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I liken the Internet to the national highway system: It carries a large and diverse set of traffic, and allows mostly unencumbered passage from start to finish. It is actively maintained to ensure its effectiveness, and the reason is clear- America depends on it.. for almost everything. The transport of goods essential to the operation of this country depend on that road. People who travel to and from work that have a role in the economy depend on it.
That should equate to how the Internet should be treated. Like the interstate, it has many uses, some of them others may deem irrelevant or even wrong. However, if we begin to place restrictions on such use, that medium becomes less useful to everybody else that depends on it. The Internet might not carry goods and people like the interstate does, but it does carry business-oriented data, communications, and new-emerging technologies that soon the world deserves to have access to.
Following this analogy is a set of principles on which I believe the Internet should be treated/improved upon:
1. The Information Superhighway is a Dirt Road
The issue is not that there is too much traffic on the Internet. The issue is that in order for everybody to benefit, this 'highway' must be expanded. Instead of enforcing tiered access, we should expand its infrastructure to support the new load. I believe that the US should allocate funding to expand the backbone and the effective throughput the nation's businesses and people can use. Our competitors in Korea and Japan have done so already. They have superior network systems to ours. Homes and businesses have faster connections. We as a global power need to allow our businesses to compete by having comparable infrastructure. Japan has an information superhighway.. we have an information dirt-road, with people threatening to place tollbooths.
2. The Information Superhighway Should Remain Open
A man might take the interstate to his favourite gentleman's club or adult video store. Although not everyone will approve of this, he is allowed to take the road to get there. What controls whether or not if all men perform the same behaviour is not whether we establish roadblocks, but rather if the local community allows the store to be built in the first place, and if the person/family/local community approves of it.
To be blunt, if a person has an issue with certain websites being available, they should be free to do something about it.. AT HOME. Parental filters are available for this sort of thing. We cannot take values and turn them into rules that are applied for the Internet at large. Local governments can perhaps enforce certain rules, but the whole Internet should be not be held to those standards. Its purpose should be to facilitate effective and reliable flow of information from source to destination; no more, no less.
3. The Internet Should Allow All Kinds of Traffic
As long as a vehicle complies with the minimum set of standards to travel on the interstate, it can. There are no restrictions on what it can carry. This allows for people of all types to travel and carry limitless things on the interstate: food, raw materials, consumer goods, etc. If the interstate was restricted to small cars only, the entire American economy will screech to a halt.
That is the kind of thing that certain network providers wish to do- restrict what kind of data can travel unencumbered on the Internet. That premise is bad for business. Certain video games that require the Internet to transfer information, such as World of Warcraft, certainly use a fair share of bandwidth. If we begin to cap the usage on that kind of data, a multi-million-dollar American industry will suffer. It will also hinder innovation in many up-and-coming industries. These industries potentially can create jobs and bring our country out of it's economic recession.
I assert that an Open Internet is Essential to the American way- for commerce, freedom of communication, and technological competition with other global powers. If we begin to restrict it now, we close the door to an opportunity to securing our prosperity for years to come.
Thank you for providing an open forum to express my ideas.
-Amin Astaneh
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The Internet is highly competitive. Traditional “phone” and traditional “cable” companies have been locked in an intense struggle to win customers, and wireless is rapidly becoming another viable alternative to wired broadband connections. If a private company blocked or censored Internet traffic maliciously it would lose its customers. If government exercised such control over a government-controlled Internet, there would be no place to turn.
The envisioned burden-of-proof for required network management practices is unreasonably restrictive and will prevent business models that may be economically efficient, impose uncertainty, and create litigation risks. Such restrictions would lower the rate of return on investments in building network capacity to the point that some of those investments would no longer make economic sense.
The Internet would then either remain crippled or be “rescued” with taxpayer subsidies, which would inevitably bring government control and politicization along with government ownership. Indeed, this “public utility” model is the desired outcome of many proponents of regulation, including former White House adviser Susan Crawford and Free Press founder Robert McChesney.
Such a transformation of the Internet into a government-controlled public utility is a major policy change that should be debated in Congress, the legitimately elected legislative branch of government. The Commission should not on its own set into motion regulatory changes that will force us down this path.
I am especially concerned that the Commission is already contemplating content restrictions, such as the suggestion under paragraph 77 of the NPRM that the Commission may ultimately be the arbiter of which competing interests should be prioritized.
Advocates of so-called “net neutrality” have been ringing alarm bells now for so many years (starting with the November 19, 2002 letter to the Commission from the so-called “Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators”) that their claims should be heavily discounted. In the absence of concrete evidence of not just discriminatory but anti-competitive behavior, there is simply no rationale for imposing new regulations that could have the effect of slowing down the great engine of innovation, growth, and expression that the lightly regulated, competitive Internet has become.
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The public demands the strongest Network Neutrality rule possible, without loopholes. Millions of Americans have called for nothing less, and now the FCC must act decisively, putting the public interest first and not giving in to pressure from AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and their lobbyists.
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The internet is basically neutral now and it desperately needs to stay that way. For democracies to thrive and grow, a free flow of uncensored information must flow into the marketplace of ideas, and let the market decide which ideas are good, and which are not.
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Ok, so what we have here is the basic argument that is consuming America on all levels, and not just about Internet Neutrality. On one side, we have the capitalists who believe that "The Government" is the enemy and that "The Market" will balance everything out and solve all the problems. On the other side we have (for lack of a less antagonistic term) the anti-capitalists who believe that evil corporations will screw everybody in their quest for money and power, and the only solution is for "The Government" to take over and ensure everyone is treated fairly.
Let's take a look at history and see which view is more likely to be accurate:
For all of known history, individual large economic powers (cf. evil corporations) have existed for relatively short periods of time. While some have lasted for centuries such as the Rothschild banking houses, most have barely outlived their founders. These organizations reached their pinnacle of power by providing services that most people found useful and satisfactory, regardless of the fact that a small percentage of persons received less than adequate (if any) services. When an organization blocked innovation, they were either quickly surpassed and they fell (check out IBM, once the biggest seller of Business Machines in the world, now barely hanging on because they couldn't compete), or they populace rose up and broke the strangle-hold, as was done with the original AT&T. This was done through Government intervention, but WITHOUT Government take-over either outright or through massive legislation. As a matter if fact, the breakup of AT&T is the opposite of this net neutrality idea, and was to foster competition instead of equality of service. So, while there have been some bottle-necks, over time quality services become available to everybody, and the level of quality continues to increase.
Now, let's look at those services that are Government run or highly Government regulated:
Social Security: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 30 years turned to FAILURE
Medicare: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 20 years turned to FAILURE
Universal Health: FAIL (everywhere but here, where we will obviously do it different because everybody else just got it wrong - FAIL,FAIL,FAIL)
Banking: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 15 years turned to FAILURE - It wasn't the "fat-cat" bankers who got us in this current pickle, it was the Libs in Government who mandated that the banks HAD to loan money for housing to people THEY KNEW couldn't pay it back.)
Postal Service: FAIL - Raised their rates again today, and are talking about cutting delivery on Wednesdays and Saturdays
TVA: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 25 years turned to FAILURE
CCC: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 15 years turned to FAILURE
DMV/DOT: FAIL
U.S. Highway system: Started off with good intentions and a strong plan which, after less than 35 years turned to FAILURE
All these programs have the same thing in common: in order to be "Fair" and "Just" and help the lowest 10% get what everybody else had to pay for, The government "stepped in" and over-ruled the prevailing market forces. This worked fine for a relatively short period of time but, as the systems went more and more out of balance, the wobble and gyrations eventually caused system failure.
Every single time, in every single case, when "The Goverment" has taken over or massively regulated a service, either the cost has gone up and the quality has dropped like a rock, or the service itself has crashed and burned, leaving everyone without.
That's why I don't want the government messing with the internet, or the health-care system, or banking, or the auto industry or anything else. While a particular service may suck right now, capitalism will surely improve on it because it's in a business' best interests to do so. If company A doesn't give you what you want, Company B will come along a offer it. You may not like - or be able to afford - the solution (right now), but under capitalism, the quality will continue to go up and the cost will continue to go down. That is a proven historical fact.
The exact opposite is true of Government run systems. The only one in the U.S.A. that works worth a tinker's damn today is the Post Office and they do it by outsourcing to Federal Express!
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The Internet is about the exchange of information and ideas, net neutrality is so important so no one can control or suppress those ideas. Without net neutrality the internet is a propaganda machine for whom ever is in power.
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The big problem with representative Markey's Net Neutrality bill, is that it bequeaths onto ISPs the power to be police by giving them the responsibility to figure out which users are lawfully using the internet.
For one thing that violates the due process clause of the constitution.
For another it means that ISPs will inherently be able to watch our data... I have a big problem with that. That violates the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures in the constitution.
Imagine if our roads were being operated and policed by the same company that paved the roads. That would be similar to an ISP laying cables and also policing the network. That simply is not their job, nor is it any of their business.
Also, it severely slows the data down, to look at everything.
If the police have probable cause to consider that some individual or entity is committing a crime, then they should follow due process of the law, and obtain a search warrant from a judge, to tap into just that user, from their residence, without interfering with the integrity of the network for all the (presumed innocent) users who use it.
There should not be a network that is designed, like the one in communist china, to easily be tapped by anybody.
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Net Neutrality is what allows freedom of expression on the net. Regulation will restrict the voice of the people. We have seen amazing amounts of political change, and I personally have learned much by the "anyone can join the discussion" concept of the internet (such as this "join the discussion" box I am currently typing into). Seeing some be left out of having their ideas heard because they could not afford to post content, or seeing them regulated int silence would be a shame.
Leave the internet open for all.
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FCC Regulation of the Internet
As an Americans for Prosperity activist, I am submitting the following comment regarding the matter of preserving the open Internet. GN Docket No, 09-191, WC Docket No. 07-52:
I am a former 3-term MI state legislator, 2-term County Treasurer and have been a small business owner of a financial planning practice with my wife for over 20 years. Currently, I involved in bringing new products and systems to the market, and am over several faith-based 501 (c) organizations one ministers to Native Americans and the other is a disaster relief group. I am also a FEMA certified trainer and have on the MI NFIB Leadership Council since 1992. The reason I listed all this is to let you know all of my contacts and business relationships are opposed to you in any way, shape and form regulating the Internet.
We are not interested in you asserting your set of values, beliefs and agendas over yet another free form of information exchange and commerce. Federal regulators and non-elected bureaucrats were never supposed to control and regulate communication and information exchange. Nowhere in the US Constitution are they given any authority to control or regulate free speech, free enterprise or free information exchange. In fact, it actually sets forth prohibitions against this.
Freedom is the choice of making good or bad decisions, it’s messy. It’s not supposed to be controlled or molded by our government or its unelected regulators. Small to large businesses are already suffering and a competitive disadvantage to their international counter parts, because of Washington’s insatiable desire to control and regulate everything. Our free enterprise system is continuing to diminish and Socialism is becoming the form of government and economic system which encumbers and defines us.
I oppose the attempt of the FCC and the Obama Administration to regulate the internet and free speech, for the pure and simple reason that they can't control the opposition to their policies and politics. Regulation of the internet will mean the media and the government will no longer have any truly free opinion exchange of an opposing nature. It will hurt American business making us less competitive than we are already. It will hurt and stifle American citizens who disagree with current party or administration in control, regardless of which party it happens to be. Finally it will hurt America by continuing to regulate and restrain free speech and making us less free and less the America we once were.
Fulton Sheen
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I recently enjoyed Ken Burns' wonderful series on our national parks. As I read today about the question of net neutrality, I was reminded of a man in Ken Burns’ series named Ralph Cameron. Cameron pretty much decided that the Grand Canyon belonged to him. Why? Because he said so! One of his many outrageous offenses was the "toll road" he built at the head of Bright Angel Trail, where he charged visitors a large fee to walk on public land into the canyon.
The fight over net neutrality feels very much like that story. Here we have something that belongs to the public in general--cyberspace--in danger of being wrested from us by a relatively small group who decide it should belong to them. Why? Because they say so! Their claim is no more valid than was Ralph Cameron's.
The ultimate decision, for good or for bad, will have a monumental impact on this country for generations to come. We must make the right decision.
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I just wanted to share my experience comparing two different internet service providers I have, one is Pavlov media, and the other is ATT. Pavlov media provides a 1.5mbit service to my house, and ATT provides the same to my parents house. Both cost about the same and advertise their connections as being equal speed.
The difference is that Pavlov filters their connection extensively based on file type, website visited, and time of day. After testing this through a VPN which is not filtered I have concluded that for my situation net neutrality makes the internet what it is. My net neutral connection is fast and speedy. However when I use my Pavlov connection it is slow and useless. I cannot visit certain websites, my VOIP phone calls do not work. And life is sad. However tunneling all my traffic through a vpn allows me to use the same connection and do all the above mentioned things and they work perfectly!
Thus my conclusion is that net neutrality makes providers equal, and does not censor the internet like a connection which is not filtered or blocked. This is what the opponents of net neutrality want to do. They want to BLOCK OR FILTER PORTIONS OF THE INTERNET. This is exactly what is happening in china and other DICTATORSHIPS!
On a final note, I was just traveled overseas, and also used a non filtered connection, this outperformed my usa filtered connection by leaps and bounds. So I really can see net neutrality as forcing ISP's to provide an open service. If net neutrality does not get passed, we need some regulation which forces ISPs to tell consumers what services or websites are blocked. And this needs to be easily available. Otherwise we could have an internet of the future where we can only visit time Warner sites, or yahoo... etc, and we will not know why.
To sum it up, From a computer engineer, Network Neutrality is a Must for any free society!
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The government needs to stay out of the internet & let us have our freedom of speech. They are trying to get into our business any way possible.
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If large ISP and web providers get their way on this, they can effectively "lock out" internet start-ups, nonprofits, and those unable to pay for premium bandwidth. Why should we hand over the internet, which was developed with public money, over to large corporations who will only inflate the costs to consumers in the same way wireless companies nickle and dime us to death with access fees? Allowing ISPs to stifle small internet businesses is a sure way to make sure Americans keep losing their jobs and that web innovation will move overseas.
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There are very few things that the constitution actually spells out as duties of the government. Silencing free speech is not one of them. Want jobs, economic growth, and REVENUE? Get out of the way of business owners and watch the economy grow. Want REAL freedom of speech and opportunity? Get government out of the way. This "net neutrality" crap is just one of the many angles from which the liberals/democrats are attacking freedom of speech. They are trying to use "diversity," and "fairness" as the labels for some of their other attacks on the 1st amendment.
Don't let you government muzzle you like Hugo Chavez or the Soviets.
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AN OPEN INTERNET IS PART OF FREE SPEECH AND FREE SPEECH IF PART OF EVERY AMERICAN'S CIVIL RIGHTS. TO REGULATE IT IS TO TAKE AWAY ONE OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS, THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN EVER IF WE HOPE TO KEEP A FREE SOCIETY.
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U.S. is 28th in the world for internet connectivity speeds. We are the only industrialized nation without a comprehensive internet policy. Finland just declared high speed internet access a legal right.
Please, for the love of this country, keep the internet neutral. Others have articulated the argument far better than I, I just wanted to add my support in favor of a neutral internet.
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Opposing net neutrality because it "regulates the internet" is like opposing rape laws because they "regulate private relationships".
These laws are very clearly designed to keep privately owned internet providers such as Comcast or Time Warner from controlling what information you can access. In no way do they allow "evil government regulators" from "controlling the internet", regardless of what your Republican politicians have told you.
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A free and open Internet. For years now we have all enjoyed just this. This should never be changed. All traffic should be allowed. Regardless of the moral or immoral context.
It should not be controlled by any large buisness or government. It should be controlled by the people.
If we want to use Torrent's then we should be allowed to use torrents. They aren't only used to download illegal content. Many Online Games use torrents to deliver games and patches. There are many large files that need such a application to be transferred efficiently. No matter what, people are going to find ways to obtain things illegitimately.
Restrictions only end up hurting innocent people.
Free and Open. Free to share ideas, free to share media, free to share information. This is how it should always be.
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Obviously we need to come up with a detailed technical language in order for this law to be effective, but the fundamental point remains that neutrality is crucial to the betterment of our access to information.
I work in telecommunication, and I know exactly what the big providers want to do with throttling. The doors that it opens up are purely insane to even think about, after having 15 years of free and open access to the internet for relatively low cost would any of us want to segregate the network?
The key to maintaining a fast and useful internet is building more infrastructure, capital investment, hard work, and most of all improvement of technology. America has been a leader in internet development, although we do not have as much bandwidth per capita as regions such as Norway or south korea/japan, we do provide incredible amounts of users access at pretty good bandwidth levels for relatively low cost.
In a time when America is struggling to maintain it's place as a world leader in business and industry, would we really want to shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing corporations to milk more money out of obsolete systems? Think about it.
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Packets should be treated like US mail. while they are in transit, they are sacred and their integrity is sacrosanct.
Nobody, anywhere in the network, should have any right whatsoever to look at data, shape data, count data, or anything like that. Especially for the purposes of controlling it.
the best way to accomplish this is to make sure there are absolutely no proprietary portions of the internet. right now huge swaths of the network have been subverted to protocols such as DOCSIS which only cable companies can control. that means that if i find a cable modem on the market that goes at 1gbit, i can't use it because the cable company is controlling a portion of the internet. this harks back to the pre-carterfone days before the supreme court ruled that bell telephone had to allow third party telephones onto its network.
we should all have highly redundant mesh-like connections to the internet, and we should all be directly connected to the real internet, with our own public ip#, and everything that goes along with that. if somebody invents a faster communications technology, we should be able to deploy that without asking anybody for permission.
If the backbone suffers congestion because people are upgrading their speeds, then that must simply be strengthened, but i would like to point out that 300bps telephone modems used the exact same amount of telephone infrastructure as 56Kbit modems. this idea that it costs more to serve a higher speed connection is merely a figment of monopolists' imagination.
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No bandwidth caps and no unreasonable price increases. ISP's cap bandwidth not to save money, but to increase profits by charging people more for additional bandwidth. My friend works for an ISP and it cost the ISP next to nothing to provide you with service especially if the network is well used. The money you pay is almost entirely profits for the ISP.
When an ISP caps bandwidth, it is a way to cause people to use their service much ,less for fear of going over the bandwidth cap. it also stops most users from using online media services which makes them more likely to use the TV services provided by the ISP, for example, comcast put a bandwidth cap and since areas that they serve, there often the only broadband provider as well as cable tv provider, A user may be forced to give up netflix and hulu and many other forms of online content in favor of paying more for cable tv.
Other ISP's also secretly throttle bandwidth to reduce service quality for content that competes with their own services, so you think your 20mbit fiber connection is giving you a good connection but it turns out that you get good network performance for most content except content that competes with the company like voip (if you do a benchmark using apps like ixchariot to simulate certain types of network traffic between 2 systems with the same internet connection, for example 2 fios customers both with a 5mbit upload and you see that transferring dummy data gives around 4.8mbit/s but voip is being throttled to like 4KB/s until you encrypt it through a VPN then it is a problem.
ISP's need to treat content fairly and also not cap bandwidth . many ISP's are threatening bandwidth caps and this will destroy the internet is if it done on a large scale.
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The only people who would be against net neutral legislation would be those who stand to lose money from it. Don't let anyone tell you this is about the government controlling your internet. This is about companies trying to control your internet. Don't let them.
Support open access to the web. Support net neutrality.
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The ISPs have proven, through all manner of actions taken in recent months and years, that they have no interest the freedom of speech or free flow of information. The government needs to adopt net neutrality rules to guarantee that open exchange for America; failing to do so would let private companies limit our first amendment rights as they see fit.
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The purpose of the FCC is to create legislation to protect the communication infrastructure. And that's exactly what net neutrality is -- protecting the communication infrastructure from greedy corporations that want to monetize, control and conquer something that is a shared resource -- our precious internet.
Not all governmental regulation is bad, obviously. In this case, it's very good, and very welcome -- it's basically a "bill of rights" for internet consumers to keep them from being endlessly exploited and pillaged by corporations. This, for your information, is a Good Thing.
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Imagine you picked up the phone to order a Papa John's and Ma Bell tried to steer you towards Dominos Pizza instead, because Dominos pays them commission on your order. Extreme, yes, but illustrative of "traffic prioritization" arrangements that will develop if we don't insist on Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is fundamental to an Open Internet. Don't be distracted by FUD.
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