Net Neutrality

I don't know if anyone here follows the net neutrality issue, but it is a very important issue, and everyone that uses the internet should know about it.

Net neutrality is the ability to access the internet freely, go to any site you want and not have to worry, you have access to a whole world of information, anyone can start a website or a service, and if it is liked, it can become big.

Lately, there is a growing trend in big Internet Service Providers (or isp for short; such as Comcast, Time Warner, Virgin (for the European users)), these are the people who give you access to the internet. The trend is that they want to start limiting the sites you view, and having control over what happens on the internet. They want to make more money off of the internet, and it's users than they already do. They want to limit the download speed of websites, and make deals with big companies so that their sites can be viewed at a fast speed (whatever speed you pay for). For example, if you started a website about Virtua Fighter, you would have to pay the isp's a fee, or your website would get horrendous download speed, so that people wouldn't be able to view your site (as easily as they are used to, which can hurt a website). If it takes 5 minutes to load a website less people will view that site, and the site will most likely fail.

This is a big issue because right now we have Net Neutrality, where the internet is free for everybody to view, there are no restrictions on download speed by the isp's. If I want to go to youtube, since I have a fast internet connection, I can load it in about 2 or 3 seconds. If the isp's are allowed to start doing this, if youtube doesn't pay a fee every month or year or w/e to my isp (which is Time Warner), it's download speed will be trashed, so it might take me 1 minute or more just to load the main page, not to mention the videos. This can lead to the ruin of websites, such as youtube, which is all about freedom, as the name says YOU tube, YOU can view what you want, YOU can put what you like up, it's not about what Time Warner wants, you aren't being forced to watch only certain videos, for others won't load, you get to choose.

If isp's are allowed their way, then the internet will become like television. You get to see what is on at the time. You connect, and see that maybe google paid their dues this month, but virtuafighter.com didn't; too bad no virtuafighter.com for you.

Right now, there are hearings about this in the United States (sorry I don't know much about the rest of the world).

Virgin, the European isp I mentioned earlier, is trying to start this trend. They openly said that they are starting to make deals with companies already. We can not allow this to pass, for if it does, other isp's will follow the trend, and the internet as we know it will be completely changed, and possibly ruined.

We need to speak out any way we can, posting this in your blog, vblog, myspace, forums you frequent anything. We need to get the word out and let these companies know that we will not stand for this. That if they try to do this they will lose customers, and ruin themselves.

As of now, in the United States, there are bills trying to be passed by some senators (such as California Senator Barbera Boxer), to protect net neutrality. Other senators have tried to pass a bill that would allow these companies to do as they wish, but have been shot down.

If you live in the US and would like to get involved, here is a great site, with lots of information. Savetheinternet.com I'm sorry that I do not know of any sites like this that cater to the rest of the world, but I will look around and post here any that I can find.

I would also like this thread to be open for discussion of this issue, what you think the future of the internet is, and anything that deals with our freedom on the internet.
I know this was long and thank you for taking the time to read it. We need to do this not only for ourselves, but for future generations.

 

i never heard that virgin is an isp, but whatever.

i agree that net neutrality has to be saved, although i doubt that it is that easy to control ppl that way. ppl won't buy stuff that is limited and if isps start to limit things ppl will look for neutral providers.

 

Daft round the world balloon expeditions don't pay for themselves.....

 

at least not here in germany.

 

Comcast around here has already got the internet in a stranglehold. I can't use Torrents, can't use P2P file sharing programs, I can't even use the iTunes store through my iTunes program.

When I was living down south for a couple of years, just a few months ago, I was paying for Time Warner Road Runner and nothing was restricted at all.

I thought that this issue was just a Comcast thing, but after seeing this thread, I guess it's not. Also, what's funny is when I was with Time Warner I only paid about $29.99 a month, but Comcast charges almost twice that amount up here.

I hope that Verizon FIOS when that gets to this part, doesn't have stupid restrictions. Comcast has a monopoly around here right now, and it's messing everything up.

 

Sakuya, I know how worried u are. Actually, that plan has been brewing since 1999. Look for it. Its no joke. I could go ahead and explain why things like this are happening but Im gonna get flamed by the usual blindfolded folks. I'll let u with I hint, a few websites u should visit if u are concerned about all this. Its a big puzzle with tiny pieces. Good luck in your search. Also, the net its not the only place for info. informationliberation.com outlawjournalism.com cuttingthroughthematrix.com millenium-ark.net/index1.html henrymakow.com Well, good luck in your search. Because of my job I know this things are true it took me a long time to understand what is going on. These sites are some oulets for free expression but they are gonna be closed soon by a bill that limits free speech and thought under the guise of terrorism prevention. Go figure Check out the movie 1984 too. Eliminating net neutrality is part of the whole thing. Well, good luck in your search.

 

Maybe they will set it up in time for internet 2.0 or whatever it's called (the new superfast network being started this summer).
Yeah the internet is one of the biggest threats to the elites since it provides ease of communication for the masses.

 

I read 1984 back in high school, and ya it seems that the government is trying to go down that route. I visited the sites you posted, and some of the stuff is shocking, but some of it I feel is a little on the conspiracy theory side. Please post why this stuff is happening, as I am very interested. Or pm me if you wouldn't like to be flamed, or if theres no pm system on this board, please email me, my email is in my profile.


I heard about virgin being an isp, in a video I saw on wrathofthe1337king.com they are big supporters of net neutrality, and they mentioned that virgin is starting to make deals right now.

I found an article about Virgin, heres a synopsis:
"Berkett told Royal Television Society Magazine, “this net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks.” He claimed that any video content provider that refused to pay Virgin a premium for faster access would have to get stuck in “bus lanes,” having their content delivered to end users at much slower speeds than that of rich content providers. Virgin is the second biggest ISP in Britain." A link to the article http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/04/

Comcast admitted to blocking p2p services such as torrents, when I first read that I was shocked. I think I read that verizon is actually going to support p2p and torrents though, I'll try to find the article, as I saw it just yesterday. Turns out it I was unable to find it, but I found an article about Comcast supporting bit torrent http://www.freepress.net/node/38141

I know it's not that easy to control people, the thing is most people don't know that this is happening, which is why we need to spread the word. I found out about it because of a forum post on a forum I frequented about 3 years back, and I am hoping to reach as many people as I can to get the word out. I love the internet and the community(ies) that are on it (sometimes I refer to the internet as one big community), and it offers so much to everyone.

I don't think I have heard of the internet 2.0, but someone told me that the government wants to make free broadband internet for everyone in the USA, but if they do that, they can monitor everything you do. I'll do some research into the internet 2.0 see what I can come up with.

I also found an international site similar to free the internet
http://www.tacd.org/index2.htm

 

whoa is all I can really say, it looks like we might have the fight for our right for free speech. We as a country haven't really had to fight all that hard for a lot of our freedoms and as of late we've been charged with more and more with reasons to fight now. If this starts to really go down I'm going to have to become a radical down with the government type guy. Or at least down with the slow depredation of our freedom.

We will have no one to blame but ourselves and I'm sure as hell not going to be there with people blaming myself for not having fought. Get me enough credible sources and I'll be able to get a large force behind me to stop this.

 

I linked some sites already, such as savetheinternet.com, but I'll put some more sites soon. I don't know if you use snopes.com (website that tells if things you hear about are true or false, it's an urban legends reference page), but heres the link to the article on there http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/neutrality.asp
Wikipedia's entry is pretty long, but here's a snippet from it:
"Network neutrality in the United States is a contentious issue. Currently there is generally network neutrality in the United States, meaning that telecommunications companies rarely offer different rates to broadband and dial-up internet consumers based on internet-based content or service type; however, there are no clear legal restrictions against this. Some broadband services, for example Verizon's Fios, block port 80 preventing consumers from running a website on the standard http port unless they upgrade to a "business" account." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality_in_the_United_States

What kind of sources do you mean by credible (sorry I am a little slow sometimes).

BTW nice to see you here Tricky. The first character I played as on VF was Eileen, and the first thread I read on this site was one of yours .

 

I'm generally for net neutrality, but the rampant misinformation shown here is one of reasons this is such a troublesome topic.

For example, you said: "Comcast admitted to blocking p2p services such as torrents", which is pretty much a blatant lie. What Comcast admitted was that for torrent uploads (not downloads), during prime time (6-9 in the evening or thereabouts... people are apparently online more right after they get off work, how surprising...), and if other net traffic coming from the machine indicated the machine was idle except for an unmonitored bittorent connection, then Comcast was lowering the maximum upload speed slightly. This was a basic business decision to save them some some money on bandwidth during times of day when it was being most heavily used, and they at least attempted to make it minimally impact users. Now, I'm not trying to say that what they did was right or wrong... there's a court case going on that will probably decide that, I believe. However, telling people they "blocked" traffic is just a lie.

The basic argument against net neutrality tends to be about quality of service vs. pay rates. Basically, a user who doesn't go online much can pay less for slower connections, and a user who uses the internet constantly can pay a premium price, and get a faster connection (this is a seperate issue from the max download/upload speeds you can choose to pay for now, but I won't get into the details). It's not that different from the idea of paying more for a luxury car vs. buying a cheap honda.

The main argument for net neutrality tends to be that if you allow companies to implement anything like the above mentioned "speed differences", it opens the door for them to legally do things like block certain types of traffic unless you pay for it. That would be an extremely serious issue, and should be avoided... but it's not what anyone is currently proposing, it's at worst a possible consequence many years down the road if unscrupulous companies can get away with it (i.e. it could end up being legal, so consumers could only boycott the company or something, rather than sue).

 

I guess it's a good thing then that this causes a conflict with many large media companies vision of selling HD content on demand?

Not just the 'little guy' in the red corner I mean?

 

Here read this (http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/02/29/in-boston-a-shot-heard-round-the-internet/):
"But while Comcast’s seat-warmers slept, a collection of Cambridge scholars, Internet advocates, industry leaders, engineers and policymakers nearly all agreed that Internet blocking has serious consequences for each and every one of us.

Comcast’s Sleeper Cell
I say "nearly" because Comcast remains defiant; its executive vice president, David Cohen, continues to insist that "Comcast does not block any Web site, application or Web protocol including peer-to-peer services."

Cohen sets a high bar with that denial, especially since extensive testing has shown exactly the opposite to be true.

"There a single fact here that [Comcast] cannot deny," explained Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu during Monday’s hearing. "Users of the Internet sought to use an application in a certain way, and they were blocked."

This view was supported by David Reed of MIT’s Media Lab, who had also experimented with popular file-sharing applications and found that Comcast was duping users with forged network transmissions that cut off user connections. "Comcast’s secretive attempt to apply non-standard management practices creates serious problems," he said before the FCC."

Here is what comcast did at a FCC hearing about their delaying of internet services (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/mar/01/reuteman-comcast-takes-cake-for-big-fat-pr-gaffe/):
"This fall, when the 2008 edition of Fortune's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business is being compiled, rest assured Comcast will be in the top 10, maybe top five.

The company admitted this week it hired people to fill seats at a federal hearing held Monday to examine complaints about how it handles subscribers' Internet traffic. Critics charge that more than 100 people were turned away from the hearing, partly because of three dozen paid "seat warmers," some of whom were asleep in their chairs.

Comcast said it did hire people to hold places in a cramped law school lecture hall at Harvard University. But spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said the seat-fillers gave up their places once Comcast employees from the Boston area arrived. Unfortunately for Comcast, that assertion was roundly disputed by the hearing's organizer."

The basic argument isn't about pay rates, it's about charging websites fees in order for the site to load at decent speeds. Sites like NBA.com would be able to afford it, but would vfdc?
AT&T's intentions
"He's not alone. Ed Whitacre of AT&T told BusinessWeek (http://www.freepress.net/news/14959):

Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"
These corporations already make money by us paying them, so this is just a ploy to make more money.

Heres an article from Business week. Maybe some of you might see it as a more credible source http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080225_498413.htm?chan=search
It's a very good read, and shows both sides of the argument to some extent. Unfortunately my break at work is over so I will post more at a later time tomorrow.

One reason for the companie's intentions to slow traffic to some sites, is because the sites (such as netflix) compete with their own video content (such as verizon fios). I'm not sure that I understand the second part of what you are saying, it's a boxing refrence but im bad at allusions XD.

 

Boxing reference was just an analogy because there are two sides competing, and it's not just individuals who potentially have a vested interest in seeing equality, it may also affect large companies, reducing demographics etc........

But that kind of hinges on which of you is right, wether it's the websites or the consumers that pay the premium for full speed.....

I don't think, from what i've read, there is much chance of legislation being passed in Europe, though our ISPs have already implemented software mechanisms to isolate and throttle down peer-2-peer traffic.....

 

My understanding is that we're both right on that part... businesses would likely be affected just as sakuya says, I was just only commenting on possible direct consumer influences.

As for the rest of it, your originally quote, that Comcast *admitted* to blocking traffic is still wrong. They've been accused of blocking traffic as all your articles pointed out, and I believe the government is doing some review to try and prove it, but they've only actually *admitted* what I stated. And yeah, the whole buying seat warmers at that event thing was pretty ridiculous, and they deserve to get burned for having done that, even if all the other accusations prove false.

 

Ah I see now. Yes, this is true. From what I understand, some isp's already force the consumers to pay premiums to host websites. I forget which isp, I'll look it up later, but if you pay the consumer price, they don't allow you to host a website from your computer, you must upgrade to the business. There are also multiple prices for different speeds (or at least there was when I was shopping around) for consumers. The thing about Net Neutrality is that the isps want to charge the websites for an increase in their profits. It's kinda like a toll road, where you have to pay a special price, and you can drive on it, which is faster than the regular highway/freeway/street. In a similar fashion, they want to charge websites for a faster use of their "pipes"; unfortunately, the sites that don't pay will be stuck on the slow roads, with limited speed.

Yes your right, they didn't admit to it.

 

noone can control the internet. they'll die trying to limit the users choices.

 

I sure hope so, and I'll be the one getting headshots /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

 

I completely agree with the analogy. However, you'll note that in the US we actually have many toll roads, and they tend to work just fine as a mode of transportation. I'm just not convinced yet that adding that kind of model would be wholly a negative. And, more importantly, the issue is so hot, that it's nearly impossible to find any reasoned debate on the issue. Which was really my point in the first place... everywhere you look sirens are going off about serious an issue this is, but they feel self-propogating to me. That is, everyone's constantly telling each other it's serious, so the issue keeps coming up, but almost all of those people don't really know *why* it's serious.

 

The reason that it would be bad, is because many websites, especially ones that are fan sites (maybe an anime fan wanted to put some of his art online, or make a website for his favorite anime), most likely won't be able to afford the cost (on top of the other costs for web domain, host for the files, etc.)especially if he is just doing it for fun (what's the point in making a site that nobody can see, or that will cost me so much a month if it's just for fun). The thing about the internet is that it's free, and open to anyone, there are sites that are just for fun, for information, for business, etc. If you have a good idea, the internet is a good place to try it (who knows it might be the next google, or myspace). If the ineternet is free as it is now, the idea can grow and might become big, but if you have to pay for your website to be seen, this will stop. I myself enjoy visiting fan site on the internet, such as VFDC, or Zeldauniverse.net. I know half the fan sites that I visit, will be gone if this passes, and those are what got me into the internet. This is why I am for net neutrality.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, I've been busy.