Google and Verizon cut backroom deal to kill Net Neutrality potentially.

I wouldnt draw any conclusions until the actuall stuff i public, but it doesnt sound good. This Obama thing sounds like pure speculation and it sounds a bit hollow to me.

Never draw any conclusions until the train arrives and someone says "Papaers plas!"...

(Did I just godwin it already?)

Maybe you just Rooskied it.

Of course they are both denying it. It will be interesting to see what proof is offered about these deals, assuming there is any.

What the hell do you mean by "Canadian style" internet? We don't have any caps in place.

I don't know what that person meant, but the few Canadians I have talked to have monthly caps. Thing is, some of the US ISP have unadvertised caps too.

I heard this was a fake, but regardless, keep government out of regulating the internet.  Net Neutrality is not all what you read.

Do you understand the concept of Net Neutrality? It isn't about a monthly bandwidth cap, it's throttling bandwidth on a per-website basis.

Of course I understand the concept of net neutrality. The reason I used a quote was for responding to that specific statement. Do you understand the concept of quoting?

edit: should have added that when people talk canadian caps, that is what they are thinking about, the bandwidth cap. thus the confusion.

Nope, not sure what this "quoting" thing is that you're speaking of. But yeah, most ISPs offer different plans (such as 5Gbps, 10Gbps, etc) that are mainly focused on connection speed - deep down in the terms there is sometimes a "don't exceeded Xgb of downloads & Ygbs of uploads a month" that I've never seen enforced. The only time monthly caps are enforced it seems if you're dealing with specialized situations (satellite, other low speed solutions).

But we have (as far as I know at least) absolutely no selective throttling going on in terms of limiting traffic to specific website unless customers pay more.

Obviously, my point is you could have asked your question without being so rude about it. I know what Net Neutrality is, and if some canadian keeps hearing about caps and wondering why some american's think they have caps, there was the answer why. They're thinking of monthly limits not isps degrading one type of content over the other.

There is certainly throttling going on in the US, mostly around P2P and one incident involving 4chan (not a user of 4chan just saw the fallout after the fact) I believe where they just cut that content off completely. I wouldn't be surprised if other ISPs in other countries are doing the same thing. They certainly don't advertise this fact of course, and in the US it isn't illegal.. (to my knowledge) yet.

I'm sorry, I'll be sure never to ask you another question again. Did you stop and think maybe you were reading what I wrote with the wrong tone?

That's a question, and no I did not. I assume you want an honest answer to that question which is why I gave you one.

You clearly did read what I wrote with the wrong tone in mind for you to call my simple question rude.

In an attempt to put this thread back on topic. Google has denied the claims made against them: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/google-and-verizon-sign-net-neutrality-agreement-begin-the-end/

Well that's the nature of the Internet isn't it. Tone isn't always interpreted correctly. Very well, you say you didn't mean it in a rude manner, so I'll just accept it at this point. My apologies for retorting angrily because I misunderstood the tone you intended.

As I said in my first post, they're both denying it, primarily via their policy twitter accounts. That doesn't mean it's true, but we've seen some news agencies mess up on their sources before. To me, it's a no duh they'd say they didn't do this because publically it would be a very unpopular thing to do.

Although there are arguments what Net Neutrality laws would actually do for everyone, I think it's fairly clearly the public doesn't want to the net taken hostage based on who pays who the most.

Government regulation is superior to corporate regulation.

One at least has to pay lip service to what people want.   Time Warner is on record saying that giving inferior service actually helps their profitability- I don't want those guys determining how the internet works.

that said, I think Google won't be pulling through with this.

Government regulation is superior to corporate regulation?  I don't know about that.  If a corp does something I don't like, I can always switch to a different product or service, or opt out altogether.  When a gov. regulates something...where is the recourse? 

I don't know why everyone thinks government regulation is always bad, or do you miss the days of working in the factory being a leading cause of death, of children working their fingers literally off, you know, the little things that corporations didnt' care about, mainly the health of their workers.

Government usually doesn't manage to take the best option when looking for the solution, then implements it poorly, and ends up costing a fair amount too. Sometimes the benefit is great enough to outweigh all of this, but often it isn't.

Personally I'd prefer it if instead of using regulation to ba it'd instead ensure that the information was clearly displayed to allow people to make up their minds. For example if every internet service provider who planned to choose what sites you could visit was forced to have a big bold statement that they do this I wouldn't have thought many people would want to use them (thus ensuring that there's a clear incentive for some providers to allow a neutral net) while also allowing the few who want to only have a few prescribed sites to visit to be able to use that provider.

Given the failure of various governments to do something similar with DRM though (e.g. I don't know when I buy a game if I can only play it while being logged in 24/7, or can only install it 3 times, or can actually use it as I should be able to, without having to research it) I'd probably prefer regulation that banned restricting speeds based on the website viewed since they'd probably fail to do the alternative properly!

Oh I don't disagree necessarily in principal in the realm of technology especially. A lot of the old farts in congress, USA, don't know what they are dealing with and wind up showcasing games and audio from Team America claiming its some sort of terrorist training program. The DRM issues that are in place now and the ones they, various governments, are trying to put in place are awful and, naturally, backed by corporations. You know this corporations that some people seem to think will regulate themselves... some industries do that well, most of them don't.

I'm just saying it's not always bad, this idea the government regulation is just terrible is silly coming from a lot of people who benefit from a lot of this regulation already. I for one, enjoy being able to drink out of public drinking fountains and usethe bathrooms, most of which came about because government forced the majority of people to do what they didn't want to do. I don't trust corporations to do what is right on their own. We've seen them sacriice lives to save money time and time again. They'll get away with that if they can and then some all to save a buck per unit sold.

Funny thing about that, not much has changed about factory safety.  Technology has changed far more than regulations have.  GM was getting sued for killing it's employees off decades after all your wonderful reforms put an end to hazardous factories, and they've polluted ground sites all over the country.  We just bailed them out so they can keep running their substandard factories that break EPA regs.  Child labor laws put a lot of kids on the street when their families lost their homes as a result.

Lawsuits work, regulations are a joke.  Just look at that cute little oil spill down in the gulf.  The environmentally friendly Obama administration gave BP safety exemptions on a substandard drilling site before something went wrong and an obscene number of problems ended up mattering.

A real hilarious example of regulation at work is the FAA.  Alaska Airlines flight 261 takes the cake.  Boeing set regs on thread wear, Alaska Airlines ignored it.  A mechanic blew the whistle on them for not replacing worn jackscrew nuts on the stabilizers and inadequate lubrication.  Alaska Airlines fired the mechanic, and the FAA changed the regulations so they could go longer between inspections and wear down the nuts more before having to replace them.  Nothing like 88 dead people and a complicit government agency putting the lid on a whistle blower to fire up a good lawsuit.

I am sure you are aware of this, but in order to have lawsuits, you have to have actual laws to work with.

Sometimes you can't switch- like when the cable monopoly has a monopoly on internet in your area.

If a monopoly gouges you, you have no legal recourse.

If my cable company tries to pull some bullshit and cap my usage I'll call them up and cancel my Cable TV, Internet, and Phone....and then go with their competitor or even a damn satellite provider. Fucking cap bullshit. Just another way to screw over the little guys...namely All Of US!!!! Someone needs to assassinate these ass clowns before they ruin the Internet like they have everything else.