NetNeutrality and You

[heidi]

I posted briefly about this topic a few weeks back, but I haven't had a chance to go back online and write up a full explanation of why this is a huge and problematic issue for everyone who accesses websites or email, ever.

So luckily, jediboadicea wrote an amazingly eloquent post about the situation and has generously allowed me to repost it here - you can find it behind the cut. Here's the question:

If you're reading this online, then this issue matters to you, because you use the internet for personal enjoyment. You like to keep up with the mundane trivialities of on-line friends in your life, because hey, why the hell not? It's your life, it's your free time, and this is harmless fun of the superficially enriching but sometimes necessary variety.

What the COPE bill does is continue to utterly destroy the concept of "net neutrality" that was first gutted by the Supreme Court and the FCC just last year. This new law says that all internet service providers will now be able to create a two tier internet. Every person or company who wants to run any sort of website will have to now pay additional money - money on top of what they pay to buy webspace in the first place - to the telecom companies in order to have a website that loads smoothly and more quickly than those who don't pay. It means that if Google wants to load as quickly on your browser as it currently does, they will have to approach the internet service providers in every region individually and pay additional money to get premium service. Otherwise, Google will be relegated to the lower tier, and load less quickly.

But you have high-speed internet, you say? Tough cookies. It doesn't matter what sort of connection you have if the internet service providers themselves are feeding the site to you more slowly. This means that unless you - yes, you - as a site owner - can pay a ransom fee to every different internet service provider in the country, your site will load like crap.

It means that Verizon, or Comcast, or TimeWarner, or whoever runs your internet service in your area, will now have power over deciding which websites are easily accessible to you and which are not.

Your favorite blogger couldn't pay the additional fee for your area? Oh well. Your favorite specialty online store couldn't pay this additional operating cost? Tough luck. Your political candidate's fundraising site couldn't pay extra money in order to fundraise? He was probably just a jerk anyway. Your favorite fandom site where you donwload all your crack fandom fixes? Yeah right, like they have the money to pay Verizon to give you stuff for free.



If you have a Live Journal account as you read this, then this issue matters to you, because this is a perfect example of the type of service that will be affected, and how it will change an aspect of your life you have happily taken for granted. You have your Live Journal account for free? Awesome. You pay a few dollars every couple months to have your Live Journal account and 100 fun user pics? Cool. But if the Senate passes a similar bill to COPE, you can kiss the speed with which Live Journal loads goodbye, because they will now have to pay additional money to every single internet service provider to keep up this level of service.

If you live in major urban centers, like New York or Los Angeles, you might be okay, because should Live Journal choose to make that additional payment, they'll likely make it to providers in areas with the most clientele to be serviced. But if you live in Wyoming? You're out of luck, buddy. They likely can't afford to make a ransom payment to every provider in the country; they're going to have to pick and choose. Because remember, it's not some big blanket provider that services everyone. Every region has different providers, and each would have to be negotiated with independently. Oh, and those few dollars you pay for your LJ account? You can expect that to increase, I'll bet. Who could blame them? On top of all the money they already pay now just to get space on the internet, now they'll have to pay more in order to get the "good" service.



If you have your own website, or a free account to share pictures, or a favorite site to download media, or post your fanfiction at an online archive, then this issue matters to you.

You like YouTube? You like FlickR? You like PhotoBucket? You like blog spaces? What's so cool about all these places is that now you can share your pictures, your words, your passions, with faraway family, with faraway friends, with the whole world, at the click of a button. It's easy. It's fast. It connects us all. Most of the time it's free. Best of all, it's a place where Joe in New York and Mandisa in India can be in the same place, on the same footing, no barriers, no issues of distance or social or economic preference between them. You can access the internet? Awesome. We're all free here.

So much for that. Do you think that awesome site devoted to your obscure OTP is going to be able to pay premiums to internet service providers to make sure that they load as easily on your browser as they do now?

Google, eBay, Amazon, and Microsoft have all joined together to ask people to fight against the passage of this new law. If they think it's going to harm their operations, if they think they won't be able to afford paying these ransoms, then what hope do you you have?



If you use the internet to study for your schoolwork, or research information for private interest, then this issue matters to you, because these are certainly sites that will not be able to pay for premium service. Most of these places are already operating at a loss anyway, because they feel that providing information is a service to the community, and so they do it at no cost to you, willing to pay what is already necessary just to buy webspace in the first place. While we cut funding to libraries all across the country, we have all clung to the hope that at least the internet is a place where information can be shared freely. Who hasn't come to rely on the ease of a search engine to learn just about anything you could possibly want to know about in the world? That awesome site about Middle Ages textiles, with all the amazing pictures and scans, that you have bookmarked in the hope of maybe someday using that information in a story? That page with the Central Asian recipes that you have bookmarked in the hope of inflicting them on an unsuspecting family someday? Be prepared for those to take much longer to load.

Well, and what's the big deal about that? you say. Who cares if it's a few more seconds, or even a minute or two? It's still there. You just have to be patient, right?

Honestly, how patient are you? When Live Journal takes more than a few seconds to load, don't you mutter darkly, hit stop, hit refresh, and expect it to pop up instantaneously? How irritated will you be when that doesn't happen? How irritated will you be when that happens on nearly every site you go to?

More importantly, why should you sit back and let this happen to an internet that has been equal and free to everyone for so long? Why give up what already exits? Why let massive companies who are already being paid by you for access, AND by the webiste owners for webspace, have the right to say that they need to be paid again in order to give you what they're already giving you now?

The argument that implementing cutting edge technology raises the telecom companies' operating costs doesn't hold water here either. Since when have big companies not implemented the newest technology? That's standard operating practice. That's what you're already paying for. And anyone who has seen their cable or DSL costs keep going up knows perfectly well that they're paying for just that. But we still do it, right? Because we're getting the same end result. You want to keep paying the same price for a different and unequal and filtered end result? I don't know about other people, but I certainly don't pay for internet for the privelege of getting Paramount Pictures' official website to load faster; I pay for the internet to have access to my obscure anime downloads and my Live Journal. Somehow I don't think those sites are going to be able to meet new gatekeeping ransoms when Google and eBay can't.



If you've ever paid to upgrade your internet access, then this issue matters to you. This is the real kicker, and I hope that those with more capitalist and free-market tendencies than I will be angered by this part of it too. Because what the passage of this law means is that, even if you pay for a service, it doesn't matter. You have paid for internet access in the first place. Okay, that's fine, that just means you have access to whatever is out there and however it is designed to come to you. But if you've ever paid even a penny to get faster access, you've done it on the premise that the product you are paying for is faster access. This is what you have paid for. This is the product you have paid for. You, as a consumer, have paid money to a provider, and you expect to be provided with the product you paid for. Why am I emphasizing this? Because under this law, it won't matter what you paid for. You can have paid for light-speed internet access that actually predicts your thought and loads your desired page before you've finished typing in the url, but it won't matter one whit unless the page you're trying to load has paid the ISP for special-treatment equally lightning-fast access too. Those pages that haven't paid are going to load like dial-up, baby. Which means that the lightning-fast access you paid for is only going to apply to those sites that are on the ISP company's "good list."

What, you mean you wanted access to everything on the internet at the same speed? You mean that's why you paid for high-speed access in the first place? Isn't the first law of good business that you give the customer what they paid for, otherwise you're a fraud and a thief and not serving the market properly?

Oh well.



This is not an issue of liberals wanting to "regulate" the internet. If anything, this is much more a self-interested issue of pure Money As God, that everyone should be able to agree with. You're paying for something. You should get what you paid for. You didn't pay for the internet in order to be told by a massive telecom company which sites you should be allowed to view easily and which you shouldn't. How many times have those of us who pay for cable television flipped through 400 channels and moaned that there was nothing worth watching? That's because someone else chooses what you get access to. The internet has never been that. The internet has been everything, has been the world, has been the place where everyone has a place. That awesome independent musician. That radical political group. That cartoon fansite.

Preventing the government from passing a law that gives massive corporations the right to tier the internet does not mean you want the government to regulate the internet. It means you just want the internet to be what it has always been - a place where everyone and every site is equal, you pay for your bandwidth and your space, you pay for your Live Journal, and you get exactly what you paid for, no preferences, no gatekeeping, just payment and product and a free exchange of ideas and information and art and friendships. That's what you have now. That's not government regulation.

That's what you won't have, if the Senate agrees to pass these new laws.

This is not a trivial issue that will only affect the trivial aspects of your life. Do you really want Verizon to be able to decide which news and information sites load more easily for you? Do you really want TimeWarner to be able to decide which fansites you can easily download from? Do you want everything you have known and loved about the internet to be fundamentally changed? Good luck getting back across that bridge once it's crossed. Getting internet freedom back after it's been parced out and sold is going to be infinitely hardly than giving it away was, if not impossible.

This website has loads of information:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Anyone who has heard my stance on the immigration issue should have an idea of how poorly I think of Representative Sensenbrenner, so when I say that he is listed as a Net Hero on this site, you can bet it's not some "liberal bastion of partisanship," but an important information site for everyone. Visit it while you still can.

"The Washington Post has an op-ed piece (this should be a direct link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702108.html?referrer=emailarticle ) urging people to let their representatives know that this is unacceptable.

This page in particular explains just a few of the ways this could impact individuals:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=threat

The site also provides a way to automatically send a message to your representatives. To do so, go here:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=act "

So pass this word on. Link to this entry if you want to and it's more simple for you. Time is crucial. We turn a blind eye to politics all the time because it's so overwhelming and annoying sometimes, but if you are reading this on the internet, then this issue matters to you.



And if you haven't heard about this before, then re-examine your perceptions of the mainstream media news. Who do you think owns your local news network anyway? If you don't know, research. You might be surprised.

Comments

[aillil.livejournal.com]

I'd sign that petition in a second -- however, I'm neither American nor Canandian, so I don't have a representative in either congress -- i.e. I'm out. Is that intentional?

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Likewise...would it do any good to contact my MP?

[scribbulus-ink.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the detailed information; I just used their form to send a message to my representatives.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

God, this is depressing. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. It's not as if politicians listen to ordinary people; they're far more likely to listen to PACs, special interest groups and lobbyists.

Shit.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

And, frustratingly, in this case, they're not even listening to Microsoft. Sigh.

[infinitegraces]

What is Microsoft saying on this issue, Heidi?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Microsoft, google and other internet players, are fighting the telecoms on this, trying to prevent said telcos from getting the right to charge the access fees.

[infinitegraces]

Well, it's certainly a good way to get people's respect, isn't it? By trying to help save them from being "restricted"?

Personally, I think this bill is stupid, and should be tossed to the sharks in the Gulf and never seen again.

[daintress.livejournal.com]

Can I repost this as well?

[aidenfire]

I've always wondered this--does it do any good to write or call your rep/senator if you're not yet of voting age?

[marie-j-granger.livejournal.com]

You could get your parents to do it -- or remind said rep/senator that you will be of voting age in a few years.

And thanks for the info, Heidi!

[nightfalltwen.livejournal.com]

It appears I can't make a difference at "save the internet-act"

We're sorry but it appears that you are not eligible to participate in this campaign. This campaign is designated for constituents of the targeted decisionmaker(s) and based upon your address, it appears that you do not live in an area represented by the targeted decisionmaker(s).

Sucks to be me.

So basically I just have to sit back and hope that other people can make a difference.

[empressov.livejournal.com]

So isn't this going to encourage an eventual monopoly is the land of ISPs? Because it's going to come down to one particular comglomerate ISP (charter cable, etc) who has the largest chunk of cusotmers being the one to which website owners choose to pay money to as their top priority, which will create a circular monopoliy-building effect where more people go to that most common ISP and then more and more websites only pay in to the one ISP.

How can anyone think this is a good idea? And if Google, Microsoft, Ebay, et al all would like to fight this, wouldn't it be best for them to get one particular large ISP on their side (or create their own) which would then refuse to two-tier their service and would make this service nationally available to prevent any other ISP from doing this in order to remain competitive? I'd totally pay more to an ISP that promised to tell the government and this Act to collectively screw you.

Thanks so much for posting all of this...

[jords.livejournal.com]

Both for the links to writing to my Congressmen as well as the info in general. Fortunately, Wisconsin tends to have fairly active Congress reps, so now all involved have received an earful about how if I'm paying for a cable modem, I had better by-God be able to access both my bank's website and my brother's wedding blog with equal speed.....

It was more eloquent than that of course. But basically it said, "I paid for it, what the hell is this country coming to, blah blah, equal rights for student, senior citizens, homemakers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and anyone else with a mouse."

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting topic as an illustration of economic theory. The above piece seems to me to be founded on unrealistic premises, though.

Google, eBay, Amazon, and Microsoft have all joined together to ask people to fight against the passage of this new law. If they think it's going to harm their operations, if they think they won't be able to afford paying these ransoms, then what hope do you you have?

Let's be very clear about this: These companies are among the wealthiest in the world; Google alone has five billionaires. They will pay, if it comes to that; they simply don't want to. What the telecoms are trying to do here is very similar to what Microsoft is trying to do in China: Squeeze an emerging market for a little more cash on the theory that it's worth the effort. All business is based on this premise.

Competing factions will develop solutions to fight it, if they can, and of course they can. There is simply nothing proprietary about the nature of broadband networks to prevent other people from coming along and doing it better, or for less money, than the current player. Quality of service distinctions already exist and that's quite reasonable; consumers already see far slower throughput than businesses.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that WiMax and other similar technologies completely blow away the premise that owning cable or owning fiber means owning some sort of monopoly high-bandwidth Net service. Sadly, the large majority of the consumers who are worried about this could not even begin to define what WiMax is yet; they simply aren't tech professionals.

It's true that the telecoms have wielded enormous clout in select markets at select times, such as a Verizon-sponsored initiative in PA that gave telecoms veto power if city governments try to give away WLAN access at low or no cost. Still, the premise that the telecoms will have more clout at a federal level than other, wealthier businesses, and thus will be able to create and maintain unchallengeable monopolies, seems very dubious to me, though.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

But isn't the problem that traffic needs to go over the telecoms' pipes at some point in some huge percentage of the time, just to get from hub to hub? Even with wifi as the "last 50 metres", a packet uses a major telecom's wires during its travels. And I'm not even sure if it's possible to fully circumvent that.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

WiMax is quite different from WiFi.

WiMax is one example of a breed of broadband wireless I've been writing about since 2000 which spans multiple miles, not multiple meters, alternate examples of which include laser transmission (TeraBeam, for instance, was used by Merril Lynch after 9/11) or satellite. Broadband wireless networks will eventually overtake fiber and copper for many reasons, not least among them that they're incredibly easy, quick, and inexpensive to deploy by comparison and the technical shortcomings have already mostly been overcome.

But even if you do presume it all comes down to fiber... and that new fiber can never again be laid (which Google obviously questions)... the fiber we have today is not owned by one company and never will be, and it's already illegal for the companies that own it to collude behind closed doors to manipulate prices.

There are certainly problems of this type in the technology world, but network technology as a class is intrinsically much less vulnerable to them because it's built atop fundamentally interoperable open standards... quite differen from, for instance, the Windows API. If Microsoft suddenly decides to charge all the PC companies three times as much for Windows, they will have to swallow and eat it, because the alternative is going out of business.

I have to chuckle at any article that portrays Microsoft as a struggling, cash-poor small-timer trying to survive against the onslaught of a much larger, more powerful monopoly.

[mogliecat.livejournal.com]

I signed the petition, though I'm not sure that the evil telecoms are really as evil as the article makes them out to be.

1. Verizon has actually stated that they do not plan to reduce current bandwidth to content providers that do not pay this so-called ransom. They claim that this is a situation where, for example, a website that is video intensive could temporarily use greater bandwidth than what the end-user is paying for in order to deliver videos in real time.

2. I'm not sure that the backbone providers can get away with slowing speeds for all non-paying content providers what with consumer power being relatively high and switching cost being almost non-existant between dial-up and high-speed connections.

In any case, I do hope that net neutrality wins out just in case the backbone providers really are that evil, and they don't have a concern about how many end-users will switch off the high margin, high speed connections.

nothing i type is going to make it better

[jords.livejournal.com]

Thought I would update and let you know that my posting to my Congressman actually resulted in a reply. I'm torn between amusement and embarrassment...for reasons that will become quite clear shortly....

"Dear Ms. ~

Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 5417, the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act and the issue of net neutrality. I appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns.

The advent of high speed Internet access, also known as broadband, has increased the ability of Americans to access information and has been a catalyst for innovation and competition. However, given the current competitive landscape of the telecommunications market, companies that control networks that provide Internet access may exercise market power in a discriminatory manner to limit consumers' ability to access certain Internet content, applications, or services.

I introduced H. R. 5417 to protect consumers and other Internet users from possible anti-competitive conduct by requiring broadband providers to interconnect with the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis and refrain from giving faster, more efficient access to certain providers of Internet content, services and applications based on their affiliation with the broadband provider. H.R. 5417 will preserve net neutrality principles and continue the tradition of innovation and competition that has historically defined and contributed to the success of the Internet. The House Committee on the Judiciary favorably reported H.R. 517 on May 25 and more information regarding this legislation is available on the Committee's website, which can be accessed at http:://judiciary.house.gov

As the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rest assured I will remain mindful of your views as Congress addresses this issue. Thank you again for contacting me.

Sincerely,

F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr."

**In case you didn't guess, bold print was on my part, not his**

Ok, so while I wrote both of the senators and this learned gentleman more or less the same message, "Preserving Net Neutrality is essential, especially since I already pay a ridiculous fee for RoadRunner and by God I had better be able to access my bank's site, my LJ, and my brother's blog with equal speed, yadda yadda yadda", it is only fitting that since I didn't take the time to say, read up on who supported what, one of them went to a guy who not only supports Net Neutrality, but introduced the bill into the House to protect it. Mouth, meet foot.

anywho, thought I'd share.

Re: nothing i type is going to make it better

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Oh, meep! But yes, at least you know where he stands!