Finally, some sanity!

[rose-welch.livejournal.com]

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080225/wr_nm/internet_fcc_dc;_ylt=Aqxm2xtM3jJkAcO97BhpVW5k24cA 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080225/ap_on_hi_te/fcc_internet_regulation

I can't believe the government is doing something that I'm happy abou! I totally thought they'd be on the side of Big Business! *does a happy dance*

Comments

[kuang.livejournal.com]

That's only in the states though - our government are strangely reticent to comment on the issue, despite throwing their weight behind the 'ban filesharers from the internet' faction. It alarms me that the government seems to be in the pocket of big business in this respect, especially recording companies.

Did you know a bill is about to get its second reading in parliament to extend copyright to 95 years from the current 50, despite a government commissioned report (the Gowers report on intellectualy property) stating that this would stifle the creative arts and damage teaching and study of those materials? I would imagine this is to appease the big 4, and the fact it's going through at all and in quiet alarms me. I've asked my MP to vote against it, so he's reading up on it first before deciding.

If this is part of a trend then we will see a multi-layered internet here without question because there are too many big interests and monopolies in the UK market. VOIP gets big so BT deliberately slow it down, the BBC wants an extra share of bandwidth so that iPlayer gets priority, Warner Bros want a dedicated chunk for a PAYG film channel, etc. Some of the major ISPs already filter traffic and cut bandwidth from certain protocols at certain times, so it's not as if it's not going on to some extent already - all it'll take is for the media providers to throw their lot in with one of those ISPs and the foundations are set.

Sadly our government have a long history of utterly ballsing up anything to do with IT projects or technical legislation, and if thre's a sniff of money in in then I would imagine the flint hearted accountant in charge will grasp at it first and ask questions later..

*sigh*

[rose-welch.livejournal.com]

That is so sad and so true. I can see ISPs demanding money from companies to give top priority from the customer to the business site. If customers have to wait an additional 3 minutes to see my site, then they will choose the view the faster loading ones, and small businesses like mine will soon be out of business. Yay, Big Business!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

We need someone to sneak in at the last moment and put a dot between the nine and the five...

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

In the US, it would be:

Sadly our government have a long history of utterly ballsing up anything.

Copyright is already that long, and whenever Mickey Mouse would go into the public domain, an extension is granted. Ironically enough, the general public seems to buy into it. Multiple, heated arguments with my mum result in her saying "No, it's my fictional creation and I own it, forever. Come up with your own idea instead of stealing mine".

[kuangning]

And never mind that the same people who are claiming it's their fictional creation borrowed heavily from past works themselves, yeah? The only reason Disney et al don't push for complete abolition of *any* end to copyright is that all those fairy tales they've used weren't their own work...

[kenbrody.livejournal.com]

(Applies only to the U.S.) I'm certainly no lawyer, but in order to do such preferential treatment of some traffic over others, doesn't that mean they must examine the contents of the messages (beyond just the destination, which is required to properly route the traffic)?

Doesn't the whole concept of "common carrier" depend on not examining the traffic?

[sethb.livejournal.com]

ISPs aren't common carriers.

[jecook]

Correct, despite several ISPs (AT&T notably) trying to vie for CC status some years ago when the Recording Industry Ass. of America supenaed IP addresses and other information from them.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Don't waste effort being happy until the government actually does something more than hold hearings.

Allow me to play devil's advocate here...

[jecook]

Suppose I own a moderate to large ISP that serves an area of two or three states. I've sunk several million into making sure that the company's network backbone has adequate capacity for the 'average' user's needs: most of my subscribers are on a ~3 Mbps connection, so my internal backbone is comprised of some rather expensive OC-12 fiber interlinks between each of my hub sites. However, I'm finding it increaseing difficult to keep traffic flowing in a consistant manner, because ~5% of the subscribers are either hardcore P2P junkies, even more hardcore gamers (who constantly call up my helpdesk in the middle of the night complaining that they are getting lag above 20ms which is causing them to initiate full raid wipes because they couldn't get a heal/DOT/sunder/taunt off time time), or people who run machines that are so wide open that every bug known to mankind has infected them and turned their machines into spam/DDOS/worm spewing zombies, and complained voraciously when they are pointed to the clause in the T&Cs about 'keeping one's machine and A/V software up to date' is a good thing, even going as far to arrange to have A/V software made by a reputable company included in the price of the subscription.

now suppose the government steps in and insists that I keep these bandwidth hogs on my network instead of terming them for either violating the T&Cs of the contract they agreed to or for consuming 50%+ of the bandwidth causing outages and problems for the remaining 95% of my customers, or for putting an uneccessary burden on my support staff. (especially considering that the churn on my helpdesk is much higher then I'd like it for that reason)

My choice would be to say "fuck you all" and close down the business, leaving the 200-300 people I employeed out of jobs, forcing the 10,000 subscribers to find someone else, and costing the taxpayers more money for unemployment payouts, welfare, etc.

all because the government is trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with the backbone I spent several million buck to build, and 99% of my monthly booked revenue to maintain.

(not a true story, but consider the 'net neutrality' laws from a small to moderate reigonal ISP's view. Comcast is, IMHO, able to get away with throttling torrent traffic because in some places, they are the *only* game in town- dialup is not even availible! I personally do not agree with what Comcast is doing, but hey, it's their equipment.)

While I am fortunate that I do not use cable internet (I've been with my DSL provider for the better part of 6 years now, and they've been *very* good to me.) if my internet provider stated tomorrow "hey, we are changing your T&Cs and disallowing torrents, hosting public servers, and generally are going to start throttling your connection", I'd drop them like an anvil off a 10 story building. Part of Comcast's issue was that they never informed their subscribers that they were silently throttling torrent traffic, and denied doing it when they were caught.

'course, the obvious fix to that is to encrypt yer torrent traffic.

Re: Allow me to play devil's advocate here...

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Don't be fucking daft; if it's not economically feasible to offer up the kind of bandwidth the P2P'ers are using, then don't claim that you're offering it in the first place.

On the other hand, if you claim "unlimited bandwidth", then you'd better be fucking ready to deal with it when people 1. buy it from you and 2. start using it.

It frankly fucking pisses me off to see non stop ads about "unlimited" 6, 8, even 10mbps pipes to the front door for $50/month when in actual fact what they're really selling you is 6, 8, or 10mbps burstable pipes to the door with absolutely no guarantee of availability - and with the likelihood that they'll try to shitcan you entirely should you actually try to use their "unlimited" pipe.

I would much MUCH rather see an HONEST ad for a service they're actually willing to provide, rather than an ad shilling a service they won't actually give you but they're betting you won't actually use if they offer it.

Re: Allow me to play devil's advocate here...

[jecook]

Oh, absolutely, I totally agree.

My DSL provider does not guarantee *any* rates, unless you buy a business class account. my current setup is a ADSL line with a stated cap of 1.5 Mbit down, 384 Kbit up. I don't have any throughput caps, which is fine by me.)

The cableco's I'm fairly certain are massively overselling their capacity: the last I knew (and this was back in 2002), most cableco equipment had at most a DS3 upstream for the local distibution points (IIRC, the redback setup I had access to had a max upstream output of DS3, however, I could be WAAAAAY off by now.)

As far as ads? I don't trust a single letter of them. Hell, the last time I tried to get a cable line for something other then residential service, I never even got the time of day out of my local cableco, and I was to *buy* right then and there...

Re: Allow me to play devil's advocate here...

[rose-welch.livejournal.com]

I think you, as a company, should be able to offer service with clearly stated limits and fire customers who don't abide by them.

However, I should be able to file-share sometimes or download large files, or whatever else those limits say I can.

Comcast throttled all use of those things, even what was probably legitimate, and violated thier service agreements with those customers.

My main concern is that a) I won't be able to use the Internet as a utility and b) if they can throttle whatever traffic they like, they could make sites who pay them money premium fast and others slower, kind of like people who pay money appear at the top of your search results now.

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

ack - as much as I hate, despise, and loathe the fact that my ISP is most likely charging me more for less than some of you out there, I sure as hell enjoy guv'ment's sticky tentacles in one more aspect of my personal life even less. I won't be surprised to see one more compliance surcharge on my bill soon...
I agree with the problem description 100%, however the solution I fear will be laden with more ways to legalize taps into my privacy for unnecessary means.