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Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality Is Already Gone
Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is "A Load of Bollocks". Anyone here been shaken down by their Internet Service Provider? "The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality 'a load of bollocks' and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
...is every one of his Slashdot-using customers running to cancel their accounts and find 'net access elsewhere - even if the data gets sent down a wet piece of string.
The point is not whether companies can get higher bandwidth by paying more. What has people angry is the idea that their cable provider might deny them the full bandwidth that they paid for when they connect to certain content providers or use VOIP.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Literally, I was JUST about to switch my broadband over to virgin, becuase I'd heard they were quite good and reasonable. Net neutrality is already dead? So either they're lying or they've been lying to their customers for a while now. Sticking with BT now atleast, they may not be any better, but they haven't shown they hate their own customers yet, and their service is quite good.
Hell, ask the average Joe Sixpack if they'd like to have their American Idol episodes download faster at the expense of a bunch of pasty faced nerds not being able to access Slashdot at the same speed, I'm sure they'll be quite happy about it.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
An anguished, collective shout of horror and surprise emanates from Virgin Media's PR department: "Nooooooooooo!!!"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane'."
Let me see if I've got this right - if I don't pay him money, he'll put me in the subsidized lane that contains no other traffic?
Errm, OK. Much obliged!
Isn't the whole point of bus lanes to keep the buses moving in rush hour traffic? Not the best analogy for a Virgin wannabe-mobster to be using to coerce content providers to cough up.
I doubt it.
"You wanna do it without a condom? It'll cost you..."
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
So, if I don't pay up, you'll put me in the bus lane, i.e. a lane with restrictions on who can be in it, therefore allowing it to move faster? Thanks!
Hey, how much faster can you send me data if I kill your cat?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Ok, summary and title have virgin, internet, balls (bollocks), and media in it. Alright, all we need is MS, conspiracy and goatse before we have and uberstory.
Malicious routing will only get them so far. If we have packets we want delivered, we will pay whomever is willing to do it fastest and with the least hassle.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Finally a company is honest enough to admit that net neutrality doesn't exist. Here in Canada, almost every ISP is throttling torrents, throttling DSL 'nodes', circumventing advertisements for their own, prioritizing certain web pages, and worse. This is rarely publicized until some intelligent people discover it and bring it to light and since there's no rules or laws, it's perfectly acceptable by everyone but the consumer.
Interesting that I acually posted my comment that I belive that my company may be doing the same thing about 10 mins ago.
...he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... IANAL, so does anybody know if these kinds of deals might have the effect of invalidating an ISP's 'common carrier' protections?If so, I vote we prosecute him for downloading child porn, as a modern-day equivalent of walking the plank, and a warning to the other ISPs...
Yarrrrr!
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
In one way it is refreshing to hear a CEO describe in truth what is going on whether one agrees with him/her or not. Usually a CEO stands behind innuendos and words with double meanings to avoid a head on collision. Not so with this one apparently.
It happens that I believe that all should have equal access but then I do not run an ISP. It seems clear that multiple levels of service can be commanded by varying levels of payments. Sort of like steak or hamburger.
It will be interesting to see how all of this finally works out.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I don't get the reference to the "internet bus lane"... He said: If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane'.
But should it not be the other way around? Paying separately gives you the privilege to ride the congestion-free public transport lanes where each full bus frees up several tens of cars from the streets, while not paying forces you to keep tugging along in the traffic jam of private motorists?
This blatant confession by Virgin Media is the best news yet for the Net Neutrality movement. Because the main argument of the enemies of Net Neutrality (who are therefore the promoters of Net Doublecharge) has always been that "equal access is never threatened", while usually contradictorily also saying "unequal access will be necessary to pay for increased capacity". Now Virgin Media is just admitting that's all a bunch of BS, and they're so hellbent on destroying the equal access for everyone that they already do it.
This is an industry claiming we don't need our equal access protected. And now, at the same time, telling us that it's gone, and we're whining too much because they've already destroyed it.
The enemy has blinked. There now should follow a backlash that will guarantee that we don't continue to give away our most profitable, most strategic global asset, that the public paid to invent, and build and promote, to those crooks who will say anything to steal it. And evidently are now so arrogant that they'll even admit they've already stolen it. Even though they haven't, or at least not so much that we can't take it back.
--
make install -not war
Assuming he means "slow lane", this seems an odd decision to take. "Join Virgin Media and get iPlayer running slower than anywhere else". Can't imagine many ISPs holding on to too many of their customers when it's explained that their favourite services will be crippled because the suppliers wouldn't bribe the ISP.
The net is not neutral when it comes to different ISP customers, you pay for a 20/1 contention ratio, or less on the 50/1, or your own leased line.
I thought the net neutrality was about content providers being shoved in the slow lane unless they pay up too. So if fancy media site X doesn't pay your ISP, there movies get put in the same bit bucket with the bit-torrent downloads.
Yeah I'm sure his legal department is none too happy about this. If Net Neutrality legislation does pass this guy just hung himself...
Net neutrality means you can't bill your competitor's customers. This is absolutely essential to a free market.
See, there are actually four parties involved. The end user, Bob, buys a connection from an ISP, CableCo. Meanwhile, example.com, buys a connection from a different ISP, ExampleOnline. CableCo and ExampleOnline are competitors, but they have a peering agreement, which means that they agree to share the costs of a connection which lets Bob visit example.com. What's happening here is that CableCo is trying to get money from example.com. But example.com is ExampleOnline's customer! If ExampleOnline's customers are generating traffic which CableCo can't handle, then they need to renegotiate their peering agreement, not go after ExampleOnline's customers. That's unethical and possibly illegal.
If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'
That'd strike me as a rather weird turn of phrase, since the "bus lane" is a desirable place to be. Indeed, you can get fined if you're in it during rush hour, as it's the lane with the least traffic so that the buses can get people into town quicker.
..But these last few stories make me very happy that i live in Canada..Albeit Bell tried/is trying to do the same thing. At least here they are taking a lot of government and public flak for it
Assuming (since I am not an expert on this) that the prioritisation of content is being done by some sort of prioritising of packets then it is a mutually exclusive situation. The line is only so fast - the line contains only so much bandwidth. If all providers pay to have their content prioritised then nothing moves any "faster" than it is with neutrality. If only one pays to have their content "faster" then all they are doing is degrading all other traffic.
ISP provisions need to be revolutionised - the current crop are perfectly happy as a hegemony of providers - do what they like, charge what they like. There is "competition" in only a very superficial sense.
What if Google stopped responding to requests from Virgin customers? I think Virgin would cave in pretty quickly.
I'm sure the CEO was trying to be really witty with his remark that Net Neutrality is "bollocks", but I have a more factual comment, Virgin Media customer service is a load of bollocks. Pay an arm and leg for shitty customer service and shitty internet experience in general - no thanks. There are other choices for ISP's in the UK.
Is he trying to out-do Ratner for attracting customers (read 'The Speech' section).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I paid to invent and build that Internet that Virgin Media is now holding hostage for charging ransom against the billing model that made it worth holding for ransom. That's not a "free market", except in the corporate handouts you "Libertarians" love to pretend is "free" because you'd love to be the next ripoff artist yourself.
So I'm not "fighting WW2", a ridiculous comment from yet another Anonymous Libertarian Coward. I'm trying to keep some corporate interloper from ruining something that's too important to ignore. And as a trivial side skirmish, I'm slapping down your nonsense about a "free market" that erupts across an open Internet only because it does have equal access.
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make install -not war
"The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality 'a load of bollocks' and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
Well, it's always nice when the idiots paint a nice big "Class Action Lawsuit Bullseye" on their foreheads, ain't it?
We're on Virgin ADSL. About one month ago, someone hacked our WEP and started leaching. It was all my fault - I'd replaced a router, didn't lock down by MAC address, and they locked on.
We noticed slowdowns / issues but didn't call Virgin until my wife determined these always happened after 4PM. This was after some three weeks of slowdowns.
Called Virgin's "pay as you go support", where a technician cheerfully told us we'd been capped due to a violation of AUP.
Ok. Someone had leached our connection. Our fault. But it took TWO weeks to get uncapped.
All this after several weeks of leaching - which impacted ALL customers on our local net mind you - no email, no call, nothing. Until we incurred expense calling their "pay as you go support".
Virgin's shaping is poorly executed, and heavy handed.
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For a while there (1999-2007) I had the impression everything about the net is said, done and closed file, but people watch it were back to the big decisions. Now that everyone can have 30MBit/s connections (i pay about $60 a month for it, 40 EUR that is, but my ISP throttles BitTorrent!) it's not about the speed, the reach (except some areas but it's all coming), the software (just download Ubuntu and you get software for really all you can just do on the net), it's about things like net neutrality.
This isn't going to just pass by the courts, at least not where i live (the EU), and it's going to set important milestones for net access for decades to come!
The downside is that before the decisions will really be made we're going to wade for years through molasses, with ISPs doing all sort of weird things with their customer's access until someone puts the hat back on.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
I used to be a customer of Telewest which became Blueyonder bfore Virgin took them over. Back then it was a great service. I used to laugh at my usage capped ADSL using friends with their flaky connections and bandwidth that went up and down while my Cable went flat out 24/7 downloading as much as 200Gb a month. The TV box was great too - better picture than Sky Digital, neat facilities etc. I was really gutted when I moved house to an area that didn't have Blueyonder cable and reluctantly signed up with Sky for TV, BT for phones and a rapid succession of crap ADSL providing goons.
Two years on, I'm with Zen ADSL who provide a great service and Sky is OK but when when I visit friends who are still on Virgin, the TV is now terrible - jerky, freezing, grainy and the broadband? WTF happened? Very, very sad. That said, Blueyonder were billions in debt afer investing in all the infrstructure so I guess they were too generous but it was great while it lasted.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
In the future I will not be buying or using Virgin's products or services. Way to go slime ball.
No, I'm New Here
This coming from Virgin, a brand whose business model and valuation depends entirely on its coolness factor... I am speechless...
Napoleon used to say: "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
I hesitate between thanking this guy to state openly what the other ISP's have worked hard to disguise and warning him to watch the speed at which his brand will disintegrate...
Because, indeed, as the parent implies, Virgin's scheme means the end of the Internet as we know it, and we are really, really, not going to be happy about it...
CEO's don't know jack shit about the technical aspects of the business they work for, they also twist the truth a hell of a lot. if he is talking about peering arrangements then this isn't a bad thing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Life is good.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The problem is in the US market where there is no competition in the local loop and the cable companies have a long history of behaving badly - as the shareholders of Adelphia know only too well. The consumer does not have effective choice and the Bush administration has consistently backed the interests of corporations above all.
Is it really a problem though? Let's face it, there's a lot to be said for net priorities over net neutrality that makes it a lot more consumer friendly. A modest move towards charging content providers for customer access would have the effect of getting rid of a lot of marginal or crappy content that clogs even google these days.
I mean, I honestly, at this point, would be very happy if my ISP filtered out link farm sites, or, better still, if they just went out of business because the ad revenue was no longer sufficient to make them profitable.
Similarly, I might like it if ISP, in doing so, also had better bandwidth and pipes to specific service providers. I really like watching back episodes of shows on NBC's web site. Now, if my ISP cut some sort of deal with NBC to throw off a bunch of pirated stuff from other sites, like PirateBay, and that in turn brought me the original episodes of the A-Team at original film resolution, then, hey, that could be a winner.
The bottom line is, net neutrality is a feature, and while, it sounds good in principal, it also stands to reason that having a non-neutral internet makes possible offerings that might be more attractive to people than a merely neutral internet. Sorry if that bothers people's anti-corporate sensibilities, but a lot of people do actually eat Big Macs, because they like them, and a lot of people are going to like a net that isn't neutral.
This is my sig.
The fact of the matter is, most people have absolutely no idea what route their data takes to get from its origination point to them, and vice-versa.
All they know is that "Gee, the internet seems slow today." They might even call and complain to their ISP, but it might not even be their ISP causing the throttling delay. So in the end it's going to become a big finger-pointing game, and the customer at the end of the day will still have no idea where the bottleneck is or who is responsible.
All the wire owners know this. So they are going to accept bribes for preferred data rates and keep mum about who is getting put into the "bus lane".
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's only faster until they decide to shake down your favorite site or service. Then you might as well have dial up.
Their brazen admission of these practices is not better than alleged shameful practices. Both are wrong and both lead to the same place if the other companies are determined to rip everyone off. The practice can't be hidden for long, so what you have is a choice between ignorant leadership that may be evil or plain evil. Both suck.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"[quote]he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
I'd love to put him in a bus lane.
and the people control nothing.... Hell, ask the average Joe Sixpack if they'd like to have their ....expense of a bunch of pasty faced nerds not being able to access Slashdot at the same speed, I'm sure they'll be quite happy about it
What you are really saying is that the you do not have control over the vast majority of people want. In America, corporations cater to what people want, or they die and die quickly. Consumers are fickle and they want what they want. So, if Americans want an internet, which exists so that people can watch back episodes of American Idol and follow all of the winners, that is the internet that ISPs are going to bend over backwards to get. What you are asking for, in net neutrality, is for ISPs to ignore mountains of market research, essentially polling as to what people want, in favor of an internet that does what you want it to do, and you want the government to impose that. That's not net neutrality, that is net tyranny. Just because they tyranny works for you, doesn't make it not a tyranny.
This is my sig.
If I was some content provider like a youtube knock off or something and I got some bullshit shakedown letter asking for money or they'll limit the download speed at my site, I'd note the ISP sending it and put a blatent note on every video playing page that said "If _____ is your ISP, they're purposely slowing down video streaming on this site. To view videos at full speed, switch to another ISP." That would really burn their ass. You get enough of those messages around the internet on high traffic sites and everyone will get a really bad image of that ISP really fast and switch like crazy. That would be the end of that crap and it would force net nuetrality faster than any law would.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I use an 8Mbit "unlimited" account (50GB/month) because I download movies, TV series and games via Usenet and Bittorrent.
If my ISP degrades these sources then I will no longer be getting 8Mbit, will not require 50GB/month and will not be prepared to pay the rather high price I am currently paying for these privileges - thus I will downgrade to a cheaper package for web browsing only or more likely, I'll just move to another ISP.
This idiot is talking about slowing down all of the content I'm interested in. I don't give a shit about content from his "partners" and I paid to receive 8Mb or as close to that as their hardware can get, regardless of where the data came from.
I'm so glad I'm not with Virgin.
I'd be curious to see a content provider put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine if google/youtube or yahoo charged ISP's to deliver content to them faster than other requests. Imagine how long an ISP would last if google pages came up slow or not at all on their network.
Was a time when the idea of a single provider of anything in a given area was considered an opportunity.
It is as long as you can get government permission and can afford to string up or lay the infrastructure needed. Even today most places don't have a choice as to who provides landline phone service. In most place there's only provider. It's the same with cable. I'm hoping wireless technologies will open up choice in broadband.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The bus lanes where I live bypass regular traffic... :]
So if we don't pay...We're getting higher priority?
I'm liking this CEO.
How do you think the cable companies got started? One cable at a time.
You left out one government granted monopoly to use the right of way at a tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What if you called your friend and before the connection was made, a digital voice prompted you with something like "We're about to connect you, but before we do, press '1' if you'd like a clear, clean signal for $1 to be billed to your phone -- press '2' if you would prefer to forgo this charge and listen to advertisements from one of our sponsors."
Meanwhile, this isn't was your friend signed up for in the least and the communications company is attempting to make even more money by having him as a customer... charging the rest of the world for access to him.
This isn't something a legislator is likely to care about. They have all their wants and needs paid for at a scale the average consumer cannot afford. It'll be hard to get them to understand what a royal pain not having net neutrality is.
I don't know about other people, but it angers me greatly that an ISP that has already been paid by me for the bandwidth I use, gets to turn around and extort money from the providers that I access. that is just the way I feel
it's not a battle we're going to win. We will see about that.
If you ditch net neutrality, each content provider has to negotiate contracts with every connectivity provider. So if there are N content providers and M ISPs, the system needs up to M*N contracts to function. That's a huge market inefficiency. Since ditching net neutrality doesn't magically create more bandwidth (it only prioritizes it), the system as a whole has gained zero additional capability at the cost of an enormous amount of extra paperwork. It's a classic tragedy of the commons, where each individual acting in their own best interests will result in the worst possible outcome for the system as a whole.
Also, the ISPs have yet to realized that this is a two-way street. If they start charging unaffiliated content providers extra money, the natural response is going to be content providers "unionizing" to increase their negotiating clout. Suddenly they'll be demanding lower network connectivity prices than they were initially charged. "You ISPs are getting money from other content providers, but haven't dropped your prices! We demand the prices you charge us reflect your new cost of operation."
The end result of all this will be a lot of running around to arrive at exactly where we started. It's stupid, wasteful, and inefficient. That's why net neutrality makes sense. If there's a bandwidth problem, the solution is to add more bandwidth; none of this stealing from the right hand to pay the left silliness.
I paid to invent and build that Internet that Virgin Media is now holding hostage for charging ransom against the billing model that made it worth holding for ransom. That's not a "free market", except in the corporate handouts you "Libertarians" love to pretend is "free" because you'd love to be the next ripoff artist yourself.
That is no free market to a libertarian. Libertarians encourage competition which lowers prices and increases quality, or in this case, speed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It's not just that you have already paid for the bandwidth you use, so has the site that you are accessing. That's the nature of the Internet. What Virgin wants to do is to charge one (or maybe both) of you more for faster access.
Wouldn't this be enough of an admission for the FCC to actually act now?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17538
In the immortal words of Scott McNealy, "Get over it."
"I'm already doing deals to sell your personal information to the highest bidder."
Only in Scott's case, he wasn't *quite* stupid enough to say that out loud.
Two blow hard members of the fait accompli / might-is-right crowd, deluding themselves into thinking they can pull off the "we're already in Iraq" card.
Wait a second there, guys. Neither of you can fill the pants of the loser who pulled that off. Dream on.
The "genie out of the bottle" argument was just as strong on the side of p2p as it is on the loss of consumer privacy. Yet in both cases, there was a loud "we'll see you in court".
It goes without saying that any content provider who finds it necessary to buy their content an express lane isn't competing on quality.
I was just viewing Ikiru, pausing at the end of the first act when my housemate had to run out.
In modern society, the 30 years of perfect attendance as a civil servant with no real purpose is replaced by 30 years of consuming bad content (television), because the average consumer is too lazy to walk an extra block or two to a video store that stocks movies more than a week old.
One of the symptoms of terminal stomach cancer in the movie is diarrhea. There's a good metaphor for the typical content delivered via the fast lane.
"We humans are so careless. How tragic that man can never realize how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death."
That's what's this ISP basshole is counting on: that his consumers will choose instant drivel, rather than wait for the good stuff.
It always happens this way, because too few of us care until sake is suicide.
Yeah 'cause stock owners care more about obeying the law and being ethical than they do about screwing every last penny out of everyone else, their customer, competitors, own business employees, small children at sweet shops ...
Rise of ethical consumer to support growth in green investing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
He knows that the principals involved have already been bought and paid for. Now it's just a matter of time.
The government builds and operates the interstate highway system for the common benefit of all. It's not much of a stretch to see the advantages of them building and operating a public data network, too.
As a bonus for the security-minded, if the government operated the public network, they wouldn't have to go cap-in-hand to the private sector for permission to monitor traffic. There are cameras on all the major highway intersections, and no one complains. The same could be done for a data network.
Governments aren't as cost-effective as private enterprise, but they have the terrific advantage of operating more in the public eye. For a public resource, this is an extremely valuable characteristic.
The fact is, telecom doesn't operate in a free market, so almost none of the normal arguments for letting private enterprise take the lead are valid. Competition doesn't truly exist, so corporations are free to invent ever more resourceful ways to make us pay more for less.
At the very least, a publicly-run network would be more responsive to ordinary users who at least have a vote. As it stands now, we really are at the telecomm's mercy.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I don't really see how it could be illegal. After all, it's entirely legal to run a paysite, which may involve access to various machines behind a certain network border...
It may go against the peering agreement, in which case, that needs to be revisited.
And it absolutely is unethical. The right thing to do here would be to just boycott Virgin -- everything Virgin -- until we get an apology.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Libertarians would not have used taxes to pay for all the wires these companies now use.
These companies are descendants of a government-granted monopoly, using taxpayer-funded infrastructure. (in America) They don't operate in the free market, and unless they give back all those tax dollars, they are subject to regulation.
I'm a Libertarian.
Wouldn't this be enough of an admission for the FCC to actually act now?
That's FCC's stance now, no net neutrality law is needed because the FCC can fine ISPs that violate neutrality.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I find it quite interesting that these "free countries" seem to have such an issue with getting it through their skulls when it comes to net neutrality.
I live in Japan, which is a democracy and supposedly "free" country, but with many restrictions and bureaucracy that make it feel less than so. However, net connections have always been better than advertised.
First example is "best effort maximum speeds". Back in the day of 64Kbps and 128Kbps ISDN, there was a worry that everyone online, all at once, would cause a bottle neck. So the advertising said that the cheap plans were "best effort" speeds, and your mileage may vary. They said the same with ADSL, and then fiber. However, "best effort" really did mean the telco and provider's "best effort", and I have yet had a line that was slower than what you would expect from real world overhead issues with routers and your TCP/IP implementation simply being poor. With 100Mbps fiber, I really got 64Mbps throughput, up and down. That really isn't bad.
Then there's the "unlimited access" thing. When they say unlimited, they mean it over here. I have never, ever heard of a case where a provider cracked down on a user because they were going over some invisible threshold. Actually, I've heard the opposite from a Telco/ISP employee who was talking off the record. He said that the fiber lines typically run into a 1Gbps line via a router that houses anywhere from 20 to 50 users. However, these routers are monitored, and if throughput drops too much, they'll investigate who's hoarding. The solution is... move the hoarder off to a different router that has less traffic so that everyone is satisfied.
And finally, there's the net neutrality issue. I have not done serious research into this over here, but I have never heard of taking your line for ransom. I haven't even heard of bandwidth throttling for that matter, and while they MAY do it, they're pretty darn good at not letting it get spotted. None of my traffic has ever felt oddly slow compared to anything else.
Some argue that it's because Japan has such a centralized population, so getting a network out isn't as hard. While there is a small bit of truth to that, I must also add that I now live way out in the boonies called Hokkaido, in a small town, and while I don't have ISDN yet, I do have ADSL. 50Mbps down, 10Mbps or so up. That's not bad at all by any standard. (OK, OK, the grandma in Sweden will kick my bandwith's butt, but it's still faster than most U.S. lines.)
The service was great while my ISP was Blueyonder, but then the "Bearded Demon" (Richard Branson) and his hooded Virgin Media hordes took them over. Now I can't download a single TV program from ITunes without being throttled into oblivion. What's the point of broadband when you just get throttled when you use it?
Why do "net neutrality" advocates ridicule politicians for comparing the Internet to a âoeseries of tubes,â and then trust them to regulate it?
The One Minute Case Against Net Neutrality
Hahaha. I'm a rich guy who works only when I want to, because I worked hard at a smart company I started (and had some luck).
But thanks for showing the primitive logic at work among you defensive "libertarians". Or are you "Libertarians"? I can't keep your fake ideology and your fake political party clearly apart, because they're both mainly just excuses to indulge your greed (and shoot someone and get away with it).
--
make install -not war
Whos' Virgin Media? ;)
.5 seconds after everyone gets wind of it.
Don't know bout' you folks across the pond, but here I only have one option... Pay my ISP. They have "plans" but nothing major just bandwidth caps, and as far as I know.... Nothing like a "P2P Extra fast" option, etc.
Why do I say? Because I pay for the use of the pipe. (Sorry, Tubes for those around Washington, DC)
So my data should have the same rights as all over by my ISP. There should be no question of WHAT It is, or WHO it is going to... I don't have any Al-a-Cart options on the bill, so they can't selectively decide
how to route a packet. I would assume since the next hope is the Big net that my ISP subscribes to. Unless they are missrepresenting the TOS, I never saw anywhere listed that their provider limits the network. I supposed a sucky ISP would try that, but then market forces should dictate that their business model would fail in
So, if you think your ISP (DLS/Cable/Dialup) is limiting your packets then RAT THEM OUT! We need to know! We NEED a clearinghouse on this and Slashdot seems to be the closest one.
one of two things will happen. Either they fail, or someone will step up and provide a "Net Nutural" open pipe service that everyone wants and become bizillionairs.
* I know, "nutural", but I laughed so it stays...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
What the EUC would have to say about these sorts of measures.
I also believe there's some Caveats (at least in the US, not too sure about the UK) which mean that if you start monitoring and controlling the data over the network you become responsible for it, one also imagines this would have far reaching implications on their business as they'd lose a lot of their safe-harbour provisions...
Might I suggest that Virgin Media clients start downloading more copyright works? If they become liable for the data on their networks that opens the door for the **AA to sue them (I shudder at the thought of supporting the **AA with this statement but it might send a message.)
Sure, it looks like this guy is just trying to squeeze "pence" (or whatever it is that's a tiny bit of currency) out of customers. I know. I hate it when things cost more. Do you complain this much when your video card prices go up. They make new models all the time. It's time to start actually thinking about the cost of infrastructure in the market of high speed connection. If they're buying new equipment with this money, that's fine. If this new "CEO" is pocketing that money, he'll soon be riding the bus. This isn't a matter of corruption yet. When I read the article my first thought was of course... oooh multiple DDOS's. That was irrational. Instead, I sat down with a nice glass of chocolate milk and actually thought about it for a moment. If I had a business, I'd eventually end up doing the same thing. That's the way companies are going. Until there is government regulation, they can do that. Sad as it is, to them, the internet doesn't mean freedom. The internet doesn't mean education. The internet doesn't mean slashdot. They don't care about us. So why should we care about them? Because the people on slashdot care about freedom, education, and net neutrality. I'm posting as anonymous coward, but I should be posting as lazy coward. I didn't feel I had the time to log in, and now I'm writing this huge thing. Maybe no one will read it, maybe no one will care. If that happens, we've become them. Viva net neutrality, viva slashdot. And by the way, my name is Dan Waggoner. put a period between the first and last names. Add at yahoo dot com to the end. We can complain on here all we want. Until there's a law passed, it doesn't mean anything. The question I ask you all for real, do you want government regulation, or do you want competition? Pro's and Con's and then we can talk. Email me. exAnonymous Coward Out
Here, our bus lanes are express restricted-lanes!
What if your ISP puts *everythng* in the slow lane for buses?
Isn't that net neutrality?
I am anarch of all I survey.
Apparent link to the Interview mentioned in the article is: http://www.katebulkley.com/18-19neil_berkett.pdf
As a whole, libertarians don't make it a point to suck corporate cock by handing over infrastructure built at public expense. The people who argue for this aren't libertarians but corporate shills.
So wipe the froth off your mouth and call a horse a horse, rather than painting every libertarian within reach with your own brand of bullshit. Your mindless yammering makes you just as much a fool as the nutjobs who claim that they're libertarian when they quite clearly aren't.
Overselling bandwidth is just cheating. I wonder, has anyone ever considered setting up a p2p network (of, say, VM customers), to send random noise across the network while you're not using it, filling up that bandwidth? Oh yes, the BBC already invented it...
It would appear that Virgin Media are doing this to force the hand of the BBC. A bunch of ISP's are asking the BBC for money because of the huge bandwidth requirements of the iPlayer, and this appears to be the latest salvo.
Virgin are saying that if the BBC doesn't pay them, they'll throttle access to the BBC.
I'm not commenting on the morality of Net Neutrality here. I'm just saying that this may just be a bit of chest beating to force the beebs hand.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
Just wondering; what would happen if, say, Google were to pay Virgin for full bandwidth. Then one of the connections to a Virgin customer drops; can Google now sue Virgin for not providing that customer the bandwidth Google paid for?
And what about when a customer experiences slow performance of Google's site whilst using a Virgin connection; could Google sue Virgin for breach of contract?
How exactly does Virgin propose to make the contracts. Virgin has to make some promises and guarentees regarding bandwidth, otherwise the contract will amount to nothing but extortion and will probably be legally regarded as such. If they make any kind or reasonable/acceptable promises, they'll more than likely break those.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Deleted
Is there an US-based ISP that is a *promoter* of Net Neutrality?
I ask because this is the second time in as many days I've heard someone say this so I'm intrigued to know why and where people are hearing this from?
DSL ZoneIf you look at sites like this:
ISP Reviewor this:
They're fairly consistently rated as almost worst ISP there is.
I'm wondering if Virgin have run some kind of successful whisper campaign to hide the truth about their service?
I'm libertarian and in favor of net neutrality, because this net neutrality has value in my necessarily subjective value-scale.
Mr CEO here wants to profit undeservedly from this value net neutrality has for me and millions others by taking our enjoyment of it hostage. And, well, taking hostages does not fit in my libertarian idea of what ethics encompass. I already pay for my carrier to be net neutral, now that I paid for this net neutrality it is mine and they can't take it back forcefully: that's how I see it.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Demon internet have a cap that for years wasn't publicised (not sure if it is now or not), if you went over that unknown cap you were dropped to 128kbps for an entire month no questions asked.
Dropped to narrowband speeds for a month for breaching an unpublicised cap? It'll surely take some doing to beat that!
The reason the UK is so bandwidth starved is because BT is dragging on 21cn, the new internet backbone for the UK. The reason they're dragging is because they want it subsidised by the tax payers, but now BT is a private company the goverment aren't willing to hand tax payers money over to them.
If we stopped wasting money on crap like the war in Iraq we'd likely have the money to pay for something like this without worry. As the Labour/Conservative parties are technically incompetent and unable to make decisions and pass laws that are forward thinking and designed for the internet age this only makes the problem worse.
Unless there's a major change to Labour or the Conservatives, or unless the Lib Dems get in we're not going to see change to UK laws and parliamentary decisions that will create a nation that's prepared for the internet age then we're going to continue to see stuff like this, and this is only the start of it.
With our current Labour/Conservative majority making the decisions in parliament it will get worse, I'm fairly convinced net neutrality will go out the window, the 3 strikes law for illegal P2P will be implemented and our data will be sold to the highest bidder. There's just no one in power right now with the understanding to make the right decisions at the moment and doesn't look like there will be for at least another 5 years unless we can somehow educate them or remove them some way.
I am a customer of these idiots. Now I am as annoyed as the rest of you. In two years time, you wont be able to get a vanilla connection. It will be
* phorm infected
* Traffic Shaped
* Prioritised on a who pays the most scenario, rather than which packets need timely delivery.
To top it all off, it wouldn't be that bad if our *ahem* 20MBit connection did more than 5K/s modem style speeds before dying about 18 times every weekend.
It sucks donkey balls. To add insult to injury this idiot is in effect dissing his customers. TBH Id rather pay more and have a nice fast, stable 5Mbit connection. It's not even as if we are big BW hogs. Between the two of us we maybe use 5 GB total per month. Sometimes less than 500Mb (Depends on when new Linux ISOs come out)
I'm going to write to both my MP and the HJIC - Head Joker In Charge and tell them they can cram their broadband and v+ where the sun doesn't shine when the contract is up.
Also now, when you have a problem, ie the cable modem looses sync, you have to ring premium rate tech support who insist on going through there BS checks, when you know its their issue not yours.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
those who are voraciously trying to cash in on the internet, even at the cost of eroding the features and principles that made internet a success.
people like them are detrimental to human civilization. they are hampering development, leave aside from being bagloads of shit.
Read radical news here
"cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
And I have to say "you make a threat like this, you can go fuck yourself, asshole!"
I recommend every web master put a notice on top of their page explaining Virgin's behavior.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is no different that the protection rackets of old.
I think there's been a key point missed. ... forthcoming ... with the fact that they are making deals against Net Neutrality. .001%?? To really benefit, Google would have to make 'preferred peer' arrangements with thousands of little ISP's out there, and the logistics of that are enormous.
It's interesting that Virgin is taking such a risk by being so
Personally I think it's because they are trying to build up a scare factor amongst e-commerce companies (of any description) that if they don't sign up they'll miss out.
Because my bet says -no one is taking them up on it-.
Just think about the headaches! Let's say Google (just for instance!) decided to spent their loads of money to get faster speed. So they make a deal with Virgin. OK... so how much of Google's target audience gets the benefit???
So my $$$ says all the e-commerce providers are all looking at each other nervously thinking "I'm not going to do it if you don't". Virgin's statement seems to be implying that it's already in progress, and that Google (or whoever) is already missing out.
I don't see anyone but small local e-commerce providers with a limited geographical reach taking them up on it, there's not enough benefit.
My strong and deep libertarian streak agrees with you completely.
I just like to bear in mind that turning 100% streaker is a nice theory of freedom, but embarassing when actually practiced (even if fun to watch flame out).
--
make install -not war
All it will take is for a few heavy weights (Apple, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft?) or an aggregation of a lot of little guys...
All they need to do is tell the ISPs to take a hike. See how long the ISPs who want this will be around. A communication network is useless without content. Sure they could negotiate deals with B or C level players but that won't work out and it will cost them tremendously...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Your agreement doesn't say that they -can't-. And besides, if you don't like what your ISP gives you, you are more than free to start your own. There's plenty of room in the market for boutique ISPs...
It doesn't say they can either. And while it may be easy to start a dialup ISP starting a broadband service is different. Because of this I was hoping the FCC auction for the 700 MHz airwaves would open them up so it would be easy to start wireless broadband. Now we'll have to wait to see if it happens.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That you don't like Libertarians is obvious from your posts, but the reason you don't like them is not. Unsubstantiated ad hominems don't do much to forward your case, and in fact paint you as a stereotypical "invective-spewing liberal". I fail to even see the connection between this CEO's statements and Libertarianism, other than the tenuous one of, "well, Libertarians support the free market, and this happened in a market, so, ummm, DEATH TO LIBERTARIANS! Yeah, that's it!"
Instead of making general attacks and making yourself look foolish, perhaps state your objections to Libertarianism (as they pertain to this story) in a clear and reasoned format, so they can be discussed. Otherwise you're really just being Silly Internet Troll #24,129,938.
The connections are in the posts to which I'm replying. They're not just "general attacks", they're counterattacks to what some libertarian has attacked me with.
:P.
One problem with libertarians is that you don't properly distinguish between the specific and the general. Like when you just capitalized "Libertarianism": that's the specific ideology of the Libertarian Party, not the general ideology of the political philosophy.
That tendency to conflation also underwrites the thinking in that entire post you just made. I never said "well, [l]ibertariams support the free market, and this happened in a free market, so, ummm DEATH TO LIBERTARIANS!" or anything close. In fact, I pointed out that the market in which Virgin's making its grab is not free, just the most obvious way in which your contrived "summary" is unconnected to reality. But it is a self-serving oversimplification, from a libertarian, so of course I should dignify it with the respect of a logical response
Libertarianism is political extremism, worshiping liberty while ignoring every other value, fetishizing a reductionist logic ad absurdum. I've had to deal with it for years, as generation after generation discovers Ayn Rand and "the virtue of selfishness" for itself, as if the world were brand new. There's as little chance of clear and reasoned debate about extremist libertarianism as there is about any other fundamentalism, as I've learned over and again for so long. No, it's much better to just laugh at it, because it's really better as a joke. Taking it seriously is just much too sad.
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make install -not war
Be a shame if anything happened to them.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The fact is, the net protocol was not designed for huge, fast and continuous usage. It was designed for quick bursts, more or less, and most often, quiescence. I agree absolutely that net neutrality will have to be respected. But now we have things like AT&T's UVerse running over the net. This TCP/IP was not designed for. We need to get our trusty engineers busy extending the protocol to acccount for the burst use and the growing steady streaming rates, which we want faster and faster. This cannot happen without the government stepping in on the side of the people. Ahem.
It seems to me this whole Net Neutrality thing comes down to ISPs trying to double-dip. That is, the whole premise of the Internet infrastructure, up till now, as far as I understand it, is that I have *one single* company that I do business with - my ISP. This is true for content providers, who pay for T1/E1/OC3/OC48/whatever to connect to the Internet through *their* ISP, as well as for end users who do the same with their ISPs. My ISP in turn makes agreements with the other ISPs for fair data-passing and revenue sharing (e.g. Insert-Internet-Server-Here's ISP presumably pays an upstream provider to connect to their network, who in turn pays the end user's ISP to connect to their network - I suppose at some point for very large, long-haul providers, you have to start doing packet-level accounting to figure out which network is sending more data and which is receiving it, etc, etc.).
The point is, the Internet writ-large cannot possibly work, long-term, if every participant has to negotiate seperate deals with every other participant in the Internet, so we 'aggregate' the deals through our ISPs. When ATT, Verizon, Virgin, et. al all start trying to trash net neutrality, in effect, they've already setup those service agreements with all the ISP's but then they are trying to get *additional* revenue by forcing individual end-user's to pay a *second time*. So they are entering an agreement to provide service to, say, Slashdot's ISP, then not providing the service they are contractually obligated to provide to that ISP?
I just don't understand how all of this is NOT a breach of contract between ISPs?
Now, with all that said, I don't think there is a problem with doing Quality Of Service for specific protocols/ports. E.g. VoIP, Streaming video/audio, and games, should probably all get elevated priority over http transactions (it doesn't really matter if it takes another 1/4 second for a large image to load, but it does make a big difference if there is a 1/4 second lag for VoIP, media, and games. But if they are going to implement such quality of service routing, they should do it equally for all hosts on the Internet, not preferentially for some over others.
I sometimes get the impression that all of this ultimately boils down to the large backbone providers and broadband ISP's simply not wanting to upgrade their infrastructure to keep up with demand. After all, all this Net Neutrality business is completely irrelevant if there is enough bandwidth to meet demand. It's only relevant when there is simply not enough capacity to deliver all packets in a timely fashion. So, the ISP's are effectively admitting that they are not providing the bandwidth to their users that they *claim* they are, when they say that Net Neutrality is 'bollocks'.
Nope, eh.
You took too long to give the English the boot, eh. Besides having a long continuous government is not a reasonable definition of 'being in existence first' eh.
What the fuck is the USA going to do with the Quebecees, eh? Teach them Mexican Spanish, eh?
Fifty first staters you shall remain, eh.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Give the English the boot? I was talking about the UK!