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Musicians Demand the Internet Stay Neutral
eldavojohn writes "124 bands — including R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan, and Pearl Jam — and 24 music labels are sending a clear message to keep Net traffic neutral. The Rock the Net campaign wants all traffic to be equal instead of allowing providers to charge a fee for certain pages to load faster than others. These musicians are the latest to join the Save the Internet campaign, which has the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in its camp. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., spoke at the campaign's kickoff. I think it's obvious that musicians (especially independents and small labels) will find themselves with the short end of the stick if they are asked to pay a fee to have their music streamed as fast as larger bands or even corporations."
Well, if REM says so, then it must be a good thing. That really helped me solidify my stance.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to think "profiling is worse than the slaughter of innocent people..."
I'm all for net neutrality, but did they really believe that their opinions matter?
Britney is leading this celebrity crusade.
.. from rehab.
She raises her fists in the air and says, "No! we will not stand for this!"
I think one of the best things I noticed about this article is the news site it is taken from. Not Wired online, not the Register, not any of the usual, tech-oriented news sites. CNN is read by the technoelite and the public in general. The entire Net Neutrality issue needs to be in the public view-space.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
... is when bands, especially those who have made it already and don't need more money (I'm talking to you R.E.M.), just dump their records labels and publish their music freely. They can ask you for a contribution if you like, or for you to come to their shows. Here's an example from the Netherlands, all their music for download as long as you "promise to let all your friends listen to it".
In general, I think if you want to be an artist, then you want to have as many people as possible to have access to your material, and if can also make a buck, it's an extra. Otherwise you're just an "entrepeneur" (I quote Rock the Net) and part of the system that aims only for consumers' money, and you should not complain.
I'm a musician here, and I demand that the net stays equal, too.
If there are any musicians that read this, post here, too.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Not more Net Neutrality crap. I have to love /.'s double-stance on this. First they decry ISPs for not disconnecting clients that have been botted - then they demand that laws get passed to prevent that.
Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to implement QOS? Do I have to give up decent ping times on VOIP calls solely because the idiots next to me absolutely have to BitTorrent the latest episode of American Idol? Should someone sending spam be given equal priority to the 'net as someone trying to send emails to colleagues?
Net Neutrality means throwing up our hands in the air and allowing the Internet to become a useless mess of spam and viruses since the power to handle them would be stripped from ISPs. It means giving up on streaming video and audio. It means giving up on VOIP.
I don't think it's worth it. Why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to pay more to get a better connection?
Different styles of fascism (like loss of net neutrality) are popular around the world where elections, demonstrations and petitions are becoming more and more worthless because you can easily silenced by not having time on TV.
I believe in technology like guns and P2P to save this world.
"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do. I studied psychiatric history, which somehow proves something about drugs." -Tom Cruise
"They are well known people with large followings"
But large followings for doing _what_, exactly?
Why should I take medical advice from, say, the local mechanic or car repair advice from the local doctor? Or, for that matter, any advice from Paris Hilton?
OK, there's a good argument that everyone's email or web traffic ought to be the same, but for some applications you really do want the net itself to not be totally neutral. For example telesurgery, where a surgeon conducts operations remotely through the use of a robot, and where you really don't want packets getting delayed and are willing to pay for the elevated service. Do we really want such applications blocked (or made unreasonably hazardous) just because of poorly written regulations that are attempting to prevent possible future abuse? Would it not be better to break up the big telco monopolies instead and so allow competition to work in customers' favour?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
And in other news, Mice demand Cats stop chasing them.
Yawn.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Considering that Slashdot is owned by the VA Software Corporation, do you think it's funny that it is portrayed as being a fighter for the independent etc. etc. Or is it possible for a corporation to not be evil all the time?
And somebody needs to come up with a better name for it than Net Neutrality.
Something like...
'Uncrippled Internet'
As in...
'Don't support a crippled internet!'
'Stop a crippled internet!'
'Verizon wants to cripple your internet!'
paintball
"Net neutrality" requires government regulation to implement.
What makes you think that will make the internet a better place?
CrippleNet.
paintball
Good to see that Jenny Toomey continues to fight the good fight. For those who don't know, she ran an independent record label during the 90s (Simple Machines) and has always been an advocate of independent labels and musicians. Several years ago she started the Future of Music Coalition, which is one of the groups spearheading this campaign. Keep up the good work, Jenny!
This guy's the limit!
This is like the Onion story, where upon hearing that 100 students marched against the war in Iraq at some liberal arts college, George Bush suddenly called the troops home.
Newsflash to you entertainers: You don't matter. You sold your souls to the recording industry, and in return you got your jets, and your hookers and blow, now STFU and GBTW making them money. You dont HAVE TO sign with a big label, but you won't get anywhere if you don't.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Please tell us what zookeepers and botanists think about net neutrality next. Thanks in advance.
They make most of their money from concerts.
What you're saying is a bit like me expecting to not only go to work and get a paycheck, but also to videotape myself working (typing at my computer all day, not very interesting) and sell that to millions of people. I'm already getting paid.
I realize this isn't the case for everyone, just pointing out that some bands on that list (Pearl Jam?) could give their CDs away and still make obscene amounts of profit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Um, because it will? Just because the government is regulating something doesn't make it inherently worse off. Like how they regulate the roadways so you have to drive on a particular side (depending on which government is doing the regulating). Don't let your distrust of government regulation make you write off the matter. It isn't the regulation that is inherently bad, it is the misuse of the regulation.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
What I would like to know is: how do these artists feel about the extoritionist tacticts of the RIAA? Especially when their work funds the labels who pay the RIAA?
Any musician whose record label funds the RIAA has no standing, in my opinion, to make statements about what is just.
That's one opinion, but you don't have a way of knowing exactly what these bands are doing with their money either. Who says R.E.M. isn't spending a good bit of money on other charitable causes and interests? Maybe they are, and maybe they're not. But it's certainly possible.
Quite a few bands were hugely successful for years, only to become completely irrelevant if they stopped putting out material and decided to live off their past success. Maybe R.E.M. and others like them feel that they need to keep putting out new singles and albums, because they can do more good with a constant revenue stream coming in than if they call it quits?
I agree that it might be a nice gesture for successful major-label bands to all dump their labels and go independent. But in the grand scheme of things, that might not really mean a lot anyway. The really *critical* change happens when the new, up-and-coming bands succeed despite never signing with those big labels!
I think it's obvious that musicians (and too many other people) don't know how the Internet works.
Nobody "owns" the Internet. If some ISPs or backbone companies decide to limit bandwidth to certain sites, then they will simply lose business to the service providers who don't limit bandwidth.
And what would prevent musicians and their fans from using P2P techniques for distributed streaming?
The whole "threat" is nonsense.
I'm so glad, musicians — the real experts — are finally weighting in on this issue. Why are the FAG still quiet, I wonder?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Most of the people who want "net neutrality" probably don't want to ban QOS outright.
This is what I think ISPs should be prohibited from doing:
1.Discriminating or throttling or blocking based on source/destination addresses (and that includes forcing companies like google to pay more if they want full speed over the ISPs network)
2.Applying any kind of throttling based on port number. QOS is fine (that is, giving VoIP packets priority over BitTorrent packets) but throttling is NOT. If a network link is 1.5MBps and no-one wants to send traffic other than BitTorrent traffic over that link, the BitTorrent traffic should be able to use the entire 1.5MBps link (obviously if someone starts sending VoIP packets, then the network link wont accept as many BitTorrent packets and the BitTorrent download will slow down). This would specifically prevent the (increasingly common) practice where ISPs give you 1.5MBps or whatever speed but no matter how perfect the network conditions, BitTorrent or Emule or whatever else is limited so it can never go over 128KBps or 256KBps or whatever. Write in an exemption for cases where there is a direct threat to the network or to another network (e.g. someone spewing out packets as part of a DDOS attack)
These measures would still allow ISPs to completely block ports used by malware as well as measures like blocking port 25 to cut off spam zombies. And it would allow ISPs to apply QOS so that your VoIP packets have higher priority than the BitTorrent packets. But it would prevent ISPs from deciding that if you access CNN.com you can have the full 1.5MBps speed (assuming the rest of the network can handle that) but if you access YouTube.com or download something over BitTorrent, you cannot ever get more than 256KBps unless you pay extra for it (or google pays extra for it in the case of YouTube)
it won't make it better, it will keep it the same as it was, which i personally feel is a good idea, as it just works.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You know there was a time that Rock partly meant protest, something your parents
didn't like, something that worried the government and politicians and that is what made
it so appealing. So I guess when a few bands come out against the "man" that makes
news today.
Are they hoping "Rock The Net" will be as successful as "Rock The Vote"?
I think the point is that I don't have to pay extra taxes just so I have the privilege of seeing ferraris driving down the streets of my small town. Which makes sense because a ferrari doesn't wear down the roads anymore than some beat up pinto.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
We blew it guys, we had the promise of free, unrestricted knowledge - the ability for any man to share his knowledge with another. The freedom to aquire knowledge of any aspect of human achievment, from any culture at any time.
And what did we do with it? We used it for porn, greed and libelous behaviour. Much worse than that we propogated the publication of ill-informed opinion, of which I freely admit this is a part. Not only did we propogate it, we actually preferred our opinions to come from unqualified sources, because what we were being told from those that were qualified did not fit with what we wanted to hear. You only have to look at the myth of man made global warming to see this in action (and I know I will get flamed for that sentence, but that will only serve to prove I am right).
Wikipedia is the largest collection of ill-informed crap on the face of the planet, an admirable quest that has descended into a miasma of gibberish. It is now no more than a loose collection of opinion that may or may not be right. Certainly no use as a source of vital information - precicely because we cannot verify where the information came from and who is accountable.
However, the Internet's day has passed, the social experiment has failed and like radio, film and television before, it will descent into an over-regulated, commercial, empty shell of what it could have been.
QoS is the first step towards this regulation, it is the logical step towards the closing of the gate - you can say whatever you like but unless you have the bandwidth you will be unlikely to be heard. The loudest voices will be those that have the largest budget, just like every other aspect of our lives. The quality of your content will be naught compared to the size of your bandwidth, conversley the more bandwidth you have will affect the information you can receive.
In an ideal world the quality of information would be a factor in its propogation, however that does not lend itself to this medium, or any other for that matter. This is a lost cause, before it even started. I am not going to waste my time fighting it, instead I am going to find an alternative - perhaps the human social network is the only true forum, I don't know, but I do know that the wheels started falling off this cart a few years ago.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
...because it is totally correct. In a true competitive landscape where you have a half-dozen choices for broadband connectivity, lack of Net Neutrality wouldn't be a concern. However, if I want broadband, I have exactly one choice: Comcast. We're too far from the DSLAM for DSL, and FiOS won't be coming to Illinois any time soon. So if Comcast starts screwing around with traffic shaping, bandwidth limitation, and the like, I am out of luck, and so is everybody else in my area.
"Let the market sort it out" doesn't work in the case of geopolies.
They are aware that this is the same Internet used to steal food from the mouths of their housekeepers via file sharing right?
These are not the
They're citizens with a stake in the outcome, like you and me. What exactly offends you? That each participant isn't ranting all alone on a street corner? Do they have any less right to get together than the folks who were astroturfing faux-neutrality with a blog ad blitz a few months ago?? Do you believe those guys should "Shut Up And " do whatever it is they do?
Net Neutrality is all about the back-bone providers. ISPs can do whatever the fuck they want. It's the back-bone providers that have got to leave the packets the fuck alone. I suppose this is confused in the States by backbone providers also beign ISPs. Don't be confused.
Net Neutrality is about preventing back-bone providers regualting packets due to a source and/or destination if that source/destination is outside their network. If the packets are generated in thier network or going to a destination in their network then, yay for them, they can do what ever they like with it. However in the majority of cases they've been paid to carry packets from an access point to their network to a exit point on thier network, they don't get to charge again just because they don't like the ultiamte destiantion or orign.
Imagine if a toll road charged you a different fee from another user just becasue you were going to San Fransisco and they were going to Los Angeles EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE USING THE SAME 100 MILE STRETCH OF ROAD IN ARIZONA. That wouldn't make any sense at all.
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I'd rather they spent their time writing new songs ...
And poorly implemented antitrust rulings. Does anyone have a cheaper phone bill because of their "choice" between Bellsouth, Pacific Bell, etc?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
"think it's obvious that musicians (especially independents and small labels) will find themselves with the short end of the stick if they are asked to pay a fee to have their music streamed as fast as larger bands or even corporations." -well, the free market economy already allows this to be true, really. Content Delivery Networks like http://www.akamai.com/ provide a much higher quality of service over the public internet than just sticking it out there on a random webserver. Akamai actually powers iTunes and most big media content with big dollars behind it already. So I agree that the net itself should be free and open, but private enterprise has already created solutions to offer premium delivery for those that can afford it and have a real need.
I'm like most discerning music lovers in that I pretty much know what artists I like and what music (on CD in my case) I am going to buy. Therefore, I'm not going to go buy a particular CD by one artist because it's cheaper than a CD by another artist - instead, I've pretty much decided which CD I want and just go looking for the cheapest place to buy it.
Other than that, I may buy a CD by an artist I've never heard before purely because I'm browsing through a CD retailer's web site and see a CD worth trying based on it being a good price.
And because I'm particularly passionate about the music I like anyway, if some big record company tries to foist a particular artist on me through advertisements, the chances are that I'll ignore it even more and go find something else - only because *I* decide what I will and will not listen to, not some record company.
Unfortunately, we seem to be breeding a younger generation that is programmed to treat music as a "throwaway commodity" like a washing machine, rather than something you carry with you throughout your life. The iPod generation typifies the viewpoint that when you're bored with it, just format the hard disk and start buying some new music.
Me personally, I've got albums that I first listened to 30 years ago on a noisy copied cassette tape through owning on vinyl to now having on CD. Sure, I've MP3ed my CD collection to carry round with me easily but there's no way I'd sell the original CDs, even though they only now get played occasionally on my reasonably good hifi system, because I *LOVE* the artists and albums so much.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
This helped make up my mind. Fuck "Net Nutrality"; let the market decide.
I read the opening line as ""124 brands-- including R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan, and the Pearl Jam..."
Which actually made more sense to me.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
One thing I'm confused on... is IF the ISPs were allowed to charge you a fee for your content to be downloaded faster... and suppose I'm a content provider. Does that mean I'd have to pay a fee to every ISP in the United States? Ug.
And what if I'm a content provider in another country, would I have to pay a fee to all the USA ISPs to ensure my content gets to Americans quickly?
Sounds unreasonable just on the basis of logistics. Add to that the sheer stupid unfairness of it and I don't see how politicians can even consider it.
Isn't this like airlines charging overweight people more for their tickets? Or wait... charging famous people or frequent fliers more?
Bah!
I think that we should stage a protest in Washington DC! We should: 1) get tie-dye shirts with Al Gore's face on it (him looking pissed mind you) 2) wrap cat5 cable around ourselves like a toga (or cat6 if you want to be 'trendy') 3) all signs must be in 1337 speech
we aren't asking the government to do any more regulating, we are just asking them to make permanent (via legislation) and enforcable (the FCC enforces laws, it doesn't create them) what the FCC was doing prior to selling out to AT&T and SBC. net neutrality isn't a new way of doing things. it the way things were always done in the past. the tiered internet is the new way of doing things.
now that the FCC is owned and operated by the telecommunications industry, we need congress to pass legislation that makes it illegal to stop the earlier (and more effective) practice of net neutrality.
the "hands off the net" stuff is just astroturf by the telco industry to convince the public to let them proceed with thier tiered internet plans. passing real, and enforcable, net neutrality legislation will stop all providers from creating a slowlane to relegate non-paying traffic to. the bill that would gut net neutrality failed to pass (a win for net neutality), but the AT&T merger went thru, which was a defeat for net neutrality as well.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Like how they regulate the roadways so you have to drive on a particular side (depending on which government is doing the regulating).
Oh dear lord I hope they never make a connection between road service and internet.
Legislation for "Wide/Long load" bitflags, mandating which side of the tube american packets must flow on, crosswalks in routers for dialup, IP address clearly visible in the front and end of the packet, speed limits based on state borders (or even better, a national speed limit set to 55kbps), packets must give way to emergency packets behind them.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
The article references the Rock the Net campaign, which has an Online Petition you can sign.
Unfortunately, it appears to be down - I get this stacktrace when I try to sign it:
java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Arithmetic overflow error converting IDENTITY to data type tinyint.o n(Unknown Source)U nknown Source)r rorToken(Unknown Source)e plyToken(Unknown Source)
...
Can anyone else get through? Does this mean that the table is totally full?at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseExceptions.createExcepti
at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseExceptions.getException(
at macromedia.jdbc.sqlserver.tds.TDSRequest.processE
at macromedia.jdbc.sqlserver.tds.TDSRequest.processR
to have its traffic owned and limited by large corporations, so you'll have to excuse those of us who remember that fact, and who were there during that time, while we either rebuild an alternative net, or mostly abandon the recreational use of computers altogether for something less corrupt, like basketball or poker.
Why pay a premium for broadband here in the US if I am not going to get the speed that I have paid for? Some basics:
1) Companies that host web servers have paid their fees for the local loops and internet connectivity.
2) Consumers have paid for broadband access.
3) We should be able to negotiate a communications speed.
Now we have the telecom companies putting in rate limits for more cash. They have already been paid by the hosting companies as well as the consumers. My question is why should I pay for broadband if I am not going to get broadband speed?
Here are some thoughts:
1) Pay for a slower broadband internet connection.
2) Go back to dial up.
Consider this: What about the non-profit companies; Debian; *BSD's, a ton of *.org's. They won't be able to pay for this service.
The telco's are going to loose money one way or another.
Ya. We were talking about net neutrality at the barber shop last Saturday morning. We're still pretty much half and half, but once we come to a concensus I'll make sure to post it on Slashdot.
I wasn't making an analogy between the roads and the internet (we all know the internet is more like tubes than roads). I was using the traffic laws as a blatantly obvious case where government regulation was needed.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
If their words don't do enough alone, these musicians should set their words to song, and unleash a mighty ballad with the power to solve the world's problems. Just like "We Are the World", only about Net Neutrality, instead of about... the world and stuff...
And who can forget the protest songs of the 1990s and early 2000s? All those protest marches in DC, with the youth of America singing in unison, "This function is void, it takes two parameters..."
But as impressive as those mass protests are, it always comes down to just one person - one person with the spirit and vision to pursue his dreams of peace, love, and music, in spite of all odds. One person to charge out onto the battlefields of the world with his guitar, shouting "Ore no uta o kike!" Hear my song! And put an end to your senseless conflicts. This man will be the leader, and the rest may at first question his methods or his senses but ultimately they'll all be singing his song.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
http://rockthenet.futureofmusic.org/
I'm not so sure that quote is necessarily anti-capitalism. It looks like one of those quites that reveals more about the listener than the speaker. I'm not a big Manson fan, but he is often cleverly ambiguous.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'm all for net neutrality, but did they really believe that their opinions matter?
The real question is, do you think your opinion matters? Why did you feel the need to share it?
Please resubmit using an analogy based on a series of tubes.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
In short, millionaire artists and multibillion dollar media companies demand that multibillion dollar telecommunications companies not raise their cost of doing business as they see sales of prerecorded media sales continue to fall and don't want to have to shell out money to ensure future fast net-based delivery of their product. Does that about sum this up?
Wow, what a brave stand.
I have to say, in the end can we really win this one any other way then with our pocket books? I mean if given the choice between a ISP that is net neutral, wont report me to the RIAA and is mostly stable. And you know everyone else, wont we all goto the good one, and thus net neutrality will become a thing of the past?
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Please let this crap discussion die! Now.
... he'll tell you he read about the Pearl Jam on the google. ;-)