While I certainly plan to return to the subject of Rep. Dave Reichert’s reversal on Net Neutrality as symptomatic of his lack of guiding principles, I would be remiss to touch on the subject without thanking Rep. Jay Inslee for his leadership on this issue.
It is Rep. Inslee who is proving to be Net Neutrality’s most vocal champion in the House, and it is he who is a circulating a letter urging the FCC to follow through on its plans to enforce this principle on broadband providers: the basic principle that all content must be treated neutrally.
Under Net Neutrality, Qwest cannot legally block or or slow down access to HA when I berate them for their terrible service, or in perhaps a more likely example, Comcast could not limit access to competing video content, or perhaps strike a deal to provide superior enduser throughput to Google over Bing, or vice versa.
Net Neutrality is a principle that ensures a free and open Internet, and as such is absolutely crucial to health of our economy and our democracy. So thank you, Rep. Inslee, for holding firm to your principles, and fighting the wealthy and powerful telcos and cable companies on our behalf.
I don’t understand why anyone not in a relevant business would support anything but a totally neutral Internet. It would be simple to enforce laws that force neutrality, the laws themselves would be simple to write.
If you provide hardware, the hardware must be platform-neutral and not dedicated to any specific applications or operating systems, and you should not be allowed to provide software, except that which is specific to the functionality of that hardware.
If you provide software, you must not be permitted to specify what hardware or operating systems the software would function on, nor would you be allowed to manufacture hardware or operating systems.
If you provide operating systems, you must not be allowed to specify or discriminate which hardware platforms the operating system would function on, or provide software applications nor would you be allowed to provide hardware specific to said operating systems. They must conform to a national and international standard of operability and interoperability.
Yeah, lookin at BOTH you Steves.
Jerks.
The businesses must be separate. The functionality must be neutral across platforms.
If you provide internet service, you should not be allowed to specify what platforms the service would function on, nor should you be allowed to provide content, except where that content is specific to the functionality of the service. You should not be allowed to specify or discriminate which content providers would be allowed on your service, or what hardware or software that allows access to said service. You cannot be allowed to regionally or locally discriminate who has access to such service except when specific users abuse or misuse the service, as ruled by a court of law.
If you provide content, you should not be allowed to provide service, nor specify what hardware or software platforms the content can be hosted upon or discriminate which service can provide access to said content. Nor should you be allowed to manufacture hardware or software specific to utilization of said content except where it conforms to international standards.
Neutral network. The businesses are maintained as separate entities, and are required to conform to specifications and standards set by a federally-funded and maintained organization such as the National Bureau of Standards, as is done with things like screw threads, measurements and weights.
Such a law would put real teeth and enforcement capabilities into the hands of a dominating, single body. Malware, viruses and spyware would be nearly eliminated within a few years. This would also slow down the race to complexity we see now, with operating systems requiring faster and more complex hardware to function with every new version or upgrade.
You can run windows 95 on any PC, but try running W7 on any machine older than 2 years or so. Try running Linux or any version of Microsoft operating systems on a modern Macintosh. Every new version of an operating system seems to also require a massive and total upgrading or replacement of expensive equipment to function. This process needs to be slowed down. Not stopped, just slowed down. Most people cannot afford to chuck and replace an expensive piece of hardware every time a new operating system comes out, and most folks cannot spend $400 on a new operating system every couple of years to access internet content or new software.
The entire industry must be neutral.
I’m not a lawyer, I’m sure some legal-beagle type could come in here and punch all sorts of interesting holes in my arguement. But thats what it seems to me, as a layman, should happen with the internet.
Inslee’s on the correct side of every issue. I’m sure glad to be in his district.
Rick Larsen signed the industry generated letter
no good
@ 3
Yeah, he’s a whore. Just one of 435.
Inslee’s on the correct side of every issue. I’m sure glad to be in his district.
Maureen @ 3
I saw that.
Made me wonder why Rick Larsen would choose corporate profits over free speech.