So, while The Netherlands just adopted net neutrality, the US is now nearing a comprehensive agreement on a piracy crackdown system. It will include throttling internet speeds, limiting access to e.g. only the top 200 websites, and forced participation in an educational program on copyright. The system has been drafted by the White House, big content, and ISPs. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for net neutrality in the land of the ‘free’.
So the ISPs could potentially be the law enforcement of the internet? I thought that only happened in cyberpunk novels…
The term Net Neutrality means ISPs will not use their power as the gate keeper to the Internet for their customers to unfairly direct their customers to the ISP’s own media properties and will not use their position as gate keeper to customers for the content providers to extort money from the content providers for said access.
Nothing about Net Neutrality is about prevention of punishment for illegal behavior.
Edited 2011-06-23 23:57 UTC
I disagree. Neutral is neutral, and for them to consider restricting a customer to the “top 200” websites because they infringed on an unrelated company’s IP…oh wait, never mind, Comcast and Charter are owned by Big Media, and AT&T will be soon. At least, it seems that way with their about-face stance on net neutrality. Last year they were all for net neutrality, now they are part of the alliance to bring this new found power to all major carriers at once. I smell acquisition or takeover soon, and I’m not talking about T-Mobile (though that sucks for other reasons).
Also, I wonder just how many of those “top 200” websites are owned by the above companies, or by partners of theirs? And “top 200” of what? Total internet popularity? That would mean sites like Youtube and Hulu, which already rub the media companies the wrong way no matter how compliant the sites try to be. No, I think it will be the top 200 sites that the media companies prefer you have access to. Perhaps their own sites with a pay-to-play gateway? Why not, the power is apparently about to be in their hands alone, with the White House’s seal of approval.
No, like I said before it’s a bad idea to let the content provider (a heavily biased and partial entity) be the internet police. Imagine if store owners could be judge, jury and jailer for someone shoplifting a pack of gum? That $.50 worth of gum could very well land a person in jail for the rest of their lives on a first offense, with whatever meager proof the store owner wanted to fabricate.
In other words, there’s a reason we have a government run criminal justice system: Impartiality and fairness to the accused. It’s far from perfect (believe me, I work in the thick of it) but it exists to protect the citizens from exactly the kind of injustice that this kind of legislation can only bring.
Edited 2011-06-24 01:08 UTC
I have to agree with modmans2ndcoming. I can’t see what NL net-neutrality has to do with US anti-piracy policy. The Dutch will inevitably have their own separate anti-piracy legislation, in whatever form, completely unrelated to their stance on net-neutrality. Surely N-N is about a level playing field between sites and different methods of accessing them, not anything related to IP-theft. Even here, no-body’s proposing to, say, block access to certain sites for end-users, just for ISPs to police likely contraband traffic, as in (sadly) the UK.
You’re right, there shouldn’t be a comparison between what’s going on in the Netherlands and what is going on here in the States, which is why I didn’t mention the Netherlands (I know, the parent article did). And network neutrality should never be about “policing” the ‘net. However…
That’s exactly what they are proposing! One of the provisions of this deal is what I described above, that they would limit access to 200 arbitrary sites, out of the literally billions of web sites in existence. That is such an extreme example of anti-neutrality that it boggles the mind. If you use recent figures for legitimate websites in existence (~2.024B) that comes out to an accused (not convicted!) infringing party being able to see only 0.00000098% of the Web. Not to mention, “the Web” is not the entirety of the Internet, and if the subject is restricted to just those 200 web sites he obviously is also restricted from all of the non-WWW content.
That is why I feel this is a slap in the face to network neutrality in the U.S. Regardless of the lame excuse they came up with regarding IP protection, it’s still wrong and highly anti-consumer.
Well, maybe not. The entertainment industry in the US (as well as the lawmakers in their back pocket) will realize that fighting piracy is like pissing into the wind, and they’re never going to stop it no matter what they try. I understand that they should’ve been able to figure this out years ago, but they will get there eventually…. once they run out of ideas.
If they get to this point before the Dutch enact any sort of anti-piracy legislation, there will be no point in the Dutch pissing into the wind as well
I feel ashamed to have moved to U.S. only a month ago!
God bless Canada…not how he did the U.S.!
Meh, don´t feel that bad… They rest of the ‘civilized’ world will follow suit soon enough… under some ‘FACKTA’, ‘Cash Cow Protection Act’ or similar ‘in-your-best-interest’ kind of name…
According to the source of the article (the CNET article), it looks like it’s “voluntary” for now – but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s sweeteners like easier licensing for content for participating ISPs and things like media companies requiring content licensors to block non-participating ISPs. Not saying that’s what it involves, just that I wouldn’t be surprised.
I wonder how they define customer too?
If someone’s reselling a big carrier’s services, are they a “customer” who will have adherence forced upon them by the supplier?
Or even worse – what about TRANSIT “customers” – if a big ISP that provides transit for non-US sourced/destined traffic decides to start treating foreign IPs or netblocks or ASNs as copyright infringers…?
I’m not even in the US and it worries me!
Seriously, what is going on?! I feel like every day I wake up to find out that the US gov’t is finding new and innovative ways to screw us. I’m at a loss for word so let me just end with a quote:
….Home of the Slaves