Net Neutrality

[Razola]

Alright, kids. Put down your beer bongs and get off myspace. The intertron is under siege.

There's currently a battle in Congress about "Net Neutrality". In simple terms: the right for internet providers to limit or outright block your access to specific parts of the internet. For example, AOL could block you from seeing TPM or at least made it load very very slowly. On the other hand some bigwig forum bristling with ads could pay AOL so they get the speedy load times. TPM would have to pay AOL or piss off.

That's not a likely scenario, but you might be in a situation where you have to use Yahoo because Google didn't pay Verizon enough money. Or maybe your precious myspace is loading like crap because some other site is paying more.

The bottom line is: America currently lacks the competition in ISPs for Net Neutrality to stop existing. If we had a more diverse market, this wouldn't be a huge deal, as a large number of competitors would mean constant battles over whom offers the most acces until we're back at Net Neutrality again. But there are many areas in the US where you either go with company A or it's back to dial-up.

Scary thing is, the companies are winning. The House voted down a bill to protect Net Neutrality.

Uh-oh.

[phaedrus]

Ruh-roh is right. this issue is ridiculous.

the internet was created by the people and for the people, and no bunch of addled bureacrats should be able to change it.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

^ for reference

[Crazy Elf Boy]

Yeh guys you tell them, Fight the powers man. :smilie:

[Magmar]

Oh screw that. I hate how this freakin government tries to control EVERYTHING.

[Chris]

Oh screw that. I hate how this freakin government tries to control EVERYTHING.

This isn't about the US Government, it's about US ISPs wanting to make even more gigantic profit margins than they do at the moment. "Save The Internet" and related web sites are going to do little to help, because if eBay, Amazon and Google can't convince Congress to keep "net neutrality", a few hundred thousand people on a web site aren't going to manage it.

If this actually happens, major problems are going to occur.

[RedStarWarrior]

My ISP wouldn't do something like that as there are several other broadband choices available to me. I agree that many people could suffer.

PS - Fuck myspace!

[Katie]

I wonder how many sites are going to say fuck it and just die out.
on the bright side, at least these isp guys will be able to support their families with food and clothes and a home and private plane ...wait.

[Dark Dragonite]

yay, what a crappy, crappy thing is happening...This is just one of many reasons I wish there were better ways of doing things here in America...Well, I have Bellsouth dsl type service, so...seeing as bellsouth is huge in the south...maybe they won't get too crappy... :afro:

[Heald]

Hah. Our Government doesn't even know what the Internet is and hopefully it'll stay that way. Whenever the Government comes across any new technology, it's scary and therefore it should be handled by huge market-domineering firms, since they always do what's best for the consumer.

Right?

Riiiiiiiight?

[Crazy Elf Boy]

I think that is all very crap anyway stupid ISP people

[-/Deathborn/-]

So my country's own government is trying to take over the Internet, which was originally made by the people, for the people...wait a second...

No wonder the French hate us.

[Heald]

France don't have a leg to stand on if they want to hate America for infringing on civil rights. They've effectively banned freedom of religion and are trying to wipe out foreign languages. I think the real reason France hates the US is for invading Iraq and finding documents linking French government officials with the Iraqi government in shady deals. OH SNAP.

Oh, and for lording it over them for rescuing their surrender-monkey asses in both World Wars (along with the British and Canadians, obviously )

[Chris]

[... the Internet] was originally made by the people, for the people

No it wasn't. It stems from ARPANET, which was a US military network built in the 1960s.

[phaedrus]

well, it may stem from ARPANET, but it really came together with the work of open-sourcing, such as Apache. thus, by the people.

[Dark Dragonite]

And here this whole time, I thought Bill Gates came up with it by himself, for the money. :afro:

[Razola]

If this does go down, I can only hope it brings forth the Google ISP.

[Sceptile_Master]

That's a bunch of crap and it should never be allowed to pass. I don't see why it is fair at all. Sometime I feel really glad that I live in the UK.

[Chris]

well, it may stem from ARPANET, but it really came together with the work of open-sourcing, such as Apache. thus, by the people.

It may have developed better thanks to open-source software, but it certainly wasn't made "for the people", which is the statement I disagreed with.

That's a bunch of crap and it should never be allowed to pass. I don't see why it is fair at all. Sometime I feel really glad that I live in the UK.

This is going to affect you too. This web site, for example, is hosted within the US.

[Heald]

^ - I don't think the hosts have anything to do with it. It's the ISPs. The example used I think was, lets say Yahoo pays BTInternet for bandwidth priority over Google, then if your ISP is BTInternet, Yahoo will load faster than Google I guess.

[Dark Dragonite]

at the very least
protect you rights
sign the petition
www.savetheinternet.com


Not that it will convince the government to stop it's agenda...

[Roy Karrde]

Well for one DD I wanna know what Right we have to protect through this? The use of the Internet is a privlage not a right, if it was a right then Internet would be free for everyone and we wouldn't have to pay for the use of the service. With that being said, I'm saddened to say that those websites never work, back in the day when the FCC was and still is screwing up. I had a Stop the FCC website in my sig, the website was also given alot of time on the radio over here in Dallas, which is the third largest radio market in the U.S. In the end it didn't matter. Those websites never matter, I wish they did, but they just dont.

[Dark Dragonite]

We PAY for the service of connecting to the internet...what we DO, and websites we see, as long as they are legal, is OUR business. I don't pay to get to ebay and google faster than yahoo, or amazon, I pay to be able to go to those sites.
How do they have the right/priviledge to dictate what sites we can go on, and how fast they load?

I believe that is the point.

If this is what happens, I'll just take my laptop to Starbucks, screw paying when I can link up to wi-fi for free.(I enjoy the coffee anyways)

I do agree it is a priviledge we get the chance to have internet capability, as I think no offense to anyone, the middle-eastern women who don't want their pictures taken for their license should be refused a license, it is a priviledge, not a right to drive.

[Alucard]

Online petitions do jack shit. As demonstrated by all those "Sign this to save [insert cancelled cartoon name]!".

I'm not really all that worried. If something does go tits up, there'll be somebody somewhere starting something to free up everything for everybody.

because if eBay, Amazon and Google can't convince Congress to keep "net neutrality"

It'd be kinda amusing if the porn industry saved all our asses.

[Dark Dragonite]

Well, for my fellow Americans, I can tell you right now, it does email your local and state officials, I got an email reply that my message was received.

[D!]

You guys didn't expect the US to let us enjoy something easily for this long, did you? I feel like we're the forest dwellers, and the US is the construction company flattening us down. Oh, fun in the sun.

To make even slight changes to the decision of the US, we'd have to get off of our computer chairs and into some pants, for one thing. Let's just pray that ISPs drop the cost of Internet Connections, and boost the speed.

Let's rely on the smarter people to fix things, shall we? Things tend to fold out in the end. Look at the wars, there's no more going on now.. *..cough..*

[Chris]

^ - I don't think the hosts have anything to do with it. It's the ISPs.

All data has to pass between at least 2 ISPs, regardless of their size.

[homeofmew]

AOL sucks period.

[Dark Dragonite]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006...pcworld/126280

DENIED!!
Barely, but Net Neutrality has failed to make it...