Although tech blogs from both the civil liberties left and the free market right have supposedly debunked Monday’s hot Wall Street Journal article about Google reversing its long standing pro-Net Neutrality position, other irksome (and locally relevant) revelations in the article remain standing: Two major Seattle tech-culture companies, Microsoft and Amazon, also longtime advocates of Net Neutrality, are getting squishy on the issue.
Net Neutrality is the James Madison-y idea that all content is created equal. Practically speaking, it means this: Internet companies like AT&T cannot give preferential treatment to content companies, or any website for that matter. Walmart.com cannot get better treatment than Hel-Mart.com, for example.
The concept has been contested by transmission companies like AT&T who want the option of offering better delivery for companies willing to pay more. They argue that big content companies should get better service (and pay more) because they use more bandwidth. But that’d be like Seattle Public Utilities giving a wealthy family living in North Seattle faster and hotter water than someone living in South Seattle just because the fancy family used more water and paid more.
While the tech blogs went after the Journal article, defending Google’s honor by pointing out that Google was only promoting a long standing concept called edge-caching— which apparently doesn’t jeopardize net neutrality — the accusations that Seattle’s own Microsoft and Amazon are reversing themselves on Net Neutrality remains in question.
In the two years since Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other Internet companies lined up in favor of network neutrality, the landscape has changed. The Internet companies have formed partnerships with phone and cable companies, making them more dependent on one another.
Microsoft, which appealed to Congress to save network neutrality just two years ago, has changed its position completely. “Network neutrality is a policy avenue the company is no longer pursuing,” Microsoft said in a statement. The Redmond, Wash., software giant now favors legislation to allow network operators to offer different tiers of service to content companies.
Microsoft has a deal to provide software for AT&T’s Internet television service. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment whether this arrangement affected the company’s position on network neutrality.
Amazon’s popular digital-reading device, called the Kindle, offers a dedicated, faster download service, an arrangement Amazon has with Sprint. That has prompted questions in the blogosphere about whether the service violates network neutrality.
“Amazon continues to support adoption of net neutrality rules to protect the longstanding, fundamental openness of the Internet,” Amazon said in a statement. It declined to elaborate on its Kindle arrangement.
Amazon had withdrawn from the coalition of companies supporting net neutrality, but it recently was listed once again on the group’s Web site. It declined to comment on whether carriers should be allowed to prioritize traffic.
Microsoft kinda sorta denied that they’re backing away from Net Neutrality in this follow-up article, but they don’t address the specifics of the WSJ’s accusations.
Sidenote: The WSJ article also indicates that Obama—who was a loud advocate of Net Neutrality during the campaign—may also be reversing course.
just want to report that the public school day in bellevue has now ended and there are no students who went to school and no snow or ice on the ground.
now back to the latest: rick warren to invoke at obamanoggerayshun.
TPM noted 2 days ago that Obama is still behind Net Neutrality.
“used more water and paid more”
I don’t know about how water but back in the days when City Light was undergrounding utilities it happened in only the wealthier view neighborhoods of Seattle. Meanwhile, poorer lowland neighborhoods like Goldy’s Columbia City went begging for sidewalks and street lights.
Your water Analogy is very flawed, The internet is not like TUBES OF WATER!!!! Net neutrality is very important. A better analogy would be that Microsoft could pay money to get Better/Faster 545 Buses because so many people take them in the morning, to go to Microsoft. But all the Sound transit buses are basically the same speed \ quality, no mater where they go, or who rides them.
Since Microsoft cant do this it created the Connector. I would not be surprised if content providers start creating their own networks, sooner or later it will be cost effective, just like the connector.
Why bother, we cannot win. The greedy bastards will get theirs and every one else can suck sand. The big companies would like to have any upstarts be stifled while they blaze through.
@2,
Obama can say he’s still for Net Neutrality, but that doesn’t prove much. Gotta see what he does. And as the WSJ article noted, there are signs among his advisers that there may be a shift.
Net neutrality sort of worked back when the Pentagon paid the bills, and as sorta-kinda seemed to with the pornographers picking up the tab.
The reason it seemed to work was that the other stuff that everyone thought was important, including corporate email, e-commerce, various online news and opinion sites (including this one), the search engines and early Webcasting all got something of a free ride on the excess bandwidth capacity that was required to be able to provide Joe Pervert with hot and cold running smut whenever he wanted to pound off.
Now, backbone traffic is dominated by spam and streaming video from the big media companies, the latter group hoping that they’re going to be able to use the Internet as a cheaper way to get their material to their audience’s eyes and ears than maintaining their own cable networks or tens of thousands of half-megawatt transmitters or making and distributing CD’s and DVD’s. All this traffic is costing someone a hell of a lot of money, and if the biggies have to pay more they don’t like the idea of us little weenies getting a free ride trumpeting our half-baked opinions. How dare we ordinary people think we should have our opinions considered, or our music heard, or our pictures looked at, when they have money??? What the hell do we think this is….a democracy???
They’re for it, until it effects their bottom line. These are businesses, and they are out to stay in business, which is done thru competative advantage.
To make sure there is no conflict (ie; keep the bastards in line) with the general good – we have regulations.
I’ve already been to change.gov to express my opinion about net neutrality. I recommend everyone do the same thing. Net neutrality is too important an issue to fool around with. If you enjoy blogs, then you should be a proponent of net neutrality. Let your voice be heard.
http://change.gov