Sounds like a declaration of war war rather than a desire to demonstrate (to their supporters) that some of the fears are so easily proven false that they invalidate the rest of their case and that some of the advantages are so obvious that they’re in danger of coming across as overly extreme Luddites. (Basically my position).

Sadly however, it also sounds like you don’t agree with me that one branch of those fears is based on genuine insight into nasty potential future abuses and that a complete freedom to filter and prioritise data, according to no more than whim (or rather money), is a dangerous thing.

Opposing extremes don’t often produce a sensible medium.
[Just to drag politics in, neocon warmongers versus lunatic muslims is as good an example as any]

That’s the very definition of “over-broad legislation.”

I suspect you missed the difference in tone between ‘demand’ and ‘encourage’ (the latter being the word I used)

As different carriers realise the common sense behind prioritisation for latency critical services, I believe that the demand driven ‘infectiousness’ of such a policy would do the rest.

Further Quote
“I’ve described a rational and non-discriminatory QoS service, but it doesn’t close the door on discriminatory application of packet prioritization. It’s still possible to use legitimate engineering practice toward less-legitimate ends, but it’s very hard to detect this without analysis of market distortion. If Comcast wants to make a deal with Yahoo to deliver Yahoo video faster than Google video, they can certainly use some form of queuing to do that. But it’s not obvious to me that this kind of deal should be banned unless we can determine that it hurts consumers in some way. I think that’s the sort of thing that our FTC monopoly cops are supposed to do.” /quote

I know nothing about your FTC, but I see legislation aimed specifically and exclusively against such prioritisation as a legitmate and preferable demand for the net-neutrality folk to make. I have to admit I don’t understand why you would not see legislation against such a practice as a desirable way to prevent money from becoming the controling factor over who receives what at which rate. Bye bye level playing field.

I assume the FTC is something like our monoplies commission. I’ve just had a quick look at their page and it hasn’t told me much. If I’m right then it would only have a right to take action if the companies concerned were linked in some way, rather than just taking an ISP up on the offer of a service. Even if I’m wrong, I’m not sure they could argue that it wasn’t ‘Fair Trade’, or at least I could make a convincing sounding case that it is.

I’m happy to agree to disagree though I’d very much like to undersand your reasoning.

My current POV is that prioritisation of latency critical services should be (perhaps) gently encouraged, and certainly not legislated against, but that legislation against prioritisation on an IP by IP basis is something which could do only good, and is therefore desirable.

If companies are as fair and even handed as you seem to believe they are then it would have no effect, but if they are not then it would prevent poorer people from being ring-fenced into prefering the web-services offered by the companies with the most money (the dreaded exponentially growing giants) who can then pay even more for ever more priority over more and more links.

It would certainly make a good business model do you not think? Say ‘Budget Broadband @ $5 a month’ with the small print mentioning that it’s subsidised by payments from the larger advertising-based companies for a higher priority over the network for their packets. That would make a few people an absolute mint and would rapidly become my absolute nightmare.

I’m puzzled by your position, but time is precious, so maybe that’s just how it goes … Thank you for the replies so far.

As a footnote, I stand by my thinking that ISPs (here and in the USA) should be made to sell no more than they can actually provide were everyone to simultaneously us their connection at its maximum permissible average rate. I hope that’s already how it is. If not then the possible slight increase in charges would be worth it (AFAIAC) for the rationalisation which should have been there from the word go.

The Internet is privately owned, so I don’t see any legitimate basis for demanding that each and every NSP and ISP upgrade their links to enhanced QoS services. I hope they would, but there may be those who prefer to leave their service offerings as they are now in order to continue using existing equipment. Going from a single service model to a tiered service model involves an upgrade, and everybody’s finances are different.

I’ve described a rational and non-discriminatory QoS service, but it doesn’t close the door on discriminatory application of packet prioritization. It’s still possible to use legitimate engineering practice toward less-legitimate ends, but it’s very hard to detect this without analysis of market distortion. If Comcast wants to make a deal with Yahoo to deliver Yahoo video faster than Google video, they can certainly use some form of queuing to do that. But it’s not obvious to me that this kind of deal should be banned unless we can determine that it hurts consumers in some way. I think that’s the sort of thing that our FTC monopoly cops are supposed to do.

It’s certainly not a case for the FCC and packet inspectors.