Tim Berners-Lee On Net Neutrality: It's Important, But Now What?
from the where-the-conversation-breaks-down dept
teKuru writes in to point out Tim Berners-Lee's latest essay on the importance of net neutrality. It's a good read that talks up the importance of network neutrality, and how it has allowed innovation to flourish online. Very few people (perhaps other than telcos and their supporters) will doubt that. The real question, though, is the one that Berners-Lee punts on. He doesn't have a solution for how to deal with the question of telcos looking to end network neutrality. All he says is: "To actually design legislation which allows creative interconnections between different service providers, but ensures neutrality of the Net as a whole may be a difficult task. It is a very important one. The US should do it now, and, if it turns out to be the only way, be as draconian as to require financial isolation between IP providers and businesses in other layers." In other words, it's a tough issue and legislation could make it worse, but do it anyway? That doesn't seem much better than Senators saying that laws against file sharing networks may cause more problems than they solve, but they need to be done anyway.This is a big issue that many people don't seem to want to dig in on. Those who are against net neutrality regulations say that the regulations will screw things up even more, but ignore the potential downsides to letting the telcos end net neutrality. Those who want regulation say network neutrality is very important and thus needs to be written into the law -- but ignore the potentially stifling aspects of bad regulations. The problem is that both sides then are talking about different things... and there's no one looking at if it's written into law, how can it be written to cause as little damage as possible and if it's not written into law, how can people feel comfortable that network neutrality will remain an option going forward? The real answer is that it would be great if there were a truly competitive market that would make it impossible for anyone to kill network neutrality, but the FCC has already killed that option off by giving telcos virtual monopolies on the lines and rights of way that the government granted them. So, perhaps the real answer isn't to focus on legislating (or not) net neutrality -- but making sure there's real competition in the market. In the meantime, it looks like the Markey amendment on Net Neutrality is back in play. However, as it's been turned into a partisan issue, it probably doesn't stand much of a chance.
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Yeah, whatever,
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Legislation??
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Re: Legislation??
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Other Countries
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Re: Other Countries
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Hit nail on head.
Net neutrality legislation is meaningless if there is little or no competition.
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Re:
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long distance battle redux
Now we have decent competition in long distance, but the old monopolists are rattling their control over the local loops and tandem switches once more. The solution is the same as before - update the access regulations to cover broadband and IP traffic, and look at restricting the variety of businesses the baby bells are allowed to participate in. Congress should make sure the FCC commisioners do their jobs instead of sitting around picking out blue ties to wear on the news shows, like other administration appointees.
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scifi
I have no faith in the telcos or the politicos.
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Re: scifi
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They don't understand that the vulnerable parties in the net neutrality issue are the future techdirts and slashdots. Little guys who might want to put up a site a few years from now to talk about technology or (gasp) political issues, but won't be able to because the people who are already paying full fare won't want them to. Or even worse, they'll be able to put up that site, but it'll be harder to get to because it won't have access to the same speeds as the big boys.
The beauty of the internet has always been that techdirt can be just as fast, just as widely seen, just as effective as AT&T or Microsoft. We definitely need an internet protection act to keep corporate raiders from doing to the net what they've done to national forests or wetlands.
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Not just telcos
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Net Neutrality And Anti-Trust Laws
The way Net Neutrality remains an option going forward, without the adverse consequences of bad legislation is for the Judiciary committee to get the referral they're seeking, and use that referral to rewrite the Net Neutrality Amendment. That amendment needs to remove the references to net neutrality as an FCC issue, and instead refer all complaints regarding access providers engaged in shady tactics to the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC already investigates and acts on anti-competitive activities. It is not clear, however, that they have the authority to engage those regulatory powers on telecom services. That needs to be made explicit. That would provide the framework to prevent predatory tactics without creating a new framework for existing laws to be applied through a different agency.
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Net Neutrality is a red herring
You bet!
I hate to even post and add noise to a debate which I think has become 100% noise. It's all emotion. Hating telcos has got people so blind to the issues that most reactions are nothing but idiocy.
If you define "Net Neutrality" as "unprioritised, unfiltered, equal-access to all internet content from any ISP" then you know nothing about economics or markets. Or, you are arging against a free market system. Call a spade a spade and say you want socialized Internet access please. That's at least a focused discussion.
Imagine any law that said "every store must offer every product consumers want without priority or price differences". That's what you're asking for. No retailer could survive. You wouldn't have botiques, brand-differentiated retailers, and you wouldn't have MONEY FLOWING according to SUPPLY AND DEMAND. That is the critical problem. If you don't see ISPs as a crucial part of the economic value chain then your view of the internet is dysfunctional in a free-market economy. If an ISP is forced to provide a channel for delivering high-demand goods for exactly the same price as it does for delivering low-demand goods then they are a dysfunctional component of the market.
And that's probably why we hate them, because we've put them in a no-win situation and allowed their behavior to degenerate into what it is today. Instead, of figuring out ways to make the market work, an "us-vs-them" mentality is gumming up the works and this whole debate is part of the problem, not the solution.
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The piece by Berners-Lee seems to only oppose the idea of walled or exclusive access. He does not appear to oppose the idea of tiered access for QoS issues like video and VoIP.
TBL quote:
We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me.
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hmmm.
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Lesser of two...
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By tag-teaming the blogs this small handful of individuals gives the false impression of broad popular support for an industry-friendly position.
What they fail to point out is that Net Neutrality has been the rule that has governed access to the Internet since its inception. It's the reason that the Internet has become such a dynamic force for new ideas, economic innovation and free speech. What they really want is for Congress to radically re-write our telecommunications laws so that companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth can swoop in and become gatekeepers to Internet content -- in a way that benefits no one except the largest ISPs.
I'd like these people to tell us how it is that they appear together (usually one after the other) spouting identical industry talking points across the blogosphere.
What gives fellas? Are you being paid? And by whom?
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