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Net Neutrality
Date Saturday, April 20, 2024 - 04:59 AM PST
Topic Internet
| Net Neutrality:
A bandwagon article about more stupid greedy fucks who want to rule the world.
Many people have read the Popsci article about the implementation of a web toll. Well, now the shit is hitting the fan so to speak.
Their side:
A Washington Post article explains how large ISP's like AT&T, BellSouth, etc. want to start charging not only the consumers for using their internet but also companies like Google, Msn, and Yahoo, for using their lines. They feel that companies and pay a small fee to connect to the net but when they start offering bandwidth heavy services the ISP pays the price and gets no compensation for the added weight.
On top of that the economic concern of companies that provide internet services, outlined by FreePress, is that anyone with an internet connection and an idea can try it out. Quoted from the article:
Tech guru David Isenberg explains it this way: “A hobbyist collecting Pez dispensers could develop the idea to become Ebay. A couple of Stanford students could start Google and build a better search engine. Two guys in Europe could assemble a handful of programmers to invent Skype and threaten the trillion-dollar annual global tel-economy.”
So logically their point stands, ISP's want business and feel they arn't being compensated for the entire use of their wires. Multi-million dollar companies like Microsoft would gladly pay to be on top since free and open source projects like Unix, Skype, and Gaim steal their business. ISP's feel cheated by free and open source as well since they pay minimal amounts for their connections and ISP's get no compensation for everyone who downloads their products.
Our side:
Just like everyone else internet services like Google and eBay pay for their connection and pay for their bandwidth, then consumers also pay for their own connections and bandwidth. To me that seems like plenty of compensation. Viably, they are paying one internet company and using all the lines, but so is everyone else. All ISP's use all the other ISP's lines. All in all it works out pretty fairly. These companies already make millions of dollars, being picky over individual lines is simply being greedy.
On the corporate software and services side yes, free open source projects easily accessed on the internet CAN ruin your business. Tough break, it is unfortunate that million dollar companies like you can't make better software than bored college kids. It is also unfortunate that you price your software so high that most people are using cracked versions rather buying their own. Quoted (again) from FreePress:
The brilliance of this end-to-end network is that the intelligence resides at the edge of the network; the wires in between simply pass information between individual users. The network’s only job is to move data — not to stifle user innovation by selecting which services to privilege with higher speeds.
Free Internet helps small companies to grow and have their chance as well. It lets the user choose their own media. Most of our side rests on rights and freedoms, the right to choose, and right to equality. This bill would heavily compromise that. The internet is a thriving community for Independant companies, artists of all types, a great information network, and communication network.
A sort of twist:
In a slightly twisted perspective the passing of this bill could actually be beneficial from certain points of view. If this bill is passed, few people will stand for it. At least we would hope so, and if people don't stand for it, the will all switch ISP's leaving the large companies consumerless and hopefully they will all go bankrupt and leave the world a better place. Though given the amount of filtering in other popular media these days that is being stood for it doesn't seem so likely that enough sheep, I mean people, would rise up. And small companies would be too busy trying not to go completely bottom out.
One small catch - if this bill is passed it will only affect Americans since that is the country in which it is being passed. BUT this doesn't mean it won't spread and affect us all eventually. The internet is key to the growth of the future, unless we want to end up being run by companies - anyone read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood? That's where we're going. What baffles me most is the number of people who simply don't care or are not aware. Not just about this, but about everthing happening in the world. But this article isn't about the world, just this small freedom about to be snatched away for the sake of business.
Save the Internet
Save the Internet Myspace - with Moby and AskANinja ads :D
Sign the Petition, Tell people about it, Spread some Intelligence! God knows the world needs more intelligence. It's not like it takes a lot of time or energy to make just a small contribution to helping keep the Net Neutral. Hell, its FREE! But if the bill gets passed it might not be for very long!
| This article comes from Shmeng
http://www.shmeng.com/
The URL for this story is:
http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=818 |
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