Examples of net neutrality violations include when the Internet service provider Comcast intentionally slowed peer-to-peer communications. In 2007, one other company was using deep packet inspection to discriminate against peer-to-peer, file transfer protocol, and online games, instituting a cell-phone-style billing system of overages, free-to-telecom value-added services, and bundling.
Net neutrality
Network neutrality is the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. According to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, the best way to explain network neutrality is as when designing a network: that a public information network will end up being most useful if all content, sites, and platforms are treated equally
A more detailed proposed definition of technical and service network neutrality suggests that service network neutrality is the adherence to the paradigm that operation of a service at a certain layer is not influenced by any data other than the data interpreted at that layer, and in accordance with the protocol specification for that layer.
Open Internet
The idea of an open Internet is the idea that the full resources of the Internet and means to operate on it are easily accessible to all individuals and companies. This often includes ideas such as net neutrality, open standards, transparency, lack of Internet censorship, and low barriers to entry. The concept of the open Internet is sometimes expressed as an expectation of decentralized technological power, and is seen by some as closely related to open-source software.
Proponents often see net neutrality as an important component of an open Internet, where policies such as equal treatment of data and open web standards allow those on the Internet to easily communicate and conduct business without interference from a third party. A closed Internet refers to the opposite situation, in which established persons, corporations or governments favor certain uses. A closed Internet may have restricted access to necessary web standards, artificially degrade some services, or explicitly filter out content.
Net Neutrality: Flipkart’s withdrawal from Airtel Zero is telling-
Economic Times Editorial 16th April 2015
It is welcome that Flipkart has chosen to withdraw from the Airtel Zero platform. This is a strong expression of solidarity with the more than three lakh citizens who have petitioned the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in favour of net neutrality. Airtel continues with its claim that it supports net neutrality, even as it promotes its Zero-rating platform. Airtel says its offer to allow zero-cost access for consumers to certain sites and applications that agree to pay Airtel for the cost of the data traffic does not violate net neutrality. Sorry, this claim is the product of either confusion or a deliberate attempt to dissemble. Either way, the claim is wrong
It is welcome that Flipkart has chosen to withdraw from the Airtel Zero platform. This is a strong expression of solidarity with the more than three lakh citizens who have petitioned the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in favour of net neutrality. Airtel continues with its claim that it supports net neutrality, even as it promotes its Zero-rating platform. Airtel says its offer to allow zero-cost access for consumers to certain sites and applications that agree to pay Airtel for the cost of the data traffic does not violate net neutrality. Sorry, this claim is the product of either confusion or a deliberate attempt to dissemble. Either way, the claim is wrong.
In India, Trai is still in the process of carrying out a consultation on net neutrality. In its paper, Trai has reproduced the rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission of the US. These are essentially three. No blocking of legal content, says the first. No throttling of any legal site or service, says the second. No paid prioritisation or fast lanes for any channel, says the third. Airtel Zero violates the third rule of net neutrality. Instead of the consumer paying for the data downloaded in using an app, the app would pay Airtel for the data, or the app would be zero-rated for the consumer.
Naturally, the free app gets a leg up over a rival, to access which the consumer has to pay. This is paid prioritisation, indeed. It is time Airtel and other telcos stopped telling consumers that they worship at the altar of net neutrality.
Consumers are savvy. And empowered. The speed with which opinion could be agglomerated to send Trai with a barrage of three lakh impassioned pleas to enforce net neutrality is remarkable, considering the as yet limited reach of broadband in India. This opinion on the net will only grow stronger and companies would do well to guard against reputational damage from underestimating the intelligence or power of the consumer. Consumers can see through the short-term gain offered by zero-rating to the long-term loss of competition and creativity such violation of net neutrality can lead to.
Link Economic Times
Link Economic Times
Net Neutrality: What You Need to Know Now
What happened?
In May 2014, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler released a plan that would have allowed companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to discriminate online and create pay-to-play fast lanes.
Millions of you spoke out — and fought back.
Thanks to the huge public and political outcry, Wheeler shelved his original proposal, and on Feb. 4, 2015, he announced that he would base new Net Neutrality rules on Title II of the Communications Act, giving Internet users the strongest protections possible.
The FCC approved Wheeler’s proposal on Feb. 26, 2015. This is a watershed victory for activists who have fought for a decade to protect the open Internet.
What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is the Internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. This is the definition of an open Internet.
Net Neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that Internet service providers should provide us with open networks — and should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn't decide who you can call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn't be concerned with the content you view or post online.
Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the Internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors' content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open Internet.
What was the FCC’s ‘Open Internet Order’?
The FCC’s 2010 order was intended to prevent broadband Internet service providers from blocking or interfering with traffic on the Web. The Open Internet Order was generally designed to ensure the Internet remained a level playing field for all — that's the principle we call Net Neutrality (we say “generally,” since the FCC’s rules prohibited wired ISPs from blocking and discriminating against content, while allowing wireless ISPs to discriminate against but not block websites).
In its January 2014 ruling, the court said that the FCC used a questionable legal framework to craft the Open Internet Order and lacked the authority to implement and enforce those rules.
Did the court rule against Net Neutrality?
No. The court ruled against the FCC's ability to enforce Net Neutrality under the shaky legal foundation it established for those rules. The court specifically stated that its “task as a reviewing court is not to assess the wisdom of the Open Internet Order regulations, but rather to determine whether the Commission has demonstrated that the regulations fall within the scope of its statutory grant of authority.”
When the FCC made its 2010 open Internet rule, it relied on two decisions the Bush-era FCC made, rulings that weakened the FCC’s authority over broadband Internet access providers. Nothing in the January 2014 court decision prohibited the FCC from reversing those misguided decisions and reclassifying ISPs as common carriers.
In fact, both this decision and a prior Supreme Court decision showed that reclassification would provide the best means of protecting the open Internet.
What does ‘reclassify’ mean?
When Congress enacted the 1996 Telecommunications Act, it didn’t want the FCC to treat websites and other Internet services the same way it treats the local access networks that enable people to get online. Congress understood that the owners of the access networks have tremendous gatekeeper power, and so it required the FCC to treat these network owners as “common carriers,” meaning they couldn’t block or discriminate against the content that flows across their networks to/from your computer.
However, in a series of politically motivated decisions first by FCC Chairman Michael Powell (now the cable industry’s top lobbyist) and then by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the FCC decided to classify broadband Internet access service as an “information service,” meaning that the law sees it as no different from a website like freepress.net or an online service like LexisNexis. These decisions removed the FCC’s ability to prohibit ISPs from blocking or discriminating against online content (it also removed the FCC’s ability to ensure that ISPs protect your privacy).
In Verizon vs. FCC, the court stated that the FCC lacks authority because of “the Commission’s still-binding decision to classify broadband providers not as providers of ‘telecommunications services’ but instead as providers of ‘information services.’”
On Feb. 26, the FCC voted to define broadband as what we all know it is — a connection to the outside world that is merely faster than the phone lines we used to use for dial-up access, phone calls and faxes.
Doing so gave the agency the strongest possible foundation for rules prohibiting discriminatory practices.
What did the FCC vote on?
The new rules, rooted in Title II of the Communications Act, ban throttling, blocking and paid prioritization.
Why is Net Neutrality important for businesses?
Net Neutrality is crucial for small business owners, startups and entrepreneurs, who rely on the open Internet to launch their businesses, create a market, advertise their products and services, and distribute products to customers. We need the open Internet to foster job growth, competition and innovation.Net Neutrality lowers the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses by ensuring the Web is a fair and level playing field. It’s because of Net Neutrality that small businesses and entrepreneurs have been able to thrive on the Internet. They use the Internet to reach new customers and showcase their goods, applications and services.
No company should be able to interfere with this open marketplace. ISPs are by definition the gatekeepers to the Internet, and without Net Neutrality, they would seize every possible opportunity to profit from that gatekeeper control.
Without Net Neutrality, the next Google would never get off the ground.
Why is Net Neutrality important for communities of color?
The open Internet allows communities of color to tell their own stories and to organize for racial and social justice.The mainstream media have failed to allow people of color to speak for themselves. And thanks to economic inequality and runaway media consolidation, people of color own just a handful of broadcast stations. The lack of diverse ownership is a primary reason why the media have gotten away with portraying communities of color stereotypically.
The open Internet gives marginalized voices opportunities to be heard. But without Net Neutrality, ISPs could block unpopular speech and prevent dissident voices from speaking freely online. Without Net Neutrality, people of color would lose a vital platform.
And without Net Neutrality, millions of small businesses owned by people of color wouldn't be able to compete against larger corporations online, which would further deepen the economic inequality in our nation’s most vulnerable communities.
So what can we do now?
The cable and phone companies — and their allies in Congress — willl do everything they can to dismantle this win.http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now
Net Neutrality: Telecom operators should partner with most players and re-invent themselves -By Alok Kejriwal
Economic Times
What is this brouhaha about pro and anti net neutrality? I assume you know what net neutrality is. It simply means that consumers should be able to access all web content at the same cost and terms without discrimination. I believe that there is a deeper conspiracy of keeping the net anti-neutral:
The Disruption of Disruption
In 2000, I was invited to a glittering event at The Regal Room, Trident, Mumbai, to attend the first ever 'Entrepreneur Awards'. I was invited to be a part of the audience. I was seated at the "Zip Fone Table".
Zip Fone was this new styled phone calling booth that had started springing up all across the country. It was slick, clean and best of all had 'video ads' running in the centre of its chassis. Zip Fone was the disrupter of those shabby 'STD' booths we had, where call charges were suspect and the service poor.
This new phone service combined advertising revenues, aesthetics and transparency as a brand new service . On the table was seated the founding entrepreneur of Zip Fone. When I asked him how he had spent his last year, he said, "Alok, just signing term sheet after term sheet. There is so much investor money chasing me, I am on a non-stop money raising spree."
Circa 12 months later. Mobile telephony kicked into the country with a bang and the Reliance Infocomm's 'Monsoon Hungama' offer made every man, woman and unborn child an owner of a mobile phone.
Zip Fone was destroyed almost overnight like one of the cars in the latest Fast & Furious movie. The landline business imploded faster than a death star. Mobile operators had disrupted Zip Fone, which was a disruptor itself.
Come 2015 and the very same mobile operators are on the brink of disruption by the untamable and ubiquitous internet. Look at the penetration and popularity of WhatsApp. A simple green buttoned app has the power to decimate the business of SMS and ruin the business of voice calls. Other internet-linked apps yield the same power. Net anti-neutrality is a conspiracy aimed at self-preservation.
Nobody Learns from History.
And History Repeats Itself! In the late '90s, two teenage boys proposed an incredible hypothesis: every young person in the world had some kind of digital music stored on their PCs and always wanted to listen to more stuff. Why couldn't they 'swap' music files between themselves (called peerto-peer or P2P)? Note that the boys did not care about the ..
No comments:
Post a Comment