Defeat for net neutrality backers

oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. anyone got any good news?

I thought things were going to start falling apart somewhat , the internet was never going to be allowed to grow unchecked the way it has, but this would be a pernicious change to the nature of data flow if ISP's are allowed to control what you can access, but I can see it coming to pass.

<sarcasm>
Why was the amendment defeated so heavily, it's not like there is potential to make money out of it's defeat.
</sarcasm>

What's that, billions you say. Ah :? .

Mine does that already - some times I can access all and other times it's sweet FA (now't to do with footie, in case you were wondering) :? Oh wait... or is that only when I use IE?

Mr O'Hasselhoff
You have led me astray... it's those eyes, oh those eyes. O:)
I have recently been charged to dispense with my customary <irony:cynicism:sarcasm> forthwith.
Now I've let Hugo down... again :oops:

As a newb I felt it was necessary to add them for fear of being labelled a gormless fool. I would prefer that you get to know me before you realise I am the aforementioned buffoon! .

I shall not utilise these heinous elements again :-#.

Well you are allowed a period of grace, a transition phase from deep cynicism and flippancy to your new found enlightenment but that does not include leching over avatars, please decorum at all times forthwith.

Mr O'Hasselhoff, I'm afraid that it is not possible to be labeled a buffoon ; on this forum that is a right and privilege that is earned and conveyed through the special status of guru where we are allowed to be vague, obtuse, sage etc; well thats what I call my buffoonery.

We would ask though that you try and avoid leading newly appointed gurus back to the spiritually bereft path that is cynicism.

Fear not, #gormless_fool has already been taken and you can only have one per forum. However, you can have any number of .buffoon. And we do... as I am sure you are beginning to appreciate. :roll:

:sheesh: that's a good start to my guru-ness... x-posting and x-ing (s)words with the honcho x-man :mrgreen:

tsk tsk, you're off to a good start :roll:

Where did you suddenly come from?
Can't a girl have a private edit now?

No! anyway what did you edit looks the same to me.

Huh!
Shows how much attention you were paying.

I 'm a bloke can't pay attention to more than one thing at a time and at the moment my attention is.. is... wandering. Anyways if it was a spelling/grammar/puncty thing you know it would be completely over my head.

I know what you mean. At the moment I have one ear glued to the television in the other room... soon... very soon... it is about to start. End of multi-tasking ftb.
INGERLUND \:D/

Ah, there is nothing to match the madness every four years of a billion or so people gathering in stadia and in front of TVs to watch the grass grow. How dull. It's the height of excitement, though, compared to anything else happening, or, more truly, not happening on the field.

The Mavs are one up in the finals, the Rangers are leading their division and the Cowboys open training camp next month. Life is good in Dallas.

cheers,

gary

The trouble with having so many gurus, is that who is going to pull them back into line when they stray so far off topic :?

Me :twisted: Get back on topic or I'll . . . I'll . . . well, there's nothing to threaten you with.

Erm . . . carry on. :oops:

Gary... Don't those chaps play baseball (otherwise known - throughout the rest of the western world - as rounders) ? I've always puzzled over how the peepz beyond the Western Ocean, i.e. the Americanadians, could call their tournament - the "World" Series.

How very dare you. Err.. does anyone know the score in the Ingerlund game?... I fell asleep

/Cut, paste./
You are sooo right Roy. Couldn't agree with you more.
Now we really do need to get back on topic and plan how "The CSSCreators" can protect the web from the pernicious inroads of the financially over-challenged.

BTW did anyone notice from that article in the OP how Sir Tim does not appear to have aged at all (although his computer is a bit past it)? :?

Thank you for your sagely wisdom Hugo, I shall pay more attention to my green status and leave the cynicism to the experts .

If you insist :roll: .

I sometimes use a bit of CSS humour that generally goes unnoticed on other forums. This made me laugh more than it probably should .

Oh, and the Mavericks play basketball, which I used to follow a good few years back. This is their first NBA finals in quite a few years if I am not mistaken. Good start .

Did someone mention net neutrality or something... :-s .

AAAW, bless, but maybe you should get out more

That would be "netball" then, played in very long shorts instead of cute little short skirts, with just a glimpse of frilly whotsits. Actually, I confess, I have watched some NBA on late night television. They are much err... taller than the gels I played netball with. :roll:

Ahem... you are right. It really is time to get back on topic... anyone?

OT: is this the start of the end of the net as we know it!

No Roy, nets are an integral part of many major sports and can't really be replaced.

Right then. I've googled and I've yahooed and read so much about this and the background that my head hurts and all I have come up with is questions.

Am I right in thinking another House Committee is using anti-trust as a spoiler? Who will win, I wonder? Will there ever be a resolution?

Is the whole thing just a new revenue stream for lawyers as well as the corporations who could be said to have a vested interest?

What about dial-up users?

How pervasive will this "censorship" become throughout the rest of the world and what is wrong with censorship anyway? Maybe, just maybe it will become as all pervasive as Section 508 (sorry, uncalled for) Back OT.

Is there anything inherently wrong in the network providers trying to protect themselves against information providers who sail too close to or break the laws of many countries?

Is there anything inherently wrong in "information distributors" charging to disseminate "information providers'" erm... information?

Do we perceive The Internet as akin to a public lending library? Who pays for the books?

Where was Vint Cerf (the Google neutrality evangelist) while all this was going on? At the White House of course, but would his physical presence and personal advocacy instead of "sending a letter" have made any difference?

<aside> Is there anything in the bill that could possibly be brought to bear against Offshore Call Centres? pleeze!</aside>

Roy
You can see I'm floundering here without your wise advice and opinions. Please share your views on the subject.

Alas I don't have the time to dig deep into this subject and explore the many tangental issues that influence it. But I do have a rather simplified (as a consequence of this lack of knowledge) opinion...

Although conceived by the US government's RAND Corporation as a military communications system in 1962, the internet was given to 'the people' by non-commercial organisations such as ARPA (original network trial, NCP, TCP and IP), the University of Wisconsin (DNS), the US National Science Foundation (NSFNet and rules for its non-commercial use), and Tim Berners-Lee with CERN (WWW) during the following thirty years or so. As I see it, the internet is a connected collection of communication channels following a common set of communication protocols; it is not the communication channels per se.

AFAIK the net was never intended to replace the world's phone systems and TV networks, and in all other respects, it has far surpassed everyone's wildest dreams about uniting the world through shared information at everyone's fingertips. I think that that part of the net is now reasonably well mature and unlikely to be under any significant threat, due to the myriad ways of transmitting and receiving information that will never see one commercial organisation controlling every aspect. But I could be wrong!

The fuss that has now sprung up in the US about Net Neutrality seems to me to be a lot of high-profile corporate posturing and muscle flexing by the companies that control the current telephone and TV networks, as they are suddenly waking up to the fact that the commercial world that they have grown up in so securely, is about to be turned upside down as TV and phone communications take to the net.

Personally, I don't see this happening as a mainstream method of communication in my lifetime, and even if it does, will the resultant networks be classed as internet traffic and nodes, or will they just be using the same bits of electric string for their delivery? This all smells of a big fuss over nothing to me, in order for a lot of individuals and organisations to make stacks of money out of a storm in a tea-cup, as you have suggested, Lorraine.

Net Neutrality is a false reality. We don't have a neutral net at the moment, so what's all the fuss about? If I pay next-to-nothing for a 56kb internet connection then I'm going to have to wait for web-pages to load and forget any ideas I have about video conferencing or streamed broadcasts. If I pay £200pa for basic broadband then I can see websites and streamed content at speed but can still forget video conferencing. But if I pay £300pa I can get a better connection and start talking to people via video-phone.

Similarly, if I host my website on a shared server on the end of a BT line then people are not going to be very impressed with the speed of my site. But if I pay a bit more and rack a dedicated server in a datacentre that is part of LINX, then I'm going to be able to publish at speed and in volume. The multi-tier internet is already here, and we seem to be able to accept it and thrive in such an environment, so what's new?

Market forces usually find their own balance and momentum, and before we know it, everything is going to be delivered via radio/satellite anyway. If the companies that provide these services are not allowed to charge for them, then innovation and enterprise will be stifled - ironically the very thing that supporters of the bill are concerned about!

Obviously I don't understand all the issues - as I admitted at the start - but it seems to me that it's just the big corporates doing what the big corporates do, and keeping lots of lawyers and public servants busy in the process. It would obviously be nice if the US government do the 'decent thing' and legislate 'for' the principle of net neutrality, but in the wider scheme of things, I don't think it's going to make one iota of difference to you and I in the long term. Net Neutrality is a principle, but principles are meaningless in the world of commerce - particularly in the US. No matter what bills are passed, the corporates will carry on doing what the corporates do.

I am often highly cynical and pessimistic about corporate involvement in the net and the web, but in this case, I don't think it's going to make any difference to the web that we have come to know and love, as it is clearly going to continue to evolve at a pace that the big corporates are going to be too cumbersome to be able to control

In a nutshell everything! which is not to say that we can escape it or that it's not necessary at times.



Should they be worried they are not providing the content just facilitating my access to a global network, where I go or what I digest is not they're responsibility.



Yes; but are ISPs information distributors? or just providing access to the network. Again are they to be held responsible for what is out there, they charge for their service in connecting you to the network, if they charge for providing information then they take on a responsibility for that content, assume some form of liability. I guess then of course they wont want to take any chances and you'll only get what is perceived as a safe sanitized version of information or what is .

The spirit of the internet will suffer you will have censorship and the internet ceases to be a place of freedom of thought, however offensive some may find that thought.



We do! don't we? I pay a silly amount each month to enjoy unfettered access to the network, in the main the infrastructure that allowed the network to grow was in place to start with , all the improvements to this infrastructure are paid for by our patronage is it not? What by way of extra charges do they think can be levied ? hosting of the sites visited is not free that is paid for by the person that wishes to disseminate their info through a site.

It is I would have thought utterly vital that the internet as we know it is allowed to remain free from any form of control or censorship in any shape or form to any degree whatsoever (with some excepted exceptions)

I would have thought that the argument that surrounds censorship in the Arts would and should apply here, every sane rational debate I have ever listened to says that it is utterly vital that censorship is never brought to bear on Art , being as it were the ultimate form of free expression and absolutely necessary to the essential growth of humankind.

But lets wait for Roy's wise council on matters (teasing! :roll: )

Edit/ Roy got there before me, all of what he said as well

It's amazing how a good pub lunch and ample libation loosen the typing fingers. Go Ro-go.