Wednesday, March 30, 2011

oh COME ON!

The web is meant to be open and free! How can companies limit access to something that is put out there for the public to browse for FREE!? how do you limit the WORLD WIDE WEB? In that sense I definitely do not agree that companies have the right to charge for access to certain sites. As far as certain speeds go though, I think that can be understood. I like the example the writer gave in the SFGATE-BUSINESS INSIDER article, about the post office: You pay more for overnight or 2day shipping. If you want the higher speed broadband then you simply pay slightly more. That’s business. That is the Internet providers personal service, not them blocking out someone else’s website/business.

I am not exactly sure how net neutrality should be legally applied to the web. I think the Internet should remain neutral all around–the end. Even after reading all of our articles, I don’t understand why the government would want it either or why companies would try to do this. I just don’t understand WHY. If website content is free then why limit us to that free website by charging us a fee?

I think it is going to be impossible to do this anyway. Seriously, every single day, every single hour, people are coming up with ways to get around websites and emails and viruses and hacking and the list goes on and on…Even if net neutrality was to be triumphed upon, there would be a way around it. The Internet is an open source, the millions of users would just thrash it one way or another. Do we really need to deal with more legal issues with something like the Internet, when we’ve got bigger issues to kill? I mean, they’ve already got us being tracked and privacy issues are being challenged, so much openness with so much blockage doesn’t work. It’s one or the other. You track us or block access. I don’t know, just a thought, the worldwide web cannot be limited. It is infinite.


5 comments:

  1. The reason telco's would like to restrict access to high bandwidth sites to customers that pay extra is simple. Telco's are an oligopoly (sort of like a small group of monopolistic companies), they all stand to make a huge profit if they can prevent Net Neutrality and split the internet into tiered packages much like the way TV packages are sold. They are in the business of up-selling and forcing customers into paying for lots of content that they will never use. The other major advantage to restricting the internet for telco's is the control over competing technologies passed over IP. Companies like Vonage and Skype would be crushed if Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T had control over what was allowed to be transmitted over their infrastructure.

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  2. When you said people are coming up with ways to get around websites...and hacking, I immediately thought of /b/ of 4chan. They would probably hack these ISP's so quickly that the ISP's won't know what happened. I totally agree it is unfair to want your cookie and eat it too. You can't want openness for yourself, but not want to offer it to your customers. It seems that greed took over once ISP's learned people will pay regardless to have internet service.

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  3. "You pay more for overnight or 2day shipping. If you want the higher speed broadband then you simply pay slightly more. That’s business. That is the Internet providers personal service, not them blocking out someone else’s website/business"

    While I hate Blodget's far-too-simple analogy to shipping services, it can work when expanded upon. Yes, you pay more if you want it overnight instead of 2-day. You also pay more for either if you are trying to ship say, a bronze sculpture and not a 20-page contract. From this point-of-view , doesn't it make sense that ISPs would want to charge you to stream an episode of Family Guy from YouTube (~ 200MB) but not the a blog post about the latest episode ( >1MB)?

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  4. @cwoolf
    "Companies like Vonage and Skype would be crushed if Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T had control over what was allowed to be transmitted over their infrastructure."

    Putting this in physical terms, if you owned a business near Michigan Stadium and some company started charging people to park in your parking lot on game days without giving you a percentage of the profits (it is your property after all) wouldn't you be pretty pissed?

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  5. The way I see it no matter what kind of law gets passed, the companies will come up with a way to make more money just like we will find ways around what they are doing

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