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Small Cable Groups Seek To Break Net Neutrality
saikou writes "CNet's News.com has a story on the first cable companies openly going against Net Neutrality. As usual, request for equal treatment is labeled as 'special favors', and Google is used as an example of company that should pay for a fast connection to the end user." From the article: "'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
Not to be a troll, just Devils Advocate. What do you think would happen if Cox "blocked" Google. Do you think the vast majority of Cox users would care enough to switch ? Do you think they have the ability to switch ?
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed other than RoadRunner. I cannot get DSL, and have only one provider. What happens tomorrow if they decide to throttle back Gmail, and throttle up Hotmail ??
This is something that needs more press.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
I had a similar idea but without paying for any trial.
Surely Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc can identify trafic originating from that ISP via IP addresses. When anyone trys to access your page from one of those ISP, redirect them to a page explaining that the ISP is holding back bandwidth to this site so your expierence may be slower than it should be. Then provide information about competing ISPs in the area which don't do this as well as contact information to the ISP to complain. Then after 5 seconds or something you are redirected to the actual page.
Yes, this will probably annoy users but I think that annoyance will mostly be focused toward the ISP. Then the market can sort out if its worth it to implement this.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Just display a page with a message saying "XYZ isp is making you wait N seconds before accessing Google".
Using the end user's ISP named and N being the average from that ISPs throttling. Include a link to a page explaining what the ISP is actually doing - slowing down the users connection to try to make someone else pay them money. In other words the users service was reduced intentionally (without notifying them). Just use simple words because most users don't have a clue about computers.