So aparently theres a movement by telecommunications companies to finally turn the US into something that more resembles totalitiarian china or nazi germany. basically these companies are lobbying to have control over content and in turn create a way to box in what kind of information we get as well as where we buy products and in general what we see.

this will majorly effect people who run businesses and promote themselves on the internet...

http://www.coanews.org/internetfreedom. ... netfreedom

check this out... pretty messed up.

Is that like the study of capitols?

I thought China was communist?

this would cause super massive hacker attack.

what kind of fucked up shit is this man!?!?!?

Alright, let's see if we can cut through the fog that both sides of the coin are mucking up here.

Wikipedia reference for everyone to start off with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicat ... ct_of_2006

What it seems the issue is here is whether ISPs can have different tiers of payment for different types of content. I don't really see any problem with that philosophically. However, I can't imagine that that would be very popular with the consumer, especially after what the consumer's been experienced to so far. Heck, AOL tried to do a similar thing years ago and look where that's gotten them. I'm skeptical of the doomsday arguments that video is making at this point.

The teleco's spent billions in the late 90's building a fiber optic network. The fiber's still dark. Now the Teleco's are getting pissed because Google, Yahoo, Ebay, etc. are getting rich (read: having large share price increases) off their existing networks and not contributing to cost recovery of the dark fiber.

Enter our corrupt federal government.

Brilliantly stated. Absolutely correct. Company A spends a ton of money on stupid stupid stupid fiber optic business ventures, to the tune of about $10,000 a ft. Never mind it's ridiculously unreliable because Timmy J Jackass enjoys playing around in the back yard with a bob cat without a call before you dig ticket and etc. etc. etc. Meanwhile company B had a better plan so they kick the shit out of company A in the market. Thus, company A hires lobbiests to grease a few government knobs and maybe slide a few bucks under the table too and suddenly the government gets involved finding a way to make things a little easier for the idiots over at company A.

It's what government does.....reward stupidity.

if that were the case, id be one rich mother fucker

yeah, you and me both.

well, it's never completely that simple but that's how it works. That's the whole point of having a lobbiest, make the market advantageous to your company and hell, if you can punish the competition at the same time by giving a few more dollars....bonus.

Then, get by with as crappy a product as you can and you have the Big Dig.

Thanks, but here's real question. If they (the Telecos) own those fiber lines, the dark lines and the in-use lines, isn't it up to them how they are run? Like any business, are they not free to provide and deny service as they see fit? We already allow the sale of larger more comfortable seats on airplanes to those who are willing to pay more, why shouldn't the Teleco's have the same contract rights as the airlines?

I acknowlege that greed is their motivation, and the recoupping of the cost of the bad expansion plans is triggering event, but so what. It's their network. If the government wanted it to be free for equal public use by all parties, they should have bought it.

But its not free. I am paying for my broadband connection, as is Google, Yahoo, Ebay, and everyone else.

I meant free of regulation or corporate control, not $$$$. =P

Ok. Sadly the Telecos are claiming that Google and the likes are getting a free ride.

totally bullshit since any big site spend a lot of money with servers and things like that. free ride my ass.

Here's Senator Ted Stevens take on net neutrality.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/497

First, Ted Stevens is the Senate's leader in pork-project spending, so I wouldn't take his for anything. Second, the dude has his facts backwards about the "tiered" model with regards to proponents of net neutrality. WTF?

This is true. It raises questions about the digital spectrum from the Telecom act of 1996 as well. It will probably go along similar to the advent of the telephone whereas one large company owns the lines and charges everyone to use them, in the end it'll just be another item on the end users bill.

It still annoys me that the government would have to get involved at all.

It's also annoying when we essentially have to pay them back for being over zealous in thier expansion plans. This was all envogue in business development 5 + years ago. Everyone owning a ROW or Easement from power to pipelines were getting in to the fiber optic fun.