[ale] OT: Craig Newmark of Craig's List on Net Neutrality

Geoffrey esoteric at 3times25.net
Sun Jun 11 09:03:42 EDT 2006


J. D. wrote:
>  >On the other hand: for all everyone gripes about the USPS, they do a
> 
>> >great job delivering mail. For a measly $.39 I can ship a letter from my
>> >mailbox to anyone in the US in under a week. In most cases, I can get it
>> >from Atlanta to LA in about 2 days. But they do have a faster,
>> >guaranteed service that costs much more as it gets special handling at
>> >tracking. That's pretty cool. There are even private firms that can get
>> >a package delivered even faster at a much higher rate.
>>
>>
> Well after some digging around and reading your post I'm nearly doing a 180
> on this one.
> Thanks for the enlightening analogy. I am feeling a little better about it
> now. ;)
> I am okay with QoS if that is what we are ultimately talking about and 
> it is
> an important
> part of networking performance.

It's not a QoS thing.  It's 'whoever has the biggest wallet wins' issue. 
  The bottom line is, Pizza Hut pays for a higher priority, thus local 
Joe's Pizza loses out in the mix.

This goes against everything the internet has done for the small guy. 
It's leveled the playing field for many.  Individuals can produce their 
own music, burn their own discs and sell them directly to their 
customers.  Cutting out the bloat of the big labels.  People you would 
normally never have heard of selling products you would never have seen 
otherwise.

Competition works in this world now.  Big companies can pay for higher 
bandwidth and better technology.  Let them pay for ads on google and 
yahoo.  Permitting them to intentionally slow down someone else's site 
is not competition.  It's like Joe's puts up an ad in the local paper 
and Pizza Hut pays the newspaper to NOT print it.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little
security will deserve neither and lose both.  - Benjamin Franklin



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