THE GREAT VERGOOZLE PANIC OF 2010
Aug. 14th, 2010 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Around 100 people rally outside Google's California offices demanding they drop their evil pact with Verizon to kill off Net neutrality in a grand Screw It Let’s Be Evil plan to kill off the free open Internet and replace it with a pay model where you’ll pay $100 per YouTube video if you want it to run properly and you’ll like it and there’s nothing you or the FCC can do about it. Suck it!
Or something like that.
Okay. Look.
That’s not really what Google and Verizon have come up with with their Net neutrality framework idea. But I’m not surprised it’s being interpreted that way – the Net neutrality discussion (like every other socioeconomic policial issue in the US) stopped being rational quite some time ago, with both sides greatly afeared that either Evil Corporations or Evil Obama will take over the Internet and kick the other side off it into Digital Exile until they Play Ball.
Luckily, there are a few reasonably calm write-ups on the Google-Verizon proposal to give you a better understanding of just what they’ve done and what they’ve got in mind. I recommend this one from Wired and this one from Engadget.
Here’s what I can add as someone who writes about this stuff for a living and also has a grasp of the network technologies that sit behind it all:
Basically, a lot of the criticism seems overblown and based on the slippery-slope logic that X inevitably will lead to Y (where “X” = “VerGoozle NN plan” and “Y” = “Corporate Telco America wins the Internet and nothing on it will ever be free ever again”).
Having read the proposal – and remember, it’s still just a proposal at this stage – I don’t think that’s the case. The VerGoozle proposal actually includes most of the stuff that pro-NN people have always wanted in the first place – like non-discrimination and non-prioritization of traffic in an open and transparent manner.
It’s flawed, sure. The main issues are the exemptions for “additional online services” (which is so vaguely defined that it makes most of the entire proposed framework meaningless, and for my money is the only thing that makes the “fast lane” idea a problem) and wireless broadband.
For the latter, it’s worth noting that the proposal does include a provision to look at including wireless later on. What it needs is something more concrete with a roadmap and teeth to ensure that actually happens. VerGoozle is right to say that wireless has different traffic management issues (it does – ask any AT&T user who has complained about about how goddamned slow their iPhone connection is sometimes). But it’s also true that transparency alone isn’t going to cut it (for example, most wireless operators don’t care if you know they’re blocking yr Skype or Slingbox app on their network).
These kinds of details will have to be hashed out during the vetting/argument process, and I think they will be as long as people talk sense. The same goes for concerns raised by the EFF about other issues like defining “lawful content” (which may or may not include copyright issues), as well as working out where exactly the FCC fits into this to enforce the final version.
So there’s a lot to work to be done, yes, but as compromises go it’s actually not a bad start.
Unless one’s idea of compromise is: “I’ll never join you! Never! Never! Never!” Then I can see why one would have a problem with this.
Not the end of the world,
This is dF
Or something like that.
Okay. Look.
That’s not really what Google and Verizon have come up with with their Net neutrality framework idea. But I’m not surprised it’s being interpreted that way – the Net neutrality discussion (like every other socioeconomic policial issue in the US) stopped being rational quite some time ago, with both sides greatly afeared that either Evil Corporations or Evil Obama will take over the Internet and kick the other side off it into Digital Exile until they Play Ball.
Luckily, there are a few reasonably calm write-ups on the Google-Verizon proposal to give you a better understanding of just what they’ve done and what they’ve got in mind. I recommend this one from Wired and this one from Engadget.
Here’s what I can add as someone who writes about this stuff for a living and also has a grasp of the network technologies that sit behind it all:
Basically, a lot of the criticism seems overblown and based on the slippery-slope logic that X inevitably will lead to Y (where “X” = “VerGoozle NN plan” and “Y” = “Corporate Telco America wins the Internet and nothing on it will ever be free ever again”).
Having read the proposal – and remember, it’s still just a proposal at this stage – I don’t think that’s the case. The VerGoozle proposal actually includes most of the stuff that pro-NN people have always wanted in the first place – like non-discrimination and non-prioritization of traffic in an open and transparent manner.
It’s flawed, sure. The main issues are the exemptions for “additional online services” (which is so vaguely defined that it makes most of the entire proposed framework meaningless, and for my money is the only thing that makes the “fast lane” idea a problem) and wireless broadband.
For the latter, it’s worth noting that the proposal does include a provision to look at including wireless later on. What it needs is something more concrete with a roadmap and teeth to ensure that actually happens. VerGoozle is right to say that wireless has different traffic management issues (it does – ask any AT&T user who has complained about about how goddamned slow their iPhone connection is sometimes). But it’s also true that transparency alone isn’t going to cut it (for example, most wireless operators don’t care if you know they’re blocking yr Skype or Slingbox app on their network).
These kinds of details will have to be hashed out during the vetting/argument process, and I think they will be as long as people talk sense. The same goes for concerns raised by the EFF about other issues like defining “lawful content” (which may or may not include copyright issues), as well as working out where exactly the FCC fits into this to enforce the final version.
So there’s a lot to work to be done, yes, but as compromises go it’s actually not a bad start.
Unless one’s idea of compromise is: “I’ll never join you! Never! Never! Never!” Then I can see why one would have a problem with this.
Not the end of the world,
This is dF