San Francisco Gate (by way of Business Insider) has an interesting editorial that ponders why companies and activists see net neutrality as a moral battle. The author (Henry Blodget) uses the post office (or any other company that ships packages) as a real world example of why the author thinks net neutrality is "ridiculous."
In his example, the author asks readers to imagine if a shipping company was legally prohibited from charging more for delivering some packages sooner than others. He calls this ridiculous, and goes on to point out that, like broadband service providers, those shipping and transport companies have the right to charge whatever they want because they "spent billions of dollars building their transportation networks."
More sympathy for the devil below:
The Silicon Valley champion, Google, has long stumped for this concept. And Google is now being savaged for apparently betraying that stance and becoming "evil" by discussing a premium-tier deal with Verizon.
Now, it's easy to see why poor startups and massive bandwidth consumers might prefer that ISPs be forced to treat every bit the same. But from a moral and economic fairness perspective, this stance is ridiculous.
ISPs spend billions of dollars building fiber networks. Why on earth shouldn't they be able to charge what the market will bear to deliver bits over those networks? If people want their bits delivered quickly and securely, they can pay more. If they don't, they can pay less. It's as simple (and fair) as that.
You can read the full article here. One or two things to consider: the United States Post Office is probably a bad example to use considering that the U.S. taxpayer subsidizes it (it's a pseudo corporation partly owned by the U.S. government - much like Amtrak). It should also be noted that companies like Verizon, Google and others certainly get their fair share of favorable treatment from the government including tax breaks - also subsidize by the U.S. taxpayer. So it's logical that some citizens feel like corporations owe us a little consideration on some matters.
Comments
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Using his analogy...
Sure, shipping companies charge what they want and deliver what they want, but they don't own the roads. The roads themselves are neutral (except toll roads). So let the service providers charge what they want but leave the network open to anyone who wants to make their own service provider free of charge.
After all, the only thing be shipped here is information, ie a virtual good. Since the government isn't interested in protecting my level 31 WoW character from being stolen, their track record indicates that they believe virtual goods are non-existant goods.
Don't charge me for things you don't believe exist.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
In the (very likely) even that you are not aware, shipping companies using trucks by road or trains by rail or planes all pay taxes on every freight mile. Different states have different tax rates, and they all want the taxes for freight carried through their state. There are different rates for different types of freight, and some types of freight are restricted against using certain roads. The roads are not, in actuality, open for everyone to use freely.
Everyone, please put the analogies down. You're only hurting yourselves.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Since you brought up taxpayer subsidies, my local broadband ISP just got a $4 million grant to expand and improve their network, so more people in my somewhat rural area can get hooked up, with fewer interruptions in service (it goes down roughly once a day for like 1 hour, random times). I think since I'm indirectly paying for these upgrades, I shouldn't be charged more for different sources of data, or have any data slowed or blocked.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
I think this is the most effective argument in favor of net neutrality I've ever seen.
http://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Nice! It would be funny if it weren't so likely to happen.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
In the UK, the ISP's use a pre-existing network put in place by British Telecom, so, no they didn't have to invest nearly as much. Why do these people think that America is the only country in the world, and that NN would impact only that one country?
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Because nobody else matters, of course.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
This guy sounds like a total corporate shill and totally misundertands net neutrality, either out of ignoracne or because of a hidden agenda. ISP's ALREADY charge different rates for different speeds, just like his shipping analogy. What they DON'T do is charge more for letters about whats going on in your life than they do for letters about business matters, then they do for letters conating adverts. Its all about time to delivery, not content of mail.
As stated, ISP's already have tiered service perfectly analagous to Fedex's overnight, 2nd day, ground, etc. Its called 256Kbps, 1Mbps, Mbps, etc.
Now they ALSO want to say, hey, are those bits related to online gaming? More money. Are they related to news? More money. Don't want to pay the more money? Then it goes really, really slowly, or maybe you just can't access them at all. That may sound out there, but without some basic net neutrality principles and rules in place the IPS's will be able to do just that if they so choose, and they will choose so, eventually. I am not even talking about the censorship that is bound to crop up once ISPs get to decide what bits they like and which they don't like.
NN is THE defining issue of our generation. The Internet is already a big deal and its only going to continue to be a larger and larger part of our culture. We need to set the ground rules sooner rather than later and they need to be fair, open and transparent. They need to protect the little guys as much as the big players and they need to protect the consumers as much as the ISP's. The networks may be owned in part be the ISPs but its our Internet.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Meh I agree with the paying more to get better speed but i'm more concerned that Comcast or At&t will block websites, or that the Government can step in and not allow certain websites to load.
I wouldn't want to wake up tomorrow to find out since Obama is in office that Drudge Report won't load or that if a Republican is in office that Huffington Post won't load.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
But you have to understand that making sites load at an intolerably slow rate is going to restrict their readership almost as much as banning them outright.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Exactly, it's one thing to be faster when going to approved sites but I fear that "bad" sites will load at 13K modem speed no matter what you pay.
Hell Jack Thompson could even pay off Comcast to block off his favoriet GamePolitics website.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Hahaha, Ted Stevens is too old to even know what the Internet is. I love it when they try and speak on the Internet like they have any knowledge of the subject, it lets everyone know how out of touch they are and that they are just doing what their corporate lobbyists tell them to do.
People like that should DIAF.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Oooh, be careful what you wish for. I'm no fan of Stevens but I don't wish him harm; I hope he's all right following last night's plane crash.
EDIT: Stevens confirmed dead. Nothing really to add that I didn't already say.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Looks like Google and Verizon have announced what they would like to see happen
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/google-verizon-propose-open-vs-pa...
TheSmokey
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
That's great, except that ISPs also got billions of dollars of tax payer money in order to build said networks. It also doesn't make logical sense for that kind of infrastructure to be built via competing companies. On that kind of scale, it makes sense to build one giant, shared network where everybody pitches in and everybody gets to use it. We need to get away from this concept of ISPs "owning" the networks. Nobody owns the Internet.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
Perfectly said DorkmasterFlek.
The ISPs don't own squat. Those networks were both directly funded and indirectly subsidized by the taxpayer. Besides, we already pay for tiered service: you get a slower connection for X dollars and a faster one for XX dollars. I mean that system is already in place. Clearly this idiot doesn't understand what Net Neutrality is :/
For those who don't fully understand, Net Neutrality is not the same as "Universal Broadband". The idea behind universal broadband is to get everyone an internet connection at or above a certain speed. The idea behind Net Neutrality is that all data being passed through a network must be treated equally. Under the current system, if a company doesn't like what you're using the internet for or even just doesn't like that you're actually using your full speed, (or for any reason at all really) they can cap your speed whenever and however they feel like it. Net Neutrality would prevent that, forcing them to allow you to use your internet as you intend to rather than as they intend you to.
Basically, Net Neutrality puts the power back in the customer's hands, where it always should have been anyway.
Off topic, but I have to ask, what's with Americans always saying "THE COMPANY PAID FOR IT, THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT"? The idea of being so afraid of government that they give all the power to the markets, who then buy the government, which then turns around and uses taxpayer dollars to support the market seems very ironic to me. Americans need to realize that they are the government and stop putting up with this crap.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
But the average american isn't the government on any level. On a direct level the government is comprised of the people with the skill to get elected or appointed, not the skill to do any of the actual work involved which may or may not be related to elect or appoint ability. On an indirect level the government is comprised of the people who voted for the current government which, in America, hasn't been a majority of the voting eligible public, in decades. Even if the government was indirectly controlled by more than half of the public which is eligible to vote they would still be hamstrung by the first part.
My point, however, is not that the government should never step in on any topic but that the power to do so should be weighed carefully before doing so because very often, as other posters have pointed out in areas where the larger corporations own their government oversight due to massive funding for their lobbies, the government is not the unfettered voice of the people.
my vanity is justified
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
"On an indirect level the government is comprised of the people who voted for the current government..."
Don't you mean it's comprised of the people who PAID for the current government? Corporations don't vote - they just give enough PAC money to guarantee that their interests are served. Or are you saying that that, in essence, IS voting in our current system?
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
The pool of electable people is limited to people who can get funding i.e. are independently wealthy or can get money from donors corporate and private. This is one of the factors I was referring to when I said "On a direct level the government is comprised of the people with the skill to get elected or appointed...."
my vanity is justified
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
*shrug* 'free market' is a pretty strong meme in the general culture war going on. Outside a rallying cry there is very little real meaning behind it since very few people understand how markets actually work.
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
I wonder if the author doesn't really understand what net neutrality is all about or if he's just not very good at analogies. Actually reading the full editorial might answer my question so perhaps I'll do that later.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Editorial: 'Net Neutrality Not a Moral Issue'
He does not understand it.
He has taken the ISP's standard misdirrection talking points and remade thier case and little more. Then he added a bunch of macho 'poor bleeding heart liberals' muck to it.