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The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

neocities.org

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Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#3
You know what communicated the perils of Net Brutality to me? Images like this one:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2009/10/29/net-neutrality-what-it-cou...

Websites being reduced to cable-like add ons. Just terrible.

Edit: I followed the chain of blog spam attribution all the way back to the original source of the Net Neutrality graphic:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9yj1f/heres_a_new_scen...

Edit2: Another similar example: http://images.appleinsider.com/netneutrality091808.png

Apparently this was a big deal in 2009.

Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#4
This is worthwhile read that makes some good points.

But it should be noted that net neutrality is only a restriction on data carriers. It is not a restriction on sites or hosting services.

FTA:

> And combined with geographical data, I could do some serious discrimination on the internet. For example, I could compile an IP block list of the most conservative places in the country, and prevent them from accessing my site. I could use demographics to do this in some very exotic ways. I could block districts that have high percentages of minorities, or the highest rates of heterosexual couples, or the youngest population, or the highest percentage of mental health problems.

And he could still do all that even if net neutrality were enforced by law/regulation. Comcast couldn't do it, but he could.

Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#6

This is worthwhile read that makes some good points. But it should be noted that net neutrality is only a restriction on data carriers. It is not a restriction on sites or hosting services. FTA: > And combined with geographical data, I could do some serious discrimination on the internet. For example, I could compile an IP block list of the most conservative places in the country, and prevent them from accessing my s…

The big difference being that Comcast is (in many places) a monopoly. Neocities isn't.

Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#8
I think the author has it a bit wrong. If the KKK decides they want to try to prevent African Americans from visiting their website, that doesn't really have anything to do with network neutrality.

The relevant network neutrality issue is: Your ISP oversubscribes its peering link to the wider internet, so people in your ISP's service area who visit the NAACP's website to watch a video of a speech by a civil rights leader won't be able to see it. Meanwhile your ISP's Fox News affiliate comes in loud and clear to inform you of the dangers of welfare queens and anchor babies. (Feel free to substitute videos on the Tea Party website and your ISP's MSNBC affiliate if it better matches your political leanings.)

Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#9
I think I'm out of the loop a bit on the chain of events. Last I heard, the FCC were the ones holding back the tide by classifying ISPs in a way that prevented them from limiting bandwidth. And then recently a court stripped them of this ability, opening the gates for ISPs to manage their bandwidth how they wanted. Is there a step somewhere after this that I missed where the FCC turned into the enemy? It seems strange to be protesting the FCC like this, when afaik they were the ones who were on our side for so long.

But please, someone correct me if I am wrong. I'm not as knowledgeable as I'd like to be on this.

Re: The "fast lane" to Internet civil war

#10

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." Good luck with government regulation of your network.

I'm not sure what you're getting at...

I can at the very least vote for the people who are writing laws and making policy. The people, via democratic government, have (theoretically) some influence on how the network is to be administered and regulated.

If rules are left to the whims of a single monopoly or a small oligopoly of network providers, the only options are "take it" or "leave it."

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