End of Net Neutrality: Savior of newspapers?

Seems vaguely similar to the case made here on multiple threads that newspapers, en masse, should flip a switch one day to start charging for what otherwise has been "free." All it takes is one to thwart such a consortium -- if that one can provide much of what most people want.

If all papers agreed to the plan except for the WaPo or the NYT, it probably would fail. If all papers agreed except for Podunk Bugle-Express (which probably has gutted its staff and has a 1992-level Web site), such a plan still might work.

No way could they restrict according to #'s of Web sites accessible, though. Every small and large business owner in America would be screaming bloody murder. Not to mention the bloggers!

 

Could be, Wretch. I'm just going by what that site was reporting. I have no independent knowledge of ..... well, much of anything. Certainly not net neutrality. I could see the plan you're talking about being in the works as well.

 

My wife e-mailed me a copy of a Congressional Research Service report on net neutrality. Their definition - though they admit that many people have their own definitions - is any move by network owners (i.e., those that provide content for and access to the internet) to ensure equal access and non-discriminatory treatment. The disagreement over NN: Some think that more regulatory guidelines are necessary (fearing that discimination will be a problem if left untreated); for example, the potential of charging more to access files unaffiliated with a network provider. Others think that existing regs are fine as they are and any movement toward NN will inhibit future growth.

A real-world example: Broadband access providers have begun to prioritize service; those using their connections for gaming and voice service, for example, need an uninterrupted connection moreso than us cruising by SJ (if it doesn't load, you hit refresh and here you are). From the document itself, since it explains it better than I can:

"There is concern that the ability of network providers to prioritize traffic may give them too much power over the operation of and access to the Internet. If a multi-tiered Internet develops where content providers pay for different service levels, the potential to limit competition exists, if smaller, less financially secure content providers are unable to afford to pay for a higher level of access. Also, if network providers have control over who is given priority access, the ability to discriminate among who gets such access is also present. If such a scenario were to develop, the potential benefits to consumers of a prioritized network would be lessened by a decrease in consumer choice and/or increased costs, if the fees charged for premium access are passed on to the consumer. The potential for these abuses, however, is significantly decreased in a marketplace where multiple, competing broadband providers exist."

The FCC already has certain criteria for broadband internet: It is classified as a Title 1 information service, which means it's subject to less rigorous standards than for those classified as telecommunications services. Secondly, the FCC released a four-part policy statement - not yet part of its code, so it's more of a guideline - that reads as follows: "(1) consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; (2) consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice (subject to the needs of law enforcement); (3) consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and (4) consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers."

As I've said, some want to go beyond this for more specific regulation; others believe it's fine as it is. The latter say the FCC has already used the authority it has and they have not requested any additional enforcement power; they also have the full force of antitrust laws, if necessary, to combat discrimination.

Shifty's example seems to be a projection of all of this, a what-if sort of thing.

 

Good stuff, Hustle. Thanks for running all that down. Now, the extremely small amount of knowledge I have of net neutrality is considerably more than it was about 2 days ago.

And yes, it is a bit of a what-if scenario, but one some people are saying is a possibility in the not-too-distant future. Because I think the consensus seems to be that it's highly unlikely to happen, it may not be worth speculating about at this point. But I was curious what people thought the effect of such a scenario would be on newspapers? Good? Bad? Can it actually get any worse than it already is? Are we all doomed to an ink-free life?

 

I can't imagine such legislation surviving more than 10 minutes of the first challenge in court. Congress can scarcely influence the way a monopoly charges for its product. They would have no prayer of imposing a this kind of price-and-plan structure in an industry with thousands of competitors.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080603/bs_nf/60098&printer=1;_ylt=AnwmfG3ymg8CXByPl2gVRqvwPDQD

Time Warner Launches Bandwidth-Capped Internet Plan

Barry Levine, newsfactor.com2 hours, 23 minutes ago

On Thursday, Time Warner Cable will begin testing a new pricing plan that caps bandwidth usage. Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president, said the plan will be launched as a trial in Beaumont, Texas, and will consist of several tiers. The first tier, at $29.95 monthly, will be a relatively slow 768 kilobits per second with a 5GB monthly cap, while a plan at $54.90 per month will offer 15 megabits per second and a 40GB cap.

Both downloads and uploads count toward the monthly total. Overages will be charged at $1 a gigabyte.

Only New Customers

Time Warner has an estimated 90,000 customers in the area, and only new customers will be offered the tiers. With some users exchanging huge, media-based files like video, some other cable companies have also considered caps. For instance, Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, has reportedly said it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month.

The experiment comes as consumers have grown used to unlimited Internet usage. But Larry Hettick, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said the current problem for Internet service providers is mostly created by five percent of users, while the rest have usage patterns within expectations. Those five percent, he added, are frequently downloading or uploading huge files.

Hettick noted that providers have previously said, in effect, that their policy is "unlimited, within reason," and then kicked off those few who go unreasonably beyond expected usage. "From a marketing point of view," he said, "it's probably a better approach."

He added that it will be interesting to see how users react to this experiment, as they have become accustomed to unlimited bandwidth, and the phone market is going the other way -- toward unlimited use for a flat price. "Personally," said Hettick, who sometimes works at home and depends on his online connection, "I would not buy a usage-sensitive data plan."

'Probably Enough'

He did note that, for the 95 percent of normal users, a 40GB cap is "probably enough." But addressing the short-term problem of dealing with the five percent of overusers, he added, will not fix the long-term problem, with high-definition home movies being uploaded to YouTube or users downloading high-definition features from iTunes.

"There has to be several parts to the solution," he said. One of these is increasing capacity in the so-called "last mile" to the home, by implementing new technologies such as DOCSIS 3.0 or reducing the number of homes on a given line. "Three years ago," Hettick noted, "a cable company might have served 100 homes in a neighborhood with one access point, but now could be serving 25."

Hettick said another part of the solution is increasing capacity at the central parts of the network. But, even with these adjustments, cable companies and other service providers will still have to come to terms eventually with those ultra-high-bandwidth users.

 

Re: End of Net Neutrality: Savior of newspapers? (Update: Time mag on the story)

The same people who talked about this in the original link I posted are now saying that Time reporter Dylan Pattyn is working on a story about "The End of the Internet" and that he has received confirmation from ISP employees that the original story is, indeed, true (http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality2).

As I said before, I have no idea how much credibility these guys have. But if this part is true, it at least lends some credence to their calls for concern.

 

Someone wrote, and I don't remember who, that we are living in the golden age of free.
Almost everything can be had for free.
Movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, information, entertainment.
At some point, that is all going to come to an end.
I recently had an internal debate about cable, why was I dropping a $100 a month for cable, when 85 percent of the shows I wanted to watch can be seen for free on the Internet? And by free, I mean really free, going to a coffee shop or someplace with free wi-fi and watching the shows I wanted.
With tivo, watching a show live no longer has any appeal. So waiting a day or two for the show to be made available online is no big deal.
As more people realize that you don't have to pay, how can the current model for news and entertainment be sustained?
Papers are already dealing with this now.
Entertainment companies are coming to grips with it.
But with all that video footage out there, the Internet has become an expensive beast to maintain. So it seems like the only model to make it work, is to make people pay for the Internet and the more you use it, the more you pay for it.
I suspect that places with free wi-fi will eventually go away and all you can handle Internet for $20 or $30 will go away as well.
In some ways that is probably just part of the natural evolution. The web was organic, no one planned for it, no one said this is what we should do as this thing grows. No one was ready. Just like no one said when the first Model-T rolled off the assembly that in just a couple of decades the country would be covered in vast strips of asphalt and concrete to handle all the traffic.

 

Good points, Jay.

Of course, as most of you probably remember, most people did pay their Internet bill based upon usage when it first started growing in the late 90s. That was back when those AOL "3000 minutes (or 3 months) free" CDs were lying seemingly everywhere you looked. Once you got past that trial period, you got a certain number of minutes free each month, then paid some amount for each additional minute. That's all just to say that there has been a precedent for something other than "all you can handle Internet for $20 or $30."

Your point is well-taken, though. We could be taking this "age of free stuff" for granted a bit right now. Could it be that the current money-making model for the Internet will dissolve before newspapers ever really figure out how to use it? And I still say that it could be fool's gold for the newspaper industry because once one of the remaining Web sites offers viable classifieds (perhaps for free, a la CraigsList), the complete lack of Internet revenues could really kill some papers. On the other hand, if those Internet classifieds were expensive enough to where papers could be competitive, that could help considerably.

 

Net neutrality, from my understanding, differs from tiered broadband.

Tiered access is the pay for what you use model. I think the numbers are something like 5% of Internet users consume 40% of the bandwidth. Those are the smelly bloggers in their parents' basements downloading, in HD, every baseball game from the night before.

Net neutrality is the filtering of content by the ISP providers. So say you've got Comcast high speed. Comcast also has digital phone service, but you're using Vonage or Skype to make all your phone calls. Well if net neutrality goes away, Comcast will have the ability to block you from accessing Skype because it's a service competing with what they offer.

The same goes for TV shows. Comcast might block you access to Hulu.com because they don't want you watching your TV shows for free on their Internet when you could be paying for basic cable.

 

NICE FREAKING CATCH!