Don't bet on `net neutrality,' senator says (Repub)

[NVMojo]

June 13, 2006

Google and other Internet companies are unlikely to prevail in the Senate on legislation to require ``network neutrality,'' a key Republican lawmaker said today.

The House of Representatives already has voted against rules that would forbid high-speed Internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast from charging extra for priority access to their networks.

``I believe we'll have a similar vote on the floor of the Senate on `net neutrality,' '' said Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, according to a Bloomberg News report.

more...


http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/columnists/business_update/14809681.htm

[msongs]

1. how many senate dems "dislike" net neurality and are taking

money from companies to vote the way the companies want. not that it is bribery of course, only campaign contributions.

we will see when the votes come.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
get your pics on shirts!

[depakid]

6. More than a few I bet

And those people need to be defeated- PERIOD- if the Dems ever expect to regain a majority- or even relevancy.

[saigon68]

21. All your MINDS, are Belong to us

LOL

[wordpix2]

2. Ted Stevens on a science committee? To get technology that can drill oil,

chainsaw the coastal forests, build roads and mine the mountains all at the same time, maybe? :wtf:

:eyes:

[bearfan454]

15. f*cking eh on that one nt

[Nordic65]

3. I'm impressed - NOT

Ted Stevens, does he even know the difference...

[anotherdrew]

4. if they charge for access, they're not selling "the internet" anymore

They will not be able to advertise it as such, the backers of this should be sued right now, we have contracts with these providers, we have an expectation of service, and this pay to play bullshit is not going to fly. We need to have ads out against it now, this has to be turned into the bigest mistake since New Coke.

[NVMojo]

5. It's a kickback for letting Bush snoop on our lines ...

[wordpix2]

11. I don't get it why we need to pay to play, we're already paying. I pay

$49.95/mo. for high speed access from Cablevision.

[Doremus]

7. You'd think there would be more of an outcry from the blogosphere

With it being legal to discriminate against providers for any reason, can the day be far away when telecom monopolies cut the cord on 'undesirable' content?

Say goodbye to the last remaining place to find the truth.

[Robbien]

9. I know, I keep posting threads asking for action

and they quickly drop off the front page with little or no response.

Here is the link once again to use SaveTheInternet's handy action page in support Net Neutrality

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=act

[Doremus]

10. Thanks for that link. I hope many will take the time to use it.

It would be the ultimate irony if repigs were able to muzzle us at our own game.

[NoodleyAppendage]

8. Ted Stevens is such a ROTTEN BASTARD

Leave it to Ted Stevens to cater to special interests over the public good. He must get lockjaw often from kneeling in front of the lap of his oil and corporate sugardaddies.

J

[wordpix2]

12. hahaha, LOL about Ted's lockjaw, thanks for a laugh

[OneBlueSky]

13. the net is a real threat to the corporatocracy . . .

when millions of people can communicate with each other without passing through a corporate filter, those running the show get VERY nervous . . . and with good reason . . .

as the last great bastion of free expression we have left, the internet is in the sights of those in control, and they won't rest until they extend their control to all of cyberspace . . .

[oscar111]

14. free phones and internet is my goal

all need them, so why not simplify this whole area with my title here?

Basic needs of life should be free to all humans.. starting with our own citizens.

These are the four basic needs:

healthcare
college
a job
a fat pension.


Listed In the order of one's lifetime. I said fat pension because i recoil a lot from the usual meager ideas on pensions. Oldtimers need far more money than they now get, due to health costs. So the word "fat" is what i use to reframe our thinking.

currently, these basics are made so hard to get, that many amricans do not get them, or get a fragment of them after massive stress. Many do not live lives that can be called human. Subhuman lives are what they live.


Free libraries are very "american". Let's just expand on that.

[Uncle Joe]

16. The corporate superpeople we have created

by extension reduce us to second class citizenship. We are all created equal, corporations are just more equal. The corporations believe in Freedom of Speech so long as the people cannot be heard.

It is a crying shame; the internet which fulfills so many aspirations from the founders of our nation to Martin Luther King should be neutered by greedy, power hungry corporate pigs who don't give a rat's ass about empowering the American People.

[Godhumor]

17. Just think how rich the first company to offer "network neutral" will get

I am certain each provider is already planning either a premium service for equal service, or you'll start seeing some of the bit players advertising they're all about being neutral. It will be interesting to see the fall out from this.

[yngliberal]

18. Can the Supreme Court get involved?

I believe people will be filing lawsuits and I think this is going to become a nasty situation.

[IA_Seth]

19. Letters sent to both of my Senators in IA..

Kick and Rec'd.

[ikri]

20. It's an odd idea

There are a few routes that ISPs can take on priority access:

1. An ISP charges its customers for priority access to specific sites. Pretty easy to do and requires the least amount of investment, the ISP could simply route all its web traffic through proxy servers and choke bandwidth to non-priority sites. However if any other ISPs come along & refuse to do the same there's a real chance they'd lose a huge number of customers.

2. Give priority access to web sites hosted by the ISP to customers of the same ISP, in practice this already happens since if you're accessing a web site hosted by the ISP you're probably already using hardware in the same data centre, with less hops between servers the access times are much lower. This was exploited a while back by a company that created a download program that emailed any downloads to a user, with connection speeds between an ISP customer and an ISP's mail server being better than those between the website hosting the download & the customer you could generally expect to download files a lot faster than you could do via the web.

3. Charge web sites a fee to become priority sites. This is probably the best route to go down financially since you can expect to make a fortune by having web sites pay a fee to allow access to their sites. Unfortunately for ISPs, and fortunately for the rest of us, this is fraught with danger that a good lawyer should see pretty quickly - there are already laws against this, it's called racketeering.

[mogster]

22. It will be the death of the Internet

.. and - I suspect - the birth of the under-Internet. Or the bits 'n bytes war will start.

Republican laws - you can always trust them to be against ordinary people. Subsequently, the ordinary people will be against the republicans.