Net Neutrality [Rumor?] | The Coffeehouse

the-laughing-man

I just got something in my RSS on Net Neutrality and it's a big issue for me, I love the way anyone can become something online and that sites like Facebook come out of no-where and become the norm (and die just as quickly)

This group claim they have insider info from a few ISPs which says by 2012 that the Internet will turn into something very much like subscription TV and that you will be only be able to visit certain sites which you would pay for access to.

If that is what they mean and that is what is to happen that could kill all innovation on the internet and scares me a LOT.

http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

What do you guys make of it?

W3bbo particularly as you have been sending letters to MPs about this before is there anything you can suggest to me?

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

It won't happen, at least not like that. It's political dynamite and no politician would like to see the mob that forms after they ignite that touchpaper.

What's somewhat more likely is that highly successful websites (such as Google, YouTube and Facebook) get effectively charged by the ISPs as "compensation" for the high amount of bandwidth that they use in proportion to the rest of the Internet's websites. This is also pretty outrageous when you think about it and fully deserves to be prevented in the Senate and elsewhere, but it's quite different to the Internet apartheid that you are suggesting.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

the-laughing-man wrote:

I just got something in my RSS on Net Neutrality and it's a big issue for me, I love the way anyone can become something online and that sites like Facebook come out of no-where and become the norm (and die just as quickly)

This group claim they have insider info from a few ISPs which says by 2012 that the Internet will turn into something very much like subscription TV and that you will be only be able to visit certain sites which you would pay for access to.

If that is what they mean and that is what is to happen that could kill all innovation on the internet and scares me a LOT.

http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

What do you guys make of it?

W3bbo particularly as you have been sending letters to MPs about this before is there anything you can suggest to me?

Scaremongering. ISPs cannot block sites and turn consumer Internet access into a "pick the sites you want" system. If an ISP blocks a set of popular websites customers are going to flock to rivals ISPs that don't block them, even if the price is higher.

The Internet, unlike TV, is a buyers market, not a sellers.

You'll notice it's all the "last mile" ISPs who are thinking of these nefarious plans and not the backbone providers (who really power the Internet).

//didn't RTFA

EDIT: Okay, so I'm watching the video. This reeks of implausibility. They make claims without backing them up, refering to them only as "sources within the industry", and also demonstrates an ignorance about how the Internet and WWW work on a technical level. They're confusing the Internet with the WWW, and that a website is addressed by host-header and hostname, to filter at this level would require lots of DPI, the costs of such inspection (never mind the privacy issues) probably outweigh the costs of collecting "access fees".

They also claim ISPs are colluding, this is crap. Worldwide ISPs are often massive rivals and would never collude, take THUS (Demon) and BT, they operate separate networks and seemingly hate each other.

And heck, since I operate my own small-scale webhosting operation technically I'm an ISP, and therefore I'm in the industry, and this is total crap. How's that for a soundbite?

the-laughing-man

well the content of the video did seem a bit off the usual "giving quicker access to sites who pay for it" Net Neutrality problem either way it scares the bejesus out of me

figuerres
???

back in the 90's I worked for an ISP...

One of the things that used to come up was the issue of "Providing Access" Vs. "Publishing"

any ISP that starts to filter the domains you can visit has to be very carefull or they become "Editors" or "publishers"

that opens the door to liability ... if you send users to select sites then if the contents prove to be wrong / illiegal / or have other flaws the isp can be sued for having published that information to the subscriber

there are other issues like that...

also if the provider is charging for access to select sites then what about the site owners?? sites could then limit access to isp's that pay them a fee. that would raise the cost of operations for the isp.

most isp's do not make much money for basic access.

also the limited / filtered access would cost money to setup and manage, more hardware, software and staff....

and then comes the whole set of political probelms that the FOSS crowd could bring to play...

that could make the anti-microsoft crowd look like peacenicks....

the whole "information wants to be free" angle...

there are a *LOT* of ways isp's lose in any plan like limiting access.

jamie
tangible goods

hmmm ... not so here. there is rogers and bell. so - you go to the other tier of resellers (re-selling bell) ie: teksavvy.com.

but then bell goes and throttles its resellers bandwidth

(thats what all the canada kerfuffle has been about)

so now there is no option... rogers or bell

apparently a march with michael giest is planned in ottawa

edit: i wonder if MS will be attending...

jamie
tangible goods

this wouldnt be a problem if the liberals were in power (as they usually are) ..but it is Harper.

(love his - just do it (no committee) style - hate his policies)

oh well - maybe soon we will vote in ratatoullie (i mean stefan dion)

"doo can haf envro-ment be aas bid as dat as it has becum!"

sigh

Rd_Falcon

While we may not get to the point of blocking specific websites, I just came accross this article on MSNBC that talks about Time Warner trying out caps on internet usage like it was back in the days of dial-up. As the article points out at the end, ISPs switched to unlimited because consumers wouldn't have anything else, which I hope is the case again 10 years later. I am guessing net neutrality will face the same outcome as those providers did back in the day.

Here is the link to that article for anyone interested. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24936796/

figuerres
???

In reply to Rd_Falcon

#Jun 2nd, 2008 @ 10:02 PM

totaly different... pay-for-bandwith does not censor what you do / see / post.
it just tries to relate bandwith use to cost of services.

if it's done right I am all for it.

the problem is in how you comput the cost...

matthews

Jamie: Not sure where in Canada you live, but here in Halifax there's a lot more options than just Bell and Rogers. The ISP I use is Eastlink, but I know there are several others as well. I think you're missing the important feature of capitalism: competition.

Suppose in your area Bell and Rogers really are the only options, and Bell starts introducing a system where all alternatives to Microsoft websites are throttled down to 10kb/s. People who use Google or Yahoo daily are going to take notice of this, and not be too happy. Rogers can take advantage of this and just keep offering unthrottled service and suck up more marketshare. The good news is Bell would know this in the first place, so they wouldn't be stupid enough to do such a thing. Even if Bell and Rogers were to work together to ensure slow connections to any sites on their brown-list (which is so comic-book evil and ridiculous I can't even begin to imagine it would happen), enterprising young men and women can start up a new ISP that doesn't have insane restrictions, and just syphon away Bell and Rogers clients.

The thing I don't like about everything surrounding this net neutrality debate is government control. I'd rather just let businesses do what they will and have the market decide what's best. If we let governments start to dick around with our ISPs, where will it end? Will they start forcing them to turn over names for IPs without warrants? Will they start up a CRTC-like group to completely strongarm everything the industry does (I for one am tired of seeing Atlanta Braves baseball on my TBS)? There's just no need for it; no ISP in their right mind would start offering preferential service to websites because they WANT people to use their service. They're not evil; they're a service provider out to make money and they know the best way to do this is to offer GOOD service.

Rd_Falcon

In reply to figuerres

#Jun 3rd, 2008 @ 6:25 AM

Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood the concept of net-neutrality then. I was thinking along the lines of ala-carte pricing for internet instead of censorship.