Net Neutrality

[ipaintminis]

theres information about it all over the web...

but THIS is just one of them

I was wondering what world-wide, and American citizens thought about this issue.

Do you have a site that might get screwed because of it?

I was reading it the other day and don\'t want to get any one riled up about it, just want to hear some good opinions

 

[supervike]

I started to read that, but my eyes began to blur, and I believe I may have dozed off...

Can you nutshell it for me?

 

[ipaintminis]

I\'ll try my best

the major ISPs - verison, Time Warner, ect - are in the process of producing a bill that would cause loss of freedom of speech over the internet. From What I understand (and i\'ve done a fair bit o reading) in order to stay at a high connection or any connection whatsoever each website will have to pay the ISP. For instance, if Yahoo paid Verison but not Time Warner, those who use Verison would be able to see Yahoo while some Time Warner customers would not.

Net Neutrality is the opposing bill- it involves a law that would disallow this from happening, while some say that the internet doesn\'t need rules and regulations, I personally think that dream is impossiable. Those who created Net Neutrality (and believe it or not, its bi-partisan) are aiming to create an internet where a user dosen\'t have to feel threatend, or loose valuable information.

it could pose a threat to smaller websites, blogs, myspace, xanga, maybe even coolminiornot. while ISPs may not shut down the websites entirely it would cause a MUCH slower connection.


i do hope i got that right. lol

 

[No Such Agency]

Great post IPM!

To gloss what IPM just added:

This is a plan for extortion plain and simple. Big net usage = lots of revenue = deep pockets. And the ISP\'s know that sites will pay throught the nose rather than be shut out of a major market like \"all T-W cable net subscribers\".

Of course the ISP\'s don\'t want to lose their Common Carrier status while they\'re at it. Because then they\'d be responsible for the content of every packet of every unlicensed mp3 file, ripped DVD or child pornography image passing through their network. So they want to be able to filter packets based on content/origin (the opposite of Net Neutrality) but without any legal culpability for that same content (which Common Carriers do not need to worry about). They want their cake, and to eat it too.

If this goes through, Americans might as well be back in the days of Compuserve BBS or AOL\'s \"mini-internet\". AT$T customers pay to access Google, there\'s no reason except AT$T\'s greed that Google should pay to be accessible to those same customers.

 

[Ogrebane]

I seriuosly doubt a couple of American Laywers and greedy companies can do much to the internet. They can pass a law that may affect some american ISP but then people will just switch to offshore ISP\'s and wont have to comply with the american laws. I think the internet is too large for just a few corporations to control and we all know what happens when you tick of the geeks.

 

[Drake Farstrider]

Umm... not sure if I fully understand this, but it does not sound good for the smaller sites.

 

[No Such Agency]

Originally posted by Ogrebane
I seriuosly doubt a couple of American Laywers and greedy companies can do much to the internet. They can pass a law that may affect some american ISP but then people will just switch to offshore ISP\'s and wont have to comply with the american laws. I think the internet is too large for just a few corporations to control and we all know what happens when you tick of the geeks.

But what happens if American ISP\'s start blocking or slowing sites preferentially? Google can set up their servers wherever they want, but it\'s not their provider that\'s trying to screw them... it\'s YOURS. YOU can\'t just use a Chilean or French or Japanese ISP to access the Internet. You have to use whatever American companies offer the service in your area, and if they start to monkey with the system this way, you are SCREWED.

 

[Swordwind]

If they did go through with it how long before some code junkie wrote a script that bypassed it altogether...

 

[petey]

I think the internet should stay exactly as it is now.

 

[Ogrebane]

I dont think big business should mess with the Geeks. They are a powerful force. What was the name of the company that tried to tell the world they had IP in a unix module and therefore everyone using linux should pay them. The geeks shut them down real quick.

 

[ipaintminis]

I don\'t know if its a bypassable thing.


NSA I\'m pretty sure you know more about this than I do...could someone create a code to eff the system?

I wouldn\'t think so being as its the servers that are a problem not the actual encription.


I wrote my congressman today about it, and signed a petition. I think the government is just screwing with us to make my generation get involved in politics. (kidding, ONLY kidding)

 

[dougaderly]

You have all summed it up pretty well. Who this is going to screw is the small businesses. Say for instance, CMON happens to be hosted on Verizon. All Verizon customers would be able to access CMON. For an additional fee, All Verizon customers could access CMON, without the delay that Verizon would put on non-paying sites. Now, Say I have ATT for my internet provider. If CMON paid ATT for the privelege, I could look at CMON. But it will never be as fast as a Verizon customer sees CMON, because ATT wants CMON to switch to ATT. The best analogy is cable tv. You don\'t get every channel that exists, only the ones your cable company wants you to see and paid the fees.

 

[hakoMike]

I\'ve been trying to sort this one out for a while. As far as I can tell, there is no \"net neutrality\" now, and the propsed law would prohibit the passage of laws that establish net neutrality.

Personally, I\'m not for a completely neutral net. (gasp! shock! horror!) I work in IT for a university, and since we have implemented \"packet shaping\" we have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth fees because we limited the bandwidth of (drum roll please) popular peer-to-peer file sharing programs sending/receiving data from off campus!

Nobody like the idea of ISP shaping packets based on payment schedules, but net neutrality either hurts my college by allowing unfettered access to everything or some government agency gets to decide what packets we\'re allowed to shape and which we aren\'t.

I think a pure neutrality law or a neutrality prohibition law would both be unwise. I don\'t know what a good solution is.... or even if there is a problem.

I guess here\'s the question. Is it currently illegal for an ISP to limit bandwidth (no matter the criteria) and, if not, why is it not a widespread practice?

(the whole thing is confusingto me .....) ???

 

[RedSevenBlue]

NET NEUTRALITY FTW!

Man, I hope Net Neutrality comes through! There are a bunch a blokes in this world that want to stop certain websites from being viewed and stuff.

 

[dougaderly]

currently, the law is written so that ISP providers must give as good or better access to bandwidth to web sites outside of their network as they give their own sites.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq

 

[No Such Agency]

Originally posted by ipaintminis
I don\'t know if its a bypassable thing.

NSA I\'m pretty sure you know more about this than I do...could someone create a code to eff the system?

I wouldn\'t think so being as its the servers that are a problem not the actual encription.

I suppose you could use a proxy web server:

Site <-> proxy server <-> your ISP <-> your computer

This makes all the original site\'s content appear to originate from the proxy server. But I\'m certain that if ISP\'s were allowed to break net neutrality, one of the first things they\'d do would be to block all known web proxies and anonymizers.

 

[hakoMike]

Originally posted by dougaderly
currently, the law is written so that ISP providers must give as good or better access to bandwidth to web sites outside of their network as they give their own sites.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq

I can\'t find what you\'re citing about ISP\'s being obligated under law to provide access and bandwidth in that FAQ. Can you tell me what question it\'s in?

 

[marineboy]

Originally posted by No Such Agency

But what happens if American ISP\'s start blocking or slowing sites preferentially? Google can set up their servers wherever they want, but it\'s not their provider that\'s trying to screw them... it\'s YOURS. YOU can\'t just use a Chilean or French or Japanese ISP to access the Internet. You have to use whatever American companies offer the service in your area, and if they start to monkey with the system this way, you are SCREWED.

There\'s the kicker. Any local provider will be able to put limitations on services provided by any non-local provider.

This sounds very much like money talking and politics talking. It\'s certainly protectivism in its ugliest form.

Keep the web free!

 

[dauber22]

Government regulation of most things scares me. It scares me even more when they try to regulate things that no one has a clear definition of. Even more when its something that most of them really have no idea what they\'re really talking about. And the whole problem with \"Unintended Conseqences\"; where they take a concept that sounds great and wonderful, pass it in to law, and it winds up doing awful things because of the way its written or implemented or interpretted - sometimes the exact opposite of what was intended.

Probably the best thing they could do would be to forget about it completely and just leave it alone

 

[GreenOne]

Of course they will do this. We\'ve had a lot of fun with the internet these past years and the only reason is they couldn\'t do anything about it. Now they\'re starting to find ways to ass-mediase it and impose the same cultural/tough/freedom restrictions we\'ve seen on all other media, it\'s a matter of time and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
We\'ll soon have to kiss the good times goodbye