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BitTorrent CEO On Net Neutrality
angry tapir writes "According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the Internet industry has to regulate itself by responding to consumer demands in the wake of the recent US federal court ruling that the Federal Communications Commission didn't have authority to enforce its net neutrality rules."
I didn't know a protocol could have a CEO. :)
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...but unless you work for, are paid by, or represent an ISP, how can you support allowing ISPs to give preferential (or detrimental) treatment to different types of Internet traffic?
Living With a Nerd
Everyone fears decentralized networks and lack of central control. It is easier to ban than to utilize what you're not creative enough to adapt to.
Doesn't "self regulation" usually result in services and pricing that always benefit the industry at the expense of the consumer?
We just GIVE the FCC the power to regulate (bitchslap) troublemaker isps like comcast.
The free market wont fix it. Nobody else will fix it. So make the FCC do something useful for a change.
Altho i'm not sure why we allowed internet provider greed to ever bring up net neutrality at all. Neutrality should just be the way things are by default.
We're just not a very bright species i guess. Or too many of us are getting paid one way or another to be tools for the isps. Sell everyone out for a buck.
Slight (mostly relevant) rant:
I'm a little tired of hearing "bittorrent" used as a synonym for "piracy". Do lawmakers, ISPs, and IP holders not realize that bittorrent has plenty of legitimate uses as a distributed filesharing platform? And I'm not just talking about Linux ISOs: One example is World of Warcraft, which has integrated bittorrent technology into it's patcher. For a piece of software that popular, not using bittorrent or something similar would probably bring down the patch server constantly.
Bittorrent != piracy (or copyright infringement). Stop using them in the same breath.
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Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
they become monopolies or oligopolies, and warp the marketplace so only they benefit
the greatest enemy of the free marketplace, true capitalism, is not socialism or communism, but monopolies and oligopolies. people need to understand the difference between capitalism and corporatism
capitalism is the engine of growth of any economy, and the country that is able to keep the marketplaces as close to free as possible is the country that prospers. corporatism meanwhile is all about the larger players in the marketplace paying off the government, abusing natural defects in the marketplace, and otherwise ossifying and abusing their size to squash innovation and consumers to maximize profit. what's most important is to realize that the only tool you have against capitalism devolving into corporatism is a government with strong regulatory powers. the players in the mark place won't self-regulate, ever... well, they WILL self-regulate, if by that you mean the degenrate meaning of merely consolidating their power at the expense of the free market
the "shocking" realization for the libertarian free market fundamentalist is that the friend of the true capitalist is a strong central government with lots of regulations. it seems contradictory to the common rhetoric, but its absolutely true. perhaps the common rhetoric has been bought and paid for by corporatists. perhaps those who fight government, whether out of being propagandized or being naive, are actually working for the oligopolies whose true desire is to crush the individual and the marketplace (for then they profit more)
if you are a true libertarian, your greatest enemy are oligopolies, not communists
we need a sea change on the right in terms of seeing that large corporations are not their friends, and represent a greater threat to their beliefs and their country than any bleeding heart liberal could ever be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm actually kind of glad it hasn't fallen under the FCC, because it just wouldn't make any sense. Whatever level of government is creating the monopolies, is who should be regulating. Cable Company has a franchise with your city? Then the city is the one who should demand neutrality (and any other necessary pros for the quids). And in the rare situations where an ISP doesn't have any monopoly force, there's no need to regulate them, because their customers and competitors can handle the job.
I know people generally hate this idea, because they don't want to get involved with local politics and only show up for general elections so they can vote party tickets, but tying the special favors directly to the restrictions is the right thing to do. If you don't like local politics, the problem is with you, not the fact that you have a local government. Get over it, face up to your responsibility, and demand some conditions the next time you use government to transfer your power to other private entities.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
some of you think that if there was choice, you could just choose the isp which respected net neutrality and problem would be solved.
it is anything but this. just check any sector in regard to products and services :
some corporations start some practice in their product/service. if they can get away, others start to imitate it. when the number of companies practicing it hits a noticeable level (and corresponding market share), the practice becomes de facto standard of the sector. in almost every field this is like that.
so, even if you had competition, 2-3 major isps (at&t filth etc) would start filtering their traffic, and after a while try to push it as de facto, logical nature of the industry. they can take huge losses, they have staying power, they can wait. you couldnt expect smaller isps to resist for long.
this is something like your free speech rights - you cant just skip enforcing them, and then just expect everythign to 'work out fine' by itself. some things need enforcement.
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