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Re: [ProgSoc] Pranksters behind "Save the Internet"



On Monday 05 June 2006 12:33 am, Christian Kent wrote:
 ] On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Roland Turner wrote:
 ] > Umm, interesting. I was not aware of SaveTheInternet, but the 'net
 ] > neutrality issue itself is no hoax.

 This pretty much echoed my position on your posting, but wading
 through all the other posts, trying to delinate where the hoax
 started and the genuine, demonstrable concerns ended, was just
 too painful.

 I understood it to be slightly different than how Roland described:

 ] > Your article, perhaps in maintaining consistency with the hoax,
 ] > misrepresents tiered access. It's not about speed, it's about which
 ] > content providers are _permitted_ at any speed, and for how much, to
 ] > deliver content over last mile circuits.

 My understanding is that the Big Carriers are deeply concerned that
 the rinky dinky players in the ISP world are about to take away one
 of their major, long term, and consistently lucrative markets (local
 and long distance voice calls).  This has been 'about to happen' since
 2001, I know, but there's been some pretty fine local examples of how
 Big Carriers have u-turned on a few projects they were supporting,
 arguably to protect this bit of their market.

 The issue becomes one of relative speed, which probably means the
 same thing as content allowed at any speed, of our ISP's packets
 versus our ISP's ISP's packets, if you see what I mean.  It wouldn't
 be a concern if our ISP's ISP was in the same market that our ISP
 was now entering, of course, or if there were clearly defined laws
 that dictated practices in conflicts of interest of this nature.

 As an aside, if some goose decided to muddy the waters of what is
 going to be a very annoying (to customers) and very frustrating
 (to everyone in the industry, including customers) and ultimately
 legally questionable practice, then they're probably not being very
 helpful.  Black helicopter time wrt their motivations -- as there's
 only a very small demographic that stands to gain from the public
 being further confused about this stuff.

 ] I'm going to ring them up and complain my connection is down, or 
 ] disconnect.

 This belies comparable examples over the past decade of AOL's
 attitude towards its customers, yet it remains one of the biggest
 players.  Some people will move, most will be happy with what they
 are given, probably because they don't know any better.

 Plus there's all that money being spent by would-be competitors of
 Google, as they want to bite into that particular pie -- I imagine
 we'll see some useful alternatives to their search engine over the
 next couple of years.  They're about the only near-monopoly service
 provider on the net that I can think of .. maybe eBay counts too.

 Jedd.

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