On Jan 16, 2008, at 8:34 PM, Robert Oliver wrote:
Apparently things move quickly when the FCC investigates a cable
company, and Congress investigates the FCC.
There's no evidence that this is a reactive move, so let's not pat
ourselves on the back just yet. I suspect Time Warner has been
working on this for quite a while if it's going to be tested in Q1.
Wes Felter - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://felter.org/wesley/
[ I agree, this sort of project doesn't typically appear in such
detail with a snap of the fingers. Frankly, I'd much prefer
published caps to "secret" caps. No law forces ISPs to sell or
promote services as "unlimited" -- and honesty in pricing is
always a good policy. Of course there will likely be
competitive issues to consider so long as any widely available
competitor continues to promote themselves as "unlimited" --
but that's what the marketplace is all about.
One thing we know for sure, users will be requiring ever larger
amounts of downstream bandwidth -- the various video downloading
and streaming services guarantee this, and it won't be long before
users demand "HD Quality" in these as a matter of course.
But upstream needs will also be increasing rapidly, and not
just for P2P. If ISP topologies and provisioning don't take
this into account, the current situation will be remembered as
"the good old days" in fairly short order. Hopefully ISPs will
want to keep up.
What continues to astonish me, however, is the extent to which
ISPs seem to believe that it is proper to inspect and modify
point-to-point data streams. Broadly inspecting subscribers'
content data to see if it contains "copyrighted" works (as AT&T
is discussing) seems quite analogous to the phone company
listening in on everyone's calls to try determine if they're
discussing something illicit. With a warrant, selective and
highly targeted telephone content monitoring is legal, but
without a warrant (well, at least until the current
administration it seems) there has been general agreement that
such broad monitoring would not be permitted.
Similarly, ISP moves to inject their own messages and presumably
eventually their own ads into point-to-point data (in the manner
of the Rogers controversy and http://www.perftech.com ), seem
beyond the pale.
All of these sorts of factors and many others play into the
network neutrality debate -- their wide range and scope is
part of what makes these discussions so complicated, and yes,
frequently emotional as well -- but potentially very useful.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
