Net Neutrality Seen Through the Telegraph

James McP writes "Ars Technica has a write-up on the unregulated telegraph of the 19th century, which gives a view into what could happen to an internet lacking any regulation mandating neutrality. The owners of the 'Victorian internet' used their control of the telegraph to prop up monopolies, manipulate elections, facilitate insider trading, and censor criticism."

Comments

If you ever thought about learning Morse

[caluml]

If you ever thought about learning Morse, you can do it at this very good site: http://www.lcwo.net/. .-.

so clueless!

[FranTaylor]

"BadAnalogyGuy" is just so appropriate for you!

"There is only finite bandwidth available to everyone and one guy in his parents' basement can slow traffic for everyone else. "

"Shouldn't these users be forced to pay more for their extra usage or at least be throttled to the point they aren't causing physical damage to the entire system?"

Apart from all of that, you don't even know what is being talked about here. We are talking about REGULATING, CENSORING, and EVESDROPPING activities.

If you want to fix your Bad Analogy, you should compare this to allowing the turnpike authority to search the contents of every vehicle that enters their roadway, and also allowing them to steal and/or make substitutions for any cargo on any vehicle that enters their roadway.

There, I fixed your BAD ANALOGY for you.

Re:so clueless!

[m1xram]

Check this out. Wired has an article on Net Neutrality.

Reasonable network management consists of: (a) reasonable practices employed by a provider of broadband Internet access service to (i) reduce or mitigate the effects of congestion on its network or to address quality-of-service concerns; (ii) address traffic that is unwanted by users or harmful; (iii) prevent the transfer of unlawful content; or (iv) prevent the unlawful transfer of content; and (b) other reasonable network management practices.

With this definition of "reasonable network management" an ISP would be required to determine the content of packets rather than the type of packets sent. If a user was to send any image it must be determined if that image violates copyright law or whether it is child pornography, etc. The same thing applies audio and video files and streams. Typically that level of spying on customers has not been implemented and could be very costly. And, what will they do about encrypted transmission? Unless the ISP decrypts transmissions how can they know that the "transfer of unlawful content" has not occurred. This has obvious privacy concerns.

There's a PDF link on the Wired site to the 107 page FCC Proposal. Looking at the PDF table of contents you will notice that there should be 185+ pages. Sections IV F forward are missing and I can not find the document on FCC.gov site. Can anyone find the complete document? I would be interested in reading...

F. Reasonable Network Management, Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and Homeland and National Security pg 133
1. Reasonable Network Management pg 135
2. Law Enforcement pg 142
3. Public Safety and Homeland and National Security pg 145

I think people would be more comfortably with Net Neutrality if it did not contain these Patriot Act type things in it.

Re:It doesn't matter who is violating your rights

[DreamsAreOkToo]

I'm currently living with 4 people. We are paying for a 120 mbps connection. However, when I'm on WoW, and my roommates are playing Modern Warfare, streaming Hulu or music, all of a suddenly we all lose connection. We all start cussing and swearing about it. But the internet only briefly stops (long enough to boot everyone playing a game online). If we keep trying to all connect, we lose connections again.

If I'm home alone, I never lose internet even for an instant.

So tell me, if I am paying $120 for internet, which is a lot more than everyone else, and I'm using 50 mbps of my 120 connection, why can they kick me? I should be able to use every bit they've sold me 24/7... or they should bloody well send me a fat refund plus damages for advertising their services as "Unlimited."

This is blatant monopoly abuse. A monopoly on a product that my tax money built.

Re:You have NO IDEA about job rights

[Jesus_666]

Actually, not only does that not apply to all countries but AFAIK not even all US states have at-will employment. Depending on where you are, getting fired over a sex video on the internet is a great reason to sue. (However, most bosses are smart enough to find some very minor infraction, blow it out of proportion, have you complain about it and then fire you for being disruptive and creating a hostile work environment. Or some such.)

Re:Duh

[dkleinsc]

After all, being truly machiavellian is an art rarely practiced outside of government.

Definitely not true. In fact, there's a pretty good book (as well as quite a few imitators) on the very subject of how Machiavelli is incredibly useful for understanding modern business.