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The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

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.

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If Chester did not include Canadians in his concluding chapter's concerns, I'm sure that we should - particulatly with the just-elected Bush-friendly PM Harper:

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If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny for themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003. Without such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven agenda, it is likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied against further consolidation will be "tamed" by the well-funded lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industry.

Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (www.democraticmedia.org).

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If it has to happen I would rather see a company like Google in control rather than a telephone company facing extinction.

Some may trust government to guard our interests; I'm not so confident since it is too frequently one feeling threatened. And let's not forget the economic interesrs of government in its loss of millions of dollars-worth postal services, with Net-users abandonment of stamped mail - other than the usual Christmas mailing.

Fortunately, with alot of new open source technology coming on stream its becoming much cheaper for DIY'ers to do stuff.

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Originally posted by Yukoner:
Also, Google has quietly been buying up dark fibre* all over the globe it is thought their ultimate plan is to create a 'new' internet (infrastructure) that they would have complete control over.

If it has to happen I would rather see a company like Google in control rather than a telephone company facing extinction.

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Power has corrupted greater entities than Google. I would prefer a more even distribution, legislated if necessary.

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Originally posted by radiorahim:
It may become necessary in future to create a new "people's" internet, by-passing all the corporate schlock and corporate control.

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Originally posted by m0nkyman:
Traffic on the port that bittorrent uses is restricted to a much lower throughput than traffic on port 80, aka http aka wwww stuff. You think that might have something to do with pressure from copyright holders?

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In all honesty it probably has more to do with cost. Shaw is buying their bandwidth from somewhere and are most likely get charge a monthy 'bit rate' from thier supplier. It is no secret that the internet is becoming more media rich (and bandwith dependant) as convergance approaches. One option for Shaw (and other ISPs) would be to dump the additional cost on to consumers which wouldn't be very popular and would drive people to the competiton, so they can throttle the users who are hogging the bandwidth by traffic shaping and port blocking. That way everyone is happy, with the exception of the few who are trying to download 5 million mp3s or the latest epiosode of 24 via a torrent.

It works for me, but since I don't do a lot of torrent downloads and have a rogers 108Gb download account they may not be that interested in stopping me from using what I paid for (although they did throttle the default bittorrent port ... down to 1 or 2Kbs at best ... 1720 I get 200+Kbs on the good torrents.

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Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
I have Sympatico, so I don't personally have to deal with me: It just annoys the fuck out of me that the Internet is rapidly becoming more and more restrictive.

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Originally posted by asterlake:
My Internet is fast and reliable.

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So's mine. Linux helps; as does a lean system.

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Hey, don't you remember the old bulletin boards? Some of them were quite large. How about the usenets? (or news nets, if you prefer)

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Oh yes they were great fun. I remember back in the early 1990's the old "Toronto Computes" newspaper used to publish two full pages of BBS phone listings several times a year.

Some were connected to Usenet and I remember Fidonet. Most of the BBS's were run out of some computer geek's basement on a spare 286.

I used to use amateur radio packet mail alot too back then. Had world-wide e-mail...as long as the other person was a licensed amateur radio operator. It used AX25 instead of TCP/IP. There's still alot of that software in the Debian repositories.

I understand that with some new open source software called Asterisk it's possible to build PBX's really cheap...and of course there's lots of stuff that could be done with Wi-Fi. Perhaps some community groups could get together and rent some satellite time and then you can by-pass the "commercial" internet.

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or the latest epiosode of 24 via a torrent.

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