McCurry's at it again...

I'm not saying that COPE isn't an atrocious piece of work - mega corporate welfare plus a massive free speech challenge - or deny the enormous lobbying effort of the telcos and their friends.

But why is McCurry front and center?

He gets in the way of the substantive discussion because the fact he's so often namechecked by lefty bloggers rather suggests some sort of personal vendetta, rather than hostility to a thoroughly bad bill; and just skews the priorities of pieces written on the subject.

Not helpful.

Mike & the Telcos seem to keep forgetting that no one is using "the pipes for free". last I looked I don't have free access to the 'net. I pay a nice healthy monthly fee. I'm guessing Google, Apple, Vonage and the rest do as well. In fact, I could pay less for dialup or more for a T1.

Matt,

Could you post the link for the Skype killer service? I and some other folks are talking to A Clinton staffer next week, and this is one of the topics.

And a different group of us meeting with our USRep on only this topic.  I'd like to have documentation to back up our claim.

Or you can email me. Jay at Ackroyd.org

Give McCurry a break.  Maybe he just doesn't realize that he's working for swine.

When One of your own turns to the "dark side" of course it's a big deal!

The Extremist Rantings Of A Mainstream Progressive

The way this game works, is that the telco changes the interface equipment.

Thats what they do to control the network. Thats what ATT did for so many years, and quashed competition and innovation in america until a federal court finally decided to force them to open the market (and where the internet was born).

This is the trick they will pull: read carefully.

In about two months they will add a new "service". It will be something that , instead of a router on your side - will be something like a switch.

So, they will say now that the interconnections from their network to yours are a very big cable that they will own.

Then, they will say to the feds, see - we own this, why can't we decided what to do with it?

Now, the difference would be, that if you have a DSL modem right now - you're going to have a device that can make route decisions about where to go on the net, so the net will be this wild new place and you've invested in the equipment.

But down the road, they will try to say - well , even if the customer has bought their own equipment you've still got this great big cable that we provide.

Note well: the cable companies already tried stupid stuff like this with their EULA. Read  your end user license agreement and you'll see some ridiculous stuff like, they own the content of the internet, etc. Write a letter or email protesting it + state that unless they make a clarification you'll cut off service.

Also hold their feet to the fire. They are banking on stupid end users more than anything. Go ahead and upgrade your own connection, get a real address and run your own site.

That way, they can't hide behind this idea that there are some sites that they can take down, and the end users aren't real - they're just classless creatures

The internet is a many to many communications medium. The stuff they are doing is geard for one to many, and the more that idea is challenged the worse their case will end up for them.

Here's a real world example I've been thinking of about how internet life would be if the telecom CEO's get their way.  Lets take the recent White House Correspondents dinner.

For example, lets say that President Bush's routing where he pokes some light fun at himself is posted as a video clip on some of the major media sites. ... oh, just to pick a name, lets say its MSNBC.  When you go to view that video clip, its very easy to use and fast.  You click on it and with very delay President Bush doing his shtick appears on your computer screen.  Its this fast and this easy to use because MSNBC is paying a fee to the telecom company to make sure their stuff gets priority speed through their network.

Meanwhile, say the clip of Stephen Colbert isn't as widely available.  Maybe its just up on places like Crooks and Liars.  And since Crooks and Liars doesn't pay your telecom company a big fee for fast access, when you try to access this video, there's a long delay before it starts playing.  And maybe while you are watching it, there are pauses where the connection is slow and the video just freezes until more data gets through.

This is the real-world impact of what's being debated.  If its "content" that a big corporation is trying to put out, then they'll pay the telecom to make sure its fast to you.  If its a film clip from Crooks and Liars, or Democracy Now!, or Indymedia, then they of course don't have the money to pay for this fast access, so its going to be much slower and more painful for you to watch anything from these sources.  And since there will probably be more traffic from the non-paying sources, all of that traffic will get jammed into the "slow" pipe the telecom will provide.

So the effects may be subtle.  It may be more that its just more painful to try to access independent information rather than corporate information.

Of course, they are also talking about blocking content.  They are talking about blocking "porn" (and that's their definition of porn, not yours).  And they are talking about blocking "bit-torrents" which they claim are copyright violators (they aren't ... I trade a lot of music from bands that are very happy to have it traded around on the internet).

And of course, there's always the slippery slope to this stuff.  For example, what happens if a telecom decides its going to start to filter and block objectionable political comment.  Maybe Democrats and Republicans are ok, but anarchist political content gets blocked by the telecom???

Anyways, I've been running through my head this example of competing video clips from an event and the differences you'd see as a user of this brave new world of telephone content aggression.

>>>Mike & the Telcos seem to keep forgetting that no one is using "the pipes for free". last I looked I don't have free access to the 'net. I pay a nice healthy monthly fee. I'm guessing Google, Apple, Vonage and the rest do as well. In fact, I could pay less for dialup or more for a T1.

They mean that they don't want competitors to have access to the fat pipes that they want to provide in order to compete with cable.

What they're conveniently omitting from the whole equation is that The Telcos have been transporting their own damned traffic over their competitors networks for years "for free."  They're all peered together and all of their network connectivity has been reciprocal.

And if neutrality is enforced, they can continue to pass their own traffic over competitive networks connected to the Internet "for free."

It has mutual benefit for all qualified comers, but they want to break that regime so that they might monopolize it.  

Here's what I don't get about this whole debate.  Everyone seems to agree that the Internet is a breeding ground for innovation.  Its coming.  So why are people all about trusting Congress to regulate us into this open and equal place?  

I know  - someone is going to say - How can you trust corporate america either?  Which is right.  

But honestly "I'm guessing Google, Apple, Vonage and the rest do as well. "

That's not good enough.