Topic: Too Damn Late
It's Midnight CDT & it's time once again for Too Damn Late!
WARNING: Too Damn Late is not written in front of a live studio audience. Since it's written after midnight, the contents in here are uncensored by anybody as an act of first ammendment rights. Therefore, if you are easily offended by swear words or outrageous thoughts, STOP READING THIS BLOG ENTRY NOW!!! I don't want to hear any complaints from anybody because you read this with ample warning. I don't writing these warnings, but I do so to protect myself here. By reading beyond this warning, you hereby consent to such adult content. VIEWER DESCRETION IS ADVISED!
As you may (or may not) be aware of, an Appeals Court has ruled against the FCC on the issue of Comcast throttling speeds of BitTorrent users. This causes a blow to Net Neutrality movement & places us one step closer to monopolistic anarchy. HOWEVER, before I start spouting off my beliefs... let's take a look at both sides of the issue.
Essentially, "Net Neutrality" is the idea that all traffic going through a specific network is treated equally, regardless of data, protocol or distance required in the transmission. Your e-mail is treated just the same as your neighbor's music download, your friend's online gameplay or your kid's video stream. Despite the different destinations for each piece of data, they're all processed in a timely fashion at the best speed available from both sides of the transmission. While ISP's still controls how fast you can upload & download data (& charging you as specified), everything is given equal attention by them. It's up to you on how to utilize your internet connection & it's up to you to decide if some programs should get more attention & bandwidth than others. Most routers now have a "Quality of Service" (QoS) setting that allows you to throttle the various transmissions on your side. This is mostly designed to allow stuff like VOIP activities (like Skype & Vonage) to take up more bandwidth on your connection & throttle your file downloads.
Those who are against Net Neutrality (like Comcast) are essentially taking away your right to manage your own connection by throttling connection speeds for a given service or protocol (like BitTorrent). While they're doing it more to balance their network loads, it also means that you can't fully utilize your connection for a service they're throttling. Their arguement is that they built the infrastructure & they want the right to manage their network however they please.
My arguement for "Net Neutrality" is that allow ISP's to throttle the connections of their customers on specific services become an extremely slipperly slope. While it may start with throttling some services like BitTorrent to balance network loads, it could later move onto throttling other services that are competing against other services that the ISP may provide. Using Comcast as an example here, they could start throttling video-on-demand services like Hulu, YouTube or Netflix in order to push their own video-on-demand service through cable. Next, if you want to use services OTHER than what they provide, they could start charging you a premium to access such services that were originally free or subscription based. Then, even if you're not on their network, if you're accessing a website that uses their network, they could charge you a fee just for visiting said site. You could get raped for $100 / month instead of the original $50 / month you pay for... on top of your online subscriptions (like XBox Live & Netflix) to fully utilize your connection. To make this even sleazier, the ISP's could charge websites like eBay, Amazon or Apple's iTunes Store to PREVENT them from throttling connections to their sites... now where did I hear something like this happening... Ah, Yes... THE MOB RUNNING A PROTECTION RACKETEERING RING! They're charging you to get unthrottled access to a website on your connection & charging the website for unthrottled access for customers on that ISP.
While I don't necessarily hate Comcast, while they do run some cable networks/channels (like G4) that I like, it's just their ISP service that is getting all the crap because they're doing stuff that seems very underhanded towards their own subscribers. With Net Neutrality, you can go anywhere & do whatever you want with your internet connection & get charged a flat rate (assuming there's no usage limit for your service, as some ISP's are metering usage... which totally bites). Without that on the books as a law, your ISP can tell you where & where you can't go online. For example, if you wanted to buy some books, they force you to use Barnes & Noble instead of Amazon & so on.
The one biggest loser in an non-neutral internet would be all the cloud services, like Google's office suite, GrooveShark (for music), BOINC (distributed processing, like SETI@HOME), YouTube, OnLive (gaming) & so on... These services can only exist on neutral internet because the data is not located in a central location. If the service relies on servers located elsewhere to store your data, you'll likely get screwed over if your ISP has control over how fast you can connect to the service... if you can connect to that service at all.
Net Neutrality is NOT Government censorship or Government control over services. It's just a measure of regulation to level the playing field for everybody from the largest corporation to the tiniest start-up. For those who state that "the Internet is just a luxury"... let's nit-pick at the framework here on a level that would seriously hurt you: ATM's & Debit / Credit Cards. They run on the same framework as the internet, while there's only a small amount of data getting transfer (say 1 KB), the ATM network has to be "net neutral" in order for transactions to reach their destinations without any problems. While the bank running the ATM & your bank may charge you a fee on the transaction, you can use any ATM in the world without having to worry about who runs the network. The same can be said with Debit & Credit Cards, but the fees are usually placed upon the company that takes the transaction instead of the person using it. If those networks were neutral, you'd likely get knocked up with fees for every network you cross. This could cost you around $5 & $10 per transaction! While this could be exaggerated a bit, it's just one example how a non-neutral network can royally screw you over.
I just believe that the internet, much like information, should be open & free. A kid using a computer at a library should have the right to access anything they want online (within reason) that a Multi-Trillionaire (say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet... for example) can access. Websites can still charge a premium for their content if they want, but it's their choice.
That's all I have for this episode... I may right more if feel light tonight.
