Net neutrality... opinions?

As you pointed out, Common Carrier only implies that you can't sue the supplier. Like getting mail you don't want from the post office or getting phone calls you don't want. These carriers are same from harm because of this.

But correct me if I am wrong, even the mail services charge more for what type of delivery you want. First Class, Second Class and Express types. For the most part they carry the same stuff you see on the web, just in paper format. Pictures, Movies from Netflix, catalouges for shopping.....

Are you arguing against net neutrality or for paid emails? They aren't the exact same topics. Please clarify.

-Ryan

The travesty we have now due to the idea that "email should be free" is an example of letting socialistic-thinking run rampant.

Uncontrolled spam is an example of the kind of the ill consequences we can expect if we let the "net neutrality" idea also run rampant.

Like it or not, the lines built by telcos are owned by the telcos. We should not force the telcos to carry traffic that hurts their business without also allowing then to recapture some of that lost revenue by charging more for that content that causes them lost business.

Trying to circumvent the ownership rights of the telcos is why this is sounding more and more socialist. Until and unless we respect ownership rights we will keep eroding the freedoms we have.

Unfortunately this forum and the podcast in general has become the last bastion of socialist intent on turning the internet into a communist utopia (and we know how well that idea worked in the old Soviet Union).

Since when is it a right to have free email?????

You say that the lines are built by telcos, which is true, but those telcos have also gotten billions of dollars in tax cuts to assist with building them, and they are yet to deliver on what they promised to provide to get those tax cuts. In that regard they're not just building the networks with their money, but with tax money as well.

The government did not GIVE money to the telcos to have lines built, they TOOK LESS as an incentive to the market-space to encourage an activity.

Here is an example:

Government does not tax churches. Nor do they give them money, but they TAKE LESS (nothing, usually) from churches as a way to encourage the kinds of things that churches do for people.

Now, does that mean that the government owns churches and can tell churches what to do with their buildings? No, of course not.

Same thing with the lines built by the telcos. Has the government TAKEN LESS from the telcos (as a group) - OK, I don't know that for sure but for the sake of argument let us say that is the case. Does TAKING LESS from a business give the government the right to tell that business what to do with the assets it has spent money to build?

Absolutely not!

The lines built by the telcos are the property of the telcos as it was their money they expended to build them, regardless of how much they were taxed, or not taxed.

A few years ago we all got a tax cut. Personally, our family household got a tax cut of just under $2,000. That doesn't mean the government gave me $2,000 so I'm NOT beholden to the government/tax payers to do their bidding.

Tax breaks for corporations are NOT "corporate welfare."

Lets take my sister as an example.

She was divorced by her husband leaving her with three kids. He did several things to avoid child support so she was left on her own (with some help from me and other members of her birth-family).

So, here she is, a working mom trying to make ends meet. So lets say she decides to take in laundry from neighbors to make a little money (this now is fiction). Now, being a low-income worker she does not pay taxes (meaning that the government TAKES LESS of her income than they take out of, say, my income).

So, since the government 'subsidises' my sister with tax-breaks does that give the government the right to tell my sister how she can use the washer and dryer she bought with her own money to perform this washing service? Does the 'tax break' she gets give the right to the government to tell my sister that she cannot create a 'priority service' and put washing some customer's clothes ahead of others if those customers are willing to pay extra?

I take it your answer would be 'no'.

So, in the spirit of 'equal treatment under the law' why should we treat a telecom company any different than we would treat my sister? Both are 'legal entities' under the law.

If you still think they should be treated different then perhaps you need to examine your motives and find out if you just have a grudge against telcos.

The tiered internet means -- following your analogy-- that when you order something from Amazon and pay the shipping on a book, then FedEx gets to go back to the *publisher* and charge them for shipping the book to you. Does that make sense? Why does Macmillan have to pay FedEx for Amazon to ship the book to you?

Carrying it further now put FedEx in the business of publishing and sending you a catalog where you can buy books from them.

Now add the final tip of the hat where FedEx says that large packages sometimes get lost or take a long time to deliver and so if the publisher of the book you're buying from Amazon doesn't pay extra the book might not arrive very fast if at all, but if you buy a book from FedEx it will be guaranteed to arrive.

NOW cut down the playing field to where you only can choose to use FedEx or a pony to have your packages delivered, and while the pony is cheaper it's really really slow. So you have to play by FedEx's rules whetehr you like it or not. You have no choice, which is very Soviet-like if you ask me.

NOW you have an analogy that reflects the tiered Internet debate.

When I do order something from Amazon and I ask it to be shipped FedEx then FedEx does get the cost for shipping it to me from Amazon. That IS the way it works with physical material. Therefore Amazon passes the cost of shipping on to me at order time.

If I don't like the extra cost of FedEx then (at order time) I can choose to have it shipped via another carrier.

So.... If you don't like the extra charges that Vonage passes on to you when you use Vonage over an ATT owned line then you can choose to get your broadband from Comcast instead.

Anything less than having both ownership rights and free-market choices will result in an unfair condition. It is unfair to us to not have a free-market choice, but it is unfair to the telcos for government to tell the telcos how to price their services on lines they spent their money to build (to violate their right of ownership).

But FedEx currently doesn't charge Macmillan Publisher. It doesn't charge Sony if you order a CFD. It doesn't charge the maker of the product you ordered. That's what's going on with tw-tiered internet.
Telcos already charge both content providers and content consumers to use their lines. They can charge mor eif they want to. That's fine. What they are proposing is charging content providers twice. Now like you say the free market could eliminate that ridiculous proposal if you have a choice. But in most telco situations you don't have a choice.

And as for earning back their money, that's OUR money they spent. They got tons of tax-subsidies to put in that fiber. You're defending a socialistic monopoly subsidised by the government when you defend the telcos.

Would it be inaccurate to say that, in this issue, the two legislative choices are:

1) Legislation to protect a desired end result, i.e., neutrality - which then has the net effect of ruling out a "tiered" internet.

2) Legislative commitment to the principle of enforcing fairness in whatever the market forces and customers create, whether "tiered" or "neutral."

How about no new legislation at all? Keep government out of it completely. Or rather enforce ownership rights that the telcos have over the lines they paid to build.

When a supplier (Vonage for example) gets charged by a telco (ATT for example) for carrying the bitstream of your calls then Vonage will pass the extra charges along to you (you know they will). At that time you will have the choice of dropping your DSL line from ATT and using a cable-modem connection (Comcast for example).

We don't need more legislation, just allow the market forces to work.

However the telcos shouldn't be allowed to continue an ufair monopoly using our tax dollars that paid for their fiber lines.

How do the "telcos" (plural) have a monopoly... I thought "mono" means one?

How did our tax dollars pay for fiber optics?

I'm not saying either of your statements is inaccurate I'm just looking for the support.

BTW, as mentioned in other posts I agree with those who say that tax breaks do not equate to subsidies. I don't think that not collecting a tax is the same as giving out money.

To say that a tax break is a subsidy is like saying that the government is inherently entitled to certain income streams. This is not in the least bit true. I'm pretty sure that every single tax we pay can be legally repealed at any time. "XX%" of my income is NOT automatically entitled to the government. Its mine until we the taxed agree that a certain percent should be taxed.

I'd like to see the trail of my tax dollars flowing from my employer to me, then to the government as a tax, then transfered to a fiber optic network. If it has, then I have, through my government's legislators, some say in how those lines are used.

If on the other hand, my tax dollars never made it to build fiber optic networks then I have, through the customer care department of the company(s) that own the lines, some say in how those lines are used.

The telcos pretty much have regional monopolies on phone service and naked DSL provision. You cannot get DSL without your regional telco being involved. So within a large region of the US, AT&T (nee SBC) is a monopoly.

The tax break - subsidy thing is somewhat a matter of opinion. If a tax is there for all and the government decides to give certain companies a break on their taxes, that ends up having the same affect as getting paid. On the books, the company is seeing a net positive affect. It's not simple but it's true. If a company doesn't get a tax break, they will spend less money.,

They're also have been direct subsidies in some cases.

Yes, the 'tax break' vs. 'subsidy' is a matter of opinion on the outside. But on the inside it is the capital of the telco that is expended on doing the build-out of lines. It comes down to how the money was expensed (in their accounting procedures) to build out the lines.

With the tax-break approach the government ceded any right to ownership of the lines they wanted built. And ownership is the crux issue here. Does the government own the internet, or do the telcos?

As it was the capital of the telcos that was used to build the lines you have to view the 'ownership' of the internet as belonging (collectively) to the telcos.

With ownership rights (in a free market economy) comes the ability and right to charge whatever and however you wish. The telcos are realizing that things like Vonage and Skype are taking revenue from them. So I think they have every right to try to recoup that lost revenue by constructing a 'tiered internet'.

I think we're not so far aprt. I agree that telcos (or any business) should be able to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm others. Basic Lockian nonsense. However, I'm concerned that there isn't enough competition. The telcos have long received government protection even after the breakup of Ma Bell. They have regional telephone monopolies and a real oligopoly in cellular and long distance. They also seem to dominate the backbones, but I'm a little fuzzy on that still.

If there's free and clear competition I think it's fine. The idea of charging for content delivery will, in my opinion, be driven out of the marketplace. If they have a stranglehold, then I worry it's not fine.

My other issue is that they already charge and can charge more, for access to their lines. They are targeting companies who are in similar businesses. This isn't just about recouping your investment. They can do that already with charges to access. This is about charging your coimpetitors.

Think of it this way. What if a company owned the highways and shut down one lane and only allowed people who drove their cars to drive in that lane. Then they charged GM, Toyota, etc to allow drivers of their cars to drive in those lanes.

The original two choices I listed were carefully worded. The second choice is "legislative commitment", meaning that the legislators who choose to not adopt option one (enforcing net neutrality) would remain committed to overseeing the support of the principles of allowing free market forces to occur.

In reality, option two would rely more on the judiciary protecting fair application of free markets. But even the legislators sit on oversight committes that can definitely have large impacts on steering the nation's industries, in more ways than just enacting legislation.

I'm still trying to get my mind around this. So far it just keeps seeming like the two likely choices I listed and a few more which seem less likely.

1. Legislate that net neutrality will be protected. This results in something like the status quo: no tiered internet; sketchy streaming and VOIP, etc until there's a technological breakthrough. LIKELY. At least, its a stated goal of some.

2. Legislate a tiered internet. Proactively produce legislation that states it protects the goals of whichever companies benefit from this arrangement. UNLIKELY. At least, it seems unlikely that there will be strongly worded legislation designed to specifically, directly support the end-goal of "tiered internet."

3. Legislative package supporting conditions for tiered internet. That is, a few tweaks and policies that allow favorable conditions for the possibility for the development of ideas, some of which may possibly include "tiered internet"-type innovations; that is, if some private entity wants to do that. LIKELY. Again, likely means that it seems to be a stated goal of some legislators.

4. Indirect legislation. That is, seemingly minor legislation or legislation that doesn't seem to directly address "Neutrality v. Tiered" per se, but does affect the outcome. For example, someone mentions that the telcos actually own the lines, so shouldn't they be able to do whatever they want with it? Even if that means charging others for access to those lines? Well what if the government determines that the lines were put in with government subsidies, giving the government a say in how the lines are used? This sounds similiar to 3. above. When this particular issue starts to get nuanced it really loses me. I have no idea how likely this may be.

5. No legislation. The government stays out of the issue completely. Either on purpos or due to beuracratic snafus the government doesn't even give symbolic support to any of the different sides of the issue. Eventually one company or industry will do something that another company doesn't like. How long will that be in court? Will the US drop further in the international broadband rankings? We'll have flying cars and moon resorts before we achieve 10 mbps on the net.

I can't see the government staying entirely out of this. I'm a "small government/free market" guy. But I think big brother is going to eventually have to referee the issue at some point. Maybe it would be better if Uncle Sam takes a stand on what some of the rules of the game will be before the game starts.

There already seems to be a lot of public interest already tied up into the whole situation. Billions of dollars in the "Universal Coverage" program. Also, a reasonable interest in providing universal coverage. Not that every desolate ranch cottage has exact parity with urban bleeding edge geeks, but at least some capacity to participate with basic functions of the net.

Rural poor are more likely than urban middle to upper class to use the internet for education. IP has been shown to be more reliable for communications during a disaster. Is the internet becoming more like a utility? Should rules and attitudes applied to utilities also apply to the internet?

This whole Fedex idea has a huge flaw.

Lets say Fedex is Verizon in this case...

It would mean that an ISP (on verizon's backbone network) would pay Verizon for the access to that backbone.

Also, those who want to connect to that ISP pay verizon to get access to those services.

So, Fedex would be charging the person who's sending things through their service, and also charging the person at the end (which isn't happening, at least not in the uk anyway!!!)

Verizon just want to get more money... If they just decided to keep the pricing as it currently stands, then people will see less to go to people like Google, or other companies with internet backbones

But this will not be a popular solution in this forum. We have certain elements that would like nothing more than to have the government take control of the Internet.

But we don't have a free market with the telcos. We have a morass of legislation, tax breaks, subsidies, understandings, and legislation giving the telcos the advantage.

The lines used to move the internet traffic are long-haul lines. It is the long distance telcos that own the lines that (collectively) make up the internet, not the local telcos. There is plenty of competition for long distance and it is the long distance carriers that are having their revenue eroded by such things as Vonage and Skype.

Regarding the local telcos having a monopoly this also is a fact of the past that isn't true anymore. With cable companies providing both broadband as well as land-line telephone service there is true competition even at the local level.

As I have indicated in previous posts... if a LD carrier wants to do 'deep packet analysis' and determine that they need to charge Vonage for 'streaming audio traffic' (phone calls) then let them do it. Vonage will realize that they need to pass those costs on to the consumer and the cost of Vonage will go up making it a more fair playing field.

Right now Vonage is getting a 'free ride' on the lines.

I'm not sure I understand how services like Vonage are getting "free rides." Aren't they paying the telcos for service just like everyone else?

And about the cable companies. Aren't they also paying the telcos to use the backbone?


-Terry