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ACLU Study Wary of Broadband Providers
An anonymous reader says "The ACLU recently had a study done that suggests that broadband access is a threat to internet freedom. Their study focuses on the control available to broadband providers who don't have to deal with the same level of competition or regulation as ISP providers. The result is the ability to radically control internet access combined with the omnipresent corporate incentive for profit, whatever the cost to free speech."
It's broadband!!! *Hugs monitor and cries*
Maybe on of the primary markets for PeekaBooty won't be China, but the U.S. Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" because of a number of things. They stopped travellers and demanded to see ID/papers/etc. The U.S. is doing that now. They controlled information flow and communications. The U.S. is doing that now.
On a more positive note, I think I saw a recent article about Time Warner saying they would not be limiting or regulating use of RoadRunner. Let's hope.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I've always been a DSL proponent, because of the fact that DSL has regulation in place to create competition. Of course, the bush appointees to the FCC wants to take all of that away and allow for monopolies.
Of course, the way phone companies have been screwing independent DSL providers in spite of the law has bankrupted most of them. Its really sick.
Oh, and to those of you who say that only government regulation can cause monopolies, go fuck yourself.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Go here for a text version.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
There are loads of ISP's offering broadband (ADSL) here in the UK some of which explicitly say you can serve anything legel and have as many pc's as you want hanging off you connection and tell you how to setup nats etc...
The UK regulater makes a hell of a lot of noise, the UK had a public monopoly upuntil a few years ago and the regulator keeps trying to force down prices offered to ISP's for dialup and ADSL access.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The problem is that you cannot use anybody else.
most broadband providers have a govt sanctioned monopoly.
And after the recent declarations from the FCC the little competition that was coming from small dsl providers will soon evaporate.
Here in the year 2002, if you can't easily read a pdf, it's not someone else's fault. You should upgrade to a less primitive system.
how do you suppose that will happen?
thanks to the fcc the telcos can now exclude competitors from their hubs. The cable companies will never let a competitor on their cable. The cable networks were created with large government subsidies and such subsidies will not come for a duplicate cable network.
This government of ours has ensured that telcos and cable companies will have a monopoly on broadband for a loong time.
The ACLU did NOT state that "broadband access is a threat to internet freedom". This is a study on the problem of broadband monopolies being created in the cable market only, due to common carrier restrictions.
It is the grand flaw of capitalism. When a company reaches the point where it no longer has to care about how good the service it provides is, and merely tries to maximize it's profit without needing any concern for the trade-off, then it is wrong. Take Microsoft. It's not in there best interest to increase their profit by making a better product - it works better for them to screw their customers. That's what anti-trust laws are for, and that's why we try to keep any one company from having control of a product/service. The unscrupulous among us (and there are many) will stop caring about customers. That's not how it should work.
SIG: HUP
"What is wrong with corporations having an incentive to make profit? That is what they are there for.
Companies have no incentive to support free speech, the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them. If you don't like what cable companies do then don't use them. Don't try to impose your will on others."
The simple point is this: Corporations are not citizens. While you say that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to them, the 1st Amendment does apply to the citizens that use the cable company. (I know there have been a number of court cases that give citizen-like rights to corporations, though. One phone company sued a town that wouldn't let them put up a cellphone tower, saying its civil rights had been violated. The town lost.)
Consider this, perhaps... While it might be a flawed analogy, what if the cable provider changed your text en route, attributing things to you that you didn't say. Could you sue the company for libel? Slander? If they are blocking you, would that be denying you your right to free speech?
While it is most likely in their (profitable) interest to promote free speech (sounds like a phone ad...) if there are fewer and fewer companies that provide the service (cable is not a right) they will have de facto control over the medium. The solution is to have more players in the market, so that there isn't one central controlling company or a very small number of controlling companies. Competition helps promote fair play. Usually...
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
I thought BT wholesale only provided ADSL connection not internet connection, SFAIK ADSL could be used for anything e.g. direct connection to the office, not just 'the internet' so BT would have a hell of a job restricting the line.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Nobody said anything about p2p, and nobody has to justify anything to you.
The reason we call them "rights" is because they are not open to discussion. I am free to express myself, and it is not OK for people to deny me that right. Doesn't matter if I'm using my broadband account to host my little web page, or to play Quake...you don't get to decide what I do.
And as far as your codicil that everyone is wrong in someone's eyes, I guess you must be right...cuz you sure are wrong about everything else.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Hmmm... let's see. Gaming? Work? (I'm a designer and regularly transfer large Photoshop/Illustrator files.) Obnoxiously large Flash sites? And lest we forget, the hallowed halls of pr0n. (Or so I've heard.... *cough*)
Should I keep going here? There's a lot more to the high-bandwidth than P2P leeching, despite what the front page of most news sites would have you believe.
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Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
I tried BT's service, but switched to demon (no I don't work for them) as they have a pretty open policy, plus you get a fixed IP (which is a double edged sword I guess).
;-)
Before I signed up I asked about their policy for customers running services on their machines and bandwith limits. I was told I could do anything I liked so long as I didn't cause problems for anyone else.
Service has been great for me, I could never go back to a modem now
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Their goal is to make a profit, but the 1st amendment DOES affect them. They may not actively support my constitutional rights but they cannot limit my rights via their business practices.
This is especially egregious because they have a monopoly. This is the reasoning behind regulation by the FCC (e.g. equal access to radio & TV time, access to incumbent carriers' telephony facilities, the right to erect antennas for TV reception).
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
"What's left to legally justify broadband?"
What about Windows Update? What about the free Personal Learning Edition of Maya (an over 100 MB download), or Gmax (21.4 MB just for the installer, and 15.20 MB for the help files)?
"The Congress shall have Power
Maybe it's time to realize the fact that "email" and "information superhighway" aren't just empty metaphors. They are the modern implementation of the basic transportation and communication systems that have been mentioned in the US Constitution for 200 years.
Freedom of speech or the press only means one thing, that the government can't stop you from speaking or publishing. It dosen't mean that you have a right to force others to provide you with a Printing Press, or a TV station, or a Broadband connection.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
You may have a local problem, like junk in your local DNS cache. Also check for any adware/spyware on your local machine that inserts itself into the TCP/IP stack, like Web3000. Use AdAware to look for such crap. Also turn off any "keyword" type browser features.
Actually, courts have ruled the first amendment does apply to corporations. They are using this to overturn many of the FCC's regulations on ownership, including limits on the percent of the national market that cable companies can own and the TV/newspaper cross ownership ban.
Our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees us freedom from government trampling on our rights.
Individuals, corporations, etc have the freedom to do what they please to do, and the market and consumers will decide if they can deal with those issues.
The ACLU are a bunch of morons, all they do is advance socialists race-balancing theories, not protect freedom.
The only organization that actually DEFENDS freedom is the Institute for Justice.
Argh.
I think that companies have to get one thing into their head. The internet is not the next big place to make money. The internet is the equivilent of a phone, paper mail, and a library, all of which are extremely personal and non-commercial. I really don't think that people want corporate interests to pervade every aspect of their lives. At some point, people's interest in keeping a vital economy and strong commercial sector have to come to a balance with people's interest in maintaining perspective and sanity. The current situation on the Internet is ridiculous. It is so overly commercialized that what once had the promise to become a powerful medium of information exchange has increasingly become a method for corporations to make money, just like T.V. and mass-market clothing and movies. I'm not saying we should all be communist and kill those evil corporations. All I'm asking for is for people to realize that maybe the current value of the NASDAQ isn't the most important thing in the world, and that keeping corporate America in a constant state of growth does not take precedence to maintaining peoples' quality of life.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The problem seems to be on your end.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Since when does broadband -- or any other product -- need legal justification to exist? Certain products may be restricted due to public-safety concerns (things like guns, radioactive compounds, etc.), but none require "legal justification" to exist, to be created, to be sold, etc.
You ask what's wrong with the ACLU. They start from the premise that we live in a free country and have rights and freedoms.
What's wrong with you? You're assume that the government must provide sanction to citizens for them do do something -- in this case, sell and buy broadband internet connectivity. That's backwards. Citizens give sanction to government. At least, in free societies, they do.
It really sounds like you want to shove people down to slower, less useful connections so that your connection is more useful to you, and you're not shy about using the government to that end.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The odds that this subject will make it onto TV at all are slim. The odds that they would interview anyone who would advocate for the position espoused by the ACLU are remote. I would be shocked if they let Jesse Jackson on because he would say something about media consolidation adverserly effecting minorities, but I would be thrilled if they did.
hence p2p is useless for legal reasons.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
What's left to legally justify broadband? Nothing at all. P2P is the only thing that justifies broadband. If you're not using p2p then you can probably get everything you need from a 56K modem and save yourself some money.
>>>>>>>.
Have you used dialup lately? Even just surfing the internet is a pain. Not to mention the fact that it limits your access to stuff like CNN Newfeeds, video conferencing, internet long distance phone calls, etc. All of these are things the average home user wants to use. Also, I doubt that the average home user even knows about p2p. Maybe kids, but not adults.
Second, I do think we should get rid of speed limits. I'm sick of the government protecting people from their own stupidity. Instead, make the consequences for stuff like manslaughter much tougher than the ridiculous "community service" crap they have now.
As for the ACLU, they're the ones protecting your freedom. The fight is never over, because the government is always out to get you. No, people should not live peacefully, but always be alert. This is perhaps the one biggest thing that annoys me about the "public." Always wanting to get on with their own sedentary existance without giving a single thought to the larger issues in the world. I'm not saying we should spend every moment worrying about the global ethical consequences of our behavior, we'd go insane. But staying alert of them wouldn't kill us, and would make the world a whole lot better.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
My government in my free country knows that private businesses are private until they are unfair or illegal in their business practices. The ACLU has no right to tell broadband companies what to do, and I mean that they have no right even if they think that as the ACLU they can define the bill of rights to suit them as they have done in the past.
I think the ACLU is a joke, we have the supreme court to do what the ACLU thinks is their job. Oh well I guess I'm just not an American because I trust the system of government that is in America and I trust the supreme court, so that leaves no room for the ACLU.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
You are absolutely right, I have no right at all to tell you how to use the broadband connection you have. BUT that doesn't mean that you can use the connection for anything that you want to, hence the terms of agreement. I think what everyone is failing to realize is that this is the ACLU going after a private entity which can put any stipulation on their service that they want to. I think a large portion of the slashdot community has forgotten that one cannot tell a company what to do unless they own that company.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
p2p blocking is what makes broadband worthwhile to the average person. Where did I say I was average? I use my broadband to update debian and mirror OSS projects (roughly 900 gigs of it). Though I really wouldn't call it broadband I would call it a T3, but that's beside the point it's a fast download.
Always on? That's a joke and a half. It takes less than a minute to connect via dialup, if your email is that important then you really need to find a hobby. A second pohne line with a dialup connection is actually far cheaper than a broadband connection.
I bet your TOS says that it can be changed at anytime, doesn't it? Yup!
As far as handguns, you are a simple minded fool for thinking such things. I want you to loose someone you love to a handgun and ask yourself how much that they are useful as security devices. No one hunts with a handgun, and if no one had a handgun there would be no reason for anyone to have one. The biggest argument for handguns is that someone else has one and you want to protect yourself.
Besides the point you really need to think about what a troll really is. Someone who makes a sound argument is not a troll. I have been posting to slashdot for quite a while now and change my UID more than once, but you need to realize that not everyone is a 13 year old trapped in their basement with nothing to do and that there truly are people posting to slashdot who want to make their comments known.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Who's a monopoly. I know of at least 10 cable modem providers (now that @home is dead) and 3 times that many DSL providers. Where's that monopoly again??
Monopolies are a joke because no one forces anyone to do anything, it's the fact that people are stupid and lazy and use what's common that creates a "monopoly" of sorts. Windows is not a monopoly, how do I know this? Because I've got a mac right here that I use all the time with no windows OS on it at all.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Not at the time I signed it, it didn't.
And no, I don't have options for cable modem providers. I can't get cable modem service at all. And, as far as DSL goes, my options are 1) Covad.net (since they successfully forced everybody else out of the market) or somebody reselling covad.net's service at a higher price.
That's a monopoly.
Monopolies are NOT a joke. If I have a monopoly on steel, it's not really OK for me to say "Well, you can buy my steel or you can not use steel!" Or, at least, that's what the anti-trust laws say.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The getting sued problem is solved by making the law clear that anyone supplying internet access is a "common carrier" NOT a publisher. Web hosting services, newgroup etc.. are a bit of a grey area, but the law should make it very difficult to sue the hosting company, and have clear protections against frivolous charges of copyright infringement.
As for bandwidth hogs - stop advertising unlimited bandwidth unless it IS unlimited. This isn't as much as a problem for the adsl providers, but for the cable guys where many customers are basicly sharing a big star one hog can cut into a lot of customers bandwidth.
My ISP (adsl) gives me X bytes up/down for a flat rate. If I go over this generous limit then I pay extra. Wouldn't this solve the hog problem for the cable guys too?
Anarchists never rule
I am a network engineer and sysadmin by trade.
As a consumer, I am very distressed with the state of broadband. I just can not find broadband providers that meet the needs that I desire. The only option that I seem to have is getting a DS1 or fractional DS1 at extreme cost to get what I want.
What do I want?
Broadband is made up of two things -- latency and capacity. Low latency is important. Anything over 100ms is high and can cause problems with time sensitive applications such as voice communications, shell usage, and action game playing. In regards to capacity, this is the pipe width of your circuit, be it 128Kbps or 1.5Mbps.
But it is also made up of other things. Does your service provider allow you to use servers? Will their mirror your reverse DNS files since they hold the masters? What about in and out port and protocol filtering? What about quality of service? Uplink costs are about $1000 per 1Mbps -- that is $1 per Kb! In order to make money and provide a good service to their customers, they need to oversubscribe, and also deal out the bandwidth fairly.
I have no sympathy for the P2P copywrited material sharing fools out there who are upset that they can not pirate software -- that is not what the Internet is for. The Internet is not TV -- you do not just watch things. The Internet lets you publish, touch, interact, and exchange information on an International scale.
Companies who do not let you run servers on ANY connection, be it dialup or DSL, are NOT providing Internet connectivity. They are providing browse-only-Internet, Read-Only Internet, or just plain TV-like crap.
Companies that do not provide quality of service mechanisms are also doing a poor job. Implementing a QOS scheme with modern equipment is very easy and works, but nobody wants to rock their big dumb ISP boat and say that they need to do something like that.
Offering only an OSI layer 2 (bridged) network connection is NOT acceptable. This means cable providers, LRE (long range Ethernet), and PPPoE/PPPoATM providers that do not provide point to point circuits. If you want to provide this kind of service, then that is okay, but not as an only option.
Any ISP that does not provide for IP allocations is no ISP at all, period.
I do not need a 1.5Mbps upstream and 128Kbps upstream DSL line. I would much rather have a 384Kbps bidirectional ADSL or SDSL line (yes, you can have a balanced line with ADSL, there is no technical excuse) and be able to use it.
I do not mind paying a little more for these services, but overcharging me for things like a small IP allocation, or reverse DNS on the allocation, or using servers, is unacceptable. How much work does it take to do a SWIP and enter a configuration line in your RDNS pull system? I KNOW how much work it takes because I used to do it -- about two minutes AT MOST, almost zero resources, does not have to be done by an engineer, and is easily automated.
AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate modern broadband providers, and I hate the people who use them blindly. Why does nobody care?
In Denver I was paying $150 a month for a 640Kbps PPPoATM ADSL line with a
I have recently moved to the Orlando Florida metro area, and while looking for apartments have found that I am really screwed. I just can not get what I need. Almost all of the apartment complexes here used digital line compression on their phone lines, which kills DSL. There is nothing wireless, and only RoadRunner cable modem service is available, and I hear very oversubscribed.
I hate everybody! Die.
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From page 2:
/give up/ your competitive advantage.
"4. Cable broadband is not restrained by competition
5. Cable broadband has not been restrained by regulation"
These statements are mutually exclusive. Allow me to elaborate. It is partially true that cable is not subject to competition. The reason for this is that it has indeed been "restrained by regulation". Throw a rock in a room full of US cities and you'll hit one with a legally-protected cable monopoly. My city sure has one. If you don't allow multiple cable companies to operate, how can you chide them for lack of competition? It makes no sense. It's also preposterous to suggest that the solution is MORE regulation rather than less. You cannot produce the effects of competition by writing laws. The failure of socialism proved that one.
But this logical breakdown hardly matters, as the entire premise of their concern is faulty.
From page 1:
"The danger is that the Internet will come under private control. Core American liberties
such as freedom of speech are of no value if the forums where such rights are commonly
exercised are not themselves free."
I don't know what country these guys have been living in, but it ain't the USA. Every avenue through which free speech is exercised is under private control. Newspapers, TV, radio, even if you just stand on a soapbox and shout, the ground you're standing on is owned by someone. Even our precious internet runs on cables and computers owned by individuals. Quite simply, "free speech" on the internet doesn't exist. You can only post on Slashdot what the Slashdot owners will allow you to. It's the same at ArsTechnica, Shacknews, SomethingAwful, or any other online forum system or moderated usenet group. And unmoderated usenet only acts "free" because the designers and operators of the system and the individual groups decided it should be so. There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING "public" about the internet, and that changes not regardless of whether you use dial-up or cable.
And didn't we address this already recently, in the story on making 'net access a public utility? There the fear was that it's in the competitive interest of providers to limit access. As I said re: that story, that's bullshit. If what consumers want is unfettered access to anything and everything, then providing that is what gives competitive advantage. Limiting access is how you
The value of the internet is in how decentralized it is in terms of content provision. The value of the web isn't on Yahoo or MSN.com or anything owned by AOL/TW, it's on Geocities, lonestar.org homepages, stupid Tripod sites, small community forums, etc etc etc. It would only ever be in the interest of providers to limit access if they could limit access to just things that they own. But no provider could ever own enough of the internet to be useful on its own.
hence (by your logic) ftp is useless for legal reasons.
Don't outlaw something just because its only legal uses can be done by something else. If we keep doing that, we'll end up removing everyone's teeth because they might bite someone, and they can chew their food with their fingernails
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
Yes, absolutely! The problem does lie with government and not with the true *providers* of broadband.
The small "competitors" selling DSL were not really DSL providers at all. That's the crux of the issue. They just wanted government to force the regional Bells to hand over their DSL services at (or below) cost so they could resell it.
Then they bellyache when the regional Bells "play games" with them, and give them only second rate service on those circuits. Gee, I wonder why *that* happens?
Open the whole thing up.... take govt. regulation out of the picture completely, and see what happens then. In the short term, sure - there will be some chaos and some folks will see their access cut off as their company goes under.
Good... that's "survival of the fittest" in action. In the long-term, you'll have a variety of different technologies that all promise to bring you inexpensive high-speed Internet - and DSL will simply be the regional Bell's method of choice.
You, the consumer, will finally have *real* alternatives, instead of the exact same service sold to you by your choice of "shell companies" that are simply printing up the bills and forwarding your service requests to the real provider, the Bells.
What you describe is not a flaw of capitalism but rather a flaw in the current application of anti-trust laws in the U.S. Capitalism, unhindered by the sort of kowtowing to corporate interests we see in our Congress and governmental "leadership," provides (if not requires) the ultimate remedy to this problem: competition. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater; the bad guy here isn't capitalism, but rather the lack of.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
The thing about the Supreme Court (or any court) is that they cannot make a decision on an issue unless they have a case in front of them that addresses that issue. You may think the ACLU is irrelevant, but I think they are an important part of bringing issues to the courts' attention.
The ACLU may just be publishing reports on Cable Monopolies now, but someday these issues will go to court, and the ACLU will probably be involved somehow - providing legal expertise, evidence (this report??), money, etc.
The ACLU is responsible for so many of the freedoms and rights that you now enjoy.
What i like a lot about the ACLU is that they protect everyone's liberties, including people that obviously dont deserve them, like you.
http://saveie6.com/
Bush is guilty of plenty as well.
The Bush FCC has worked hard to remove any meaningful competition from all media especially internet and radio.
And the patriot act is pretty bad.
but yeah clinton is guilty as well.
Wrong the problem lies with capitalism. It is an inherent flaw that causes people to look out for number one instead of providing services for all. Communism would be a far better approach to a post-industrial/computerized society. In this information age we have the ability to do something known as computerized automation. What does that mean? It means you can have machines do ALL of the work. If our money is based on the amount of work we do and if we have machines do all the work what does that mean? Money is free. If money and work are essentially free then why do we need capitalism? We don't.
But there are some very rich people who do, in order to maintain their lifestyle status as a billionaire or even a millionaire. Those are the people who are pushing for all this capitalist propoganda and commercialism, get-rich-quick schemes, etc.
But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe capitalism saved the world, beat the commis and will make us all rich. Cheers to all those capitalists out there with the easy life who are financially indipendant and worry free. I'll be among you soon enough. So what do I care?
I think the ACLU is a joke, we have the supreme court to do what the ACLU thinks is their job. Oh well I guess I'm just not an American because I trust the system of government that is in America and I trust the supreme court, so that leaves no room for the ACLU.
The fact that you trust the Supreme Court does not make you unAmerican... it just makes you stupid.
God is real unless declared integer
Capitalism...provides (if not requires) the ultimate remedy to this problem: competition.
I have to say I don't agree. The structure of Capitalism allows the acquisition or destruction of the "competition."
Capitalism is warfare in the retail realm (though it's effects spill out into other areas of life;) it is a pseudo-feudal system, where warlords seek to conquer their oposition, and smash them into the ground.
Any divergence from this scenario requires legislation to protect citizens from the mighty power that capitalist organisations wield: namely, a truce (where everyone agrees to a price for goods that benefits all major competitors) or victory over all opposition (where more legislation is needed to prevent the monopoly.)
It is every corporate entity's wish to either have a balance of power (which means an abatement of competition) or to eliminate their opposition (which, also means an abatement of competition.)
Capitalism is warfare. The bigger and smarter and more powerful, the more likely they will win. The only thing that stops a state of hegemonic dominance by Corporate Capitalist entities, is the law.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
well you have the supreme court to thank to be able to call me stupid. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Only in America, eh!
Ahem.
I mean, this is a threat to internet freedom only in one (increasingly reactionary) country, the US of A.
When a company reaches the point where it no longer has to care about how good the service it provides is, and merely tries to maximize it's profit without needing any concern for the trade-off, then it is wrong.
Sure it is...and there's one sure-fire solution. If enough people in the market are willing to get off their lazy asses and do something about it, they'll take their business elsewhere. A monopoly creates opportunities for abuse, but its the money that allows the abuse to continue. If consumers would rid themselves of their indifference, it seems like it could really turn things around.
I LIKE the fact that the Dow Jones is tanking. It's unfortunate that people are experiencing serious loss, but sometimes you've got to take a few steps back before moving forward. The message I see here on the part of investors is, "play by the rules, or don't play at all." Bush and his cronies would do well to climb out of their ivory towers and take note.
Part of this chaos is admittedly emotional, but the other part, I'm assuming, deals with the very real issue of investor confidence. There may well indeed be some good stock buys in the market right now, but without any reassurance that corporate fraud will be vigorously prosecuted, where's the sense in subjecting your money to any further risk that it will be stolen by corporate thieves?
To sum it up- if the practices of a given monopoly or corporate conglomerate are out of line, complain. If that doesn't work, LEAVE, and by all means, take your wallet with you.
I have the constitution of the United States to thank for the right to call you stupid. I have the Federal Government to thank that funded the research that wound up creating the technology that allows me to call you stupid via the internet.
But I don't get why I should thank the current Supreme Court for "being able" to call you names. Maybe I'm being stupid - I certainly have been before. Why do I owe the current supreme court any thanks?
God is real unless declared integer
I agree. This is the difference between capitalism and a free market. When there is a monopoly, there is no free market because the buyer can't choose different suppliers. Yet monopolies are often the result of a long term capitalist market.
Having a free market should be the goal--not a capitalistic one. Unfortunately, the government seems to be pushing for a capitalistic market that is tightly regulated (as in enforcing policies that define every way the company should act). This is much like communism--the only difference is that the government doesn't own the companies on paper. Maybe it is this way in some countries, but it is this way in my country (the US). They don't even seem to punish most real criminal behavior--just bring down everyone with absurd contradictory and restrictive standards.
It should be that the government maintains a free market by enforcing anti-trust laws (which they don't--just look at Microsoft) and punishing actual criminal behavior--such as fraud, theft, murder, etc.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
GNU xpdf is a very crappy program by pretty much any standard. Don't inflict it on other people! In fact, IMO, Acrobat Reader is a very crappy program too, however I imagine some people will disagree with that one.
Yes, which gives them no excuse for not providing an html version on the web. After all, html is the standard format for documents on the web. Why shouldn't I be able to view their documents with my browser?
BTW, PDFs are made for formatting documents on paper not a computer screen. That may be good if you need to print it out, but otherwise it isn't.
In fact, every PDF file I've looked at uses black text on a bright white background--very bad for viewing on a computer--when your monitor is showing lots of white, it is just like staring into a lightbulb. I remember several years ago when there were so many complaints from office employees about eye strain that the government came out with regulations that basicly suggests that monitors should have "filters" on them (that are really just sunglasses). This was "coincedently" just a few years after MS Windows (you know: the OS with the paperwhite colors) came out. I doubt there would be those kind of problems if a dark background was used.
P2P is hardly "useless for legal reasons." For one, it can be used to reduce bandwidth on overloaded servers. I know of one P2P program that allows you to use Debian's apt system for downloading from peers instead of the main sites. It also has a chatting system and a group messaging system (kind of like usenet, but kind of not). Those are quite useful legal reasons.
You can get those services via other methods, however there are reasons to use P2P over those other methods. Downloading may work better than an overloaded server that is provided by a non-profit organization--you are actually helping them out as it costs them less money that way.
It is a way to use group messaging protocols other than usenet without needing a server--something for those people who are tired of trolls, spam, censorship and etc. ...or for people who want to try out new experimental protocols. It is a way to chat with people potentially without the problems of central servers--netsplits, poor service, advertisments, required to use one ISP's crappy IM client, etc, etc... There are also many other uses for P2P, many of which probably haven't even been conceived of yet.
The only reason P2P technolgy seems to be focused on copyright infringement is because the entertainment cartel keeps broadcasting that the only uses for P2P programs are to "steal" music and movies from them. So many people writing P2P programs think that trading music and video files are the "killer app" for this technology, and people running P2P programs mostly came because they heard on the news that they can get free movies and music via P2P services.
Would someone please show the politicians that this is the real reason broadband hasn't taken off. I keep seeing crap that says it is because there is no video on demand or DRM. Like in the CBDTPA or the Technology Administration's Public Workshop on Digital Entertainment and Rights Management.
So, different DSL offerings are not "the exact same service" even if they're all using the ILEC's wire and DSLAM. Most issues I've seen with DSL are not related to the wire/DSLAM part of the service, but to the upstream bandwidth and policy issues. The ILECs naturally build the cheapest network possible and impose narrow terms of service, reasoning that their consumers are not very critical. Other providers build better networks, have more friendly TOS, and charge more.
You ask for completely free competition. How would this work? Would everyone be allowed to run their cables on existing telephone poles? Or would everyone be allowed to plant their own set of poles or dig trenches as they see fit? Or does the government get to decide who can compete?
It's easy enough to set up your own DNS cache and use that. Not only does it bypass your ISP's name servers, but since fewer DNS queries will need to go out onto the Internet, you should also see a slight increase in browsing speed.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" because of a number of things. They stopped travellers and demanded to see ID/papers/etc. The U.S. is doing that now.
/. stretches of belief of all time. Honestly, the USA today and the Soviet Empire are similar? Are you getting moved to North Dakota because you hold a dissenting opinion? Are you getting a state-run occupation given to you? I THINK NOT.
This has to be one of the greatest
Does the current US gov't not let you go from state to state without papers? It is a little different, I would say. The only thing that you have to stop for in the US is if you are hauling cargo, and you have to make sure that you don't break bridges and roads with oversized roads.
They stopped travellers and demanded to see ID/papers/etc.
Well, do you know of a nation that DOES NOT DO THAT? I went to Cozumel, Mexico, a resort island with a planeload of yankees the other day. A man in green fatigues with a rifle was the first person I saw off the plane. IT IS A RESORT ISLAND FOR TOURISTS. Every nation does this. The USA for one had NO REASON TO STICK MILITARY AT THE AIRPORTS BEFORE SEPT. 11. They do now.
They controlled information flow and communications. The U.S. is doing that now.
I am a news photographer for FOX. My best friend at work went to Afghanistan. They could go wherever they pleased IN A WAR ZONE. I have no concept of what you are talking about nor any knowledge of what you claim, but I have videotape in my personal possesion to prove you're lying. If you are saying that the government and I are in bed together, and that I am doing everything in my power to control information to you, then you are a stone cold idiot. I work for an independent news organization.
I am not their "friend." Both sides understand the issues that we bring up.
DO YOU EVEN LIVE IN THE USA OR KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE USA ENOUGH TO MAKE THESE KINDS OF STATEMENTS? Apparently not. So take all of your crap karma and pointless, uninformed, anti-USA rhetoric and look up some information before you and your little revolutionista friends start spouting "facts."
Dear enraged person, please click here.
Thank you.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I wasn't generalizing. And you can block all stories I post if you'd like :)
I'm hesitant to respond, but since I hear the beating of the "you-can-block-editors-you-dislike" drum, more and more these days, I feel somewhat obligated. It seems a lot of editors feel this is a solution.
I would like to explain why I feel it is not. Or rather, it's not a solution that works in all cases.
Slashdot has given us two great tools for tweaking what we want to see: blocking an editor & making someone a friend/enemy.
In the case of a moronic user, it works well. I can just make them a foe/enemy and adjust my preferences to score it beneath my threshold. In the case of an editor like Katz, who posts almost exclusively his own commentary, it also works well. As you state, I can block all his stories.
But what about when an editor posts stories that aren't his? That is, what about all the stories coming from the submission bin? Often, they're independent of the editor and really dependent upon who ever's on shift to watch the bin.
In these cases, sometimes the editors just post the story, and if it's a topic they're especially interested in, participate in the discussion. Perfect! That's helping keep slashdot a healthy, active community.
In other cases, some editors, notably yourself & Michael, aggressively integrate your own opinions and commentary into other slashdot worthy stories, instead of simply posting the story and adding your comments as a regular user. Some, like Jamie, will even go out of their way to update an existing story they didn't post to add their commentary!
To be clear: I have no problems with you -- or the others -- having an opinion. You're certainly entitled to it.
But, I, and a large part of the slashdot community would rather just ignore you. Something you make it very difficult for everyone to do. As someone who often pulls from the bin, you make it so we can't ignore you without ignoring half the daily submissions to slashdot!
I don't understand why you guys do it. You build use these great tools, only to circumvent them! In this case you, I can't block you without blocking half the user base.
The solution is pretty simple, and it's been pleaded for by myself and other user's. Post the story, and inject your commentary just as all the other user's do: in the comments area.
Anyway, two cents.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
You, sir, are a liar.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Freedom of speech or the press only means one thing, that the government can't stop you from speaking or publishing.
The government stops me from speaking over the radio because the FCC refuses to open new application filing windows for low-power FM radio stations.
The government stops me from publishing over the Internet because municipal governments have granted exclusive last-mile franchises to the telcos and the cable companies.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Me? I work for a large company that (until sometime in the near future) owns a large cable TV system - but I'm planning to get DSL, because I want to run servers and don't want to put up with the service restrictions. Some of the DSL providers are equally clueless, but some aren't....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And phones, paper mail, and libraries are all _highly_ commercial as well as personal. The contents of your mail should be private, and who you get mail from should be private, and in a free market they would be, but the government monopoly lets the post office open your mail to inspect it for politically incorrect plants and sexually incorrect pictures, and doesn't require a warrant to give the police records about who you got mail from. Some libraries are tax-funded, some are privately funded membership-based, some are run by other kinds of organizations for their members, and some are purely commercial - Borders and Blockbuster Video and the wonderful independent bookstores we have in the San Francisco Bay Area are just as much in the library business as your town's library, and the books your library buys are mostly byproducts of the commercial publishing business (Authors may write books for artistic reasons as well as financial reasons, but publishers pay for the cost of printing and distributing them purely because they're trying to make money....)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
T1.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The Cable companies have set up a service and a price structure that is aimed at the typical home internet user. It isn't intended to be a substitute for a T1 line, yet people are complaining that their $40 cable dosen't have the flexability of a far more expensive T1 line.
If there is a large enough market for low cost T1 type services someone will provide it, but a few geeks wanting to run webservers is not a large enough market to justify the cost at this time.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The USA for one had NO REASON TO STICK MILITARY AT THE AIRPORTS BEFORE SEPT. 11. They do now.
Please explain how a military presence at airports would have prevented the 9/11 hijackings.
Perhaps you're being extremely insightful, in that the USA does have a reason to place military units in airports now, and that reason is to make people feel more secure.
--
E_NOSIG
I thought the ACLU didn't like things like identification papers.
???
I drem of the day when companies wake up and realise that 90% of there employes only? need to go into work one day a week, and should be given the freedome to work pro-rata from home.
I tele-work, most of the work I do is a few hundred miles away and on different locations.
I still have to come into the office though for no apparent reason.
I have a faster connection a better PC, more software, a confortable environment and thats all at home.
Number of man days lost to, 'I could just do with another hour in bed' drop to near zero.
Hours lost having to go outside for a smoke , drop to near zero.
Whole days lost to illness, drop to near zero.
etc.....
People may slack off for a while, but I took a 3 month sabatical and came back to work because I got board.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The irony is that it's our laws that create the Corporate Capitalist hegemonies. In thanks, these hegemonies lobby the government for special treatment. The feedback loop is obvious. The solution isn't. I support killing that too sweet collusion between business and government by severely scaling back patents and copyrights, having more enforcement of the corporate death penalty, eliminating corporate income tax and instituting a corporate flat tax, removing perpetrators of victimless crimes from prison to make room for corporate criminals in "federal ass-pounding prison", destroying the laws that make corporations "public persons", eliminating corporate campaign contributions.
That sort of thing.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I think what happens here is these guys get pointed to some "underground" news site on the internet, and they read some "shocking" story about coverups, and they think;
"My God, normal Joe Sixpack would NEVER read this site, nobody could find this site but because I have an open mind and such cool friends, *I* found it, and now I know *THE TRUTH* - and everyone else is duped by this huge corporate conglomerate media conspiracy! I MUST get the word out! I know, I'll start with slashdot - - they seem pretty open minded. . . "
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Because everybody's definition of "incentive" is different.
Everyone can make a living at just about every business. But nowadays, just making a living isn't worth the effort it seems. Now, it seems, the only way to give someone the incentive to start a business is if they can get a monopoly, corner the market, sit back, and rake in obscene amounts of money.
You know this to be true. Look at the stock performance of a completely (as yet) unregulated monopoly, Intel. Or Microsoft. Compare those to the rest of the market. Why in hell would anybody spend money on stock of a company that's eventually going to get destroyed or swallowed by the monopoly? Answer is: nobody would.
Why in hell would the RIAA want to spend money to allow people to download songs at $1 a pop, with full access to their complete range of artists from the beginning of recording history to the present - only to allow people to freely make copies - despite the fact that they'd likely sell billions, - no trillions, the mere fact that they can't "maximize" their profits, because part of the equation is out of their control - the copying, no fucking way are they going to do that - which is why you see no widely RIAA adopted or approved music download service like that available today.
Why in hell would oil companies allow alternative fueled vehicles be developed when they can make obscene amounts of profits by pumping black crap out of the ground for next to nothing? There's no "incentive" - despite the fact that they could still make obscene profits - someone else will invariably have their fingers in their pie - ethanol or biodeisel-producing farmers, or solar-cell producers (although BPAmoco is one of the bigger players in solar cells right now).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
How would free competition work? I don't think you'd have "everyone running their cables on existing poles". The point is, you'd leave the copper up to the regional Bells. If they're completely released from govt. control and have to compete in the marketplace, that's their only unique asset. They'll, of course, want to sell everyone on the idea that they're the "only one who can bring you DSL" - and in my scenario, yes - they would be.
The fact is, competitors would simply have to think "outside the box" a little bit. Instead of worrying about running more copper (or finding ways to share Bell's copper), they'd have to offer competing technologies that use other means of transmission. Perhaps the electric companies will sub-contract new companies to offer Internet over their lines? The cable company's high-speed access is already working quite well. Some of the wireless Inet services offered via microwave that didn't survive before might be viable in the near future, too. Certainly, cellular phone providers would have more incentive to offer high-speed Inet service over their networks. (Instead of trying to convince us we really need to get web services on that tiny cellphone screen, they can sell adapter cards for laptops and desktop systems to get you on their network at high-speed.)
Don't forget, too, there are other ways to get cable into a home. There was talk in the past of running fiber through sewer lines. Some properly protected fiber could come in through water, sewer, or maybe even gas lines. In all these cases, the public utility wouldn't have to offer the service themselves. (I don't think you'll really want your local water company becoming your web host.....) They simply need to strike up a deal with someone else to make this happen together.