[mdlug] [Fwd: Thank You for Standing Up for Net Neutrality]

[Aaron Kulkis]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Thank You for Standing Up for Net Neutrality
Date: 	Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:43:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: 	Timothy Karr <list at freepress.net>
Reply-To: 	Timothy Karr <list at freepress.net>
Organization: 	Free Press: media reform through education, organizing 
and advocacy
To: 	akulkis00 at gmail.com


> 
> 
> 
> free press: media is the issue <http://www.freepress.net/>
>  
> 
> Dear Aaron,
> 
> Thank you for taking action to protect the open Internet once and for 
> all. This is a critical time for Net Neutrality. Can you forward the 
> email below to share this action with your friends?
> 
>  
> 
> Hi,
> 
> The deadline is fast approaching to take action on Net Neutrality, the 
> principle that safeguards our freedom to do what we want and connect to 
> whomever we choose on the Internet.
> 
> Can you sign this letter to the FCC to protect the open Internet once 
> and for all? http://free.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=437
> 
> Thanks!

Here is the text of what I sent:

The FCC must reclassify broadband as a "telecommunications service" so that it can keep the Internet open and free of corporate gatekeepers. 

Without vital Net Neutrality protections and the ability to enforce them, the Internet will cease to be a public platform for free speech, equal opportunity, economic growth and innovation. Instead, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, which have a commercial incentive to limit the free-flowing Web, will decide whose voices are heard.

We already have (for several decades now at the very least) the same sort of neutrality regarding telephone systems.  Telcos are neither allowed to give preferential call connection to some people you call, vs other people, based solely on whether the recipient of your call has paid ransom money to the telephone carrier.  Neither are telephone companies allowed to listen in on your calls, and determine if your conversation is "appropriate" or favorable to the telephone company's interests or not -- and then improve or degrade your call connection on that basis. 

They are legally limited to merely moving sound (currently digitized, and moved over the SAME connections and hardware as the internet), and providing whatever service level which the caller (not the recipient) pays for.

ISPs should either operate under the same common carrier rules which telephone companies operate under  -- which provide them immunity from prosecution for conversations over their voice networks which involve criminal acts or consiparacies to commit criminal acts, in exchange for not being responsible, or even allowed to monitor traffic on their networks unless ordered by a court to do so).  Likewise, if a criminal takes a taxi a bus to preparation for, or in the commission of a crime, or fleeing the police after the fact, such carriers are not held responsible for unknowingly transporting such an individual, because, by law, they must treat all customers according only to their willingness to pay the fares, and nothing more.


As long as ISPs continue to inspect the content of data network traffic (for the purpose of elevating or lowering connection priority solely on the basis of the content, or where the other end of the network connection ends -- such as google.com or whatever), then they should be held legally responsible for taking part in any illegal activity conducted over their networks. -- after all, they ARE willingly inspecting both the content of the traffic, and passing judgement based upon where the content comes from -- if they choose to lower the precedence of legal traffic, while also delivering traffic which is criminal in nature, then there is no logical alternative other than to have he officers of that ISP charged as accessories to such crimes.
 
You still have the power to protect the public interest. Please restore to the internet the same freedoms we have enjoyed with the telephone system.

A business which receives a large number of telephone calls (such as a carry-out restaurant, or a telephone/mail-order house) does not, and never has, been subjected to pricing structures that if they want their customer's telephone calls to be given the same priority as other calls, that they must pay the telephone company an extra sort of ransom on top of the money already being charged to the caller.  Businesses by as many telephone lines as they need, and purchase as much bulk data bandwidth as they want.  To degrade customers' data connections because the company has not paid an additional ransom ON TOP of the bandwidth purchased from the ISP is both prejudicial and wrong.  The ISP has already been paid for their bandwidth and the associated hardware and infrastructure to deliver it.

As a computer systems engineer for over 20 years, I see the recently stated desires of ISPs to discourage the use of "unfavored" sites -- by offering slow deliver, or limiting the number of data connections through their network  -- for example, if hulu.com or google.com does not pay the ISP a ransom -- in favor of their "partner" sites which would not be 
similarly limited, is both prejudicial, and wrong.

Similarly, the recent practice ISPs to interfere with internet traffic using data transport protocols such as bittorrent -- which is a very efficient way of delivering large files and helps lower aggregate network traffic for the same amount of data delivered as compared to protocols which are not disfavored (such as FTP)) is both prejudicial and wrong.

As a common carrier, a telephone company is prohibited from operating a content business -- precisely to prevent this sort of conflict of interest.  The same rules should be made to apply to ISP's, with the threat of charges to being accessories to crime for ANY criminal acts committed by transmitting data through their network (child porn downloads, "phishing" scams, virus propagation via emails and web-sites, etc.)  After all, if the ISP is inspecting and making judgements about traffic based upon such inspections, then they should likewise be held responsible in the criminal courts for delivering ANY such traffic which aids in the commission of a crime, or which is criminal in and of itself.  Anything less would be wrong.

With such a persuasive stick of both corporate and personal criminal charges for the legal liability for delivering criminal traffice which naturally stems from inspecting data content, and prioritizing on that basis, I am quite sure that ISPs will EAGERLY accept the proposal that they adopt the same content-neutral and source-neutral rules which already govern our telephone systems.