Net Nutrality Is A Serious Issue what do you think is net nutrality a serious issue?

[talktime 0]

Net nutrality is a serious issue according to Sir Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the web.
This is something that has potential to affect the future of the internet. here are some notes from his blog.

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.I blogged on net neutrality before, and so did a lot of other people. (see eg, Danny Weitzner, SaveTheInternet.com, etc). Since then, some telecommunications companies spent a lot of money on public relations and TV ads, and the US House seems to have wavered from the path of preserving net neutrality. There has been some misinformation spread about. So here are some clarifications.
Net neutrality is this:
If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.
That's all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.
Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.
Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.
There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past - it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.
Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) There is a very strong short-term incentive for a company to grab control of TV distribution over the Internet even though it is against the long-term interests of the industry.
Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.
Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.
I hope that Congress can protect net neutrality, so I can continue to innovate in the internet space. I want to see the explosion of innovations happening out there on the Web, so diverse and so exciting, continue unabated.

What do you guys think? Please also mention any new info you have on this topic along with your comments.

Notice from pyost:

When copying content from other web sites, be sure to use the QUOTE tag and specify the source. Posting a text without doing this is considered plagiarism, which is not allowed at Xisto.

Edited November 4, 2006 by pyost (see edit history)

[unimatrix 0]

The big issue is providers wanting to charge you at both ends of the pipe. Not only for connecting to the internet, but to connect to that page on the other end. I've heard a lot about the idea if anyone can figure out a micropayments scheme for content (as a way of making ad revenue for sites) but I think that could turn against the internet as companies would figure out a way to use that to charge for looking at web pages.

[Arbitrary 0]

Of course we'd all hope that the Internet won't have any third parties clamming up in the middle. But shouldn't we have all learned that never works? The government won't support our cause if they find that the ISPs have a more appealing (whether economically or otherwise) incentive. To answer your question, it is a serious issue. No one wants to have to pay more to access certain sites; that's just not supporting the Constitutional idea of equality for all. (Though I suppose if you don't live in the U.S. that may or may not apply to you) If certain sites are available to all users while other sites cost a few extra bucks, the average user would end up forgoing info.Personally, I don't think this would happen. ISPs can try, but they're only going to succeed if the big companies support them. If they only get a few small companies that are hungry for profit to back them up, then they won't get anywhere. And in all truth, I don't see how big companies can benefit from this--they'd generate more income if they just didn't charge their visitors the extra buck.Oh, and by the way, don't forget to quote your post, otherwise it's against Xisto's policies that posts not written by you cannot be counted for as credits.

Edited November 4, 2006 by Arbitrary (see edit history)

[DrK3055A 0]

It seems quite a paradox, at current times, that most countries give support to globalization (basically for free flow of money among corporations), but when it concerns to free flow of information, this becomes a fight that involves the ones willing to get the informational monopoly, that is, the main corporations for media content. This has been proven successfulness for ideas that state that free doesn't necessary mean "cost-free", but big corporations have in mind the idea that if there are 2 services, one is tax-free, and the other is of some cost, then user's choice will be the first one. If the non-free alternative can't compete to the free one, then the corp behind that service will try to eliminate competence. They won't accept that the business is over. One such example come from Record Label Companies, that don't accept that a physical format for music (CD-AUDIO) is dead, and the future for music is online transfers to players, cell phones, etc. Instead of developing tools for that new and revolutionary point of view, they try to restrict, or avoid the use of such technology, by implementing DRMs, and propietary formats that need to hold somehow license taxes for being traded with. But i think that technology develops faster than those restrictions (it recalls to my mind the case of DeCSS, and every electronics company sell DVD burners) but it's been always the same thing, it happened with the coming of video-tape technology at 70's (that movie factories tried to forbid without any success, neither with macrovision limitation)If corporations want to set a fee for internet content, there it will always come up an alternative that will be free and much better (i don't intend to mean costless).This is a battle that companies have lost from the begining.

Edited November 5, 2006 by DrK3055A (see edit history)

[beatgammit 0]

I read a book called Net Force (its actually a series, but this is the first book) by Tom Clancy. It was about a gov't agency that patrols the internet looking for cyber-terrorists. I think that, while this is a noble goal, gov'ts should not have a finger in the internet.The internet is a place where people can freely exchange ideas. The only time that action should be taken is when copyrights are being infringed. If this were not the case, professional media (like music and movies) might cease to exist because they do not make enough money to make it worth their while. If this line is crossed, where action is taken outside of copyright laws, then we could end up with an internet that is controlled by a corporation, thus ending the free exchange of ideas. I like how Google is handling their dominance in the search world. They seek to control the world's information and only use this information to create add revenues. They do not use their huge power to take over other sectors of the internet, only focusing on search and services (like email and video). Regulations can be good, but as we see from George Orwell's 1984, once the gov't oversteps their bounds, there is no stopping gov't (or a very powerful company for that matter).Thus, I support the net nutrality act.

[talktime 0]

During april 2006 Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce subcommittee denied a proposal that would have levied extensive regulations on broadband providers and forcibly prevented them from offering higher-speed video services to partners or affiliates. By an 8-to-23 margin, the committee members rejected a Democratic-backed Net neutrality amendment to a current piece of telecommunications legislation. The amendment had attracted support from companies including Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. According to them such a change to the legislation was very critical. Now after the mid term election with the Democrat controlled senate There is a possibility that net nutrality amendment will be accepted.Net nutrality is definately benificial for consumers and i think they should pass the amendment.

Edited November 14, 2006 by talktime (see edit history)

[kapnkrunch 0]

I understand the concerns regarding Net Neutrality but what can realistically be done in North America? The web as we know it exists because private companies have invested in the infrastructure to carry Internet signals. If a TV station partnered with, say, Coca-Cola they'd be well within their rights not to air Pepsi ads. I don't see how a broadband provider could be justifiably told that they could not restrict access to websites owned by their competitors.A dilemma, for sure, but unavoidable, in my opinion.