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Chinney
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Ottawa, ON
 
2006-10-19, 08:25

Just looked at this for the first time. Net neutrality was not a term I had heard before. Wikipedia has a good discussion of it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

In short, it refers to a principle – and perhaps eventually regulations – that would forbid ISPs from favouring certain types of content over others for priority delivery over their systems.

It looks as though ISPs are against any strict controls implementing net neutrality, as they feel they could get higher profits by giving priority to some content – especially commercially saleable content that they control or that other companies have paid them to deliver via priority streaming. Successful restistance to any requirement of net neutrality also could allow ISPs to implement tiered pricing, in which ISP customers would pay a premium for priority streaming of certain types of content, with other types of content relegated to lower priority status.

Meanwhile, the general net community of is mostly in favour of net neutrality, as they argue that ISPs plans in the above regard could ruin the democratic nature of the Internet, relegating non-commercial content or content provided by smaller companies or individuals to second-class status and firmly putting the Internet under the control of those with money.

Arguments are possible both ways. It could be argued that you should be able to pay more, if you so choose, for priority delivery of particular services that you need or want. On the other hand, an open, democratic nature is the soul of the Internet – I would hate to see that compromised.

When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray.

Last edited by Chinney : 2006-10-19 at 10:12. Reason: Clarification and correction of word-usage errors and typos.
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