In article <telecom25.245.2@telecom-digest.org>, jmartineau@gmail.com
wrote:
> Hi,
> Been trying to keep up with the Net Neutrality debate but obviously
> it's a confusing issue. My question is, don't we already pay for faster
> service? Don't websites pay based on the amount of bandwidth they need
> to serve out? I know I pay a premium price for cable internet service
> because I get more bandwidth. Seems like most people are willing to
> keep going as we are now -- where the price is proportional to the
> speed.
> How is what the telecoms are proposing different? Are they suggesting
> that they should be allowed to arbitrarily limit or increase the
> speeds with which certain sites or traffic can reach me, regardless of
> what that site and I are paying in terms of bandwidth?
To me, the essence is that they should just *transmit* whatever
packets I send thru them into the Internet or receive back from the
Internet thru them, transmitting those packets both way through their
facilities at whatever bandwidth capabilities I'm paying them for, but
without them *knowing* or *caring* or being in any way influenced by
whatever recipients are on the other end of my communications.
They and we may, in fact, ultimately have to live with government laws
that require them to record and store every site that we communicate
with, though this will be a civil rights obscenity.
And it may be a losing fight to stop them from noting that I buy a lot
of books on line and turning my name over to used book dealers to spam
me.
But I certainly don't want them *ever* redirecting some of my packets
to some other URL of their choosing, because they've made a commercial
deal with the alternative site.
And I don't want them transmitting packets to or from BordersBooks
through their system faster than amazon.com packets (thus making
BordersBooks look like a more responsive site) because BordersBooks
pays them a behind-the-scenes bribe to do so (or sending streaming
video signals from some sites faster than from other sites, because of
similar bribes).
In other words, none of their technical actions should depend on what
the content is of the packets they're sending me. But, the last two
items above are (a) things they want and intend to do, and (b) things
that are absolutely unacceptable.
AES (siegman@stanford.edu)