(Untitled)

[thesnowysoviet]

"Net neutrality is this: if I pay to connect to the Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the Net with the same or a better quality of service, then you and I can connect to the Net with that quality of service. That's all."

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and current director of the World Wide Web

Comments

[edg]

I hope there's context to that quote, because I can't figure out whether he's being reasonable and just saying it poorly, or he's making fun of net neutrality and saying it in a way such that if he gets called on it, he can say he meant the other thing.

(In other words: I can easily see how this could be meant to read "these net neutrality goofs are saying that if they pay ten bucks for dial-up and I pay thirty for broadband, we should all either be connecting at dial-up speed or at broadband speed".)

In fact, the more I read it, the more I think - assuming he's speaking in earnest - that he's either has just misunderstood net neutrality or has no business talking in public, because it sounds like he's talking about net bias - in other words, the providers who pay more get better service, which is exactly the opposite of net neutrality.

(Perhaps, of course, you're poking fun at him, in which case not only am I preaching to the choir but also the minister and the entire Archdiocese.)

[thesnowysoviet]

I took "quality of service" to mean something beyond connection speed, but yes... it was poorly articulated. I think he was trying to make a point about the convoluted language telecommunication companies throw around. The quote is from a mini-documentary that's got a fair bit of Digg popularity at the moment.

[kira_amaya]

This is interesting. Particularly after a conversation between Geno, his friend and someone from Comcast yesterday. The friend had lost his internet, cable, and house phone because all of it comes through comcast. He sat on the phone for probably 45 minute on hold to be told that they can't promise he'll have any service for a while. They're still doing the mixing of Comcast and Insight and the friend simply won't have service. Or, he can't be promised it. Yet paying is necessary. And acceptance that for the same or more money they get half the speed of the Insight service...

Mmmm internet companies are fun.