"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all bits are created equal..." -- AnonymousJust recently, the US Federal Communications Commission voted to take in public comments regarding new rules for broadband subscription plans. With this move, the most likely topic of this public consultation would be "net neutrality."
But what exactly is it? Well, wiki for starters. Net neutrality basically advocates the following principle:
- No discrimination on data transmitted through the Internet, no exceptions.
However, this does not bode well for media companies and content producers, who are increasingly becoming the victims of rampant online piracy. They argue that controlling P2P traffic would help deter pirates and stem their losses.
American ISPs have also taken this stance, by offering their services into ordinary and premium plans. Basically the ordinary plans will have their streaming and P2P bandwidth restricted while the premium plans will get theirs at the same speeds as their browsing traffic.
While our local ISPs are still struggling to make fast and cheap broadband more accessible, this doesn't mean that net neutrality will never become an issue here. With cheap wireless broadband becoming more and more of a reality in the next 3-5 years, our future policymakers should consider making rules against making rules on Internet use.
Think about it. If our local ISPs started to restrict P2P traffic, they'd lose business overnight. :)
2 comments:
love this article! been reading about this too! :D
I really want to believe that half of the traffic here in pinas is just pirates doing their thing (i thought real pirates were out in Singapore?).
Otherwise, it's a silly article to be interested in. :)
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