Net Neutrality?

[Dionysusigma]

From http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html :



A Note to Google Users on Net Neutrality:
The Internet as we know it is facing a serious threat. There's a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called "net neutrality" – and it's a debate that's so important Google is asking you to get involved. We're asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom.

In the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill, and one that may come up for a key vote in the Senate in the next few weeks, would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.

Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay.

Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative (202-224-3121) and let your voice be heard.

Thanks for your time, your concern and your support.

Eric Schmidt



I'm not sure what to think of this. Is it encroaching on the 1st Amendment (which has been ruled to apple to the Internet) for companies to apply preference to certain sites?

I know this isn't strictly gun-related, but I figured posting it here would get it more exposure than APS...

Legal and Political
Get informed on issues affecting the right to keep and bear arms and other civil rights. Coordinate activism, debate with allies and opponents. Discuss laws concerning firearm ownership, concealed carry and self-defense.

 

[dch1978]

What believe Google?

They are probably scared that the bill will pass and FORCE THEM to quit delisting Gun-blogs from internet searching.

Yes they have done it, have been through a few that show when the delisting occurred and the loss of the web ads, and the resultant drop of traffic. Some are very good, others are mediocre.

They are simply afraid that there own censoring of sites they find objectional will be taken over by people that they cannot control.

I find it a little Ironic that they are feeling the internet "censorship" bite when they are cooperating with CHINA.

DCH

 

[Zedicus]

Like or Hate google, the info is Correct.

However, Net Neutrality is a minor issue (if the COPE act gets shot down), Pass or not Little will change, what it does is Prevents ISP's from deciding what their Customer's are "Allowed" to access, effectively "Censoring the Internet", but over Petty bandwidth & Greed Driven (in a way similar for getting charged 4 times for 1 phone call) disputes rather than political motives (which I'm certain will appear eventually).

The Big issue however is the C.O.P.E Act (which has already passed in the house), it will turn the Internet into a Censored Nightmarish version of the Newsgroup system...

(EG: to be able to Access THR you will have to be on an ISP that has an agreement with the main line company that THR is routed through, otherwise no THR access.)

if both are shot down things should stay the same as they are, but we may get some temporary interruption's due to Petty Squabbling.

If the Net Neutrality Passes the Internet Billing/Censorship wont get any worse than it is.

If the COPE act Passes, Goodbye Internet & Hello Newsgroup like Nightmare....

I'd like to Shoot the Idiot who decided to get Politicians involved in Internet Matters, Especially Highly Technical ones that the Slimeballs have no clue about.:banghead:

 

[dch1978]

Zed,

So, Congress thinks that because they can order hearings on baseball, they now need to make sure that some "equality" needs to be brought to the internet?

Is it fair to assume that this is being pushed by corporates that have a stake in the industry? And that someone will make money if the deal goes through?

As far as I am concerned this thing we call internet has become overly corporate. In the way that every major company is online and some you can only access this way. My first memories of the internet did not contain this crap, although it was much more difficult to use or navigate, being that search engines had not become mainstream like G, or others. This is not that long ago.

It has lost some of its appeal. Times change and we move on.

I hope places like this are never restricted because of stupid line sharing contracts.

Edit,

What problems will this create for Voice over IP?
DCH

 

[grampster]

Wait, we need government control of the internet. It's for the children.

 

[Zak Smith]

It's a big-government plan to control private resources.

 

[Zedicus]

It's the Mega Internet Conglomerates that are Pushing it they are the Main Line (AKA Big Pipe) Owners, they are wanting to set up a System that would be like the Newsgroup System and the Old US Cell Phone System.

IE: Under such a system If you want total Internet Access (actually not total, but the least censored) you can expect to fork out in the area of $200+ a month for the equivalent of a Basic 1.5Mb/s DSL Internet Connection.

If you don't know what I mean by Newsgroup System and Old US Cell Phone System here is a breakdown of each.

Old Cell phone System
With the old (original) Cell phone system If you made a Call both you and the recipient would be charged (at a obscene rate) for the call, If you wanted to call someone who was on a different network, and that network did not have a agreement with yours, you couldn't call them, and if they did have an agreement your network would have to pay the other at an agreed additional rate (which would be passed onto you) to allow the call through.

=======================================================================

Newsgroup System
Newsgroups are a lot like the Original BBS system, but to access each individual group your newsgroup Provider has to have an agreement with each newsgroup network for varying rates that your Provider pays each before anyone is allowed access, this bill is passed onto the user, if the network a certain group you want access to is not on your provider you can request it (max of a 30% chance of that happening, and if it expect a rate increase) and if you can't get it that way you have to get an additional provider to gain access, the Average Rates for newsgroups are around $50 a month for a basic setup, but you are also extremely limited on bandwidth and speed (Plain Text only Level), for higher bandwidth packages such as the kind you would use to watch say 10 google video clips a day you wold be looking at around $150-$200 a month.

===================================================================

Additionally the COPE act has Provisions (Buried Deep) for a "Possible" requirement for a "Internet User Licensing System".

If this BS Passes expect the current Internet we have come to know to cease to exist, also expect a underground Internet to appear in short order, which will most likely be criminalized in one way or another by order of the Conglomerates who have various Politicians & Bureaucrats in their pockets.

Those pushing for this are trying to argue several ponts all of which sound like something right out of "Atlas Shrugged", and here two are with my own comments in brackets.

• Everyone Must get an Equil share of speed and acessibility.
  (Since when was anyone not getting equil acessibility? Oh I get it, you mean limit ourselves down to Comunist China's levels.... )
• It will be Faster and much more Efficiant which every user will have an Equil share of.
  (With the Massive Decrease in users that this would cause, that would be impossable not to happen... :banghead: )

that's just the 2 most popular ones.

If you have read the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand you will probably be experiencing a weired Deja-Vu Sensation at reading those...

the worst part about this is it is being decided on by people who haven't the slightest idea what anything about it means or will do.

 

[Owen]

Hello, packet radio!

Packet radio is an alternate file transfer protocol used by HAM Radio guys. IF this Net non_neutrality stuff gets very far, HAM gear may start getting very inexpensive.

 

[Zak Smith]

I think even if it were implemented, technological solutions would exist to circumvent its intent.

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore.

As long as my ISP will route some packets for me, I can get to anywhere with tunneling.

 

[sm]

owen,
great reminder!

I like the GaltNet idea too...

Paging John Galt...page for John Galt...

 

[C. Rabbit]

We're asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom.

Funny they say that when they're asking for more laws and regulations on the internet.

CR

 

[st_albert]

Owen: Doesn't packet radio need an ISP interface to the backbone at some point? That's where they'll get you. (I'm asking, not telling. I'm a bit ignorant of packet radio.)

Is it fair to assume that this is being pushed by corporates that have a stake in the industry? And that someone will make money if the deal goes through?

Are bears Catholic? Does the Pope defecate in the woods? LOL.

Albert

 

[dch1978]

I seriously doubt that all bears are Catholic.

But it does depend on which Pope we are talking about. I am sure that at one point in history this probably did happen, as for now I am not quite so sure that the Pope would venture very far from "modern" facilities.

But seriously,

What is this packet radio? Over what medium does it work?
Is it worth investment?

I also see a possibility of an underground I-net. I believe there was talk of this some time ago. But I think that was called I-2 and was basically a super highspeed where all would be fiber optic and such.

yes i know were are getting off topic.

DCH

 

[Zak Smith]

Internet2 is a project to provide ultra-high speed links between research and academic institutions.

http://www.internet2.edu/

Internet2 and Level 3 Communications, Inc. will develop and deploy a new nationwide network and new services to enhance and support the advanced needs of the academic and research community. This new network initially will offer Internet2 members 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) of capacity, more than 10 times that of the current Internet2 backbone network, and will be designed to easily scale to add capacity as Internet2 members’ requirements evolve over time. Based on input and feedback from the research and education community, including experience gained with the Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) project, the network will be designed to support a full range of production IP services as well as new on-demand, dedicated optical wavelength services to support the most demanding network applications and experimentation.

What people have to understand is that the "internet" is just a mass of links between smaller networks, which all use the TCP/IP as the basic "language" of communication. As long as people can contract "private" ISDN, T1, ATM, OCx, etc links, they can link networks together.

 

[Owen]

Yeah, you need to have some sort of ISP to get to the net.

However, with packet radio, your ISP can be a few towns away. If the local ISP doesn't let you get to gun sites, then you may be able to trde packets with someone a few towns away. Speeds are currently about the same as dialup.

You have now fully exhausted my knowledge of this topic.

Just remember, for every roadblock a politician can build, hackers are going to find an innumberable number of paths around it.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

The Internet should remain unregulated in my opinion. I don't see any evil so great that it needs to have government lay its heavy hand on it. The great thing about the Internet is that it was deliberately designed to function with a big chunk of nodes destroyed. This makes it very difficult to regulate and very amenable to free speech.

 

[Zedicus]

Another alternative would be a Huge Network of WIFI hubs, or possibly even just bouncing low power encrypted digital signals off sattelites...

 

[Soybomb]

I run a small ISP and I'm torn. The telco's do control the internet and I certainly don't put it past them to do nasty things like block voip and iptv to make up for bad business planning on their part and try to charge content providers on both ends of the both to tap into the cash. The libertarian in me wants to say "free market free market free market" but the network nerd in me isn't sure if there is enough of a free market as it were with just 7 or 8 tier one isp's and many broadband users having only 1 possible provider of broadband.

 

[sevesteen]

This is only slightly about content, it is more about bypassing competition. Consumers will pick based on cost and speed--However if Yahoo is artificially slowed while Google runs at full speed (or vice-versa) most people will just think Yahoo sucks. In this case, Yahoo will most likly pay the extortion--In other words, pay a second time for the bandwidth you've already paid for.

It won't surprise me much if non-PC sites have to pay more, but in reality it's going to be the big companies with the most to lose that pony up.

 

[Soybomb]

This is only slightly about content, it is more about bypassing competition. Consumers will pick based on cost and speed--However if Yahoo is artificially slowed while Google runs at full speed (or vice-versa) most people will just think Yahoo sucks. In this case, Yahoo will most likly pay the extortion--In other words, pay a second time for the bandwidth you've already paid for.

Don't forget to think in new tech areas too. Lets say you're time warner and you're worried about people starting to watch this iptv thing to get shows they want, you have ATDN (aka: aol who time warner is the parent company of), one of the 8-10 or so big ISPs that make the backbones of the internet start filtering out IPTV traffic across the network.

If you're ATT, Verizon, NTT, Qwest, or Sprint (more of the 8-10 big dogs) and part of your overall company business plan has been expensive long distance and all of a sudden VOIP is growning in popularity with people like Vonage eating your dinner, you simply drop the voip traffic on your circuits. My ISP resells sprint. If sprint stops carrying voip on their network, many ISPs would quit carrying voip no matter if they wanted to or not. If the telephone industries wanted to, they could squash voip since they are the backbone providers for many isps.

 

[Gunpacker]

LOL

What a poiniant plea from the company that is allowing the government of China to censor EVERYTHING allowed on the net in that country. Google will be their enabler.

 

[rwc]

This is about two things:
1. Who decides what you do on the internet, and
2. how much money the RBOCs can leverage out of the rest of the industry (and you).

It matters to everyone.

 

[Zedicus]

It matters to everyone.

all to true.

If COPE Passes the big dogs per say get a staked deck in their favor, and the end user gets reamed.
and it would be highly possible for it to turn into politically motivated censorship.

the COPE act would in simple terms Centralize and Unbalance the net.

If Net Neutrality passes the Internet will remain Decentralized, and considerably more Balanced than with the COPE act.

if neither pass things will probably stay the same as they are (except for tech advances).

in many ways it's like Bush V Kerry

 

[Zen21Tao]

To make this thread gun related:

Whether you support this bill or not the important thing is that it be discussed as it involves the first amenment.

Liberals are blatant hypocrits in the way they wrap themselves in the First Amendment but, not only fail to defend the Second Amendment, actually work hard to undermine it. We gun owners, on the other hand, should show them what integrity is. We shoulkd show then that if you believe in the freedoms of the constitution you should work to defend them all by allowing resonable discourse of First Amendment issues too.

 

[rwc]

If you really want to wade into the "deep end of the pool" follow the links below. Bruce isn't always my cup of tea, but he's often right. Warning - this will raise your blood pressure...

Content based filtering by the RBOCs is the first step down a very steep slope that is not in any way good for the mission of this forum.

rwc
---
Teletruth News Alert: June 20, 2006
Contact: [email protected]

"200 Billion Broadband Scandal" is NOW a FREE download for
ONE WEEK ONLY ---Starting TUESDAY, June 20th, 2006

Free download page: (more about the issues, Teletruth)
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The Senate Should Stop and Investigate Verizon, AT&T, BellSouth and Qwest's
Broadband Deployments and Internet Control -- FOLLOW ALL THE MONEY TRAILS.

Read the FREE ebook, then please take action.

Last week the House of Representatives caved in and gave the phone companies
new financial concessions, including national franchises, and took away more
of your rights for an open, competitive, broadband and Internet. This
includes eliminating/ignoring Net Neutrality.

And this Thursday, the Senate is about to do the same bad vote.

Why should there be an investigation? In many states, you paid (and are
still paying) for a fiber optic network service you never received and it cost you thousands of
dollars - and now Congress wants to give the companies who didn't deliver
--- AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest--- more concessions and more of your
money. Worse, America is 16th in the world in broadband because these
companies didn't deliver --- and may never deliver. Plus, their proposed new
services, FiOS and Lightspeed are crippled networks that can't compete
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Worse, the Steven's bill has massive increases to the out of control
Universal Service Slush Fund --- More taxes on your already overtaxed phone bills,
wireless broadband and VOIP bills..

And Net Neutrality? When the companies control the 'pipes' they control
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http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Ask_this.view
<http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Ask_this.view&askthisid=186>&askthisid=186

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http://www.newnetworks.com/fioslightspeed.htm

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(more about the issues, Teletruth)

http://www.newnetworks.com/scandals.htm

LINK TO THE SENATE:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Two page synopsis http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

Teletruth is an independent, nationwide customer alliance and was a member
of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, 2003-2004.


Bruce Kushnick, Teletruth
Author $200 Billion Broadband Scandal
[email protected]

Tom Allibone, Teletruth Director of Audits
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