[Four shots of espresso]

Never mind, theres probably another thread on this anyway...going to go look

Edited by Four shots of espresso, 26 April 2006 - 01:25 PM.

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Dont think we have had one.

Its a real and very present danger, the american congress is coming up to vote on removing the neutraility of the internet it would mean that companies controlled it.

[warriorscot]

Dont think we have had one.

Its a real and very present danger, the american congress is coming up to vote on removing the neutraility of the internet it would mean that companies controlled it.

[stettybet0]

so... what would that mean for the average internet user?

and how can Congress decide? its called the WORLD wide web for a reason... shouldn't every country have a say? and im american myself and i think thats wrong...

Edited by stettybet0, 26 April 2006 - 07:54 PM.

[Four shots of espresso]

Yea I couldn't find another thread on this either. It's not as serious as sites like savetheinternet.com think, they are an activist site so it's common practice to inflate an issue in order to garner support for their cause. It is, however a threat to the Internet of today. I can't say what would happen, worst case scenarios can be found by googling 'cope act' and 'net neutrality.' My advice is to get informed and make your own decisions, but approach it as an Internet enthusiast keeping tabs on legislation regarding their hobby (or perhaps livelihood), and not as a victim of big business witnessing the destruction of the Internet itself, which is impossible.

It's not so much Congress and the telcom's imposing their will on the Internet as it is ISP's favoring sites that pay for something like 'premium hosting.' Wouldn't affect the WORLD wide web, just what you see on your screen. It could just mean some sites are given a higher bandwidth ceiling, or it could mean a free webcomic or local library site loading slowly due to bandwidth being taken from them and given to Barnes and Noble. Bills like this tend to be fraught with loopholes allowing ridiculous amounts of corporate freedom to 'loot and pillage,' but who can say at this stage.

Edited by Four shots of espresso, 26 April 2006 - 09:40 PM.

[warriorscot]

Well its actually fairly important, the internet can operate without the US on a country by country basis however the servers that connect everyone and allow the internet to operate properly are located in the US, this would mean US ISPs could dictate global internet speeds.

It would also remove the equality of the internet stripping it of one of its more important features, no longer will everyone be treated equally you will have to pay for people to access your pages on a large scale quickly, the maintenance costs of large sites like this would have to pay more to allow so many people to effecetivley use this site.

Its a very important factor that the US congress is voting on the worlds internet, and while they have written law protecting the servers that control the whole systems neutrality(they had to if they didnt it would have destroyed the internet as it would have had to be moved probable to the UK or somewhere in Europe and who would pay for it and political factors would cause conflict). However they would hand over the way these communicate and all servers on the internet communicate essentially turning your "freeway" into an expensive toll road.

If passed it would fundamentaly alter the way the internet operates and it would no longer be what the internet is supposed to be.

[ScHwErV]

This comes very close to being one of the stupidest things I have read today.

Dont believe everything you read on the internet, especially from a site like save the internet.

[dsenette]

ScHwErV...it is an actual bill that is being voted on (i think the voting is starting today in fact) it will allow for tellecom's to charge different rates based on connection speed...so sites that want to be accessed via broadband will have to pay more for that privelage...(really hard to grasp but)...basically...a site like google would pay (and be able to pay without problems due to their large revenues) the U.S. telecoms a premium so that their site would always be accessed via the fastest connections available....a site like www.momandpopstore.com (not a real site) wouldn't be able to pay those premiums so all traffic going to and from their sites would automatically get routed onto the slowest lines... not SOOO bad of an issue in general (though it would suck for us as i'm sure admin isn't gonna pay a premium for us to get the sweet sweet fast connection)...the biggest issues here is that the open wording of the bill could in theory give ISP's and telcos the right to actually govern what's hosted and accessible...such as political websites that they don't agree with or anti isp websites like www.at&tsucks.com (if it existed)....

[dsenette]

http://www.chiefengi...ontent/2435.htm

[Nick-YF19]

This has been milling around for awhile now. When Vonage and others started to really promote their VOIP service, the cable companies (some also do telephony) and the telephone companies didn't like having someone make money for something they charge for over their own Internet lines. That and seeing other companies make money (Google, Amazon) while they get nothing. For regular people, there's no plan to downgrade everyone's site to dial up speed if they don't pay. That'd be stupid. It's for the site owners to pay more to have a higher speed. If Vonage didn't pay, then they'd have lower speed and that would likely break the telephone connection.

In the end, it's a bunch of crap. You don't pay more or less if you call a business on the phone to buy something. Whether you call a friend to talk or a store to buy something makes no difference in the call. So whether you go to Google or some unknown site shouldn't matter either.

[warriorscot]

What do you mean it does cost more to phone a corporation they usually use higher rate numbers, it doesnt cost the phone company any different it just costs you this is the opposite but for the internet more people who need to use your site then youll have to pay more for it.

At the moment its equal and neutral everyone has the same rights to service, what they want is to restrict it and commodify that, and on order to achieve that the little guys will get shafted for those who can afford to have the better service the network capacity wouldnt increase it would just be redistributed to placse which generate more profit for the company it would also allow companies discretion as to who could have such services.

It wont affect normal internet users speed so much as it would affect the speed of what they want to see. This shouldnt be the way the internet is operated, the situation wouldnt be so bad if the US networks had the extra capacity to allow for this commodification to allow sites to have the extra capacity without compromising the extra service however from what i read they simply pocketed the money given to them to improve the network and used it for there own profit not upgrading the infrastructure.

[Nick-YF19]

I don't know how things work in Scotland, but it doesn't cost me any different to call the car dealer to see if my car is ready than it does to call a friend at home. In fact many companies have 800 numbers which cost people nothing to call. Companies pay more because they have business plans, but cost per call doesn't change depending on whether it's a business or a private person called.

[warriorscot]

Well generally you have various costs very few places have such a thing as a flat rate phone system mostly call are charged on a distance basis although not always, most places have special rates wether calls are local or international is a larger example it doesnt cost the phone company anymore to route my call to say gibraltar than it does to the house down the street but they bill you more to phone gibraltar just because its further away, it costs me less to phone my friends at uni that it does to phone the my local supermarket or car dealership because those are on national rates not local even though they are local, from the time ive spent in america call schemes were quite similar with local, standard, international, premium rates. What this legislation would mean is that companies could charge more for levels of service or the number of users visiting a site, they could in theory charge sites on per visitor basis if they wanted to they could also deny service to sites which the disagree with and charge companies with sites with certain content more for the service.

[warriorscot]

http://www.publickno...ge.org/node/307 there is a video here that seems to explain some stuff about net neutrality quite well.