oh SH!T - net neutrality
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- sherm0
I already pay to access the web through my android phone, and they want more rupees?
fuck, off to the bush then:
- SteveJobs0
that preferential treatment mentality hurts potential growth, and it leaves the door open for anyone with deep pockets to own a market and weed out would-be competition. to me this goes against the whole idea of the internet which has always been a level playing field.
- Hombre_Lobo_20
exactly honestly,
the internet will become like tv if net neutrality is crushed.
- abettertomorrow0
"this goes against the whole idea of the internet which has always been a level playing field"
Exactly, and you can bet the big media companies like NBC and News Corp hate that aspect of the internet. In their eyes they should have been able to march in and set up NBCTube and Foxbook and reap millions - how the fuck did these startups clock them so throughly?
- Notice that every decent web company was set up by tech entrepeneurs and not these bigwig corporations. It's kind of sad to think what TV or radio could have been if they had been kept equally openabettertomorrow
- sad to think what TV or radio could have been if they had been kept equally openabettertomorrow
- sad to think what TV or radio could have been if they had been kept equally openabettertomorrow
- monNom0
I don't get it, are you guys in favour of comcast charging you more to build out the infrastructure to support netflix subscribers? shouldn't that cost be put back on netflix (and therfore its subscribers)?
it should be noted that your 1Mb residential connection is really 1Mb/s peak, which is allocated based on stop/start downloading of webpages, and generally during at home time (not office hours). If all of a sudden everyone is streaming 1Mb/s consistently, the whole pricing model for the exisiting infrastructure goes out the door.
- scarabin0
so, next on our plate is how to pirate internet access.
- monNom0
also important to note is this is 'last mile' infrastructure that needs to be built out to residential areas, not plugging in some more hardware in a datafarm.
- DrBombay0
I see your point but I pay almost 50 bucks a month for 7MB/sec down. So does everyone with that package. I use a lot of that bandwidth but I would reckon 75% use nowhere near that much bandwidth. So that is why I am like fuck Comcast.
- honestIy0
i don't think anyone (or at least very many) who went into the tech business thought to themselves "let's keep this cheap and difficult and no matter what we are not in it to get rich."
greed is good.
where do you think innovation comes from? maybe 1% is for the good of mankind, the other 99% wants a damn dollar.
- autoflavour0
bring back BBS ..
- SteveJobs0
that's a pretty bleak view of life, but even if that's true, the current model has been working fine, particularly in this last decade and such a radical change should not be up to a corporation, but rather the people.
- coming from your nick, i'm astounded you can look past the reality of my viewhonestIy
- because the real SJ doesn't mind 3rd world labor mining for battery minerals for his profit marginhonestIy
- i don't disagree entirely, but rather i think it's a lame basis for any such justification.SteveJobs
- you usually do disagree with me entirely so i'm not surprised by your soapboxhonestIy
- haha, do i? nothing personal :)SteveJobs
- Boz0
yep..ukit put it very well..
what this means if it gets sold out is that if you have a great startup and you have ideas.. you will have to pay something that none of the startups we know today as huge companies had issues with.
It is the most disgusting example of corporate control over something that should be completely free and where they should compete by investing more into their infrastructure and not trying to milk what they have already.
- abettertomorrow0
I think some of you are missing the point. Comcast and Netflix are competitors in the TV and movie business.
Currently I can pay $50+ a month for Comcast cable TV and even more for pay per view movies in the traditional model. Or I can pay $9.99 a month to stream much of that content over Netflix.
Now how can you possibly say Comcast doesn't have a conflict of interest here when they decide to target Netflix with a rate increase? They are killing off an innovative service to protect what is basically a monopoly in many parts of the country.
- i think the word basically can be removed from that statementhonestIy
- abettertomorrow0
Actually, read this, this guy explains it better than I can
- honestIy0
so let me get this straight, you're all complaining about net neutrality while pretty much every product available for sale was produced in a so called third world country usually at an equivalence to slave labor?
priority misalignment detected.
funny you care about the cost and ability to browse the net but working conditions for another human being is not your problem?
- ukit0
Of course the sell out politicians need a way to explain their selling out to the voters so you get crap like this.
Net neutrality is...what else..."Marxism." How dumb would you have to be to believe this guy? But for people who are hearing about the issue for the first time they probably will believe it.
- scarabin0
at least we got to live in the wild west of internet history
- lukus_W0
It's a pretty complex situation - and 'net neutrality' was a bad choice of term to describe it.
If you're an ISP, you have the ability to give favour to some types of traffic over other types of traffic - which is known as 'traffic shaping'. The main question revolves around whether ISPs should be able to engage in this practice traffic shaping; and - if so - to what degree.
Why would they want to? Well, I think there are legitimate and non-legitimate reasons for allowing an ISP to do this...
To a degree, I think most ISPs must need to employ 'balancing' to ensure that service is good for the consumer.
They might choose to supply less bandwidth to peer-to-peer networking, because they feel that the majority of the traffic being used by application like bit-torrent and kazaar is dubious on legal grounds, and it's negatively affecting delivery of other forms of traffic. While I don't think this is a great situation I can appreciate the reasoning.
I think problems come when an ISP responds to commercial pressures - and tried to exploit and extract value from them.
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For example, an ISP might feel that too much of their bandwidth is being taken up by streaming video. Youtube, iPlayer and Hulu all put a relatively high strain on networks - they might choose to limit the effect that these services have on their networks. Image that one of these sites might become aware that their users are unhappy about the limits in place - e.g. Hulu might be launching in a new territory and decide that if users in the new territory don't receive their streams via a higher bandwidth pipe, they're be less likely to make a strong impact.
So, in a case like this - should the Hulu be able to pay the ISP to supply a higher bandwidth service?
In an extreme case, an ISP could actually block services and sites from their customers when it suits them - either because they have a competing product, or because they're being paid to do so.
Deals between major corporations could possibly happen without the knowledge of consumers - but could potentially go a long way to shaping the commercial landscape for years to come.
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Apart from the corporate angle - there's another avenue to the net-neutrality debate that affects consumers in a more obvious way.
Different ISP customers have varying needs and different preferences.
For example, some people are into gaming. The ISPs could become wise to this fact and might choose to allow gamers less latency when playing first-person shooters. The ISPs could probably easily alter their traffic profiles to allow for this.
In cases like this, the ISP might feel that they're able to charge the user more money to receive an especially tailored 'gaming package' .. and - in my opinion - this is where the main trouble begins.
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If an ISP is reckless and decides to cut out a rival site from the internet, or gives obvious preference to one site over another, there's a strong likelihood that people will complain and protest. I think this provides an adequate safeguard against the worst from happening.
However, if ISPs start offering varying packages to consumers under the auspice of 'choice' - protest is far more difficult. All ISPs are in the business of making money, and - imo - most ISPs would be happy to change the way they sell their services if it's profitable to do so.
So, in the worst case scenario, we have a situation where we have to pick and choose which sites and services we want to have access to - and we have to pay extra to be provided with what we have now. The ISP would no-longer be seen as a passive-gatekeeper .. as it would be actively filtering, and shaping traffic - with the full consent of paying customers.
The basic brilliance of the net has been its ability to provide a reasonably level playing field for all. If this changes, the world will be a much darker place.
- abettertomorrow0
lol, there are also kids starving in Africa, whats your point? This is something that is being decided right now, that affects the tech/ web design industry directly.
- you care more about personal expectations than human welfare, don't wonder what's going wronghonestIy
- Anyway conditions in those countries, lets be honest here, are ultimately the responsibility of their own governmentsabettertomorrow
- Do you think workers there are worse off because American companies have manufacturing plants there?abettertomorrow
- yes the people are worse off when they have no option but to work for dick all for imperialistic american corporationsDodecahedron
- ....corporations.Dodecahedron
- Get back on topic.DrBombay
- No option? Really?abettertomorrow
- yeah in many cases. that or don't work considering all the other jobs are out of business or goneDodecahedron
- people in china, south pacific south america etc are literally forced to workDodecahedron
- No one should ever talk about anything except Americans indirectly enslaving the planet.DrBombay
- just sayingDodecahedron
- Canadians, Europeans and westernized Asia don't own iPods, they are only owned by AmericansDrBombay
- Gimme ur rare-earth metalzDrBombay
- i should say 'international corporations' because there's manyDodecahedron
- Not sure what it has to do with Net Neutrality.DrBombay
- because we're not supposed to talk about net neutrality if we don't care about poor people being exploited for computersDodecahedron
- I care damn it!Dodecahedron
- Dodecahedron0
Whatever happend to just buying your competition out?