Google close to agreeing deal on 'two-tier' internet

The conservative argument against net neutrality ignores a single but crucial point - in almost all cases, these telecoms are given a pseudo-monopoly by the government over bands of frequency or laid wire. Yes, the companies themselves pay for the infrastructure, but this would be like claiming some air harvesting company has dominion over the air because they paid for the refinery.

That said, I'm optimistic that this war will eventually be won. It's undeniable that as time goes on, the information always makes its way to the people, and away from the elite. Maybe we'll have a decade of TV-style internet, but something will come along to unseat this, and once again government and corporate power will be slow to respond.

if they do that, I am sure independent search engines will come up

google really think they will be able to get money from people? they will simply avoid any google service and go to other places

the internet is much bigger than google

as if life didn't exist before the internet.........
well, it did.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Charging users to have information processed quicker and more efficiently will never work. When in Britain we are paying near £50/month for 50mb internet, who in their right mind would want to pay more?

Oh sorry did I say for 50mb? I meant "UPTO" 50mb... It's more like 17-28mb on average.

Until we start getting WHAT we pay for, I think price hikes should be totally banned. OFCOM are supposed to prevent these extortionate prices from being delivered to the "middle man." We already spend so much money on tax etc, why in the hell should we be ripped off with what little money we have left after slugging our A**** off for buttons?!

Rant over!

Originally posted by timepolarity
The conservative argument against net neutrality ignores a single but crucial point - in almost all cases, these telecoms are given a pseudo-monopoly by the government over bands of frequency or laid wire. Yes, the companies themselves pay for the infrastructure, but this would be like claiming some air harvesting company has dominion over the air because they paid for the refinery.

I'll give my conservative spin. The issue needs better definition and a lot of ideas get mixed up in to net neutrality. First, on the subject of infrastructure, if a company incurs expenses to purchase right of ways and lay down lines including private lines then that is there business. The government has no business getting involved and crushing innovation and investment.

Also - not part of neutrality is that Company A should be able to purchase more bandwidth than Company B - its based on demand which is tied to bandwidth requirements.

Neutrality is more about Quality of Service (QoS) and packet routing. The concept is to allow Company A to pay for packet priority - reducing the latency between you and Company A. Honestly I'm on the fence. We're in a world where internet sites are providing QoS to connecting clients but having little capacity to deliver due to the networks in between. A QoS system will help solve that and give us all better quality to the sites we use the most. The downside is that its like making it so that Blue Flower Trucks can go through the traffic intersection before anyone else including the startup Red Flower Trucks. In a way though it is no different than everything else in life.

A $100000 Service Company is going to have a hell of a time competing with a $1,000,000,000 Service Company - but then again the billion dollar company didn't have to compete against someone with the same advantage when it started. I think the issue could be largely solved with incubator systems where the QoS could be provided to start-ups for a period of time (36 months) at next to nothing costs.

I certainly don't think non-neutrality is the doomsday that everyone here thinks it is. The idea behind the image posted earlier would of course never fly with the public and so would be dead on arrival. Great thing about not having the government dictate how things are with the power of negative enforcement.

The other idea brought up sometimes on this issue is the one where site A has to provide "both" sides of an issue and present issues equally. Basically that is intended to protect politicians and the people in power by putting sites like ATS out of business.

See you guys on some underground internet source!
So long... World Wide Web.
RIP

All this junk is on the surface, about these mega-corps making more money but it is something much more sinister under the surface. It's also of course another step towards keeping control of the flow of information to the people.

TPTB have had a virtual monopoly on what information and where that information was received from for almost all of this century. But because of the free flow of information on the net, the sheeple have begun to waken and realize what the game is.

If they can control this content again, where you go and what's available, it's back to sleepy zombie time for the idiot masses.

This is the real goal for them...

Originally posted by Xiamara
That's kinda scary. I like my internet all neutral and happy and free file sharing. Why do big corporations have to ruin a good thing if it ain't broke don't fix it.

They're doing it for profit.

Have you ever heard the corporate puke-speak buzzword "Monetize"? I'm sure the executive meetings have been full of jargon-filled blather like "how we can further monetize the internet".

Nothing would be free if entities like Google and Verizon would have anything to say about it. It's all about the bottom line and not about what's right.

While I am for a free market, I am also very much in favor of morality having great influence in business. However, it seems it has no place in business today, and that is one of the reasons this reality is so screwed. No morality in business, no morality in government. No morality anywhere. Can't legislate it, either.

If it's really supposed to be more efficient and "better" to get it from google and verizon, why not just have the option to sign up for it if you want? isnt that what people supposedly want with healthcare in the US? to be able to chose whether or not they want it from the government or from a company? Speaking of govt, what about the internet kill-switch bill i was reading about on here? if the companies own it, then can obama override those companies and switch off the net?

this is like the bp spill, if verizon or google decide to take down websites such as ATS etc, and blame it on some strange contractual conglomerately detailed reason, then the government wont be to blame for regulating our internet. it makes me sick our govt is trying to act like its getting out of our lives while TPTB are silently taking over freakin everything. if the govt is regulating our internet with google and verizon, then theres going to be more laws put in place obviously. who wants more of that?

Pay more get more? That's about the size of it. Pity. It was too free. They're not ever going to let anything that should be free be free...including air, water, the internet, and us.

Then, when they've squeezed every last dime out of tier two, we shall have tier three.

This is BS. Boycott Google!

[edit on 8/5/2010 by ~Lucidity]

If this actually does occur, its going to create some interesting results. While the average person in the street will complain but abide an underground will definately form, where freedom of internet will still exist. Maybe its about time that the people of the internet should rally together and show this corporates and governments that they cannot do what they want.