Quote:
Originally posted by John D Harris:
quote:
Originally posted by shamrock_uk:
Sorry to disagree, but...
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I admit, that if this were only ISP's, then a problem wouldn't exist.
The big telecom companies however, physically own huge swathes of internet infrastructure, leasing the use of it to individual ISP's. The capability to create a two speed internet is certainly within their power.
Of course, their defense is that enough bandidth exists for all and it wouldn't make market sense for them to do so in any case.
However, with the principle of neutrality rapidly disappearing from US law, we have no guarantee that when it does make market sense to discriminate that they won't do so.
The exact wording of the amendment was:
Even if net neutrality is a "solution looking for a problem" as the teleco's allege, it's an amendment that any reasonable person would agree was in the public's interest.
But if there are dissenting voices, I'll edit the title to be a little less definitive 
Edit: Lots of 'em as I think I misunderstood Bungleau
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Long time no talk Sham, just out of idle couriousity do you own any phsyiclly? do you want the government or others dictating what you can do with what you own? If you own things that the government and others can and do dictate to you what you can do with them how do you like it? Why should the telecomunications industry be any differant then you?
Second paragraph in the background article:"The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is considering making changes to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and one of the ideas being floated is that network providers should be allowed to offer preferential service to some of their customers instead of providing a neutral data carrier service."
Big whoppty doo! So somebody else want to give their customer preferential treatment, "Hale" if anybody out there works for a living they ARE allready doing that. If one of your customers wants something you do your best to deliver or you lose them as customers. If they are not your customer the ONLY reason you MIGHT give them preferential treatment IS in hopes you can make them your customer.
EDIT: I couldn't pass this up, from the same background info.: "Those in favour of "network neutrality" and keeping the current model of the internet as just a data conduit include big hitters such as Google, eBay, Amazon and even Microsoft.
They know it will cost them more if they have to pay to get their video delivered to users.
The phone and cable companies want to be free to charge for new services and make more money, and they argue that it's not up to the government what they do with their networks."
HMMMMMMMMMM it seems that it's NOT ok for the phone and cable guys to make money, but is ok for MIRCOSOFT not to have to spend more money? Rule#1 in business "Money in MUST excede money out!" if not you don't make money. So microsoft is ok to make money by trying to lower money out, that's ok. "HALE" I'll bet dollars to donuts the writer of the article was several years ago piss'n & moun'n about microsoft and anll the money it's making, now he/sge wants to hold microsoft up as something to be admired? Well spank my rear end an paint it purple. [/QUOTE]*Gets can of purple spray paint*...Actually, I do lease a domain, and I have content up for people to browse, and hopefully buy. Some have, BTW. I already pay to have the domain hosted, and to be able to provide the content. Now, along comes the telecom companies saying, "OK, you can only get guarenteed hits on your site if you pay us too". Why? I'm no where near e-bay, or Yahoo, or Microsoft for income, but this would cause me to have to pay whoever to make sure that when people click the link to my site that they actually get there? Hey, I realize that you have to spend money to make money, but I sure shouldn't have to spend more money than I make. The fact is, people that lease bandwidth from the telecom companies are already paying to get their information out there, and now the telecom companies want more. The problem is, where does it end? Am I going to have to shut down my site because I can't afford to pay 5k a year to guarentee hits when people click an existing link, to an existing site? If that's the case, it's going to bring places like this, YouTube, and other sites that provide free entertainment/information to a stand still. No more Wikipedia? People that don't have the money to pay to guarentee the stuff they have already paid to host gets hits will quickly die, virtually anyway. My site included. If they doubled my current plan price, I'd have to shut down. What would happen to IW? I've donated when I can to help keep it running, but what happens if the costs double?
So, while it may seem to be a harmless piece of legislation, it can actually do a lot of harm to a lot of "little guys", because we won't be able to compete. I don't know how much competing I really do right now, but I do know that if you click the link in my sig, you will get to my site. If the telecom companies get their way, you'll get a 404 error, even if I do still have my site up, because I couldn't pay them to be sure you got directed there.