Privatising the internet

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L0cky

Member
Jul 10, 2001
388
18
Scotland
Some said it couldn't happen despite all the spam and marketing we have to put up with, but far scarier things are being proposed. I stumbled across this the other day...

The End of the Internet?

Sure it's in America, but that affects a large majority of the internet. Hopefully they get this "network neutrality" before the "price discrimination" for content providers or our last bastion of proper freedom of speech could be heading out the window :(
 
Mushroomhead said:
who fancies a trip to america with me and my cricket bats

me me me

but cant see it happening tbh

they could only limit the web in the usa

so europe and rest of world would react by blocking or charging usa traffic

which would hurt the us economy bigtime i xpect

its a way of them raising prices to their customers i xpect
 
The major point is that the companies who provide the infrastructure want to take a slice of Google/Amazon/etc profits - because they feel that if it wasn't for them and their networks - Google wouldn't be able to profit.

The flipside to this is that without Google, email and freely accessible information on the Internet - nobody would bother to go on-line in the first place. And the providers would be left with very expensive cables with 0% usage and no money at all.

The other key point to all of this, is that at the moment data providers are exempt from liability of any information which traverses their network. They are known as a "common carrier" and therefore are not liable if they indirectly break the law.

If they start to monitor the data, intercept it and filter it - they are crossing the lines between being a common carrier and being responsible for the data. This is why they want to relax (change through bribes and lobbying) the laws governed by the FCC, so that they can have the best of both worlds - control and no liability.

You'll all say it'll never happen, but just look at our (general) dependence on US technology systems. Google is primarily based in the US, as is Microsoft, Hotmail, Amazon. Sure they have sites all over the world - but they overall they are governed by US law and the companies are primarily based there. We get software/updates etc from the US.

I think this is one area us Europeans should focus on, being independant of the US - especially in the area of IT. We've kicked Microsofts arse for not playing fair, we've resisted the changes to Software Patents

The 8 or so root DNS servers which control all of the top level domains out there (.com, .net., .org, .co.uk, .nl etc etc) are all property of the US and ultimately they can do whatever they like with them.

Worst case scenario - it will fragment the Internet quite a lot and people and technology will adapt to get around it. It'll be nothing more than some downtime and lots of broken DNS systems.

It's also highly illegal for them to create a cartel and fix the prices for internet access too. Which is probably another law they want to try and dodge through corruption.