Net Neutrality Paradigm Shift

[Xiahou]

It has done fine on it's own, up until now. Now it is threatened by corporations who seek to control what they have been ignoring for over a decade.

Examples please. Tell us all when businesses that control the Internet backbone have banned specific content from a provider because they refused to pay their e-protection money?

People have been crying about net neutrality for years now- pointing to unrealized threats that need to be regulated. Here we are in 2009, have any of their fears been realized? Nope. Yet people still scream for regulation.

Net neutrality, still completely unnecessary.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Examples please. Tell us all when businesses that control the Internet backbone have banned specific content from a provider because they refused to pay their e-protection money?

People have been crying about net neutrality for years now- pointing to unrealized threats that need to be regulated. Here we are in 2009, have any of their fears been realized? Nope. Yet people still scream for regulation.

Net neutrality, still completely unnecessary.

Umm, see the link I posted in one of my earlier posts. The US Chamber of Commerce (not at all a part of the US government) forced an ISP to shut down the internet for supporters of the "Yes Men" an anti globalization group that humorously held a fake Chamber of Commerce news conference declaring that their policies against climate change have been dead wrong and will now help in stopping climate change.

[Xiahou]

Umm, see the link I posted in one of my earlier posts. The US Chamber of Commerce (not at all a part of the US government) forced an ISP to shut down the internet for supporters of the "Yes Men" an anti globalization group that humorously held a fake Chamber of Commerce news conference declaring that their policies against climate change have been dead wrong and will now help in stopping climate change.

Yeah, about that... 2 points:

1. It had nothing to do with net neutrality and everything to do with the DMCA.

2. Even still, the issue was resolved in their favor without additional regulation...

This isn't the first time a Yes Men site has found itself targeted by a DMCA complaint brought by a large corporation. The Yes Men have in the past received DMCA notices from Exxon, Dow Chemical, DeBeers, and the New York Times. In each case, the the Yes Men (represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation) refused to comply, and prevailed.

So do you have any actual examples?

[Lemur]

So do you have any actual examples?

Google "traffic shaping" and you'll find plenty. At the moment, it's all about throttling Bittorrent, which sucks if you download such illegal things as Europa Barbarorum, Linux distros, Asus drivers, or WoW updates.

Comcast has been known to mess with packets on their network. Last year, they stood in the middle of a firestorm thanks to traffic shaping. Comcast was caught red handed using TCP resets to block traffic based on protocol, the top issue was BitTorrent traffic.

The issue got worse when, after denying it at first, Comcast came clean and mostly admitted to the traffic shaping, but essentially said they couldn’t tell people about it because they would circumvent the process. They defended the traffic shaping by comparing it to a traffic jam, where a car is slowed from entering the freeway for a moment, not blocked from entering it entirely. They also added that the press and blogosphere would keep them honest, as one of the reasons for the FCC to take no action.

P.S.: "Traffic shaping" is legal in Canada. Do you want to be Canada? Why do you love maple syrup and hate freedom?

-edit-

A little more background on Comcast and their shapely traffic.

[Xiahou]

And what happened to Comcast, Lemur? Do they still block torrent traffic?

Their attempt was pretty much total failure anyhow, as people quickly discovered how to circumvent their filtering. But, I think the topic of how ISPs- or even if they can- deal with bandwidth hogs is more interesting that the topic of net neutrality in general (your ISP is gonna block youtube!).

Hopefully, everyone realizes that bandwidth is not limitless. Your average user doesn't use that much of it, but a small percentage of users can and do take up massive amounts of bandwidth. Should an ISP be able to close ports used by bandwidth intensive applications like torrents? Most users don't use torrents, and those that do can slow things down for other users and adversely affect their surfing, ect. An alternative would be flat download limiting- which in my experience draws just as many howls of protest as port blocking. What to do?

[Lemur]

And what happened to Comcast, Lemur? Do they still block torrent traffic?

In Canada, where it's the law of the land, they sure do. Why do you love hockey and lumberjacks?

I think the topic of how ISPs- or even if they can- deal with bandwidth hogs is more interesting that the topic of net neutrality in general

Actually, I'd pair this up with the enforced local monopolies/duopolies, a subject which I don't think I've seen you address.

[Xiahou]

In Canada, where it's the law of the land, they sure do.

Who cares about Canada? I thought we were talking about a proposed regulation in the US..... In the US, Comcast's policy was overruled by the FCC.

Umm, part of the point of net neutrality is to prevent the interest group/corporation from being able to force ISPs to cut off the internet in the first place so....

No, sorry. Net neutrality would do nothing to stop people from sending out DMCA take down notices nor would it stop ISPs that knuckle under and comply without contesting the issue. To put it another way, if a company is notified they're hosting a site that has illegal content, net neutrality won't stop them from taking it down. You're dealing with completely different issues.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yeah, about that... 2 points:

1. It had nothing to do with net neutrality and everything to do with the DMCA.

2. Even still, the issue was resolved in their favor without additional regulation...So do you have any actual examples?

Umm, part of the point of net neutrality is to prevent the interest group/corporation from being able to force ISPs to cut off the internet in the first place so....