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Monday, October 2, 2006 12:00 AM

The telecom slayers

In the Capitol Hill battle over Net neutrality, a ragtag army of grass-roots Internet groups, armed with low-budget videos, music parodies and petitions, have the corporate telecoms, and their allies in Congress, on the run.

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  • Monday, October 2, 2006 07:36 AM

    Re: Hunh??, by Emyth....

    A few answers/comments:

    > No one wants a "fast free ride". People want fairness in traffic. It is likely that tiered models will be as much about slowing down or eliminating non-premium traffic as it will be about faster service with higher cost. Think of it this way. You put out a request for a page-view on a non-payee site. Your request will be at the lowest priority, which means any site with a higher priority, i.e., has paid the telecoms, will go before you. If traffic is high you may wait a long time.

    Okay, what if there is plenty of bandwidth such that no one HAS to wait. Will the person paying extra be happy? Maybe someone will make sure lower priority traffic must wait a certain amount of time before a request is granted. Net neutrality prevents this.

    > Have you flown lately? Notice how some airlines have created fast lanes through security for first class? We all pay for security and it is a government function (TSA, remember?). Why then should first class people get this advantage as well as all the other advantages?

    Think of the internet in a similar way. We all helped pay for the internet, and we pay for expansion too. Why should wealth dominate the modern "meeting square"? Money owns politics ($ = free speech still seems a stupid ruling to me, but I guess if I was rich...) and pretty much everything else.

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