Telecom Plan To Take Over the Internet Isn't Real 89
wiredog writes "The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy is actually a student project. The 'No Net Brutality' campaign idea was one of the four finalists created as an assignment for a two-and-a-half week 'think tank MBA' program. The other finalists were a project promoting free speech in Venezuela, one supporting education reform in Poland, and one dealing with sales tax rates in Washington, DC. ('No Net Brutality' came in third. The Polish reform idea won.)"
Whew... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I said yesterday the content was laughably stupid. I actually was thinking that Think Progress had created it.
Re:Doesn't anyone remember when this started? (Score:3, Interesting)
This post is better than the article. Slashdot should just directly link to this post. Net Neutrality is something all Slashdot should just agree on.
Re:Nice cover story. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing to see here, move along.
Yeah... wait.. no? I totally didn't go to www.nonetbrutality.com and I totally didn't see that this was 'just a powerpoint project'.
I'm curious why a project like this would be so involved that the student would pay for a domain name and hosting, and then (yes, i'm telling you to go to the site right now) do everything as legitimately as possible without mention of it being a project.
I'm not saying it was/was-not done by the telecoms. But the site is real, and its intentions/purposes appear real as well.
Re:Doesn't anyone remember when this started? (Score:3, Interesting)
I completely remember this debate. And my feelings haven't changed from that day to this: If you let the Government get involved in this issue, in ANY way, you will live to regret it.
What TWC and Verizon (the instigators of that roe as I recall) wanted to do was to charge large content providers (Google, Time, CNN, etc.) to have "priority" throughput on their networks. If they didn't pay, they'd be given a lower QoS and therefore, because of the number of requests to their servers, they would effectively be throttled.
What I pointed out all those years ago (with many years experience RUNNING an ISP) was that if you get the government involved, it will give them an avenue to moderate the Internet for political reasons. Further more, all the "kiddies" at that time were bitching about how Torrent, etc. was being throttled by Joe's Wireless company or some such, and they just couldn't understand the difference between what TWC/Verizon were doing and what Joe was doing trying to maintain a basic QoS on his limited bandwidth network.
In the end, it appears that two things have happened: The kiddies have drowned out the voices of people who actually have a clue, and the politicians have heard their cries and have come running.
"We're from the government, and we're here to help." -shiver-