Proposes 6 principles for a for preserving a free and open Internet.
Today in a speech at at The Brookings Institution, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined the steps he believes the Commission must take to preserve a free and open Internet for all.
“The Internet is an extraordinary platform for innovation, job creation, investment, and opportunity. It has unleashed the potential of entrepreneurs and enabled the launch and growth of small businesses across America,” said Chairman Genachowski. “It is vital that we safeguard the free and open Internet.”
The plan lives up to President Obama’s campaign promise to “protect the openness of the Internet” who also said that throttling of BitTorrent and other P2P applications would be illegal.
The Commission has already embraced four open Internet principles affirming that consumers must be able to access the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, and attach non-harmful devices to the network. These four principles guide the FCC’s existing case-by-case enforcement of communications law.
In today’s speech, Chairman Genachowski proposed the addition of two new principles. The first would prevent ISPs from discriminating against particular content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second principle would ensure that ISPs are transparent about network management practices. He also proposed clarifying that all six principles apply to all platforms that access the Internet.
Chairman Genachowski will seek to begin the process of codifying these six principles through a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) during a meeting of the FCC in October.
The NPRM will ask for input and feedback on the proposed rules and their application, such as how to determine whether network management practices are reasonable, what information ISPs should disclose about their network management practices and how the rules apply to differing platforms, including mobile Internet access services.
Wireless carriers have already voiced their opposition to the proposal.
“We believe that this kind of regulation is unnecessary in the competitive wireless space as it would prevent carriers from managing their networks — such as curtailing viruses and other harmful content — to the benefit of their consumers,” said Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade group.
I’m surer it has nothing to do with keeping their customers locked into a fixed platform with usage, content, and applications all dictated according to what serves their bottom line best.
Either way, it’s nice to see the FCC living up to the promises Obama made during the campaign. Maybe ensuring a free and open Internet will settle down the “Teabaggers” and “Truthers” for a little while.
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
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UPDATE:
The FCC has launched OpenInternet.gov to give people a chance to weigh in, learn more, and get involved.
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- Obama, Hillary Favor Network Neutrality, McCain Prefers ‘Market Forces’
- Net Neutrality Bill Hits Canada, Bell Sued for BitTorrent Throttling
- McCain: ‘No Net-Neutrality, Need Piracy Crackdown’
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FCC is evil They are attempting to get their fingers in the regulating pie by defining what ‘open internet’ means. It means STAY THE FUCK OUT, GOVERNMENT.
Don’t let anyone define freedom. Then they will change the definition, and your chains will be dubbed Mr. And Mrs. HappyFreedom Friend.
Better them than Big Business….
Woah th’ar pilgrim.
This isn’t about the government taking over the management of the internet, this is about codifying into Federal Regulation protections for the freedom of the internet.
Think of it more like how the government guarantees the right of freedom of religion, expression, press, assembly, and gun ownership. The government didn’t step in and take over printing presses, or gun factories it merely provided in law protection for those rights.
Gamer’s right. This is good for us. If this didn’t happen, the corporations would be trying to take control instead.
Are you kidding me? Obama and Lewis the new FCC guy want to control it. They said you have to control it first, or the “glorious revolution” won’t happen, “a lesson learnt from Hugo Chaves”.
I don’t trust the corporations or the government, but I’ll take the rules is they happen for now. Thing is, this goes against everything they’ve been moving towards as far as controlling the internet, you know , the best tool for free communication ever created. If Jay Rockefeller gets his way, it’ll be 2.0 and only 1,000 corporate sites to choose from. So I don’t know whether to cheer or jeer.
It’s the first piece of good news I’ve heard in a while. Right now the internet is up for grabs. Legislation guaranteeing the ways you CAN’T touch the net is all good.
Hopefully this will embarrass the stuck-up control freaks steering the EU into assembling similar legislation…
http://www.neutrality.ca/
The more the general public learns of this complicated issue, the less “NN” will have appeal. VOIP absolutely should take a precedence so reliable telephony is secured. Same for on-demand video so it doesn’t stutter. Who cares if email arrives a millisecond later? And emergency services should naturally find bandwidth before spam and online advertising. And they will. NN will never fly in the long run.
Prioritizing bits and byes is inevitable because it’s plain common sense. A private home in an apartment house has a front door, naturally, but the concierge downstairs filters everything that reaches that door, just as we want it to. That’s the POINT of the concierge. THAT’s the future of the internet, with custom configured filtering, prioritized services, tiered pricing, spam protection if you want it, and so on. The whole idea of NN is pure amateur night, because people as yet don’t understand its implications. But they will.
And amazingly, once again. ZeroPaid has it wrong because they take the simple way out and don’t actually understand the technical issues.
AArrrgh matey’s but we be PIRATES!!”
Nothing to see here, folks.
Yeah, coming from the guy who wants ISP-level filtering and DPI (both of which have a cold chance in hell of happening).
If a concierge or anybody else wants a filter Internet that’s fine, but that shouldn’t be the job of ISPs.
The future of the Internet is not “custom configured filtering, prioritized services, tiered pricing, spam protection.” That’s the job of the Geek Squad not Comcast.
Nobody wants a two-tiered Internet and that’s the whole point.
Its unsurprising youd be for both because your anti-P2P/pro-copyright stance.
People do understand NN because they dont want ISPs interfering with their connection or being told what services or content they can or cannot access.
All I want from my ISP is a steady connection with speed with no hassle or headache and Im sure all here would agree.
Being able to access lawful Internet content, applications, and services of our choice, and to attach non-harmful devices to the network is something consumers want and need.
Sadly misinformed as usual SIA, and as usual your ignorant of the issues, much like the industry your work in.
“Nobody wants a two-tiered Internet and that’s the whole point.”
And I think you are dreaming. And who ever said I’m anti-P2P? I’m anti any form of illegal civil/criminal activity IRL or on the internet and that’s very reasonable, certainly not some sort of controversial position.
When ISP’s can offer “their” version of the internet with customizable filtering and “pick and choose” services, clearly specified terms, limited application and pay-by-the-gig pricing, ALL that comes in each month at a price well under the full tilt “NN” version, more than half the world will jump at it.
Why? To save. And to create the internet they want, to exclude the internet they don’t want, to ensure radial speed and reliability for only the applications THEY want to use and to do it all at a price that is far cheaper than the whole bliss ninny NN bullshit, and a direct reflection of the services and choices they have contracted to enjoy and NOT PAY for the ones they do not want or wish to pay for.
Tiered pricing for customizable services. Kinda like freedom of choice,y’know?…. with a price that is accountable to what you take. Imagine that.
You’d better. It’s inevitable once the public gets wind of it.
That THEY want to use.
Exactly.
The Internet is the proverbial “Information Superhighway” and its unrealistic to leave up to private interests to regulate what can and cannot exist on their networks.
The reason why is conflict of interest. ISPs are also the same companies trying to sell you phone, cable, music, and movies and they enjoy virtual monopolies across the country.
Letting them decide what applications and services can be used under a monopolistic, protectionist regime means consumers have little choice. Even under the pretext of better pricing its a poor one.
“direct reflection of the services and choices they have contracted to enjoy NOT PAY for the ones they do not want or wish to pay for.”
You mean how these same ISPs don’t allow us to pick and choose what cable channels we want and instead force us to purcahse a 1000+ on us?
In a perfect world it could be better if ISPs were allowed to satisfy customer demand, but so long as they enjoy regional monopolies and have an inherent conflict of interest in offering competing services and applications then we need NN.
Just ask Skype and the refusal of AT&T to let customers use the application on their wireless network.
Exactly.
The public get wind of what? That they be allowed to access the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, and attach non-harmful devices to the network?
Yep, they’ll sure hate that one.
“And I think you are dreaming. And who ever said I’m anti-P2P?”
You, obviously.
“I’m anti any form of illegal civil/criminal activity IRL or on the internet and that’s very reasonable, certainly not some sort of controversial position.”
The problem is that you are trying to compare physical space to cyberspace, and that in itself is all that is unreasonable, let alone unrealistic.
“When ISP’s can offer “their” version of the internet with customizable filtering and “pick and choose” services, clearly specified terms, limited application and pay-by-the-gig pricing, ALL that comes in each month at a price well under the full tilt “NN” version, more than half the world will jump at it.”
The keyword is ‘offer’. You assume that ISPs would not force it in their terms; that assumption will not hold in reality.
“Why? To save.”
Better pricing does not necessarily mean that “more than half the world will jump at it”. Obviously you cannot fathom that.
“And to create the internet they want, to exclude the internet they don’t want, to ensure radial speed and reliability for only the applications THEY want to use…”
To allow people to create the Internet they want and without interference from throttling of bandwidth is the very idea of Net Neutrality in the first place.
“… and to do it all at a price that is far cheaper than the whole bliss ninny NN bullshit, …”
Yet you do not elaborate how these additional, excessive, unnecessary, and wasteful use of resources for these services makes an Internet subscription all that cheap. Your assertions are “bullshit”.
“… and a direct reflection of the services and choices they have contracted to enjoy and NOT PAY for the ones they do not want or wish to pay for.”
The flaw with this statement is the fact that you assume that consumers have a choice at all on this.
“Tiered pricing for customizable services. Kinda like freedom of choice,y’know?….”
Not even close. Without competition or Net Neutrality, your speculations are utterly worthless.
“with a price that is accountable to what you take. Imagine that.”
You forget the possibility of unbalanced prices for such unspecified hypothetical services.
“You’d better. It’s inevitable once the public gets wind of it.”
Wind of what? That you will assert “bullshit”? It’s very clear when you wrote the first three words: “And I think”.
You write “inevitable” while speculating, so why would anyone believe anything about what you think?
“The more the general public learns of this complicated issue, the less “NN” will have appeal.”
Do you even know what ‘neutrality’ means?
“VOIP absolutely should take a precedence so reliable telephony is secured.”
VOIP involves data transfer over the Internet….
“Same for on-demand video so it doesn’t stutter.”
What the hell are you babbling about?
“Who cares if email arrives a millisecond later?”
Express one millisecond in seconds.
“And emergency services should naturally find bandwidth before spam and online advertising.”
Absolutely not.
“And they will. NN will never fly in the long run.”
You wish.
“Prioritizing bits and byes is inevitable because it’s plain common sense.”
No it is not, you moronic imbecile.
“A private home in an apartment house has a front door, naturally, but the concierge downstairs filters everything that reaches that door, just as we want it to.”
So you just exposed the fact that you are trying to compare physical space to cyberspace.
“That’s the POINT of the concierge.”
So that’s the point of the French caretaker of apartments or a hotel, and yet that has nothing to do with the Internet.
“THAT’s the future of the internet, with custom configured filtering, prioritized services, tiered pricing, spam protection if you want it, and so on.”
No dice. Censorship and filtering are unacceptable mechanisms from a technological perspective. Nothing will be prioritized as prioritizing assumes that all subscribers do the same activities. Tiered pricing will never happen and you most likely cannot fathom that from a business stand-point. Spam itself is completely irrelevant to an ISP, and so spam protection from ISPs is an unnecessary waste of resources.
“The whole idea of NN is pure amateur night, because people as yet don’t understand its implications. But they will.”
An utterly naive statement from a lighting-guy. Neutrality in its definitive meaning is far from a set of implications, unlike “custom configured filtering, prioritized services, tiered pricing, spam protection,” etc.
“And amazingly, once again. ZeroPaid has it wrong because they take the simple way out and don’t actually understand the technical issues.”
NO U. You are trying to take the easy/simple way-out by having no idea of the technical issues, by having conceptual ignorance, and by having an arrogantly pathetic excuse of an understanding.
“AArrrgh matey’s but we be PIRATES!!”
Nothing to see here, folks.”
Fail.
What I mean, D.AN, is this, exactly what I said in my first post. The more consumers know, the more they will reject Net Neutrality. “Net Neutrality” sounds good to those who don’t comprehend that we are already very non-net neutral and it BENEFITS the end user. Cases in point:
Email providers already discriminate against spam, a network based solution not a user based one. DBI routers are already configured to give VOIP prioritization, and telephony works precisely because of this. Without it, at peak traffic times in specific locales VOIP wouldn’t even work right because the network would be too full without existing prioritization. Medical diagnostics and online surgical services are already prioritized to make certain the transport of an XRay, a surgical video, or a video teleconference that could save a life is given priority over some bittorrent porn download. ALL these prioritization’s exist for common sense self-exemplary reasons and are the fundamental basis why apps that need transfer actually work over the network in real time. You have a lot of homework to do, pal.
The Internet has become a utility and will inevitably be subject to more and more regulation. If we can justify treating packets differently we likely will for all of the above reasons and a lot more that will be come clearer as new apps roll out into the future. But the point is this D.AN:
We are already NON net-neutral for very good reason. FORGET for the moment the medical emergency surgery taking too long to arrive to save a life and think about simple streaming TV.
If poorly informed Net Neutrality acolytes succeed in disrupting already carefully ordered prioritization so that even streaming TV buffers for way too long to be valuable or stutters in playback during peak hours, you are going to have a lot of explaining to do to the average consumer how NN is some sort of improvement over what the past 30 years have already taught us.
Two links I posted have been taken down. One was from Robert Kahn, “Father” of the Internet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/18/kahn_net_neutrality_warning/
The other is from Richard Bennett, an engineer who helped design the internet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/17/net_neut_slow_death/
Could have been an accident. Let’s hope these stay up.
In short, Kahn is just afraid that innovation will cease (throttling is hardly innovative) and thinks that Net Neutrality means “that nothing interesting can happen inside the net”, which essentially is a vague statement; Bennett thinks Net Neutrality will kill the Internet because it cripples network management, and that throttling BitTorrent is a good network management / business practice, because it uses TCP not “in a very gentlemanly fashion”, but these arguments and the remainder of the interview just digressed very far from the main topic, and so the interview was quite meaningless, e.g. the paragraph that really made little sense is this one:
“If we’re honest, we don’t know how to regulate the internet at a technical level. But we should stop pretending it’s a telephone network, and see how it handles packets. The ‘net neutrality’ lobby is saying all packets are equal – but that’s unsound and even inconsistent with common carrier law. There’s nothing to stop a transport offering different service levels for different prices.”
Past the first (subjective) statement, the factual incorrectness just goes on in that paragraph.
As usual you miss the point….CONSUMERS (aka VOTERS) are the ones demanding NN, thats why Obama made it part of his election platform.
Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
Simple HTTP traffic already consumers far more than, as you put, “BitTorrent porn download.”
You simply have no idea what you’re talking about do you?
Again, the hard truth is that P2P is here to stay. Get over it and come up with a solution. In the meantime, do us both a favor and quit repeating the same nonsense over and over again, that DPI is coming and NN means death for the sick THX to porn downloads.
Hmm, kind of reminds me of the Death Panel hype
Both of those thoughts quotes were given well before Comcast (2006? 2007?)began throttling BitTorrent over supposed network congestion (a farce).
The truth is that until we have honest competition amongst ISPs we do need NN.
“service classes” are not fine when you have only one provider to choose from.
READ > http://www.savetheinternet.com/
The flaw with your arguments is that you neglect the fact that Net Neutrality has been demanded by consumers in the first place.
According to reality, Net Neutrality appeals to the people who do know that many ISPs are not network-neutral, and those who are ignorant of that fact practically couldn’t care less.
Spamming can be dealt with even with Net Neutrality in effect. Your argument regarding VoIP and telephony is pointless, because if the network is full, then the network will refuse all new connections to it anyway.
Every one of your arguments are basically suggesting that the speed of the transfers will decrease when there are other connections to the network of the ISP, but that is a latency problem caused by the ISP’s hardware, and loss of throughput is not normally caused by other connections to the network.
With Net Neutrality in effect, any consumer’s communication stream will not be unreasonably degraded by other communication streams, so your arguments to declare prioritization as favorable are pointless. If they do degrade, it is the fault of the ISP, not the other consumers who subscribe to the same ISP.
You are the one who needs to do real homework.
The Internet can be used for public services that are regulated by a government, but the Internet itself will not become such a thing due to its uniqueness.
“If we can justify treating packets differently [...]”
Provide logical proofs of why those reasons are valid, because just simply stating that prioritization has a benefit or so (none of them are as realistically significant as you claim them to be) is poor justification. Just one cause does not necessarily produce only one consequence.
“[...] We are already NON net-neutral for very good reason.”
As long as you don’t even mention that reason, your assertion is weak, let alone worthless.
“FORGET for the moment the medical emergency surgery taking too long to arrive to save a life and think about simple streaming TV.”
What doctor would expect to give critical instructions to a surgeon while sitting at an unreachable distance? As well, what surgeon will wait for an instruction from anyone that is unreachable? It is not as if the surgeon is alone in the emergency room. Your use of melodrama just shows that you have cannot provide substance of real arguments.
“[Worthless speculation]”
I’m going to ignore every one of your paragraphs that contain the word ‘if’ in it, since all of them consistently turn out to be utter drivel.
Good debate. I’m with soulxtc, expecting anyone to trust greedy corporations to do the right thing by it’s customers is ridiculous. They’ve proven time and time again they only do what is the most profitable.
If that happened it would only be a freedom of choice within what they give you. I don’t call that a free freedom at all. More like a “freedom of their choice”, ya know?
disregard my last post, I’ve been struggling with my horrible connection all day and my post from this afternoon JUST went through.
To Sia:
“What I mean, D.AN, is this, exactly what I said in my first post. The more consumers know, the more they will reject Net Neutrality.”
The flaw with your argument is that you neglect the fact that Net Neutrality has been demanded by consumers in the first place.
““Net Neutrality” sounds good to those who don’t comprehend that we are already very non-net neutral and it BENEFITS the end user. …”
On the contrary, according to reality, Net Neutrality appeals to the people who do know that many ISPs are not network-neutral, and those who are ignorant of that fact practically couldn’t care less.
“… Cases in point: [...]”
Spamming can be dealt with even with Net Neutrality in effect. Your argument regarding VoIP and telephony is pointless, because if the network is full, then the network will refuse new connections to it anyway.
Every one of your arguments are basically suggesting that the speed of the transfers will decrease when there are other connections to the network of the ISP. That is why data transfer speed is a large factor when deciding to subscribe for Internet. With Net Neutrality in effect, any consumer’s communication stream will not be unreasonably degraded by other communication streams, so your arguments to declare prioritization as favorable are pointless. If they do degrade, it is the fault of the ISP, not the other consumers who subscribe to the same ISP.
You are the one who needs to do real homework.
“The Internet has become a utility and will inevitably be subject to more and more regulation.”
You wish. The Internet can be used for public services that are regulated by a government, but the Internet itself will not become such a thing due to its uniqueness.
“If we can justify treating packets differently we likely will for all of the above reasons and a lot more that will be come clearer as new apps roll out into the future.”
Provide logical proofs of why those reasons are valid, because just simply stating that prioritization has a benefit or so (none of them are that actually as significant you claim it to be) is poor justification. Just one cause does not necessarily produce only one consequence.
“But the point is this D.AN:
We are already NON net-neutral for very good reason.”
Well, I’m still waiting for you to actually state it.
“FORGET for the moment the medical emergency surgery taking too long to arrive to save a life and think about simple streaming TV.”
What doctor would expect to give critical instructions to a surgeon while sitting at an unreachable distance?
“[Worthless speculation]”
I’m going to ignore every one of your paragraphs that contain the word ‘if’ in it, since all of them consistently turn out to be utter drivel.