Posted on 09/17/2009 12:41:48 PM PDT by Justaham
Senior House Democrats told the Federal Communications Commission Thursday it should do more to stop Internet providers from playing favorites among content providers, brushing aside opposition from Republicans and some large telecom firms.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing Thursday that he will put his weight behind a "net neutrality" bill introduced by Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass, and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. The bill would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or prioritizing legal content on the Web.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The commies are really having a rough year. There’s too much truth going on out there and it’s blocking out all of the MSM’s communista propaganda.
..anything this pig face puts in a bill should be looked into.........(Fairness Doctrine)
What does this mean?
It means that the people who are actually paying the bills for the internet don’t get and special treatment.
This is a good thing - right now big providers like comcast are shaping and throttling certain types of traffic based on arbitrary (ports) and sometimes specific criteria.
A group like Time Warner can effectively block certain ISPs and hosts if they think piracy is possible, to protect their financial interests - outside the law and without recourse if their assertions and punitive actions are unwarranted.
Dam% good question.
It means that the government will gain a foothold on controlling information on the internet, presumably to resolve a "problem" that the democrats deem to need resolving. Of course, there is no real problem so they'll make one up.
What does this mean?
Let's say your internet provider is your cable company. They want you to watch their pay per view, but you would rather legally download movies from Netflix or watch TV shows on Hulu. Since your cable is selling a competative product, suddenly it takes 10 hours to download a Netflix movie instead of one or a lot of the Hulu packets get dropped. That stuff is crooked and should be stopped. Others here see something far more insidious about net neutrality, but I've never quite figured out their fears.
Google or MSN can broker “performance” deals with ISPs to ensure that one site works better than another.
In a hypothetical set up, one company can throttle a competitior’s site through ISP manipulation - effectively creating an uneven playing field.
the same methods could be used to cripple media/news sites for any of a number of reasons.
It happens right now with torrent or perceived filesharing activity — essentially heavy bandwidth users.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. And it will be Waxman’s heavy foot that has the hold. It is their first step toward reining in a medium they can’t control. It’s not enough that they have the networks and the major metropolitan dailies rounded up and deep in their pockets, they want the Internet.
Net neutrality should be the law of the land - bandwidth is a utility.
I’d be interested to hear for other FReepers if there are some reasons why net neutrality ( a kind of “everyman” equality to web access) would actually be a good thing (although the fact that Henry Waxman wrote this bill makes me wonder if I should just zot myself for even asking...)
Fine, then just don't do business with them.
I guess the liberals hate the truth being on the Internet.
Well, if the traffic is traveling over their equipment, shouldn't they have that right?
In general, the type of traffic being restricted in peer-to-peer traffic - services such as Kazaa, BitTorrent, Limewire, etc. These services are well known to be methods of transferring pirated software and media, as well as child porn, and consuming a large amount of bandwidth. Some carriers choose to restrict the bandwidth to discourage using these services over their system. I'm not sure I have a problem with that. If the government wants to set the rules, then they need to pay for the infrastructure.
Waxman hates Americans, Republicans, and anyone who is not a democrat.
This vile pos voted not to cut off the funding for Acorn:
That's how I see it, too. Kinda like electricity and water although also requiring free access from many locations like the interstate highway system.
The problem with letting the conglomerates throttle bandwidth is that they often don’t get it right.
The filesharing throttling can also kill voice-over-IP traffic like Vonage, etc.
By allowing them to set their own throttling policy, you’re allowing the Time Warner’s and the Comcasts of the world free reign to sell high speed internet access and then deliver dialup speed depending on their whims.
You’re paying them for a connection and a speed/bandwidth. It’s absolutely against free market principles to allow them to kill off the vonages of the world in order to sell more internet-cable tv - voice over ip bundles.
The current set up is extremely anti-consumer and heavily favors conglomerates and monopolies.
this is one area where regulation makes all the sense in the world.
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