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D. Peter Maus · October 6th 09, 03:55 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

On 10/6/09 09:13 , wrote:
On Sep 30, 8:59 pm, wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:36:42 -0700, N∅ ∅baMa∅ wrote:
New Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski could
have used a few more dollops of genuine humility in his Monday speech

I see nothing wrong with prohibiting common carriers from censoring your
internet. They took a big bite out-a usenet already

The GOP Hypocritical do-nothing party of NO!
They want to give all our constitutional rights to large trillion dollar
corporations in the name of "not socialist"

These people can't think past their large beacon beer belly but find it
easy to cut-n-paste content from the republiCAN'T propaganda machine.

Sorry bunch of folks. No brains to think for themselves.

Net neutrality is a good thing, to be sure. It's very democratic.

It is, however, very difficult to implement, given the real
world limitations of net distribution systems.

Heavy users downloading hd movies and tv shows, playing high
speed games requiring large amounts of bandwidth, can cause
performance problems for other users on the radius as the bandwidth
limitations of the network are approached. In the case of Comcast or
ATT U-Verse, this can actually cause TV performance compromises for
users who are very light internet users, but pay heavily for cable
TV. I've experienced this in prime time at my g/f's house with Comcast.

Bandwidth limitations are necessary to prevent a few heavy users
from compromising the performance of other users who equally pay the
costs. Though Comcast abuses the privilege, to be sure.

Further, bandwidth limitations prevent residential users, on
less efficient pipes, from using the net for high bandwidth
businesses, like hosting FTP sites, as I do on my T-1, video
streams, and other servers. Again consuming the bandwidth of other
users. Compromising their service, for which they pay.

Eventually, as networks are improved, this will become a
non-issue, but the reality is, that for now, real world limitations
necessitate some kinds of bandwidth limitations for some users.
There are certainly better ways to do it than many of the ways that
are being employed today, but that doesn't obviate the necessity.

Censorship is an entirely different matter. And there is no
reason for AT&T, Comcast or even Megapath, my T-1 carrier, to have
any interest in the content for which the bandwidth is used, so long
as the content is legal.

And there-in lies the rub. Carriers have been made the
gatekeepers for content legality. RIAA has been going after
carriers, rather than end users, in it's bogus copyright cases,
because the pockets are deeper, and because they can pressure the
carriers through threat of action, into becoming RIAA agents in
pursuing copyright actions.

And that's not the doing of the right. It's not even the doing
of the carriers, because they don't want the headaches. It's the
doing of the courts, and the laws enacted relating to DCMA.

The result is...that content becomes the business of your
carriers in order to limit their own liabilities.

One other thing...When Whitacre was chairman of SBC, he made a
proclamation that no one may use his network for free to compete
with his telecom services. This in response to a proliferation of
VOIP services that simply plugged into any network connection and
carried phone service via internet. Whitacre saw this as theft of
service. Paying someone else for a service that he provided for
profit, while using his own network to provision the connections.
And to an extent, he's got a point. Another business using
Whitacre's own network to steal Whitacre's customers, doing it for
profit, while not sharing the revenue with Whitacre seems unfair.

I say SEEMS....at the time Whitacre didn't offer VOIP. And those
users finding value in VOIP while travelling, for instance, had no
alternatives from AT&T. If he wasn't offering the service, then he
had no right to bitch when customers bought from someone else.

But SBC went a step further, and began to limit the bandwidth
available to chat services with audio and video connections, choking
down iChat, and AIM when using video, as well as a number of others,
because he saw this as a theft of service.

AT&T has since curtailed much, but not all, of this. While
offering video conferencing services of it's own. For cost, of course.

Net Neutrality, as presented so far, would peel back all these
layers of protectionism on the part of carriers, threatening some
serious service issues. Whether or not these issues will actually
develop is not clear. But they are real threats to service and to
operations of carriers.

A Net Neutrality bill with some practical responses to real
occurrences would make more sense.

But, currently, "sense" in this matter isn't on the docket in
Washington. From the Right, OR the Left.