User Unfriendly.
The folks over at UF have been releasing a series of comics among their normal geek-to-geek dialog style ones on the issue of free flow of information over the internet.
In case you have not noticed, cable and telephone companies have all but abandoned their fights against each other. This is because they are now fighting tooth and nail with geeks all over congress for control of the internet. That’s right, folks, they want to be able to prioritize internet traffic.
This means that if Comcast decides that they want AOL to take priority over Net Zero, then AOL sites will be allowed more bandwidth on their lines. So AOL will load first and faster and even be allowed to bypass some of Comcast’s security safe guards.
Of course, anyone can see what this would do. Without even getting into the slippery slope of what this could open them up to do in the future, we can see that immediately, $ < --this will begin to dictate this --> www. And down the tube it goes.
Not only is this an issue of keeping the internet alive, it is an issue of keeping it ours. In the name of customer service, cable and telephone companies would be able to censor and control whatever they want. Do you like Gnutella and BitTorrent? Watch as record companies pay out the wazoo to have such traffic limited. How about your precious Myspace and Xanga? Your parents, if they are paying (key word) customers, can petition AT&T enough to convince them that social networking sites are the pedophile’s playground and have their traffic limited, as well (as if they aren’t already slow enough with all the poor coding and what not). The implications are endless. As are the devastations.
Beyond this all is the issue of freedom of whatever-hell-you-want. The internet is all about acting, wherever one wishes, with the same freedoms which one has in one’s own home. That sort of freedom is not only illegal (at least here in the US), but is really just an illusion if someone were to “own” the internet.
As a result of all of this, geeks everywhere are uber pissed. The Facebook people are all up in arms about it and even created a group to raise awareness. G4TV show hosts are ranting and raving more than CNNians. And, as mentioned above, User Friendly has been going on all week about it in their comic strips.
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/06sep/uf009509.gif
hey friend! i totally was with yo sister this weekend! we had a rad little time but you were the one lacking from the boys staff - hope you’re doing fabulous!