The Internet Is A Series Of Tubes

Monday, July 03, 2006

Saw this in an entry over on Wired Blogs, which also links to a recording of the speech. Alaska senator Ted Stevens speaks about net neutrality and gives a technical explanation on how the internet works:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Look, this dude is probably old, and I can understand him getting certain details wrong about how things work on the internet. If I have my facts correct, Ted Stevens is on the Senate Commerce Committee, which voted on net neutrality amendments to a telecommunications bill. Stevens voted against adding these amendments.

Common sense would dictate that if you’re on a senate committee voting on important issues, you be knowledgeable about the issue at hand, and that you have a good understanding of said issue. Stevens clearly has no clue about any of this, and it boggles me how he got a seat on this committee.