amin

Ideas Posted

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An Open Internet is Essential for America

amin

I liken the Internet to the national highway system: It carries a large and diverse set of traffic, and allows mostly unencumbered passage from start to finish. It is actively maintained to ensure its effectiveness, and the reason is clear- America depends on it.. for almost everything. The transport of goods essential to the operation of this country depend on that road. People who travel to and from work that have a role in the economy depend on it.

That should equate to how the Internet should be treated. Like the interstate, it has many uses, some of them others may deem irrelevant or even wrong. However, if we begin to place restrictions on such use, that medium becomes less useful to everybody else that depends on it. The Internet might not carry goods and people like the interstate does, but it does carry business-oriented data, communications, and new-emerging technologies that soon the world deserves to have access to.

Following this analogy is a set of principles on which I believe the Internet should be treated/improved upon:

1. The Information Superhighway is a Dirt Road
The issue is not that there is too much traffic on the Internet. The issue is that in order for everybody to benefit, this 'highway' must be expanded. Instead of enforcing tiered access, we should expand its infrastructure to support the new load. I believe that the US should allocate funding to expand the backbone and the effective throughput the nation's businesses and people can use. Our competitors in Korea and Japan have done so already. They have superior network systems to ours. Homes and businesses have faster connections. We as a global power need to allow our businesses to compete by having comparable infrastructure. Japan has an information superhighway.. we have an information dirt-road, with people threatening to place tollbooths.

2. The Information Superhighway Should Remain Open
A man might take the interstate to his favourite gentleman's club or adult video store. Although not everyone will approve of this, he is allowed to take the road to get there. What controls whether or not if all men perform the same behaviour is not whether we establish roadblocks, but rather if the local community allows the store to be built in the first place, and if the person/family/local community approves of it.

To be blunt, if a person has an issue with certain websites being available, they should be free to do something about it.. AT HOME. Parental filters are available for this sort of thing. We cannot take values and turn them into rules that are applied for the Internet at large. Local governments can perhaps enforce certain rules, but the whole Internet should be not be held to those standards. Its purpose should be to facilitate effective and reliable flow of information from source to destination; no more, no less.

3. The Internet Should Allow All Kinds of Traffic
As long as a vehicle complies with the minimum set of standards to travel on the interstate, it can. There are no restrictions on what it can carry. This allows for people of all types to travel and carry limitless things on the interstate: food, raw materials, consumer goods, etc. If the interstate was restricted to small cars only, the entire American economy will screech to a halt.

That is the kind of thing that certain network providers wish to do- restrict what kind of data can travel unencumbered on the Internet. That premise is bad for business. Certain video games that require the Internet to transfer information, such as World of Warcraft, certainly use a fair share of bandwidth. If we begin to cap the usage on that kind of data, a multi-million-dollar American industry will suffer. It will also hinder innovation in many up-and-coming industries. These industries potentially can create jobs and bring our country out of it's economic recession.

I assert that an Open Internet is Essential to the American way- for commerce, freedom of communication, and technological competition with other global powers. If we begin to restrict it now, we close the door to an opportunity to securing our prosperity for years to come.

Thank you for providing an open forum to express my ideas.

-Amin Astaneh

Comments (184)The Open Internet & Innovation

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amin 29 days ago

openinternet-

Yes, that's been pretty much the big difference in perspective: "Who do you trust more: the government or the market?"

I have some ideas that might be worth thinking about:

1. As for anticompetitive practices made by ISPs with a monopolistic grip in certain areas, I suggest government oversight by the FTC rather than the FCC. The FTC can facilitate the establishment of a competitive market in those problem regions and give the customer freedom of choice.

2. A media network should not be an ISP. Mergers a-la Comcast/NBC-Universal is BAD, BAD, BAD. It might be cheaper for them to transport their content over the pipe they own, but if they prefer their media network traffic to other media network traffic when their customers want to load up CNN, that's anticompetitive. I don't see good coming from that for Comcast's customers, and possibly other ISP's customers if they adopt the same model. Again, this is in the FTC's ballfield.

3. If you look many many posts above, I wrote:

"..With the current system that's established, let's use hypothetically the best-case privately-owned(sic, they are publically-traded) candidate possible: Google. They have dark-fiber, and LOTS of it. They have capital, they have the knowhow, and they support open technologies. I say this is the best shot the current market has. Could they succeed? Are they willing to try? To be honest, I'm not sure. There are too many obstacles to enter the market even at their stature.."

Looks like they recently answered: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/10/google-to-launch-1gbps-isp-service-in-select-markets-at-competi/

This is a GOOD THING. If Google came into my neighborhood, I'd seriously consider getting service from them. A gigabit seems outlandish and even silly, but with enough national coverage, it could give the overall US network a serious PR improvement (as in, we would not be a 'information dirt road') Also, it may force competitors to upgrade their infrastructure to offer a comparable pipe. All this, without any subsidy. Not bad at all!

I used to work for an ISP, and did the email thing too(http://sourceforge.net/projects/xerxes/). I agree, too much government oversight would stink. There needs to be some form that is balanced. Finding it will be the hard part.

amin 1 month ago

pangasamaneesh-

You touch on a concept that I've been thinking about for a while, and I am happy that you brought it up.

1) A content provider should NOT be an ISP. If they are, they should be broken up into separate companies. This is not really an FCC matter , but an FTC one for sure, and is worth talking about and bringing to people's attention. Internet access should be treated like a public work, such as water or electricity.

I'm definitely not joining the camp that regulation is bad, when properly used. Regulation should NOT be subject to influence by private interests, and the FCC's current proposed policy provides too much freedom to abuse free-speech, or worse by copyright holders. I suggest those companies revise their business model rather than trying to lobby governments to mold their antiquated policies around it.

A competitive (read: healthy) market allows innovation and requires it in order for companies to remain relevant to the demands of the consumer. This means that irrelevant business models eventually die. Those companies need to evolve, not try to take away our freedoms so that they may remain economic dinosaurs.

amin 1 month ago

There is something that has come to my attention that has made me, and hopefully all of you in this discussion, angry:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/net-neutrality-plan-would-permit-blocking-bittorrent

Just like the government should keep their hands off of free enterprise (in the general case), corporate interests should stay off FCC's Net Neutrality policies. And shame on the FCC for allowing such a thing to happen in the first place.

The current iteration of policy should NOT have a loophole giving license to telecoms and content providers to violate freedom-of-speech in the name of 'reasonable network management' a-la Comcast. Nor should the telecoms become copyright cops.

I was in support of the FCC's proposed regulations in regards to Network Neutrality, but I am not at this time due to this news.

Please help in signing this petition:
http://www.realnetneutrality.org/

I still think that minimal government intervention to discourage anti-competitive behaviour by telecoms is a good idea. This kind of regulation is NOT what I had in mind when I entered debate with some of you.

I am toying with the idea of writing a new essay and posting it here addressing this problem. You might hear from me again soon.

-Amin

amin 2 months ago

I saw this in the news today:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/verizon-and-google-draft-net-neutrality-peace-treaty.ars

In a nutshell:

"We've got Google acknowledging the importance of a voluntary framework for dealing with Internet discrimination problems, and Verizon cautiously admitting the need for government oversight if all else fails."

Notable talking points:
"When a person accesses cyberspace, he or she should be able to connect with any other person that he or she wants to—and that other person should be able to receive his or her message."

"No entity from either the government or the private sector should wrest control from consumers over how they choose to use the Internet, and the government should not implement policies that would limit consumers’ ability to choose for themselves."

"There is no sound reason to impose communications laws or regulations on the robust marketplace of Internet content, applications, and services."

Of course this is as tentative as a falling leaf perfectly balanced on a twig, but at least the big players on opposing sides are willing to see each other's perspectives for a moment and try to meet in the middle.

Are Google and Verizon right on their mutual perspective? I think they are on the right track. If there is some kind of framework within the private sector that expresses the market's willingness to address social problems that take place on their networks, then the government's intervention is minimized to an as-needed basis.

As for the likelihood of implementing such a framework to the consumers' satisfaction.. only time will tell. For now, I just bring this to the conversation because it is hope-inspiring.

-Amin

amin 2 months ago

mlittle-

I appreciate your spirited comment, but please stay on topic. This is not a forum to discuss partisan rhetoric, regardless of what side of the fence you are. If anything, it detracts from the core issues that drive the conflict around network neutrality.

However, you do bring valid ideas to the table:
Net neutrality can promote-
* giving independant and international news outlets a voice
* making government documents readily accessible
* accountability from government agencies, offices, positions, etc.

Sites like Wikileaks are an example of this.

ssfahrer-

Freedoms could be regarded as mere privilege, sure. However, that doesn't mean that people won't collectively express their personal desire to assert that their speech(communication) remains free( as in freedom, unencumbered). Just like meeting places like churches, universities, and the street corner, the internet should be a place where people can communicate what they want to communicate, without censorship. Freedom of speech on the internet shouldn't be wrong. If it is, I would like to lobby to reverse that decision. That's why democracy is great.

As for being a shareholder to influence a telecom to do the right thing- I'm not too sure about that. Companies exist to make money, not do the right thing. Shareholders usually are people that have a lot of capital invested who wants to see the company do well, so that they get a return. I doubt the big shareholders care if Bobby down the street with a DSL connection got throttled for using all of his bandwidth streaming Hulu. I also doubt that if I bought a few shares and wrote some letters and attended shareholder meetings that anybody would take me and my opinion seriously. Why change when you have a monopolistic hold on the market?

I wish I could be proven wrong on that point, I really do. I just don't think 'corporate accountability' is a realistic term in this case.

-Amin

amin 4 months ago

>I encourage Amin to read the entry in Wikipedia about the internet:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_history

Yes, I've read it, an interesting read.

>"The Government" neither invented, nor built the internet.

It describes how TCP/IP was developed under the influence of DARPA. Those are, the primary data transmission protocols we use now, right? Vint Cerf was scouted out by DARPA, right? Well, it sounds like the core technologies behind the Internet was government-funded.

The IETF was government-funded. Boy, I love reading those RFCs. Without them, a lot of data transmission protocols wouldn't have been standardized.

> The "subsidies" referred to are probably also a phantom. Please provide specifics and references.

I would be more than happy to!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
This was a DoD project, the world's first packet switching network. Without this, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation_Network
This composed the majority of the backbone in the early nineties. NSF is a government agency.

ANS Advanced Network & Services was also commissioned to service the NSFNET. The Cook Report explains that ANS was funded 10-15M/yr by NSF to service the NSFNET. They later were purchased by AOL. http://www.cookreport.com/glossary.shtml#145

MCI was given a 50M contract to work on the Internet II.
Bernier, Paula. "The science of high-speed computing." Telephony v228, n18 (May 1, 1995):7,15.

I can agree that a lot of private parties put in capital to wire up the whole nation. However, what made it possible? Where did the technology come from? Where did the baseline networks come from?

According to this, not from the corporations.

As for inherent openness, only time will tell. The news that's been coming out of Time Warner's and Comcast's camp haven't been too encouraging in terms of metered rates and throttling, respectively. I don't have a lot of faith in them seeking their customer's interests.

amin 4 months ago

I used the highway analogy because the majority of the country's economy depends on it to function. I think that soon (if not now already) that our economy depends on the Internet as a medium for commerce. It had nothing to do with some sort of bias towards government regulation. When people wake up in the morning for the morning commute, I don't think government regulation comes into their mind. Although, as I continue researching the history of the Internet, the analogy became more and more appropriate.

At any rate, it has been 40 years since the 4-node ARPA network came online and has evolved to what we currently use today. Ironically, the ARPANET was developed out of the same vein as the Interstate was: The Interstate was originally for war materiel transport for Eisenhower's time, and the ARPANET was a data transmission network designed to be resistant to nuclear weapons. Now, today, both benefit the regular citizen.

It is again ironic that people are arguing against government regulation of any kind towards the Internet today when 12 years ago, companies were lobbying the FCC en masse to ensure that ISPs did not have to pay market prices for per-minute access charges for POTS service. (Remember Dial-Up?) Of course we have resistance today, since the FCC is no longer willing to serve the corporate interest on this issue.

The fact we even have the Internet as it today is DUE to government intervention. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that this is the house that "the market" solely built. The backbone that the bulk of our traffic travels through was HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED.

Now, let's look over some more history. The government wanted to be able to leverage a telegraph system back in the day, but they did not want to run it's network. Private companies did that. Let us also consider again that the government back in the 90s owned and controlled the backbone(NSFNET). Again, they did not want to do that as more and more commercial traffic began to be generated. Therefore, they retired the NSFNET and funded a private backbone for companies to use. They started the privatization effort, not the companies. The companies have the government to thank. They developed the technology, and handed over to the private sector.

You read that right. The government built and controlled the Internet, but they didn't want to keep it.

Their greatest mistake is that the NSF was too myopic and did not establish rules during the privatization effort that would have made this discussion today truly irrelevant, such as mandates that would prohibit anti-competitiveness amongst the telecoms.

It's great that we have the freedom to express our opinion here. Just be sure to look at history!

amin 4 months ago

It looks like we have come to a impasse. Major points:

1. Government control of the Internet would encourage abuse (violation of right to free speech, information, and violation of privacy. Privacy has been violated already via AT&T collaborating)

2. Lack of Government control of the Internet would encourage abuse (price fixing, poor QoS, possible violation of free speech, serving of corporate interest rather than public interest)

Both sides of the argument appear reasonable. I(and others) don't trust the corporations, and I've made my case with facts and historical perspectives. I think the monopolistic control should be ended via government intervention of some sort, akin to the antitrust movement of the last century. Dar(and others) don't trust the government, and can make a comparable list of points given enough time. I say that their concerns are valid and should not be dismissed, since the government is not composed of saints.

What we do agree upon is what we expect when we use the Internet- free and unfettered access to all services that participate on the network at the best QoS that is reasonable.

Unfortunately, the Internet is made up of a group of competing corporate networks that connect together, which means a customer of one company may be rendered unable to connect to a website whose connection is owned by another company.

With all this in mind, where do we go from here? I think inaction will equal our loss. If we do nothing, we will lose our freedom anyway, regardless of the party that takes it from us.

The fact is: the corporations own the majority of the Internet, and they have currently have the power to violate free-speech rights at the backbone level to their customers and to their competitors, which both hurt us. I think McCain's bill would unfortunately ensure that practice would go unchecked. I argue that there needs to be some sort of control that ensures that a uniform standard is in place to protect the rights of the people. The only entity that is capable is a government body. As for the level of regulation, perhaps an "Internet Bill of Rights" is in order. Our rights as citizens should be congruent to the rights we have online. Unrestricted privatization would not permit this.

At the end of the day, we just might have to agree to disagree.

-Amin

amin 4 months ago

Whoops, I need to clarify something:

Sufficiently large Tier 2 networks would suit better than a Tier 1 network. At any rate, I mean a network large enough to handle the traffic requirements for a very large amount of home users and companies.

amin 4 months ago

Dar-

I'm glad we can continue this discourse civilly.

In an ideal situation, telecoms would be engaged in competition with one another in the attempt to attract the consumer to subscribe to their ISP services. This would involve offering what their potential customer base wants. In this case, we (in general):

* Want things to remain as they are in terms of universal access to all available web services at an unlimited basis.

* Want faster connections at lower prices like in other countries. Japanese can get 100Mbps connections at 50$/month.. that's 5-10x the speed of 'high-end' connections here. When I likened our internet connections to a dirt-road, I meant it.

In order for their product to be relevant and desirable by the potential customer, ISPs would have to continue to offer this service reliably and at a competitive price.

In a monopoly, the consumer has no such guarantee. They have no control on the quality of service or the price. The Supply/Demand principle no longer applies.

Now, to your premise:

"IF there was broadband access competition in some market and IF the consumers in that market wanted flat broadband, at least one company would emerge with a flat broadband access product."

I can agree that as people get more and more aware of this Net Neutrality issue, they will want flat broadband.

Now, all that is required is: a company willing and able to give customers what they want to enter the marketplace. This will provide competition, which will force the rest of the market to fall in line. I agree with this.

HOWEVER- The real question is: 1) What would it take to accomplish that, and 2) what are the chances of it successfully occurring?

Let's flesh this out, using how the Internet is organized right now.

The company would need to be a Tier 1 ISP. If you owned a Tier 2 or 3, you would have to purchase a lease to access a higher tier, and if they restrict speech, throttle, or make the lease cost prohibitively expensive, you will not be able to give what the consumer wants. The higher the Tier, the more control of the traffic you have. (I used to work for a small tier 3 ISP.)

This means-
a. If this company doesn't exist already, it needs a TON of capital to lay out a backbone network comparable to what Verizon and AT&T already have. They will need access to lay tons of fiber optics, create data centers, deploy switches able to support the potential load, hire sysadmins, etc. That is a non-trivial undertaking.

b. Once this network is established, it will have to peer(interconnect) with the other Tier 1 providers to participate in the rest of the Internet. There is no guarantee that other Tier 1 providers will connect to ours or the traffic is not tampered with, thus risking partitioning the Internet into neutral and non-neutral pieces. Imagine being able to connect to Yahoo just fine, but Google takes minutes to even load a search request. It's within the competition's power to do this, and such things have happened before.

So- What are the chances that this will succeed, without any governmental intervention whatsoever? With the current system that's established, let's use hypothetically the best-case privately-owned candidate possible: Google. They have dark-fiber, and LOTS of it. They have capital, they have the knowhow, and they support open technologies. I say this is the best shot the current market has. Could they succeed? Are they willing to try? To be honest, I'm not sure. There are too many obstacles to enter the market even at their stature. And even if they did, it would require all of the Tier 1 ISPs to guarantee a certain QoS across their interconnections.

This mental experiment brings me to a conclusion:

In order for the internet to be open to everyone, sufficient Tier 1 ISPs will have to participate, or one entity must have market control but be "pro consumer". I seriously doubt these companies will want to- they are lobbying in the other direction! And if one corporate entity controlled all of the network, we would be worse off than we are today.

Therefore, I see no other choice. The government will either have to regulate these ISPs via law, or the government will have to treat it as a public work and create a network large enough for the whole country.

That is my conclusion, Dar. Do I like this conclusion? NO! The government is fallible and can use that power badly, as you and I agree to fear. But since the Internet is owned by privately owned corporations that are concerned with profit rather than freedom, I see no other choice. At least we can vote for the people that make decisions on this matter. Not everybody can afford to be shareholders in these companies and have a say.

-Amin

amin 4 months ago

Dar-

Despite the venomous nature of your response, that is true. Some of our freedoms have been curtailed in the past administration, and that is something we need to reverse.

Consider though- what makes you think that the content providers will give you this freedom? If we have to choose a foe to defend our freedom of speech from in terms of the Internet, I rather have a Democratically-elected president and local representatives to contend with than the companies themselves. At least we can vote for the former. At least there is a chance that this situation will be in the hands of those that have our interests in mind. The telecoms do not, for certain. It's a sad choice, but I see no alternative. Privatization of the Internet isn't going to work in the long-run.

Let's contrast with the rest of the world.

Do we get our Internet access turned off every time people dissent in the streets like in Iran months ago? No.

Do we have the Great Firewall of USA here like in China, restricting websites that conflict with the government's worldview? No.

The fact a government website was established (openinternet.GOV) for us to even have a debate in this thread is sufficient evidence that SOMEBODY in the government cares about the freedom to express what I have to say. I'm sure everybody with an internet connection can read what I have to say right now. I don't see government agents banging down my door about this. Apparently they encourage it.

I appreciate your perspective, but without evidence it sounds like trolling, which is a no-no on the Internet. If you have something concrete relevant to the issue at hand, please enlighten us.

As for using SMS, you're right, it isn't my decision. If it were an open-competitive market, it can be.

-Amin

amin 4 months ago

Dar-

Again, I defend the right to a differing opinion. This discourse ensures that all possibilities are explored while forming a conclusion in a manner that uses reason rather than personal bias.

My concern is that market forces right now are stagnant. In a monopoly, the content providers ARE the market force. Demand will always be high for bandwidth in the 21'st century and beyond. We live in the dawn of the information age. Net access is becoming an essential commodity like water, food, or gasoline.

In a monopoly, there is no guarantee that the consumer will get what they want. THAT IS THE CORE PROBLEM HERE. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, they own the majority of this market. They have no real competition- why should they listen to what the consumer has to say where there are no alternatives? That is not a free market. There is no laissez-faire here. It's market control. It's a cartel.

Let's dispense with the analogies and get to some concrete empirical evidence.. a case-study, if you will. Let us consider for a moment the SMS protocol used to transmit text messages between cell phones. AT&T right now charges 30 cents for each text message sent or received. A text message consists of 120 characters maximum (120 bytes in ASCII encoding, for the savvy). That means, to generate a gigabyte of data (1/4 of the data contained in a DVD) over SMS equals ((1024 * 1024 * 1024)/120) * 0.30 = $2,684,354.56. Cell phone companies are making a killing over data transmission that I can generate watching Hulu for a few hours. Tell me that "market forces will bring good change" in this case. It hasn't in the cell phone industry. What can make a person think it will here? AT&T and Verizon do cell plans as well as Internet service, so we already have a precedent to base my argument upon. We pay more in sending texts that NASA pays to get images from the Hubble Telescope. Only heaven knows what the American people will soon have to pay for the level of Internet access we have now if they have their way.

I have no faith in empty words. 10 years ago, sure, I might agree with you. However, we are too far gone. We have run out of options- the government will have to intervene somehow: via stronger regulation, or by providing a public alternative.

I apologize, Dar, but we cannot afford to trust our freedom of speech and open commerce to the "market". Look around you. They've done enough damage already.

Respectfully yours,

-Amin

amin 5 months ago

ntom, mattsampley, ar103-

I appreciate your feedback and opinions. I defend your right to have them.

Back to my analogy:

When the Interstate system was created, who paid for it? The Federal and State Governments did (90%,10%, respectively). Who did it benefit? Everyone.

ntom- You are right, taxes can raise the cost of living. However, if you made that same argument in the previous century in regards to the interstate, I seriously doubt that we would be the economic superpower we are today. The interstate is a public work. I am saying that the Internet should be treated as a public work.

Does the government have to make some big project to do this? Not necessarily. We have the FCC. There are many ways to use resources/mandates in a smart way to achieve a goal without using too much taxpayer dollars, without a 'government-connection'. However, if we have no other choice, I argue it will benefit all in the long run. Besides, if the government had to hire thousands of workers to lay out fiber optics and install switches, I don't think they will complain, since they no longer will take part in the 11% unemployment we now face.

mattsampley- If the government pays for expanded infrastructure, sure, they can claim ownership, which may give them power to take freedoms away. However, remember what the internet IS. It's a distributed, decentralized computer network. If one link goes down, there can be many other paths to take their place. Also, what would be the difference between AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast taking freedoms/access away and the government?

ar103- I understand what the Government is doing and what their role is (they are making law, not laying out cable.). I am saying, (perhaps outside of the core idea) they should also get more involved by making more options available for data to travel across. If companies hold a monopoly over how one connects to the Internet, perhaps providing another government-funded option can provide enough competition to spur innovation. That may be more effective than law alone, where a high-paid group of lawyers can spend their time learning to circumvent.

Remember Gentlemen, these are ideas and this is a discussion. My thoughts are not 'right' or 'wrong', they are just ideas. If one opinion makes a good impact, I'm satisfied. I'm not a politician.

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