The corporate grip on opinion in the US is one of the wonders of the Western world - Gore Vidal
|
|
|
UK government intends to end the Internet
CAREER SUICIDE appears to be the UK Conservative MP Ed Vaizey's main goal at the moment, having made a speech that can only bring more ire down on the already not too popular Conservative, Liberal Democrat coalition Government.
Vaizey, the Minister for Culture but obviously not technology or common sense, has told the world that the Government is happy to end net neutrality. He thinks that a multi-lane Internet with content makers getting charged for the priority level their data gets is a jolly good thing.
Speaking at the Financial Times World Telecoms conference in London, Vaizey was reported by the BBC to have said, "We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want."
He continued, "This could include the evolution of a two-sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service."
Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken of government data going on the Internet and an open source approach to its social and corporate use, so the anti-net neutrality stance chafes somewhat. Cameron even publicised his meeting and video conference with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is a man who knows exactly what do with other people's private data to line his own pockets.
Internet guru Sir Tim Berners-Lee told Nokia World in September that the end of net neutrality would be a very bad thing indeed for the world wide web that he helped create. Vaizey, meanwhile, might have got his bonkers idea from O2's CEO Ronan Dunne. Dunne told a conference that a multi lane Internet would not be the end of net neutrality and that it could be as good as the M25. Which is a road that he clearly never uses.
Instead of taking the advice of Internet sages such as Sir Tim, this government prefers to climb in bed with privacy violaters and those commercial schemers who want to put up toll booths on the Internet. How much more wrong can they get? µ
Share this:
Share
"Sir Tim may be a guru of the Web, but he's not an economist, or a business man"
As a "guru" of the web that makes him far more qualified to talk about the subject than any "business man".
"Inventing a protocol whilst working in a publicly funded research organisation does not make you an expert in how to drive investment and optimise returns."
There is more to life than just squeezing money out of everything (something that you and your ilk are clearly utterly incapable of understanding).
If you ever get seriously injured then I hope that you get operated on by a "business man", because as far as you're concerned they are clearly the font of all knowledge in all things.
Yeah, I want a signed pledge they won't do this from whoever wants my vote!
Oh, wait...
The problem with the NET is that it is easy to disconnect and until we can free it of government controlled hubs and cables and satellites we can forget about it as a force for good very very soon. We need to understand matter in order to send data through it unimpeded then you can talk to me instantly no matter what is between us, whether "mass" or "distance" and no government would be able to interfere.
http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2008/01/06/crackpot-or-genius-has-a-shell-boffin-stumbled-on-a-scientific-breakthrough/
"Inventing a protocol whilst working in a publicly funded research organisation does not make you an expert in how to drive investment and optimise returns".
Spoken like a true business school drone! What does "drive investment and optimise returns" actually mean in the real world? I imagine it's something not unadjacent to "get people to give you as much money as possible and get other people to give you as much money as possible". Of course, that doesn't sound quite as clever.
As for the first part of your dubious contention, the fact that TBL invented the Web (while SOTSOG, of course) does mean that he is a very intelligent and practical person. Scores of technical wizards struggled with the problems of distributed hyperinformation and failed, until TBL came up with the striking compromises that made HTML and HTTP so acceptable.
I don't think we have net neutrality in Britain, do we?
If your ISP decides to allow only selected neswpaper web sites and not others, or to block BBC video and radio, or selected political sites, or suppress eBay and run their own alternative instead - or eBay only through an app where they take a commission - or block your video sharing tool, they can just do it. The small print of the customer contract probably says so.
Of course you can just transfer your business to one of the other Internet providers that has laid fibre optic cable into your home, but they are probably doing the same thing.
Steve Jones: "Sir Tim may be a guru of the Web, but he's not an economist, or a business man."
Stop it: you're only making him look good!
"Inventing a protocol whilst working in a publicly funded research organisation does not make you an expert in how to drive investment and optimise returns."
Maybe not, but a lot of economists and "business men" have little idea about such matters themselves, despite what they would have you believe. Most of them have never come up with something that enables an entire class of business activity, and if they ever did manage to do so, most of them would fluff the opportunity and try and milk all and sundry through "licensing schemes" by looking to cash in as quickly as possible.
In fact, the whole situation where large corporations pay infrastructure providers to shut out competitors from the bulk of the bandwidth is precisely the kind of anticompetitive antics that undermines genuine free markets. One would think that economists and those arguing for "the needs of business" would want to preserve a decent competitive environment, but when some easy money comes along, those people are the first to take the pay-off and act as apologists for aspiring monopolists. That their "business is best, government keep out" advocacy requires government intervention is a contradiction that shouldn't go unnoticed.
So save us your disdain for publicly-funded organisations: sometimes people working in them are the only ones with a clear head that lets them make a sensible decision, rather than thinking all the time about how to screw the next guy as quickly as possible.
all politicians are corrupt, owned by big business and have a physical addiction to money-making
they are also intent on taking as much money from the general public in as many ways as possible
are there any differences between the main parties? - just the faces
The government would so love it if they could tax you per Kilo byte.
Sir Tim may be a guru of the Web, but he's not an economist, or a business man.
Inventing a protocol whilst working in a publicly funded research organisation does not make you an expert in how to drive investment and optimise returns.
Net neutrality is a meaningless term anyway, unless you are talking about the free-for-all that is IP which allows, unless shaped, P2P multi-session traffic to screw the hell out of performance.
Like all things in this life, there are middle ways, and the the purists that would not allow for QoS and every packet an equal one are not telecom engineers, they are dreamy unrealists.
What you do need, of course, is some regulation to stop businesses dominating through economic muscle alone, ut note that Google and Facebook haven't reached virtual domination by exploiting privileged access to the Internet. Instead they have exploited natural tendencies to monopoly and concentration, and its at that level of promoting competition where attention needs to be paid, not some hopeless idea of equality among the bits.
Even if its the ISPs decision and a service dependant factor the result of streamed internet would be something akin to Sky TV, basically half ads and half populist content.
The tories will say that if some people dont want an internet full of advertising spam and insist on net neutral services they can vote with their feet. Yay for free market and all that.
But with operators like Sky and their ilk you can expect them to push the price as high as the market will stand and then use the repugnance factor to sell neutral services at a premium too.
Bottom line is that you can expect the usual perversion of public interest by financial priorities and the price of both streamed and neutral services to rise as a result.
When the Tories deregulate something like they deregulated the financial sector in the 80s for example, they think they are being clever because they only think of the short term (and personally profitable directorships and consultants fees for the ministers involved) but in the long term we end up living with the results of the mismanagement which deregulation inevitably creates when impacted by the profit motive, like pensions raiding, poncey schemes and market crashes from an over-leveraged housing bubble.
Its not rocket science.
i despair
Decisions of that importance cannot go without public acceptance. Subject demands a civil platform - dialog with citizens and neutral experts(i.e.: Sir Tim B. Lee) opinion. I for one am totally against internet taxing and any other kind of internet limitations and control. I am looking carefully what government is doing and it will have an impact on my vote in the future.
Whilst the government will no doubt get the fastest speed paid for by the taxpayer,and our MPs will have a fast home connection claimed on expenses,Vaizey is an idiot who should ake some advice from Berners Lee
The end of Net Neutrality is called the end of the internet, but it's proper.
It's proper because it's tiered service.
One person gets one service and another gets a different service.
The next thing after tiered service is to have server farms close to the different towns and cities so the tiered service has a quality internet stream speed. Also if audio or video is streaming and it is not tiered service it is sub-par quality and speed, ie if the dl is that of a illigal content then it is not tiered and so has lower quality speed, dial up speed.
Why is this necessary you ask?
Culture. Culture gets the public to go via, and via is another way of describing acceptable behavior.
If the poor class has no means then why are they on the top tier, if they want it quality they will go out and see it at the theater like everyone else.
Right now they are describing internet things like fibre HD streaing as top tier people, not lower class people.
I'll let George Orwell and Aldous Huxley answer that -- too long to copy-paste.