Michele Bachmann lies or is completely ignorant about Net Neutrality

[Jackinbox78]

"Bachmann: Oh sure, that's all they have left now, is they use pejorative terms, hateful terms, against those who are carrying the message. So whether they're attacking conservative talk radio, or conservative TV, or whether it's Internet sites -- I mean, let's face it, what's the Obama administration doing? They're advocating net neutrality, which is essentially censorship of the Internet!"

Many of you probably don't know what net neutrality is so I'm going to explain it. Net neutrality is the idea that the provider of your Internet should be blind to what you do with your Internet. They cannot block you from acceding some website (ex: the website of their competitor, an high bandwidth video website, etc.). They cannot slow down you internet connection depending on the website you connect or the type of data you transfer.

The companies that opposes net neutrality do it mainly for one reasons: they provide not only Internet but also TV (cable companies). Internet is going to make cable TV suffers since it's now possible to watch TV from the internet. Without net neutrality they can slow down a website that provides video without you knowing it. Bell in Canada do that kind of things.

Imagine that your phone provider added a delay or some noise to your call when you called someone that doesn't use their service. Would that be acceptable?

Republicans opposes net neutrality. We knew that. Now, we knows that they either lies about it or don't know what they are talking about.

Edit:
Video. She says it at 6:20: http://minnesotaindependent.com/57830/bachmann-net-neutrality-is-censorship

 

[blueapplepaste]

I'm willing to give her benefit of the doubt and say she's not lying, but this is probably more of knee jerk reaction to opposing anything Obama supports.

With many on the right, especially people like Bachmann, doesn't matter what it is, if Obama is for it, they're against it. So as you say, opposing net neutrality essentially is giving companies the right to limit what you access over the internet. In other words, its exactly what Bachmann is arguing against; but she's either too naive or too blind by her opposition to Democrats and Obama to even bother to notice.

 

[nolongerhome]

I'm going with ignorant.

 

[wpiman2]

"Bachmann: Oh sure, that's all they have left now, is they use pejorative terms, hateful terms, against those who are carrying the message. So whether they're attacking conservative talk radio, or conservative TV, or whether it's Internet sites -- I mean, let's face it, what's the Obama administration doing? They're advocating net neutrality, which is essentially censorship of the Internet!"

Many of you probably don't know what net neutrality is so I'm going to explain it. Net neutrality is the idea that the provider of your Internet should be blind to what you do with your Internet. They cannot block you from acceding some website (ex: the website of their competitor, an high bandwidth video website, etc.). They cannot slow down you internet connection depending on the website you connect or the type of data you transfer.

The companies that opposes net neutrality do it mainly for one reasons: they provide not only Internet but also TV (cable companies). Internet is going to make cable TV suffers since it's now possible to watch TV from the internet. Without net neutrality they can slow down a website that provides video without you knowing it. Bell in Canada do that kind of things.

Imagine that your phone provider added a delay or some noise to your call when you called someone that doesn't use their service. Would that be acceptable?

Republicans opposes net neutrality. We knew that. Now, we knows that they either lies about it or don't know what they are talking about.

So your neighbor downloads torrents all day and clogs the bandwidth that you share. Your ISP can't cap your neighbor because they aren't allowed to do a deep packet inspection? That seems absurd.

That is just an example I can conjure up off my head, but I imagine there will be other instances where this would be helpful. Perhaps, your computer is abiding in a DDOS attack-- your ISP needs to cap that traffic.

We could write provision like this into the bill, but as new uses for this relatively young technology emerge it may be necessary for ISPs to categorize our traffic in order to keep their networks functioning smoothly. I am not sure I want the government getting involved. For one, they respond to slowly to new threats. Number 2, I don't see this as a real problem. Any ISP that has attempted such a thing has been identified and lambasted by their customers-- and hence stopped doing it.

Is there any company actively doing this now?

Seems like legislation in search of a problem. I wonder what the finer details of the bill say. I remember several years ago we had a ballot initiative to "ban cruel traps" for hunting. Seemed reasonable, but if you actually read it there were perks for various industries and huge pay raises for park rangers. I imagine net neutrality will be loaded with oodles of other legislation. If the bill is three pages, we know it is legit. Otherwise it will just be the usual pork wrapped in a delicious blanket.

 

[Maren]

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt but at what point does it become lying for a person like this (with a national platform) to write about something they are completely ignorant about?

Maren(who thinks most would do at least basic research to keep from being a fool)

 

[KarateCowboy]

Giving priority to some traffic is a wise idea though. Torrents are high volume but don't require low latency. Games are low volume and need low latency. If you slow torrents the difference in transfer speed is almost imperceptible. This allows you to have nice, low latency in your games. Net Neutrality is just ignorant politicians getting paranoid. Well intended, but ignorant.

 

[Maren]

So your neighbor downloads torrents all day and clogs the bandwidth that you share. Your ISP can't cap your neighbor because they aren't allowed to do a deep packet inspection? That seems absurd.

That is just an example I can conjure up off my head, but I imagine there will be other instances where this would be helpful. Perhaps, your computer is abiding in a DDOS attack-- your ISP needs to cap that traffic.

We could write provision like this into the bill, but as new uses for this relatively young technology emerge it may be necessary for ISPs to categorize our traffic in order to keep their networks functioning smoothly. I am not sure I want the government getting involved. For one, they respond to slowly to new threats. Number 2, I don't see this as a real problem. Any ISP that has attempted such a thing has been identified and lambasted by their customers-- and hence stopped doing it.

Is there any company actively doing this now?

Seems like legislation in search of a problem. I wonder what the finer details of the bill say. I remember several years ago we had a ballot initiative to "ban cruel traps" for hunting. Seemed reasonable, but if you actually read it there were perks for various industries and huge pay raises for park rangers. I imagine net neutrality will be loaded with oodles of other legislation. If the bill is three pages, we know it is legit. Otherwise it will just be the usual pork wrapped in a delicious blanket.

Wrong, any company that has done this has been stopped by the FCC. The problem is companies are suing to get around the FCC rules -- thus the attempt to codify it in the law. The fact is that most communities have limited Internet providers (typically a choice between the local cable monopoly and the largest local phone provider), so the ability of the market (customers) to revolt against their providers is limited.

As for the neighbor who downloads torrents all day -- what is wrong with a monthly cap on network usage?

 

[wpiman2]

Wrong, any company that has done this has been stopped by the FCC. The problem is companies are suing to get around the FCC rules -- thus the attempt to codify it in the law. The fact is that most communities have limited Internet providers (typically a choice between the local cable monopoly and the largest local phone provider), so the ability of the market (customers) to revolt against their providers is limited.

As for the neighbor who downloads torrents all day -- what is wrong with a monthly cap on network usage?

Source?

Nothing is wrong with a cap-- but it is an example of classifying traffic.

 

[Jackinbox78]

So your neighbor downloads torrents all day and clogs the bandwidth that you share. Your ISP can't cap your neighbor because they aren't allowed to do a deep packet inspection? That seems absurd.

That is just an example I can conjure up off my head, but I imagine there will be other instances where this would be helpful. Perhaps, your computer is abiding in a DDOS attack-- your ISP needs to cap that traffic.

We could write provision like this into the bill, but as new uses for this relatively young technology emerge it may be necessary for ISPs to categorize our traffic in order to keep their networks functioning smoothly. I am not sure I want the government getting involved. For one, they respond to slowly to new threats. Number 2, I don't see this as a real problem. Any ISP that has attempted such a thing has been identified and lambasted by their customers-- and hence stopped doing it.

Is there any company actively doing this now?

Seems like legislation in search of a problem. I wonder what the finer details of the bill say. I remember several years ago we had a ballot initiative to "ban cruel traps" for hunting. Seemed reasonable, but if you actually read it there were perks for various industries and huge pay raises for park rangers. I imagine net neutrality will be loaded with oodles of other legislation. If the bill is three pages, we know it is legit. Otherwise it will just be the usual pork wrapped in a delicious blanket.

The problem is that they are doing it without telling you. If I pay for a 5Mbit line, I expect it to be a 5Mbit line and it's none of their business what I do with it. I don't want them to slow down my connection depending on the content I download.

And even if you think net neutrality is a good thing, Bachmann said something completely untrue and that's mainly what this thread is about. If they can't defend their opposition to net neutrality with honest statement, that tell a lot.

 

[ArnautDaniel]

I recall someone around here saying some unkind things about me when I pointed out that right-wing sources were trying to make "net neutrality" out to be a kind of "fairness doctrine" for the internet....

That is what has happened. Talk radio has been going on about attempts to return to the "fairness doctrine", and they've just quietly implied that net neutrality is the same sort of thing....

 

[Douger]

I know the answer to this. Order everyone in the country to buy an internet service and if they don't, fine them.
(The Democrats way of standing up to big corporations)

 

[Maren]

Source?

Nothing is wrong with a cap-- but it is an example of classifying traffic.

How about this:

A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to sanction Comcast for interfering with peer-to-peer traffic, reversing the commission’s first attempt to enforce network neutrality.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated (.pdf) the agency’s 2008 decision ordering Philadelphia-based Comcast to stop hampering the peer-to-peer service BitTorrent as a traffic-management practice.

Maren(thinks this is why the law is needed)

 

[TheNewWorldMan]

As long as the law is written so ISPs can tack on additional charges for less service, the GOP (and an increasing number of Democrats who are bought and paid for too) will support it.

 

[BotanicalBob]

I can understand the technical aspects of the NN. But we don't have technical people writing the bill. We have people who think if you get too many people on one side of an island, it'll tip over. We have people who don't care about the Constitution, and admit it. We have people who write thousand page bills and pass them at midnight on a weekend without ever having read the bill.

Is the proposed problem with the internet we supposedly have now big enough to risk congressional intervention into something that seems to work quite well. Intervention that will most likely leave the internet worse off than it is now.

Always remember, congress is the opposite of progress.

 

[Sketcher]

Net Neutrality itself is not censorship of the Internet, but it gives the FCC power over the Internet, making it one step away from censorship. It already has too much power, it needs less rather than more.

 

[trunks2k]

So your neighbor downloads torrents all day and clogs the bandwidth that you share. Your ISP can't cap your neighbor because they aren't allowed to do a deep packet inspection? That seems absurd.

That is just an example I can conjure up off my head, but I imagine there will be other instances where this would be helpful. Perhaps, your computer is abiding in a DDOS attack-- your ISP needs to cap that traffic.

Nothing about net neutrality prevents providers from capping usage or preventing malicious use. Net neutrality allows for providers to the end customer to protect the stability of their network to meet whatever QOS standards you they may have promised the customer. So if someone is using too much bandwidth, and thus impacting other users, they can turn down that one user so that everyone else gets the service they deserve. It's just that there should be clear rules and whatever service scheme you set up, all traffic is treated equally.

For example: let's say that a provider will not allow you to download more than 1GB of data over the course of an hour, then all data over that hour is handled equally until the limit is reached. There's nothing wrong with putting that cap on. However, they can't say "You can use 1GB in an hour, but the traffic from sites X,Y, and Z don't count towards that total".

Similarly, providers are free to block traffic that they believe to be malicious.

Net neutrality is basically encoding into law that which providers have been doing for years on their own.

Number 2, I don't see this as a real problem. Any ISP that has attempted such a thing has been identified and lambasted by their customers-- and hence stopped doing it.

Is there any company actively doing this now?

Comcast was doing it for bit torrent traffic, but the FCC stopped them. Then a judge said the FCC can't stop them. So I don't know if they are doing it now. The writing on the wall seems to be that it's slowly going to happen though. While companies may have been lambasted for doing it, there's so little choice for internet that isn't dial-up, that really if Verizon and Comcast decide to do it, there's no real recourse for most people. For example, I currently have NO choice for high speed internet, it's Comcast or nothing.

 

[Sketcher]

While companies may have been lambasted for doing it, there's so little choice for internet that isn't dial-up, that really if Verizon and Comcast decide to do it, there's no real recourse for most people. For example, I currently have NO choice for high speed internet, it's Comcast or nothing.

The solution for this is competition, not regulation.

 

[wpiman2]

How about this:

Maren(thinks this is why the law is needed)

"The FCC had acted in response to complaints Comcast was sending forged packets to broadband customers to close their peer-to-peer sessions. Comcast appealed to the circuit court, arguing that the FCC overstepped its bounds."

This is computer interference, not net neutrality.

I think everyone agrees with the concept; I think people just wonder if we really need another set of laws for something the industry is already doing.

 

[trunks2k]

The solution for this is competition, not regulation.

Kinda sorta. While I like the idea of being able to choose from more than Comcast for my internet, the infrastructure required to have the necessary competition makes it very hard to do. Not to mention that companies like Comcast and Verizon are so huge that they can just absorb or squash any competition.

On top of that, your data goes through more networks than just your local provider. If I want to connect to a website that's based in California, I'd have to go through my local network, my destination's local network, plus probably at least one big network to get my data across the country. Even if my local network is using NN, if any other network along the way does not, I could be artificially denied the fastest way to the desired data, and if the network on the other end doesn't like my provider for some reason, I'm completely at their whims.

 

[Sketcher]

Kinda sorta. While I like the idea of being able to choose from more than Comcast for my internet, the infrastructure required to have the necessary competition makes it very hard to do. Not to mention that companies like Comcast and Verizon are so huge that they can just absorb or squash any competition.

Nah. The infrastructure can be built, and it need not be intrusive. There's also WiMax, which bypasses cabling from the tower to the home. Also, Verizon has plenty of competition, including AT&T.

On top of that, your data goes through more networks than just your local provider. If I want to connect to a website that's based in California, I'd have to go through my local network, my destination's local network, plus probably at least one big network to get my data across the country. Even if my local network is using NN, if any other network along the way does not, I could be artificially denied the fastest way to the desired data, and if the network on the other end doesn't like my provider for some reason, I'm completely at their whims.

But there's no real reason to do that, especially if you're fearing reprisals from your competitors. Besides, that wouldn't even be the first priority traffic to throttle if an ISP was even going to throttle. It's the illicit downloads that really eat up the bandwidth and bring hassles to the ISPs. You've got the government agents and big media's hired guns getting on their case on one end, and the customers getting on their case for responding to the former on the other end. Throttling that stuff and letting your customers know that you block illegal downloads makes these problems go away. If customers want to download that much stuff that badly, they can switch providers. But it would take a pretty strong stand on the part of the ISPs to even do that, since lots of people want to use the Internet to download stuff illegally, and the ISPs want the pirates' money too.