Steve,

The US media have intentionally confused the public as to exactly what Net Neutrality is.

It would only affect other countries if they went through a US server.

Do most of them??

John

Do most of them?? ---------- No. Not to be rude, but I thought you had a better understanding of the "net" since you are fairly knowledgeable about PCs. I have followed this discussion of the Net Neutrality issue since the beginning and it has been a moving "subject". The only thing of real interest is the argument over throttling and corps buying bandwidth and propriety in "prime time" use. The mobile issue is the monster in the room and will lead to higher cost everywhere through "fees" on equipment links and local fees.

I'm not confused by what it is: nobody can filter, deny or effect (as in slow down or limit) any data that's being transferred over the internet for any reason. The whole concept of "cyber defense" goes completely against that principle and, in effect, it's not a real "net neutrality", it's "net preference". Throw in the fact the govt always enforces specific instances of data transfer that are against net neutrality (such as treating phone companies different vs fiber companies vs cable companies even though they all transfer data to IP devices that convert the signal to a device that's not a computer) because they don't really understand how it works, the whole idea makes no sense.

That doesn't change the fact that it's really aimed at specific companies & not as the internet as a whole.

Back to the other country question: data only goes through a place if it's supposed to. IE if you're in the UK & you access a site in the UK, odds are your data path stays in the UK. If you're in the US & access a site in the US odd are the data path stays in the US. Most servers are currently in the US but this country is only part of the internet. Once you cross the border you fall under their rules. That's how PiratesBay gets blocked in country A & not B. Which, ironically, the same govt & corp supporters of net neutrality want to be eliminated which is against net neutrality because you're limiting the data transferred across the internet.

I still hold by the old way it used to be done: charge by the data used, not by the time used. It's how people use cars, groceries, etc. If the govt wants to have a basic service then regulate it like the phone & cable system. There's no "cable neutrality" that says the cable company's can't filter what comes in to people's houses based on a tier system, no "phone neutrality" against the tiered phone system, no "education neutrality" where you can't have a tiered education system. It's all based on what the consumer wants to pay, not what they want to do.

EDIT: The best analogy for us would be if the govt decided that video editors are purposefully giving people who pay less or demand more work for a lower rate. Those clients shouldn't get any less services compared to people who pay more. They pass a "videographers neutrality" law that says you can't discriminate the quality or amount of work based on the work that's wanted or the price payed for the work. IE I give you $100 for a slide show you need to put as much time & effort in to making me happy as you would someone who payed you $20k.

Hi, THF, I was addressing John's comment, but he very political focused.

"nobody can filter, deny or effect" Actually, Comcast has been throttling data for a long time. There are many articles and a court case about it. I think throttling is ok when there is too much net traffic and "they" throttled back "some volume" from known P2P sites. Most big networks have good diagnostic apps that id P2P addresses in the bittorrend being used. The simplistic example is the length of the buffer and its structure......etc....

I can't comment because I only read around the periphery of this issue.

Perhaps the leading-edge discussions of this issue can be found on Freedom to Tinker.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/search/node/net%20neutrality

The Wikiedia article does a good job laying out the concerns and also covers other countries' like the EU where there are equal concerns. Example:

European Citizens' rights groups have argued that the adoption of the Harbour Report would be the end of net neutrality. They claimed that the report was heavily influenced by US telecoms giants, including AT&T and Verizon, and was a sign of the European Parliament watering down its concerns in order to form a consensus with the European Council.[80]

The article goes right up to and includes the proposal that became the current GOP bill to reverse the recent FCC ruling on the US House Floor right now intentionally not being discussed in US media . The re-assurances by some who have responded in this thread are not re-assuring if one is familiar with the issue. As I said, that Wikipedia article lays it all out very well if one takes the time to read through it.

It does not however get into the interrelationship of worldwide corporations based in the US denying service or content or throttling bandwidth in the US and the interlink and potential effect in other countries. I didn't post it to get into a discussion about what Net Neutrality is and what it means to all of us in the US, just to see if those in other countries know how it's potential demise here in the US would directly affect them. Possible your free press have discussed it's ramifications openly and honestly in your country.

John

Do your internet data packets cross borders? You betcha'. Do a traceroute of a ping across the country (San Francisco to NYC, for example), then analyze the routes the pings take, and it's not unusual to see your packets going through other continents.

Imagine an island community that has one toll bridge to get on or off the island. (Key Biscane, FL, for example). Everyone pays $5 to cross the bridge. Trucks pay a per-axle rate.

That's neutral. No one gets preferences.

Now, imagine that the bridge owner's brother is in the construction business and trucks bringing building materials to the brother's sites get on the bridge for free. At the same time, supplier's trucks destined for other builders sites pay an elevated price to cross the same bridge. The bridge owner's brother makes more money than his competition thanks to the favorable treatment his toll-bridge owning brother offers his supplier's trucks.

This is why the network providers do not like net neutrality. They own the toll bridge.

If net neutrality fails-

Vonage and Skype can be throttled into uselessness. You want VOIP - you have to buy it from the toll-taker - comcast, Cox, Verizon, etc.

Hulu can be throttled because Comcast offers the same content - at a premium. You want to watch "Beverly Hills Chihuahua", buy it from us because we'll make sure that Hulu content will be so slow that you can't watch it.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with artificial data caps.

As in everything political - follow the money.
You think Comcast bought NBC for the peacock logo? No. In five to ten years, most television distribution will be over the internet. NBC owns the content, and Comcast owns the toll road. Sounds like a monopoly in the making.

Steve Mann

I have to correct something. It was not a separate bill.

The Republicans added it as an amendment to the Continuing Resolution spending bill that funds the federal government for a few more months. The amendment passed in the House today 244 to 181 along party lines.
It prevents the FCC from using federal funding to enforce its regulations.. No one reported it on Network or Cable News and now to fund the government the Senate will have to either pass it or introduce an alternate spending bill (despite the media's objections), or the President will have to veto it (despite the media's objections)or the new Net Neutrality rules cannot be implemented.

If the defunding effort fails, Republicans are pursuing a second route to try to block the FCC's open-Internet order. Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Oregon and other Republicans in both the House and the Senate introduced on Wednesday a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which would give Republican lawmakers more time to try to block the FCC's net-neutrality rules permanently.

John

It defunds the FCC. Nobody is shutting down the the FCC Craftech. The FCC is in charge of the airwaves and basically all interstate communications, air or wire. They (congress) may try to reduce funding for the proposed department inside the FCC structured for implementing the Net Neutrality Rules under the current administration new regulations... which the Us Supreme ruled against this Administration new rules. FCC actually generates money by selling airwaves and licensing all communications.

Personally, I would like the US to build a new public internet and open wireless for everyone. Screw the old net! Then the carriers would work harder to complete for customers ...... because no government system will meet everyone needs.

Same for national healthcare, screw the insurance corps, they only add cost to the system! Obama should man-up on his plan and seize the insurance trust funds required by law for health courage and put that money into direct care.

It defunds the FCC. Nobody is shutting down the the FCC Craftech
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I reworded it for clarity.
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the Us Supreme ruled against this Administration new rules
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This is completely false. Look it up.

John

This is completely false. Look it up. Again, this matter of the FCC being able to implement Net Neutrality without congress has been ruled on. This is why there is a bill in congress now. Remember, if the US Supreme court refuses to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling, it is viewed as supporting that decision. Comcast was the first real test of the FCC new regulations concerning throttling and Net Neutrality. That FCC court argument lost opened the door to the "deal" that Google drafted with many carriers. There are many sides to these issues because of its really a complex issue concerning future content needs and associated profit from that transfer and who gets what and how. ;-)

Again, this matter of the FCC being able to implement Net Neutrality without congress has been ruled on
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Again. You said the Supreme Court ruled on this. They did not and you cannot provide proof that they did something that they did not.
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This is why there is a bill in congress now.
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This is also false. There is no bill in Congress right now. I explained that above.

Above I linked the Wikipedia article on Net Neutrality. It addresses a lot of your confusion on the subject, but did not answer my question. Thus the original post.

John

Do your internet data packets cross borders? You betcha'. Do a traceroute of a ping across the country (San Francisco to NYC, for example), then analyze the routes the pings take, and it's not unusual to see your packets going through other continents.
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Steve,

This is what I suspect as well although I cannot find a "map" that clearly shows it all. My guess is that when the US corporations inevitably get to control the final information leak (the internet) in the US it will probably affect those in other countries in terms of cost and access. Not sure about "content" in those countries, although unlike us they do have a free press to fall back on.

John

" my question to those of you that live in countries with a free press is will it affect you?"

As far as I've read there's been very little coverage of this in the local media or even in local tech fora. Two possible reasons for this:

1) It will not affect us. I suspect this may depend on how our local carriers contracts with USA based carriers are written.

2) Australia is in the early stages of spending over $40 Billion dollars to build our National Broadband Network. This is a very hot topic so most anything else might be getting ignored.

Locally what has been very hot is Wikileaks, the actions of various US Corporations to cut off their funding, the attacks by Anonymous on those corporations and then the HB Gary Federal debacle. My spin on all this is any corporation who tries to control the Internet could find itself in a lot of trouble.

Another hot topic has been Internet censorship via secret mandatory filtering. Thankfully the government finally seems to have realised that their plan was both unworkable and very unpopular. Wikileaks added somewhat the governments problems with its plans when the current secret list of banned sites was made public.

I read above about Hulu, down here it is not available however many of us get around that by using VPN connections into the USA and other countries. It is also an obvious way the government's Internet filter would have been bypassed.

Personally I think the whole issue of the Internet is going to become very interesting in the next few years as governments and corporations attempt to control it.

Bob.

Yes, Bob it is going to be interesting how government and corps will control it. In Canada it's already getting outcries from internet users here. A short re-cap our CRTC, similar to the FCC decided to allow UBB, User Based Billing on people here accessing the internet. This came about because we only have three Corporate players controlling internet access, SHAW, BELL, and ROGERS. Smaller ISPS were offering unlimited packages for a set price, but they buy bandwidth from the Big Three and the proposed UBB was to force the smaller ISPS to offer less than the Big Three basically forcing them out of competition. Nearly a million people cried out and the Federal Government here told the CRTC to review the UBB decision which was to take effect March 1st or they'd step in to quell it. It all started with Netflix coming into Canada and Canadians love it. $7.99 a month for all you can eat. So the Big Three which control the internet, but also control content buying up TV Networks etc and pay per view started loosing money and people started cancelling cable to just get their fix of movies and content on the internet. Pay the Big Three about the same amount for one movie as Netflix offers for unlimited usage per month. So, people are using streaming more for news, content, and movies dramatically changing the old cable model. Now, people are saying here that the internet should be open too and not controlled, throttled, have user caps etc. The Big Three claim caps are needed because of bandwidth hogs and will charge 3 to 4 bucks per gig overage when it only costs a cent or two and using the line that a few are playing online games, streaming videos, downloading in excess and hogging the internet for the poor lowly user that just uses it for email. Bull Crap. Anyway, the whole issue here is it's not like a resource like gas and water as a commodity it's bandwidth and people here are waking up to that fact. I'm sure the telcos and big players in the United States are keenly watching as this hotly debated issue here in Canada plays out..

Radio Guy, I'm a Canadian as well and was going to be hit hard by this insane UBB cap.
I'm with TekSavvy (unlimited DSL) and was going to see this capped at 25 GB.
Needless to say, my idea of signing up with Netflix went out the window with that announcement.
Extra blocks were available for a fee but it wasn't the same as unlimited.
Fortunately the power of the internet and groups like http://www.stopthemeter.ca/ prevailed and the CRTC was forced by the politicians to to go back to the drawing board.
Of course this has nothing to do with the rumours of an impending federal election :)

Mike

Down here most of the plans ISPs have on offer are capped, always have been. For not too much though you can up the cap to such a large limit it would pretty much count as unlimited.

One thing I see is these companies see the net as just another medium to deliver the same old stuff. I spend as much time watching content from YouTube as I spend watching OTA. I can watch want I want when I want. Last night I watched an old US Navy training film on how to load a 16" naval gun. A couple of nights ago I watched an old Soviet doco on the Tsar bomb, the biggest bang made by man. The upside of the web is digital anarchy, the downside is somehow it has to be paid for and it's very hard to see how the eyeballs can be monetized, I still have my reservations about YouTube's long term financial viability.

Bob.

Techsavy is a good company and is now fighting tooth and nail to compete but as you point out rs170a being forced to capping at 25Gig per month is not a good starting point. I think the internet is now a regular and important part of daily life in not only entertainment but business. For me sending audio for approval via email, drop box or what have you , getting pictures and documents sent by clients for projects or having a Skype or Gmail phone or video calls with clients and peers, taking online courses and keeping competitive and up-to-date... let alone online banking even government promoting cutting down paper billing and using the internet is now pretty regular. Okay, sure I look at the latest viral video or news and entertainment games and netflix online too. I don't mind a fair cap Bob as you have int he US, but If UBB doesn't get sorted out here in Canada soon it might be cheaper for me to send material back and forth on a hard drive by priority post. :)

I'm sure the telcos and big players in the United States are keenly watching as this
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That would imply that the media corporations in Canada aren't covering it up like they are here in the United States. Bob seemed to indicate that in Australia the media hasn't downplayed or covered up the issue either.

There is more intelligent and substantive discussion in general in the playgrounds outside the primary schools here in the US than on cable and network news.

The only place I have seen any intelligent discussions on Net Neutrality devoid of lies has been on the public access channel the cable companies are required to provide called C-Span, but few Americans watch it. Too bad. If they watched the US House and the US Senate live on that channel and then compared what they saw and heard with their own two eyes and ears to the cable news versions of the same issues they would quickly realize that the cable and network news channels across the board are manipulating the electorate into supporting only what is good for the largest corporations. This phenomenon took years of media consolidation (from 50 independent news corporations during the Reagan era to only 5 now) and is absolutely irreversible.

So to the Canadians: How is the UBB issue being portrayed on the Canadian cable and network news programs? If they stand to gain from it, are they manipulating the viewers as they do in the US?

John

"I don't mind a fair cap Bob as you have int he US"

Oh dear no, sorry but I'm in Australia :)

I guess if you're in Canada then the USA is "down here" also.

Bob.

"So to the Canadians: How is the UBB issue being portrayed on the Canadian cable and network news programs? If they stand to gain from it, are they manipulating the viewers as they do in the US?"

No. Don't mean to offend but...

Our news programs are quite a bit different from that of the Americans. It's black and white in comparison (as news should be).
Just for example, we don't have too many pretty news anchors with wild expensive hair and teeth... they're just average people. (In fact... kind of funny... US anchor John Roberts started in Canada. I always thought he was far too pretty to be taken seriously in Canadian news. Sure enough... it wasn't long before he moved to the USA). But the news for the most part here is told like it is.

People here in general have no misunderstandings and have not been mislead into believing the bent perceptions that the Americans are being fed. As already stated, our CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) gave the green light for "charge for usage".... and our Government, due to popular demand promptly squashed that green light.