Net Neutrality

[VaporTrail]

Okay, this is really important, everyone. First off, what is net neutrality?

 

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-net-neutrality.htm

 

I've bolded the main points from this article...

 

When dealing with any form of network, be it telephone service, cable television or the Internet, there is often a business philosophy called network neutrality at work. When dealing specifically with Internet issues, the term is usually shortened to net neutrality, but the basic principles are still the same. Net neutrality refers to the non-discriminatory nature of essential Internet components such as servers, ISPs and transmission lines. In the eyes of an idealized Internet, all users have the right to send and receive packets of information equally. The principle of net neutrality makes this possible.

 

At the present time, there is no actual law in the United States that enforces net neutrality, but an informal arrangement has been in place for many years. Net neutrality essentially levels the playing field for commercial websites, ensuring that a small online bookstore can still receive visitors, even if sites such as Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com are statistically more popular. Under the philosophy of net neutrality, individual Internet service providers (ISPs), search engines and major online services like Yahoo, America Online (AOL) or Google cannot restrict or filter a user's access to rival companies. AOL, for example, cannot prevent one of its subscribers from receiving email from Yahoo accounts.

 

Supporters of net neutrality suggest that non-profit government control over the Internet would prevent larger commercial websites from completely dominating the marketplace. A government agency similar to the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would oversee the basic network to prevent the formation of 'robber barons', companies who could possibly choke off competition by controlling key points on the Internet transmission network. Countries such as Japan already have Internet access laws based on the principle of net neutrality. Eventually, most countries with Internet access may have to implement laws to protect the current net neutrality concept.

 

Opponents of net neutrality include cable television companies, major Internet service providers and large commercial websites. They suggest that net neutrality is an unrealistic goal, since other network systems are already controlled by their largest contributors and are still able to function fairly. Government control over the Internet's basic network, opponents argue, would only lead to increased censorship and invasion of privacy. Website owners shouldn't be legally forced to receive or transmit information from competitors or other websites they find objectionable. This has already happened in isolated incidents.

 

What side are you on? Personally, I like how it is now. Keep it so that ISP's are expected to allow you to look at anything you please, free of any extra charge.

 

KISS

 

 

Now I believe this image is the absolute worst case scenario, but at the very least we could expect them to bottleneck the amount of traffic that can go through sites that don't support the ISP agendas.

 

Read up about it! Wikipedia's got a pretty good article that explains who's for and against it, if you read the opponent and proponent sections, I think it gives a really good idea of what it's about. But after you do it, go here

 

http://www.savetheinternet.com/fcc-comments

 

Let the FCC know how you feel about it!

 

/edit

 

I'm actually not very clear about this, as I find the whole thing kinda confusing, but I did ask, and here's a pretty level response that I think is worth mentioning

 

Don't be sorry. It is confusing. You probably are a net neutrality supporter.

 

As best as I can explain; if you think it's better that your ISP determine what sites and services get the bulk of the internet speed they provide, then you are against net neutrality. If you prefer the internet to be an unfettered, open pipe, where your ISP doesn't choose what sites or services get better bandwidth, then you are 'for' net neutrality.

 

A heavy part of the confusion is that we don't really know what ISPs would do with the ability to make the internet a tiered service. At best, it would be to provide video and telephone services at higher speeds so that these types of services crap out less often. At worst, they'd sell off the better bandwidth to the higher bidders, squeezing small and personal web sites out of the internet business altogether.

 

Personally, I don't trust AT&T and Comcast to do anything that would benefit consumers especially when the alternative is to reap more profits without really improving anything.

 

Now, if they really wanted to do the right thing, tiered services would be something consumers could do for themselves at their own control. Seems technically feasible that a person could set preferences at their own router to choose what services get better bandwidth.

[VaporTrail]

Bump! This is important!

[Mr. T]

Net Neutrality has been talked about before on here. Not one congressman or woman wants to make this a law without disguising it first, especially when we are on the doorstep of a new election season. This would be like throwing more gas on the fire that already exists among voters who are already mad and are wanting to take their shot at "Change" as in changing of the guard.

 

But here is something that needs to be watched as progressives and liberals cannot compete with alternative media Obama and his cronnie commis will be using the siorn fist of the FCC in what they will be calling it “public media”.

 

Below is the story as written. .........Isn't google fighting communist China over censorship and propaganda?

 

 

---------------------------------

4.1.10 - In order to counter alternative media, an adviser to the Federal Communications Commission has suggested using your tax money

 

FCC Adviser Advocates State-run Propaganda “Megaphone” to Counter Alternative Media

 

 

Kurt Nimmo | The government is desperate to counter the free flow of information especially on the internet and steer the populace back on the government propaganda track.

 

In order to counter alternative media, an adviser to the Federal Communications Commission has suggested using your tax money — or rather money the government borrows from bankers and then expects your children to pay off — to create “public media” that will serve as a “filter” and a “megaphone” for a network of government-funded journalists competing with other, non-government-backed reporters, according to Matt Cover, writing for CNSNews

 

Rutgers University law professor Ellen Goodman, who is a “distinguished” visiting scholar with the FCC’s Future of Media Project, submitted the proposal in a draft of the government takeover plan targeted at the internet called the National Broadband Plan.

 

The feds are pushing their internet takeover plan under left cover, specifically touchy-feely platitudes about the disabled, and providing “free” internet as a form of democratic egalitarianism (nothing is “free,” especially when it is offered by government). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has addressed the issue in FDR-esque overtones, stating that broadband internet “is our generation’s major infrastructure challenge… It’s like roads, canals, railroads and telephones for previous generations. It’s like electricity in its transformative power.”

 

Commissar Goodman said the government needs to provide the “narrative content necessary to involve the entire population in democratic decision making or to foster widespread economic and social flourishing.” She said there are “information gaps” in the investigative journalism arena, especially in regard to “underserved, minority, and poor populations.” Goodman wants to “transcend” the “legacy public broadcasting system” in order to “correct these deficits.”

 

She said the federal plan to take over the internet is the key to correcting the nation’s civic “deficits” and called for a digital public media network to connect government-funded journalists together.

 

Goodman said “public media” (government run and controlled media) is necessary because while information is “abundant” today, “wisdom and knowledge remain hard won.” In other words, she believes the corporate media and especially the alternative media are not doing enough to disseminate government propaganda.

 

“Public media contributions are especially needed in the areas of enterprise journalism (particularly at the local level), educational content, and content that illuminates issues of particular relevance to minority and underserved audiences,” she added.

 

Goodman’s “underserved” audiences, of course, will be determined by the government and based on how they vote and to what degree they support the ruling elite. Don’t expect Libertarians and other critics of government to be allowed to participate (most would find such participation abhorrent, so moot point).

 

Goodman’s network of government “investigative journalists” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) would connect on the internet and “operationalize” the new public (government) “non-commercial” media.

 

New public media are needed, Goodman argues, to foster “virtual and real spaces” for “intelligent discourse” (managed by the federal government) free from the “commercial pressures” of independent, non-government media — in other words, the government needs to create a monopoly because it cannot compete with commercial and alternative media now predominate on the internet.

 

Alternative and commercial media, she explains, engage in “ever more outrageous flares” (academic-speak for talk radio and news and information websites outside the orbit of the corporate media).

 

Goodman has suggested a takeover of public television in order to realize her comrades-in-arms vision. But it does not stop there. She also believes the government must take over commercial television. “The Plan also threw out the idea of using noncommercial TV spectrum auction revenues (to be generated by voluntary consolidation of stations) to fund public media,” she writes. “I supported this kind of approach in my comments and think there may really be something to it. But it’s an issue that will take a long time to work though, that will involve the whole TV band, including commercial TV stations, and that will require Congressional action.” (Emphasis added.)

 

The government is desperate to counter the free flow of information especially on the internet and steer the populace back on the government propaganda track. It will exploit “underserved audiences” in order to do this. People are currently abandoning the corporate media in huge numbers (and in the process abandoning government propaganda).

 

Finally, reading Goodman’s comments about government-supported journalists I am reminded of the “People’s Correspondents” in the former Soviet Union. They were amateur “proletarian” journalists (from formerly “underserved audiences”) who filed reports from the frontlines about the march toward communism beginning in the early years of the Soviet Union. Under Stalin, there were more than 3 million worker and agriculture correspondents. They were instructed on appropriate themes by the communist party and Soviet newspaper editors and journalists..

 

Source HERE

[VaporTrail]

This topic has confused me more than any other. I mean, I'm arguing that Obama will keep the internet free from corporate control. You are arguing that the government will take control of the internet. Isn't there a happy medium somewhere in this?

 

I think, in my best case scenario, the government mandates that all ISP's have to respect net neutrality, keeping the web open and free, and just step back from it. Is this a realistic outcome?

[smalls1129]

This topic has confused me more than any other. I mean, I'm arguing that Obama will keep the internet free from corporate control. You are arguing that the government will take control of the internet. Isn't there a happy medium somewhere in this?

 

I think, in my best case scenario, the government mandates that all ISP's have to respect net neutrality, keeping the web open and free, and just step back from it. Is this a realistic outcome?

 

 

 

Here is where I am both confused and ignorant. Not attacking you here Vapor, but can anyone site me an example of an ISP rejecting or censoring website content. Obviously not talking about premium (extra cost) content just what anyone who is connected can view? Maybe I haven't done enough searches to encounter this problem but to my knowledge I have never been denied to access to any site (secure, premium etc excluded).

[Mr. T]

VT, I will say I am just as confused as you are, but in reality the gang in DC wants to be able to control the amount of information that is being put out on the internet. As you can recall during the recent debates over HC, Global warming and so on The White House sent out memos to everyone in congress not to open up the drudgereport because they would get a virus. Now its parlor tricks like that which will show you what is at stake here.

 

The White House does not want any competition or anyone breaking down their agenda and pointing out any of the lies that are being told. This can be a way for them in silencing alternative media outlets.

 

IMO: The White House is testing the waters to see in which way they can go about it in proposing new rule changes on the internet via getting the FCC involved and with another new propaganda media outlet paid for by you and me the tax payers.

 

I think we allready get pumped full of enough BS from the major news outlets allready, sometimes it nice to go read someones blog sometimes.

[VaporTrail]

@Smalls, Comcast has been known to throttle people that are using p2p networks. This specifically happened to me when I'd download something through it, all the internet through the rest of the house would get completely shot. Also, AT&T did block the website 4chan.

 

@T

The thing is, I'm not getting this information from cnn, fox, and co. Everything I'm reading about this is from geeky websites like wired. None of the information is from "political" themed blogs. I'm hearing it from computer type blogs, video game type blogs, and even from the asshole of the internet.

 

The telecom industries have already done things to test the water. I'm still not clear of the government's role in all of this, but I know what telecom industry wants, and I don't agree with them at all.

[Kosar_For_President]

@Smalls, Comcast has been known to throttle people that are using p2p networks. This specifically happened to me when I'd download something through it, all the internet through the rest of the house would get completely shot. Also, AT&T did block the website 4chan.

 

Use a proxy. Use Little Snitch, problem solved.

[VaporTrail]

Use a proxy. Use Little Snitch, problem solved.

 

If I may quote Norm MacDonald

 

It's the lack of respect that hurts the most

[Westside Steve]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fcc-...51452,print.sto

 

 

Somebody put thiis on another list.

I can't get it to connect; maybe you can.

 

Header said something was overturned but district court.

Date 4 8 10.

 

WSS

[osusev]

this may work out against comcast.... the FCC DOES have antitrust oversight on the NBC universal and comcast merger....... This is not over by a mile.

 

The FCC can also reclassify (politically it would be a explosive issue) ISP's into telecommunications....... yes comcast and company would fight but really the power is already there.... The white house does not want this perception problem...... even though they would be backed by virtually every major internet company in the world.

 

This fight still has some miles yet to go, dont panic yet.

[VaporTrail]

I've read up a bit more, and as it is now, there's an oligopoly, as just about 100% of the broadband offered in the US is through cable or DSL. I'm kinda banking on Google's fiber optic infrastructure to get started soon.

[osusev]

I've read up a bit more, and as it is now, there's an oligopoly, as just about 100% of the broadband offered in the US is through cable or DSL. I'm kinda banking on Google's fiber optic infrastructure to get started soon.

 

Vapor I think that is more pie in the sky waiting for nationwide deployment, access, and service. Fiber is already being dropped by most of the existing backbone providers like ATT and cable conglomerates.

 

distribution and service along with bundling of other in home entertainment is a big and complicated business that takes decades to distribute both politically on a national scale and even down to the local city/township scale.

 

They will get certain areas but it will take quite some time.

 

The FCC already has quite broad powers, Comcast already backed off from limiting torrent access...... they know like the states that when federal regulators decide to flex their muscles in other ways..... they can make life quite difficult.

 

I doubt NBC wants to tangle with the FCC and if Comcast wants that merger and avoid enemies in that powerful agency..... they will find a way to make a deal.

 

The FCC and the politicians want this.... its going to happen one way or another.