End of the Internet?

[smallCommando]

Has anyone heard about Internet2 and the plan by telecom companies to change the internet into a TV-Subscription like model?

If anyone has heard of it, how will this effect gaming?

Here are some links to it:

Alex Jones - End of the Internet

Article about Internet2 and related evidence

[physicsman09]

I've heard about it, but I don't think it could possibly work.

First off, you have to get every single web site to agree to this, and when you think about it, that's a mammoth task.

Second, a lot of people who use the internet casually probably wont bother to pay for the extra websites they visit, which would backfire on the companies planning this.

If they did go through with this, it would be the end of the age of information.

Also, this probably should be in general.

[Jackrabbit-slims]

At 7/29/08 12:09 PM, smallCommando wrote: If anyone has heard of it, how will this effect gaming?

I hardly see that as the biggest problem. Big games like WoW will have no problem with this model, but smaller p2p games will suffer.

I think this model is fucking disgusting, none of these companies had anything to do with the creation of the internet, so who are they to change it?

Nonetheless, they have to power to change it and as businesses they SHOULD change it because the new model will probably make them more MONEY. What bugs me more than anything is how all these companies are pulling together to do this. Fucking media cartelling.

[Al6200]

At 7/29/08 12:09 PM, smallCommando wrote: Has anyone heard about Internet2 and the plan by telecom companies to change the internet into a TV-Subscription like model?

If anyone has heard of it, how will this effect gaming?

Here are some links to it:

Alex Jones - End of the Internet

Article about Internet2 and related evidence

Do you have any credible sources, or just whackos?

[smallCommando]

At 7/29/08 12:19 PM, physicsman09 wrote: Second, a lot of people who use the internet casually probably wont bother to pay for the extra websites they visit, which would backfire on the companies planning this.

That's pretty much there whole plan. And people who use the Internet casually would just pick a subscription based on there needs.

[smallCommando]

At 7/29/08 12:26 PM, Al6200 wrote:
Do you have any credible sources, or just whackos?

Net Neutrality

[drDAK]

This is interesting.. but if they were going to shut the internet down and do exactly what he said I'm sure it would be on every news station everywhere.

Sounds fucking disgusting, but I don't know if they are blowing it out of proportion or what.

[Elfer]

You can't destroy the entire internet. It's not just a big box somewhere that you can swing an axe into.

If companies try to do this, they'll end up with a whole lot of angry software engineers on their hands who realize that consumer technology is widely available enough at this point to create a more distributed routing system on a voluntary basis, which would provide free, unrestricted (and high-speed, for people in urban areas) internet access for anyone willing to be part of the network.

At worst, that venture would evolve into a system of ISPs similar to what we have now. There will always be a demand for unrestricted internet access, and in a capitalist system, it's impossible to remove it from the market because of this.

[poxpower]

At 7/29/08 12:34 PM, smallCommando wrote:

At 7/29/08 12:26 PM, Al6200 wrote:
Do you have any credible sources, or just whackos?

Net Neutrality

that's not a credible source you nimrod, it's another conspiracy theory website.

The ONLY thing I ever heard about "internet2" is scientists currently using a new network made with fiber optics that has INCREDIBLE speed, like gigs per second type speeds, to pass crazy-ass huge files from probes and whatnot to each other in real-time.

Nothing whatsoever to do with your little conspiracy.

[drDAK]

At 7/29/08 12:48 PM, poxpower wrote: Nothing whatsoever to do with your little conspiracy.

I agree. With a combination of unreliable sources and paranoia, this is just being blown way out of proportion. I thought the original intent of Internet2 was to pass large files in an amazing amount of time (because large websites need more bandwidth).

Those "leaks" from major coporations were also probably forged.

[CIX]

At 7/29/08 12:34 PM, smallCommando wrote:

At 7/29/08 12:26 PM, Al6200 wrote:
Do you have any credible sources, or just whackos?

Net Neutrality

So just whackos.

This plan will never work. All it takes is one single ISP to not charge for people's favorite website and people will switch over.

[Toast]

At 7/29/08 12:48 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 7/29/08 12:34 PM, smallCommando wrote:

At 7/29/08 12:26 PM, Al6200 wrote:
Do you have any credible sources, or just whackos?

Net Neutrality

that's not a credible source you nimrod, it's another conspiracy theory website.

The guy who runs that website has 120k subscribers on youtube. I've been watching it since his first clip (which was originally a web-series about a WoW player) and each time they talk about net neutrality it's 100% story and 0% evidence. However, they do manage to scare the shit out of thousands of youtube users...

[Elfer]

At 7/29/08 03:19 PM, CIX wrote: This plan will never work. All it takes is one single ISP to not charge for people's favorite website and people will switch over.

Pretty much. Cartels usually barely work with two members, see what happens when you try to coordinate thousands.

[Christopherr]

At 7/29/08 12:45 PM, Elfer wrote: You can't destroy the entire internet. It's not just a big box somewhere that you can swing an axe into.

YEAH, IT'S A SERIES OF TUBES.

[Minarchist]

Let them do what they want. The market will take care of the rest.

[Jon-86]

Virgin Media (A UK ISP who bought over NTL) want to do this (Damn Richard Branson) and if they go through with it their will probably be the internet as we know it, which would be affected as the number of routers controlled by a tariff system increase. However if you look at P2P networks you have illegal ones and legal ones. People will pay for their downloads just say they will pay for this. So we will either have these two networks fighting for resources. Or we will have a break-away internet completely separate from the tariff-base one.

This all depends on one thing though. The root DNS servers that the entire internet runs on. If the people who control them sell-out to the tariff system then it is entirely possible that this can be implemented. And we would see the creation of a break-away network im sure.

Question is would the good people who run these systems allow it? I dont think so. Their would be literally hundreds of thousands of programmers all over the world who would fuck it up because were not gonna be ripped off. It falls inline with open source ideology that this tariff thing is doomed to begin with.

[TehChahlesh]

This has been an "imminent threat" for years now.

It will never happen.

[Ansel]

There is no Internet2. I have never seen a single person who supports this plan. And it's all ridiculous anyway. No company could force this onto the users of the internet-- in case you didn't know, the government runs the internet. Yep. The US government developed it-- they're the ones you rent your domain from, etc. It'd take government compliancy for it to work, and I doubt it'd happen.

[SadisticMonkey]

There are too many companies that would lose millions of dollars to allow this to happen.

[Alphabit]

It just wouldn't work.
Think about all these small-to-medium size commercial businesses who have a website online, surely they'll sue the crap out of the ISPs. We're talking about millions of law suits here. And even if ISPs had the legal power to restructure the internet like this, the vast majority of people would protest it... This could go all the way to making a referendum to the constitution. Most people do not want this to happen, therefore it wont.

[Drakim]

At 7/29/08 12:19 PM, physicsman09 wrote: I've heard about it, but I don't think it could possibly work.

First off, you have to get every single web site to agree to this, and when you think about it, that's a mammoth task.

No you wouldn't. Not even a little. 100% wrong my friend.

Second, a lot of people who use the internet casually probably wont bother to pay for the extra websites they visit, which would backfire on the companies planning this.

Wut? No, it's the companies that charge websites to get into the list of allowed websites. Like, they would make google pay cash to be allowed on their list so the people can use google.

If they did go through with this, it would be the end of the age of information.

Nah, the internet companies that did this would be drop kicked out of the market, and it would be remembered as an epic fail.

Also, this probably should be in general.

Nah, "politics" isn't just politics with politicians. As explained in another thread I made, it compasses many aspects of our society.

[Christopherr]

I find it strange that both the end of the long-count calendar and the end of the free internet appear in the same year...

Which leads me to another question: why 2012? What's so damn special about 2012?

[Gunter45]

This discussion is pointless. Anyone who's not a gullible tool who believes every word from Alex Jones' garbage hole knows that a subscription-based internet is a farce.

[Al6200]

Look guys, the "Tiered Internet Subscription Model" is the absolute worst case scenario if net neutrality is repealed. But how realistic is that in today's environment? Would you pay for that subscription model if you could get DSL or dial-up for less? The only way to make that model

If you look at why the cable companies are opposing net neutrality, you'll see that it's actually not all that unreasonable. Basically, they have a few customers who are using huge amounts of bandwidth and network resources to download videos and games non-stop, and their average consumer who just downloads a tiny e-mail has to pay for that extra capacity.

The cable companies want to charge the people who use more bandwidth more for that service. So if you use your internet access to download ten gigabytes of video games - you'll pay for it on your bill.

I actually think a debate on Net Neutrality could be quite compelling. There are a lot of interesting economics/social arguments that could be exciting to watch.

[CIX]

At 7/30/08 12:20 AM, Al6200 wrote:

Telecoms don't want a tiered Internet service, but they will do it if they have to because they can't maintain their network anymore due too FCC ruling say they can't prevent file sharers from UPLOADING packets. I have to agree with Comcast, uploading is the biggest strain on networks and if they can stop bittorrent uploading then piracy will decrease and jobs will be saved.

[drDAK]

Its a farce people. Someone is misreading something.

[EKublai]

At 7/29/08 12:45 PM, Elfer wrote: You can't destroy the entire internet. It's not just a big box somewhere that you can swing an axe into.

If companies try to do this, they'll end up with a whole lot of angry software engineers on their hands who realize that consumer technology is widely available enough at this point to create a more distributed routing system on a voluntary basis, which would provide free, unrestricted (and high-speed, for people in urban areas) internet access for anyone willing to be part of the network.

At worst, that venture would evolve into a system of ISPs similar to what we have now. There will always be a demand for unrestricted internet access, and in a capitalist system, it's impossible to remove it from the market because of this.

But as with most products (if for the first time we can actually consider the internet to be a standalone product) there will most likely be a phase out period that will probably raise the same concerns with upsides and downsides like what's going on with the phasing out of analog television. I don't know how possible it is to have two competing internets with traffic costs as expensive as they are getting.

Another interesting note about net neutrality coming as a huge issue in recent weeks is the case of how comcast is restricting it's customers from using bittorrent. This is primarily because of the huge toll its taking on comcast's bandwidth, a problem a lot of other companies are having that leads them to consider monthly plans by the gigabyte. But about what p2p restrictions entails and the FCC is relaly getting onto this case (for better or worse we'll see)

Being a guy who still likes to watch his movies on a larger than life scale, and seeing as mostly large files like movies are the ones to most benefit from such a transition, I'm not so sure I like the strides towards Internet 2.0 since that will certainly cause the deaths of the movie theater, and most likely non-internet streaming television will also get hit hard by this. And yet no one seems to stand to benefit besides netflix and few others.

[Drakim]

At 7/30/08 02:10 AM, CIX wrote:

At 7/30/08 12:20 AM, Al6200 wrote:

Telecoms don't want a tiered Internet service, but they will do it if they have to because they can't maintain their network anymore due too FCC ruling say they can't prevent file sharers from UPLOADING packets. I have to agree with Comcast, uploading is the biggest strain on networks and if they can stop bittorrent uploading then piracy will decrease and jobs will be saved.

...

You do realize one can use torrents for legal purposes, and it's often done?
And that even if one was to block it, all you gotta do is use an encrypted bit torrent system?

I mean, that's like banning guns to prevent crime.

[CIX]

At 7/30/08 05:24 AM, Drakim wrote: You do realize one can use torrents for legal purposes, and it's often done?
And that even if one was to block it, all you gotta do is use an encrypted bit torrent system?

I mean, that's like banning guns to prevent crime.

Then those "legal" torrents should be able to setup private and encrypted servers.

Comcast isn't policing the Internet by blocking packets the same way the government has a ban on weapons. Comcast is trying to provide the best service for their customers because right now it's only a small group who use the majority of the bandwidth.

[Drakim]

At 7/30/08 06:20 AM, CIX wrote:

At 7/30/08 05:24 AM, Drakim wrote: You do realize one can use torrents for legal purposes, and it's often done?
And that even if one was to block it, all you gotta do is use an encrypted bit torrent system?

I mean, that's like banning guns to prevent crime.

Then those "legal" torrents should be able to setup private and encrypted servers.

So can pirated ones do too. Then we are back at square one, but with more regulations which does absolutely nothing. Yay.

Comcast isn't policing the Internet by blocking packets the same way the government has a ban on weapons. Comcast is trying to provide the best service for their customers because right now it's only a small group who use the majority of the bandwidth.

But you see, when you buy an internet connection, you usually get a speed value. Like, they might advertise, "we will provide you with 24Mb per second down and 12 Mb per second up!"

And you know what? When they do that, I think people should be allowed to use their 24Mb down and 12Mb up without having people coming telling them that they are "using up all the bandwidth!"

Touch luck. I paid for this bandwidth, and am in perfect right to use it. If they didn't want such a situation, they shouldn't have promised such a speed to each customer. They are trying to give you more than they can realistically provide and still maintain a quality service. But instead of fixing up their failed system, they blame it on their customers who uses exactly what they pay for.

I know, I'll sell you twenty gallons of water and then complain when you have drunken it that now everybody else doesn't have anything to drink! Genius!