Slashdot Mirror
UK Minister Backs 'Two-Speed' Internet
Darkon writes "UK Culture minister Ed Vaizey has backed a 'two-speed internet', letting service providers charge content makers and customers for 'fast lane' access. It paves the way for an end to 'net neutrality' — with heavy bandwidth users like Google and the BBC likely to face a bill for the pipes they use."
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/open-internet-enhances-our-freedom-of-speech/
I can hear it now, almost a throwback to the 60's...
"dangburn newfangled hippies with their free love, free net, free information! Every redblooded {American|Brit} knows you get what you pay for! Can't have vagrants just lolligagging around on the net! The pricetag filters out the hoodlums!"
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Google and the BBC already pay for the "pipes" they use, and end users pay for the "pipes" they use, where is someone not getting paid in this?
I think most here generally support neutrality. Some argue that ISPs should be able to prioritize traffic based on type but not destination - they could give priority to latency critical, but low bandwidth, packets like VOIP at the expense of FTP; but not give priority to their own VOIP traffic above other VOIP traffic.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Not in the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe) If someone calls/texts me, they get charged. I only pay for outgoing calls/text messages.
That would in fact be fairer than what they are trying to do. Take comcast as a good example. They just purchased NBC. Now let's say you are a comcast customer and you want to stream an episode of Chuck and then an episode of NCIS. Chuck streams great no lag or stuttering but NCIS coughs and sputters and buffers all the way through and you just think CBS.com sucks compared to NBC.com but in fact comcast saw you were streaming a show from a competitors web site and flagged your packets with a low priority so all other traffic gets to go first. Then CBS cries foul and comcast tells them if they want their content to get delivered without interruption they'll have to pay a "protection" fee to ensure on-time delivery. Now imagine they are doing this to ABC.com, Google, Yahoo, etc., etc. If they can get this practice federally labeled legal they stand to add billions to their bottom line for relatively no extra work.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
...probably believes in a two-tier society generally, the nobility and the peasants! ;-)
This is a man (son of Lord Vaizey) who accidentally got £2000 worth of furniture delivered to "the wrong home", including an antique chair and paid it all back when the accounts committee found out.
It's fraud on the part of the ISP.
I have already paid my ISP for the bandwidth from slashdot.org, just as slashdot have paid their service bill for the bandwidth they consume.
ISPs want to be paid twice for the same service, and media monopolies want an unfair advantage over their competitor. This goes against the founding spirit of the internet, big media want their monopoly back.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"