Rep. Ed Markey formally introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006 today. Read the whole thing here.
Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of Internet time until August of 2005, the Internet’s nondiscriminatory nature was safeguarded from being compromised by Federal Communications Commission rules that required nondiscriminatory treatment by telecommunications carriers. In other words, no commercial telecommunications carrier could engage in discriminatory conduct regarding Internet traffic and Internet access because it was prohibited by law.
In August of 2005, however, the Federal Communications Commission re-classified broadband access to the Internet in a way which removed such legal protections. And how did the industry respond to this change? Just a few weeks after the FCC removed the Internet’s protections, the Chairman of then-SBC Communications made the following statement in a November 7th Business Week interview: “Now what they [Google, Yahoo, MSN] would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. . . .”
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Do we really have to wait till these corporate giants divide and conquer the open architecture of the Internet to make that against the law? These telephone company executives are telling us that they intend to discriminate in the prioritization of bits and to discriminate in the offering of “quality of service” functions – for a new fee, a new broadband bottleneck toll – to access high bandwidth customers, we cannot afford to wait until they actually start doing that before we step in to stop it.
You can read the actual content of the bill here. If you care about the internet, here are some resources to get involved, courtesy of Pachacutec:
1. SIGN a Net Neutrality petition to Congress.
2. CALL Congress now. Especially, tell your representatives in the House to support Markey’s Net Neutrality Act of 2006, but educate your senators on this issue too, as the fight will soon move there.
3. WRITE A LETTER to Congress.
4. MYSPACE: Add “Save the Internet” as a friend.
5. Check out the BLOG RESOURCES about this issue, including “Save the Internet” logo.
6. VISIT the SavetheInternet coalition Web site for more information.
This is about discrimination of content correct? If I am to read your mock up of a tiered internet correctly it seems that what telcoms want to do is offer sites like cable companies off programing packages. Is this correct? I mean right now the telcoms make their money from people paying to have broadband service and those that pay for more bandwidth get a faster connection hence the motivation for people to shell out the cash for better service. That part makes sense as it is old fashioned goods for services what you pay for is what you get. So by creating this other system what fundamentally changes is that you would have to pay more in order to access certain sites or essentially in order to have the bandwidth to use those sites? I dont quite see how this changes things as people still have to pay more money for a faster connection. Is it the telcoms double dipping from the consumer? I mean if I want to watch last nights top ten on the Letterman site then I can’t very well do that with a 56 k modem. So is their already this discrimination in content? I don’t know I’m all or less laws and this neutrality thing sounds like a good idea on the surface but perhaps the best correction would be to overturn the FCC reclassification or atleast start by examining the rationale for this change in policy/law.
Yeah, its essentially a double dipping thing. No one is complaining about the tiered service charges; it makes sense to charge more for more bandwidth, because bandwidth is essentially what you are using. But as it stands, that bandwidth gives you unfettered access to all the internet, including all websites and services. The mock up thing, however, isn’t talking about bandwidth, it is talking about access to those services.
From the teleco point of view, they see Google making loads of money over their bandwidth, and they want a piece of the pie. Since it is ‘their’ bandwidth, they figure that they should be able to control who can access which services over their network. Their plan, roughly, is to make deals with content providers, like Disney.com or iTunes, and then charge the consumers a premium to access those sites and services. So the package you’d be signing up for isn’t about the speed of your connection, but which sites you can connect to. The telecos further figure that, since it is their bandwidth, they are also free to disrupt service to sites and services that refuse to make these deals. If you want to use Skype to make phone calls over the internet, well, then you have to pay more money, or else the teleco will disrupt your phone call.
The issue, of course, is that websites are starting to offer television and phone services, and this directly conflicts with the telephone and cable company’s core business model, so they look at their internet services as a liability. They think that network neutrality is forcing them to aid their competition. With the FCC reclassification, they think it is now their right to start discriminating access.
The FCC reclassification thing came out of much needed revisions to the old 1996 telecommunications act. You can read more about that here