OT: Net Neutrality and Comcast

Laurence wrote on 2/27/2008, 7:53 PM
This issue should be incredibly important to us Vegas users because many of us put our video on the Internet and this issue directly affects that:

The idea is that large Internet companies such as Comcast want to have a sort of inside track for paid content that will reach end users much faster and more efficiently than stuff that is just posted to the Internet without paying them access fees.

Their latest step is to try and keep the general public out of meetings by paying people off the street to go to these meetings early and take up the space so that there won't be room for concerned citizens in the meetings.

The idea is that content like the videos you and I make will only go through to Comcast customers at a snail's pace in order to make room for all the paid high bandwidth content and advertising that these companies want to shove down our throats.

If this doesn't piss you off, it should!

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/27/2008, 8:23 PM
ironic... that whole video was just what news reporters said & in the end it's an advert. :( LAME

the fcc has already said they're going with "net neutrality", hence why that happened. comcast already know's they're in deep & are pretty much screwed.

So who to trust with the internet's future? Not private companies, Comcast showed how under-handed they can be. Govts? Pakistan already shows how under-handed they can be. Considering people comprise both of those, I'd say the internet is doomed either way.
daryl wrote on 2/27/2008, 9:32 PM
Comcast? I finally booted them out of my home, pitiful bunch, greedy bunch, no, I don't like them. Should have done it long ago. Live and learn.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/28/2008, 4:37 AM

Lengthy, but worth looking over. It does have subheadings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality


InterceptPoint wrote on 2/28/2008, 5:47 AM
It is certainly true that the Comcasts of the world are going to be heavily biased in favor of the utilization of the Internet bandwidth that they control for their own Video on Demand use. And it does seem just that their ability to do so should be restricted by the FCC. That seems like a good idea.

OTOH, do not forget the threat to Comcast and all of us here that the bitorrent and P2P folks represent since these networks have the potential to swallow up huge chunks of the available bandwidth on the net. Until we all have a gigabyte/second running directly to the Internet backbone I don't see how we can object to Comcast and others doing what they have to do to control the P2P activity on their network.

I don't like the idea, I just don't see any near term alternative.