Net Neutralitypresented by: Brian G. Riesen

What Is It?

Service providers should remain “end-to-end neutral”

The Two Sides: Telecoms (against)

View it as an obstacle to their business models which include partnerships, bundle deals, and marketing strategies which make the Internet affordable for consumers.

Content Providers/Consumers (for) View it as a means of “double-dipping”, extortion for

better bandwidth, filtering tool for the telecoms.

Past Legislation

Pacific Telegraph Act (1860) “messages received from any individual, company, or

corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.”

Communications Act (1934) “An act to provide for the regulation of interstate and

foreign communication by wire or Radio, and for other purposes.”

Introduced the concept of “common carriage” i.e. private companies using public property shall be

regulated to route all traffic in a fair manner and not interfere with the content of the transmission

Present Legislation

Bill No. Summary Status

S.2360 Restricts blocking legal content transmissions and requires common carrier rules for service providers.

Pending.

S.2686 Amends the Communications Act of 1934 with the FCC conducting studies of potential net neutrality abusive business practices.

Defeated by the Senate June 28, 2006.

S.2917

Amends S.2686 with stricter net neutrality rules and prohibits “Quality of Service” deals between ISPs and content providers. The FCC remains the enforcing power.

Pending.

H.R.5417 Enforces Antitrust rules for web traffic discrimination and prohibits degradation of service to non participants.

Approved by the House Judiciary committee May 25, 2006.

H.R.5273 Amends COPE to make its net neutrality clauses stricter.

Defeated in committee.

H.R.5252 Creates a national franchise for video providers, and addresses net neutrality, e911, and municipal broadband.

Passed by the House of Rep. June 8, 2006.

Public Involvement Madison River (NC)

Blocked competitors’ VoIP services. FCC intervened and fined them $15,000

Telus (Canada) Blocked customers from visiting pro-union Web sites in the midst of a labor dispute

Shaw Cable (Canada) Offered a "Quality of Service" upgrade for competing VoIP services, forcing users to

use their services or pay to maintain the quality of competitor’s calls Shaw calls this a "managed network" approach

AOL’s GoodMail (USA) Anti-spam program which charges marketers a fee to guarantee delivery of their

marketing emails by circumventing AOL’s anti-SPAM filters (email tax) AOL blocked emails mentioning dearaol.com, an site opposed to GoodMail

Korean ISPs vs. HanaTV (Korea) Korean ISPs and cable providers are blocking HanaTV, an Internet TV service ISPs claim the service placed excessive strains on network lines In reality, 60% of Internet traffic from peer-to-peer file sharing services which have

no restrictions The companies blocking HanaTV also provide competing TV service, thereby

creating a forced monopoly

Taking Sides

For: Amazon eBay Google Microsoft Vonage Skype Yahoo Earthlink Joe Consumer Christian Coalition of

America

Against: AT&T Verizon Time Warner / AOL Comcast Qwest BellSouth Henry Brown

SC Congressional District 1

Senator Jim DeMint Lindsey Graham (undeclared)

Who do you believe?

Software Engineer’s RoleQ: Who controls the “tubes”?

A:

As software engineers we will be in charge of engineering the infrastructure, the hardware and software, which runs the Internet and controls the data flow.

The ACM Code of Ethics states: "The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good."

Discussion - Q&A

To support Net Neutrality visit SaveTheInternet.com

Your average consumer is ill-informed regarding how Internet Technology works – it is up to us to educate them

Microsoft cannot be all that evil if they support Net Neutrality.