Internet Filtering Lobby Forms

mbone writes "Wired's David Kravets reports on a new lobbying effort to support the filtering of internet traffic called Arts & Labs. Coverage is available at PC World as well. The lobby's members include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America. Their web site says, 'network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers.' Does it seem that this is an attempt to categorize P2P with spam and malware, or is it just me?"

Comments

Re:'must'

[slimjim8094]

Wait, disregard my above comment for dumbassery. This has nothing to do with children... I should go to bed.

But I'll try to salvage it:

Assuming there was consumer choice in the ISP market, why wouldn't you be able to choose 'granny ISP' that allowed email, websites, and iTunes but filtered porn, hack attempts, and would clean your computer for you if you got infected? And then there's the HARDCORE TORRENT provider with a (possibly) lower bandwidth, but no throttling and high upstream, with the assumption that people will torrent 24/7.

As it is, they're selling a 'one-size-fits-all' plan of high-bandwidth, but we'll cut you off if you use it more than we want, and charge you more than you should pay.

This is trying to shoehorn this strategy into a changing market. People are using IPTV and there are more people knowing how to use BitTorrent... but they don't want to upgrade their system to support new uses. So, to fend off the law knocking on their door, they're trying to get it named 'malware' because their system can't handle it and it hurts other people sometimes.

Re:'must'

[Anonymous Coward]

I like that, "think of the children."

ISP's need to be able to filter whatever they want because of the children...or because they could then charge content providers extra if they want. Once you do away with net neutrality, we can rely on big businesses to help themselves. But don't worry, the robber barons will donate some money to the poor unfortunates that will no longer be able to compete. Or maybe they'll donate condoms to Africa with some of that money. Sorry, but I'm not feeling overly optimistic about the ability of most big businesses to play fairly, without getting laws passed that favor them.

Maybe some year when I'm not being asked to bail out slimeball businessmen with my taxes, I'll feel differently. BTW, 700 billion isn't much. Just take the net worth of the richest man in the world, multiply it by 13 or 14, and you're in the neighborhood. I was looking at figures and comments about social security, and it's called the largest government giveaway program. I think it'll be surpassed shortly.

Yeah right....

[Kjella]

Clogging the lines, sure... because you can't build out the lines right? I'm hoping this will be my next ISP. It's in Norwegian but what you need to understand is only before and now. They just upgraded their customers from 10/3Mbit to 10/10Mbit, 25/5Mbit to 30/30Mbit and 50/25Mbit to 50/50Mbit for the same price. They don't even deliver a slower line if you're one of the 110,000 (of 4,5mio) people that can get this, with an estimated increase of 25,000 or so next year. Within the next decade bandwidth will be so plentiful the argument will completely cease to make sense. Just like Napster didn't kill the Internet, YouTube didn't kill the Internet, piracy will never kill the Internet. It'll expand with headroom to spare to the point where you can send live HDTV if you want. In the dotcom days we laid the backbone, now we're laying fiber on the end mile. From there, anything is possible.

Re:Sounds like a ploy

[Stanislav_J]

I'm suspicious of this. I concede that illegal filesharing is a problem, but it sounds more like an attempt to turn the internet into a tightly controlled broadcase medium, like television.

It's already well on the way there. The Internet in the "good ol' days" was like one gigantic public forum where anybody with a cheap modem, a shareware program, and a free web host could establish a beachhead from which they could proclaim their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, hobbies and avocations, opinions and rants to the world. And while, of course, that element is still a part of the Net, look how dominated it has become by huge corporate commercial websites. Some of us still search for the individual blogs and sites that enrich our lives, but increasingly a lot of Net users probably spend most of their time with the Big Boys.

I foresee an increasingly widening divide between content providers and content consumers. "Net neutrality" is just the tip of the iceberg in the effort to clamp down on and marginalize the little guys. See, technically right now, even TV and newspapers DO afford an opportunity for anyone to broadcast their thing to the masses -- IF you have the money. I see the Net heading in the same direction. I believe that eventually the ability to put up your own website is going to cost ya, and cost big.....no more cheapie/freebie blogs and such. Your internet connection will remain affordable -- on a par with cable TV or subscribing to a magazine -- as long as you are just consuming the content that the corporations want you to see and hear. But if you want to actually speak to the masses instead of being a passive lump, well, show us the money and we'll see. If you want to buy even a single 30-second ad on the smallest TV station, it will run you at least hundreds, probably thousands of dollars. I see the Internet as eventually degenerating into the same unbalanced affair -- it will largely cease to be an interactive medium, and become another mass medium for the dissemination of what the folks with the power and the money want you to see.

But it was fun while it lasted...