The Future of the Internet 264
bariswheel writes "An important piece written by a Columbia Law professor addresses sensitive questions about the future of the Internet: "Is it a problem if the gatekeepers (i.e. a duopoly of the local phone and cable companies) discriminate between favored and disfavored uses of the Internet? How would you take it if AT&T makes it slower and harder to reach Gmail and quicker and easier to reach Yahoo! mail? What if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special "rush-hour" lane for GM cars only? Is there something special about "carriers" and infrastructure--roads, canals, electric grids, trains, the Internet--that mandates special treatment? Should content providers like Google, or subscribers like us, pay for the bandwidth consumed?" Here's hoping that sites like Google Techtalks and Channel 9 remain 'free' and available for the next 10 years."
What worries me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What worries me (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that the tension over US control causes a splintering of the internet. So that you would have to do something weird if you were in the US and wanted to use the "French internet". It would be like the old days, when you had to be on bitnet to send mail to someone on bitnet.
I personally think that the Internet as we know it now has been integrated way too much into our lives (and those of corporations) to ever let such a thing happen. The disadvantages greatly outweight the advantages for internet segm
Re:What worries me (Score:3, Funny)
I think they are just jealous of how the Oil companies are screwing people and want to get in on the action.
International problems could be the solution (Score:3, Interesting)
I could see some quite interesting lawsuits coming down that throttled road.
Re:International problems could be the solution (Score:2)
You know, TCP/IP already has the ability to set a priority bit [tcpipguide.com]... so it is merely a matter of turning those bits on or off to offer different speeds for people.
What if (Score:2)
Doesn't the same apply here?
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
There would be many competitors in your area and if you didn't mind long distance charges you could literally pick any of the thousands mom and pop ISPs anywhere in the nation.
But with Broad band... All those places died out... The telco's and cable companies took over and the onl
Re:What if (Score:3, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, AOL was around as Quantum(tm) back when the Internet was Arpanet, and didn't allow ordinary companies to connect.
The phone companies and cable companies make exclusive deals with localities in order to bring wires into your house. Since they tend to have been granted government monopolies, they are more re
Re:What if (Score:5, Interesting)
"What if... The biggest ISP decided to partner with a lot of content providers and limit that content to their customers only? I think it would be called AOL and people would jump ship and go to smaller ISPs.
"Doesn't the same apply here?"
-- missing000
What if, in a few years, a few giant ISPs are the only ones left for 99% of USians to choose from, and they all discriminate by content, protocol, and application? Then where will people "jump ship" to? How will we even get news or viewpoints that don't conform to the commercial interests of the few big ISPs?
Very slowly, I think, if at all.
Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:5, Interesting)
Resistance seems futile, as no ISP wants their users using P2P apps. What can we do? We used to threaten to cancel our services with providers guilty of bandwidth throttling, but now they all do it, so what options are left, besides simply accepting that this is how the future of the Internet will be? Normal access to "preferred" sites that make the ISP money, and discouraged (throttled) access to sites and services that cost the ISP money. It sucks. I'm open to suggestions.
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:2, Interesting)
That's what I loathe about Telco companies.
On one hand, they are passing laws banning the creation of muni-broadband. For example in Batavia IL, millions of dollars were spent on a smear campaign to defeat a grassroots effort to build a fast municipality owned fiber network. Millions of dollars that could
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:5, Insightful)
Blocking is blocking. Period. When you start saying "well, in this case, blocking is OK", then you open up the door to what we have in front of us. It doesn't matter whether its a site, a port, or a specific protocol. In all of those cases, the ISP has inserted themselves between you and your endpoint site/host so they can make decisions for you as to what does and does not get passed between you and the other party.
One could certainly argue that there are real positive uses of this model -- like closing port 25 on residential IP's -- but by doing this, don't forget that you give the ISP's a slippery slope that they can travel down. The way IP is designed, I should be able to get a packet of content (ANY content) from point A to point B, as long as both of those points exist. The travel route and the content of the package are irrelevant.
That's it. That's the internet in a nutshell. Anything that is done between point A and point B (filtering, spoofing, blocking, whatever), is by nature, altering the transmission. So if you want to block, fine, but don't call it the INTERnet. Call it a "bunch of networks that might be able to talk to each other, if allowed"
We know that every single packet from every single customer CAN be inspected and approved or denied by anyone in the middle of point A and point B. The question is: Are we, as a society, going to allow our Internet Providers to selectively choose what can and can not be sent between the endpoints?
(I didn't mean to but I think I just gave a resounding support post for net-neutrality.)
You must have some new definition of "red" (Score:2)
Red is a colour, apples are fruit (or possibly a brand of computer.
Only some Canadian ISPs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:4, Insightful)
From the Bell Sympatico acceptable use policy. [sympatico.ca]
The wonderful peer to peer Internet is under attack from many directions; commercial service discrimination is just one - and IMHO, it would be more like the power company deciding how much (if any) juice and of what quality they'll supply, depending on who manufactured my toaster, kettle, TV etc. than the KFC/Pepsi analogy given by Wu.
John Walker describes other, related threats here: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/ [fourmilab.ch]
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:2)
those who forget history (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't, and I'm a sysadmin for an ISP. We're not a huge ISP by any means, but I *will not* filter internet traffic. If your paying my company for 3Mbit, then you can use 3Mbit.
Don't use bittorrent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't use bittorrent? (Score:2)
You can, but it is hurtful to the Ubuntu Project because you are costing them money for the bandwidth.
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:2)
I am assuming that you know that picking the first ISP above will get you a great deal on Internet service (think 19.95 a month here) but might be lacking in s
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:3, Insightful)
If there are enough ISPs available to you that you are able to make that choice, then great. For a lot of people, however, there are only a few broadband ISPs available in their area. Those people will may be able to "choose an ISP with a different business model". If a sufficiently large amount of people are in that sort of situation (and I submit that they are, or could be in the near f
Re:Canadian ISPs already discriminate (Score:2)
How slow? (Score:3)
I guess to me it would be a matter of how "slow" or how much "harder". I mean how do they make it "harder"...have www.gmail.com NOT go to GMail .
Re:How slow? (Score:4, Informative)
With GMail as it currently exists this might not seem like a big threat, but look at where "webmail" is headed. GMail already includes instant messenging / chat, and in a few years I could see it becoming much more interactive; instead of firing up Skype to make a VoIP call, you might just navigate to a particular web page.
AJAX and future interactive technologies could be greatly affected by network conditions, and two competing websites might be perceived very differently by consumers if one was always much faster or more responsive than the other. It doesn't take much to give something a reputation for slowness or unreliability, and that's a big turn-off to potential customers. (And not one that you can really argue against -- you as Google could say "it's not our fault, it's your cable company doing it!" to which the customer says "So, what? You're still slow and Yahoo is still fast, so I'm using Yahoo.")
Re:How slow? (Score:2)
Don't give them any ideas. Fiddling with their DNS servers so that www.gmail.com goes to mail.yahoo.com every 3rd try isn't beyond them. They could make DNS lookups of affiliate sites faster than lookups to sites that haven't paid the protection money. Some of us can remember 64.233.161.83, 64.233.171.83 and 216.239.57.83, but most users can't.
Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, both consumers, via the monthly charges to their ISP, and Google, via the presumably large charges from whoever provides their bandwidth, are already paying for bandwidth consumed.
Why do people keep repeating this absurd claim?
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'll skip the attribution to avoid invoking Godwin's Law. Besides, the original context isn't important in this case anyway since it applies regardless.)
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:2)
Usually the "Big Lie" quote is attributed to Goebbels, actually. However, Goebbels kept extensive diaries, and I've never seen it attributed there or otherwise to an actual written or durably recorded quote. It's cynical, it's catchy, it was certainly very apropos for the regime and its architects, but I suspect it's also apocryphal. I'd love to be corrected, if anyone has actual hard information as to the attribution.
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:2)
Short answer - comes from AH's Mein Kampf.
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps that's part of it.
Re:Bandwidth NOT already paid for (Score:2)
"Bandwidth is a service."
You can reasonably charge some customers more than some smaller bandwidth consumer and they will pay it. If they don't pay then maybe their service suffers a little until the big-bandwidth consumer sees the light and agrees to pay a little more. You have to have money to pay for the bandwidth provider's obscene CEO compensation package right
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for (Score:3, Interesting)
But my sma
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for... (today maybe) (Score:2)
Verizon will gladly sell me more bandwidth and that's ok. Just don't make hidden deals with shadowy players in smoke filled backrooms that make some packets cross the network slower than others.
Re:Bandwidth is already paid for... (today maybe) (Score:2)
The idea of doing an individual stream for each TV for each station is *IDIOTIC*. You would honestly have to be stupid to do that. If some VC was silly enough to give you money for that, your business would go under anyway.
TV over the Internet works for either small numbers of users or if you run it multicast. ISPs do
Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine what would happen if such things, filtering, seperate pricing, access procedures etc should be done, with hundreds of thousands sites erected each day, maybe 20 thousand and more isps active around the world, hordes of networks, satellite and telecom operators, datacenters ?
The result would be an INFINITE and ever increasing number of protocols, prices, agreements, disagreements, filters, etc and stuff !!!
How much cpu power would the operators need to determine what goes to where and what goes not if such mess was introduced ? Google would have to erect a new server farm to process 'filters', and it would be one that is comparable to the one it uses for search processing.
'Pay for bandwith' my arse. The profits from bandwidth would go to maintaining endless server farms all around the world to process access limitations.
I repeat : people should not be allowed to propose laws in an area they have no expertise, training or experience in.
Re:Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:2, Insightful)
You've just eliminated the entire govt. A legislator should be able to take the advice of experts to create laws though.
Re:Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:2)
Brilliant! And it won't even get the FBI involved like my plan would have!
Re:Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:2)
Like yourself, who apparently didn't read the article and isn't familiar with what the writer is talking about? Why don't you look into some of the restrictions cable companies like the @home service have implemented in the past. Why don't you read the article?
I'll give you a hint. If Im in control, I don't need to filter 99% of the traffic or exercise a heavy hand on it to see a benefit. I only need to bl
Re:Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:2)
Re:Another one that speaks in a field with no clue (Score:2)
Isn't that pretty much what we have today? Baby Bells and Cable companies lobbyists give "suggestions" to legislators, along with campaign funding.
Re: (Score:2)
Road comparison is treading dangerously. (Score:2)
The only time it becomes a problem is if they purposely slow down the connection. Not granting it access to the newest high speed line is not the same thing. If some provider builds up a special section of their network to provide better throughput then by all means they should have the opportu
Re:Road comparison is treading dangerously. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Road comparison is treading dangerously. (Score:3, Insightful)
Already we have toll roads. We have examples of where special lanes are set aside for people who are willing to pay more for better service. So how is complaining about internet providers doing the same different?
Simple. By paying $49.95/month for Road Runner [roadrunner.com] rather than $9.99 for Blue Frog [bluefrog.net], I am already paying a $40/month "toll" to use the fast lane. I've paid for it, now fork it over.
As for paying a "tiered" toll, I'm already there. I picked the middle tier. I get half the bandwidth for $29.95,
bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
GM doesnt pay for the roads. Taxpayers do. Now if GM went a built a series of roads with their money and only allowed their cars to use those roads, would you object?
Re:yet another bad analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if GM paid for the roads themselves out of monies earned via a legally granted monopoly, say, that only GM cars are allowed to be driven in the region, would you object?
If the roads were partially funded by a special assessment on all drivers of GM cars, regardless of whether they choose to use those roads, would you object?
Re:bad analogy (Score:2)
Re:bad analogy (Score:2, Informative)
http://lafayetteprofiber.com/Blog/2005/10/banner-o f-hypocrisy-whose-subsidy.html [lafayetteprofiber.com]
http://www.lafayetteprofiber.com/ [lafayetteprofiber.com]
Bad analogy (again!) (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it's basically taxpaye
Re:bad analogy (Score:2)
Will it play this way? (Score:5, Insightful)
On average, how many carriers did you cross? What would happen if a carrier started using Class-Based Queueing techniques just across their sections? What if they started creating tariffs, quotas, import fees of classified "bulk traffic', or started using the differentiated services model at internet peering points? I'm not talking about rate-queues and other things that guys on NANOG routinely do now, I'm talking about corporate sponsored refusal to carry types of traffic.
A complex system of MPLS paths based on traffic types would result, BGP tags would get processed to have implied meanings (i.e. AT&T won't carry my SMTP messages unless they are destined for email servers in the AT&T network) and on the whole, it would get pretty messy.
Now, the economic result of this would be that carriers would set up trade barriers to each other, not unlike nations do. And the net-net would be... market consolidation. How could it not? The small ISPs and regional carriers would eventually fall prey to larger groups who would create mutually beneficial arrangements to carry traffic and create cartels to approach the major websites, esp. the search engines, and demand that they pay up. Google would need to pay into formed groups like "the Consolodated Tier-1 providers of North America" to allow broadband users to reach Google services.
The end result would be the fragmentation of the internet. Large parts of it would be unreachable from certain parts of the world. And that's over and above national firewalls like the Chinese have, this wouldn't be censorship - this would just be business. The board at AT&T now has the technology to really implement differentiation, and now they want to use it. To make money, at the expense of content providers and value-add information sites. I don't see how that is a good thing.
Re:Will it play this way? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they would lose their "common carrier" status, a fate VERY few of the big boys would willingly risk.
What would happen if a carrier started using Class-Based Queueing techniques just across their sections?
Then they would either breach their contracts with those on either side of their chunk of network, or they would voluntarily transmit less data over time, thereby making less money for that traffic.
If you sell cinnamon
Re:Will it play this way? (Score:2)
Perhaps, then, you should edit the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] of common carrier, since you have it right and they have it wrong.
Then they would either breach their contracts with those on either side of their chunk of network, or they would voluntarily transmit less data over time, thereby making less money for that traffic.
What contracts are you specifically referring to? Perhaps you also should look u
Re:Will it play this way? (Score:2)
From my understanding, common carrier status has become much more of a burden than anything since the deregulation introduced by Telecommunications Act of 1996. Most VoIP providers have fought tooth and nail not be classified as such. Other than not being held legally responsible for the content that traverses their networks, what else is appealing about the classification?
Re:Will it play this way? (Score:2)
Let me simplify, then. Packet switched networks do not work the same way as circuit switched networks do. The cumulative effect of applying QoS to a packet as it traverses your part of an IP network, when you do not know what the other networks are doing to the packet, invalidate assumptions about transit and would inevitably break networks. The only way to insure this does not happen is to work with other network providers and create a system of classification that everyone can a
I don't get it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google pays their ISP to provide them with a connection to the internet.
Why exactly should either ISP be allowed to charge extra for me to connect to Google?
Look at it this way: If I pay for a 3 Mb connection and Google can deliver a 3 Mb downstream, I expect my ISP to allow that. Otherwise, I am NOT getting what I pay for. So basically what a number of ISPs want to do is promise their customers a connection which they will not deliver unless a given website *also* pays for their customers to get that connection.
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:2)
Sprint doesn't need to be paid for that traffic. Think about it.... why should they be? Who would they owe any money to for routing that traffic? The only argument that one can even remotely rationally use is that it takes up bandwidth that Sprints own subscribers could be using.
The problem becomes that if anyone really tries to give precedence to their own subscribers packets
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:3, Informative)
That's not the plan. The plan is to create a HOV lane on their backbone (at the expense of every other lane) to companies that pay money to the Bells. It has nothing to do with what is in your house.
Remember big isps over
Roads... (Score:5, Funny)
I think they already do this in some states, except they discriminate by how many blow-up dolls you are transporting in your vehicle.
Re:Roads... (Score:2)
Boy howdy!
In Phoenix, we renamed the HOV/Carpool lane the 'pervert lane'. Rush hour? I fart in your general direction!
So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Not just double-dippint - try triple-dipping! (Score:3, Insightful)
Both of us already pay for our connection. I pay $45+tax+fees+basic_cable per month for a decently fat pipe coming into my house. Google pays something I don't even want to imagine for the bandwidth it consumes - and that includes the bandwidth for which I also paid to connect to Google.
But now the telecoms have said they want even more??? Greedy bastards we should do away with, for certain. But do we need to worry about non-net-neutrality?
Everyone talks about "imagine carrier-X favoring MSN over Google"... But Google already pays for a guaranteed bandwidth. My connection at work pays for a guaranteed bandwidth. Although I currently pay for peak bandwidth rather than guaranteed on my home connection, watch how fast consumers drop ISPs that throttle them for reasons unrelated to congestion. "But I can stream HD video from MSN? Great, fuck you too, I don't use MSN, cancel my account!"
So this leaves AT&T with three options - breach of contract with their "supply-side" customers, or loss of constomers on the "consumer-side". Wait, I said "three", didn't I? Yep - They have one other choice. They already need to provide a certain level of service to Google and to Joe Sixpack. But they have the option of making MSN faster than the competition. Whether they do that as anticompetitive price-cuts for higher bandwidth or as network infrastructure upgrades, both would tend to drive prices down and quality up. End result, they lose their own bone barking at the dog in the stream.
Re:Not just double-dippint - try triple-dipping! (Score:2)
Just curious. How many high-speed low-latency connectivity providers can you choose from where you live? More than two?
Re:Not just double-dipping - try triple-dipping! (Score:2)
Cheap home broadband, only three choices (possibly four, if the ISP about a mile away offers point-to-point wireless links, but I've never looked into that).
And no, I don't live in big city... Not the middle of nowhere, either, but the suburbs of a fairly small city (~30k people).
But I see your point. Keep in mind, however, that cellular carriers already have the ability to offer
market forces (Score:3, Interesting)
ISP's make money while content companies have largely failed to live up to their Bubble-ish expectations.
Google only makes 7-8 billion in revenue, and the amount that could be diverted to potential bandwidth-throttling is not that much compared to the money ISP's generate from maintaining existing customers.
Other content sites aren't nearly as successful as Google, and would have even less leverage to engage in these anticompetitive practices.
The Spirit of Our Times (Score:2)
Google only makes 7-8 billion in revenue..
Oh, what a sad world! Vast sums are considered mere trifles.
Only through such a perspective may the 'tiered internet' endeavor to exist.
Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
Additionaly, the ability of backbone providers to influence the delivery of packets is quite limited in comparison to the 'last mile' provider. The ISP customers immediately connect to, if they choose to set QOS for some type of service from some content provider, will have a great deal more effect on download/upload speeds that backbone providers. That's just how QOS out at the edge works. Yes, backbone providers can influence packet delivery, but not nearly as much as edge providers.
The other problem with allowing provider to prioritize traffic is that once packets traverse provider boundries, all bets are off. Does anyone really think that Verizon/MCI/UUNet will treat AT&T's prioritized packets better or even on par with its own? After all, Verizon's own customers, like maybe giant-company-xyz, is paying to have their traffic prioritized, and all Verizon might have with AT&T is an aggreement that might not be worth as much as $$ from giant-company-xyz. If AT&T never sees all the router configs in Verizon's network, how can they claim that Verizon isn't honoring their QOS?
The internet is more like an ocean than it is a bunch of lakes and canals, and the telcos want to sell good weather and smooth sailing. AT&T will sell Disney, for example, a 'higher tier' of service for their streaming video on their backbone, but unless they can get each and every edge provider to go along, and each and every other entity that runs any kind of peering link at all on the Internet, it won't make as big a difference as they claim. My point is that even if telcos sell prioritization, its likely it won't stack up like they claim, due to the nature of the Internet itself. Then everybody will have to decide how to treat legitimate priority traffic, like 911 for example.
The entire debate looks to me as though it being framed in a misleading way.
Re:No No No! (Score:4, Insightful)
To use the same terms as your analogy:
1: The Internet *was* an ocean that ISP's sold boating subscriptions
2: The ocean contains wealth the ISP's have yet to harvest. That wealth will be extracted by turning the ocean into lakes. Inside each ISP's lake they will sell you the "right" to visit other lakes and see/use other features in the lake. This is the natural outcome of privitazation and "market-based" services.
The other sh*tpipe into your home, cable/satellite TV is the proven model. The "internet" that you have grown familiar with, is but a distant memory.
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
Conversely, what if your neighbor's call to 911 through their VOIP provider is squashed by your call to Aunt Martha because you chose to use the ISP's VOIP service (free for the first 30 days with any new HBO+Cinemax subscription!),
Somebody has to pay (Score:2, Insightful)
As I see it there are three big "supply and demand" things on the net:
connectivity, high-transmission-speed, and low-latency.
Connectivity is a no brainer - that's maintenance on the wire going to your house, the cost of billing you, etc. etc.
Transmission speed is easy to understand also: The "pipes" just aren't big enough to let everyone max out their connection all at once. If everyone got on their high-speed connection and started downloading stuff at the same time, things will slow down. Thi
Lovely idea, but wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
That would assume that "consumers" actually had a choice, but as we all know, competition is a misnomer. With acquisitions and mergers, the number of carriers continues to shrink. And while you might think you can get whatever phone company you want wherever you are, think again. My folks in North Carolina have one carrier available: Sprint. They can't switch phone companies. They use calling cards for long distance, so they don't have to pay Sprint's outrageous fees or deal with their crappy customer service.
Think cable's a good alternative? Bah! I have to use Optimuj Online through Cablevision, because I can't get Comcast (not that I really want to). There's no competition -- in my area its Cablevision or satellite, take your pick.
If you think the Bells and or cable giants stand to lose by restricting service or charging more to some comapnies than others, think again. The customer doesn't have much of a choice in most cases.
Preferentialism versus paternalism (Score:2, Interesting)
For me, I don't see a problem with ISPs who give preferential treatment to traffic -- just as your grocery store gets paid for better shelf placement by hundreds of product manufacturers, I think the same should be true for any free market good. In the long run, the
Re:Preferentialism versus paternalism (Score:2)
"The big problem is where government is already sticking their nose in my business, such as where certain providers get monopoly status (within the village or the state). In this case, there is cause for concern, but that is already the problem with government regulation: it tends to create monopolies out of preferred enterprises and really hurts the competitive market. "
Telcos had/have a natural monopoly based upon the high infrastructure costs acting as a barri
My prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
I also predict a return to BBS-like behavior based on wireless mesh networks, but that's another post.
If this comes to pass, you all owe me a dollar.
Re:My prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually in my experience, it's been just the opposite. Enforcement of restrictions on servers have become more lax, not more strict.
They'll start refusing to relay traffic that might expose them to liability, such as p2p networks and usenet.
This is unlikely to happen in the near future. A large number of broadband customers have a connection just for p2p networks. The minute an ISP cuts p2p users of
WE DO PAY FOR BANDWIDTH! (Score:2, Informative)
As net users we pay to be connected to the internet and for the price we pay we get a speed and (in the case of us australia users) a download limit. And as companies groups like google and yahoo pay for their connections and data they send to the internet.
So both groups have paid their dues to those who control the networks...So all of this bullshit (and lets not beat around the bush here) is that network providers want to double dip without raisi
The fix for this is... (Score:2)
No backbone until it comes time to leave the local urban area - no local ISPs at all. Networking becomes networking, not nodeworking.
There would be no way to charge for local access at all, and long distance could only be charged by the backbone providers that your box a
Take back *our* Internet. (Score:2)
I want to continue to experime
Free (as in freedom) Internet doesn't exist! (Score:2)
So there is little worse than this but shutting the network down!
Freedom is an illusion.
Real freedom double so!
Seriously enough and at the risk of moderation (Score:2)
Network neuter-ality (Score:2)
Infrastructure (Score:2)
So, either renationalise the telcos (which has its problems, but at least the government can't absolve itself of responsibility), or tell them pretty clearly what they can and can't do. Given that lobbyists pay for the legislation of their choice, the latter option might not be so gre
You can help. Real concrete ways to help. (Score:2, Interesting)
If a telecom has applied for a franchise in your town the do this:
Show up at the local council meeting and ask your local government to ask the telecoms what their position is on keeping the internet a level playing field?
This issue needs to work from the local governments up; not from the federal level down. The telecom's money is useless at the local level.
Raising the
bandwidth (Score:3, Informative)
You get what you deserve (Score:2)
The 'problem' here is only one in the US. This is what the companies in the US want to do. And this is what the people YOU voted in are going to let them do. So STFU and educate yourself to who is voting for these things in YOUR name.
If your not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a better argument against (Score:2, Insightful)
What we should be focusing on:
- Bandwidth is already paid for. The consumer and producer pay their respective Internet Service Providers. This has already been discussed above.
- AT&T (and other telephone companies) get tax breaks, tax incentives, and right-of-way because they are common-carrier and a utility. If AT&T wants to start degrading service to individuals unless a fee is paid, then AT&T sh
The example doesn't seem quite right to me (Score:2)
Re:Moron (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Govt interference more likely (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not at all a parallel situation with what AT&T wants to do. Your analogy may call attention to the one value of tiered interenet, but completely ignores that they way in which a greedy monopoly will use it as a weapon to lock down consumers. The government, the only authority for HOV lanes, may be a useless bureacracy but we can control the proliferation and governance of HOV lanes easily with our votes and angry protests. We have absolutely no control at all over AT&T...unless we want to live without a phone or internet.
Re:Govt interference more likely (Score:2)
Ever hear of an HOV lane?
That is a very weak analogy. You can get into an HOV lane with any brand of vehicle as long as it is a motorcycle, or you are carrying a passenger. You won't get turned out of the HOV lane just for driving a Hummer, nor will you get automatic admittance just for driving a Prius.
No, the HOV lane is more like priority being given to some services than to some providers.
On the other hand, the original analogy is weak, too. A better analogy would be that you get to use the HO
Re:Is it my imagination? (Score:2)
Here, though, the author is wrong -- he asserts that the main difference between KFC favoring Pepsi and I-95 favoring GM cars is that you can choose not to
Re:The future of the internet... (Score:2)
Re:The future of the internet... (Score:2, Funny)
No, they won't. (Score:2)
gah... no... MS+Amazon (Score:2)
Re:The future of the internet... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why people make fun of fox we know all news has some bias but FOX is so far from center it's basically propaganda.