Net Neutrality

[Grayvon]

I just had this video sent to me through stumbleupon and I wanted to share it. It makes me so mad!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4332830819848713435

Pass it on!

[KN]

I'm still pissed that the US gets to **** up the Internet while everyone else uses it.

I'd be in favour of bombing Capitol Hill just for that.

[kytanos]

I wouldnt favor that. but id favor a massive protest to capital hill. If i were to hear of one pro-videogame or pro-internet. Id go...seriusly... id pay the money. grab a months worth of food and water: Usually hard to get during massive gatherings: and gotta keep more just incase. and make my own picket sign

[MUTANT SPUD]

The state of the Australian broadband network, seen in the terms laid out in the video, starts to make sense. We have one company in control of the infrastructure and it's part government owned, they are also the provider of the Newscorp owned cable TV service. A possible solution would be to develop a secondary internet, much like ham radio, it must be within the realms of possibility.

[ZippyDSMlee]

Time warner wants to cap bandwidth and Comcast is in trouble for creative throttling, hell we in the US already have a tiered net its just the goverment dosent know it yet....

[Cigawoot]

Time warner wants to cap bandwidth and Comcast is in trouble for creative throttling, hell we in the US already have a tiered net its just the goverment dosent know it yet....

Capping bandwidth indiscriminately is one thing, purposefully interfering with traffic is another. As long as they are open and upfront about any type of capping they do, and its done in a fair and reasonable manner I'm fine with that. Comcast tried to cover up their censorship of bittorrent traffic, got caught, and is now in hot water.

Net Neutrality is important to maintain the internet as we know it. The Internet is the last thing we've got that isn't unduly regulated or controlled by corporations. The only reason a politician would not support Net Neutrality is to suck corporate @$$. In that case, they don't deserve our vote either.

That is all.

[ConstantNeophyte]

Capping bandwidth indiscriminately is one thing, purposefully interfering with traffic is another. As long as they are open and upfront about any type of capping they do, and its done in a fair and reasonable manner I'm fine with that. Comcast tried to cover up their censorship of bittorrent traffic, got caught, and is now in hot water...

Yeah, but I thought they were capping people on a supposedly "unlimited" plan.

[Cigawoot]

Yeah, but I thought they were capping people on a supposedly "unlimited" plan.

I was talking about Warner's capping. What they want to do is offer limited bandwidth for people who don't want to pay for an unlimited line. As long as they are open and frank about their practices, I have no problems with it.

I do have a problem for Comcast because they are being deceptive about it.

There's a difference between "Come use our interwebz! UNLIMITED ACCESS 40 A MONTH! (bandwidth limits may apply)" and "Come use our interwebz! Get 5000 GB of transfer per month!"

[ZippyDSMlee]

I was talking about Warner's capping. What they want to do is offer limited bandwidth for people who don't want to pay for an unlimited line. As long as they are open and frank about their practices, I have no problems with it.

I do have a problem for Comcast because they are being deceptive about it.

There's a difference between "Come use our interwebz! UNLIMITED ACCESS 40 A MONTH! (bandwidth limits may apply)" and "Come use our interwebz! Get 5000 GB of transfer per month!"

they want to do the later, cap it at XGB a month.

[Cigawoot]

they want to do the later, cap it at XGB a month.

It would be messed up if they said "Come use our interwebz! 50 GB transfer per month! (unlimited for select partners)"

[ZippyDSMlee]

It would be messed up if they said "Come use our interwebz! 50 GB transfer per month! (unlimited for select partners)"
They can just drop the unlimited part and say high speed board band,hughes net dose this even if you try and downlaod 1GB and you are put on 5.0KBPS for a day...

[MUTANT SPUD]

they want to do the later, cap it at XGB a month.
Telstra, my ISP seem to throttle whenever they feel like it, I'm on a 12 GB plan but surprise, surprise last month the service was throttled after 9GB, last night I went to bed and the service was at a crawl, first of the month today and its back to normal.

[Cigawoot]

Telstra, my ISP seem to throttle whenever they feel like it, I'm on a 12 GB plan but surprise, surprise last month the service was throttled after 9GB, last night I went to bed and the service was at a crawl, first of the month today and its back to normal.

Hmm... as far as I know Mediacom Online is 100% unlimited. I haven't noticed any screwing of bandwidth or specific traffic (bittorrent included). Any downtime I had with that provider was my fault.

Of course, since the service costs over 50 a month, I'd be pissed if they were throttling it.

[ZippyDSMlee]

Telstra, my ISP seem to throttle whenever they feel like it, I'm on a 12 GB plan but surprise, surprise last month the service was throttled after 9GB, last night I went to bed and the service was at a crawl, first of the month today and its back to normal.

they want to move from hidden throttling to on the recored limiting everyones bandwidth.

[MUTANT SPUD]

they want to move from hidden throttling to on the recored limiting everyones bandwidth.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/07/2112130.htm
This is the company I'm unfortunate to have a contract with.

"We are only going to participate in the things that we own and control," the paper quotes him (Sol Trujillo; Telstra CEO) as saying.
This statement is particularly telling. I pay $70 Australian (US $62, UK 32 pounds ) a month for their (expletive) service. Theres no conspiracy afoot they're pretty open about it, if they get their upstream filtering in place, on their network, on their terms..well we'll see what sort of internet we get. They also control the feeble excuse we have for cable tv in this country.
And whats more Australia is often used as a proving ground for unpalatable products ,marketing styles and public policy, Tony Blair was a disciple of our former Prime Minister Keating who in turn was Awfully cosy the dictators to our north (Suharto, Mahathir, Lee Kwan Yew et al).
We wont quite get Big Brother, more like Overweight Smothering Auntie, telling us not to go outside without a hat and not to look at Por....em..ahem.."artistic websites".

[ZippyDSMlee]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/07/2112130.htm
This is the company I'm unfortunate to have a contract with.

"We are only going to participate in the things that we own and control," the paper quotes him (Sol Trujillo; Telstra CEO) as saying.
This statement is particularly telling. I pay $70 Australian (US $62, UK 32 pounds ) a month for their (expletive) service.

it could be worse I was on sat net and at 140$ a month for 5KBS-200KBS but mostly 5KBS speeds due to network shaping....

thats why the Asian governments forced some of their company's to behave, they forced them to get it in place and charge a mediocre rate for it, while the US and other country's are like 30 years olds being fed of mommas tit..... theres comes a point and time were government must push the interests of business aside for the people....

[MUTANT SPUD]

Yeah well we could have the Chinese style of internet, you're right it could be worse, but knowing Australians they'll just sit back and let it slip away. No matter!, we'll all just have to go back to forming social clubs, trade unions and political parties in which to communicate and distribute ideas. You'll probably see me in a few years in some basement cranking the handle of a Gestetner machine printing video game reviews for underground distribution:D

[ZippyDSMlee]

Yeah well we could have the Chinese style of internet, you're right it could be worse, but knowing Australians they'll just sit back and let it slip away. No matter!, we'll all just have to go back to forming social clubs, trade unions and political parties in which to communicate and distribute ideas. You'll probably see me in a few years in some basement cranking the handle of a Gestetner machine printing video game reviews for underground distribution:D

I was refring to japan,taiwan and other places that planed out their boardband infrastructures better.

It took Jp 1-2 years to out pace us in speed and availability.

[MUTANT SPUD]

Yeah but even Italy is putting in a new fast system, faster even than the one proposed for Australia, everyone is outpacing the so called "Developed nations". Ok granted Australia has a tiny population and we're miles from anywhere but the government is swimming in cash from mining export taxes, they could take the 4-5 billion out of petty cash and just build the darn thing in 2 or 3 years. To get things done you need to re- nationalise a lot of services and that just aint gonna happen, It'd be nice but it's a pipe dream.

[ZippyDSMlee]

Yeah but even Italy is putting in a new fast system, faster even than the one proposed for Australia, everyone is outpacing the so called "Developed nations". Ok granted Australia has a tiny population and we're miles from anywhere but the government is swimming in cash from mining export taxes, they could take the 4-5 billion out of petty cash and just build the darn thing in 2 or 3 years. To get things done you need to re- nationalise a lot of services and that just aint gonna happen, It'd be nice but it's a pipe dream.

the government can regulate them and force them through taxes and fees to behave of coarse it would help if the government was not their lap dog....

[Thomas John Lloyd Kastner]

I believe that getting the government involved might be a bit premature. There has to be alternative methods of getting this accomplished without making a deal with the devil. I completely understand why many individuals support Net Neutrality but I simply am not comfortable working with the government to get it done. The US Government isn't exactly the biggest fan of the game industry or the internet. What exactly makes you think we can trust them?

Perhaps I'm being a bit too conservative but I think we ought to show some interest in finding new methods that may work this problem out. There has got to be something else besides basically telling the government that we are dependent upon them and need them to help us every time we run into trouble. Independence is always the more dangerous and difficult path but it is always more rewarding in the end.

I honestly believe many underestimate the power of the consumer.

To be clear I am not against all the ideas of Net Neutrality. It is a very important issue and will effect us greatly. But jumping the gun and becoming allies with the very people that are likely to eventually take away our e-freedoms is a very scary thing to me. I believe in a small government and a free market. This situation can definitely be solved without government intervention, but first we must explore our options.

[S3al]

well from what I understand about this. They only want to reduce upload limit. Because all those guys seeding torrents are uploading crap all day, and they are sucking the net provider dry. So in a sense, this is a good thing. It will help reduce piracy, maybe. On the other hand, for people who run tons of game servers, this wont be good. Because they need the upload speed. I would have to see about the upload cap they want to put on it to know if it will be good or destroy everything.

[ZippyDSMlee]

well from what I understand about this. They only want to reduce upload limit. Because all those guys seeding torrents are uploading crap all day, and they are sucking the net provider dry. So in a sense, this is a good thing. It will help reduce piracy, maybe. On the other hand, for people who run tons of game servers, this wont be good. Because they need the upload speed. I would have to see about the upload cap they want to put on it to know if it will be good or destroy everything.

Not really they want to blame the 10-20% for all thier troubles and go after them, they are the ones who refuse to create plans that limit speeds,examples

10$ 100KBPS down/20 up
25$ 250 down/30 up
35$ 250/40
45$ 400/50
70 800+/50

50$ 100/100
85$ 200/200
99 500+/500

Of course if they do anything to the speeds publicly they will lose customers to those that throttle behind consumers back, its there own damn fault for being greedy and then yelling unlimited and then whine when a few people DARE to use the service fully!

[Tank]

I just got this in my e-mail...I'm a Canadian, so I can't really do anything, but I figured I'd post it here.

This Thursday, the House of Representatives is expected to hand phone companies a get-out-of-jail-free card for illegally turning over your private phone records to the government. I don’t have to tell you how wrong this is.
We have 48 hours to stop them. Tell your U.S. representative that you oppose any effort to cover-up illegal spying on Americans. We will deliver the letter before Thursday's vote.

Tell your U.S. representative: No Cover Up (https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=245)

This is vital to protecting your basic right to make a phone call, send an e-mail or search the Internet without the government monitoring your activity.
After intense lobbying by AT&T, Verizon and the Bush White House, the Senate has already signed off on immunity for these companies. If the House passes the FISA bill this week, more than 40 legitimate lawsuits currently pending against phone companies will disappear before they've begun.
Americans have had their rights violated, and now Congress may pass a bill that gives us no legal remedy. When you are accused of breaking the law, you should have your day in court. Neither the phone companies nor this White House is above the law.
By signing this letter you are calling upon both your representative and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stand firmly beside the American public and against the destruction of the rule of law.


Tell your U.S. representative: Don’t Surrender Our Civil Liberites (https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=245)

Please sign the letter to Congress and then forward this email to your friends.
It is time for profound change in this country. It starts with our representatives standing their ground over Americans' basic liberties and the rule of law. Tell them that the era of kowtowing to the White House and corporate lobbyists is over.
Thank you,
Josh Silver
Executive Director

Free Presswww.freepress.net
P.S. Please visit our friends at ACLU for more information about the FISA bill and spying by phone companies.