What is Digg?53 Comments
- chaosmachine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19looks good. anything with "freedom" or "patriot" in the title is pretty much guaranteed to pass. ;)
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18If only it was the National Patriotic Internet Freedom and Liberty Act of America
- leodavinci, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19From TFA, "Unlike existing proposals in both houses of Congress, the bill was endorsed not only by Democrats but by Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican."
"Called the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act," the bill is designed to "provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers," Sensenbrenner said in a statement."
Hopefully this will begin a truly non-partisan look into the real truth behind what the big ISP's are trying to do. - buss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11The sad truth, but at least this time it actually protects our rights!
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"I don't speak for DiggNow, but I honestly don't understand what is wrong with a private company charging different prices for different levels of service. Is that not what almost every company on the planet does?"
That's because you're not considering the long-term consequences of a "multi-tier" internet. - ccanni1028, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"The [opposing] senators also charged that such rules would "deprive parents of new technologies they may use to protect their families from online harm.""
Since when has Net Neutrality had anything to do with parental controls on the internet? These senators are full of ****. - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Perhaps beefing it up to "the National Patriotic Internet Freedom, Liberty, and War On Terrah Act of America" will help it along even further.
- skatingrox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I don't think this bill is going to pass. You know the telcos will lobby every penny they have before they let a bill like this be signed into law.
From User Friendly: A new species - Telco Executives (Headus Upasses) - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm certain it would be several orders of magnitude larger than $1000.
Just a little memory refresher... The Net Neutrality issue didn't spring up because telcos proposed offering faster service for select customers. It sprang up because the Telcos began suggesting that they would extort money from popular websites.
Politicians took notice when Verizon, If memory serves, complained very specificly that their customer's traffic to Google.com was "eating up most of their bandwidth" and that they did not think "Google should be getting a free ride."
(despite the fact that google pays more in hosting and bandwidth cost than many small nations do...remember that web hosts already pay the telcos for the reservoir side of the delivery pipe, by the gigabyte, while consumers already pay for the spigot end. It's not about billing... it's about double-billing ...)
Telco's already have plenty of market forces in place to keep them offering faster packet delivery. Including their own economies of scale.
These bills are not about some imaginary special speed improvement that needs regulating... it's about protection money, extortion threats to sites that fail to pay the proper bribes being silenced or slowed... - jeffgtr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6 I live in Illinois and we have John Shimkus fighting against net neutrality. I've sent several emails and called his office expressing my disappointment in the way he is representing us. More people should do the same. If you don't make alot of noise nothing is going to happen. Unfortunately we're going to have to make our selves heard more so on this issue because the average net user has never even heard of net neutrality. Here's his website, the phone numbers are there. If you don't express your opinion then you might as well not even have one. http://www.house.gov/shimkus/contact.shtml or better yet call your own representatives as well
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Right. Because those socialist principals which currently seem to govern our non-tiered internet have clearly failed. Nobody uses that thing any more.
Keeping the playing field level for small $$ and large $$ sites and services was a terrible idea. AOL should have OWNED the net if it weren't for those meddling socialists!!!
And since then the internet never ever sprouted any new businesses or innovations. All because the telcos couldn't extort money out of the more popular websites.
Kind of a shame that we all had to migrate back to paper and pencil in 2000 like we did. Darn those ip socialists!!! - twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Care to elaborate on your comment? What is so wrong with this bill??
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The biggest problem is that there is no representation for real Americans in Washington. They are all trying to figure out which lobbyist will pay them the most money for said bill. If it were up to real Americans, the government would have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the internet.
- jono1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4True, but I don't think charging websites for the ability to be viewed constitutes a different level of service.
"And for an extra $1000 a month, you get our Gold membership where people can view your website at a whopping 24kbps!" - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Unless your angry letter comes with a large check attached, I doubt Shimkus is listening.
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Terms like "extortion" and "threats" are appropriate to third-world gangs and regimes..."
If the shoe fits.... If we wanted to be polite we could call it "protection money" or "racketeering"...
In America, the Telco's have virtual monopoly markets over most consumers. Very few Americans have a choice of even two broadband providers. And as any econ student knows, natural market forces are distorted, almost to the point of being suspended in a monopoly (especially a utility-like "natural monopoly") For a market correction to a monopoly to occur, either conditions for consumers must become unbearably bad, or the monopoly will require regulation to prevent it from undo harm to consumers or (and this is the important bit for the legislation I believe) other businesses.
The telcos, at this point, can do significant harm to America's economy by leveraging monopolistic scarcity against American business as a whole. This would create significantly more economic harm, than good.
Charging more when adding value is a *good thing* for an economy as a whole. Charging more because you can arbitrarily manipulate scarcity, not so much... - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2True, but there are plenty of big companies who want to see Net Neutrality pass too, and they also have deep pockets. It's just a matter of who's willing to write bigger checks.
- The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Kid's, geekee is a fine example of somebody who is...
A) clueless to what Net Neutrality actually is
B) somebody who likes to pay more for what he's currently getting
C) working for one of the telco's who wants to charge more
D) a moron
It's multiple choice if you want to choose more than one reason. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"The sad truth, but at least this time it actually protects our rights!"
No one has the right to a good or service provided by another person. - dougbdl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That site is just plain stupid.
- tehgooch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Now would be a good time for independant ISPs to come out of the woodwork providing uncensored internet access. If it came down to it I would probably just go from wifi hotspot to wifi hotspot. It'll probably be hard, but nobody said it would be easy. (Disregard the "simple as that" in my earlier comment >.> :P) I might just move if I can't get anything else.
- ccanni1028, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1skatingrox - It is true that the telco execs are a species of their own, but even the sub-execs have cranio-rectal impalement disorder. You have to watch out for them too.
- dougbdl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And you going to go to whom? I have 2 high speed carriers available, Adelphia and Alltel. I would believe both would treat me the same.
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You really don't undestand how markets with high barriers to entry work. Upper-tier internet service (the "backbone" is what's known as a "natural monopoly"; basically that means that the barriers to entry for a newcomer are so high (stringing cables, building data centers, etc) that whoever got there first is going to have a monopoly by default unless the government steps in. "Real Americans" might vote your way, but if they did it would be out of ignorance.
And don't forget, tax dollars paid for a good chunk of that infrastructure, in addition to actually building the thing in the first place. There wouldn't *be* an internet without "government intervention". - GNiMeLF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hopefuly Aussies won't follow in American footsteps... coz this blows.
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@twstdroot
Why would my opinion be based on what other people think? My opinion is based on how it would affect me and my family first, and discussions I have had with friends on the subject. Obviously you come from the sheeple camp, where you let others think for you. - Christophercles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not quite this insidious, but our government does want to censor large parts of the internet in line with puritan values, and both the Liberals and Labor have similar plans.
- The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Your right to what? To not be charged extra for consuming extra bandwidth?"
If it was actually about that, your "argument" might make sense. - ccanni1028, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1twstdroot - "Care to elaborate on your comment? What is so wrong with this bill??"
Every one of DiggNow's comments I have seen is going against the article it is posted in. DiggNow is just the basic troll you find on any site. I have learned to ignore his comments (most of the time they are modded down below -10 already so I don't even have to see them anyway). - colsim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wouldn't this affect everyone in the world trying to access American websites?
And to those who wonder why this is a particularly big deal, I read an interesting analogy, comparing this to Ford buying a lane on every freeway that only Fords are allowed to drive on. Communications infrastructure, just like roads, is too important not to be regulated. - tionanny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A bit off topic, but it strikes me funny when even well written responses use the abbreviation TFA.
I can just picture some clean cut IT guy muttering "freaking" just to keep the naughty f-word out of his head. - ccanni1028, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does anyone actually have a link to the bill, or at least its name so we can look it up? I am interested in reading the whole thing but there wasn't a link in the article.
- 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1After what we've seen the past couple of years, ANY proposed legislation with key buzzwords in the title should very thoroughly scrutinized.
- satori3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yes, this is ridiculous. It's sad this is being put forward, but it's even worse that they think it will have any affect outside the U.S. Often when there is congestion some traffic ends up here in Canada and guess what... we're not going to respect their ridiculous requests for QoS on Internet traffic. It's an open network, deal with it... Losers!!!....
- The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, ISP's here have already come out and said they wont do it.
Unlike in the states, ISP's over here say they provide a service (e.g. up to us what we do with it), unlike the states, where it's a product (where the ISP decides what you can do) - tehgooch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1***** regulation, leave my internet alone. If my ISP decides they want to slow down traffic from sites that don't pay them - they won't be getting my money anymore. Simple as that. We don't need mommy government to look out for us.
- basementoffice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its only non-partisen because the lobby groups haven't put up the cash to one side or the other. As soon as congress's pockets are lined with donations it will be back to good-old red v. blue.
BTW when in Vegas, or anywhere for that matter that money is on the line, bet on RED - STDOUBT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Great -I hope this isn't like the
"Help America Vote" act which mandated use
of blackbox voting....
Just because it has a pretty tile doesn't mean it's
absent of devious *****. - buttface, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Seriously go be a techno-political poser somewhere else, and try to understand wtf you're posing about. Not enforcing neutrality will cause indefinite stagnation, on the mono-telco terms. What they really want is an excuse to keep holding back and profit off of non-development. The lame snippet you post out of context is the direct result of ignorance like yours and fabricated logic meant to justify their means of charging double for services that people already pay for.
- twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@jeffgtr
"Unfortunately we're going to have to make our selves heard more so on this issue because the average net user has never even heard of net neutrality."
Unfortunately?? We should be happy to make ourselves heard on things like this that we are passionate about. The people who have never heard of net neutrality could probably give 2 craps about whether Google has to pay twice for their bandwidth. - basementoffice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I wonder how much this will cost Google
- twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@rasterbator
So what you're saying is that it would be better for you and your family to privately fund the infrastructure that has been built by governmen subsidies? I'm sure there are a lot of real Americans that don't use the Internet that would rather you pay their share of the taxes and fees that have built the infrastructure. - basementoffice, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Citing government statistics that 98 percent of Americans have at most two choices for broadband service, Sensenbrenner said such a "virtual duopoly" is ripe for anticompetitive practices, and "a clear antitrust remedy is needed."
Who are they kidding?! When was the last time congress came up with anything that was "clear" and actually provided a "remedy"?! By the time this passes we will go from a "virtual duopoly" to an absolute monopoly, probably owned, operated, and "upgraded with new FEATURES" by MS. - Oakes, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1kremvax -
Yes, I understand that the telecos want to increase the prices of current users, not introduce new speeds. Does it matter? They clearly want to balance demand by charging a premium once a certain level of bandwidth is exceeded. Why is this a crime?
Terms like "extortion" and "threats" are appropriate to third-world gangs and regimes, not to private companies who have the right to sell their services at the price of their choice. - Oakes, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3I don't speak for DiggNow, but I honestly don't understand what is wrong with a private company charging different prices for different levels of service. Is that not what almost every company on the planet does?
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2"Net neutrality, which critics charge is impossible to define, centers on the idea that broadband providers must not be permitted to favor some Web sites or Internet services over others. Network operators argue that they should be entitled to charge bandwidth hogs extra for faster transmission and prioritized placement in order to help finance vast build-outs of broadband infrastructure."
Net neutraility will strangle the internet. Socialist principles invariably lead to stagnation of technology since they kill the profit motive. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0I still say http://www.screwcops.com
- Oakes, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Chompy -
Are they at all related to the consequences of a "multi-tier" Windows? That is, Starter, Home, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate? (or however it goes)
Why is this pricing model, which makes those who hog the most bandwidth pay the highest prices, only illegal with regards to the telecos?
jono -
Did they really say that it takes $1000 a month to make a website viewable, or was that just a hyperbolic slight-of-hand? - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1lol, congressmen are even worse than digg users.
- twstdroot, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0Are you sure about that? Is your opinion based on the thoughts of real Americans or just really geeky Americans? I honestly don't think that most non-geeks really care that much about the government's involvement in the Internet.
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