Net Neutrality Blasted by MPAA Bosses 222
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.'"
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]
Re:Not the real reason... (Score:1, Informative)
For most current combinations of network and streaming architectures the costs do not compute.
It is a classic case of "You should never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes" (in this case DVDs).
The cost of streaming (not downloading - streaming with guaranteed QoS) of a movie at DTV broadcast quality is above 5$, DVD quality or HDTV quality are simply out of the question. This is way higher than rental through the post. Only some fiber architectures come close to matching the costs but even they cannot hit the right numbers for the time being.
Open Spectrum. (Score:1, Informative)
See, Reed [reed.com], Bose, and The Prometheus Project [prometheusradio.org] for a sensible way to end government control of a public resource that's not really scarce.
That should not relieve incumbents from their regulatory burdens. The money and power they have was gained by government protection and for the last 20 years it's been done against better technical advice. At the very least the public servitude should be protected from vandalism and other crimes. At best, their infrastructure should be considered public so that others can connect to it without fear. Open spectrum will kill the economic advantages of land lines but we must not allow incumbents to continue owning those few places there's a good business case for it.
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 lobbyists (and possibly sleeping with one of them (talk about being in bed with special interests), although that part seems fairly dubious). Neither, as far as anyone has been able to ascertain, does Hillary Clinton support net neutrality. Obama is the only remaining candidate who favors it. And I do believe he is quite sincere about it, and takes his technology platform pretty seriously. Evidence can be found in the emphasis his campaign puts on his successful bill to promote transparency by making earmark information publicly accessible on the Internet and in Larry Lessig's association with the campaign. It would be really novel to have a federal government that actually supported some of our interests instead of trying to fuck us over at every turn...
Re:FUD begets FUD (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.