I’m not very “pro business” myself, so these are meant to fill a rhetorical prescription.

1. Everyone needs clean air and clean water. Everyone needs equal access to information. “Net Neutrality” keeps the pipes of the internet clean.

2. Net neutrality is the basis for entrepreneurship. America believes in the power of ideas. No one should be able to strangle a good idea while its still in its crib.

3. Innovation can happen in a garage. Or on the internet. Why should inspiration be forced to wait for admission through a corporate toll booth?

4. Any number of people without corporate clout conduct their ideas through the internet: Pro-lifers. Christian peace groups. Book clubs. Knitting circles. Train enthusiasts. Libertarian debaters. Scientists. Teachers and students. What right does AT&T or Disney or Coke or Comcast have to dictate our lifestyles?

5. Did capitalist free markets triumph because information was restricted or because it, too, was free? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Toll Roads are a big hot button issue here in Central Tex – to date I have helped at least a dozen life long Repubs fax our Senators with this analogy alone

but it’s worse than that – we’re all already paying ISP’s – so I told these folks not only are you paying for the road – anti net neutrality will charge you for the lane you use – and oh by the way, there will no doubt be “taxes” and fees on usage (another sore point)

no I’m not offering this up as a workable analogy – just proof that analogies work as none of these folks have ever contacted Congress in their lives

The toll booth analogy seems good to me.

Or: It’s the difference between zooming along an interstate highway in the fast lane or riding behind someone going 25 mph for a couple of hours.

Driving analogies are good, because everyone understands them.

I would like some sort of jingle, slogan whatever to counteract the… well, neutrality of the term “net neutrality”. I know I am not the only one (I hope) that gets confused on if I am for or against it, just because of the name. Especially with the opposition using the same words to mean the opposite thing.

I mean, I am for it (I think… either that, or I’m against it.. whichever one means I’m not for the telcos taking over ;), but as I was telling a friend the other day… perhaps I’m just so accustomed to those crazy California iniatives where, in order to support it, you have to vote no that I’ve just wound up confusing myself.

Anyway… a slogan, or something that one can use would be great.

Google fights back. Probably some good links here under “sponsored sites” about why to oppose this.

A simple approach:

“I’m calling in support of net neutrality. Keeping the Internet free and open to everyone is important for small business and for democracy. Please ask the senator to vote “yes” on the bipartisan Snowe-Dorgan Internet freedom Preservation Act (Senate bill 2917).”

I like Jane’s toll booth analogy. I’ve explained it as a sort of conveyor belt mechanism — like the I Love Lucy episode in the candy factory, where once you start messing with the rhythm of things, everything gets screwed up. And then no one is happy with the candy.

But I think the toll booth is better. No one wants to be in the slow lane waiting for change alla time. Especially if the guy in the toll booth gets to decide individually how much everyone in line has to pay — and can change it any time on his own without anyone providing oversight. (Hello, rubber stamp republican congress?)

Net Neutrality is the way the Internet was back in the 90s when browsers first got big, kids with new ideas and hard work were able to get rich and the Internet turned into the amazing thing it is today.

The bill in Congress wants to make it work like your local cable TV provider, where only big companies decide things and good luck calling customer service.

It ain’t broke. Don’t ‘fix’ it.

“Google fights back. Probably some good links here under “sponsored sites” about why to oppose this.”

Whoops, here’s the link…

http://www.broadcastingcable.c…..y=Breaking News

The Internet Guru at Columbia U already framed it perfectly …

He called the TeleCom proposal to squat in between Internet users and Internet sales pitches and censors … THE TONY SOPRANO BUSINESS MODEL.

Ready made framing: Extortion … Fat, Dumb Gatekeepers Decide Who Gets Thru and Who Don’t … Mafioso Extortionist: Nobody Passes Till You Pay Us Your Monthly Vig (aka: juice; aka: bribe).

Don’t matter what you think of Italian-Americans or the “worth” of HBO’s Crime Family the ever-dysfunctional Sopranos. This Net NON-Neutrality effort by telecom companies is as close to Al Capone Patronage, and Tony Soprano Waste Management Extortion, as it gets.

EVERYBODY gets pissed over Mafioso Extortion.

Nanette @ 16

HANDS OFF THE INTERNET! period

How about international competition? Whatever Congress does will apply only to the US; other countries will presumably continue the free flow of information, and while we are strangling innovation here, they’ll be pulling miles ahead of us everywhere else.

If you have a small business in the state with a website, contact your reps and sens with:

“I am a small business owner (website address), and I am concerned that I will have to pay more to get the same access as larger companies to stay on line. I already pay for internet access and web hosting, why should I have to pay more? If this bill does not pass, you may see many businesses in the state fail or never get started because you’ve given control to who gets access (or is accessable) to big corporations. And that means fewer jobs and fewer tax revenues.”

Google the term “Dark Fiber”.

Its an example of trying to corner the “Frozen concentrated orange juice” market and failing.

Somebody’s gotta pay for that.

It’s not my analogy, but the story someone linked to a couple of threads ago had a good one:

[G]iving preferential treatment to certain Internet traffic (as the telephone and cable companies desire) is not only unfair, it inherently degrades the quality of service provided to others. If a network operator starts to give preference to packets from one source (that perhaps pays the operator for preference), what happens to all of the other, ordinary packets? We know that when an ambulance or fire truck comes down a congested highway, everybody else has to pull over and stop. For emergencies, and for public safety, that is accepted, but what if UPS trucks had the same preference? Giving a preference to the packets of some will degrade the transport for everyone else.

This is from Penn State Professor Jeff Kuhn’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

http://live.psu.edu/story/18325

It’s a good non-technical explanation of the technical difficulties with doing away with net neutrality. I’ll comment on some of my own experience later, and reinforce it with another quote from this paper, but for now, read it. It’s really good.

H/T to whoever it was who found this, BTW.

I think this is also a battle for the “mythical little guy.”

If you are one of the small business owners trying to compete with Wal-Mart, how are you going to have a chance when Wal-Mart pays the ISP that dominates your zip code to send all the traffic their way. How can you hope to survive when Wal-Mart has paid those ISPs to effectively shut you down? What’s next? The phone company can redirect your calls to Wal-Mart?

Great posts so far!

A slightly idealistic, but perhaps useful angle:

Comcast and AT&T may own the “pipes” but the public owns the infrastructure that supports the pipes: the land, electricity, the public crews that keep all that running. We sometimes forget the words of that old song:

“This land is your land, this land is my land…”

We own this country, and internet providers are lucky we let them make a buck in it.

Ooooh, Paul at 20 — good one. Everyone hates sitting around and waiting for the repair guy. Who wants that with their internet — only while they are online. Blergh.

Come up with a brief analogy or explanation that would make anybody understand whats at stake.

On the website end, it’s like the phone company saying they want to charge you more money for your phone line because more people call you than they do your neighbors, and your unpopular neighbors (or even you) are offered a deal where they can pay more money for their line or people may never call them again… but to top it off, on the net-user end, the phone company wants to charge you more money to call your popular friend(s), while making it harder for you to call everyone else.

I like the fast food analogy. Why should I have to drive through MacDonald’s when I want to go to Burger King? Just because the owner of the road I have already PAID TO DRIVE ON (via my ISP monthly bill) has a deal doesn’t change the fact that I want BK not MacD’s.

Fast food works because fast food is supposed to be, you know, fast.

I’m with ya on the little guy thng DB -

THEY want to control YOUR Internet

We need to remind people that we paid for the internet. Our tax dollars developed it, but now the telecoms want to go out and build toll booths on our highways.

Uses the toll road analogy and states the damn facts.

We’ve already seen political operatives getting busted for jamming phone lines. Now they want to make it legal for their biggest donors to shut down web traffic.

Sigh. This is when I wish so many of my friends weren’t virtual. I just ordered wayyyyy too much General Tsu’s chicken and too many crab dumplings from my favorite Chinese place and there’s nobody to share with.

I also managed to swipe three kinds of cake from some coffee and dessert thing that’s going on in the building’s lobby.

Who’s with me? Don’t be shy.

This is also not an analogy, but I think one of the most important points to push is that Net Neutrality is about preserving the status quo, and telecom claims that it’s “massive new government regulation” or “the government controlling the Internet” are, to be blunt, self-serving lies.

Since it is preserving the status quo, we don’t have a situation of deciding which idea is better, we have “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s clear how it would benefit them; it’s their obligation to show it would benefit us, and if they can’t, we don’t change. Plain and simple.

And since they’ve led off with blatant lies like the idea that Google and eBay are using their networks “for free,” I’m guessing they don’t have any good arguments.

What Cujo359 said at 7:15.

Now this is the Roots!I love it!

I think supporters of net neutrality should open another front against the telcos and cable companies: breaking up the duopoly for internet access.

Some cities are already providing free internet access (Philly, etc.)

The more cities that do this, the greater the leverage we will have against internet providers.

I wrote my congressman a few weeks ago on net neutrality and he sent back a wishy-washy response that could lead one to believe he supported net neutrality, but gave him plenty of weasel room. MoveOn.org informed me that he voted against neutrality last week.

I called his office and told them I was outraged. His aide tried to justify the rep’s position by saying that he felt like the net neutrality amendment in the house would have “regulated” the Internet and that was bad for consumers. He believes in “free market forces.”

I guess the idea of legally protecting consumers from abuse by powerful utility companies with unequal bargaining power just doesn’t fit in with this guy’s unquestioning support of corporate America. I guess I need to check and see who’s been contributing to his campaign fund.

Cujo 28 – thanks, that Jeff Kuhns testimony is AWESOME

I like the toll booth/fast lane, slow lane analogy. It’s easy to understand.

One of our Roots Project members wrote up a great diary on Kos about an hour ago on the NN issue. It’s longer than you want, but she explains it really well, the history of the telecoms, equal access to phone lines, etc. It’s really good. And we’re proud of her.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/15/21545/0159

The telco protection racket.

“Nice website yis’ got dere … shame if nobody gots ta see it…. yiz pays us every month on the 15th, nice and regular-like, and that home page will pop right up when da suckers click on it.”

Idea #1:

Target stockholders of companies that make their money off the internet, yet oppose net neutrality.

Point out that they (the stockholders) need to dissuade these companies from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs in return for short term gains (sure killing the goose sounds like it will boost the bottom line this quarter, with golden eggs and freshly cooked goose, but what’s it going to do to subsequent quarters?). In trying to eke out a bit more revenue they risk killing the business.

Play out the scenario for them: Broadband provider X decides that they need to be paid twice every time someone looks something up on Google–once, by their customer, who’s paying for internet service, and then a second time by Google, for no good reason. Problem is, Google isn’t stupid. They realize that there’s no good reason why they should pay to provide a free service to X’s customers; there’s no advantage in it for them. They won’t pay. So X blocks Google, and now X’s customers can’t get to Google. Same story with ebay. And CNN, and Microsoft, and… Now X’s customers are paying for a service that’s all but useless to them.

As a consequence, X doesn’t get the addition revenue they were dreaming of, and in the process they loose the revenue stream they already had.

Mention that, should the companies persist in the delusion of being able to kill the goose and still get eggs, it might be a good idea to dump their stock early, before the market catches on.

–MarkusQ

cbl at 23: Unfortunately, the telecoms are working to frame net neutrality as “government control of the Internet,” in order to confuse the simple “Hands Off the Internet” message.

Cujo359 28 -

That was me. At your service. I am all over this issue. It SUX what they’re trying to do.

My grandson was interviewing me some weeks ago for a class project. One of the questions he asked me was what did I consider to be the best invention of my time (I’m 60) and why. I responded almost instantly that it was the internet. The why was because it freed up people to learn about the whole world, exchange ideas, and connect on a level that was totally without precedent in the history of the human race. I told him that I could see the internet fostering people power that could one day trancend the political voices that speak for us now around the world. With the internet, I told him, you are only limited by your ideas. That having the internet was like living in the worlds biggest library and museum. My final remark was that as long as the internet was free, open and uncontrolled, our current and future freedoms were protected by the best use of freedom of speech this country has ever seen. I want my grandson to have that world!

TRex:

I’ll take some of that General Tso’s chicken…

Water cooler talking point: “In your experience, don’t you think cable companies blow donkey? Didja know Congress is about to hand over control of the Internet to them?”

Redshift 47 -

In my rightwing rag of a local paper (the Vegas R-J) they recently had a ‘net neutrality article in the bidness section totally spun as “all these great nascent internet technology benefits we may not get if we don’t let the Suits have control.”

Not shitting.

Josh Marshall had a good point about the telecoms claims that they need to do this extortion to pay for upgrading the Internet:

This is just one part of the debate over ‘Net Neutrality’. But one argument the telcoms make against Net Neutrality, actually their main argument vis a vis consumers, is that they need these extra fees to build out the next generation of super-slick new mega-internets that will leave today’s internets in the dust. There are various answers to this question. But one point to keep in mind is that with every new big telecom bill the telcos promise all sorts of new stuff. And their record is, in a word, terrible.

So what the telcoms want is a whole new class of customers (all websites, basically) they can extract fees from. And the rationale is because they’ll build all this new stuff. But they’ve said stuff like this many times. And usually they don’t follow through.

A good analogy for Net Neutrality already exists in our prescription drug care, for those of us fortunate enough to have insurance. You go to your doctor and get a prescription for Drug Zowie for whatever ails you. You go to the pharmacy and hand over your prescription. The pharmacist tells you, “Well, your insurance won’t pay for Drug Zowie because they have an exclusive agreement with a company that competes with Zowie’s makers. You can have their competing product, Drug Poop for your $15 copay, or you can pay $80 a pill for Drug Zowie. It’s your choice.” Is Drug Poop the same as Drug Zowie? No. Is it as good as Drug Zowie? Maybe, you don’t know. Is it what you (and your doctor) wanted when you walked into the pharmacy? Heck, no! But you weren’t given a real choice, because your insurance company already brokered a shady deal to prevent you from getting the care you and your doctor want for you.

If you want to be able to get the Internet you enter into your browser, without lag times, without blockage, without detours, if you want your Drug Zowie, support Net Neutrality.

After spending way too much time in airports the last 10 days, this came to mind

The telcos want to be in charge of the TSA%u2014 they and their big money clients get a pass through the security line, no wait, no hassle. Smaller clients get to stand in line but make it through without much fuss. The rest of us regular folk have to take off our shoes, unpack our laptops, take out our video cameras, and then when we get to the other side, the do the wands bit. By that time, we’ve missed our plane.

That’s what would happen without Net Neutrality%u2014we’d all effectively be on the no-fly list.

So I had to do some (real) work today. What’d I miss?

SalHepatica said:
The telco protection racket.

“Nice website yis’ got dere %u2026 shame if nobody gots ta see it%u2026. yiz pays us every month on the 15th, nice and regular-like, and that home page will pop right up when da suckers click on it.”
- – - -
LIKE I SAID AT #22 … OR LIKE THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY INTERNET GURU SAID … “IT’S THE TONY SOPRANO BUSINESS MODEL.”

Who wants to defend restraint of trade … extortion … the Monthly Vig to operate?? Only Mafioso.

Murtha speaking now.

My comment disappeared into the ether. What happened?

It seems like it should be pretty easy.

“Don’t let the same idiots who fucked up cable TV fuck up the internet!”

the best thing i heard was at the net neutrality panel at ykos. tim karg of the free press explained that the telcos want to shape the internet along the cable tv model.

i don’t know about you, but i hate my cable tv company, and i hate the limited options they give me. i can’t get the super station from chicago, i can’t get the golf channel (not that i want it), i can’t get the gay channels (again, don’t want it, but not that there’s anything wrong with that), i can’t get lots of stuff that i know is available thru other cable tv companies.

if we can frame the debate in that way, i think we have a shot.

One point the Kuhn testimony makes has to do with what happens when you try to prioritize bandwidth:

When Internet2 first began to deploy its Abilene network, the engineers started with the assumption that they should find technical ways of prioritizing certain kinds of bits, such as streaming video, or video conferencing, in order to assure that they arrive without delay. For a number of years, Internet2 seriously explored various “quality of service” schemes, including having our engineers convene a Quality of Service Working Group. As it developed, though, all of the research and practical experience supported the conclusion that it was far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment. All of the bits arrive fast enough, even if intermingled.

Today the Internet2 Abilene network does not give preferential treatment to anyone’s bits, but its users routinely experiment with streaming HDTV, hold thousands of high quality two-way video conferences simultaneously, and transfer huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets.

This jibes with experience I’ve had over the years. Prioritizing network traffic is never a good solution. In the end, you run out of communications capacity, which we often refer to as “bandwidth” or “pipe”, and you often just end up creating more offered traffic load than if everything went through promptly. Internet protocols try to guarantee that traffic is delivered in one way or another. If it is not, the software just tries to send the message again. The only way to prevent this is simply to block some forms of traffic altogether.

One of the reasons I know that prioritizing traffic is a bad idea came from experience I had on a DoD project many years ago. We were trying to fit too much data through the communications media that were available (this was back when 16 kilobits was a fast link). One particular form of traffic was accounting for 80 percent of the offered communications load. Some management genius told us to set that traffic at a higher priority so it would get through. We argued, of course, but had to do it anyway. The results were predictably disastrous. Not only did the “priority” traffic not get through, neither did anything else. The problem was too much traffic for the comm pipes available. Nothing was going to fix that but less traffic or more pipe.

I might add that in this project, the underlying communications protocol was one of our own design. It was loosely based on the TCP/IP protocols that are used to run the Internet, but it was different nonetheless, and tailored for our environment. It was marvelously efficient in the environment we used it. Typically, we could push actual data (as opposed to data plus overhead traffic) at a rate nearly 90% of the capacity of the links. With TCP/IP, you’re lucky to get 90% utilization even counting the overhead traffic. We ended up learning the same thing Internet2 did, that there’s little real use for prioritized data traffic.

So, practically speaking, if you’re going to prioritize traffic, you’re really getting rid of traffic. There’s no other reasonable way to do it. That’s why people say you can’t prioritize the traffic meaningfully, and they’re right.

Telco squatter scam!

The telcos want to build firewalls between all websites and then charge everyone to get through the walls!!

Vote yes on net neutrality and NO to the telco squatter scam!!!

The only thing is, I think we also need to counter the anti-net neutrality folks whose argument is “net neutrality will make internet access MORE EXPENSIVE for EVERYONE.” Because that message will probably work for them.

I don’t understand this all that well, but isn’t internet access (due to congestion) going to get more expensive for everyone either way?

We can’t let the cable companies lead people to believe that maintaining net neutrality will make using the internet more expensive for the average Joe – we need to be able to show that the costs will be going up but it won’t cost any more to maintain net neutrality than to destroy it – and then add the toll booth or McDonalds analogy.

OK, will try it again.

After being in too many airports this last week plus, here’s the analogy:

The telcos run TSA. IF you are one of their preferred platinum customers, you get a pass and don’t have to go through security.

If you are a customer, but not on the preferred platinum list, you go through security quickly, don’t have to stop to take off shoes, etc.

If you are one of the regular folks like us, you have to take off your shoes, coats, belts, etc. open your laptop, cameras, all of your electronic gadgets, and then once through the detector, you have to be wanded or searched. By then, you’ve missed the plane

Or, you are on the no fly-list.

So, I’ve been working today. What’d I miss?

more from the net neutrality panel at ykos:

adman green of moveon.org told the story of telis, the at&t of canada. they were in a labor dispute with their employees’ unions. and they blocked internet access to all websites that held positive views about the unions from their customers. is that what we want to be able to happen now?

There are some good cable TV analogies.

What they want is a basic cable/premium cable divide. They say that they’ll provide better service for the high end but somehow not provide worse service for everyone else. But look at basic cable.

Cable companies are required to provide a basic cable package for a regulated profit, but they want you to get extended basic and premium services where they can make serious money. So do they provide a good, solid product for basic cable? No, they do their best to make basic cable something nobody wants.

Without Net Neutrality, most of the Internet will become basic cable.

Coincidentally, I included these scenarios is in an email to Senator Mikulski earlier this evening.

Let’s say my ISP is VeriZomcast and they obtain a financial stake in the internet phone company Vonage, what’s to stop them from degrading my connection from their hubs to any Vonage competitors? There are all kinds of ways VeriZomcast could make it appear that Vonage is better (and the competitor worse) by routing “competitor traffic” through older equipment or even introducing the equivalent of “static” to degrade the performance. The only way customers would learn of this would be by a VeriZomcast whistleblower. Even then they could argue that the routing of the “competitor traffic” through
older equipment was not intentional. How would customers be able to prove otherwise? This is an open invitation for mischief.

It also has implications for the marketplace of ideas. If VeriZomcast decided it didn’t like the website of, say, the Baltimore City Paper, it wouldn’t take a programming genius to figure out how to route that traffic through slower parts of the network or even to introduce the Internet equivalent of dropped calls. I suspect your staffers might know a current Verizon employee or two who can vouch that this is technically possible. Please, PLEASE, don’t just take my word for it. And please, PLEASE, don’t let the ISPs get away with this. Back when TV’s had “rabbit ears” did you watch the channels that had a lot of snow over the ones that came in clearly? ISP will effectively have the power to introduce “snow” on links to sites that they want people to avoid. The result being to drive traffic to sites that are more favorable to their financial/political interests. If VeriZomcast enters into a partnership with Sinclair Broadcasting, which TV website do you think will stream video the fastest?

Cujo -

Also, Wiki has a good, more technical, summary of the salient attributes of the issue (and the wiki stuff will be continually updated — until the Suits gain control).

To amplify Paul at 20:

Remember the first big internet providers? Compuserve, AOL, Genie? How their stuff worked and nobody else’s did? Well, customers wanted real access to the whole internet. But charging both content producers and end-users is the most profitable business model, so the big companies are going to Washington to get Congress to force Americans to buy a product they have already rejected in the marketplace.

Be sure to add that the bill also allows broadband providers to avoid non-profitable areas. This will make the digital divide WORSE, not only for the inner city, but rural America. When AT&T wanted to wire America for telephones, the federal government forced them to wire rural America as the price for being allowed to sell telephone service in profitable areas. What would have happened to rural America if telephone service never reached beyond the wealthy suburbs? Don’t we want all of America included in the digital revolution?

You’re a good Southern Baptist. You go to church every Sunday. The minister is distraught this week. Folks, this is the last week of full Southern Baptist services. You see, we no longer have religion neutrality.

You’ve got to pay full service rates to get full service religion.

We can have the choir, or the communion.
If we’re going to keep Jesus in the nativity, we’ve got to lose Joseph and two wisemen.

Thankfully, we’re able to arrange refreshments.
There’ll be coffee (decaf only) and cake non-frosted sugar free day old donuts.

For those that prefer full service Southern Baptist services, they’ll still be available every Sunday at 2:00am, or at the Catholic church across the street.

odd, comments show up in Firefox but not on Safari. I don’t get it. Oh well. Sorry for the duplicate post.

BobbyG @ 7:31 pm (#52) – That sounds an awful lot like how the music business was going to go to hell if we didn’t let the music industry make all sorts of changes to the copyright law. We did and it went to hell anyway.

Welcome, DB!! Woo hoo!

How about this?

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

FYI -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_neutrality

One analogy–which kind of isn’t an analogy, because its real–is cable TV. When you sign up for your cable TV, your cable (or satellite) provider gives you a menu of the channels they carry on their private network & you can choose from them. It’s not like you can just get a set-top box and choose any content you want (like with the Internet). They may have five hundred channels, but they determine what those are. If I want LinkTV, or Current, and my cable operator doesn’t carry them–I’m out of luck.

Further, not all of that content is priced the same–a basic package might cost $30 for 100 channels, but HBO might be $12 for just five channels. Other content might be pay-per-view.

Internet access providers want to have the same control over their broadband networks. The CEO of the largest cable company, Comcast, said to congress the other day, they don’t want to be regulated as a “dumb pipe”–i.e., just access. They want to control what is on their networks–the content.

This will manifest in both what may be charged to content providers (who want to have access to you), but also charges to the consumer (different content, like HBO, might be priced at a premium).

A good example of the former, and a good parallel to what might play out in Internet content, is the case of Fox News. In 1996 when the channel was launched–Rupert Murdoch actually paid cable & satellite operators on a per subscriber basis to put Fox News on their networks. That was the only way they could acheive the kind of nationwide access they needed to get the channel going.

That is the same dynamic which would be at play without Net Neutrality, and completely changes what the Internet is. Rather than an open network with worldwide access, it becomes a patchwork of cable TV style “walled gardens” where big media companies control what gets in and the price of access.

Cujo359 70 -

I know by now I can count on YOU for great analogies.

Yes.

Click here for the 411.

Here’s a subsidiary but nevertheless related talking point. The telcos are making a big deal out of, “Don’t burden us with unnecessary regulation! Competition and the market will take care of everything!!”

Sure. Just like we’d never need regulations to make sure that these exact same companies gave their cell phone customers access to 911 in emergencies, or number portability . . . oh, wait.

And these aren’t even new regulations they’re whining about. They’re the old rules of the road, that have been in place since the beginnings of the internet. They’re not asking for a free market; they’re asking for a government handout, at the expense of small businesses, consumers, and the innovation that’s one of the last places where America still has a competitive advantage.

everhopeful @ 7:40 pm (#61) – I have an answer, I don’t know how convincing it is.

Television’s free. Do you like that? Do you like the non-stop Fear Factors and American Idols and the endless parade of crappy sitcoms? Because that’s what’s cheap. If you want quality, you have to pay. Oh, and freedom isn’t free, either.

I like the toll booth analogy, too – most people can instantly relate to it. But it’s bigger than just the tollbooth. It’s like the folks with the EZ Pass (for those who haven’t experienced EZ Pass, it’s a transponder you buy from the Transportation Authority and mount on your windshield – you pre-pay on it, but it allows you to bypass the tollbooths because sensors “read” the transponder and automatically debit your EZPass account), have all the exits on their side of the highway, so those who have to use the tollbooth have to detour just to get to the exits.

Do we want Internet Freedom to become Internet “Fee”-dom?

Maintain the Internet as an Entrepreneurial Incubator.

How about a medical analogy?

“You’re here to see the Doctor? Do you have a Platinum ‘Premium MD’ Card? No? OK then, have a seat and we’ll be with you . . . in a while.” Other patients walk in while you’re sitting there, and after flashing the shiny card, they’re waved right in. And you sit and sit and sit . . .

Two tiered service – yeah, that’s just what the doctor ordered . . .

everhopeful at 60:
The only thing is, I think we also need to counter the anti-net neutrality folks whose argument is “net neutrality will make internet access MORE EXPENSIVE for EVERYONE.” Because that message will probably work for them.

Short answer: *snort* — Yeah right, making the Internet more like cable TV will make it less expensive.

It helps that almost all the companies we’re fighting against are phone companies and cable companies. If anyone tries to push that line, ask them to cite a single instance where giving the phone company or the cable company what they wanted resulted in lower prices.

antonetteg 74 -

Y’all are now getting on a roll. Yep.

:)

In the end, it’ll all devolve to Content Control. Now, perhaps to the otherwise indifferent infotainment masses, WFTC? But, if you value open communication and the free flow of all information, their days may well be numbered on the internet.

brownandserve @ 7:42 pm (#65) – I’ll see if I can find some documentation on this, but your VeriZomcast hypothetical isn’t very hypothetical. It’s why you’re using Excel instead of Lotus. Back in the ’80s, Microsoft deliberately changed things in Windows so that features of Lotus wouldn’t work properly. The rest, and Lotus, is history.

Cujo @ 83 speaks the utter truth on that point.

Matt Stoller put it pretty succinctly at YK:

Like dropped calls? Then you’ll love the pay-internet!

wow 60 comments and no one off topic. This is some kind od record!

One approach is to focus on US teleco’s greed and lousy price/performance. US teleco’s provide an inferior, slower internet broadband service – and charge customers more – than those in other countries. The US telecos supposedly need more money to upgrade to handle new video and other high capacity downloads. Yet, teleco’s in other countries already can handle this high capacity stuff without high prices. The US teleco’s, which are already underdelivering, want to extort even more money.

brownandserve – I sent an e-mail to Mikulski (and Sarbanes) last week, and got a response from Mikulski today – don’t have the text of it now because it’s on my work computer, but I would be curious to know whether you get the same response I did.

This is all because the righties can’t lies on their political websites.

There’s a couple of points to illustrate to people who only use the net for emailing and sharing photos and simple things. 1. What regular people can get under a non-neutral net (e.g. the McDonalds vs. In ‘N’ Out burgers) and 2. What regular people can distribute on the net (i.e. their own emails, blogs, and photo galleries).

This needs work (and brevity!) but here goes for explaining #2…

Imagine the post office trying this. You want to send a newsletter to your friends and family about your recent vacation. You buy the paper, envelopes, and stamps, and pay for extra copies at the one hour photo shop. You write up the stories, put funny captions on the back of the pictures, print everything out, stick it in the envelopes, put the stamps on and 3 months later the post office finally delivers your envelopes. No the mail wasn’t sitting in the spare bedroom of the letter carrier. You didn’t pay the extra fee that the post office demands for Extra-Special First Class postage so your mail was dumped into the ‘whenever you get around to it bin’ to be delivered after all the Extra-Special Bulk Class junk mail some advertiser paid to be rushed ahead of plain old 1st Class. That’s what the phone companies want to do, deliver the websites first of big companies willing to pay extra fees over the general rates everyone pays.

hmmm. It needs work

Is everyone already aware of Save the Internet http://savetheinternet.com and It’s Our Net http://www.itsournet.org/

Slogans…
A neutral network is a public square.

looseheadprop says
June 15th, 2006 at 7:54 pm

wow 60 comments and no one off topic. This is some kind od record!
_____

The prospect of hanging in a fortnight serves to wonderfully concentrate the mind.

something like that. don’t have my quote book handy.

How about “Net neutrality, keeping the internet slow but fair!”

Another reason to have net neutrality is that a faster internet means more porn downloads.

It just struck me: This is a quintessential liberal issue.

Philosophically, it’s a battle between the liberal value of making public utilities available to all at low cost to all and the conservative value of exploitation through private ownership with use available to those who can pay.

We could be asking ourselves how many times we have used the internet to find information that is vital to our well being.
Looking for medical information, finding a doctor, weather/road conditions, etc.
Using the internet has become a critical part of how we live. How we interact, how we get important and vital access to the information we need. For example, my health insurance company doesn’t even provide a paper booklet of doctors or services I HAVE to use the internet.
Hope thats helpful

We support the maintenance of the pipes, we support the maintenance of roads, National Parks, the people who keeps us safe (policemen, firemen, etc.) Republicans and Democrats alike enjoy these things as part of society.

Whats the point? Socialism works.

There’s an unclosed a href tag in Cancer Cures’s post @ 77

RevDeb @ 68
Clear history, empty caches, reload the page should do it…

Cancel cable in retaliation and no more banking on line?

LindaR 93 -

Yep. The Grover Norquists of the telcos spooge over the prospects of toll roads EVERYWHERE.

Jason Leopold @ 7:56 pm (#92) – That’s Crooks and Liars downloads, Jason.

Hmm, has Debbie’s Big Butt downloaded yet???

The phone companies are attempting to create a legislated pricing monopoly on internet bandwidth so that they can play Enron style extortion and market manipulation games with the public’s internet connections.

The House Bill will force the public internet into a crisis of manufactured California style conectivity black-outs and ridiculous price gouging. It is poorly thought out legislation being rushed through to take advantage of a weakend and corrupt republican controlled congress.

In the face of the relentless greed of the telecoms to despoil the thriving internet economy and the climate of corruption created by the Bush administration in Washington the Dorgan-Snowe bill is the only defense the public has against this threat.

If someone is moderating comments, would you please check? I have one waiting…?

ccmask @ 7:59 pm (#96) – I don’t think that would be a problem over a modem. Most banks try to make their web sites light on graphics and other nonsense.

# 93 Stuck in moderation!!

Even better is the Clinton era phrase.

“The internet should not be a toll road.”

I think when you start talking about the greed of the telecom companies, you are just asking to be shifted into a conversation/argument about why companies making money should be considered a bad thing.

Rather than focus on why it’s bad for telecoms to make (way too much) money, I think the focus should be on why it’s good to have an arena in which small businesses and individuals are able to create economic opportunities.

I think most people would agree that as we get closer to having one or two banks, one or two telcom companies, etc., people are getting less service, not more, they are getting fewer choices, not more, and they have less ability to compete in the marketplace.

More everhopeful at 60:
I don’t understand this all that well, but isn’t internet access (due to congestion) going to get more expensive for everyone either way?

Nope. More users and cool new things like online video require more network capacity, but technological advances and economies of scale keep making it cheaper to provide it. Think of it this was — a broadband Internet connection are hundreds of times faster than dialup, but it doesn’t cost hundreds of times as much.

new from the comcast family of quality; Comcastic-search!!

“Now that almost 50% of our search requests are completed within their 4 hour windows, scheduled days in the future, we’re going to eliminate degrade access to google and yahoo because we’re all about customer service.”

Anne @ 86

I’ll be sure to let you know. I think the Sinclair Broadcasting point might be the one thing that might hit a nerve with Mikulski after the sh*t they tried to pull last election.

It’s not just dropped calls, it’s the peak / offpeak issue also. You can download your music / show from 3:00am to 5:37am on every Tuesday after a full moon.

It’s the wireless phone calling plan also.

dogeatdogi @ 100
I was gonna be pithy, but… Howdy!

The people vs the powerful. Class warfare.

But wait, after YearlyKos, don’t we have a direct line to Warner, he should be speaking out. Or is he beholden to Verizon? What about Boxer, Dean, and Harry Reid. They all know how important this is to us, and to the people. Anyone of them could block this damned thing if they were determined to do so. That’s where pressure should be applied.

Pith away!!!! Howdy!! Go read Glen Greenwald

We’ve been focused on the consumer side of the equation. How about something for the business owner side?

Suppose you OWN a small diner in a midsized town with good parking right off Main street. One day, along comes MegaFastFood Inc, and they promise the city that they’ll build a great new MegaFoodMall in that old empty warehouse district, promising loads of new jobs, tons of sales tax revenues, cheaper food for all, and more, if only the city will simply block off all the exits along main street into businesses like yours that don’t generate sales tax income above a certain (high) threshold.

Sure, folks could still get to your diner for your great food if they went around the block a couple of times, but is this really what you’re looking for?

You move to another country that has an Oligharchy, (big business runs the government for it’s own benefit).

You order telephone service. When they come to hook you up they give you a bill for the service that allows others to speak you, but then they give you another extra bill that pays for the service that allows others to hear you when you reply to them.

cujo: oh, well….I guess the way bloggers have been treating our fine leaders is not going to help us too much. Is this about shutting us down legally before the election and then dropping the issue later on? WTF do these people need so much money for!! Do they bathe in it or what?

Anne @ 8:03 pm (#104) – The telephone line/digital divide analogy is an apt one. We’re trying to decide whether it benefits our society more if we make sure that everyone can benefit from the Internet or if it can be delivered more efficiently to those who can afford to pay and live where the service can be delivered efficiently.

Hi and a wave to VG! I’m getting ready to cash it in for the night, but wanted to say hi – my brain is crispy around the edges from all that is going on in the world, and work – geez, some days I feel like I’m doing field work for a degree in counseling (sometimes estate and trust work puts one in the company of exceedingly dysfunctional families, and I happen to have more than my share at the moment – it’s exhausting).

Dogeatdogi @ 109-

(2) Retroactive effect — The amendments made by paragraph (1) shall be construed to have the same effective date as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Back to the future…
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

I know the issue of net neutrality is important, but with all the lawyers who post on this blog, why aren’t we talking about today’s appalling Supreme Court decision that just overturned a 100 year old precedent requiring police to knock on doors if they want the evidence they find when they come inside to be used against the defendant in court? I’m going to bed – too depressed.

The ability of every individual to gain access to a mass audience on an equal basis is not a bug or a feature of the Internet. It is the lifeblood of the net. It is the net. To imagine what would happen to the web if the ability of a site to gain access to its readers were determined by how much the site could pay, picture what would happen to the human race if a person’s ability to gain access to oxygen were limited by how much he or she could afford to pay. Then figure out where you would fit into that world.

Phoebe 77:

Sure. Just like we’d never need regulations to make sure that these exact same companies gave their cell phone customers access to 911 in emergencies, or number portability … oh, wait.

Exactly.

Another question is this allows the cable / phone companies to DELAY buildout of the bandwidth for next generation media.

If Japan and South Korea have higher bandwidth, then the University students, researchers, developers, garange entrepreneurs in South Korea and Japan will develop the next generation technonogy unimpeded by the need to pay for premium connection quality.

This is designing competetive disadvantage.

How many e-mails do you send every day? What if you had to pay for stamps on every e-mail you sent? Could happen if the telecom companies become the internet post office (and then if you want them to get there fast, you’ll have to pay for internet Fed Ex)…

(don’t know if that’s an apt analogy, but it might get people’s attention)

patience @102 – that’s a good one. Everybody, blue state and red state, can relate to it.

regulate: to adjust or control so that it works correctly. (Oxford American dictionary)

How about this one?

Are you for taxes on the Internet? If you’re a Republican, I’m thinking you’re not. Well guess what? When Amazon has to start paying the telcoms money, who do you think is going to pay? Amazon? No, they’ll raise prices. You’re going to be paying a tax for everything you buy on the Internet, but the money is going to the telcoms.

ccmask @ 8:08 pm (#114) – Adding capacity is hard. It requires pulling and testing new lines, and often also requires building or at least digging ditches and placing conduit. Wireless isn’t any easier, and it’s a good deal less durable. That’s an expense that will take a long time to recover, and yet if the companies want to increase revenue by selling more bandwidth, that’s often what they have to do to get it.

The alternative of simply charging more for the bandwidth already available is an easier one, but they won’t be able to charge us much more. I guess they figure they can hit up all these “rich” content providers like Amazon and Google for money.

I freely admit to not understanding all the financial issues, but those seem clear. Every publicly held company is expected to increase profits. When they don’t the stock price goes down. How to get more money without doing much real work?

This seems like a perfect project for the Roots project! Let me explain:

Josh Marshall has been keeping tally of Senators for and against Net Neutrality. Look at this list and see if either or both of your senators are undecided or undeclared. Then you know what to do — start a viral email/snailmail/phone barrage! When I can get a terse, well thought out message on Net Neutrality (I’m blushing here at my own ignorance), then I am going to send an email and letter to DiFi (blergh — my other senator, who happens to be sitting on the fence).

If everyone here and in the Roots project sends a message to their senator and commits to twisting the arms of at least three of their friends/family/etc. to do the same (including contacting three of their contacts), then we can produce quite an outpouring of opinion.

What I would love to get is that Net Neutrality messaging (and perhaps a pointer to definitive Web resources). (I’ll just be popping by Wikipedia & Google next…)

Presently the internet is based on the “telephone” model — call any-one at any-time — it’s up to you — It’s Net Neutral.

The proposed change? — model the internet after cable television — with multiple “tiers” — that means different prices for those that can’t afford it.

i agree with anne at #103–there are so many examples of Internet content and innovation that came about because of the low barriers to entry–both past & present. often, these are examples of not just content, but also new forms.
An obvious example is Yahoo-two college students started a search engine–no one even knew what that was at the time. It became a pivotal way to access the Internet–which many others then built upon (google, lycos, excite..)
Other examples include Craig’s List, or eBay, or blogs, or Amazon.com and too many others to list.

What if these people had to worry about gaining access to a multitude of private networks to lauch their ideas, instead of just putting it up on the Net? Would these innovations even have developed at all? The Internet’s open access leveled the playing field for new types of content to emerge.

Before the Internet took off–we had private online service networks. They were called AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy & MSN. Remember those? AOL’s great selection of content from the “most popular” content providers–i.e., Time Warner, Disney, etc. Those online service providers stopped being private networks because they could not compete with the level of collective force and innovation from the open Internet.

I, for one, do not want to return to those days.

Twin Planets 125,

Just remember, these messages aren’t just for the Senators. We need to get on the radio, local papers… everywhere and get everybody to understand what’s at stake.

That means explaining to right-wingers that Dan Rather would still be at the anchor desk if the blogs were shut down.

peterr at 80

“How about a medical analogy?

You’re here to see the Doctor? Do you have a Platinum ‘Premium MD’ Card? No? OK then, have a seat and we’ll be with you . . . in a while.” Other patients walk in while you’re sitting there, and after flashing the shiny card, they’re waved right in. And you sit and sit and sit . . .

Two tiered service – yeah, that’s just what the doctor ordered . . .”

_________________________________

This two tiered service is what already exists.

The “shiny card” group contains those of us with excellent health insurance.

If you have an HMO, high deductable, no insurance, or poor insurance – welcome to the waiting room. Your health care will be slower – if you get any at all.

[Part of that Morning in America thing.]

Anyway, thanks for illuminating our lethally disparate access to health care.

Thanks Pach :)

newtonusr

At least we have Greenwald…

Dover Bitch @ 8:16 pm (#124) – What I don’t understand is why anyone thinks that Amazon, or Google, or any other content provider is getting a free ride. They’re not. They pay for the bandwidth at their sites, just like you and I pay for ours. The cost of long haul data transfer should be covered in that cost, because that’s part of what their ISPs have to pay to stay on the Net.

Or do I not understand something?

As an extension of the Toll Booth example – imagine in addition to the toll booths, you have wealthy organizations paying the tolls for certain cars because they are the right make and color so that cars that don’t look right and make a less desireable sound run out of gas waiting in line for the booth.

This is the first thing that came to my mind when considering net neutrality. It’s not just a way for telcos to rocket their stock, it could be a way for big money interests independent of the telcos, political ones in particular, to selectively control what gets through to shape large scale market perception.

.

Remember when you could get your own money from an ATM without paying a fee? When ATMs got so popular and were networked, we started paying fees. Some banks started to charge for using tellers instead of ATMs. They stopped giving you your checks in your bank statement, and started charging fees if you wanted to get a copy of a check.

Despite putting our money in the bank, and despite the bank being able to use that money, we began to pay more and more just to have access to, or get into our hands, what was already ours.

This will be the internet if the telecoms get their hands on it.

As you enter the grocery store, there are baskets and super-carts. The super-carts are for the Hummer owners. All others have to use baskets and make as many trips through the store and register as it takes.

Worse yet, the supercarts are ruthless. They cut you off, bump you, and get to go through any of the 15 fast lines in the checkout. You’re stuck with your basket in the 2 snail lines.

Cujo359,

The only thing your missing is that it’s even more unfair to Google than you suggest. Google is spending a fortune to develop services and supercomputers — they’ve made an investment in the Internet. Now the telcoms want to change the rules to profit off them.

Re: The toll booth analogy

From my perspective, the UPS truck analogy works better. If the network traffic is truly prioritized because there’s not enough traffic, you don’t get on the highway. You’ll be constantly pulling over for a UPS, Fedex, or whatever vehicle is on the street at the moment.

With the toll booth, you pay and then you get on. There’s no ambiguity there. With the UPS analogy, you are still suffering under the illusion that you might actually get somewhere, when, in fact, you won’t.

No time to read the entire comments, but SalH @44, DaVinci @55 have the right idea, the “protection racket” analogy is a great one because it plays up the illegitimacy — criminality, even — of what the telecomms are trying to do here. They are bullying greedheads.

OfT: Teachers for Ned Lamont:

http://www.newhavenindependent…..back_l.php

For sports fans:

Enjoying those football games on your XM radio? Oh that’s right, you get baseball. Bet you’re excited for the Internet to be just like that!

Cujo359 – the recording industry is a good analogy. The record companies fought hard for Apple to have two categories of music on iTunes, the regular .99 songs and more expensive “premium” songs by more popular artists that would get more prominent placement and promotion. (You know, just like you pay more for the better movies when you go to the movie theater, right? Not!)

They had all sorts of arguments for this, but the real reason was to continue the model of record stores — they wanted to be able to threaten artists with the bargain bin so they could squeeze them on their contracts.

The fight against net neutrality is the same damn thing.

I’m not smart enough to find an analogy, but if anybody else is from Colorado, both our Republican and Republicrat Senators are still on the fence. Wayne Dullard I fully expect to vote with Big Bizness, and Salazar is probably hoping for some BigTel money, but it can’t hurt to call and urge them both to do the right thing.

Don’t know if it means anything, but John Salazar voted with the good guys in the House. Somtimes I wonder if we got the good brother in the wrong chamber….

Huge disadvantage to any small organization that uses the internet for any kind of communication. This would be all organizations such as schools, day-care centers, local shops, artists, musicians, restaurants, churches and non-profits. This is yet another way that big businesses will be favored over small. Currently big business gets the best rate on lets see health insurance for employees, printing marketing materials, computers, airline tickets you name it. They get a better price for purchasing in bulk they pay less mark up on everything.

Do you think the internet will be any different? Once the telcos can dictate who gets access to what eventually the constomers who bring in the most business will get a better price overall for each unit they purchase. In the end we will all pay more but the volume purchaser will pay less. So not only will Wal-Mart have the ability to make sure their site is the only on-line shopping that loads super fast but in the long run they will pay less per customer than any schools, day-care centers, local shops, artists, musicians, restaurants, churches and non-profits not to mention average internet subsciber household.

Heh…I keep trying to post, but am getting server errors. Hmmmm

FREE Information, not Fee Information

Redshift @ 8:27 pm (#141) – The other thing about the recording industry is that they insist that things have to be done the way they have been doing it, as if there was no other route to success. iTunes is a good example of this. If you go to an online music site like Magnatune you are presented with a bunch of artists that you can sample. Heck, you can download the entire albums if you want, and listen to them, and buy the ones you want. They’ve been in business for several years, and seem to be going strong. I doubt their artists are any worse off than most who sign with traditional record companies.

MsAnnaNOLA,

Exactly, Net Neutrality = Walmart.com

I think the public airwaves vs pay-per-view cable tv is the best analogy.

The government, with our money, created the internet. Now, the telcos want privatize a public resource, so they can charge the richest companies for the best access.

This means the companies best able to pay the telco extortion get the low channels; everyone else gets the channels in the 100’s or 200’s, and really bad connections if they get connected at all.

I always assumed Republicans were for social Darwinism. The internet is a raw unfettered market of ideas–the very thing the righties preach as the very foundation of conservative principles. In this medium, I wholeheartily agree with them. It is the idea, exposed to the public standing exposed nakedly to withstand withering criticism to emerge victorious or to wilt and die as a result of fallacies. The endgame of this open discourse is to create the best society possible for all. A free and open exchange of ideas to be debated and fleshed out. How can this be a bad thing?

And now a proposal comes forth to tax the very ideas of democracy, a tax on the Town Hall of the 21st century–the internet. Those who enjoy the status quo and wish to squelch the voice of Democracy embrace this tax enthusiastically, while those who feel we can greatly improve our country, and by example rekindle the torch of Lady Liberty as a beacon of hope around the world, are very much opposed to the stifling of freedom of speech.

This is how I see this issue.

OFG

Small business owners get killed by the health insurance costs charged by their insurers, who tell them “You’re just not big enough to get the really good rates.”

Let’s try that model again with the Internet. Everyone loves their medical insurance company.

Everyone with insurance, that is.

Bring in the SNL “Compulsive Liar” to do the voices on the commericals: “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Funny, we did an action plan on this today. I’m so glad this is posted because we really are having a hard time finding a description that resonates with everyone. The following is a little bit from what I posted this morning – not an analogy or description of net neutrality, but this seemed to resonate with a few folks I spoke with today.

You see…they didn’t really care if Google/Yahoo/CNN had to pay more to deliver the goods to us. They hadn’t taken it a step further to realize that this cost would be passed along to the consumer in some way.

If Google, Yahoo, CNN, Fox, etc have to pay more to be top tier for different providers, at some point that is going to impact us. At some point they will make access to their data subscription only or will put more information behind firewalls like the New York Times does and limit the information that is available for free.

I do not begrudge the service providers their profits. I do get a bit pissy when Time Warner Cable reaches into my pocket each month mulitiple times….and this is exactly what would wind up happening. In other words, I pay them my monthly access fee and then I pay them through Google or Yahoo or CNN for any fees these companies impose on services I currently receive for free. You see these companies have to turn around and give part of my money to Time Warner Cable for their top tier status. TWC might not raise my rates, but I will ultimately pay more to receive the same access that I have now.

I’m still not doing a good job of saying what I mean…but at least I understand what I mean. That’s better than I was doing this time yesterday.

Cozumel @ 8:36 pm (#148) – Actually, Net Neutrality means cujo359sshopofhorrors.com gets the same level of connectivity to people not on its own ISP’s net as Walmart.com does.

Or, it would if it existed ;)

B. Muse @ 8:40 pm (#151) – Just like how television is free. I pay for the maintenance of the television networks every time I make a purchase. I’m just not presented with a bill that says “television: $30.00″ each month.

ck at 153

you make such a good point about where the Internet came from–
public dollars! it makes me so mad.

These companies got to take advantage of all the collective innovation of the Internet by offering access to it–a hugely important new revenue stream for them.

AND

there is a trend in the industry to convert their networks to being all IP, including their TV services (IPTV). This saves telcos/cable ops a bunch of money by being able to offer “triple play” services (voice/data/video) all on the same underlying IP network.

OFG –

The Republicans are all for Social Darwinism, so long as the fatted calves are delivered into the jaws of their most generous campaign donors, and the starving masses all croak out of sight of the GOP gated mansions.

A reader at BlueNC posted a great analogy. She is Working for Change at DKos.

She described it like a four lane highway where there are 3 HOV lanes and one regular traffic lane. She said my piddly squat blog would be in the regular traffic lane crawling along behind all the other bottom tier folk while all the big guys who can afford top tier status would get the nice fast HOV lanes.

She didn’t really call my blog piddly squat. :) (even if it is)

From David Isenberg, http://www.isen.com/blog/:

… the auto industry is competitive but it depends on public-good roads, the airline industry is competitive but it depends on public-good airports, electrical appliances are competitive but they depend on publicly regulated electricity,

(ken picks up)

…and tv sets are competitive but depend on publicly regulated airwaves and cables.

and the Web is competitive but depends on publicly-regulated network transport, which the telcos provide and sell at a profitable price to all. That’s the way it has worked, but now that the FCC has let the telcos reestablish their monopolies, they want to change the game.

What the telcos want is the equivalent of our Turnpike Authority cutting an exclusive deal with GM, to give GM cars a dedicated lane.

WOW, OFG, that was powerful!

“You’re all invited to make suggestions in this message thread. Come up with a brief analogy or explanation that would make anybody understand what’s at stake.”

Imagine a world in which cities are allowed to charge different fees to different people for the privilege of driving on the streets. If you can afford to pay the “premium” fee, you get a device that allows you to turn every stoplight green when you come to it and make everyone at every other corner of the intersection wait at a red light.

What’s more, if you DON’T pay the premium fee, the city has the right to install spikes in the entrance to your driveway, so that every time you try to leave your home you puncture your tires and have to drive on four flats — i.e. VERY slowly.

Would most Ameicans consider that fair?

Of course, it doesn’t matter what most Americans think, because the telcos basically own the U.S. Congress.

A even better analogy might be the way that hundreds of petty barons were able to install toll stations on the Rhine River during the Middle Ages (that’s really what all those picturesque castles are) thus crippling trade and retarding Germany’s economic development for centuries.

But I think that might be a little too obscure for most voters.

antonetteg @ 8:44 pm (#156) – To be fair, the Internet was built partly with public dollars. The telephone system it’s built on top of was built, to a great extent, with private money. It’s that telephone network, which is really a very high speed data network, is what we’re really talking about here.

The Internet: you paid for it with taxes, now Corporations are trying to take it away.

Don’t let them do that. Net nuetrality is important.

This is one of the greatest thefts of the century.

Cujo359 @ 157

The costs always get passed down to the consumer. We just don’t always see it for what it is.

I will add to that:

Productivity:

Many of the productivity gains in the last couple of decades have been due to the internet. We will lose a good portion of that productivity if the telecom’s get to decide which business’ productivity goes up and which goes down. Keep our economy growning; don’t break the internet!

And on Education:

It has gotten to the point where school children need the internet to compete with their peers. The child without access is highly disadvantaged in the education arena. It is imperative that all educational content is easily and freely available to our nation’s children. All of our nations children regardless of: race, creed, national origin or family income. By having providers and consumers pay “extra” our nations less well off children will be left behind even more.

And:

This misguided law takes the public treasure that is the internet and auctions it off to the lowest bidder.

This law is nothing short of corporate welfare. Don’t let the telecoms and cable companies have our internet. It belongs to all Americans.

Under the telcom’s definition of Net Neutrality you will pay more for the same or worse service. Monopolies never cause prices to go down.

Cujo359,

“Cozumel @ 8:36 pm (#148) – Actually, Net Neutrality means cujo359sshopofhorrors.com gets the same level of connectivity to people not on its own ISP’s net as Walmart.com does.”

LOL That’s what I’m thinking. Sort of ; )

As I write this I’m sitting in a motel in Hillsboro, TX. I’m hardly ever home. For this reason, for years, I had no home phone. I took my phone with me wherever I went. I discovered these blogs (a lifeline to me) several months ago and decided to get a landline for internet access for my brief visits at home. Costs me about $60 a month for the company of my fellow firepups. Somehow that is not enough money for the suits that run the store.

Cujo359@157
okay–i’ll give you that, partially.
The big backbones were private money (although the big super computer hubs were schools weren’t they?)
but its not the big backbone at issue here. it’s the “last mile” at issue

B. Muse @ 8:45 pm (#158) If, in that analogy, the traffic in the normal lanes isn’t moving at all, then it’s a good analogy. That’s the problem. See my 7:40 pm #59 for an explanation of sorts.

There are grassroots high-speed-wireless groups proliferating who could make the telco’s irrelevant in all of this.

http://www.seattlewireless.net/ is a grass-roots wireless networking community working to provide free-high-speed wireless covering rural or metropolitan areas.

Thats a grass-roots movement that could put the telco’s out of the internet business.

Cujo359 @ 170

Ouch…then I’m moving even slower than I thought and ultimately paying more for the privilege. Yippee.

Does anyone know if public universities and government servers are still considered the internet backbone? If the phone companies can double dip us once for getting our access and second to the content providers (sounds like a cell phone to cell phone call) then what happens when the cash strapped Universities start charging for packet handling on their servers?

The wireless grass-roots needs to connect with the blog net-roots.

Oilfieldguy, I think you’re on to something here . . .

Remember the Stamp act? It’s first version in 1689 put a tax on legal papers, then was extended to newspapers and other publications, with the money raised to provide for the British military presence in the colonies. These taxes later begat the Townsend Acts, which taxed imports into the colonies.

Is this what we’re seeing again? Let’s put a fee for premium service on this new medium, all in the name of “protecting” the medium.

Who’s up for a Boston Fee Party? Where’s Patrick Henry XI? “Give me Neutrality or Give me death – the death of the internet, that is.”

Or maybe “Liberty, Equality, Neutrality!”

There’s no Net Neutrality in Communist Red China.

Or how about…

There’s no Net Neutrality in religious terrorist-breeding Islamic police states.

Therefore, any Republicans or Democrats who are against Net Neutrality are really closet Communists or Islamic terrorists, control-freak conservatives and are really anti-democracy and anti-liberty…to say nothing of being greedy, power-hungry, corporate monopolists.

But at least most of them are Christian. Yeah, right. In their wildest dreams.

Billmon!

First they came for the printing press,
then they took over the air waves,
and tapped the phone,
now they want the Internets.

One part of the story that no one has mentioned — dark fiber.

The reason the telco stocks went into the dumpster, was because they built a huge fiber optic network, anticipating exponential growth in internet traffic.

Well, guess what? The traffic never materialized, and only 10% of the fiber optic telco network is being utilized. Hence, 90% of the network is “dark fiber.” (The 90-10 ratio is from a few years back, so it might be better now.)

So the bottom line is — the telcos made a really bad bet, and built way more infrastructure than will be absorbed in the foreseeable future. To compensate for their bad judgment, they’ve chosen the tried and true method of increasing their profits — bribing Members of Congress with campaign donations, in exchange for privatizing a public resource.

The quickest way to get rich in America? Buy a Republican Politician!!!

ck @ #162

History shows raw unfettered capitalism results in the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of the few leaving a powerless and frightened everybody else. (Google Saipan and Delay). This is the fatal flaw I find with Republican philosophy.

Suzanne @ # 165

Thank you

Cujo359 – thanks for clearing things up for me. I’m going to try to quote some of this tomorrow in an update to our action plan.

The Oracle: yep my thoughts exactly

Productivity losses due to this horrendous bill in America will only serve to encourage the offshoring of American jobs to places like India and China where the Internet is neutral and productivity gains due to the internet is conferred equally on all businesses large and small.

I need a link for the post about Sealed v. Sealed — anybody have it?

peterr -

“Boston Fee Party”

Perfect.

OT: was EPU’d on previoous thread, disturbing but a comparison I thought worth sharing.

I was helping my niece write her senior high school history final paper today, and was struck by this commentary on post WWI germany.

As I was reading her essay I came across this chilling sentence and got the willies.

Stretched to the breaking point, militarily, and financially, confidence in its gov’t and place in the world shattered, other world powers turning in coalition against it.

The In-and-Out Burger analogy is the closest. But net non-neutrality is more like the interstate by-passing a town. Business have to move out in sight of the passing cars; those that don’t die out. Meanwhile those of us on the road are herded like lemmings from one metropolis to another, missing the true flavor of the countryside and its people.

Angelinos know the 91 Fwy out to Riverside, a bogged down mess with diamond-lanes zapping by only to get caught in the mess a few miles down the road. No one escapes, no one wins.

antonetteg @ 8:50 pm (#168) Most of those telecoms are also the long haul providers, and that’s part of the problem. Some smaller ISPs have bandwidth they’ve reserved, but that only gets you from one part of their individual networks to another. Any long distance traffic has to pass through the telcos. Bypassing these long haul links is a major expense.

I’ll just add that one way around this, to some extent, is the development of community networks. The trouble, in addition to the need to connect these networks together somehow, is that the telecoms have been busy trying to make them illegal, or at least make sure that local governments can’t organize them. It’s a rare community that manages to do it these days.

billmon at 8:47 pm – Now that would make a great net neutrality PSA.

I’d work the word “censorship” in there somewhere. The gatekeepers could target sites for political reasons.

while we are strangling innovation here, they’ll be pulling miles ahead of us everywhere else

change “they’ll be” to “they’re”… sigh.

the telcos, the cable companies, and their partners in crime have always hated the Internet. they didn’t pay enough attention to it to strangle it at birth, and they’ve regretted that ever since. they’ve managed to keep it stuck in its crib, more or less, and now this is their chance to smother it.

and the argument that writing Net Neutrality into law is “unnecessary regulation” cracks me up. that’s like saying that we don’t NEED to make robbing banks illegal because everybody promises that they’d never do such a thing, scout’s honor!

Er, ah, about the toll road analogies…in practice people generally just sigh and pay the toll, grumbling a bit but assuming that the money is going for road repairs. And we are never surprised when there is a traffic jam on a toll road, for we are too used to there being traffic jams on every road. So I think as an analogy it could prove counter-productive. If I were a monster telephone company I would pounce on it and say, “Exactly – we need these tolls to keep providing you the best possible service!” What sells best is short and sweet. To repeat:

FREE INFORMATION, NOT FEE INFORMATION

It’ll be like having to pay to use the public library

I was thinking about this today and it occurred to me that the telecom proposal to make the internet pay-to-play runs counter to the purpose of the 1994 Telecommunications Act. Does Congress realize this or care? While I think that act was bad for consumers, the intent was to open up the telecommunications infrastructure to new services and technology. The current proposal does just the opposite, by giving telecoms the power to shut out any service or technology they don’t like. Companies like Vonage and Google will be pushed right off the net as the telecommunication/media conglomerates decide to offer their own services.

By the way, I don’t think most people realize the telecoms are hoarding “dark fiber” for their own purpose. Dark fiber is unused plumbing for the internet that already has been put in place, but they’ve not turned it on because they want to keep bandwidth a somewhat scarce commodity to keep prices at a target range.

Is that really Billmon!

Peterr @ #179

See what I mean about free exchange of ideas? I put forth a basis, merely as I see this paricular issue, and you bring forth historical perspective. Others will add some will detract. A secondary elaboration occurs followed by a condensation to the distilled bottom line message.

Dover Bitch (way yonder kewl moniker) A great post about net neutrality uses this medium to discuss how we discuss the ability to discuss free of restraints. My, how ironic.

OFG –

Your story about buying a land line is another reason the telcos are desperate to steal the internets from the public.

The telcos business model is dying. Long distance profits were hollowed out by low cost carriers, and will soon be killed by VOIP. But what is really killing them is loss of land line client base. As more and more people depend exclusively on cell phones, where do the telcos find growth opportunities? Well, if they are like Qwest, they don’t — they go BK, and sell off divisions of the company to raise enough cash to survive until the next crunch.

The cable modem vs DSL broadband is really a death struggle between the telcos and the cable companies, and the telcos have drawn the short straw.

What better way to fatten their bottom line, than bribing some politicians into letting them charge pay-to-play fees for internet access?

Hell, it’s the same business model the GOP K-Street project has used for years — why would any politicians object?

Peterr – “Liberty, Equality, Neutrality!”

I really like that! The Boston Fee Party too.

Hmm I just had another thought. So if they are going to try to charge people who provide content, couldn’t they just move the “content providing infrastructure” off shore. Assuming they have the funds. Can anyone say Wal-Mart again.

Again if the big players in the matrix move their content providing operations off shore to say India where people speak English and many offshored jobs have already gone, it will only make the price “normal” businesses pay that much higher.

So in the end the people with the deep pockets balk and don’t pay moving off shore, we lose American jobs to competition overseas and we all have an internet that is a shadow of its former self yet we pay a lot more.

OK it is official if the Rethugs don’t kill this there is no hope for small business in America. We are official a facist kingdom in the true meaning of the word. Government by and for giant corporations. The American dream is over unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Say it isn’t so Firedogs!

Sorry for melodrama! This issue really gets my goat because we shouldn’t even have to be having this conversation. This is one of the dumbest things the Congress has ever contemplated.

Riffing off what Billmon said, one used to have to pay fire departments for protection, back when they were private companies. You’d display your medallion on your house. If your house was on fire and you had the wrong medallion, fire companies would just let your house burn. You hoped the company you did business with would show up in time.

I believe I heard Thom Hartmann talk about this as being a major factor in the Great Chicago Fire.

I suggest an interstate highway analogy.

The government conceived and started the system, it serves all, and is regulated (truck weight, safety rules, etc.)

Now imagine Ford and Toyota owning major sections. At first they charge a toll for GM and Honda cars, eventually only Fords and Toyotas are allowed to use it.

This makes perfect “capitalist” sense for corporations wanting to increase profit (just like they are legally required to do), but certainly DOES NOT serve the public interest.

Further, the oil companies might lobby for a MAXIMUN mpg, to discourage green cars, or fundimentalists pressure for requiring WWJD (…Drive) stickers. And so on…

Sophist @ 8:52 pm (#173) – I’ve just alluded to the trouble that these networks will have getting beyond a certain point. Long haul links are expensive, and they’re mostly owned or operated by the telcos. We could wire up all the communities between Everett and Olympia out here, but to get to any other major cities takes long haul links, and you don’t want to do those with a Pringles can and a Wifi card if you don’t want to spend all your free time maintaining them.

My guess is that if this community networks thing goes too far, the telcos will just buy the legislation they need to shut it down. They’ve done it already in Texas, not that that was a big departure from the ordinary down there. If they can buy their way out of Net Neutrality they can find some regulation or law that will kill off community networks.

Cujo359 @ 189

yeah–the interconnectedness of everything is what makes it so complicated and that itself underscores the need for net neutrality!
i would love to see a community network movement.
still–it is the IP structure (developed by the taxpayers)–that gives the networks their value, not just the networks themselves.

re: ck at 183

The company I work for sends IT contractors all over the world. One of our guys has been all over both hemispheres and has recently commented that North America is way behind a number of second and third world countries in the proliferation of high-speed wireless.

Care to guess why…

All those telco’s trying to hold back the tide, and recoup money spent on copper and fiber infrastructure.

A couple of years ago a teenager form the netherlands developed a high speed device using low frequency AM band with speeds 5 to 10 times normal highspeed at ranges of up 50kms radius. His research and prototypes were bought up by an american company a florida based venture cap. Haven’t heard much of it since however.

I think the product was GMax or some such, have an article on it archived somewhere, I’ll have to dig it up.

Whether or not the GMax product ever hits the shelves, the genie is out of the bottle on high speed wireless. North American telco’s just don’t want the consumers to figure that out.

Should we just pull out really sharp knives and ask political supporters why the hate free speech?
Why do you hate democracy?
Why do you hate internet voters?
Why do you hate…?
This is the shit we get hit with. Anybody wanna play ball?

Amazing discussion on this topic tonight. You are all to be commended.

Cujo at 204

I agree that there are long haul link issues. The wireless community thing isn’t a perfect ‘internet’ replacement, but its a step in the right direction.

And yes, legislation gets bought all the time, wireless could be circumvented by regulation, and has been already.

But the ‘genie out of the bottle’ hope is that enough do-it-yourself’ers have begun wireless communities, changing frequencies, and carrier mediums after the fact will be a run around for regulators once the idea that different frequency/carriers can be used.

It’s noncompetitive. It will stifle innovation. It will charge you more and provide you less. Heck, it’s like the Bush Administration but on the internet. What’s not to like?

Oilfieldguy -

Bro’, whu’sup?

Hello BobbyG!

Enjoyed the pics!

How about the Great Internet Theft?

“Starting in the late 1960’s your tax dollars were invested in research that would lead to the Internet Age. Now the Big Telecoms want to appropriate the profits from the Internet — your profits. Don’t let corporate lobbyists steal one of your best investments ever!”

Sophist #204,

As a concrete example of your point, cellular phone service in North America is a shadow of what Europe and most of Asia has. Why? Because we have a couple of large telecomms determine what service we get and they lock phones to their networks and create intentional fragmentation. Elsewhere in the world the cellular network is standardized and the competition comes from quality of service and the features and costs of phones.

It is a blaring example of the failure of the libertarian view of capitalism. Without government regulating the free part of free enterprise, monopolistic breakdowns are inevitable. Once a few companies take control the customers lose.

The other thing we need to hammer — net neutrality is essential for American prosperity.

Part of the reason for our productivity gains is that every company can take advantage of the internet super highway. As soon as tolls are imposed, American prosperity goes out the window.

It’s not just your recreational internet access that is threatened — it’s your job.

Forget “wireless community.” Pipe dream. You still gotta get into the trunk somehwere. They wanna control access (and eventually) content. The Bush FCC will fuck with wireless should it become a major conduit.

For example… If libraries, like the internet, were forced into a “pay to play” scenario, your next visit could look like this:

- “Gone With the Wind” would lose out to the revenue-generating “Windows XP for Dummies”

- Shakespeare is replaced by a fee-paying “Shaq Talks Back”

- “The Adventures of Robin Hood” gets shelved in favor of a cash-kicker “Girls from Da Hood 2″

- “Christ the Lord” might be nudged out buy the megabucks paying “Lord of the Rings” and “Traci Lords: Underneath it All”

The beauty of neutrality is that everyone plays on the same field. Without it, your choices, your world, becomes one big advertisement.

Again. I am SO impressed with y’all tonight. But, BUT, as I been yammering for a while now, this thing is at a critical stage. The Suits wanna push this through quick. There is no time to waste fighting it on all fronts.

Puppethead: re dark fiber

If that is really true that “should” blow this thing wide open. So they really are lying when they say oh we will build this new thing “if”. They already built it and now they want make some heafty bucks off of it.

I got a very bad taste in my mouth after Katrina. At my office we had a local reseller as our “local and long distance telephone provider”. After Katrina the lines were down, the switch was damaged and BellSouth was saying six months or so to get service up in our area. At least that is what all the neighbors were saying. So I said to myself I had better call and get in line. I called Bellsouth because they “own” the infrastructure. I said I am a new customer I want to switch to Bellsouth. They said we will have some one out there in about a week or so. What they did was run a specific fiber optic cable to our building for our service. Why? BECAUSE WE WERE NEW CUSTOMERS!!! So if we had been paying them a buttload of money for their crappy service for years we would have been completely out of luck. Because we were new customers we got service in weeks, not months.

Do we want to turn our internet over to people who value their longtime customers that much? I don’t think so.

Give them hell gang! I think we have much to work with. Peace Firedogs!

Oilfieldguy -

Thanks, having and posting all those YKos pics was way cool. Great to meet you.

ck – and part of the reason for the “dark fiber” situation is frauds like WorldCom and Global Crossing. They built huge amounts of fiber capacity and fraudulently claimed they were making huge profits on it, so the non-fraudulent telecoms wanted to cash in, too. Then the frauds collapsed, and the non-frauds had all this capacity that they now realized they’d wasted money on, and they’ve been trying to figure out how to make it pay ever since.

Kind like how the malpractice insurance companies invested in the stock market and used the profits to keep premiums low, and when the tech bubble collapsed, they got their Republican allies to scream that the premium hikes were the fault of the (Democratic) trial lawyers. GOP politicians get an excuse to regulate away Dem contributors, insurance companies get to duck responsibility for their business failures, everybody wins!

They’ve already screwed up public access wireless. When Philadelphia announced it’s plan to create a city-wide wireless network, what did the telcos do? When to the politicians with bags of cash, crying about socialism.

Face it — we live in a country devoted to Corporate Welfare, with the Welfare Queen Telcos and Cable Companies greasing the politicians, to make sure they can keep sitting on their fat asses.

BobbyG #214,

No, not really. Usenet started out as a store-and-forward system on the uucp network, where systems would call each other in a phone tree to transmit information. Sure, it’d take a day or two for information to go cross-country, but it worked.

I imagine a similar kind of community network with wifi could be done, but it will not be as fast as the internet with the big interconnects. Even so, we’ll be able to keep free speech going, if just curtailed somewhat. If net neutrality is taken from us by corporations we’ll just have to see a new tech hippie movement to become self-sufficient.

Sophist @ 9:15 pm (#207) All wireless traffic is carried over one of two bands that are basically unregulated as long as your transmitted signal (in your wifi card) is no more powerful than some level I forget at the moment, but it’s in the milliwatts. All that has to happen is that the FCC requires certifications that are too expensive for ordinary folks to afford for anyone running an outdoor network being in compliance with those minimum values. That will be the end of the problem for the telecoms. If you’re in violation of the FCC regs, they’ll find you sooner or later.

This is the thing – legislators need to understand that we view the Internet as a national resource, like the telephone network before it. They also need to understand that we’ll work to defeat them if they oppose us. If they don’t, the telecoms will always be able to buy their way around this community network problem.

I got a card today from my energy company, WE Energies in Wisconsin. It asked me if I wanted to pay more for my eletricty to come from renewable sources (wind, solar, landfill gas, etc.). I want to say, OK, I’ll pay 35 cents more each day (about $10 more a month) so they can provide my electriciity from sources that don’t rely on fossil fuels. But they don’t tell me that using renewable energy sources is a way to deliver energy to me in a way that will be more profitable to WE Energies stockholders in the long run. What do I really get from the deal? If I’m going to pay more, then I should get some dividend from the long term benefit that WE Energies stockholders will get. It’s like I’m paying their future dividend today. I know this is always how it’s done, but the dishonesty in this “offer” from my energy company is blatant. We don’t say it much, but the alternative (socialized energy) would be more honest.

Sophist at 184, those have been my thoughts too, and my worries.
We have a president who wants to use this country to prop up his self-esteem, to settle old scores, and to make his presidency mean something.
And other countries recoil from us.

puppethead 219 -

I hope so, but I am skeptical, given the scale.

Bush would love for the highways of the internets to become more few. With those remaining all in his crony pockets.

Okay, haven’t read the entire thread but riffing off the fast food idea.

Imagine you want to go out for a special dinner, like an anniversary.
You decide you want to go to this special little place in your town. It’s not fancy but the food is divine. You know where it is but it’s a kind of place only locals know. Blocking the road in front of it are a bunch of goons hired by the big chain fast food joint just down the street.

They have baseball bats and a generally threatening demeanor. In order to get to the restaurant you want to go to, you would have to drive through the goons. You know it would take half an hour to get through at best and even then you are not sure if you will make it.

You see cops standing at the corner. You go over to them and ask them to clear away the goons and let you pass freely. After all they are standing on the public street.

The cops tells you that it is entirely legal and the only way you will be able to go through the goons is if you or the restaurant will pay the goons to make way for you. Otherwise, there is plenty of food to be had at the fast food joint.

You’re hungry and it’s a big night. What should you do?

a)Pay up. What’s the point of fighting?

b)Go to the fast food joint. By now you just want to eat.

c)Go home and eat pb and j. Guess you won’t be eating out any time soon. Probably better for you anyway.

sophist at 203: And the telcos have the gall to claim that somehow how far behind other countries we are in broadband access is an argument for getting rid of net neutrality! (It’s in the idiotic WaPo editorial.) Despite the fact that other countries have done this without abolishing net neutrality, for some reason our telcos are incapable of doing that…

In Colorado, Xcel Energy has been selling wind powered electricity at a slight premium for some time — but with the run up in natural gas prices, wind power was cheaper. What is Xcel doing? Going to the PUC, to get them to raise the price on wind powered electricity!!!

GOP American Capitalism — screwing consumers coming and going.

Hugh at 9:15 pm – “Heck, it’s like the Bush Administration but on the internet.”

“This content brought to you by Halliburton/DSL.”

hmmm . . . a longish post seems to have gone into the black hole somewhere upthread.

oilfield guy 9:12

Yes. Not a pretty tactic, but a required one (assuming this is targeted against the telco’s political supporters.)

I don’t understand anything about the structure of the net, providers, routing, etc. but the general concept of the telecoms being able to tier the services seemed wrong. I am learning lots from this thread – will have to come back to it tomorrow to see if I can absorb more. For someone no-tech like me, the easiest arguments to understand were the Detour at Burger King that keeps routing you to McDs, and the What if you had to pull over for Fed X and UPS and . . .

Thanks for all the good information and the patience in explanation.

You know who would protect the Internet? Minnesota Representative Elaine Harder, that’s who!

http://www.politicsnationwide……sp?ID=3437

Draft Rep. Harder for a Presidential run in 2008. Maybe she could pick House Majority Leader John Boehner as a running mate. America could use a Harder/Boehner ticket (well, at least my wife would be happy with that…)

Harder/Boehner ‘08!!!!!

OT:
Margot at 224

Yeah the comparison between the woes of post WWI germany, and the looming danger the U.S. is facing is startling.
Moreso considering all the WWIII rhetoric the Neocons were so happily tossing about.

bonkers @ 9:33 pm (#231) – Yes, but it’s pronounced “bayner”, which kinda ruins the joke.

uhhh . . . I’m afraid Big Pharma would go all out to defeat the Harder/Boehner ticket — they won’t let amateurs horn in on their ED profits.

New thread. Apparently, there’s something about Harry…

I’ll keep checking back here.

new thread

http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..out-harry/

“The cable modem vs DSL broadband is really a death struggle between the telcos and the cable companies, and the telcos have drawn the short straw.”

Just by coindidence, I was talking to a money manager about this today, and his take was that the telcos are basically betting the ranch on on-demand video. They know they can’t be competitive with cable if cable can offer TV AND high-speed internet AND a limited version of video on demand, while all they can offer is landline voice and crappy DSL service. But if they can run fiber optic into homes, they can offer REAL high speed internet and leapfrog what cable can now offer in way of VOD — and find a profitable use for all that “dark fiber.”

The problem is that it is effing expensive to run fiber all the way down the last mile — as Verizon is now learning. Plus it will take a lot of cap spending on the backbone (routers, switches and all kinds of stuff I don’t understand) to make real VOD (whatever show you want when you want it) work.

Bottom line: The not-so-Baby Bells are going to have to shell out a ton of money over the next decade just to stay in the race. That’s great for the companies that make routers, switches, et. al. but it doesn’t give anyone a reason to invest in the telcos. Just the opposite.

The solution, not suprisingly, is to get customers to pick up the tab for all that cap spending in advance, through the telcos’ little pay-to-play scam. Or, as we used to say back when the utilities were still building monster nuke plants, “investors are hard to find, but there’s a ratepayer born every minute.”

ck @ 9:39 pm (#236) I stand corrected.

Cujo359 (#235):

Joke? What joke? ;)

billmon @ 9:41 pm (#239) – It’s like I’ve been saying, no one wants to build for the long term anymore.

Cujo359 @ #235

When two vowels go walkin’ the first one does the talkin’. I’m jest sayin’.

Let’s keep to the KISS principle. How about: All packets are created equal

(sigh) EPU’d even before I could get a thought out..

I think restricting net access is like having a stroke. The network is still there, things just aren’t moving as fast or along the same pathways, you have to relearn how to use your left (!) leg, etc.

The tollbooths are like bloodclots..

The telcoms are like vampires, not quite sure how to fit that in.

Up, up, and away!

Seems like the analogy given in #8 (you want to get an In N Out burger, but 19 out of 20 lanes of traffic only go to McDonald’s) would make a great visual. Take an aerial shot of a several-block-wide area, and then photoshop it so some streets are absurdly wide (but lined with bland establishments) while all the interesting choices are strung along a one lane road choked with traffic.

In Colorado, Qwest has partnered up with DirectTV to offer hard line phone service, DSL, and sattilite TV for $81 per month.

Anything to cut the evil cable companies out of the picture — until Qwest can deliver TV through it’s own pipe.

Oilfieldguy @ 9:46 pm (#243) – I think that’s true until your kids can’t go to school anymore.

ck @ 9:53 pm (#247) – They’ve been doing that out here, too. Unfortunately, I really like my DSL provider, and after having to deal with the lying incompetents of Comcast, I’m thinking that’s as important as saving a few bucks.

The thing that sticks with me regarding bandwidth, and bandwidth mediums, is the story of modem speed. As the years went by with modems and the evolving computer marketplace this trend developed.

2400 is the fastest we’ll ever get out of copper…

4800 is the fastest…

9600 is the fastest…

etc, etc

What changed between modem speeds and high-speed was really better compression algorithms. Its the same stupid copper wire.

Okay so the compression/encryption programming is built into the modem hardware, fine and dandy. The point is it could have been water, air or plant fiber, all that was needed was a better set of ‘paper cups’ at each end, the string didn’t matter too much. The same is true today, some enterprising enthusiast is gonna code a little ’string’ to connect his computers via house plants or some such, and then where is the whole copper/fiber question.

Okay, I’m being facetious, but the hope that I have is that the medium, air, copper, fiber doesn’t matter, its all how the signal is transmitted and recieved. I kind of hold out the hope that data transmission across very low frequency ambient EM is possible, across bands that are so ubiquitous they can’t be regulated.

Wishful thinking I know, but then so was thinking that modem speeds would exceed 2400 baud.

Qwest is my DSL, wireless, and hard line service — I’ve stuck with them, mainly (entirely) because of the one number wireless service. If the cell phone is turned on, it rings instead of the hard line.

The DSL is only $20 bucks a month, but the total bill is $120 or so. Comcast is $13, and I only have them because the broadcast reception is so crappy — but I do like the cable channels, so maybe I’m hooked.

ck @ 10:14 pm (@250) – If I added my phone and DSL to the cost of one of the satellite TV services, that would be in the $120 range, I suppose. I figure there’d be some change in that $81 a month deal after six months or so, anyway, and I really do like the DSL provider. I can talk to help desk people who are actually helpful, and if they don’t know what the problem is will hand me off to someone else who might.

It’s worse when you don’t use Windows or a Mac. Most broadband providers now just don’t want to deal with you. That was the second last straw with Comcast (the last being boinked for a month of service they never provided).

As far as I’m concerned, Comcast is another argument against telecom consolidation. Imagine if it was all Comcast?

It’s hot and your neighbor has plenty of water to irrigate his lawn and drink lemonade, because he pays extra for deluxe water service.

You pay taxes — and your taxes paid to set up the system of dikes and pipes that brings water to your community from the mountainside.

But your family goes thirsty, because the water goes first to your ‘deluxe water’ neighbor, and by the time the water reaches your house, there’s only a trickle left.

OR…

You drive a Honda, because it’s a nice, cheap car.

You paid taxes that helped build the highways from your town to San Francisco.

One Sunday, you discover that you’re in a huge traffic jam, with cars sailing by on your right. Those cars are American-made, Chryslers and Buicks and Cadillacs and Jeeps, and General Motors has “adopted” your highway, fixing the potholes and controlling traffic. GM has decided to let their American-made cars have priority on the highway.

So you sit in the traffic jam on one side of the road, and the American-made cars zip past, at the pleasure of the GM managers of the highway you helped pay for.

The Telcos want to turn the Internet into an HMO.

Sure, you can go to the website of your choice – but if it’s outside the preferred network, then you pay more.

Dang, guests tonight and now Luke is not sleeping, ansty over the school show tomorrow (he’s a rat). Gotta dish and dash.

I haven’t had a chance to read all the posts, but I’d like to point out what Warner’s campaign commercial at YKos said, he brought bandwidth into far corners of Virginia and brought opportunity to more people.

Most rural communities feel cheated when it comes to tax money, public funds and opportunity. The big cities and suburbs get all the best stuff, there’s nothing left for the little guys in small towns, in middle america or anywhere. Liken Net neutrality to the main highway when it’s first build, next to a tiny town on the road to somewhere else. WHere the exit is built determines which businesses live and die.

This is inhcoherent. I’ll go to sleep now.

Can we get James Earl Jones to read this?

The Internet is a teenager, created in the 1990s from taxpayer-funded research which began in the 1960s. In just a few short years, the Internet has changed the way people communicate, learn, bank, shop, and work. Its impact is global: it has helped spread information across borders against the wishes of repressive governments.

The reason for this remarkable impact on America and the world is this: The Internet is a resource that no one owns. It is open to one and all. It continues to spur innovations that affect business, education, recreation, entertainment, the arts and politics.

Today, huge telephone and cable companies want to seize control of the Internet and regulate your access to it, so they can make even greater profits. Where will those increased profits come from? The same place they always do: the profits ultimately come from you.

These companies think they can succeed, because they sent cash and lobbyists to the halls of Congress to buy the votes of your senators and representatives.

But those senators and representatives don’t work for the phone company or the cable company. They work for you.

Call, fax, write or e-mail your senators and representative to let them know you expect them to vote to keep the Internet open, and want them to vote for the Snowe-Dorgan Net Neutrality bill.

The freedom of the Internet is changing the world, from America to China and all places in between. Don’t let this freedom be taken away by short-sighted companies that want to take more money from your pocket to pad the bulging wallets of their executives.

God bless you, Dover Bitch.

First of all, Marek, where are you now that we need you?

That said, the metaphor is that “net neutrality” is the 21st century equivalent of “freedom of the press.”

FWIW, I don’t believe that in the modern era there is any way a government can really stop information from getting out. Sure, they can diminish the bandwidth. But there is no way that can stop it. And all we are talking about is bandwidth!! And the bandwidth of all the email and blogs in the world ain’t shit compared to video-on-demand. Keep it in perspective. Bandwidths are doubling every year.

To serve you better!

Hey, we’re Americans, we all know what that means. And this is a classic To Serve You Better scam, where the players make changes that are entirely to their benefit, impose them on their customer base, and announce the changes in Orwellian customer-service language.

“To serve you better! Now, you can get lightning-fast downloads of four of the very same top-rated tv shows that our special partners offer you over free television! Speeds up to ten times anything you’ve seen before! Direct to your iPod or your PC, it’s your choice!

“Too bad about the hundreds of thousands of sites you were actually interested in, with independent content not provided by our Special Partners. Those are gonna be kind of slow to load, or you might not be able to get to them at all. You can’t have those choices. We eliminated them To Serve You Better!”

The internet is public property, developed with defense funds under DARPA. There is no such thing as a free market, it is only a question of who controls that market. If we turn over ownership of the internet to the private Telcos, then they will control that market. Then, instead of having to respond to demand, they will have control over the supply. They will be free to start exclusive deals ( ever see both pepsi and coke in the same restaurant? ). They will be able to censor ( like China does already ). They will be able to punish customers they don’t like ( like deadbeats who don’t pay enough attention to advertisements ).

Does this sound like the kind of market you want?

“Don’t privatize our internet.”

[personal note- I learned of this story decades ago when I worked for a telco doing non-switch related mission critical private line stuff]

“No longer will my competitor steal all my business just because his wife is a BELL operator.” – Almon Strowger

Therein lies a story that resonates with this struggle to maintain Net Neutrality

Mr. Strowger was an undertaker in Topeka Kansas that was having business problems because all the calls were connectd by live operators, one of whom was the wife of one of his competitors.

So he decided to come up with a way to ensure that subscribers could choose who was called, rather than the operators.

The result was the Strowger switch, the heart of the public telephone network until the electronic age.

Remember dial telephones ?

“…This is not a game.” – Lorie Van Auken (2001.09.11 widow)

We need to get people to look at the Internet as a public utility like water.

The analogy: Net Neutrality means everyone pays the same price for the same filtered water that flows at the same rate. What the Telcos want is the ability to charge people selective prices for water. They’ll charge you more for a steady flow as opposed to a trickle. They’ll charge you extra if you want your water free of disease. If you want to take your water and make lemonade and then sell it, pay up.

Letter to the editor –

Alarm about efforts to assure net neutrality are indeed appropriate, if one is in favour of the “neuter” in a neutrality that would
effectively disembowel content providers who, having already paid for access did not pay additionally for a prioritized space on the information highway.

The corporate solution to avoid any delay in infrastructure investment would be like the oil companies demanding mileage charges for fuel delivery so they can better serve customers – who are able to pay for better service.

If broadband providers, already amply compensated for providing internet access,
wish to double dip the present system for additional revenues, may I suggest adding ice cream to their business model? I would gladly pay extra for butterscotch ripple in a sugarcone.

We have no chance. Every night I pledge to unhook cable TV because 90% of it is garbage. Since I have cable internet I don’t do it. But! This might save me $100 a month if telecoms get their way – they often forget that they offer a service that we don’t have to have. I’m beginning to wonder if just using TV for running DVDs and tapes wouldn’t be a better use of it anyway. I would miss this communication and information but I can sacrifice for our new found democratic ways.

In honor of the rubber stamp project, a six inch length of PVC pipe.

“Open Pipes” is the slogan

I asked my Congress woman ( A Schwartz a Dem) why
she voted yes to the Cope bill w/o net neutrality.
She said she thought it would encourage competition. It’s that same thinking that got us into this mess with Medicare and drug companies…

The competition argument is total bullshit. Look how cable compnaies now charge for premiums like HBO.You would think the more people in an area that subscribe to HBo would lower the fees. WRONG.Its actually the opposite.
Its all market driven and they are out to gouge us…

when “free market forces” are used as a justification for opposing net neutrality, just mention that PRICE GOUGING is a free market force. do we want companies to be allowed to price gouge us based upon our internet usage or whether we are a big company or an individual?

Talk about special interest. There’s not a single user of the internet, from the largest corporation (other than the telecoms and cable companies) to the individual surfer, who benefits from slowing or closing off access to the flow of unimpeaded information available.

CK Post 213 had the term I was looking for “Information Superhighway” contrast that with “Information Road-Block”, “Information Traffic Jam”, “Information Detour”, “Information Traffic Control”, … , etc

Free information not fee information (wonderer #149): I like that one a lot.
Like paying to use the public library (everhopeful #194: Good thought. How would it affect research tools for students or anyone who relies on the internet searches for their job or business? I’d like to hear some thoughts on that.
Thanks to billmon #239. Good info. Of course we know the average consumer would pay for this takeover somehow but I was glad to have some clarification on the cable/teleco motivations.
I now have some good info to tell people about this issue…it’s pitiful how many don’t know a thing about the internet battle (or anything else for that matter.) One person I talked to quickly chimed in ticked off about porno type spam email & porn on the internet in general which is a separate topic. It’s frustrating when conservative people who know I am progressive in my views tune me out on stuff like this that affect all of us. Good job, rovians, of conning americans that we don’t have anything in common.
Minnesotans: Sens Coleman & Dayton are still on the fence. Call them.

Real life example:

I, like plenty others, use Vonage for my phone service. Without neutrality, my ISP could simply make my phone service pure hell in order to encourage me to switch to their more expensive version of the same thing.

lurker alert!

Ever been northbound on a highway and see a fast food restaurant go by in the southbound direction and find that

you can’t get there from here…

To the Democrats, it should be quite simple and to the point: No net neutrality? No more blogs feeding them support and money. Corporations will strangle the blogs that don’t operate on a profit basis, just an informational basis. Corporations will censor blogs by bandwidth throttling (or completely cutting them off) because they don’t like what the blogs say about them or their wholly-owned politicians.

Get rid of Net Neutrality, you get rid of the best chance for a resurgence of the Dems.

Tailer the message to be about business and profit crap if you are stuck talking to a GOPer. That’s the only thing they understand or value.

You pay for broadband access at rates far higher than they should be so you can get fast access to the sites you rely on and enjoy. No net neutrality and you will find yourself paying fat fees for connections that act like dialup. Didn’t you all, as soon as you could, drop dialup in favor of broadband?

An analogy may be the early railroad trust days charging “whatever the traffic will bear”, cutting deals with their trust partners to drive their competitors out of business. More competition? Not bloody likely.

How about Gate keeper analogy. Remember how Google how helps sensor sites in China. First they get control of the main highways, then they begin to filter out. Your not just slow any more, you disappear to most people. You no longer exist. Hey…where did FireDogLake go… oh well.

I think the post office/physical mail analogy is actually very good, but the previous posts in this thread have, IMHO, missed the most important point. The situation without net neutrality wouldn’t just be like having to pay extra for express mail or FedEx — the truly sinister thing is that it would probably allow the “post office” (the telecoms) to degrade or deny service (or charge much more) based not only on ability to pay (which is, of course, bad enough) but also on ARBITRARY CRITERIA of their own choosing. So it’d be like having the post office delay or charge more for the delivery of mail with political messages that the current administration doesn’t like, or to delay or charge more for the delivery of mail with information about competitors, etc. And it would probably allow them to do this, in practice, in ways of their own design and without public accountability. I don’t know what laws might prevent FedEx, for example, from doing this with physical deliveries (does anyone know?)… but network communication can be examined/filtered so much more easily than physical mail that I think that strong network neutrality laws are essential to keep the telecoms from controlling political and commercial discourse.

Another reason that the post office analogy is good is that the net is, in actual practice, replacing many of the functions of the post office. So even though much (not all!) of the net is privately owned, people should be able to see that it is part of our public infrastructure and that it must remain available for all political and commercial communications.

How about:

“It’s all about Telecom profits. The internet needs a ‘pay-to-play’ law about as much as the oil companies need their government subsidies.”

RE the “free market” component of the anti net neutrality crowd: Market regulation is always assumed to be done by the government, and that is what those arguing against certain laws or rules want you to believe. In reality, markets are often regulated by the participants. In the case of anti net neutrality, the free and open bizarre that is a neutral internet, if you will, will instead be regulated by a small number of corporations. How to compress that into a sound bite? Because in this case, an internet regulated to be neutral, will be free (as in speech not beer as they say) for all to use.

Let’s see here. I pay the phone company for using their lines. I pay my ISP for their time, and they pay the phone companies for using their lines. The content providers like Google and eBay pay the phone compaines for using their lines (and the ISPs for advertising them).

Is there a pattern here? The phone companies (and cable companies, too) are on the receiving end of payments. Why the fsck do they need more money for the services they’re providing? Why should they be allowed to control what the customers and providers do with the time and space the customers and providers are paying for?

Google and Yahoo bought lines from telcos like Verizon at the going rate, invented some cool services, and made a bundle of money off of it.

Now, a Verizon executive accuses Google and Yahoo of getting a “free lunch”. Simply because Google and Yahoo figured out how to make so much money off the internet, Verizon wants to bill them more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01624.html

My analogy would be this: This would be like the phone company or the post office charging Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Donald Trump or George Soros extra whenever they pick up the phone or mail a letter. These guys are making billions off the infrastructure the phone company and the post office put in place, so why should they get a “free lunch”?

Basically, the phone company no longer wants to charge you based on the minutes you talk or the number of extensions you have. THEY WANT A CUT OF THE MONEY YOU MAKE WHILE YOU’RE ON THE PHONE.

This would be like the Post Office or UPS charging you not based on the weight of the package and the distance they’re carrying it, BUT BASED ON THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU STAND TO MAKE OFF THEM DELIVERING IT.

Basically, the phone company no longer wants to charge you based on how long you talk on the phone. They want to charge you based on how brilliant/profitable your words turn out to be.

This is how the mafia operates – it’s not the way American businesses are supposed to operate.

It’s PAYOLA, plain and simple. These are our “airwaves,” not industry’s.

How about “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Anybody read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”? This situation reminds me exactly how big business tries to control and make money where ever possible. It starts with something innocuous, like the need to upgrade technology, but could eventually end up at the other extreme of absolute control over internet content.

I don’t even need a made up analogy, you can just look at the selection you have at Lowe’s or Home Depot now that they put the small hardware shops out of business.

In almost every department, they are letting their supplier pay them for exclusive shelf space. So if you want a nice bathroom medicine cabinet, they only have crappy cheap ones and – even worse – somewhat less crappy very expensive ones, all from the same offshore vendor.

Luckily for me, a friend still works in a janitorial supply store that still sells an american made enameled metal cabinet that is far more attractive and better built than the crappy vinyl particle-board junk at lowes and Home Depot, and even costs half as much as their cheapest one.

Or you can go to the local convenience store to get a stunningly awful choice of candy bars, since Hershey’s and Mars now take up all of the space.

The internet will turn into a horrible mess of commercially oriented choices and anything else won’t be able to pay the telecom’s access fees.

What about our first amendment rights? Especially “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” This thread is a great example of how people assemble these days, and we have a fundamental right to do this. We cannot let any corporation impede that right by allowing them to charge differential access fees or attempt in any way to control the location of that gathering. This is entirely consistent with the intent of the first amendment.

The challenge with this is to convince the senate to act now to prevent the taking of this right later. This is confusing, even in some of the posts above – we’re not asking them to vote against a telco-sponsored bill now, but to vote for something the telcos are against. We want congress to act now to prevent telcos or anyone else from obtaining control over and an ability to charge for our right to peaceably assemble online.

We already have the analogy: You like the cable-satellite TV system we have, with a handful of companies deciding what we are allowed to watch and how much we must pay for it, whether we like it or not? Well, the same system is coming to the Internet.

Analogy:

This post outgrew the comments section, so I posted it at my occasional blog.

http://drlimerick.blogspot.com…..inate.html

It’s one thing to converse amongst ourselves about the whys and wherefores of how utterly wrong this is, but remember, what is needed are simple, effective slogans and statements that will convince people who aren’t us. Neighbors and other citizens who can barely use a computer, who don’t know what ARPANET was or that they already paid for the creation of the Internet.

Possibly something like this:

They want to put tollbooths on a highway we already pay for every month.

Here’s a reason for some people to care about net neutrality.

http://www.progressiveu.org/12…..neutrality

There are some assumptions that need to be stated, I think.

Assumption #1:
There are two Internets in play. The first Internet, Internet2, is an Internet that touts itself as the Internet that officially represents all future creativity and innovation. It is comprised of universities, government agencies, and international corporate members. The other Internet, “commodity Internet”, is just another distribution medium. It is the one that represents economic growth and prosperity. Look up “commodity Internet” and notice who uses the term, “commodity Internet”.

Assumption #2:
It is believed that all Internets must use the present infrastructure for communications. Today, a global communications infrastructure could be created in weeks, if every house installed a cheap tin can antenna ($3 to $7) on their roof.

Once those two assumptions are accepted, the discussion of net neutrality can begin, as it is at that point, that everyone at the table has the same information needed to make final policy decisions about the issue.

The Senate is set to vote Tues, 20 June.

There are several critical factors that I did not see mentioned on this thread:

1. The LEGAL designation of “phone” was altered once information became digitized. This happened in a 2004 Circuit Court decision referenced as “Brand X.” Suddenly, The Technology Formerly Knowns as Phone, which had been regulated Common Carrier phone line was now unregulated, up-for-grabs ‘information services.’

2. The REGULATORY designation of “phone” was altered by the FCC in 2005, meaning that there will be no oversight because The Technology Formerly Knowns as Phone is Now “Information Services.” Information services are not regulated, and have no oversight. Enter predatory pricing, from stage right…

3. Telecoms have been waiting for the 2006 Telecommunications Bill to be sure that not a whiff of NN language gets in. This is their moment.

4. The “Intenet” has several layers in it. Few on this thread understand this, and it appears that few in Congress comprehend this basic fact. This is technically very significant. Legislation for one layer (the wires) threatens to bollux up the most important layer (the software).

5. The ‘hardware’ layer of the Internet is controlled by telecoms. That’s what Cujo and Billmon and others reference. Those who build this layer have no interest in being regulated.

6. The “software” layer of the Internet is the layer that need the Net Neutrality provisions – this is the layer that writes the web browser apps, the email apps, the calendar apps, the eComm apps… this layer NEEDS Net Neutrality. ck addresses this topic in #197 at 9:05. I hope she elucidates before next Tuesday!! (And where is Rayne?!)

6. The telecoms were ready to lobby on the 2006 Telecomm Act; the software industry was late to this gig. (Too busy working, methinks…) So the telecoms, for reasons involving the dynamics listed by Bilmon at 239 (9:41 pm) are going after what they want — no regulation. IF this occurs, the software layer will be seriously screwed. The result would be diminished innovation and software development. The telecoms are killing the ‘nutrient rich’ software layer by killing NN. The software layer has made the Internet such a phenonomenal economic driver by developing websites, streaming audio and video, and other apps.

————
It’s not a Dem/Repub issue at all. That is a dangerous misconception. This is a TECHNICAL issue, with economic and social implications.

It is quite interesting that Harry Reid and Russ Feingold are paying attention and seem to “get it.” Too few others do; Cantwell and Murray (who represent Redmond, WA) are both playing coy. Send Reid and Feingold some love. Send love to Repub Senators who ‘get it’ … if I knew who they were, I’d post the names. Still trying to ferret out why some ‘get it’ while others don’t; may have a lot to do with staffing decisions and staff backgrounds. Few techies on the Hill, I suspect 8-p

A pipe without any interesting apps running through it is useless. The telecoms don’t appear to grasp the significance of the way in which their actions threaten the ability of the Internet to innovate, create, drive products and services.

NN 101 is at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/15/21545/0159

If you read that link, I think you’ll be able to advocate on behalf of NN with a reasonable amount of understanding. Late post, on the chance that anyone comes back for a re-read.

I expected Microsoft and Google to make more progress on this issue… b/c they didn’t, I’m turning into a veritable ‘expert’ on NN this week. Sheesh. It should never have gotten this out of hand.

I like the slightly old-fashioned post office analogy myself. All mail-delivery services charge by weight, not by content. An ounce is an ounce, and a bit is a bit. The advantage of the metaphor is it exposes how dangerous it is to let the knowledge-carriers have the power to vet (or differentially tax/charge) knowledge-content. The toll-booth analogy doesn’t capture this carrier/content distinction, since it is not unreasonable to establish toll-booths to charge travellers for use of the road (or net lines), and even charge trucks more than cars if they use more band-width. But the corporate oligarchs can never be permitted to charge blue passengers more than red ones, if you get my drift!

i’m confused — why are people here repeating the “hands off the internet” slogan? why is there an ad on this page (”what is the future of the internet”) pointing people to that site?

the hands off the internet web site is PAID FOR BY THE TELCOS. AT&T and BellSouth are sponsoring it. it is NOT an advocate of network neutrality.

their hackneyed and completely bogus argument is that insisting on net neutrality is a form of compelled speech, and violates the telecommunications industry’s first amendment rights!

get it straight!

I don’t think that the slogan should focus on the money side of the issue, though it’s an important practical dimension. The deeper issue is one of content control, which is why I advocated the post office analogy above (and I agree with KLA’s post too). People understand that the post office shouldn’t be able to censor or charge differently based on content or who you are or who you work for, etc. But I didn’t offer a slogan so I do so now:

SUPPORT FREEDOM OF ELECTRONIC SPEECH

I know there’s a crazy telecom rationale that net neutrality violates THEIR first ammendment rights but that’s just nuts and we shouldn’t cede them the territory. There argument is like saying that that “postal neutrality” violates the post office’s freedom of speech. It is the freedom of speech of the public (including the body politic) that must be protected.

-Lee

The other day I copied some stuff from a posting to help me write a LTE, unfortunately I don’t know where I got it so my apologies. I thought this was a good piece:

“Do you order flowers online from your local florist? If he doesn’t pay up, you won’t be able to — you’ll be directed to a national online site that did.

Do you like to get your news from many sources with varying points of view? Soon you’ll be limited to only those sites the service providers want you to see — whether because of the political views of the providers’ executives, or because only conservative sites pay up.

Do you use the Web as a user interface for your critical systems? Perhaps your ordering system or help desk software or collections system is web-based? Your systems will be placed in the slow lane unless you pay up. “

I also heard it described as if you are shipping a package and both the sender and the reciever are charged.

Regarding the tollbooth analogy…wouldn’t it be more like only being allowed through the tollbooth if the place you were going had paid the toll? Otherwise you have to take side streets or “can’t get there from here” signs.

I haven’t read all the way through this (the comments are at 297 strong right now), but I thought I’d offer up my $.02.

How about a phone service analogy. If you need to call someone, then both parties better be paying their phone bill. If both parties are paying their phone bill, then they have a reasonable expectation of having access to the whole phone network.

Now someone might say that this argument is a little strained since your phone bill is metered, but you can make a legitimate argument that your phone bill would be lower if they scrapped their metering infrastructure and went to a subscription based model (a la Vonage). It’s easier to predict your profits with a subscription based model and you don’t have to keep track of every single phone call, etc.

But I digress. Both parties ARE paying to have access to the internet.

I’m not just using the internet as an information “consumer” – I also use it to make a living: I’m a software engineer and I work from home. Everyday I connect to my customer’s networks to make a living. I use Verizon, but my company may use a company like Sprint, or SBC, or any one of a thousand other companies. What’s going to happen there? Tere are 2000 people like me at my company alone. Businesses are counting on having fast access to the internet. Oh yea, this is why they want to pass this bill in the first place – they have a good portion of the business community by the balls and want to give them a little tug to let everyone know who’s boss.

The information producers (google, micro$oft, etc.) are also paying to have internet access and are paying a much higher rate than you or I are from home. They’re paying a fee that IS metered – generally by the GB (gigabyte). My website costs $30 a month to run. If I transfer more than my alloted amount of data a month I incur a penalty and have to pay for it.

Any mom and pop business run over the internet (and there are many) are going to be squeezed. Thanks for screwing the little guy you jerks!

One more thing – could this limit competition? I live in New Hampshire and my town for the longest time had an exclusive contract with Adelphia cable. Couldn’t get comcast if you wanted to. So Adelphia for the longest time was my internet provider. This is common for New Hampshire towns – can’t comment on the rest of the nation, but Adelphia could have easily decided to stop my Vonage telephone service from working and limited me to Adelphia’s own phone service if they had one.

Thank you for calling Ted’s Towing Service using Verizon Wireless. If you’d rather be connected with Tony’s Towing Service, press one or stay on the line. Or for a 75 cents fee, press 7925# to be connected to Ted’s Towing Service.