Go read Larry Lessig's the future of ideas. Several chapters on the stuff you are interested. He calls it "the control of wire" Knowing IP law a little bit, I think Lessig's book is very biased and flamboyant. Nonetheless, that book is what you want to read for the stuff you interested in.
I think some of you are missing the point. Businesses have a symbiotic relationship with the consumers. Expect massive boycotts if this net neutrality thing is abolished. Expect riots. Remember 4chan? They do massive internet hit-and-runs, most notably their vigorous and relentless assaults on Scientology. They're probably going to do something about it. Supply/Demand is bs. There are already soft caps in place to prevent you from using too much bandwith. At least with cable internet.
Sammy, its hard to debate many of your idiotic opinions, as opinions are just that; opinions. So therefore I never bother to subject myself to your trolling. FWIW, Basso makes for a much better troll. He does it for his own humor. Yours comes off as anger and bitterness. But since you want to try and mock someone based on facts, you are making yourself look like a fool. As a matter of fact, if you want to imagine them as "tubes", then feel free ... its not too far off an explanation; certainly not the best and accurate explanation, but better than believing wireless internet is cheap and unlimited.
Space Ghost - what is the highest level of education you have attained? If it was post-secondary, did you ever have the experience of raising your hand in class and speaking at length about a book or scholarly tome that you had not read, and knew absolutely nothing about? And in so doing seen people next to you either smirk, look generally annoyed, or be embarrassed? Meanwhile, the instructor/professor is antsy and trying to cut you off so as to spare you further humiliation? Because that is generally where you are in most of the threads I've seen you posting in here. Anyway enough with the insults - can you write a bit more about the series of wireless tubes and how it realtes to your take on net neutrality?
Massive boycotts from who? Consumers? If thats the case, why do you need net neutrality if the consumers will handle it on their own. This is the very reason why we have yet to see ISP's demanded preferred access ... the consumers will not tolerate it. Im against the market manipulation of tiered access as the next person, but net neutrality is just an excuse for the FCC to start regulating the net. The whole fear of "microsoft and google" controlling the web was used when net neutrality was a popular idea a decade ago, except it was Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Perhaps the FCC should regulate instant message programs since it was rumored they were going to start charging .05 a message sent. supply/demand is not a huge issue at this point on a hardline. You can continue laying now fiber and throwing up servers to increase capacity if need to be. Its not the same for wireless. Carriers only have a very limited amount of wireless spectrum.
So you say that verizon can charge anyone from Facebook to 4square to joe smoe millions of dollars to have the right to have consumers connect to their app????? That's terrible - it will kill 1,000's of companies including mine. If conservatives support this - then their whole "we fight for small business" and innovation is a gross lie.
Does Facebook or 4square demand royalties? No. All the wireless carrier is doing is providing internet access to those sites. SprintTV and TmobileTV are not simply internet access. Cable and Satellite companies pay big money for network access for each and every channel you watch. They demand the same from the wireless carriers.
Youtube doesn't charge royalties either. So how do you figure that? And do you think that what holds true for wireless will also not hold true for broadband? You argument might be nice from a conservative perspective, but it's not reality. People aren't using their phones to get TmobleTV or Vcast or whatever. That's the whole point. That's the real issue here. And you just are either blind or just too ignorant to see it. The whole point is for the cable / ISP to be able to DOMINATE your choice of programing. They can't compete with Hulu and other content sources, but if they charge them, they can push people onto their services - inferior services, instead.
Is someone restricting youtube?? I GET the point. ISP's, or heck, any business can do lots of things we all won't agree on. Do we regulate everything into oblivion? Yes, ISP's CAN dominate your choice of 'programming'. Are they doing it? No. Are they seriously considering doing it? No. Remember the one cable ISP that starting putting a hard cap on downloads? How long did that last? If ISP's start regulating their own traffic, consumers will be infuriated and switch. If ALL ISPs did start regulating their own traffic, then feel free to have the FCC step in and do something. At this point, we don't need to regulate something that is not a problem.
Umm, FCC is regulating the internet. THAT IS THE STATUS QUO. What ISP WANT TO BE ABLE TO REGULATE THEIR OWN TRAFFIC WITHOUT FCC HAVING THE ABILITY TO STEP IN AND DO SOMETHING. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW SUIT. Imagine lawsuit goes through in 2005, before youtube is big. Cable company sees a company like youtube getting fans, the Cable company buy metacafe and tell youtube they either pay $15 million a year or they get second tier service. Youtube, can't pay and consumer sees that meta-cafe can stream video faster while they get constant "buffering" of videos on youtube, tell me if what is likely to happen?
Yeah, they are considering doing it. Verizon was my client 3 years ago and over dinner and a VP of marketing talked about how the internet would "need" to change in order for it to become more of a money maker. He anticipated that content providers would have to eventually pay and forsay the internet in 10 years becoming like cable. One person's opinion, but it does go to show that the thinking is there in that company. Don't be naive man. You don't know how this stuff works. Go back to watching Glen Beck. This isn't about politics to me. It's about my livelihood.
Let's also remember that no deregulation of a utility - whether it be cable, phone, electricity, media, etc - has gone like the people pushing the reregulation suggested. It's never driven down prices or increased competition. In fact, it's done the exact opposite in many cases. All you have to do is look at who supports and who opposes deregulation to see who's going to benefit and penalize. Large companies who benefitted from the regulation of the internet when they were small companies now want to benefit from the deregulation of the internet by creating barriers of entry to their competitors.
Republicans vote to kill net neutrality. I like how the Oregon Republican does not even realize how nonsensical his statements are: Note that the senate is unlikely to move this forward but it's an interesting juxtaposition of priorities in any case.
Who likes the idea of people like TWC, Comcast and verizon making the rules and setting prices and points of access? It's like anything else... right now they're just practicing to see how best to fool everyone into giving them their greedy and authoritarian ways. The real screw job comes after they've made it seem innocuous, or worse, beneficial. It's like the Patriot act, for the internet.
