Humanity Lobotomy

Mada_Milty · May 7, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66PbSzwnLes

Short flick on the importance of network neutrality.

musksnipe · May 7, 2008

That was pretty interesting, Mada
............... :tas
Stamp out AT&T!!!!!

Mada_Milty · May 7, 2008

Another, less dramatic resource on the subject is Michael Geist's website:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1678/135/

ItsWendy · May 8, 2008

Yeah, a no brainer. I thought the issue had gotten too quite. Where has it popped up lately?

Mada_Milty · May 8, 2008

Bill_Marsden said: ↑

Yeah, a no brainer. I thought the issue had gotten too quite. Where has it popped up lately?
Click to expand...

TBH, when I first watched this, I was under the impression that the US HAD passed net neutrality legislation. (A bit of research contradicted this notion, so I posted)

Currently, its a huge issue in Canada, since the CBC has been releasing content to bittorrent clients, and distribution of the material has been hindered by Bell Canada's traffic shaping policies.

roflmao

Its funny, because Bell's defense is that only 5% of users use P2P applications (highly dubious figure, IMO), but make up more than half of the traffic alone, citing statistics from Sandvine, Inc.

I know about 5 people who work at Sandvines myself, and when I mentioned this, my friend was confused; they are currently doing studies that show that streaming media (ie youtube) is the big bandwidth hog on the net.

Mada_Milty · May 8, 2008

What else I find funny is how both the AT&T exec in the video, and Bell's exec both play dumb about the consequences of their traffic management policies.

LOL Maybe they've bought into the myths they're peddling:

Kevin McArthur said:

Myth 1) Telecommunications Companies are entirely private organizations and should not be regulated. They paid to build the internet, and they should therefore be able to do whatever they want with their networks.

Reality 1) The telecommunications companies rely significantly on public grants, tax exemptions and public and private property easements to operate their businesses and as such are hardly entirely private organizations. Because of these special privileges, it creates a significant subsidy for telecommunications carriers that are rapidly becoming content producers. This creates an anti-competitive situation that must be regulated to maintain free-market principles and to prevent ISPs from leveraging their subscribers to out-muscle and unfairly levy competing services. Net Neutrality is simply required to preserve competition on the public internet.

Myth 2) An 'extra' second Tier of internet service will help everyone have access to better products and services and will ensure more rapid growth of telecommunications infrastructure.

Reality 2) The Tiering process is achieved through a technology called QoS which is short for Quality of Service. It should more acurately known as Packet Prioritization. This technology allows certain types of information to be prioritized over others and is definitively _not_ extra. It can only work by lowering the priority of other traffic on the rest of the internet. It's simply digital line-jumping and this 'service' makes the internet experience for those who do not pay even worse. It results in an addictive feed-back cycle that artificially drives demand and creates the problem it is designed to solve. Tony Soprano might be able to explain this concept better.

With QoS and without Net Neutrality the ISPs will be able to control consumer internet usage such that the most competitive services such as Digital Telephone or Internet TV will become the exclusive offerings of the ISPs. This is not a competitive market, and there is a definite role for government to ensure that our internet remains a competitive and free market; a market free from these types of digital racketeering schemes.

With Net Neutrality general service levels will still need to be maintained in order for internet services like gaming, video conferencing and web browsing to work efficiently. This will require upgrading our Internet infrastructure as it has been done in the past; for each subscriber on a network there must be a certain amount of available bandwidth to support them -- and Net Neutrality guarantees a consistent service level for all applications and competitors.

The profit margins are at record highs due the constantly falling cost of bandwidth. A Gigabyte of data transfer currently retails for less than a quarter and the caps ISPs are placing on so called 'unlimited' usage plans are approximately 60 gigs per month. Even at the maximum usage, and assuming retail rates for bandwidth, the cost per subscriber is less than $15, yet ISPs are charging anywhere between $40 and $60 dollars a month for that service -- a more than reasonable margin and this is especially evidenced by their record profits.

Myth 3) Content producers get a free ride, and it is the ISPs who pay for increased bandwidth usage.

Reality 3) Currently the internet is, for the most part, a neutral medium; everyone who uses it pays for access. This includes the average internet user who pays an ISP for internet access but it also includes each and every content producer on the internet. The cost is currently shared 50:50 with every bit uploaded being billed at the same competitive rates as every bit being downloaded. The content producers pay their fair share for uploading just as users pay their fair share [via their ISP] for downloading.
Click to expand...

Mada_Milty · May 15, 2008

CRTC turns down ISPs' call for temporary injunction against Bell

ARGH!!! :banghead

Mada_Milty · May 15, 2008

Neutrality now!

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Humanity Lobotomy

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