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Net Neutrality
werehippy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Since things have started really ramping up on the next wave of policy initiatives from the Obama administration (financial regulation, climate change, and net neutrality), now seems like a good time to start focusing down on details. The lay of the land as it stands now:
The Obama administration has decided to push forward with Net Neutrality through the FCC, which just released their proposed new rules for debate over the next 60 days before a final vote. Wired has a good plain text summary here, but the major take away points are that all the rules are going to be applied not just to line based data service providers but also wireless, and the meat is beefing up four existing rules and adding two new ones.
On the political front the fight looks to be decidedly bloody. It goes without saying every telecom company in existence is going to be willing to spend every penny they have to fight this, because it's the difference between being the choke point for digital content and getting obscenely wealthy and being dump pipes and just being profitable while the real money goes to device and content creators. The typical old media and struggling content providers on old business models are already picking sides, which is likely to mean an unfriendly and even stupider than usual mainstream media.
The republicans are, as can be expected in any case involving a democratic initiative and business big old school businesses throwing money and their weight around, going to double down on obstructionism like there's no tomorrow. The odd thing for me is the letter 72 House Dems signed opposing neutrality. The Blue Dogs are to be expected, given they've never met a business interest they weren't willing to slobber all over, but the odd as hell thing is the Black Caucus coming down with them. I sincerely have no idea what the hell is going on there.
On the pro side you have the new media and the democratic activists. Google, Facebook, and pretty much every innovative company of the last decade can't wait for this to happen. Opening up the internet is always good for them. The Net Roots, which basically is the entirety of the non-union democratic activist base, pretty clearly has a preference here. It's been one of their touch issues for years.
On the merits I can't say I've ever heard a good argument against net neutrality. Wireless and the internet are, for all intents and purposes, the infrastructure of the 21st century. They should be as widely available, high quality, and low cost as humanly possible. And that's leaving aside that social and democratic benefits of having wide open and freely available informaiton.
So that's where we are. The lobbying is going to be fast, furious, and bloody over the next two months, and at the end of the day it'll be passed by a five person vote from the FCC. It should be a fun ride.
The Obama administration has decided to push forward with Net Neutrality through the FCC, which just released their proposed new rules for debate over the next 60 days before a final vote. Wired has a good plain text summary here, but the major take away points are that all the rules are going to be applied not just to line based data service providers but also wireless, and the meat is beefing up four existing rules and adding two new ones.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner.
- Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this part.
The republicans are, as can be expected in any case involving a democratic initiative and business big old school businesses throwing money and their weight around, going to double down on obstructionism like there's no tomorrow. The odd thing for me is the letter 72 House Dems signed opposing neutrality. The Blue Dogs are to be expected, given they've never met a business interest they weren't willing to slobber all over, but the odd as hell thing is the Black Caucus coming down with them. I sincerely have no idea what the hell is going on there.
On the pro side you have the new media and the democratic activists. Google, Facebook, and pretty much every innovative company of the last decade can't wait for this to happen. Opening up the internet is always good for them. The Net Roots, which basically is the entirety of the non-union democratic activist base, pretty clearly has a preference here. It's been one of their touch issues for years.
On the merits I can't say I've ever heard a good argument against net neutrality. Wireless and the internet are, for all intents and purposes, the infrastructure of the 21st century. They should be as widely available, high quality, and low cost as humanly possible. And that's leaving aside that social and democratic benefits of having wide open and freely available informaiton.
So that's where we are. The lobbying is going to be fast, furious, and bloody over the next two months, and at the end of the day it'll be passed by a five person vote from the FCC. It should be a fun ride.
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This is going to be a really interesting fight because this issue is (maybe the only) one that seems to have the extremes on both political sides more or less in agreement. I'm pretty sure even the redstate guys are out in favor of net neutrality.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Funny you should mention McCain.
I don't think it's so much the extremes of the political spectrum agreeing, because I guarantee you the red meat republicans and tea party/Beckians are going to be screaming about socialism. It's the divide between people who use the internet and wireless data and people who don't. Anyone remotely technical who doesn't have a financial stake in kill net neutrality overwhelmingly favors it, everyone else is the typical partisan and financial motivations.
Except the black Caucus. I really, really don't understand where they're going with this. Maybe it's that they tend to represent black and urban populations that are least effected because they have the best situation in terms of choice/infrastructure and give the least amount of a crap.
Anything in this vein has be on edge because of
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
I know years ago internet celebrities came out trying to say why Net Neutrality was a good thing but the campaign came off as hilariously bad and didn't do too well.
Most people don't understand how important this issue really is. There is so much on the line, this is basically up there with Health Care Reform.
I've always thought this was succinct:
People need to write to their congressmen.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
This seemed like a neat idea until I realized that a lot of people would probably be just fine with paying 20 bucks less to just use email and watch american idol reruns
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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60 websites? Really? Fucking really?
Edit - And I have to pay extra to use Google and Wikipedia of all things, and even more extra for You-fucking-Tube!
The hilarious part being porn webites are among the most profitable out there. So if anyone has money to throw around to by better access, it would be them.
Also, fuck legislating other people's morality.
You will notice that Hulu isn't even on that list. Nor would it ever be. (Well, maybe in off-peak hours if you area also a digital cable subscriber...)
But you're right. Hulu would get fucked right over. I imagine YouTube would be held more accountable for web operation too.
"Disney.com/HandyMany rip 10/25/09"
over 200 websites...
over 2000 websites...
That is the most terrifying image I think I have ever seen in my life
Even if it's fake it represents an example of what they'd do to the internet.
Of all things political as of late, this is the one thing I feel strongest about.
They'll probably end up making less than they do from ads presently.
Porn and Gambling are what birthed the internet as we know it. If it wasn't for them it'd still just be some cutesy toy in DARPA that they use to fax things to computers.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think he was commenting that people were going to stop going to Hulu because they don't want to pay money. Which means less people clicking on ads.
Actually I was assuming that viewership will drop so low no one will pay to advertise with them.
First they get ya hooked on samples and then they start charging big bucks to feed your addiction...to television on the internet.
Would there be any reason to, exactly? If it turns out to be profitable, what we'd see is new sites springing up and cable TV models would be adopted to this new breed of internet sites (but the internet itself wouldn't adopt to it). Honestly I wouldn't mind too bad if the price is right. And since it's on the internet, they'd all have some semblance of TiVo. So y'know. Death of the television.
I imagine Viacom would be dicks and pull the Colbert Report and Daily Show from the net.
Give away the razors and charge out the ass for the blades. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. That being said, though, I wouldn't mind having to pay for that stuff since it would basically be along the same line as what iTunes has with some TV shows. Seeing how I don't plan on having cable TV, just cable internet, in my apartment it'd probably wind up costing less overall regardless. So I'd be saving $20 instead of $40 a month, hardly the most horrific of outcomes. Besides it might speed up the switch for networks to get on the 'net and more or less eliminate TV as we know it today.
This was going to happen sometime within the next decade, so it may as well start now. Who knows, maybe when they find out they can charge an internet subscription for streaming shows they'll drop the price on regular TV services.
*Not actually that poor, but only because I have very few expenses. I want to keep it that way!
Speaking of McCain's sudden and purely principle driven interest in technological issues, by a funny coincidence McCain received more than double the campaign funds from telecoms anyone else in Congress has received.