What is Digg?122 Comments
- Skitzzo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+94I think we're going to quickly be reaching a point where the laws of our nation are forced to catch up to the technology. Our copyright laws are outdated and inadequate for the online world. We've got a teacher facing some serious jail time for nothing more than having spy-ware on her computer, and now we've got lawmakers trying to limit the flow of information across the greatest invention of our time. I don't care if Al Gore did invent the damn thing, it and the information on it should remain free of charge and available to all!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+53you're a moron, net neutrality is a good thing, it's to keep the telcos offering unbiased internet access, did you even read the article?
- pintomp3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+42either some of you guys work for telecoms, are you don't understand the reason net neutrality is important. this is one of the increasingly rare cases where legislation is a good thing. one of the reasons the internet has succeeded is because it is data/traffic agnostic. the telecoms want to double dip on fees and set up tiers so they can artificially create premium services by making non-premium ones bad. believe it or not, some laws are good. net neutrality is pro-consumer.
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38This law is great news. Write your MD legislators and thank them for acting in your best interests.
Ever wonder what the net would look like if the Telcos have their way, and crush neutrality as a practice?
Take a look at the offerings on your mobile phone. $.15 a message, $2 a ringtone, and your front page only links to the news/weather/tickets providers that pay the telco off. *Thats* what a non-neutral telco-driven internet looks like. - baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35i am pro-net neutrality, i don't want huge telcos (AT&T) and other huge corporate GreedMonsters having absolute control over the internet, (absolute control corrupts absolutly)...
the internet should be impartial like tap water, inexpensive and available to everyone... - petercooper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30Why's it sickening when net neturality is a GOOD thing?
(Whoa, after reading a lot of the other replies it seems there are people who actually think it's bad. My bad.) - pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32This whole "Please digg" and "Diggers speak up!" persuasion technique is really dumb. How about stating the facts:
"Net Neutrality Law Introduced in Maryland" - thelab101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29Why would you not support net neutrality?
So I guess the citizens of (some third world country, trying to be p.c. here) would technically have an advantage over the citizens of the US, if the telcos have their way.
For instance, any citizen regardless of income could access the internet without restriction and cross reference what ever they wanted, they could double check wikipedia articles, they could shop where they wanted. But here in the US, a low income house would be directed to Verizon tunes, or Verizonipedia. because Verizon blocked certain sites from their 'tier' whatever the ***** that means.
And don't data packets on the internet get handled evenly? Doesn't google set up huge systems of servers and whatnot, don't they offer free services like gmail, etc. etc... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -18/+43all these reasons about the internet being free... they're all reasons to support net neutrality legislation... net neutrality is so the telcos CAN'T block web sites that don't dish out money to them.
also, whoever titled this article is a dick... how about "Net Neutrality Law Introduced in Maryland" ... seriously, aside from YOUR own (gay) bragging rights about how many diggs you got, wtf is the point of "Please Digg: Diggers Speak Up!" ... seriously, i'm sure you confused half the digg population with this... let maryland pass the law, it's a good thing... and digg users, unless they live in maryland, CANNOT affect what happens to the law. Skitzzo, you're a ***** jackass. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22the problem being fixed? it's so that on your 5mbit connection, telcos won't be able to make digg transfer at 1kbit ... without these laws in place your isp tells you where on the internet you can and cannot go by shaping their internet traffic to only allow sites that dish out money to them. THAT'S the potential problem being addressed here *****. you won't be complaining about government regulation when 90% of the internet transfers at 0.01% of your bandwidth.
- i4mt3hwin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Yawn, for the retards who come on and say net neutrality is bad you should probably know that it is the law that makes the internet free.
Net neutrality = good thing. - SoundJudgment, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Isn't it amazing how so many people fall for those same tricks time and time again?? AT&T obviously has their own Digg.com account to better spread such anti-sentiment rumors and rhetoric. Why spend millions on negative-marketing Ad campaigns, when they can come here and do it all for free? ;)
- rudy23, on 10/12/2007, -12/+23Buried for starting title with "Please Digg"
- Vachel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@skitzzo
Did you read the article?
"Taylor's proposal, which would naturally apply only to broadband subscribers in his home state, stipulates that any provider who offers such services to the public "shall not provide or sell to internet content, application, or service providers, including any affiliate of a broadband company, any service that provides, degrades, or gives priority to any packet sources over that company's broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination." - ArchetypeRyan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Since the title seems to be confusing people, try discovering the meaning of net neutrality at Wikipedia and then decide for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10tiered and pay-by-use are completely different things. pay-by-use, you pay by bandwidth used. however, you use digg, that's a given, but on a tiered setup you wouldn't be able to use digg, well, not with your complete bandwidth but with a tiny fraction of it, while your isp's digg clone will transfer great. so it's either .5kbit a second for digg or 3mbit a second for the isp's digg clone. wow, that sucks, you won't be using digg on a tiered setup. if isps gave the choice of options 1 2 and 3 then by all means, that would be great... but there's nothing preventing them from using just a tiered setup, here comes net neutrality. net neutrality doesn't say the isp CAN'T offer multiple services, one being tiered. it says that they can't have just a tiered system. they have to offer a service that does not give bias to their own, or companies that pay them, packets.
- MrUnknown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Net Neutrality bills are meant to protect your rights to access and use any service on the internet without discrimination by your ISP. For example, lets say your cable company has a VoIP phone service available to their customers. Skype, Vonage and many many other free and paid for services on the internet are in their direct competition. It is not in the business' best interest to allow access to any of these services. Without Net Neutrality laws, your ISP is free to either make these services so unreliable that you can not use them. Call and complain and they can tell you that their VoIP service is the only one supported by their internet connection.
Some people have a hard time figuring out how this could actually affect a website or their access to them. Consider applying it to things in real life. Imagine a taxi cab charging you double fare to be driven to a location within 10 blocks of a competitor. Imagine your phone company charging you long distance rates to call family members who are in your local calling area because you call them a lot. Politically motivated? What if SomeMajorTelco is trying to have a law passed in their favor and calls to people who oppose it just so happen to not be reachable using their network. - xhadow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The way this was worded makes me think one of the telecos is a digger trying to drum up support to kill net neutrality and place the public on their side by feeding them mis-information. Last I checked net neutrality was a good thing for the public and bad for telecos.
- SoundJudgment, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This reminds me of the old joke where the 'commentator' stands on the street-corner with his microphone and protest banner... and asks women who pass by to 'Speak out against the 'evils' of Women-Suffrage!' lol.
- justgeorge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9FOR ***** SAKE BURY THIS MORONIC RUBBISH..
They guy who submitted this is winding us all up. - bouche, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6instant lame for "Please Digg" title
- aserer511, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6:tup: to Maryland. I hope other states follow suit.
- goorioles747, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I actually live in montgomery county, Maryland (The county that Herman Tayor represents) and this is great and directly applies to me.
- renzien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The net is neutral now.
You're a ***** idiot. - djtansey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I just wrote Delegate Taylor to show my support. And I wrote my state senator, Jamie Raskin, to say I think he should support it.
One thing I do like about federal systems is that the states can provide leadership, even when the federal government is unwilling. - pogfreak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6You can be in favor of the concept net neutrality and be against a specific, or any, piece of legislation for it. We've had net neutrality for decades without laws enforcing it: why the sudden rush to pass laws? Does a net neutrality law at he state level even make sense? How is it going to be enforced? At the very least we should critically analyze these bills on a case by case basis, rather than stirring up this emotional furor for anything with the words "net neutrality" in it. "Intentions alone does not a good law make".
- gmarks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wait, I misunderstood net neutrality. YES!!!!!!! Why did this guy tell everyone to speak up?
- 2digme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The Net Neutrality concept will cause the internet to cost more for all of us. Since the ISPs have to pay to increase bandwidth for those who use it the most, the "neutrality" law will cause them to raise prices for us all. The decision is basically to let those who use bandwidth hungry applications pay more than those who use less bandwidth hungry applications --- OR ---- let everyone share the cost. Those are the only two options. So if I called it "option 1" and "option 2" instead of something else, which would you choose?
- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MrPig makes a good point.
Our Constitution says We The People. NOT "We the chairmen of AT&T", NOT "We the rockefellers", NOT "We the bankers that own and operate the privately owned and privately operated federal reserve".
When We The People do NOT WANT something and do NOT WANT _OUR_ internet censored or shut-down and the so-called representatives just go ahead and do it any way then it's time to consider the exercise of the Second Amendment.
Net Neutrality is a good thing. What's bad is when so-called Net Neutrality legislation is passed when it does NOT enforce Net Neutrality or has bad things attached to it. Many of these bills or excuses for these bills are pure double-speak. Take the "patriot" act for example, which is anything but patriotic. And this "war on terror" to "defend our freedom" which is an open assault on our Bill of Rights. I don't mean to digress here, it's just an example. - RpgActioN, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Because somebody doesn't agree with you, they are a moron? Please, don't be so rash.
There are legitimate arguments against net neutrality. Legislation like this only violates the ideal of a free market economy that we try to live up to. It is stemmed off the absurd idea that the larger a company gets, the more evil it is.
You don't think people should have a right to sell their product the way they want to sell it? As much as I would hate the Internet to be subject to rampant censorship, I think it is equally if not more so wrong to prevent somebody from operating his business the way he wants to operate it. Competition is the cornerstone of capitalism, and will inevitably keep the ISPs in check. There's no need for this kind of legislation. - Chakz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Everybody's still confused about Net Neutrality, its been used in both negative and positive statements and has been spun around more than paris hilton.
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Watch telecom companys flee Maryland. This guy is really stupid. Net neutrality, especially the way he defines it, is a bad solution in search of a problem.
- maccam94, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ok, pogfreak is actually wrong. Net Neutrality was formerly enforced by the common carriers regulations, until the FCC oddly reclassified broadband service as an information service rather than a communications service a little while ago. Now everybody's worried about the telco's abusing their new power.
- renzien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3are you retarded? seriously.
- ksponge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pseudorious, I'm not even sure what your point is. Are you saying net neutrality will kill these companies and the product that they offer? Ofcourse they don't want to kill themselves. They attempt to maximize their profits using all available avenues. That is why they are seeking it. The only point your comment could indicate is that they will die if net neutrality is introduced. Otherwise, you have absolutely no point. And if you think that would happen, then there is no viable reason to debate you anyways as your view is shallow and realistically worthless.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2actually, broadband isps have near monopolies. the amount of capital required to start a broadband provider from scratch is absurd. most cable and phone companies won't let you use their lines to transfer your own service so that's an absurd amount of money towards building entirely new infrastructures. from this, consider that in most areas there are 1 or 2 service providers. then consider what happens if both of those providers start shaping traffic giving priority only to their own services. who do you switch to?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Kordmp, there are laws against blocking competitors, but there are NO laws against shaping network traffic so that your competitors website or service transfer at 1kbit. there are NO laws against shaping traffic so that bittorrent traffic transfers slower than dial-up (i.e. WoW updates). net neutrality isn't about isps blocking sites, as you state there are laws against that, it's about giving priority to certain packets (packets from their service) while degrading traffic from other services, which there are no laws against.
- realwx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I contacted Mikulski about a bill going around in Congress (not Maryland itself; I think it's unrelated) and got this a few weeks ago:
Thank you for contacting me in support of network neutrality and free and open access to the Internet. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
I understand your concern that the Internet should not favor certain content or services over others. I believe that the Internet is not only an important tool, but a vital resource. It has allowed millions of Americans to communicate instantly with people around the world. It has put access to libraries of information at everyone's fingertips. The use of the Internet continues to grow, and the ways we use it continue to expand. Your views on network neutrality will be very helpful to me as Congress considers this issue.
Thanks again for getting in touch with me. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you again in the future.
Sincerely,
Barbara A. Mikulski
Now it looks like I'll be contacting Howard County senators and convince them to vote against the bill. - keyboardduder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Buried because A LAW WASNT INTRODUCED as the article says, A BILL WAS OFFERED was more accurate. Attention problem anyone?
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Read this study on Net Neutrality
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v19/19HarvJLTech001.pdf - ghoti06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agreed with geekee and 2digme. Maryland would be crazy to pass this, but the fight is moving to the states now, and we'll see more of this. Michigan already (wisely) turned down a similar bill last year, but I'm not so sure about Maryland.
Net neutrality isn't even close to being the biggest issue actually facing the US Internet -- the real issue is what happens when YouTube clones catch on along with HD video -- terabytes, petabytes and exabytes of data. We already know our current broadband situation sucks, but it could suck to the point of grinding to a HALT in the next few years. The only answer is more pipes, the sooner the better. Fiber to the home is expensive, but that hasn't stopped the "evil telcos" from spending billions so far to do that.
Problem is, bills like this one in Maryland limit how companies can earn a return investment on all that fiber. What happens if enough states or the federal government pass a strict net neutrality bill? Goodbye investment! And forget HD over broadband, you'll be lucky if BitTorrent works.
And then, net neutrality itself might be the end of the internet. Now THAT'S irony. - audioquester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There are certain industries in which natural monopolies arise; when such is the case these monopolies must be regulated in order that the monopoly price is lowered to what the competitive price would be and the quantity of output is increased to what the competitive output would be. When you add to this that the natural monopolies are also content providers, then you have the unusual situation where not only does the price and quantity of bandwidth need to be regulated, but the monopolies cannot be allowed to prioritize access to media. This will create a huge inefficency, increase the digital divide, and slow or even bring to a halt the innovation on the tubes.
I'm going to assume the poster misunderstood the article, or doesn't understand economics. The government shoud not interfere in FREE markets. When you have monopoly, the government exists to break it up, or regulate it. If it is a natural monopoly, the monopoly must be regulated, or the government must become the monopoly. This is ECON 101 people. The most conservative economists in the world would not argue. It was the Economists at the University of Chicago who originally broke up AT and T.
Net Neutrality is GOOD. You don't wait for monopoly outcomes, you prevent them. - ghoti06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5pogfreak is right on target. This law is unnecessary AT BEST.
Maybe a lot of you didn't know it, but there's a little thing called "antitrust law" which already protects against anti-competitive behavior in the marketplace -- that would guarantee Verizon cannot block you from visiting Google or Amazon or Digg, but I still can't see why they would ever think it a good idea to try. - mysticalone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Buried as lame since it's implying me to ask Maryland to stop a good thing. You'd have to be a mentally challenged vegetable to NOT want neutrality.
- romman00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The title implies that this is a bad thing...I actually thought it was until I started reading the comments. Buried for crappy title.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Net neutrality is the divisive idea that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize any content or services that ride on their pipes. "
How can this be divisive? How many of those who have dugg this up have written etc to voice their concerns? I bet not many. Yet, they were told to 'digg up' the post. Which they did.
One can always rely on blind sheep - they always do what they are ordered. - miquonranger031, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Marked as spam. Since I live in Philly, Comcast has paired with other telcos and is airing anti-net neutrality commercials that only say something like "cut past the mumbo jumbo. Net neutrality is bad for consumers," then ends. Sounded like the Sinpsons episode where Lindsey Naegle has someone pretend to be Marge and say that her own campaign hurts families. Just another example of mass brainwashing.
- Sethwm2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No ***** WAY!! I think that they only was this is going to go away is if the cable companies profits start dropping like flies and people are un-subscribing. The No one is going to pay a large sum of money to access something that is free and public content. This is total bull *****...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1traffic shaping does NOT fall under anti-trust laws, THAT'S the issue and why net-neutrality is being proposed. the isps WON'T be forced into a pay-per-bit scheme either... the more you write, the more you sound like you work for a telco and are spouting the same old illogical rhetoric that they continually keep trying to feed everyone. so, you've crunched the numbers? let's see the numbers...
- DavidGX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Considering the importance of this we need to spread the word as much as possible. I'd excuse the "please digg" in the title, just this once.. but that's me.
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