PC MAG
"The Justice Department this week issued its support for a tiered approach to Internet service, and said that the imposition of net neutrality laws would hinder the continued growth of the Web."

also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

All the better to control us when they control the internet.

Holy shit. This is bad. Bu$h administration, bought and paid for.

all nations follow

Total bullshit. Where is the proof from the "Justice Department"?

sigh, so depressing...

Here you go Rotty
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20625194/

The Justice Department is asking why is it incumbent upon Federal regulatory agencies to stop the web service providers market from providing more options at more cost to customers who want better service (and thus put better technology in the ground and in the air to provide these better services). Painting the issue as entirely encompassed by the situation in which a service provided for some reason would charge extra money to see certain sites is very deceptive, and if such actions were anti-competitive, well there are laws against that already.

With all the Ron Paul sifts splashing around on the sift I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has commented on how poorly this clip portrays the situation. "Net Neutrality" sounds like a bad thing to give up, but please read more about it and post more good comments before you jump on board! (props to Fed for some good ones up there)

Seriously... Oh, but one of the two guys who developed the most popular internet application (www.) is against it? Must be bad! ...come on. Critical thinking! Woop-woop!

Bamdrew, I don't entirely understand your comment, but I've looked into net neutrality, and can say that I do understand the issue pretty well (being that I used to be a telecom engineer and such)and have formed my opinion that without net neutrality, the telecom giants want to have a multi-tierd internet whereas they can charge a "premium" to websites to have their site run on a higher bandwidth. Guess what, if you don't pay them the premium, your site gets stuck in the slow lane making it harder for people to access your site.
That is just one of many negative things that would happen. You saying it would bring about better technologies doesn't make any sense. It would allow them to charge the consumers extra for content, much like having to pay for premium tv channels now, whereas the current model is akin to getting access to all channels equally for the individual to decide which they prefer. The only technologies that would be created are ones in which providers can monitor and label and charge websites and consumers.

Net Neutrality is telecommunications firms trying to charge you for the tubes, a way to pass onto the consumer the large infrastructural costs they do not want to undertake themselves as net services become better.

When they can charge you for the various tubes, they can price the tubes accordingly, like TV channels. So you if you want the VS tube it will be one price, the HBO tube will be another price, and of course various Tube packages will also be available. Content control and price control get introduced into the Internet.

Large telecommunication firms have million dollar PR and lobby groups that keep pressing on Washington to 'deregulate' the internet into a subset of services, under the guise of providing faster internet services. In reality all they want to do is break up the internet into subsectors, so they can can compete not only base line broadband speed but access to websites and of course pass all the costs associated on to the consumer, getting away from having to invest in it themselves.

It's the exact same argument they had a few years back about 'deregulating' local TV stations, so that 'more choice' could be given to consumers. In reality large TV corps swooped in and bought local stations up, consolidated their market power at the expense of locally generated content or news.

^no.

it's not like TV, because there is not a restriction on spectrum of the internet (i.e. there can be 234857093487562309586703498750348503890 websites but there cannot be so many TV channels) and also because the high production costs of TV make it totally different, and TV is old. Bad comparison. I agree that "deregulating" TV meant large corps swallowing local stations, but i don't see the same happening on the internet, or anyway i don't see the "exact" comparison.

Also AOL and Compuserve and Microsoft already tried restricting the internet to their customers, and look where it got them... eventually they were forced to play along. it's just not cost effective to employ 39853987539 editors, and people demand choice more than ever now they are used to it on the internet.

Do you know anyone that would pay an ISP to give them only facebook and youtube? lol! And if they did... so what?

Do you think suddenly there will be a "tube" called "terrorist network" where they will put all the 9/11 conspiracy sites and charge $7999 per hour to suppress the truth? lol!!!

About different sites being in the "slow lane" well, you know, i can't afford hosting as fast as Fox can. So what exactly are you talking about with this "slow lane" shit? I have seen many sites struggle to survive when their popularity raises their hosting bill and melts their server. How is net neutrality protecting them?

The main point is that at the moment the internet is NOT regulated, and if this legislation passes then it WILL be regulated, and we shouldn't be handing that regulatory power to the government. That's the Ron Paul argument.

I think some people just want 29384795 gigs of free movies and don't want to pay extra... isn't that right guys?

The gov't keeps handing things to telco's - where's our fiber to the curb? Japan is kicking ass in broadband, because they have real competition:

"Now, 10 years ago Japan had slower internet than the U.S. So they looked to the U.S. to see how to do it -- and they saw that the U.S. had open access laws (where in the old days, companies could buy access to the lines at wholesale rates -- which is why there was an ISP on every corner in the 90s) and decided they were key."

Its not like tv...yet. They would love to merge TV and internet and control all aspects of content and service. They would make it cost prohibited for the little guy to have a web page about his dog or whatever unless that webpage was a part of a larger site like myspace or whatever, and they would be able to charge MYSPACE a premium to allow it to be accessed by its users in the "fast lane". Therefore they wouldnt directly charge consumers for content (yet) but they would be able to cash in on websites who want to be accessed faster. Secondly, with regulation, they could screen content on any site, set it up with a rating and limit peoples ability to gain access to a certain rating, either altogether, or without paying extra fees (for adult sites for instance).
Personally, I think government should quit regulating every aspect of our lives. They are not there when you need them, they are only there when they need your funds.

"About different sites being in the "slow lane" well, you know, i can't afford hosting as fast as Fox can. So what exactly are you talking about with this "slow lane" shit?"

Its called bandwidth, the more you have the faster the site loads. You are confusing amount of bandwidth in content versus speed of more bandwidth.

"How is net neutrality protecting them?"

Net Neutrality protects free market and doesn't allow someone to regulate content on the net. Oh, but it's coming I'm sure.

aha! devil's advocate bid paid off!

Seriously though, all the wild hypotheticals are what I really wanted to address. TV and radio are totally different stories. Show me some non-fiction evidence that removal of federal regulations will lead to successful corporate regulation of content on the net. The crux of the Justice Department's position is that a free market would not allow this to happen; as long as you have choice for your ISP and ISP companies are not acting anti-competitively (anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws already exist), I see nothing but fear of corporate America as a driving factor for continuing federally imposed restraints on the market. What if it were the other way around, and the federal government wanted to 'protect' us from a tiered market system in which we pay for a level of bandwidth and get what we pay for? Theres always opposition to change. I don't find the hypotheticals convincing.

(oh, and at grahamslam, I said "put better technology in the ground and in the air", as-in existing technology, not magically spur engineers to develop new equipment... like your name, by-the-way...)

since the consumer has already demonstrated their resistance to controlled content, this seems suspiciously like lobbyists hired to push the idea upon government so the consumer will no longer have that choice.

Businesses stand to gain a lot of money, hence the lobbying effort, but show me how a free market (constrained by anti-trust/anti-monoply laws) would move towards controlled content. I can IMAGING the slippery slope, but don't see the evidence for why it would certaintly happen.

"Net Neutrality protects free market and doesn't allow someone to regulate content on the net."

well, no, net neutrality regulation restricts the free market. apparently in a free market there would be no net neutrality because that's not what the market wants. (whether or not that is bad is another argument)

"Its called bandwidth, the more you have the faster the site loads. You are confusing amount of bandwidth in content versus speed of more bandwidth."

I certainly am confused... what's the difference, rich people can afford more, nike can have a bigger flashier faster website than my local shoe shop, you get what you pay for, and theoretically in a free market everybody gets more for less.

There is definitely an issue with competition, I for example have no choice of provider, therefore shitty expensive connection. I would think activists would worry more about that than about rupert murdoch buying the whole internet.

Remember that these big companies don't give a shit how they make money, meaning if millions of people make interesting websites, they will sell access to that at a competitive rate, they don't really care about spreading the NWO, it's just that in the old world of TV and press they got tempted to control things and make more money, NWO is where the money was.

Now i think they realise (for example) that they don't know shit about music, and they are trying to find ways to monetize independent music. They will change to whatever is most profitable. I think they would find it hard to convince everyone to buy into a fucked up corporate internet... it was much easier with TV and press. They tried with the internet, but I don't think they can succeed, and it think they will always fail. The internet was built to survive nuclear war ffs! wooha!

^call me in 2020 and laugh at me if i was wrong lol

>> ^MINK:
^call me in 2020 and laugh at me if i was wrong lol

Sorry, can't. Verizon won't let sip packets to your phone number through the data center in Pittsburgh, unless you remember to pay your "let people in Pittsburgh call me" fee to my local net gatekeeper(as well as yours, and everyone in between).

*dead

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