House threatens Net Neutrality

Article detailing how the Congress is addressing the issues presented by telecomunication companies and Net Neutrality. With fear of a Tiered internet or an unequal internet many lobbied against the COPE act, however it appears that those again with the most money have won out, with the House passing the Cope act 321-101 and defeating an Amendment to that act that would require neutrality and equality on the internet 269-152.



This really disheartens me, as our congress and executive get more and more disconnected from the reality of nearly every American citizen, it seems as if they really are only beholden to thier corporate backers, and thier corporate backers do not like how the internet has brought so many from so far so close together. For the first time EVER really, peoples from all over the world can instantly or near instantly communicate and share ideas without fear of government intervention.

However, with the current crisis of losing Net Neutrality i wonder what the internet of the future will look like. Will we the dissidents and questioners be forced on to Dark nets and underground networks? If the flow of information is controlled and filitred and censored, how will we ever set our selves free?

[edit on 11-6-2006 by Elsenorpompom]

[edit on 11/6/2006 by Mirthful Me]

However, with the current crisis of losing Net Neutrality i wonder what the internet of the future will look like. Will we the dissidents and questioners be forced on to Dark nets and underground networks?

Forced? Not at first, but as WiMAX mesh networking becomes more popular, you can bet that that will become a preferred service, though it will by it's very essence, be isolated from the rest of the world and at first even nearby cities and towns.

Nintendo's new console called the Wii will apparently have this "Meshing" capability, and when it debuts it will cost roughly the same price as a WiMAX router so hobbiests could find many ways around tiered service.

If enough people start getting their 'net access from wireless solutions(especially in the way that I described) you could see the Telcos and Cablecos drop tiered internet alltogether except when it comes to IPTV and Legal Bittorrent sites(they are coming soon, with the capability to geolocalize the downloader and ability to point the downloader to a localized avert supported video content).

I can definately see how a higher tier above regular DSL can be useful for bandwidth intensive stuff like Video, DVD Download purchases, Game downloads, and Telepresence. It's just the other stuff I don't like(though it would not effect me as much as it would you guys down there), like VOIP, WWW, Podcasting, etc could all be hampered siginificantly if certain limitations aren't put into place.

It seems that those in power are becoming very nervous about the power of the internet, where information flows freely and ideas are exchanged without filters normally present in the media.

On the internet, you can be in contact with people from around the world and find out first hand from them whats going on in their area. You also have news not covered by the media getting passed around freely without editing.

The internet is a dangerous thing for anyone wanting to keep people following one mindset and having access to selective information.

The powers that be of everynation now know that they can no longer keep information neatly pigeonholed and controlled.

So while they wont yet directly attack the internet, they will do things like this in order to slow and retard access of net users to things that might cause them to think or question. We cant have that, can we?

Im willing to bet the sites that will get the most bandwidth are those with something to sell who will be happy to pay extra to make sure they get priority.

Hear is a link to a thred that has already brought this topic up.
politics.abovetopsecret.com...

I hope enugh people can show there dis aproval of this issue to there representavies to get it stoped.


Mod Edit: Apostrophe from link removed. Link works now.

[edit on 14-6-2006 by TheBandit795]

It was inevitable that this sort of thing would happen. Incompetent governments looking for ways to get money out of something. And to top it off, we're talking about the free movement and exchange of information, which any corrupt and stupid government has an interest in preventing and controling.

I'm not so sure this is such an important thing to stop. It's the telecoms, not the government, who would be gaining control. People have made this out to be such a huge threat to the Internet, when as far as I can tell the free nature of the Internet isn't really in any danger. It's something of a stretch to think the ISP's really want to shut down access to any type of content.

The stated intentions of the telecoms and ISPs is that they want to be able to give a certain amount of priority to certain types of traffic like video and VoIP and they want to do that by charging money from the sources of that traffic.

The result of this would be
--Bandwidth could be allocated sensibly among the different kinds of traffic.
--The providers would make money doing it.
--The government wouldn't be regulating anything.

All of this makes sense, the consequences seem rather good, so I don't see a serious reason to stop this.

And please correct me on anything I got wrong.