Net
neutrality – Fast Lanes
The Federal
Communications Commission is planning to allow for Internet fast lanes. Is the future of
the Internet in jeopardy? Well, it might not be
as made up as everyone think it is.
Net
neutrality rules have been created in order to ensure Internet Tier 1 and Tier
2 providers treat all data as equal, not improving specific services or
cooperating with large companies that might be able to pay $$ for faster
connections.
Ever since
the United States Court of Appeals for District of Columbia tackled down the
net neutrality laws (initially set in 2010), things got worse (Netflix anyone?)
As
expected, after outrage of users, the FCC announced that it would try to bring
back the Net neutrality by creating new laws. But…. Well they did a thing! Not
really what we expected. The new proposal is created around the idea of fast
lanes. And as I’ll try to explain below, they do not support the Net neutrality
at all.
In a
nutshell, FCC is making a goose laying gold eggs. MIT Technology wrote a review
of the new FCC proposal putting it in par with the most terrifying Internet law
so far. “New” laws would cause venture capital firms to stop funding small
startups/home studios with new fast lanes services for media like videos, music
and others. Generally speaking, companies that
want to have any rational service on their data they would have to pay “ransom”
to ISPs (Tier 1 or Tier 2) in the future. As you can imagine, small
companies/startups/home studios are going to be impacted the most since they
won’t have enough cash flow for such a solution.
Now pause for a second and think how bad that is. Do
you watch YouTube? How often? Once a week, everyday? How about Vimeo?
Spotify? And what if their services become paid? How about all the users or
casters/movie creators on YouTube? They
might never come to be simply because they’re not able to secure funding of
their projects. How is a little guy supposed to compete with big companies?
He’s probably going to be squeezed out of the market by someone who is willing
to pay for faster connections.
So now
what? Well, thanks to some big companies like Google, Netflix, Microsoft,
Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Kickstarter, Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo, BitTorrent,
DuckDuckGo, RedTube, Ebay, Tumblr, 4chan and many, many more wrote an open
letter to Chairman Wheeler and Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, Pai,
O’Reilly (hate that guy…).
Apparently
the new set of rules by FCC got hit hard by the Internet users as well, and it
appears that they are going to put more work into it (riiiight….)
But just to
make sure, one of the providers, NeoCities (offering free and paid Web hosting)
made a plan. The Ferengi plan. It is a special FCC-only plan that cost 1000$
per year which removes the 28.8kbps modem throttle to the FCC. As specified by
the creator, they are happy to tale Credit Cards, Bitcoin or Dogecoin from the
FCC. There is even a simple code on GitHub for everyone to put limitation of
the FCC internal IPs:
The war is
not lost yet.
Question
time:
- As some of you probably never heard of this, does it make you feel uncomfortable?
- What is your insight into this matter?
- Do you think this will affect the average Joe?
- If the Polish ministry proposed such a solution, would you fight and how?
Links
1. As some of you probably never heard of this, does it make you feel uncomfortable?
ReplyDeleteNot one bit.
2. What is your insight into this matter?
As far as I can tell, after reading this quite unclear text, I think the idea won't fulfil, simply because people are against it. Same thing was with ACTA.
3. Do you think this will affect the average Joe?
I think the average "Joe" will find his own ways for getting what he wants.
4. If the Polish ministry proposed such a solution, would you fight and how?
Naturally, with fire and sword.
s10389
ReplyDeleteWell, You see, this is the problem - ACTA did happen :) Like few others aswell which noone seems to know.
But, if You're going to fight with a sword - I'm all in! I put on my robe and wizard hat ;) 's'