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The free ride may be over for consumers who download movies and music files and play video games, as Internet service providers consider a move toward a "two-tier Internet."

Companies that carry the data are talking about charging Canadians extra for everything from streaming audio and video to Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls and online gaming. Anything that uses bandwidth is under examination.

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This is possibly the single worst idea that has been floated about the internet since it's beginning. The consequences are incalculable.

The internet would not be where it is today if not for the fact that anyone can do anything for a single low price. The internet was built by individuals -- from the protocols we use to transfer the information, to the content itself -- major companies have had little if anything to do with the innovations we take for granted.

Most of the new things that we can use the internet for -- from websurfing, to email, to chatting on messenger programs with our friends, to downloading music files, to making phone calls -- were invented by ambitious geeks with free time who just wanted to see if it could be done.

The article notes that there is a wide discrepancy between the amount of bandwidth different users take up. Some use about $10, only reading websites and sending email, while others use as much as $250, taking advantage of the wide range of things you can do. But it doesn't mention that the content the $10 user consumes is probably generated as a spinoff of, if not directly by, that $250 user.

It may not work. AOL, CompuServe, and Microsoft tried to set up more-or-less private networks, none of which lasted. (There were even fears a few years ago that MS was going to "take over" the net by tying access to, or use of, their products to acceptance of their own internet protocols).

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Geist is equally concerned over traffic shaping, a technology companies use for the allocation of bandwidth that speeds priority bits and bytes to their destinations while choking other data packets.

Rogers Communications chief strategy officer Michael Lee says the company does traffic-shape, but that it speeds up the connection -- although he doesn't say for whom. Online forums are filled with bitter cable customers complaining about slow or non-existent speeds for file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and podcast downloads.

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Rogers' use of traffic shaping has really pissed off a lot of their customers lately. BitTorrent download speeds are pathetic now, we're talking sub-dialup speeds. But some users have found a way around it; by using Bit Comet, with the Protocol Header Encryption turned on, you can get around Rogers' traffic shaping and enjoy fast BitTorrent speeds again.

[ 31 January 2006: Message edited by: Snuckles ]

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Compartmentalizing the internet will only serve to stiffle future innovation. This initiative should be stopped at all costs. The internet must remain 'free'.

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Originally posted by NWOntarian:
The internet was built by individuals -- from the protocols we use to transfer the information, to the content itself -- major companies have had little if anything to do with the innovations we take for granted.

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Try explaining to corporations like banks, E-bay, Amazon, etc. that in order to please Hollywood and the record companies that they will have to increase the cost to their customers for using their services on-line.

Try explaining to IBM and Microsoft (and the rest of the companies that make their living from providing software for the Internet life-style) that their business model of offering products to make Internet communications and transactions better, easier and less expensive will have to re-tool because no matter how easy and efficient they make the services, only the most well off x% of people will be able to afford to actually use the Internet.

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:

Oh really? And here I thought Arpanet was a project of the US military...

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Yes, about a hundred publicly-funded scientists and engineers developed the TCP/IP suite of data communication protocols, fiber optics, various silicon chip and computer technologies, satellites(post-Sputnik), important medical and metallurgical advances - all handed off to private enterprise or "the free market" over the years. There was so much high technology handed over to a few rich people and corporations over the years that it became embarassing to federal proponents of free market economics that they dropped the "D" from DARPA to hide connotations of public ownership. The Bayh-Dole bill of 1980?, provided that US taxpayer-funded research and development, under contract with universities, would be transferred to universities by way of US patent laws. IOWs, the universities could own publicly-funded R&D, and then they could turn around and license them to small business. This was a camouflage. How could any red blooded Amurrican be opposed to small business or universities?.

[ 31 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.

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[ 02 February 2006: Message edited by: Rufus Polson ]

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That's bad for the US. But how would it play out elsewhere?

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Difficult to say, but just to pick one example, Google's main complex -- or complex of complexes -- is in the US (and contains something like 100,000 PCs, by the way). So unless they have similar hubs in other countries, people might have to start relying on other search engines.

Which itself is not necessarily a big problem. All the web, based in Germany I believe, works in much the same way.