Stealthsuit07 (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

The part about Gates is so true...

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

The wide infrastructure that we use today wasn't made by Al Gore and the ISPs have come to take it from him. They made the resources we are using on the Internet as we know it today. Even if everyone who pioneered the creation of a medium on every level of innovation did agree on it being regulated - which of course isn't the case - they wouldn't have the right to justify its regulation when they have allowed others to invest in creating a network of that medium.

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

As for your friend Tim, there are many Internet pioneers and they are split. We could also look at pre-Internet and post-Internet pioneers who contributed to what we experience today, and I'm sure a few wouldn't like the idea of a socialist cartel, either. Further, the Internet isn't this "place" that someone made that we all added stuff to. It's a medium, being carried by plenty of different individuals and companies - like ISPs - that we paid to create it.

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

Any ISP that decided to completely block anything that a reasonable segment of the consumer segment wants to see (as opposed to say, racist sites or something that the government shouldn't censor but they should) would be completely undercut by the profit motive of companies that want to appeal to that audience. Which is why, say, companies don't just arbitrarily not sell what they don't like and sell what they do like for insane prices.

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

Capping bandwith use for all because people are legally disallowed from paying for more if they're willing to - which would provide infrastructure-expanding capital - is, well, insane.This consumer price staggering is already done. It's letting sites pay to get more priority that's not being done. But the principle is the same. Let people who want to pay for extra resources pay for them and use them. This is what allows advances to happen.

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

Staggering prices on the consumer's side is already widely done. It certainly is in Canada. That's how everyone upgraded from dial-up to broadband during that period where both were available and broadband cost more. The higher costs were only for previous non-existent services, like DSL and Cable, and they always went down. If the Internet is going to continue to improve, people are going to have to pay.

philosophyarchitect (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

There's no reason to say that staggering prices for anything will cause high prices anymore than it does in any industry without price caps. We live in a market economy where the potential for competition stops this. Pop companies aren't going to be stopped from charging different amount for different size bottles any time soon. Fedex and UPS aren't being regulated out of offering overnight delivery for a free - and when they did, their regular delivery didn't suddenly plummet in quality.

Textra1 (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

tinyurl . com / 6r63cl

Textra1 (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

This is why net neutrality is not an issue here in Australia. Our ISPs are firmly against the removal of net neutrality. If the US goes ahead and removes net neutrality the US will become the iron curtain of the global internet.When Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web he did so for the free exchange of ideas, not so some corporate interests could come in and coop it for their own uses.

Textra1 (January 1, 1970 at 12:59 am)

Loss of net neutrality will kill the internet as we know it. It's naive to think that this is not what US. ISPs want to put into place. There is an alternative solution to the problem of growing load on networks vs growth of those network. Capped monthly bandwidth plans. Most of the bandwidth of any particular ISP is used by about 3% of it's customers. Capping bandwidth wont effect most customers, but will stop the small minority from using more than they've paid for.