Canada isn’t exactly a police state. If they were able to get a Canadian court to order it be taken down, I think it’s safe to assume this was not a run-of-the-mill political website. Telus may actually have had good reasons for taking the site down.

I have yet to see any details about the basis on which they received the court order, but I think it’s silly to assume this was a case of Telus simply trying to silence critics.

And frankly, North America is a big place. The fact that there was only one incident of censorship on a continent with half a billion people in it over a period of several years suggests to me that the actual threat to free speech is extremely small.

Enigma, I discussed the Telus incident here. As I said then:

Canada isn’t exactly a police state. If they were able to get a Canadian court to order it be taken down, I think it’s safe to assume this was not a run-of-the-mill political website. Telus may actually have had good reasons for taking the site down.

I have yet to see any details about the basis on which they received the court order, but I think it’s silly to assume this was a case of Telus simply trying to silence critics.

And frankly, North America is a big place. The fact that there was only one incident of censorship on a continent with half a billion people in it over a period of several years suggests to me that the actual threat to free speech is extremely small.

So, never having described how you would prevent content based filtering from EVER happening, and having listed several incidents where it did in fact occur when net neutrality was not operating, I will vote for net neutrality.

And what would I be apologizing for, pray tell?

Yes, I am skeptical also. However, my perspective is to look at the most fundamental values, such as freedom of speech which are threatened. I happen to place freedom of speech and other rights of the individual found in the bill of rights in a preferential place, and I also believe that those rights in the First Amendment are in a prefered position vis a vis other rights.

Thus, the fact that some companies have already discriminated against website based on what is being said, (rather than just how many bits are used to say it) very alarming.

Thus, once someone starts using their control of the network to control what is being said, a big red flag goes up, and I am uninterested in any other arguments for or against network neutrality that do not adress what I see as a primary concern.

So, Tim how do you address this concern?

Saying it is not a concern does not address it.

In other words, how would you prevent someone from supressing freedom of speech?

Oh, and Richard Bennett don’t you think you owe me an apology?

Networking costs in Local Area Networks are all in the electronics in end-user computers and local switches, once wiring is deployed. These things can typically be upgraded to higher and higher speeds without laying new cables. Hence, in this scenarion electronics are expensive but bandwidth is free. Hence, it makes more sense to solve traffic problems by simply bumping up the speed, and that’s why we use Ethernet instead of more controlled technologies on LANs.

On Wide Area Networks the economics are different because bandwidth costs money. OC192 costs more than OC48 to lease each month, over and above access equipment. Hence, there’s a need for technologies that employ QoS to manage bandwidth between contending uses and users.

QoS skeptics, like Tim, employ the economics of local area networks on wide area networks and come to wrong conclusions.

The “Just-So” scenario in Julian’s article is reasonable and nobody should be “skeptical” about it. Somebody has to pay for upgrades to Wide Area Networks, and in a fair and just economy most of that cost should be borne by heavy users. s

Who among us has not gotten a much- larger- than- expected bill from a telco? When we investigate, we often find either errors (e.g., charges for services not actually consumed, or charges at the wrong rate) or deliberate “traps” (e.g., excess-airtime charges because “base minutes” were debited for “SMS messages received,” even though no one ever mentioned (nor would any customer ever guess) that receiving SMS messages from others– including unwanted junk mail from the carrier itself– would consume “base minutes”).

Of course “errors” are always in favor of the carrier, and almost always result from deliberate action (or willful negligence) by the carrier, as proved by the way they constantly recur. The “traps” are also deliberate; carriers constantly adjust their terms of service to set new traps (and prevent comparison shopping).

Ahem. One of the “services” carriers bundle into their flat rates is simply a reduction in the hassle of scrutinizing and disputing the carrier’s frequently-incorrect metered-rate bills. With flat-rate service, it’s easier to spot the carrier’s so-called errors and simpler to dispute them.

Who among us has not gotten a much- larger- than- expected bill from a telco? When we investigate, we often find either errors (e.g., charges for services not actually consumed, or charges at the wrong rate) or deliberate “traps” (e.g., excess-airtime charges because “base minutes” were debited for “SMS messages received,” even though no one ever mentioned (nor would any customer ever guess) that receiving SMS messages from others– including unwanted junk mail from the carrier itself– would consume “base minutes”).

Of course “errors” are always in favor of the carrier, and almost always result from deliberate action (or willful negligence) by the carrier, as proved by the way they constantly recur. The “traps” are also deliberate; carriers constantly adjust their terms of service to set new traps (and prevent comparison shopping).

Ahem. One of the “services” carriers bundle into their flat rates is simply a reduction in the hassle of scrutinizing and disputing the carrier’s frequently-incorrect metered-rate bills. With flat-rate service, it’s easier to spot the carrier’s so-called errors and simpler to dispute them.