somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> > 1) The claim that people should be given unhindered access to all free
> > information

> Nothing is free. Bits and bytes cost money to push around.

  I used "free" as in "you can read this article I wrote without paying
me money" (as opposed to eg. "if you want to listen to this piece of
music, you'll have to pay me money").

  I hate the English word "free". It has so many differing meanings that
it's almost impossible to use in an unambiguous way.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> If you don't like it, don't buy the Sony TV.

That's not what I asked. I asked why it's a good thing.  I.e., why are you 
in favor of this becoming a law?

> Buy another brand. In a free
> market, people speak with their wallets. Making it unlawful for Sony to
> manufacture such a TV is not the answer, it is censorship.

And if it were a free market, I'd even agree with you. In practice, it's not.

I take it you're in favor of MS including their browser for free in every 
version of Windows and such too. It's a free market, after all. If Dell 
doesn't want to sell Windows, they don't have to, so there's no reason not 
to have a law preventing Microsoft from making whatever deal with Dell they 
want?

> Newspapers already have editors in place to filter out unwanted content. So
> do broadcasters.

Yep. That's different tho, for reasons I already explained.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 17:52, Darren New wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> The ISP business is open and follows market demands, they will provide 
>> for whatever the customers want.
> 
> Not in the USA.  Aren't most telecom companies state-run in Europe? Am I 
> allowed to open a new telephone company in (say) Germany and dig up the 
> road and all, running new wires to houses in new developments?

The way that is handled here is that the monopolist company is split in 
one that does the hardware and one that uses that hardware. You can 
start a telephone or gas or electricity company and the company that 
does the hardware has to provide you with the same service for the same 
price as they do for their former monopoly part. In most cases the only 
thing that changes when you change provider is that the header of the 
invoice changes. And the price may differ, because that is the whole 
point. With electricity and perhaps also gas (I am not handling those 
invoices) you can even change from regular to green energy without any 
physical change at your house.
I hope that is more or less understandable ;)

Needless to say that quite often it does not work as expected.

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 19:10, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:22:02 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>>> If they're privately held companies, they can do whatever they like.
>>>   That's certainly not true in the general case. There are tons of laws
>>> governing what private companies can and cannot do, even with their own
>>> property. Monopoly law is just one example.
> 
>> Sure, I was exaggerating for effect; they can, however, report the news 
>> that they feel is important, and they can do so in a biased way if they 
>> so desire.
> 
>   Well, there are also journalism ethics for unbiased reporting...
> 

Do we have Italians in this NG?

Post a reply to this message

On 21-4-2009 17:59, Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> internet will adept to that. What happens if you add a connection to
>> your neighbour that has another ISP? Will that be illegal because you
>> now have access to sites your ISP does not want you to see?
> 
> 	Actually, under typical TOS in the US, that _would_ be violating your
> TOS. I'm sure somewhere in the TOS of my ISP, it says that I will not
> share the Internet with other apartments. People do it all the time, but
> in a legal sense, you're violating the contract.
> 
> 	To answer your question: Other than the TOS issue, it won't be illegal
> - apparently even with what I understand from the proposed law. If you
> circumvent the filters set in place by _your_ ISP to get access to a
> higher tier while paying for a lower one - that would definitely be bad.

Perhaps I should have stressed the 'because', I know there are other 
reasons. OTOH the issue indeed won't arise as there will be plenty of 
other more 'innocent' reasons to forbid it for the end user. For e.g. 
universities (and big international firms) it could still be an issue as 
they they may provide large bandwidth connections between them.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> On 21-4-2009 17:52, Darren New wrote:
>> scott wrote:
>>> The ISP business is open and follows market demands, they will 
>>> provide for whatever the customers want.
>>
>> Not in the USA.  Aren't most telecom companies state-run in Europe? Am 
>> I allowed to open a new telephone company in (say) Germany and dig up 
>> the road and all, running new wires to houses in new developments?
> 
> The way that is handled here 

Where is "here"?

> I hope that is more or less understandable ;)

I used to work for the company that provided the shared services to all the 
local phone companies that worked this way in the USA (i.e., I worked for 
Bellcore). It makes perfect sense.

And if an ISP could come in that could scoop up TW's customers that wanted 
unrestricted access and provide it at a lower price than TW's customers 
could get it, I'd agree that it's not a big problem. However, I suspect this 
new ISP would wind up paying for the cost of the filtering hardware anyway, 
since I'm sure TW would include that as "part of the price".  (TW being Time 
Warner, my personal local monopoly.)

I'd still ask why anyone thinks allowing this behavior is a good idea for 
the general public.

> Needless to say that quite often it does not work as expected.

Tell me about it. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Everybody seems to know that it's completely legal and not in violation
> of any human rights that ISPs can freely choose how they filter content
> and what part of the internet they will sell to who.
> 
>   Question: If this is indeed so, then why are the directives allowing this
> being in the process of admission in the first place? What do they need the
> directives for if the filtering is already legal and allowed?

	Valid question - one that I don't have the answer for. I wondered the
same thing when net neutrality was debated in the US. A cursory reading
shows that if ISP's are considered telecommunications companies (which I
think they currently aren't), then they're not allowed to discriminate.

	Which indicates that in the US, such rules are not intended for the
whole society (i.e. all private enterprises), but only to certain
categories (which was what I was referring to under "public good").

	The crux of my arguments in this whole thread was that the legal
position is not unambiguous or clear. Ultimately, society or the
government may rule that it is vital to the public good and make sure
this can't happen - but there's no generic law that's valid for all
private enterprises.

-- 
If a pig lost it's voice, would it become disgruntled?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>>     I don't like what the ISP's may be planning, but I can't find a good
>> legal or constitutional argument against it
> 
> Look under "common carrier". If you start filtering, then you're

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality_in_the_United_States

"Cable modem Internet access has always been categorized under U.S. law
as an information service, and not a telecommunications service, and
thus has not been subject to common carrier regulations"

Citation not provided, and in any case, WINAL.


>>     It's like if I own a store with a bulletin board. I have the right to
>> dictate what goes on there and what doesn't. I could arbitrarily say
>> that you can post anything you want to sell on it, but no postings
>> regarding private tutoring are allowed.
> 
> Yes. But then if someone posts up naked children, you are *required* to
> take it down, on the grounds that you're policing the content to start
> with.

	I'm not 100% sure. I would think I'm required to take it down only if
notified of its presence. IOW, I don't think there's any law that states
that I _have_ to actively monitor what goes on on my Web site. Not sure,
though.

-- 
If a pig lost it's voice, would it become disgruntled?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:49ee0a2d@news.povray.org...

>   For example, if Apple wants to implement DRM in the music they sell
> online so that they will only play on Apple's own iPods, they have the
> full right to do so, don't they? They own the rights to sell the music,
> and they own the rights to their iPods. What rights does anyone else have
> to go and tell Apple that they can't do that? After all, if you don't like
> it, you can go and buy some other mp3 player.
>
>   Well, the European Union disagreed with this view and told Apple to
> lift their DRM from iPod.
>
>   So it's not always that simple, you see?

Nothing is simple. In this case, the complex but obvious observation is that
EU is not infallible.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> And vice versa. For a while, ESPN was refusing to serve content to Time
> Warner because TW wasn't paying ESPN extra.

	Unless something changed lately, I still don't get ESPN 360 through my
ISP...

-- 
If a pig lost it's voice, would it become disgruntled?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message