What is Digg?55 Comments
- zitterbewegung, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29Please keep net neutrality. It helps everyone and only allows the teleco's to charge more. When the net becomes non neutral then that might be the point where wifi networks outside of the telco's reach will start to come of age.
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19If you don't support Network Neutrality, you either don't understand the issue or you're an astroturfing sockpuppet working for the telcos. If the former, get informed. If the latter, get bent.
- Darmichar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13The problem is that the casual net user doesn't understand the ramifications associated with losing Net Neutrality. All they know is, 'I pay my $35 a month, and I click and the net is there'.
Should any law get passed that goes against Net Neutrality, and the everyday user can't access their favorite site or they have to pay to access it, there will be a backlash the likes of which The Senate and Congress have never seen. - amish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13He is completely right. If this thing is not solved asap the internet access in the US will be completely messed up.
- 16x9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11> Foo667 wrote: "The US Internet network speeds are hundreds of times slower than those elsewhere ... and there's little noise over the issue."
That's because as a whole, we in the U.S. have a stronger "business can do no wrong" mentality than you'll find almost anywhere in the world.
== If the telcos don't provide us with better or faster service for our
== dollar then that's just the way it is. It's their business and they can
== do what they want.
== If the telcos want to modify the parts of the internet they own to
== promote services where they get a cut while downgrading services
== where they don't, then that's okay because they have a right to do
== whatever they wish.
Look, I'm far from anti-business. I'm a small business person myself. (I'm two feet tall [oldest "small business" joke in existence]). But just like the laws we have for people such as "no jaywalking" all the way up through to "no killing other people," I have no qualms with regulations and laws that apply to business to limit the bad things they might do that can affect all of us. And as far as I'm concerned, this little stunt on the part of some of the telcos, which sadly seems to be supported by many of our Toadying Congress Critters, falls well into the "bad things they might do that can affect all of us" category. - Udon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Couple of months ago people here said this kind of scenario would happen if UN got control of the internet and that it was best to let US control the internet as it was completely safe in US hands. Hmm...
- LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Forget the US. This stuff is going to have consequences world wide. Businesses not being able to do business with other companies just because the TelCos don't have a vested interest? This is going to have serious ramifications.
- netnifty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Don't know what it's like the rest of Europe, but here in Britain we have BT who own most of the phone lines in the country (ADSL is the most used common domestic connection), so most users end up paying an ISP which uses BT's lines to send and receive data from them, so for example I've got a choice between tens or even hundreds of ISPs for my connection, even though there is only one physical connection to my house.
As I understand it in the US, you usually have a choice of maybe one or two ISPs (usually ADSL provided by your local phone company, or cable provided by your local cable TV company), and these ISPs supply their own lines rather than paying the phone company to carry their data, effectively meaning if the two companies were both to decide to start throttling data from Google etc you cannot change your ISP to another easily without moving or paying for a prohibitively expensive connection to be installed.
This is very different to the situation most ADSL users in the UK would face in the same situation; as if my ISP (Eclipse) decided to start throttling Google because they didnt pay up, I would only have to cancel my Eclipse account and sign up with another ISP, hardly convenient, but still far more convenient than moving house! - Jeremy82465, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12When government regulates the internet its fascism, when corperations do its business as usual. That is not how it should be and I never want to live in a world where that is allowed.
- deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"free beer and socialism"?
So you don't think sites like Ebay or YouTube are already paying for the bandwidth they use?
Don't you just hate it what "gawd" damn socialists like YouTube pays $1 Million per month.
http://www.forbes.com/home/intelligentinfrastructure/2006/04/27/video-youtube-myspace_cx_df_0428video.html - gregmo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Just to clarify for those like me who didnt know the name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee - BenvolioZF, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yes, of course net neutrality is greatly important, but petitions and emails won't help. Unless we have more bribe money than the telecommunications companies, the Internet we know and love is doomed.
- ArcticCelt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7They should have taken a page from the book of the other camp and called the thing "The American Patriotic Internet Freedom Act". Then the public, like lambs, would have said that this is probably a good thing.
After that, at the last minute, they could have sneaked in some amendment that effectively renders the patent system, copyright laws and the DMCA Null and void. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"Bandwidth guzzling sites like eBay, Google, etc." already pay for their bandwidth! There is ALREADY double-dipping going on - I pay for both an upstream and a downstream rate from my ISP. When I request data from Google or any other site it should not cost that site a damn thing because I'm paying for my upload and download bandwidth and I made the request. However it DOES cost Google to send me the search info I requested - and everyone had been pretty much OK with this setup even though much like cell phone calls in the US, it's already charging BOTH parties, when it should be more like land line phone service in the US, where only the party making the request (call) is charged.
What the telcos want to do is triple-dip and add metered charges on top of the rates they're already charging.
If the telcos can't afford to sell bandwidth at their current rates then they need to raise prices. But they can't do that, because they ARE making money with the current rate structures, and if they raise prices then competitors swoop in and undercut them, and still make a profit.
What they really want is for this competition to be legislated away. - ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6No one's asking the government to regulate the Internet... it's the telcos we want them to regulate. Nobody should be in control of the Internet; not the government, not the telcos - nobody!
- friend18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Corperations and companies don't care about you. You can't have anything in America unless you pay.
- Foo667, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Like the backlash we're seeing over the truly retarded (in the classic meaning of the term) Internet infrastructure in the US? The US Internet network speeds are hundreds of times slower than those elsewhere (read: South Korea etc), and there's little noise over the issue.
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6KrocCamen, it's a really bad idea to insult others' intelligence (even if they ARE idiots) when you're getting your own facts wrong. Gore never claimed to have invented anything. He led the legistlative effort to make the internet feasible and available to the general public. That's true, and it's all he ever claimed.
That, and Al Gore jokes are about as funny and original as "...priceless" jokes and "Wazzzzup!" - lateralis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in _CREATING_ the Internet" - Al Gore
this is the quote that is often misquoted as gore saying he invented the internet.
He never claimed that. - pgm_01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes and no. With more competition, you could in theory chose to move to an ISP that is not messing with your packets. However, this seems like it will be happening at the backbone level and so whether you use AT&T Yahoo or a local ISP that uses AT&T's backbone your packets will be messed with.
- rzurad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@niiru
Because most things European don't subscribe to the American Newsletter of Greedy Business. - partyonaisle7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If there was significant competition in broadband providers, this would be a moot point, right?
- deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This may be a big mistake for the carriers if they do implement this non-neutral system. There are still a lot of dark fiber out there and companies like Google could setup their own network to bypass the offending backbone. It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft was in the ISP game.
Like Republicans always say "Just shut up and carry the bits." - timberfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No one has mentioned how big telcos were guaranteed government tax breaks and subsidies over a decade ago so they could cover the country with fiber. It turned out demand wasn't strong enough at the time for lines running that fast (no wide reaching bandwidth heavy internet uses at the time) so they stopped investing in the new fiber highways. Now they're saying they need to charge for a tiered internet so they can afford to upgrade their lines and compete. BS.
And don't forget that the reason net neutrality became such and issue is because of public statements from the CEO of Verizon & AT&T who both said they should be able to charge providers of bandwidth heavy services more to maintain the speed that they enjoy now. That means they could charge Skype for the specific traffic they use on AT&T lines - Skype passes that added cost along to you and of course AT&T can come out with their own VOIP service to destroy Skype or Vonage who can no longer compete because they're paying for raw bandwidth AND then paying AT&T for traffic to be maintained.
That's tiered internet and no one's yelling the sky is falling. The telcos have said they "plan to do this" - so that's more like seeing the guy with the lever say "I'm going to drop the sky" and then pointing that guy out to people. - RustyBurrito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you haven't done so yet, go to savetheinternet.net or whatever it is and send an email to your state senators. Protect internet neutrality!
- niiru, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Since net neutrality was already in place in America and now its possible ending is causing an uproar of sorts, this made me wonder something:
Do other countries, say most of Europe, have an equivalent law? if not why are the ISPs everywhere else not raping the consumer senseless?
I'm not trying to put a downer on net neutrality, it sounds like a good idea to me, but this is an interesting point to consider. - deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The UK is probably like Canada. Anyone can rent the local loop from the telco or cable provider for a "competitive rate" which is regulated by the CRTC (Canadian version of the FCC).
- domr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore.
Except that without net neutrality, there isn't necessarily a route around the 'damage'. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The flip side though is that someone is paying for the building the infrastructure and then are being told that everyone should get to use it for free."
Yes, the people who use it, Company buys/build pipe, charges you $x per month, then pay a few cents per gigabyte to send data down the pipe, everything else goes to the company, which they use to pay debts (e.g. upkeep for the pipe, and the cost of building/laying cable, wages, etc.)
Do you really think these telco's are running at a loss? - M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2NN *is* in law here in the UK AFAIK.
- cquinnd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The alternative is putting the corporate interests in a position to abuse their power over the nature of network traffic. Its a catch-22, but we can at least pretend to have the means to
hold the government accountable. - Ukonu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Foo667
Most people don't even know these other places have such amazing Internet speeds but they'll definitely notice when their favorite sites are ripped away from them. - wware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Pardon me if the following is a stupid question. Here's my understanding of the situation: The telcos own a lot of the current Internet infrastructure, and they want to tweak their routers to recognize some packets and give them priority routing, and then they want to sell that privilege to whoever is willing to pay. Given that it's their hardware, it's not unreasonable that they should be able to reprogram it. But it seems to me (as somebody who runs a teeny apache server, and would like my stuff to remain available to the one or two people per day who look at it) that the great danger is that economic forces will push the telcos to allocate ALL their bandwidth only to paying packets.
Have I understood this correctly? If there were a legislative way to specify a minimum bandwidth percentage (I imagine maybe 50%) for non-paying packets, wouldn't that be good enough? I guess this might be a question for a network engineer. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"do you people really think that QoS is evil?"
QoS is one thing (a good thing, if done right IMO), but slowing down certain protocols (e.g. BitTorrent) or slowing down access to certain sites (e.g. YouTube if your ISP has a competing service) is a whole different issue, and that's what people are complaining about. - mojotooth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What a twisted, false impression of what the EFF does and believes. I encourage everyone to go to http://www.eff.org/about/ and read about their mission, then dig DirkBelig down to where he belongs.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ajs05
"do you people really think that QoS is evil? that it's the end of the internet when the telcos prioritize some traffic?"
But who decides which trafic should be 'prioritized'? Better yet, whats to stop them from 'de-prioritizing' other trafic?? Before too long, everything will be classed as 'prioritizable trafic' and we will be charged for everything twice! - ProvocateurCrow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have called all my reps., if you are goinng to take action on any issue it should be this one. Call your reps in the senate and congress and tell them to save the internet.
- sansbury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@DirkBelig
After reading about what happened following the 1996 Telco Act, I've come to view the telcos the same way I look at the members of the RIAA--people may be stealing from them, but they are such a bunch of bastards I find it hard to amass much sympathy. Had Verizon et. al. lived up to their promises of FTTH to >80% of the US by now, I would be on their side unambiguously. But they took the money and (didn't) run the fiber.
This Net Neutrality stuff is all well and good but I would rather see government action spending more effort on promoting more sources of reliable high-speed consumer IP hookup. Having one or at best two providers virtually guarantees that consumers will get screwed one way or another. So give the telcos their precious net-preferentiality, but also give the National Grid help deploying broadband over powerlines, and free up spectrum for fixed wireless, and pass zoning overrides to make it easier for anyone trying to deploy consumer network access. When a consumer has a choice of 5 or 6 network providers these problems will sort themselves out. - captainahab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Zybch,
As long as there is competition in supplying Internet access, the "charge twice" scenario isn't realistic.
Suppose that in order to provide you with Internet access, Telephone Company A and Cable Company B would each have to spend $15. They both decide that your access is a "premium" service, so they charge you $50 a month. Assuming the quality is equitable, which one would you choose? It doesn't matter, does it? Because they both charge the same amount. Now here's the deal: Why would Cable Company B continue to charge $50 a month if it knew it could get more customers by reducing its price? Why not lower it to $45? The company would still make $30 and steal customers from its competitor.
The "greed" Diggers are always bitching about is the very thing that keeps prices low when there is competition. Greedy companies will essentially bid down the service price to try to maximize profits.
Regulation only INCREASES the bar of entry for newcomers. What if a competitor wanted to enter the market against AT&T but could only do so using a tiered pricing model? Net neutrality would bar the company from entering the market and you would have less choices. - captainahab, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Hogwash.
The assumption behind this alarmism is that network capacity is a zero-sum game e.g. if AT&T designates half its capacity for high-speed video/audio services then an equal amount will removed for "typical functions" such as surfing the World Wide Web, e-mail, etc. That's not what happens in the free market. Whatever scarcity telcos create will draw competitors to the market who wish to profit from the situation increasing supply.
What's worse is to see how angry people get over pure speculation of what the Internet will be like without "net neutrailty." At the least, couldn't everyone just wait a few years to see if the alleged dooms day scenario even develops? It's not like Congress is going anywhere anytime soon. - M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Why is this guy modded down? He's 100% right.
- b7illsmith, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I'm not too concerned about net neutrality. The more the telcos try to control the network, the more the network will work around the damage. If this isn't true then the Internet is broken and should be abandoned for better technology. If anything, the loss of net neutrality will be a catalyst for innovation. Only the technically challenged people will suffer.
- Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3I don't support government enforced neutrailty. If you establish that the government actually should have a say in these matters, then you're acknowledging they have the right to tax the Internet, kick people off, or whatever the hell it is they want to do. The Internet is not something the federal government can or should regulate.
- ajs05, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1ok wait just a damned minute...
do you people really think that QoS is evil? that it's the end of the internet when
the telcos prioritize some traffic? as the jersey girls around here would put it,
*puh-leeze*.
telcos still have to compete with cable in the US. This means that they're gonna
offer a 6-8 meg data pipe right alongside their private tv pipe. no way they're not.
they lose if they don't. cable's got them by the balls with bandwidth anyway, except
for verizon's FTTH.
QoS enables service level agreements. Been around a long time. Makes tons of
sense. Enables new services. Does not spell the end of the world for existing services.
And by the way, existing media services blow! Would you really trust your ISP to deliver
real 24/7/365 TV to you over the net exclusively today? No way...because best effort
just doesn't make it. - Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Actually Gore did claim to have invented the Internet. He probably has done more than most politicians towards helping ensure its creation as we know it. But he saw the Internet as a great thing for libraries and schools and wanted to heavily tax commercial use of it. Thank god he didn't get his way.
- DirkBelig, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2I must've really muddled my point because everyone's attacking my post while restating what I meant to say in their replies.
Yes, the "big eaters" are paying for their bandwidth and the telcos, competition adverse as they are, are trying to ladle on further grift when they should be CUTTING prices and making it up on volume - why is broadband so much more expensive here than in Asia? Hmmm? - but the solution isn't some central government dictat which regulates things and will lead to higher prices under the false flag of lowering them. Remember when the airlines and phone companies were regulated monopolies? Who wants to go back to those days?
The flip side though is that someone is paying for the building the infrastructure and then are being told that everyone should get to use it for free. The free beer/socialist crowd have no problem with seizing the property and assets of others, but if no one can make a profit, then what makes you think that anyone is going to innovate? This is the conundrum that I have yet to see satisfactorily squared away: How do you get innovation when the innovators will not be able to reap the rewards?
Sorry, but "the goodness of the heart" is a thin reed upon which to stake the future. Anyone posting this anti-capitalist agitprop had better not be working for a corporation and asking for wage increases for their labours. Seeking profit isn't evil in of itself. Yes, the telcos are going beyond their needs into a quest for more than they could get in a truly competitive environment, but with true freedom of competition, the greedhounds would lose in the end because those being gouged would've left them behind. - millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Nonsense. Al Gore invented the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee is the DEVIL!!
- whovian, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0deleted
- felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1I hit reply on the wrong thing. Mod me down.
- Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1INTERWEBS IS SERIOUS BUISNESS
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