How the Google/Verizon proposal could kill the internet in 5 years

[villager]

A good overview on how special rules for wireless aren't so "neutral" after all:

How the Google/Verizon proposal could kill the internet in 5 years

<snip>


The Googlezon agreement was written partly in response to public interest groups and lawmakers lobbying for the US government to mandate "net neutrality." In a nutshell, net neutrality means that internet service providers like Verizon have to deliver everything – data, services, whatever – in a "neutral" way. For example, if we had net neutrality laws in the US, Verizon wouldn't be allowed to do things like make Gmail run faster than Facebook. Neither would Verizon be able to "prejudice" its consumers against certain services, for example by making any peer-to-peer traffic run really slowly.

Google has always been a staunch supporter of net neutrality, since its income depends on people being able to access the company's services quickly online. Imagine if Verizon demanded that Google pay extra to prevent YouTube from giving you the annoying twirly circle. Google's business model would be crippled, and you would probably have to start paying for YouTube access.

But nobody has successfully implemented net neutrality laws in the US. So if Google wants to protect its business, it has to make deals with companies like Verizon. And here's where things get ugly.

The internet becomes a pay-to-play medium

The the Googlezon agreement includes a section where both companies pledge to keep the "public internet" completely neutral. Verizon says it won't privilege some services over others (unless they are "special services" or "mobile services," but we'll get to that). And for its part, Google pledges that it will keep all of its services on the public internet.

But what the hell is this "public internet"? Isn't all of the internet public? Obviously there are internal business and government intranets that are private, and pay-to-play services, but the internet itself is by definition public. So why all this talk from Googlezon about how they'll keep the public internet neutral?

One simple answer, my friend: Googlezon is redefining the internet as a tiered service, like cable. And this new thing called the public internet is the lowest tier. Kind of like network television is the lowest tier in your television service options. From here on out, you will start to see the internet equivalent of cable service online: For an extra ten dollars, you can get the "movie lovers" package, where your ISP privileges Netflix and Hulu traffic, giving them to you super-fast. For another ten dollars, you can get the "concerned parent" package, which blocks peer-to-peer traffic as well as websites that they consider to be pornographic. And so on.

<snip>

http://io9.com/5610328/how-the-googleverizon-proposal-could-kill-the-internet-in-5-years

[GReedDiamond]

1. So, does this mean that my web sites...

...which are all sort of underground/alternative art and music oriented, would be put into -- using the "cable tv -- tiered levels" model, the "public access" tier, with extremely low bandwidth allocated?

That's what it seem like, to me. Which would definitely suck, since I have had some of these sites online since 1995.

[madrchsod]

2. bookmarked your site for later viewing

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. The author you cite is clueless

The Internet is not public, its a collection of private networks that have agreed to common technical standards and agreed to interconnect. It not public and never has been. Tiered service has been around since the beginning as well.

As the EFF page she cites points out, there is no clear authority today for the FCC to regulate the Internet. The Google-Verizon plan grants it explicitly, but limits its scope. Another (and better) approach would be more broadly reaching legislation that would allow the FCC to enforce some reasonable version of net neutrality, but without legislation giving them that authority, its never going to happen.

There is a pattern here...legislation. Without it, even what the FCC is proposing to pass tomorrow will be challenged. There is no legal foundation.

[villager]

5. "It's not public and never has been" -- except for, you know, when it was

Given that it was developed first by the military -- with public monies -- and then by universities.

Kind of like the broadcast spectrum, really.

But you can always count on someone to support corporate giveaways...

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Clearly you do not let facts get in the way of your screeds

The Internet was not public, not even then. Rudiments of the technology was about it, little more than concepts. The rest of it, the RFCs, the entire process is the fruit of collaboration of many over time. I have been involved with that pretty much since it started. Its not at all like spectrum since the government does not own the fiber etc. It has always been in private hands. Until recently that has been a very good thing.

There has always been some discrimination in traffic priority, and it was not always a bad thing. However, what is being looked at today is indeed intolerable. However, the answer is not a bunch of whining from clueless writers, the key is legislation. Right now the FCC is winging it when it comes to its authority in this area. It will most likely get shot down without some basis for its intervention. Lets get some authority and then we can take on the providers.

[villager]

10. " Clearly you do not let facts get in the way of your screeds" Nor your apologetics.

Unless you consider DARPA private. Which, evidently, you do:

"...In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. At the conference where he presented the paper, there was also a paper on a packet network concept from the UK by Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL. Scantlebury told Roberts about the NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND. The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers knowing about the other work. The word "packet" was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps. 5..."

etc.

http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml


Developed, originally, publicly. Later put to commercial use.

Analogy would be to bandwith giveaways, public land giveaways to railroads and telegraph companies, etc.

B

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. Technology concepts != bandwidth, your analogy is as flawed as your reasoning

To equate the intellectual property taken to viability by the community to real property owned by the public is totally specious. I suggest you read the entire article you cited to grasp the correct status of the Internet today.

I support net neutrality, it just needs some legal underpinnings which it does not have today. Whatever the FCC does in terms of regulation will be thrown out by the courts without it. We are better off waiting to get that legislation than going off half cocked and then losing the war.

[villager]

14. I''m glad to see your snark-ometer levels decreasing...

There are larger philosophical questions underpinning the increased "privitization" of access, however: To what degree should the public retain access to a technology/information grid developed in the public sphere? With public funds?

There is no "correct" status of the internet -- just an evolving one. How do we want to see it evolve?

the giving away of bandwidth in the radio and TV spectrums to private corporations does provide a cautionary tale...

Whether the courts will ultimately decide these issues is another discussion entirely -- including the degree to which the courts, anymore, can be trusted to be anything other than corporate bagmen...

Glad to see we both support true net neutrality, however...

[RKP5637]

4. Exactly the plan! "Kind of like network television is the lowest tier in your television

service options." Your PC will be as useless as your living room cable TV, pay more $$$ and more $$$ 'till you throw the damn thing in the trash.

[RandomThoughts]

6. And once again the question is.

Who will decide on the tiers, and will it be used for pressure of carrot and stick against groups.

If money first decides, what will be the intent and the effect.




And round and round it goes.


Will they have a high red flag count tiers,
will they have quantum pockets for studying different groups of people?


:rofl:

Think I saw that show.

[frazzled]

8. At least ...

I know when I know that I don't know what I'm talking about. And if that sounds like a Donald Rumsfeld statement, let that be a lesson to you.

I think 99% of the people here, including myself, and most especially the author of this article, don't fully understand what the proposal is, or what it will do, or what further legislation will do.

I think the first reader comment to the article to which the OP linked says it all:

Though I'm never really surprised to see this kind of absurd, alarmist diatribe (a specialty of Gawker's, it seems) coming from the blogosphere, I am always concerned by the degree to which it affects, and misinforms, its readership.

Let me be clear: I think this policy proposal is a bad idea, and I do support a broad and rigorously enforced definition of net neutrality. What I don't support is this kind of shrill, unproductive fearmongering.
Passing health care reform isn't going to impoverish and destroy America; electing Barak Obama isn't going to bring about the formation of a socialist world government; allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry is not going cause the collapse of Western civilization; and implementing the Google/Verizon plan as public policy would not undermine human liberty, globally crush innovation, or relegate the poor to digital slavery.

My good guess is that this commenter is probably fairly close to being right. Everyone, chill.

[msongs]

9. ACCESS providers strangle the net - Stalin said it's not who VOTES it's who COUNTS the votes nt

[thelordofhell]

11. So according to this article, Netflix is free?

I thought you paid for a package that let you stream movies and Netflix pays the providers for the bandwidth?

[prairierose]

12. It does not say that Netflix is free, what it is talking about is that...

neither your ISP nor any other section of the internet can slow Netflix down or charge you more to use your Netflix subscription. Comcast wants to be able to charge you an extra fee to get your Netflix subscription streaming video fast enough to watch. That is what Comcast and ATT want. To be able to slow down the parts of the internet, small business websites for example, that can not afford to pay extra for privileged speed.

Granted, some countries censor parts of the internet but that is not the same as privileging corporations with the money to pay more to reach your computer than the local small business that does not have the money for that and so their website loads very slowly on your computer.

It's all about money, as usual. And if the FCC does not uphold Net Neutrality tomorrow, they will usher in the tired internet. This is yet another greed-based, short-sighted regulation that will put the US far behind the rest of the world that still believes in and practices Net Neutrality.