Internet Toll

[sscotty727]

Has anyone else heard about this? I know congress is debating it in the US, but is there talk in other countries about this?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/05/25/the.web.toll/index.html

Coming soon: The Web toll

New laws may transform cyberspace and the way you surf it

By Tim Folger

Popular Science

Thursday, May 25, 2006; Posted: 11:00 a.m. EDT (15:00 GMT)

What if the Internet were like cable television, with Web sites grouped like channels into either basic or premium offerings? What if a few big companies decided which sites loaded quickly and which ones slowly, or not at all, on your computer?

Welcome to the brave new Web, brought to you by Verizon, Bell South, AT&T and the other telecommunications giants (including PopSci and CNN.com's parent company, Time Warner) that are now lobbying Congress to block laws that would prevent a two-tiered Internet, with a fast lane for Web sites able to afford it and a slow lane for everyone else.

Specifically, such companies want to charge Web sites for the speedy delivery of streaming video, television, movies and other high-bandwidth data to their customers. If they get their way (Congress may vote on the matter before the year is out), the days of wide-open cyberspace are numbered.

As things stand now, the telecoms provide the lines -- copper, cable or fiber-optic -- and the other hardware that connects Web sites to consumers.

But they don't influence, or profit from, the content that flows to you from, say, cinemanow.com; they simply supply the pipelines. In effect, they are impartial middlemen, leaving you free to browse the entire Internet without worrying about connection speeds to your favorite sites.

That looks set to change. In April a House subcommittee rejected a measure by Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts (D) that would have prevented telecoms from charging Web sites extra fees based on bandwidth usage.

The telecom industry sees such remuneration as fair compensation for the substantial cost of maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure that makes high-bandwidth services, such as streaming video, possible.

Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. "A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx's makes sense," he says.

On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message.

With a tiered Internet, such routing technology could be used preferentially to deliver either the telecoms' own services or those of companies who had paid the requisite fees.

What does this mean for the rest of us? A stealth Web tax, for one thing.

"Google and Amazon and Yahoo are not going to slice those payments out of their profit margins and eat them," says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that monitors media-related legislation. "They're going to pass them on to the consumer. So I'll end up paying twice. I'm going to pay my $29.99 a month for access, and then I'm going to pay higher prices for consumer goods all across the economy because these Internet companies will charge more for online advertising."

Worse still, Scott argues, the plan stands to sour your Web experience. If, for instance, your favorite blogger refused to ante up, her pages would load more slowly on your computer than would content from Web sites that had paid the fees.

Which brings up another sticking point: A tiered system would give established companies with deep pockets a huge competitive edge over cash-strapped start-ups consigned to slow lanes.

"We have to remember that some of the companies that we now consider to be titans of the Internet started literally as guys in a garage," Scott says."That's the beauty and the brilliance of the Internet, yet we're cavalierly talking about tossing it out the window."

[Dr. Shoe]

This will just about kill the internet stone dead. Actually, what will happen is that most websites will refuse to pay up and go for the "slower" service. This will lead to economies of bandwidth with fewer sites having these annoying self indulgent long "intros". Without customers the idea will fall on its face but it will leave a sleeker trimmer internet.

[Danielinheels]

Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery.

WE ALREADY DO, MORON

NETZERO DIALUP IS $10

BRAODBAND INTERNET IS $45

Goodness I already can't stand Vanderbilt, this only further solidifies my position. Their professors are nutjobs too, it seems.

[hoverfly]

Ooooooo boy...... It's all about the money is it? Maybe some should pay for the band width use, for some it should be free, like for governments, towns, library, schools, "community use" but this also could open the door for a true wireless net work, by passing all the fiber even using satellites to fill in ares not practical to put such systems to by pass fiber. There are so many companies who have place transoceanic fiber around the world, where ever that data goes somebody is going to want a cut. But maybe it could have others companies compete against Verizon AT&T, Time Warner who would install their own systems keeping cost down. Only time will tell.

[ShockQueen]

It's kinda like when those wackos tried saying we should pay a tax on E-mail! It's all because the USPS is pissed off that people don't want to pay extra for the ever-increasing price of stamps and postage! Isn't this something along the lines of "taxation without representation" to just tax for the sake of it being there? It'll be like "20 Minutes Into The Future" all over again.

[Dr. Shoe]

WE ALREADY DO, MORON

NETZERO DIALUP IS $10

BRAODBAND INTERNET IS $45

Goodness I already can't stand Vanderbilt, this only further solidifies my position. Their professors are nutjobs too, it seems.

I don't. I pat £10.99 per month for unlimited broadband, free calls in the UK and 28 countries including the US anytime night or day.

[at9]

I don't. I pay £10.99 per month for unlimited broadband, free calls in the UK and 28 countries including the US anytime night or day.

That sounds like a great deal. Which ISP?

[Dr. Shoe]

Talktalk. It's been advertised on all the commercial TV stations and you can get the brochures from any Carphone Warehouse outlet.

[shyguy]

£10.99 per month for unlimited broadband

I would watch those "unlimited" claims, when I had the talk talk rep in front of me and asked if it meant unlimited ie download as much as you like, no cap, he refused to answer the question directly, and said they did have a fair usage policy which in their terms.

[BlondeBimbo]

Definitely a problem with “unlimited broadband” – I am with Tiscali, and as you say unlimited 2Mb - but with a “fair trade policy” – which roughly translates to “You can download as much as you want – but we will slow your speed if you do!” Basically with broadband, you share your final internet connection with say 20 other users – of course you are unlikely to all be using it at the same time, so you end up with the 2Mb speed, but the more of you that are using it at the same time the slower your actual speed – this is the contention ratio – many of the big suppliers use contention ratios of 40 or 50 (a high chance that you will be sharing with others at the same time). In my case with Tiscali, I bought a new computer, and needed to download the updates for XP, Microsoft Office, and the firewall/virus software. However after I did I received an email from Tiscali: Extract: Your broadband Internet usage has been highlighted as exceptionally high and is affecting the service that we provide to other customers. If you do not reduce your usage we will manage your usage. This means that you will share bandwidth with other heavy users instead of sharing bandwidth with normal users. Your service will continue to be unlimited, but by sharing bandwidth with other heavy users you are likely to experience slower speeds. Basically “You can download as much as you want – but we will slow your speed if you do!” So much for a real 2Mb Unlimited!! BB

[ShockQueen]

We just did an upgrade to 8.0Mbps download here, and it is unlimited usage with no flags, caps, or limitations - so yes.......I am SO spoiled on broadband. I downloaded a 700MB file in like 10 minutes with it, so I was rather impressed with it. :drinking:

[jmc]

This "internet tax" was the subject of an e-mail hoax a few years back. I figured the e-mail in question must have been forwarded to just about everybody with a 'net connection at least a dozen times. I remember it mentioned a (U.S.) Senate bill and gave the number of the bill. As expected the e-mail urged us all to flood Congress with objections. And I'm sure Congress got flooded too! Trouble is, the bill in question was totally ficticious. The number given in the message did not conform to Congressional rules -- any bill originating in the U. S. House will be HR### and any bill originating in the U.S. Senate will be S###. This had some other goofball number entirely and was a dead giveaway that the whole thing was bogus. Not that I would put it past Uncle Sam in his utter arrogance to try to tax the Internet. But I wonder how effective this would be in a technical sense. The Internet is a worldwide phenomenon now and this board is a shining testament to that fact. Uncle Sam, as arrogant and greedy as he is, has absolutely no jurisdiction outside the borders of the United States. So the U.S. government simply cannot levy a tax on anything that goes on outside its borders (you folks on the other side of the big puddle may sing "nyah nyah nyah nyah NYAH nyah" as you see fit. Now we techies know that the Internet is composed of a large number of sub-nets going through all the major population centers of the world. Any information transmitted over the internet is broken up into some number of parts (called "packets") and each packet is routed from the source to the destination. All of the packets that comprise an internet transmission (such as an e-mail message or this very page you are reading now) do not necessarily travel through the same pathways. In fact they may not even arrive in sequence -- the receiver buffers and re-sequences them as it gets them. So if I were to send an e-mail to somebody in California, some of my packets may go through Chicago, some may go through Denver, and some may go through various cities in Canada. If someone in England is downloading a Web page hosted on a Japanese server, packets can literally go around both sides of the globe and through all the intervening nations along the way. So with this theoretical Internet tax, how does Uncle determine which packets are entirely domestic (and therefore taxable), which packets are entirely foreign (and off limits) and which packets come from a foreign server to a domestic server or vice-versa (and may be partially taxable)? I have a feeling that collecting this tax may be more expensive than the revenue it would generate. Which would serve them right! The other option is to tax Internet access, like phone access. And I wouldn't put it past 'em to try that either. I understand that a phone tax dating back to the invention of the telephone network (1800's) was finally eliminated last week. These things take a long time to die. As far as the days of wide-open cyberspace being numbered, that number is zero and has been for several years. With so many Web sites going to fee-based subscription content, the amount of decent, free content on the Web has really dwindled. Which is a shame.

[dr1819]

I already pay a premium for highspeed broadband, and THANK GOD, companies like Verizon, Bell South, AT&T, PopSci and CNN/Time Warner have absolutely no say in my ISP's throughput or tarrifs. So long as the German government prevails here in Germany, they never will!

[dr1819]

This "internet tax" was the subject of an e-mail hoax a few years back.

While I believe you're corrected, the "internet tax" e-mail hoax generated millions of letters to Congress from it's constituents.

Congress got the message, loud and clear.

[sscotty727]

While I believe you're corrected, the "internet tax" e-mail hoax generated millions of letters to Congress from it's constituents.

Congress got the message, loud and clear.

I think the difference this isn't that congress is going to tax the internet, rather congress refuses to pass legislation to prevent companies from charging a different rate structure for faster download vs slower dowloading.

Also, it sounds like the rate will be charged to the owner of the website vs the viewer. Probably what will happen is the larger owners (Yahoo, Google, CNN, etc) will eat the costs to kill start ups, and then start passing the costs onto customers.

Translated, you will eventually have to start paying for sites you visit OR suffer slow connections.

[Skirted-UK]

After reading all this I think I'll stick with my dial-up connection for the moment.

[Skirted-UK]

After reading all this I think I'll stick with my dial-up connection for the moment.

[Skirted-UK]

After reading all this I think I'll stick with my dial-up connection for the moment.

[Skirted-UK]

After reading all this I think I'll stick with my dial-up connection for the moment.

[Skirted-UK]

After reading all this I think I'll stick with my dial-up connection for the moment.

[dr1819]

Translated, you will eventually have to start paying for sites you visit OR suffer slow connections.

The main reason pay sites have failed so miserably in the past is that competition abounds. I don't forsee competition waning - I see it continuing to grow, which means even less incentive for pay sites.

[kneehighs]

Ah yes, using market power to risk the non-discriminatory features that drive internet innovation and consumer choice. New interesting developments will be forethcoming very soon. My fingers are crossed.

In August 2005, the FCC put Verizon, AT&T, and other large phone companies under a year-long moratorium that prohibited them from violating Net Neutrality--the term created by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu. This FCC ruling will lift at the end of this summer.

Whats even more interesting is the threat inherent in their piecemeal strategy to patiently achieve tiered intenet access. One foot in the door first...then two feet...then the whole body at which point the two tiered system will be legal, simply because the consumer has been patiently acclimated to new regulation over internet usage. See the rejection of net neutrality inside the new HR 5252 ACT: COPE, for instance.

Imagine what will happen to hhplace if a two tiered system becomes commonplace? To remain the internets foremost leader of freestylers, instead of paying $200/yr to maintain the site, it'll be making separate payments to AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon, and the equivalent proponents elsewhere in the world. YEAH, RIGHT.

The good news, for those in the U.S. that oppose tiered internet access, is that you can do something by calling your senator or local congressman and tell her/him to support H.R. 5417: Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006.

[dr1819]

Thanks, Kneehighs! My strongest letters to my Congressmen and Representatives, as well as the President, are being written now.

Here are the links where the rest (of you Americans) can contact your key elected officials: http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Here's a non-government site, but it offers greater flexibility with respect to contacting all your elected officials simply by entering your zip code: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/

[dr1819]

My letter: Dear Mr. President: As an avid user of the Internet since 1995, and a published author of several networking articles (Network World), I would like to provide you with a summary of the reasons behind my full endorsement of H.R. 5417. As you may know, this bill counters attempts by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to stratify Internet access. Any stratification at this time would relegate ordinary users to paying current prices for substandard services, or premiums to maintain current bandwidth. Those who were willing to pay premiums, however, would enjoy current, and greater standards of service, but only at a significant increase in price. While we are approaching a time, perhaps several years in the future, when stratification will not impinge on the rights of free access to the Internet, that future will require nothing less than fiber from the home to the Internet, a condition that's in place for less than 3% of all households, currently. There is significant doubt among industry experts that the requisite bandwidth will be available to 80% of the population by 2010. As such, this matter begs for a deferrment. Until the bandwidth milestone is reached, I respectfully encourage you, Mr. President, to endorse H.R. 5417, and so protect the rights of all Americans to access the Internet on a relatively equal, and unfettered basis. Thank you for your time. Sincerely,

[kneehighs]

Your welcome dr1819. I've communicated with my two senators' offices and appropriate congressman's office too. Hopefully, other Americans here will make their voices heard now before its too late.

[kneehighs]

This is old news, but looks like a letter and phone call is in the works to Clinton and Schumer. I'm sure every American here has heard about the House vote against the amendment that would make net neutrality enforceable.

[sscotty727]

Just found this on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/newmark.internet/index.html

Commentary: Keep the Internet neutral, fair and free

By Craig Newmark

Special to CNN

Friday, June 9, 2006; Posted: 6:04 p.m. EDT (22:04 GMT)

Editor's note: Craig Newmark is the founder and customer service representative of craigslist.org, an online community that helps people find jobs, places to live or other services unique to their city. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of America's most influential people.

Mike McCurry presents an opposing viewpoint in an accompanying commentary.

(CNN) -- Most Americans believe that if you play fair and work hard, you'll get ahead. But this notion is threatened by legislation passed Thursday night by the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow Internet service providers to play favorites among different Web sites.

Here's a real world example that shows how this would work. Let's say you call Joe's Pizza and the first thing you hear is a message saying you'll be connected in a minute or two, but if you want, you can be connected to Pizza Hut right away. That's not fair, right? You called Joe's and want some Joe's pizza. Well, that's how some telecommunications executives want the Internet to operate, with some Web sites easier to access than others. For them, this would be a money-making regime.

Next stop is the Senate. If this becomes law, your Yahoo Inc. e-mail account could operate more slowly, unless Yahoo ponies up big bucks to the major telecommunication companies that bring the Internet into your home. By the same token, your craigslist classifieds (I'm the Craig from craigslist) could grind to a halt, unless my company pays up. This is not fair.

Telecommunication companies already control the pipes that carry the Internet into your home. Now they want control which sites you visit and how you experience them. They would provide privileged access for themselves and their preferred partners while charging other businesses for varying levels of service.

But why change a good thing? Right now, the Internet is a level playing field for everyone. The wonky term for this is "Net neutrality." When the Internet is neutral, everyone can use it, just like everyone can use public roads or airwaves. All businesses on the Internet get an equal shot at success.

Here's how Susan Crawford, a professor of cyberlaw and intellectual property at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, puts it:

"Think of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk. The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along? The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn't get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call -- they're just providing a neutral pipe."

That's the gist of the issue. The telecom executives tell us that they can be trusted to play fair to let all companies, and not just their paying partners, be equally accessible from homes everywhere. But some of these executives have admitted that they intend to cheat.

William L. Smith, the chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., recently told the Washington Post that BellSouth should, for example, be able to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. or vice versa. "If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."

In my view, executives like Smith forget that they get the use of public resources, like the airwaves and public rights of way, on which they have built their businesses and made a lot of money. As such, they shouldn't be able to squeeze out some Web sites in favor of others. This would be a betrayal of the public trust.

You, the consumer, should be able to choose which sites you want to visit without the telecommunications companies interfering. What it really comes down to is this: The telecommunications executives say we should trust them to provide a level playing field of service, but can they be trusted to play fair?

You already know the answer. If not, ask your repair guy why he didn't show up when promised or consider why the telecom companies block some high-tech services from reaching your cell phone as their own services flourish, as reported recently by Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. Or how about the fake grass-roots Web sites, such as Hands off the Internet, the telecom industry has set up to support its cause? Is that the height of honesty?

It seems to me that many telecom execs have a deep investment in "truthiness," where they make claims about this or that thing without bothering to support those claims with facts. Perhaps the clearest example of this behavior is when they say that keeping the Net neutral, as it is now, involves more government intervention and regulation, when really the opposite is true.

So let's keep the Net as it is now: Neutral, fair and free. If you care about this issue, please visit Save the Internet and write to Congress.

[dr1819]

I think the difference this isn't that congress is going to tax the internet, rather congress refuses to pass legislation to prevent companies from charging a different rate structure for faster download vs slower dowloading.

Also, it sounds like the rate will be charged to the owner of the website vs the viewer. Probably what will happen is the larger owners (Yahoo, Google, CNN, etc) will eat the costs to kill start ups, and then start passing the costs onto customers.

Translated, you will eventually have to start paying for sites you visit OR suffer slow connections.

I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from. Companies serving up content don't charge me anything. Only my ISP charges me, and they have different rates for different speeds.

Those companies serving up content also pay based upon the level of services, storage required, and throughput.

The only time I pay one of these companies is when I buy their product.

Are you thinking that someone like Symantec will tack on an additional $5 to download Norton Antivirus 2006 at 2 Mbps vs 1 Mbps? If so, I retain full choice, so I see no problems with this approach, as the market will rapidly set the price points (if no one's paying the extra $5, Symantec my do away with it altogether as the additional cost of maintaining the option is likely more expensive than the generated revenue).

I'm still not sure what you're getting at, so please help me to understand with an example or two. Thanks!

[sscotty727]

I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from. Companies serving up content don't charge me anything. Only my ISP charges me, and they have different rates for different speeds.

Those companies serving up content also pay based upon the level of services, storage required, and throughput.

The only time I pay one of these companies is when I buy their product.

Are you thinking that someone like Symantec will tack on an additional $5 to download Norton Antivirus 2006 at 2 Mbps vs 1 Mbps? If so, I retain full choice, so I see no problems with this approach, as the market will rapidly set the price points (if no one's paying the extra $5, Symantec my do away with it altogether as the additional cost of maintaining the option is likely more expensive than the generated revenue).

I'm still not sure what you're getting at, so please help me to understand with an example or two. Thanks!

Well, and maybe I am wrong, but the way I understand it is like this.

Ok, for example say you use YOUTUBE to view video content. Right now you can search and view for free and it is all high speed, no restrictions. With the new way of doing things, YOUTUBE would get charged more for the faster download. As a result, YOUTUBE has two levels of service. Either you sign up and pay for YOUTUBE to continue getting a fast download or you remain a free user but get a slow download restriction placed on you or worse, you are unable to even view YOUTUBE without paying.

Same with CNN video content, etc. Same with Yahoo Messanger webcam/voice chat. Pay to get the high speed or suffer low speed for free.

The reason you would be paying the higher price for these is because they are getting charged a higher price by the ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, etc.

Atleast that is how I am reading it. If I am wrong, please correct me.

[dr1819]

Ok - I see. Personally, I think this is fair. After all, if ISPs can offer two or more bandwidth options to home users, charging different prices for each, as many currently do, why shouldn't they be allowed to do the same with their business customers? We find this is actually the case - it's been done this way for years. One of the misnomers about throughput, however, is that people often say "less throughput is less expensive." That's not always the case for a company serving content to multiple users. If the content is slow, they loose users, which is also costly, particularly if they're paying customers. The other issue is that throughput is typically measured on a per session basis, with a "session" being each connection between the web server and the client (you and I). The total throughput is largely irrelevant, provided the per-session throughput remains fast enough to carry out the task in a timely manner. Servers that dish up primarily text content, like HHPlace can afford to use servers that have a fairly low throughput per connection, while servers distributing large programs for download, like Norton Antivirus, much has a fairly high throughput per connection. Thus, the total throughput, what companies actually pay their ISPs to provide them, is merely a function of the per session throughput times the number of sessions. The best solution for this is for ISPs to charge on a "per byte" basis, but so many people screamed bloody murder that it never got off the ground, except in very limited special cases.