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Well geewhiz, haven't giant corporations already given ample proof how they actually exist primarily to make life wonderful for us? Oh wait, that was an Ayn Rand fantasy novel.

Clearly, I'm not understanding something.

Say I own an apartment building or a rental car company. The law allows me to place reasonable limits on your use of my apartment or rental car. I'm not required to let you sublet my place to a school, or put excessive wear and tear on my rental car. How is that different from placing fair restrictions on your use of an ISP's bandwidth?

Whether or not ISPs' restrictions are indeed fair, whether the prices they charge are fair, whether the services they provide live up to their promises...these are definitely open to challenge. And they should be challenged.

But the very notion that ISPs should not be allowed to place reasonable restrictions on the use of their bandwidth in the first place just doesn't make sense. Or is it just another way of railing at "The Man"?

BulldogXX: the conflict is over the definition of "reasonable." Considering that there's no difference in cost for the ISP to provide the connection at its maximum potential speed versus the cost to provide it at a reduced speed for a given client--or at least ISPs so far have failed to explain why it would cost more (for instance, currently I get a max 15Mb/s line from FiOS; they haven't explained successfully to me why offering me the line at 5Mb/s would cost them less since their network is built out to a higher speed), a reasonable conclusion is that throttling that bandwidth but still charging me the same monthly rate, and then charging more for me to get access to the faster speeds for certain premium content (for which I'm already paying anyway) would be unreasonable.

In other words, tiered Internet access would be like buying an action figure where not only are the accessories sold separately, but so are parts of the action figure. Google "Johnny Longtorso," and that should give you some idea.

Again, the problem is over the definition of "reasonable."

Brett Glass, former PC World Help Desk columnist, here. This article is below PC World's typical journalistic standards. It purports to give the "facts," but in fact it is almost entirely opinion. And it's entirely one-sided. It lobbies for restrictive "network neutrality" regulations without exposing who is behind them (Hint: a corporation that has multiple worldwide monopolies and is bigger than the largest ISP) and the negative effects that the regulations would have on Internet service and upon consumers. It also fails to identify the so-called "public interest" groups it mentions as having received large amounts of funding from that corporation (which means that they're actually lobbying for its interests). (This is called "astroturf," or fake grassroots, lobbying.) Don't buy what you read in this article. It tells only one side of the story: the side that a company which placed many of the ads on this page wants you to hear. (Yes, the company is Google.)

Boomshadow, on 30 August 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

I don't think it has much to do with the cost of providing the service. It doesn't cost the gas or water utilities any more to provide me with more service, but if I use more gas or water than you do, my monthly bill is higher than yours. If you use more bandwidth than I do, why shouldn't your bill be higher than mine?

And in the particular case of internet service, I don't appreciate having a slower connection because someone who's paying the same as me (or less) is downloading a movie. Want to download movies (legally, of course)? Be prepared to pay more for it.

@Bulldog: Network neutrality is about equal treatment of network traffic regardless of where it's from or what it is. In other words, you pay for a connection to the internet and you get a connection to the internet. The ISP should provide the connection, but not limit it to certain usage scenarios (although, generically limiting the amount of usage or speed of the connection to what the user has paid for would not violate net neutrality).

Specifically regarding your movie downloading example: it's the ISP's fault for selling something they can't provide (i.e. "unlimited" usage, and more bandwidth than they actually have available). It's a standard telecom practice, and you're suffering from that. It's a problem that's really only tangentially related to net neutrality, but telecoms like to use gregarious downloaders as an argument for selectively limiting traffic. If an ISP can't provide "unlimited" bandwidth, they shouldn't be selling it, IMO.

nafhan, on 30 August 2010 - 12:31 PM, said:

And if the Federal government can't provide unlimited interstate highway lanes...what should they do?

@bretGlass Thanks for contributing nothing to the conversation. So what is the other side of the story? I'd love to read it and look at your sources.

I think that the internet providers are already ripping us off, especially the cell phone companies. So why allow them to steal more money from us? Isn't it enough that they charge us 25 cents for a text msg? Isn't it enough they charge us for text msgs and data plans (its all data on the same network, last I checked text and Mp3 were both 1's and 0's)? They're charging outragous prices and now they want us to trust them to fairly control the net? It's like trusting an unsupervised fat kid to stick with his diet in a houseful of junk food.

This post has been edited by rkinne01: 30 August 2010 - 01:40 PM

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I think one of the above posters makes a great point about the use of utilities. If you use more gas or water than I do, then you should pay more. This is a simple, easy to understand concept. But, the major problem with net neutrality has to do with allowing the government of either party to have control of the internet and the power to tell companies how to run their business's. Cass Sunstein who is the Chief of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration has in the past proposed a "fairness doctrine" for the internet. This should scare everyone on both sides of the political spectrum. This would be the start of ending the freedom that we now enjoy on the internet. I hope that my liberal friends realize that it was the internet that helped to rally grassroots support that got President Obama elected. Imagine if the government could force the Daily Kos to publish conservative articles to balance out their opinion or if they could force WND to publish liberal articles to balance their opinions. The internet is not broke and does not need fixing.

mikedgolf40505, on 30 August 2010 - 02:11 PM, said:

Here's the difference between utilities and internet access. Utilities are finite; there's only so much water to go around, electricity has a maximum, gas has a maximum. All of these have limits on how much the company possesses. Internet is infinite, however. The wires that send the data don't expire after 500GB of data transfered. Without a doubt, there is a maitenance cost to keep those lines up, but beyond that it doesn't cost Verizon a cent more to give me 10Mbit v. 5Mbit if the line to my house is capable of transferring 10Mbit. Me using double the capacity is NOT causing stress on the lines to my house, and internally it's not causing stress either. You're not wrong in saying that there's a big political issue behind net neutrality, but there is an actual issue as well.

BGG001, on 30 August 2010 - 03:05 PM, said:

I will not dispute the logic in your argument since I am by no means an expert in the field of ISP business practices. I do however have a problem with the government telling a company how it can run it's business. Here in Lexington, KY we have several choices of ISPs. I choose Insight because it offers the fastest level of service. You can buy different plans, differing on the speed you want. I pay the max to receive the 20 meg max that is offered. That speed will soon move to 30 meg and I will change my service when that comes out. Do I like paying more for the increase in speed, no; who enjoys paying more money. But the fact is that right now there is only one company that can offer that kind of speed in Lexington. I could cut my bill considerably if I wanted to go with some of the other companies that offer 10 meg, but I "choose" not to. Like anything else (remember PCs, HD TVs, Cell Phones and numerous other examples) when more and more competition comes, that will always drive the price down and the customer service up. I am not sure what you or anyone else here does for a living, but I would not want the government coming in and telling me how to run my business. The fact is that the government has no constitutional right to tell a company how to run their business, although they do all the time. However with the advent of new technologies the laborious time needed to download certain large file types will be a thing of the past anyway. It does seem to me, and I could be wrong about this, and if I am please let me know; that some people are worried that the ISPs are going to stop illegal file sharing. I guess a good rule to remember is that nothing in life is free and there is nothing new under the sun.

mikedgolf40505, on 30 August 2010 - 03:23 PM, said:

It's an age-old argument that no one can ever agree on. It's communism v. capitalism. In theory, the companies will follow the customer's demands; however, if the companies gain too much power over the consumer, they don't have to listen to them and they can exploit for profit because there will be no governmental intervention or punishment. The government controlling the businesses is essentially socialism, which I'm in favor for (please, no idiotic patriot bashing here. I think the cold war and the red scare are over and we can all have opinions without witch hunts, right?) because, simply put, the government is essentially the people's word. I definitely have issues with our government (because, really, it's so mucked up that it's not doing what it's supposed to anymore), but the government isn't out to turn a huge profit out of me to spend on luxuries for themselves (well...I'm not going to get into conspiracies). If capitalism functioned as it was supposed to, then government intervention would not be necessary; however, we can clearly see it is flawed, lest we wouldn't have recessions (common economics says we will always have recessions, yes, but consider the causes of the most recent recession: lack of governmental regulation). Communism, too, is flawed. Any system that we have now has flaws. My point is that just because there is governmental regulation over internet companies doesn't make it socialistic or communistic, it's just a balance that is required from keeping capitalism from completely crashing. Telecommunication is government regulated, and I would argue that the internet is a telecommunication.


Also, you paying more for a service is an example of what I personally have a problem with. It is your choice to choose to go with the more expensive company; however, it's that decision that allows them to charge a premium for the faster speeds and keep you locked into them and hindering their competition. If the internet lines were government regulated/owned, you could have that speed from any provider and the price, theoretically, would be substantially lower.

I am locked into a local company, Mount Hored Telecommunications (MHTC) that offers me 3/1.5MBit wireless DSL. I live about 3 miles away from a faster connection from a competitor. I believe we have a choice of going with land DSL that runs at 768/192KBit, but that hardly seems logical, so we are locked into MHTC which is stifling competition from wanting to compete.

This is mostly opinionated, not fact. I have no problems saying that flat out. I just don't want to be misquoted as saying I'm spouting only the truth and nothing but...I'm not blatantly lying either, though. Some may be off-base, some may be spot on, but most of what I have written is pure opinion that is moot and can be disputed for days on end without a conclusion. Also, it's decently off-topic but I tried to relate everything back to my point as best as possible.

The comparison with utilities is misleading. You use more electricity; you pay more sounds reasonable when applied to the Net Neutrality question. But the ISP’s are saying they want to limit or charge more for certain usage. This is like saying if you use 100 watt-hours of electricity on lighting, I’ll charge you X, but if you use 100 watt hours on heating I’ll charge you Y. We wouldn’t tolerate that- the electricity is the same. The amount used is the same. The only difference is the use to which you put it.

In my opinion, what we are seeing here is a step backward to the days when we were charged for the time we were online in the days of dialup, and the bandwidth we used when broadband became more available. Then an entrepreneurial ISP gave ‘unlimited’ usage for a single fee providing you stayed below a set limit. This then developed to a single payment for unlimited bandwidth. It was done to encourage customers to leave their current ISP. Other ISP’s followed suit. You may remember some time back certain ISP’s attempting to introduce, unsuccessfully, bandwidth caps. Part of the reason this failed was because not every ISP followed suit. Part of f the reason was the outrcry.

The Net Neutrality argument is being used as an excuse to introduce caps and charge more for the service we already receive. If it can be enshrined in law, there would be little we could do or say about it.

When I first went on the internet, I couldn’t understand why I was charged to connect to the ‘free wide world web’. Of course, I quickly realised somebody invested in the infrastructure to allow that connection and they were entitled to a return. But beyond that, the rest of the stuff out there was, in general free. I think it should stay that way. We should not allow the pricing and other decisions to be in the hands of a few people or organisations whose main aim is to generate profit. We should not allow those few to be granted rights to sell bandwidth to the highest bidder.

What has not been mentioned is the higher bandwidth premium connections already available to those that want or need them. There is no need, in my opinion for this tiered provision beyond what already exists.

Now, I live in the UK and some of what I have said may not be exactly how you have seen or see things. This is not, as yet a major issue here. But in my experience, what happens in the US will filter over to us. I imagine many of our ISP’s are watching closely the outcome of this debate. And if the ISP’s win in the US and are allowed to filter bandwidth based on ability to pay, they will follow suit.

One other observation. As to the argument against government telling a company how to run its business, they do it every day. They tell it it must run its business safely for the benefit of its employees and the public at large. They tell it how much tax to pay. There is consumer legislation to protect the unwary customer. There are a myriad of rules a company must adhere to if it wishes to operate legally.

This is no different to government ensuring the ISP’s act fairly. Of course, we may disagree as to what is fair.

BGG001, on 30 August 2010 - 03:05 PM, said:

Only small note I want to make here, Verizon does have to pay for the OC3, OC12, 48, etc that they are using for backhaul on your internet. They have to balance the cost of the pipe, the maintenance, etc against the projected income for the area. Larger pipes cost them more, so sometimes, they are limited by what is most economically feasible to offer. Think about it like this, if they offer 5 speed tiers - 1.5, 3, 5, 10, and 15 mbit, all priced accordingly, and they now need an OC-48 to maintain throughput for say 100,000 users and instead of taking the 15mbit, too many of them opt for 5, they now have a largely wasted oc-48 pipe, and are paying for something that isn't being used, something easily serviced by an oc-12. Now the only reason I consider this an issue, is they usually do studies to see what the majority wants, then plans for that. 3-5mbit is about the industry average, and is fast enough for 99% of what people do daily. Would it make sense to install and pay for a pipe that you figure will have a very low ROI? Now, I am not saying this is 100% accurate, but I will say that if I was in the internet business, I would plan for the 'average' and for sustainable first. Then, if there is demand for higher speeds, find a way to implement it later.

BGG001, on 30 August 2010 - 03:47 PM, said:

First let me say that I will not bash or name call you because of your point of view. While I am on the total opposite end of the spectrum from you, I greatly respect the fact that you will call your views for what they are. To address two of the points that you put forth; first just give it some time and you will hare more options for ISP services where you live, it make take a while, but it will happen. Secondly, I would respectfully disagree with you about the power that companies can have over consumers. Consumers will stop using a company if they do not like it and force change, unless you have a monopoly. I think we can all agree that monopolies are not good for anyone. However, under the current system of quasi socialism that we have, no matter who we vote in, nothing will change. The problem I see and the problem that the founding fathers found with government control, is that government will always look to extend it's power. All you need to do is look at the history of this country since the "new deal" redefined the meanings of the words specific and general. At the present time we have a very corrupt brand of crony capitalism that infects both parties. It is actually under these conditions that monopolies will grow and flourish. If you take government out of the business spectrum, where it has no constitutional business anyway, then the politicians will not have the ability to favor certain companies or causes for the benefit of money. Right now both parties are adrift in this corruption. If socialism if what you favor; that is your opinion and I will not deride it. I will state that man cannot be free, when he has to be burdened with supporting casuses, peoples and forced to have his choices in what he buys and how he buys it restricted (cannot sell pets in SF, NY trying to outlaw salt in restaurants etc.). While our nation is for from perfect, capitalism has led to the freest, richest, country in the history of man. I would take that record against any socialist/communist state that have existed.

SmilingCarcass, on 30 August 2010 - 04:09 PM, said:

I am not sure what your business is like in the UK, but mine here in America is overwhelmed with meaningless and costly regulations that serve no other purpose than to keep government employees employed and drive the price of goods up and wages of the average worker down. You should see the thick MSDS manual I have to maintain and keep on hand at my business, and that is just one minor example of a worthless type of regulation. While I am not in favor on zero regulation, lets be honest companies that have an unsafe work environment will not have any employees.

Here's my two cents worth, without snarky comments. My main concern is that ISPs will limit access to the breadth of information that is the web by providing more bandwidth for traffic that goes to their preferred partners and throttling down access to competitors, or by charging more for access to specific sites.

Everyone can bash Google all they want, but they built their success on a concept that was unheard of at the time: a search engine that actually returned objective results, instead of steering people toward certain sites at the expense of others (that did not pay the search provider).

Like many, my internet experience began with AOL, and for all I knew, that was the sum total of what the internet internet had to offer. Then I figured out that by closing the AOL interface and just using a browser, huge amounts of information became available. Once I learned how my usage was being directed to steer profit to AOL's partners and limit the information I had access to, I dumped AOL and got an independent ISP. And guess what? I was not alone.

I do not want a return to those days. And without some regulation, I do not see what's to stop Comcast, AT&T, et al. from putting my web usage into a box that fits their needs. They could charge me extra for "outside access," or just make connections to their partner's competitors extremely slow.

That would be unfair, and it would harm the web as we know it. Do you really want the web to be just like TV? If so, just sit back and let the big boys take care of things, without all of that annoying government interference. OK, maybe that was a bit snarky; I'm sorry.

This post has been edited by Boletusedulis: 30 August 2010 - 04:53 PM

mikedgolf40505, on 30 August 2010 - 04:27 PM, said:

I know you said you're not for zero regulation, but understand that if the government slacks on regulation regarding safety, the companies will slack on safety if there is no repercussions. (The Jungle is a fine read here). Most companies ride right on the border of regulations; if regulations were to be lowered, I have no doubt in my mind that if it gave the company an incentive to lower their safety (IE cost) then every company would take those cuts in order to earn a higher profit. The employees could quit, but they'd have to go with another job where it's the same situation. (Yes, I'm aware that The Jungle was during the beginning era of  modern industry...but it doesn't mean there isn't a lesson behind it). The same thing happens with the internet. ISPs can and will do whatever it takes to turn a profit. Without regulation on what is "fair" they can do as they damn well please and say, "Well, we think it's fair" leaving their customers with little-to-no choice...either dump the idea of having access to the internet or have the internet and take the shaft). I'm not saying necessarily that the government needs to control the companies' every move, but some form of regulation will be necessary in the very near future to prevent the defecation from hitting the oscillation.

P.S. I'm glad you're able to be civil. I know plenty of people on your side of the fence who are very hard to talk to...I'm sure you know some on my side too.

P.P.S. The oil companies have power over their consumers. Do not doubt that for a second. It's the core of our country. They allow us to travel, have electricity, have heat...what they say goes. If there were no regulations here (which, regarding this specific subject, the regulations are like rubber) then they could do as they damn well please to us. The reality is, if they raised gas to $4/gal tomorrow, the American public would bend over and take it. It will take a lot to have an energy revolution to an alternative fuel source (it's underway now, but it's moving very slowly...should have started in the 70's). I don't want to see our "free" internet head in that direction due to lack of regulation (OR over-regulation for that matter).

P.P.P.S. I know I'm probably going to regret bringing up some off-topic politics to try and tie it with internet regulation :/.