I encourage everyone to stay aware of political and
legal issues that affect the net.
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carriers subordinate the Net to the pipes that carry it, which they own. To them the Net is a container cargo system for the stuff we call "content", and it's subject to whatever traffic control regime they wish to impose on it.
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copyright extremists of the Hollywood school see the Net as a big "content" business and carriers as ideally positioned to offer "piracy" protections at the backbone level.
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The carriers' plan from the beginning has been to convert the Net into a paid content delivery system--of some kind. That's all they were ever able to imagine. That's why they've screwed Net Neutrality from the beginning, offering crippled asymmetrical service to customers whom they expected only would consume
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8910Quote:
In fact, the asymmetrical build-outs of service to homes has done enormous harm to market growth by preventing countless small and home Net-based businesses from starting and growing.
Specifically, by provisioning big bandwidth downstream and narrow bandwidth upstream, while blocking ports 25 and 80--in crass violation of the Net's UNIX-derived network model, in addition to the end-to-end principle--the carriers prevent customers from running their own mail and Web servers and whatever server-based businesses might be possible. Again, all the carriers can imagine is Cable TV. That's been their fantasy from the beginning.
I hadn't found a way of putting it into words, but the statement about blocking ports
makes sense. It breaks net design, and changes us from participants into mere
consumers. I don't want to go back to the 1950s where Dad and Mom and the Kids
gather around the tube to watch some lame chit.
:cool:
