Cable style "Programming" is happening. Death of Net Neutrality.
 

The internet as we now know it today is going away.

I've said this before and sadly it looks like my predictions are coming to fruition.

This is the first step towards broadband providers desire to monetize the traffic that they carry and may ultimately lead to control of what you will have access to.

Marvin Ammori: About the Verizon/Google "Deal" on Net Neutrality

FOXNews.com - Google, Verizon Near Plan to Created Tiered Internet

With enough lobbying dollars, anything can happen.

From the "My How Times Change" file, the following open letter from Google CEO Eric Schmidt was posted in the summer of 2006. Here it is, verbatim:

A Note to Google Users on Net Neutrality:

The Internet as we know it is facing a serious threat. There's a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called "net neutrality" – and it's a debate that's so important Google is asking you to get involved. We're asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom.

In the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill, and one that may come up for a key vote in the Senate in the next few weeks, would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.

Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay.

Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative (202-224-3121) and let your voice be heard.

Thanks for your time, your concern and your support.

Eric Schmidt

Looks like Google payed attention to the Bill Gates theory of capitalist success: Have a good idea, use the free market to promote and succeed with your good idea. Use your success with your good idea to monopolize the market and suppress other good ideas from seeing the light of day.

Pay to play.

Some providers block certain protocols and/or popular ports... Like NNTP protocols, or TOR, ports for filesharing programs like Kazaa, bearshare, etc... How long did you think it was going to be before they realized they can make money turning it from being like a faucet to being like a faucet with multiple filters.

I was reading about this on Gizmodo.com earlier today. Though about posting it, but couldn't access the board. Was really, really, really slow. Must be one of those anti-net neutrality things...

The FCC's authority to regulate this aspect of the net needs to be clearer. The internet is too vital to this country to leave it entirely up to who can pay who the most.

Yeah jyl, good idea. Get the government agencies involved to regulate the hell out of it, just like the stellar job they do with everything else.

Right on.

eff 'em all. my life would improve w/o internet. i've learned what i need to know about maintaining a 40yr old 911 and could care less about social networking sites and the like.

Are you aware that by the time you had posted this the FCC basically tossed the decision to even allow Google and Verizon to discuss the "Tiered system" Perhaps before posting you can make sure that the context you are posting about is true? This is how rumors start.

Net neutrality is a bad thing people!

The net neutrality tards are so full of if. The Internet isn't going away. Companys like cogent might go away. Which would be alright.

Some aspects of the economy need the government to set the basic ground rules.

E.g. food companies can't sell dangerous or unclean food and must tell consumers what's in the food they do sell. And drug companies can't sell ineffective drugs or drugs that harm more than they help.

Without basic rules, food companies would sell unclean food and wouldn't tell you about all the crap they put in it (you think they would voluntarily tell you that your hamburger has 1000 gm fat? How about 2000?). Drug companies would sell ineffective drugs and even dangerous drugs (look at what the largely unregulated "nutritional supplement" industry does now).

Nothing different about the telecom industry. Left to their own devices, they will maximize profit, because that is their duty. The easiest way to do that is not to provide us w/ innovative new services that we value, but to use their power to force us to pay more for less.

Maybe the big backbone carriers get together and tell Wayne that he has to pay $100K/yr for broadband service, or PP gets throttled down to dial-up speeds. You think they wouldn't? You think Wayne can build an alternative fiberoptic data backbone?

Not correct. The FCC has no authority to prevent GOOG and VZ from discussing or making a deal. GOOG and VZ are laying low, for public relations reasons most likely. They can still negotiate and do deals, quietly.

Rumor? What rumor? Are you saying that providers do not have a desire to create a tiered premium content model? I hope not as that has been common public knowledge for quite some time.

In fact it's part of the motivation for the closed door meetings between the FCC and the providers.

And what the FCC did yesterday was not prohibit verizon and google from talking about tiered services, the FCC does not have that authority.

What the FCC did was halt the closed door meetings that they had been having because it appears that some of the participants had their own agenda which was in conflict with the objective of those meetings.

Not neccesarily.
Think about it. here are some things that Net Neutrality does...

It prevent companies like Comcast, who provide phone, internet, and TV, from slowing of blocking access to competitive markets. Let's say I'm a user of Vonage. Without Net Neutrality, Comcast could easily block or slow access to vonage servers, thus rendering my vonage service useless. "You want phone?, MUST USE US!"
I get my TV through DirecTV. For VOD, shows must be downloaded via the internet. Comcast could slow or block acess to DirecTV services. "You want VOD?, MUST USE US!"


Let's assume for fun that Blockbuster video is still owned by Viacom... a competitor of Comcast. Now let's assume (again, just for fun) that Comcast owns Netflix (which it does not) ... under Net Neutrality, Comcast could not block access to Blockbuster streaming video servers, which would force people to use Netflix instead of Blockbuster for streaming VOD.
Without Net Neutrality, they could. And probably would.


Net Neutrality prohibits the slowing or blocking of access to competitive markets, period. It allows equal access to all lanes of the highways and on/off ramps to competitive formats. It allows you to chose who you want your content from, and when you get it.
It prohibits companies Google and Verizon from striking deals to allow greater and faster access to Youtube (owned by Google) servers over, say, Hulu servers.
It prohibits companies like Comcast from blocking or slowing access to VOIP services.
It prohibits companies from making your choices FOR YOU, and prevents companies from bleeding other companies to allow their content to flow freely to the end user.

this is what Net Neutrality does.

On the other hand, if I have one neighbor who eats up all of the bandwidth in the neighborhood, net neutrality prevents our provider from doing anything about his overuse so that my connection will perform at a decent speed.

Most cable providers currently put ALL voice traffic on a lower tier. I agree that it is unethical to intentionally degrade the service of competitors. But at the same time, by not putting voice traffic on a lower tier, it degrades the service for all of the users.

No that is not what it does. I urge you to read up on the issue.

Why should verizon or sprint get paid to pass cogent traffic? Everything should be free!

So is women's suffrage. We need to end women's suffrage now! It's not right that they should suffer! ;)

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It’s 2017. The U.S. government runs the national communication GRID (Government-Run Information Distributor), comprised of the country’s fiber optics, cables, and radio links. Access to the GRID is open to all, on an equal basis, for any application and any content. Most of the population now creates and shares media of all kinds—what their productions lack in polish and sophistication, they make up in imagination.

Thanks to the government-run GRID, there no longer is a divide between urban and rural areas. The open access GRID has ushered in the era of micro-politics: every conceivable constituency can propose any initiative at any time, and set up a virtual debate space, and e-voting mechanisms.

Neutral Net was set in motion in 1983, when the FCC forced the local phone companies to let all eEnhanced sService pProviders use their wires for free. Within a few years, thousands of Internet Service ProvidersISPs jumped at the chance to offer new services without the need to invest in costly networks. With the release of the Mosaic Internet browser in 1993, a new mass medium was born. Soon after, in 1995, DSL and cable modems turned the old phone and cable television networks into broadband always-on information networks.

During the next ten years, a multitude of innovators built upon the open Internet to offer new communication services that radically transformed people’s ability to create, share and access information.

In our scenario, in September 2010 the U.S. Congress decided it essential to preserve the Internet’s openness. Strict rules forbid all network owners, telephone, cellular, and cable alike, to discriminate among users. They are not allowed to favor any traffic, nor to charge different fees for different users or different applications.

Anybody can now provide any communication service over the carriers’ networks. Wal-Mart introduces low-cost “WAL-Media”: their branded combination of wired and wireless Internet access, voice and text communication, and film and video distribution.

In the next few years, amateur production of content explodes. YouTube and MySpace garner audiences that far surpass those of traditional television channels. Blogs have now replaced newspapers as most people’s primary source of news. The Net supports a vibrant public sphere in which all constituencies find a voice, a virtual town hall, and viral tools to mobilize voters and make their voices heard.

To sort through this massive amount of news, debates, games, music, video, and films, users rely on each other. Social filters, recommendation engines, and distributed online marketplaces allow them to find, discover, rank, and select materials that match their passions.

Every device on the network is a server, whether in homes, public places, small businesses, or civic organizations. They support peer-to-peerP2P communication tools;, distribute user-produced stories, songs, and videos; and, host collaborative spaces that bring together families, workgroups, clubs, churches, or citizens.

A growing number of cities build their own Wi-Fi and fiber networks to foster greater civic Internet use. However, funding for professionally-produced premium content starts to decline, partly because it is impossible to guarantee the network performance that would allow optimum delivery of that content and, partly because P2P distribution of pirated content proliferates (it is hard to maintain control over IP intellectual property now that a multitude of service providers operate over the networks).

By 2012, network owners are unable to raise funds to upgrade their networks. Verizon discontinues FiOS, and AT&T abandons project Lightspeed. Cellular networks never fully upgrade to 3G. The network owners decide to become pure bit -carriers, scale down their production and programming operations, and concentrate instead in on cutting their costs down to a minimum, retaining only skeleton maintenance crews.

Meanwhile, although content from millions of amateur sources is now available, Hollywood loses its pre-eminence as the world’s main center of content production. Instead, big-budget entertainment is now produced in countries like China, France, and India, where the network owners keep tight control over who distributes what, and can thus guarantee protection of their IPintellectual property.

By 2014, investment in the U.S. network infrastructure has now fallen so low that its derelict state resembles that of the nation’s bridges and roads. To ward off catastrophic failure, the U.S. government takes over all communication networks, consolidating them into the Government-Run Information Distributor (GRID). A new tax on advertising is created to fund the GRID.

By 2017, the GRID provides uniform Net access throughout the U.S. territory. The nation ranks a weak 29th twenty-ninth in the OECD’s assessment of broadband performance, but a dynamic community of users constantly invents new ways to squeeze extra bits out of the country’s infrastructure.

U.S. elites are dissatisfied with the poor performance of the national GRID. They live in tele-parks, the new gated communities, which tend to congregate in border -cities and ports, where they get easy access to foreign network head-ends and submarine high-capacity fiber.

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In the year 2017, two huge TCNOs control broadband Internet access throughout the United States. Each TCNO has its own content affiliates who provide online entertainment, sports, games, and information to the consuming public. Their operational motto is “we create, you enjoy.”

The path to TCNOtopia began in 1969, when the first bits sped across a new computer network funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. Soon the elements of what would become the Internet were in place: an open architecture where users innovate at the edges of the network and E2E communications with no gatekeeper inside the network core, all of it riding on top of the nation’s phone network, providing little compensation to the telcos who had built that infrastructure. In fact, the Internet stands in sharp contrast to telephone and cable visions, which place intelligence, control, and innovation inside the network.

By 2007, the TCNOs provide more than 96% of residential broadband connections. But most of the real profits are made by firms who use the TCNO networks, such as Microsoft, Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, and Disney. Verizon and AT&T fight back with Internet television, offering hundreds of channels and thousands of hours of on-demand programs. Like the cable companies, they want to choose the content they deliver over their broadband pipes and not simply act as common carriers. AT&T’s CEO declares that Internet content providers will have to pay extra for fast broadband delivery.

In reaction, content providers join with consumer groups to persuade Congress to preserve network neutrality. But they get a chilly reception in Washington. Instead, Congress gives telcos authority to freely offer Internet programming and decide what traffic gets priority within their network.

2010: Based on the early success of Wi-Fi in Philadelphia and San Francisco, Google launches broadband wireless nationwide in partnership with local municipalities.

Verizon and AT&T, followed by the cable operators, offer contracts to Sony, Fox, Disney, and others for fast-lane Internet delivery of their online games, movies, video, and other content. Those who choose not to pay must accept standard delivery. This slow lane is where user experimentation is allowed, the only option for user-run servers, and P2P and other applications unaffiliated with the carriers. To enforce the separation, the TCNOs now scan all data packets. Customer contracts authorize carriers to screen for viruses, spam, copyright violations, and content of interest to government agencies. These contracts also limit the bits users can upload without paying substantially higher fees.

2011: Most large content providers are enthusiastic about fast-lane delivery. They can now charge higher fees for premium media experiences. But some, like Google and Microsoft, mount court challenges to packet scanning and prioritization as violations of users’ privacy rights and of network operators’ obligations to provide common carrier services.

2012: Flush with cash from content providers, TCNOs accelerate investment in fiber infrastructure and in-network innovations to achieve high performance. Dozens of new services, such as online multiplayer sports and games, become wildly popular. With full control over individual data streams, the carriers can craft compelling multimedia experiences for their customers. TCNO interface equipment in the home also optimizes the user experience, while preventing unauthorized copying of content or the bypassing of advertising messages.

Meanwhile, Google’s broadband wireless buildout has achieved initial success with four million subscribers in twenty-eight cities. However, security and reliability concerns arise after hacker attacks disable some fifteen thousand wireless-enabled computers in Chicago and Los Angeles. The TCNOs effectively use this security failure in their broadband marketing campaigns.

2014: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the TCNOs’ right to scan data packets and prioritize Internet traffic. The decision cites the need to ensure network reliability and protect customers from hacker-induced harm.

2016: The merger of Comcast and Time Warner creates a behemoth controlling 90 percent of the U.S. cable market and 60 percent of all broadband connections.

After reporting billion dollar losses, Googlezon (formed by the recent merger of Google and Amazon.com) abandons its municipal wireless partnerships. Some cities vow to keep their networks on the air, but it appears an uphill struggle against the dominance of TCNO broadband.

2017: Determining that only increased scale can compete effectively with Comcast Time Warner, the Justice Department approves the merger of AT&T and Verizon. The broadband duopoly has no serious rivals. It has brought affordable broadband to 85 percent of U.S. households, who love the network innovations that protect against spam and viruses, the e-sports leagues, and the high-definition entertainment they receive from TCNO content affiliates.

Political expression online is encouraged within the established political structure—primarily through the two dominant national parties that have negotiated fast-lane delivery for their candidates and issue messages. Other political organizations and civic groups must negotiate ad hoc arrangements, and few have the financial resources to assure fast lane delivery of their messages.

Still, some academics, artists, and other dissidents bemoan the loss of amateur content production and collaborative activity that flowed over the Internet in the early-twenty-first century. TCNO restrictions have virtually eliminated P2P communication among residential broadband users for content distribution, collaborative work, or social and political organization. Online distribution and collaboration are channeled through TCNO-controlled servers and routers. As a consequence, Internet content and applications now conform closely to established consumer tastes and traditional values. It is nearly impossible for an innovator that is unaffiliated with the TCNOs to gain a sizable Internet audience in the United States

But perhaps another eBay, Napster, Yahoo!, Amazon.com or Google is ready to emerge out of the competitive chaos in India or Brazil.