Let’s face it, the FCC just never seems all that clever, nor do they seem to ever have the actual best interests of the people as their main goal. This has never been more evident than in their new alleged definition of Net Neutrality. Here’s a letter from the ECA (Entertainment Consumers Association) that does a great job of explaining the problems with what the FCC is trying to do.
Even if you don’t read this whole thing, be sure to go read the petition and sign it. Because in the end, we, the consumers will end up paying more in money, censorship and poor service.
On December 21, the FCC will meet and it’s reported that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will outline his Net Neutrality proposal with a vote before the end of the year. Instead of the preservation of a neutral internet where traffic is treated equally, we have heard that the proposal would:
* Require wired broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal content, applications, and services with the flexibility to manage network congestion and spam as long as they publicly disclose their network management approach.
* Allow broadband providers to experiment with dedicated networks to route traffic from specialized services like smart grids and home security systems as long as they don’t hurt the public internet.
* Permit tiered pricing.
This is not a “neutral internet” and fails for the following reasons:
* It exempts wireless – wireless carriers might not be able to “block” content, but under this proposal they would be able to “discriminate.”
* Expect paid priority and toll roads – Under these rules the toll roads demanded by Comcast to Netflix would be legal and standard practice. Internet Service Providers would be free to create bumps in the road to access content or even degrade a service to the point it’s not usable, unless they pay up.
* The enforcement and definition of “lawful content” is unclear – torrent and peer-to-peer sites have a place in disseminating information quickly and easily. Unfortunately it is used for piracy as well. Will the technology be thrown out with the bathwater?
This is changing the definition of Net Neutrality and yet declaring ”mission accomplished.”
Really what they are doing is allowing the service providers the ability to do all manner of things, like charge differently for different types of traffic (streaming video vs. email) when really, all of that data should be treated exactly the same as at its most basic form, it’s just ones and zeroes.
It also could force certain services, like Netflix above, to pay more to use the same bandwidth that everyone else would pay less for. This of course is going to be passed on to the consumer no matter what and, they could also underhandedly make the service not function as well as a competing service if that other service happens to pay extra and they don’t. That is utter discrimination of the basest kind.
Finally, the FCC is about to set a standard that would allow corporations to determine what kind of data you can access and what kind of programs you can use. For gamers, this is important because many MMO game clients are being distributed via torrents since they generally weigh in at 2GB or more for a graphics-heavy game. You will no longer be able to use a peer-to-peer network to get those files as quickly as you once did but will be forced to use only services that the corporations deem ‘legal.’
However, every protocol for network traffic is made to transmit data, legal or otherwise. So if they deem HTTP (the web) as a way to disseminate illegal content, then they will be able to limit it at their leisure. That is just wrong.
Fight the FCC’s corporate-leaning ways. You are the people, the government is supposed to be for and by you, not out to screw you and yes, the FCC is about to do just that.
Head to the ECA’s page, sign the petition and tell the FCC to leave your Internet alone.