Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Yikes!

censor, censor, censor!! Yikes! look around people, we're being held down by "the man". This is not a new topic for my avid technocrat-shilton readers. Not too long ago I talked about net neutrality. If you'd like, I'd recommend flipping back to that old blog post to watch the youTube video. Lately there has been a lot of talk about how some cable companies are slowing down traffic to bittorrent downloads. This scares me... a lot. I'm worried about how the internet is going to change, for real. I understand the concern over bittorrent downloads. Bittorrent is very hard to control, it's not like the conveitional P2P file-sharing sites. Cable companies slowing the traffic is just about one of the only ways to deter the illegal downloads. I really hope that this lack of net neutrality doesn't come back to haunt us later, though it only seems to be getting worse.

1 comment:

lindsayl00 said...

Holy schnapps...from one of your censor links:http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0603/explainer.china.internet/frameset.exclude.html

"Cybercafés
Called wangba, or Net bars, cybercafés are required to keep detailed logs of customers' online activity on file for 60 days. If a user tries to access forbidden Web sites, a café must disconnect the user and file a report with state agencies. Penalties for violations include fines and even imprisonment.

"Volunteers, guided by ISP employees, monitor Web sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards to prevent prohibited language from being published. Civilians may report violations to the authorities.

"Keywords
Here's a short list of keywords that will trigger the filtering system and block access to content:
# Revolution
# Equality
# Freedom
# Justice
# Taiwan
# Tibet
# Falun Gong
# Dissident
# Democracy
# STD
# Human rights"

Well...not the type of censoring going on in the US...that would never pass. I think the prisonplanet article is a bunch of crock. I dont think the source is very credible, and the guy who started the website is kinda a nut, it appears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_(radio)#Websites).
Even though Rupert Murdoch has had some shadiness in his life, I doubt his efforts to censor "electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations or government" are ineffecive in the states.

However, the first article about comcast is a concern of mine, especially after living in Australia for a while, where traffic is completely controlled by the ISPs, and you get a certain allotment of traffic per month. When you've used it all, your internet slows down to a lengthy loading of a page. That would really suck. I've prided myself that America has i figured out, with plenty of lines and great technology that our traffic as customers does not have to be regulated. Can you imagine what would happen to home offices/work buildings which rely on internet usage to get things done? Internet is going great until late in the month when people can hardly get a page to load because the allotment is gone. Ridiculous. Fix the problem with more technology, not regulation. Freakin web 2.0 demands it. That's where we are at.