Quote:April 24, 2014
Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination
Posted by Tim Wu

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality. Specifically, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint F.C.C. commissioners that support open Internet principles like net neutrality?”

“The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Explaining, he said, “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites…. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Late last night Wheeler released a statement accusing the Wall Street Journal of being “flat-out wrong.” Yet the Washington Post has confirmed, based on inside sources, that the new rule gives broadband providers “the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers … in a commercially reasonable matter.” That’s telecom-speak for payola payments, and a clear violation of Obama’s promise.

This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity.

Some history may help explain the situation. The new rule gives broadband providers what they’ve wanted for about a decade now: the right to speed up some traffic and degrade others. (With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic.) We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won’t. They’ll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies speed ahead. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide. To put it mildly, the cable and telephone companies don’t need more money.

In 2007, Obama understood all of this. Without net neutrality, the result would be “much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.” That year, he swore to me personally that he was committed to defending net neutrality. Unfortunately, his F.C.C. chairman is in the process of violating a core promise to innovators, to the technology sector, and, really, to all of us who use the Internet.

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the author of “The Master Switch.” He has previously served as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission and the chair of Free Press, an Internet advocacy organization.

Above: Obama at Coe College, in 2007. Photograph by David Lienemann/AP.

(04-29-2014, 12:27 AM)Lissa Wrote: ... what it opens up is companies getting preferential access to bandwidth.

(04-29-2014, 12:27 AM)Lissa Wrote: This ruling still makes blocking illegal, what it opens up is companies getting preferential access to bandwidth.

Quote:Does it ensure that Netflix and Hulu get charged the same rate? If not, cannot Comcast give Netflix a low rate, and give Hulu a higher rate?

Quote:What happens if a bandwidth provider also owns content distribution? Wouldn't they give themselves the best bandwidth for cost, and shut out their competitors who must pay for bandwidth?

(04-29-2014, 02:33 AM)Hammerskjold Wrote: Net based tv? Baad. Cable TV? Goood. Net based tv that is owned by a cable TV behemoth? Why that would be...Double plus good.

(04-29-2014, 03:05 AM)Taem Wrote: I'm a little more than curious to see what a paid Google internet connection has to offer in the coming years at 2tb per second connection speeds. I'm willing to bet there won't be any tie-downs with Google, however I can almost 100% guarantee advertising will find its way into the system.

Quote:Based on this notion, I'm equally curious to see how the other cable companies adapt when Google starts taking over offering net neutrality to all companies and the small guys, assuming this is their motto, which they've said it is thus far.

(05-07-2014, 06:22 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I like this video explanation; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxMyTwmu_M

(05-08-2014, 04:30 AM)Taem Wrote: I just shared that video on fb. I hope many people see it and feel moved enough to write the appropriate parties, however I have serious doubts anything will change since it seems greed and power rule the day.

Quote:Has our government ever been any more blatantly corrupt than its been this last decade? I've never seen so many civil liberties trampled in the name of social reform, regulations meant to protect us trampled or re-worked, laws setup to limit donations to campaigns struck down, laws altered to allow torture or detaining foreign nationals, etc. I feel that winning the battle over net neutrality would be nice, but would hardly scratch the surface of the real problem currently plaguing our country, which is lobbyists dictating law to the greedy congressmen doing whatever it takes to stay on top.

Quote:I've never liked how members of congress are basically in there for life once elected; in my opinion, I'd like to see elections every 2-years to *maximum* of 4-years in office, else congressmen they get too powerful for their own good and form alliances, and do what is in their own interests, to remain in power instead of looking after the interest of the people they were elected to serve.

Quote:Old rules struck down within the last decade limiting donations from lobbyists in general and for election campaigns need to be brought back to control corruption. Anyways, some of my thoughts in this rant.

(05-23-2014, 04:20 PM)Occhidiangela Wrote: Dear Mr Wu:
You believed a political candidate who was pandering for votes.
He was either lying, talking out his backside, or maybe a bit of both.
He most likely really had no understanding of the point involved.
He told a room full of suckers what they wanted to hear.

And now you are upset.

Rube.

Politicians have been doing this since the orators of the Athenian Democracy.