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Two-Tier Internet & The End of Freedom of Speech
Max Fomitchev writes "The proposed Two-Tier Internet bill threatens not only to raise prices on goods and services served online but also to seriously hamper free speech on Internet by allowing telecom providers choking user pages and blogs not associated with major content providers. What a perfect way of censorship..."
"Sure, your blog can be seen, but if it get's too popular you'll have to pay more...
Sure, you can start a small business, but if it get's too busy you'll have to pay more..."
Incorrect, that is how it works now. With tiered services it would be:
Sure, your blog can be seen, but at a slower rate. If you want it to continue to perform at it's current rate or better, you need to pay more...
Sure, you can start a small business, but your services will be slower. If you want a better QoS you need to pay more...
The problem with teiring is that it doesn't actually fix any problem. If every company in the world signed up with every teiring opperator, we would still have the same limitations we have right now with a higher price tag for content providers and consumers. The other problem is that ANY non-teired provider will kill your higher teired service. So theoretically, not only will you have to pay the extortion fee to AT&T/SBC and the other back bone providers, you'll also need to pay the fee to all the local ISPs, dial ups, cable/DSL services, WiFi providers etc...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Don't forget the fact that if for some reason, your packets get routed to some other carriers network (ie cable cut, dug up, etc..) , that *extra* extortion money that you paid to get your packets there at a high rate of speed, are now secondary to this carrier that didn't get it's payola.
That's the biggest thing that the two tiered internet folks are forgetting...
With all the different networks, owned and operated by different companies, sometime, somewhere, packets flow through at least 2, if not 3, 4 or more different networks, before it reaches you.
So, instead of paying for
#1 Connection (your's to the ISP)
#2 Content (in the way of service charge payable to provider)
#3 Payola1 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#4 Payola2 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#5 Payola3 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
#6 Payola4 (don't want those packets gettin' hurt while on our network)
etc....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
We say "go eat dirt" (or something analagous) and find another ISP. Been there, done that.
No...no... listen:- You're running a relatively popular website, say an e-commerce site, not up there with the big boys like Amazon but you're making money and you've given up your day job. The ISP providing connectivity for millions of users (say AOL) says "we're going to a two-tier network and we're going to give you the option to get a better tier." You can't find another ISP because it's not your ISP - it's your customer's ISP who's allocated so much bandwidth to your block of IPs and you won't get anymore unless you pay up.
Your options will be to pay up, or put up with the fact that millions of your customers find your website is ridiculously slow. As less people use your website it will speed up again, but your customers and potential customers have gone back to Amazon and have taken your site of their bookmarks list. Getting a better rack server or changing ISPs won't help because the artificial bottleneck is elsewhere and outside of your control unless you pay to move onto the priority tier.