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Net Neutrality Blasted by MPAA Bosses
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:23 AM
from the nothing-good-about-that-statement dept.
from the nothing-good-about-that-statement dept.
proudhawk writes "The LA Times is reporting that the MPAA's Dan Glickman has taken another swipe against net neutrality at his recent ShoWest appearance. 'Glickman argued in his speech that neutrality regulations would bar the use of emerging tools that ISPs can use to prevent piracy. That's what some studio lobbyists have been telling lawmakers, too, in their efforts to derail neutrality legislation. And depending on how the regulations are written, they could be right.'"
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FUD begets FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FUD begets FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Regulation needed to eliminate incumbent advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how companies that benefit from past and present public servitude and spectrum exclusive franchises only complain about regulation that requires them to live up to obligations they accepted to gain advantages. Ask them about open spectrum and public servitude and you will see some interesting changes in skin tone.
The MPAA, of course, is an enemy of all kinds of freedom. They enjoy government protection in the form of patents, copyright and cable regulations. Exclusivity is not about the promotion of excellence, as anyone can see by watching the high grossing films of last year's best year ever for the MPAA, it's about locking others out. Network and software freedom will destroy their ability to lock competition out. Cost of production has vastly declined in the last 20 years. You have to ask yourself why there's only one or two film companies begging for yet more government protection.
Parent
Re:Regulation needed to eliminate incumbent advant (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm thinking remove their incumbent advantage instead of adding another layer. Open them up to free market forces. Land, mineral right, and time, all pseudo tangible ownership objects are traded on the free market and do just fine. EM spectrum and cabling can be done the same.
Re:Thanks for your own FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast is a monopoly here in Springfield. Cable companies are monopolies about everywhere. Get some competetion and the market can take care of itself, but monopolies must be regulated to prevent them from running roughshod over the people who need the services only they can (and in most cases, their monopoly is protected by law) provide.
Show me the trend to decreased bandwidth.
Comcast Sued Again over P2P Throttling [slashdot.org]
Parent
Remove what regulation? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right though, remove the regulation, remove the monopoly.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you not see the exceptions to this? Are you seriously claiming Microsoft was created by regulation?
If you think we would even have functional cell service without that regulation, you're deluded. What's to stop one cell company from "accidentally" causing massive interference for a competitor's network? Do you rea
Re: (Score:2)
What? Of course they're right- net neutrality legislation is made to protect peer-to-peer traffic.
Decreasing bandwith goes hand in hand with filter. (Score:5, Interesting)
You must have slept through the whole P2P block attack and congressional response. Bandwith is worthless if it can't be used the way you want.
The Collaps of At Home and DSL providers that has lead to the sad current state also saw a decrease in bandwith. The entertainment and telco dominated companies immediately established caps and port blocks.
That pushes the trend you are looking for back about nine years. In that time you have gotten some very minor improvements that far outweigh the restrictions put in place. The US has sank to 26th place in the world for network availability and international watchdogs rate the US as a chronic surveillance state.
"Light regulation" has provided the worst of all worlds. Both real regulation and real freedom would have provided fiber to the house by now, as it has elsewhere. Fake regulation has given you fake bandwith that mostly works to put money into MAFIAA pockets. Look for fake regulations to give you all of the freedom of broadcast TV in the near future.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats what I think they are trying to do.
My opinion on the matter, let the ISP
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Never heard of Ma Bell and the phone monopoly they used to have? That's right, the entire US used to have only 1 phone company. Your choice was use them, or don't have a phone.
Hell in the old days, you couldn't even OWN your own phone - they were all considered "rentals" from the phone company.
Re:FUD begets FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for keeping the government out of our daily lives, but there are instances where government intervention is necessary. Or do you have millions of dollars, top-notch lawyers, and the legal ability at your disposal to slap the likes of Comcast in the face hard enough that they stop bullying everyone else on the playground?
Parent
Re:FUD begets FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm ashamed to see so many otherwise bright and technologically sophisticated people so misguided on this issue of Net Neutrality. We've got a small window of opportunity to save the internet as a tool of social benefit instead of just another shopping mall. Unless some effort is made to separate the hardware and structure of the internet from the content of the internet, we will lose everything that's so valuable and special about the internet.
We are currently seeing the social benefits of having a public medium for information that is not filtered by the Princes of Commerce. Believe me, those same Princes are desperate to destroy that public medium as fast as possible, because it threatens their hegemony.
Please, if you don't see the importance of Net Neutrality right now, take a little time and look the matter over again. Once a free (as in speech) and open (as in doors) internet is gone, there will be no getting it back. In fact, it's only by accident that we ever had a free internet to begin with, and the rich and powerful are scrambling to lock it down ASAP.
Parent
Corrupt organisation... (Score:2)
Corrupt organisation seeks to further own aims.
Film at 11.
Re:Corrupt organisation... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment the MPAA, RIAA and similar organizations are alienating themselves from their customer base, which just means that the potential customers will continue to select different sources just to keep away from them.
Parent
Not the real reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pandora's lid is already off the box, the studios just want to make a couple bucks at the spigot while they still can.
The MPAA doesn't distribute movies (Score:2)
What schmuck modded that insightful?
DRM failed, so change strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA and cohorts now change strategy: make massive amounts of bandwidth expensive.
They're trying to take out the mules for software groups, who spread around the warez, and the people who hoard and distribute music and movies.
This is more likely to succeed. Although most Slashdot readers know how bad connectivity options are in the USA, very few people who limit themselves to YouTube and e-mail have any idea.
They won't notice if they get low bandwidth caps, but they'll shriek when their kids run up the bill for $500 of overage.
And of course, a bill that large warrants an investigation by the ISP.
Re:DRM failed, so change strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA and cohorts now change strategy: make massive amounts of bandwidth expensive.
They're trying to take out the mules for software groups, who spread around the warez, and the people who hoard and distribute music and movies.
And as a free bonus, it means that only THEY will be able to afford to do the digital music thing. Bye bye Indy Digital Music Labels, bye bye Indy Internet Radio, bye bye Radiohead-style "Download it and pay us directly what you want", etc.
Brilliant. Dirty as all getout, but brilliant.
Parent
Re:DRM failed, so change strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Glickman, the **AA, and any of their illk has a conflict of interest when they talk about net neutrality and filtering. He has only greed for motivation, not doing things right or even fair.
When he starts talking about how to get EVERYONE higher bandwidth AND better Internet experiences without filters or DRM... then and ONLY then are they worth listening to. They are not trying to help anyone but themselves, and perhaps that is how it should be, but we need to make sure that our legislators do NOT believe that he speaks for the average user, ISP, or Internet based business.
The guy dressed like jesus on 49th street wearing a sandwich board declaring the end is near can be spotted by anyone as a crank. Glickman is a different kind of crank and the writing on his sandwich board promises huge sums to those who would enact laws in his favor, not just eternal bliss in the afterlife.
The way I feel about it, every municipality should operate their own WAN/infrastructure and sell access on it to cable companies and ISPs so that even little guys can compete. The monopolies granted to large corporations in various areas are completely hobbling the fight for net neutrality. When they no longer have an infrastructure to claim as their problem, they cease to have any say. yes, I know this idea is fraught with problems, but leaving the infrastructure in the hands of monopolists (successful ones or not) is the way to net non-neutrality. The **AA are trying to hold on to their choke hold of distribution and cable companies currently have a choke hold on broadband distribution. When infrastructure ownership is neutral, so will the net be.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The difficulties of such a mesh are mind-boggling, of course. I'm sure getting an efficient routing system down would be a total nightmare. With a decentralized system like that, I don't know ho
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny, but it's not just utopian libertarians with such dreams. If you dig up the docs from the earliest days of the ARPAnet, back in the 1960s, you'll find that the US Dept of Defense had exactly the same dream. Except theirs was a battle field scenario, with
Ignorant about how this would backfire (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not a dumb move at all (Score:2)
Levels the playing field (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Levels the playing field (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Piracy/Privacy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Piracy/Privacy (Score:5, Funny)
P.S. If I get modded down for using the word "stolen" as a part of my analogy, I will join the other side.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The MPAA & RIAA would like Net Neutrality if.. (Score:2)
1. Each ISP pays them $5000 per month for each album they see transferred across their lines (in either torrent, iTunes, or any other legal format).
2. MPAA & RIAA get to monitor the pipelines and send the ISPs bill (Much like AT&T Vaccum Cleaner).
Then you would see a sudden change of stone-cold hearts of these bitches to support neutrality since this gives them an edge over what consumers can see and hear.
Re: (Score:2)
Who's from CT in first place? Obama? Lieberman?
Re: (Score:2)
Though its somewhat of a technicality, because he was moved to Texas at age 2 and spent most of his formative years there.
All I am hearing... (Score:2, Insightful)
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boohoo (Score:2, Insightful)
MPAA Argues *For* Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet is not all about the *AA's content .. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, some of the traffic on the roads is probably carrying illegal drugs and what have you. In the real world, we wouldn't accept widespread intrusive checking of the contents of our vehicles to try to stop that kind of stuff. I see no reason why we should accept it online.
The MPAA/RIAA expect the entire world to adapt their infrastructure to police their interests -- it doesn't work that way.
Hopefully, before long someone will firmly remind ISPs that if they want common carrier status to remain in effect, they must act like they're a transport mechanism. You're either safely responsible for none of it, or you're responsible for policing all of it.
Sadly, I fear they may get what they want because the lawmakers are far too beholden to the lobbyists and don't understand the actual issues surrounding technology.
Cheers
bar the use of emerging tools that ISPs can use to (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the ISP's job to prevent copyright infringement, nor should it be.
Changing The Distribution Game (Score:5, Interesting)
So, instead of changing their business model where they can return the distribution power back their way *by adapting*, they're trying to inhibit or restrict the convenience of a high speed network. When are these people going to get a clue?
In the book Good To Great [amazon.com], Jim Collins points out one of the fundamental things that great companies have to do: the have to have the courage to face reality. The longer they ignore it, the more difficult it will be for them to turn things around. Some may say it's too late (I disagree), but they need a real culture change to transform.
that's crazy (Score:2)
i can't believe it
USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, let's do some hacktivism (Score:5, Interesting)
In a word, yes (Score:2)
Are carriers allowed to treat packets differently without the explicit direction of their own users?
A neutral network quite obviously cannot be used to enforce the will of some third party against the will of the network's users, so yes, it does explicitly prohibit ISPs from doing the MPAAs dirty work. That is what it is supposed to do.
(Buying a faster/slower/cheaper/more expensive/whatever service is explicit direction from you to the ISP to treat packets diff
Don't vote for McCain if you want neutrality (Score:3, Funny)
Re:that may be true, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:that may be true, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Presently there's a conflict going on with regard to how the internet is managed. Service providers are overwhelmed with the level of traffic they receive, and over 80% of that traffic is being generated by less than 20% of their clients. This results in slower connections for the rest of their clients. I support legislation that would allow these providers to manage their services in such a way as to ensure a good experience for all their clients."
That's the trick - not everybody is a filesharer, and not everybody has actually started using the internet in a way that demands the full speed of their connection. Appeal to the clueless majority - tell them that filesharing results in them getting lower speeds (never mind the fact that it's their service provider's responsibility to provide the speed they've promised, or the fact that many of these users aren't likely to notice the difference anyway) and... voila. Public support for throwing a bone to ISPs.
Parent
McCain Opposes Net Neutrality (Score:3, Informative)
As reported right here on slashdot [slashdot.org], John McCain does not support net neutrality. In case you hadn't noticed, there was a pretty big flap a couple weeks ago over a New York Times story reporting on McCain doing favors for telecom lobb
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at every election in the past (I have not, but I am pretty sure there is a trend going), how many presidents have followed through with any of their campaign promises, I would hazard to guess... not a single one. Politicians all spout the I work for the people blah blah blah.. but what they really mean is they give major tax breaks to corporations in their dist