unity100
06-09-2006, 07:09 AM
You are probably aware of the telecommunications opportunity act that is in the works in u.s. congress.
Doing some research on the matter, i must admit that i came to believe that it might have considerable damaging effect in web hosting industry, for bot big, and small enterprises alike.
Im not sure if it is just over-concernedness that led me to that belief.
So i have decided to get community's input on the matter.
Below are a quote from another post, summarizing what i think about it.
And this http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html is google ceo eric schmidt's view on the net neutrality issue. It really sounds alarming when i think of the consequences.
How do you think this thing is going to affect our business ? What might be the possible outcome in the short and long run ?
First of all, net neutrality does not prevent illegal sites from being banned, or prevented. Any court order in such direction, and site gets prevented, in any country of the world.
There is a new bill in the congress that is AGAINST network neutrality.
This bill is being sponsored by congressmen which are backed by telecommunication corporations - telcos, in short.
The bill will give them rights to prioritize traffic per pay - ie, you have a site, you pay the telco, your traffic gets fast through their servers. All other traffic waits in the meantime.
Which is something telcos want legalized in order to get some of the cash google, ebay, yahoo has.
Which effectively means that, if some site can not pay the fee they demand for prioritized traffic, their traffic will wait in line. And it is possible for it to wait indefinitely, if there is ongoing prioritized traffic filling the node, and the bill gives them right to make it wait.
What does that mean ?
This means a granny somewhere in u.s. might not be able to see her grandchildren's site that has the pictures of their latest trip, customer of an estore site of a small business somewhere might not be able to get to the site to place an order, a small local non profit organisation might not be able to broadcast even to its local area, a small garage band will not be able to serve their latest recording as an mp3 to their small fan base, a game clan members might not be able to reach their own clan forum ... you can name your own examples indefinitely.
I guess you have realized that that is practically the end of web hosting & domain business ?
There is no reason to set up sites and get domains, if you dont have the money to pay the isps for your site to be visible to their customers.
You may err by thinking that, 'these are too far fetched and irrational forecasts'. Nay. It aint so.
From what i heard, despite the bill have not been approved yet, some isps have already begun doing some 'adjustments' of their own.
Cox interactive, apparently is preventing its users from accessing craigslist, a classified ads site - the largest free classified ads site on the net. How they are doing this is rather curious - they have a security software partner, and this partner's software is installed automatically on every cox user's computer. Apparently, this software has blacklisted craigslist. Despite being informed of the situation since 5 months, neither cox, nor the 'partner' firm is doing nothing to remove the site from their blacklist, and not citing any reason for not doing so.
But why you ask ? Cox interactive apparently has a classified ads site of its own.
See. Once the bill against network neutrality passes - the bill that creates a 'tiered internet' (what a 'beautified' name for a horrible thing), not only almost 95% of the web sites will be left in the 2nd tier, endlessly waiting to be served, but the telcos will have the legal and practical power to effectively block any competitor as they see fit.
They have even created televised commercials to meet this end. How ironic is that, in such short time, such effort has been poured into something that is in fact AGAINST the public, but in favor of too little a minority.
Google, microsoft, yahoo and others have allied and presented their case to congressmen, but, apparently most of them have been already bought by telcos.
Admittedly, i do not know what will happen if they get what they want.
Doing some research on the matter, i must admit that i came to believe that it might have considerable damaging effect in web hosting industry, for bot big, and small enterprises alike.
Im not sure if it is just over-concernedness that led me to that belief.
So i have decided to get community's input on the matter.
Below are a quote from another post, summarizing what i think about it.
And this http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html is google ceo eric schmidt's view on the net neutrality issue. It really sounds alarming when i think of the consequences.
How do you think this thing is going to affect our business ? What might be the possible outcome in the short and long run ?
First of all, net neutrality does not prevent illegal sites from being banned, or prevented. Any court order in such direction, and site gets prevented, in any country of the world.
There is a new bill in the congress that is AGAINST network neutrality.
This bill is being sponsored by congressmen which are backed by telecommunication corporations - telcos, in short.
The bill will give them rights to prioritize traffic per pay - ie, you have a site, you pay the telco, your traffic gets fast through their servers. All other traffic waits in the meantime.
Which is something telcos want legalized in order to get some of the cash google, ebay, yahoo has.
Which effectively means that, if some site can not pay the fee they demand for prioritized traffic, their traffic will wait in line. And it is possible for it to wait indefinitely, if there is ongoing prioritized traffic filling the node, and the bill gives them right to make it wait.
What does that mean ?
This means a granny somewhere in u.s. might not be able to see her grandchildren's site that has the pictures of their latest trip, customer of an estore site of a small business somewhere might not be able to get to the site to place an order, a small local non profit organisation might not be able to broadcast even to its local area, a small garage band will not be able to serve their latest recording as an mp3 to their small fan base, a game clan members might not be able to reach their own clan forum ... you can name your own examples indefinitely.
I guess you have realized that that is practically the end of web hosting & domain business ?
There is no reason to set up sites and get domains, if you dont have the money to pay the isps for your site to be visible to their customers.
You may err by thinking that, 'these are too far fetched and irrational forecasts'. Nay. It aint so.
From what i heard, despite the bill have not been approved yet, some isps have already begun doing some 'adjustments' of their own.
Cox interactive, apparently is preventing its users from accessing craigslist, a classified ads site - the largest free classified ads site on the net. How they are doing this is rather curious - they have a security software partner, and this partner's software is installed automatically on every cox user's computer. Apparently, this software has blacklisted craigslist. Despite being informed of the situation since 5 months, neither cox, nor the 'partner' firm is doing nothing to remove the site from their blacklist, and not citing any reason for not doing so.
But why you ask ? Cox interactive apparently has a classified ads site of its own.
See. Once the bill against network neutrality passes - the bill that creates a 'tiered internet' (what a 'beautified' name for a horrible thing), not only almost 95% of the web sites will be left in the 2nd tier, endlessly waiting to be served, but the telcos will have the legal and practical power to effectively block any competitor as they see fit.
They have even created televised commercials to meet this end. How ironic is that, in such short time, such effort has been poured into something that is in fact AGAINST the public, but in favor of too little a minority.
Google, microsoft, yahoo and others have allied and presented their case to congressmen, but, apparently most of them have been already bought by telcos.
Admittedly, i do not know what will happen if they get what they want.