Why would the law be complex? You only need one simple line of law stating:
We find this principle to be self evident, that all internet traffic is to be treated as equal.
That is it. No complex case law, no little print, no arcane law language.
"Any rulemaking by the feds will involve backroom deals between companies large enough to send lawyers to DC "
Are you saying that you are scared of big companies, therefore what we should do is surrender and let, possibly one of the most defining aspect of the internet, be done with by the big guys, who have suitcases and suits?
You might say you are being pragmatic and that is the reality, but only if the "bunch of people" keep silent and let the big guys get on without noise, you know, a bit like the "bunch of people" did with the War in Iraq. The corporations might have the money, but the "bunch of people" still have the political system and the power to set the debate. No politician would like to loose his job, and if some do then they will think twice in face of vocal public pressure.
As for your other points they are a matter of speculation. I would need to employ my imagination. I am sure there are many smart people on here who might be able to get around the internet prioritization with some code, who have all sort of programming abilities to overcome any technology obstacle. Maybe even if such tiered system would come to pass, some clever guy would come with some code which would make the ISP think that a certain site should be prioritized. The vast majority of people however might perhaps have to live with the reality of the way things are. In China for example, some people might use route-around technologies, but, the vast majority live with a censored internet.
As for AOL and all the rest, the internet, at least in popularity, is hardly even 20 years old, if we take the year that it took off to be 1995 when people started hearing about it in vast numbers. So AOL is really a baby learning how to crawl in the grand scheme of things. Only very recently, if not only now, has the internet become a serious medium with vast power of empowerment and, we must assume, vast powers of control.
So you can hardly compare the past to the future. You hardly can say well even if we live in a dictatorship someone will still write a pamphlet although he might be imprisoned for it.
You can argue about the substance of the matter. Dismissing the entire debate as something childish however and entirely misguided without providing any reasons but rhetoric is hardly reasonable.
I might be wrong, I might be very wrong, but personally I think we should fight and if in the end we lose, then we do so with dignity, not in 40 years or so tell our children of that thing called the internet and then feel sad of how all the baddies turned it into a one way communication platform.
Your proposed 1-line law is a good example of the romantic, childlike, wishcraft-dominated thinking about this issue that I'm criticizing.
That wording is neither enactable by any federal body, nor enforceable by federal prosecutors, without a ton more detail.
And, its simpleminded application would prohibit services I'd actually like to buy. I would prefer an ISP which privileged web browsing and VOIP over BitTorrent and bulk email/video/software downloads. I would like it if traffic that attempts to compromise my privacy or exploit unpatched software on my home network was blocked by default.
In fact, I run a traffic-shaping router/firewall for these and other purposes, including preferencing my own traffic over that of neighbors and visitors who use my guest wifi node. Would that make me a net-neutrality-scofflaw? Oh, I hope so.
I have the technical acumen to do this myself, but if my ISP wants to implement similar policies the next few hops up, that also provides me with positive value. And of course most customers can't set this up for themselves, so they can only get positive value from having an expert -- like their ISP -- enact upstream preferencing and blocking for them.
Why make providing a service some people will prefer a federal crime?
We've made it almost 20 years without FCC rules to protect the internet. The internet is faster and freer each year, without any help from the FCC. (Thankfully, the FCC can keep busy fining broadcasters for dirty words.)
It is not true that "we must assume... vast powers of control" are about to spring some trap. We can wait until actual harms are demonstrated -- if ever. We can wait even further, until such harms persist after enough time for competitors to adapt, before freezing into federal law starry-eyed notions of how the network should work.
You might configure your household router to favor VoIP traffic over your torrents and that's fine. The problem comes when ISPs, especially the large ones, do things that stifle competition. A good example would be having AT&T get away with degrading the quality of service for VoIP providers. It would be easy for them to stifle video providers. The case I picked is a very obvious one since AT&T sells telephone service and fancies itself as a net cable-tv operator. But the situation is just as bad if they or another ISP give unfair advantage to some other big player.
I agree that things are too complex for a one line law.
At the end of the pipe, consumers should be given the bandwidth they pay for regardless of the data type/port. And traffic should be treated equally upstream.
The majority of people in the U.S. are getting a very poor deal on "broadband" compared to a number of other nations.
Much good came from the breakup of AT&T way back when. But through corrupt regulators the cancer has grown back.
We've got many problems. Some are the result of our rights being sold off. The U.S. public lost a huge chunk of the UHF t.v. spectrum with the digital change over. We could have had a bunch of bandwidth for free community based networking. But almost all of it has gone to the major players.
If you don't think the wprocess was corrupted, look at the lack of diversity in ownership (and lack of local ownership) of broadcast stations. Besides functioning as leeches to suck money out of local economies, the narrowing of diversity in the selecting/gathering of music and news is very unhealthy. It's gone past having large players like Clear Channel owning huge numbers of stations. Now it's venture capital groups. The role of broadcasters as trustees of the public interest (and each broadcaster has a LOCAL public to serve) is not filled well.
I agree with you to a certain extent. However, I think that there is still some scope for useful regulations of established standards. For example http(s) should not have any limits put upon it. I would be happy with just that. The FCC will always be behind the times, but they can still offer some security in what would now be clearly unjust to tamper with.
>For example http(s) should not have any limits put upon it.
Entry of specifics into statute is not helpful - a lot of work was needed to alter laws (in UK) which included prescription of snail-mailing various forms or information so that the laws could be used with fax, then with email.
Hence, the specific protocol should not be used to limit only as an example (admittedly this was probably your thinking too) - "there shall be no prejudice held against network traffic sent using end-to-end encryption regardless of origin except in the following cases ..." or some such. The specific encryption can be mentioned in headers or in associated rules or in a definitions section.
It is not the prosecution who would enforce it. It is civil law. I would take the ISP to court if they discriminate against me, not the prosecution.
Art. 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is one line also. It states:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."
That is very much enforceable. You can take the government to court if they do not uphold this "romantic, childlike, wishcraft-dominated thinking"
Of course, the law being the law, there will be exceptions. These exceptions however in our common law system are created on a case by case basis when the facts are so as to merit an exception. Not to mention that freedom of speech is a much bigger area than the simple matter of internet traffic. Yet, we all know where we stand in regards to what we can say.
"I would prefer an ISP which privileged web browsing and VOIP over BitTorrent and bulk email/video/software downloads." - That is a debate to be had. I would not want web browsing to be preferred over e-mail, which can be web browsing, video, or software or even BitTorrent though I do not use it.
You can not however argue, just because you preferred it, by rhetorically asking "Why make providing a service some people will prefer a federal crime?" I am sure some people would prefer contracting a serial killer, stealing rather than working, or more close to home, smoking weed to be legal.
"We've made it almost 20 years without FCC rules to protect the internet."
My point earlier was that the internet was in its infancy. There were spots to be filled, small ventures to rise to big corporations, little guys to be made giants, the whole thing was very new and chaotic, everyone fighting to get a piece of the pie. Now the ISPs are sort of established, have their market shares, and perhaps just want to secure themselves. So too with big corporations. Sure they can be thrown out easier than in the real world, but the internet reflects the real world much more today than in the past 20 years.
In my personal opinion, the FCC would not be involved in the matter. The law would give rights to citizens. The internet is not like the telly where a few people control what we see, the internet is like the streets and just as I can sue my local council if I had an accident due to their negligence, so too I should be able to sue the ISP if they discriminate against my traffic.
"It is not true that "we must assume... vast powers of control" are about to spring some trap. We can wait until actual harms are demonstrated -- if ever. We can wait even further, until such harms persist after enough time "
First, they came for the communists...
Healthy scepticism is good. I think that currently we all know the telecos want to prioritise traffic to make a lot of profit for themselves, we also know that this would create a tiered system of haves and have nots. We know that a level playing field is better. We know that traffic prioritisation would only benefit the telecos and big companies and screw the little guys. I would rather such things did not happen in the first place and the competition focused on improving the infrastructure and innovation, rather than bang their heads against iron doors.
>We find this principle to be self evident, that all internet traffic is to be treated as equal.
That is it. No complex case law, no little print, no arcane law language.
As someone mentioned in another thread you would need to invest in a server thus actually increasing the overall capacity, rather than artificially increasing it or decreasing it.
I do not know much about servers, but as I understand it Google runs a server and they doing so I do not think affects the traffic of my website. If however Google running a server would mean that my website would run more slowly, except for perhaps the distinction that it adds real capacity, I do not see how that is more different than paying the ISP to prioritize your traffic. Though I might need some enlightening.
Also, Google has its own fiber which carries only Google packets. Not exactly net neutral there. And Google's control over site ranking in search results affects traffic prioritization on just as large and deterministic a scale as AT&T's hypothetical packet ranking.
The issue is way more complicated than people realize.
Google's fiber carrying only Google packets isn't the Internet, it's a Google network. If your company puts in a dedicated line between two offices or data centers, should we declare it neutral too?
If Google and Verizon jointly pay for a high-speed 'dedicated line' between YouTube and Verizon broadband customers, and only YouTube traffic goes over that line, is that the Internet or not? Should it be illegal?
In a networked economy sometimes coordination between different companies is deeper than two offices of the same company. Why should a company be allowed to have dedicated lines between its own arms, and not to important partners?
Are you saying that if some ISP's network is grinding to a halt under the weight of a DOS attack or a worm, they should be legally prohibited from doing anything about it? Unless we're using different terminology, Only the endpoints would be allowed to do anything about this under your proposal.
For deliberate DOS attacks, sure... I think the law could make exceptions for dealing with deliberate vandalism. But worms and the like are not the ISP's problem, unless they harm the network itself and affect users who wouldn't otherwise be vulnerable to them.
Once you agree that total equality isn't actually possibly, we are now arguing about exactly which non-neutral policy to apply. Very similar to the anecdotal story about Winston Churchill that ends with "Now we are haggling about the price."
(Shrug) If I vandalize a road sign, the highway department has the right to close the lane, replace the sign, and prosecute me for the act. They do not, however, get to sell the highway to a conglomerate that also owns a trucking company who will be charged lower tolls for driving on it.
That's all 'net neutrality' means, or should mean.
VoIP is content. SMTP/POP/HTML email is content. Do you want your ISP to monitor those to decide which are okay?
Discriminating against torrent traffic can be like racial profiling. A protocol is not an intent.
If you do want profiling, perhaps consumers running Windows should pay a higher fees and be given less bandwidth since those customers have higher support costs and have the machines most used for DDOS attacks, sending spam/scam and other foul behavior.
Windows machines harm the network. If a customer wishes to configure his router to share the bandwidth he's paid for, that's not theft of service. (Also read the F.C.C. notices included with U.S. routers - they don't own spectrum)
I don't know how you're getting any of that out of the proposal. All the proposal is saying is that if it's legal, the ISP can't block it. Nothing compels them to block illegal content, nor gives them any more right to do so than they already have.
If it harms users other than the ones who left their systems unprotected, then it would be a good candidate for intervention. Neutrality shouldn't be a suicide pact for the ISP, but a set of operating guidelines that cover situations short of outright abuse and vandalism.
We find this principle to be self evident, that all internet traffic is to be treated as equal.
That is it. No complex case law, no little print, no arcane law language.
"Any rulemaking by the feds will involve backroom deals between companies large enough to send lawyers to DC "
Are you saying that you are scared of big companies, therefore what we should do is surrender and let, possibly one of the most defining aspect of the internet, be done with by the big guys, who have suitcases and suits?
You might say you are being pragmatic and that is the reality, but only if the "bunch of people" keep silent and let the big guys get on without noise, you know, a bit like the "bunch of people" did with the War in Iraq. The corporations might have the money, but the "bunch of people" still have the political system and the power to set the debate. No politician would like to loose his job, and if some do then they will think twice in face of vocal public pressure.
As for your other points they are a matter of speculation. I would need to employ my imagination. I am sure there are many smart people on here who might be able to get around the internet prioritization with some code, who have all sort of programming abilities to overcome any technology obstacle. Maybe even if such tiered system would come to pass, some clever guy would come with some code which would make the ISP think that a certain site should be prioritized. The vast majority of people however might perhaps have to live with the reality of the way things are. In China for example, some people might use route-around technologies, but, the vast majority live with a censored internet.
As for AOL and all the rest, the internet, at least in popularity, is hardly even 20 years old, if we take the year that it took off to be 1995 when people started hearing about it in vast numbers. So AOL is really a baby learning how to crawl in the grand scheme of things. Only very recently, if not only now, has the internet become a serious medium with vast power of empowerment and, we must assume, vast powers of control.
So you can hardly compare the past to the future. You hardly can say well even if we live in a dictatorship someone will still write a pamphlet although he might be imprisoned for it.
You can argue about the substance of the matter. Dismissing the entire debate as something childish however and entirely misguided without providing any reasons but rhetoric is hardly reasonable.
I might be wrong, I might be very wrong, but personally I think we should fight and if in the end we lose, then we do so with dignity, not in 40 years or so tell our children of that thing called the internet and then feel sad of how all the baddies turned it into a one way communication platform.