Network neutrality, porn and the 2006 elections

[hedgehog]

Yesterday the House approved a bill eliminating network neutrality on the Web. If I understand this correctly, this bill would allow the cable people to charge Web sites for carrying their content. In other words, you pay for Net access, but the people you pay turn around and charge the sites you want to see for traveling down their cable to your computer.

This would make it harder for the small guy to get his site to you.

Now here's the question:

1. Would this make it harder for people to download porn?

If so, do we want to spread a meme around that this is a consequence of a bill that Republican congressmen forced through?


Understand, I personally don't download porn and don't want to. However, this might be the meme to get a lot of guys to vote from the Democratic candidate this fall. The downside is that it might blow up in our face as a back door way to get porn off the Web; hence bringing out all the strong anti-porn forces.

[Orrex]

1. An unscientific (but interesting) factoid:

A Google search for the word "Porn" returns approx. 105,000,000 hits.

A Google search for the name "Jesus Christ" returns approx. 38,500,000 hits.

Yielding a porn:christ ratio of about 2.72:1.00

Now, which do you think is more important to the internet?

:evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin:

[liberal N proud]

3. That is funny 2.72:1.00

Did you do that research yourself?

[Orrex]

5. Er... Um... Uh... A friend told me about it. Yeah, a friend.

I don't even know how to use Google for that kind of research...

[Atman]

11. I'd bet porn puts a LOT more money into the economy. And it's TAXED.

Near my town, we have three porn "superstores" within 5 minutes drive. Chain stores like "Penthouse" and a coupld very large independents, the size of grocery stores. One is especially women-friendly, with nice decor and lighting, a fashion section, helpful sales people (female), and any time my wife and I have been in it, it is mostly women and other couples there.

But we have ONE "Christian Book Store," and it's in an old converted 7-11. I never see more than two cars in the parking lot.

Just sayin'.

[neoblues]

12. Google Search for "Jesus" alone is 239,000,000

it's the two words versus one word thing.

[Orrex]

13. Spoil-sport! Well then, try this one:

"XXX" yields 154,000,000

"Christianity" yields 72,400,000

[neoblues]

15. No big deal... Obviously, even a single letter is...

more important than all the religions combined!!!

Results of a Google search for the letter "A"... 21,250,000,000 Hits!

For those who have trouble with numbers with that many zeros, that's Billions... and it's actually still only three hundred ninety three(+/-) times smaller than our current national debt** (but, don't worry, Bush has two and a half more years to reach five hundred or a thousand times...).

**8,364,370,424,000 (by the time this gets posted, it will have changed... the last six digits change every two seconds--the seventh every several seconds (where 7 is millions)).

[neoblues]

16. Curious-er and Curious-er...

I just checked 'a' again... and got 25,210,000,000

Interestingly, "Jebus" got more than a million hits (1,040,000), but the 'pc' version (allowing reference without taking "His" name in vain) of "G_d" only got 242,000.

Go figure.

Still, "Lord" scored 329,000,000... much more than either Jesus or Christ.

But, simply put... "God" (non-specific of course) does even better at 639,000,000. (one tends to wonder, though, if it isn't really 639,000,001 or something--it should be after this post anyway, right?).

[htuttle]

2. It will eventually make it harder to find anything on the net

Smaller, non-commericial websites of all kinds will get shoved into low-bandwidth cul-de-sacs, while larger commercial websites will begin to dominate their genres, since they'll be the ones you can actually GET to most of the time.

Not just porn -- news, opinion, reviews, art, games, all of it will be affected.

[Astrad]

4. This may sound like a naive 'market' solution

but one would hope that ISPS would emerge who offer neutrality and users would swarm to them...maybe...

[kenny blankenship]

9. That would mean forgoing revenues

If law doesn't forbid ISPs from stepping away from their prior role as a neutral carrier, then they will all do it to get the money. You can't say to your shareholders: "yes, XYZ isp is deriving income from charging volume sites for priority access/bandwidth, but we at ABC isp aren't doing that because I think it's wrong." In order to avoid following the lead, you'd have to make up the 'lost' revenue--the money you missed by staying neutral--in some other way. That would mean charging consumers a higher monthly access fee than the competition does, which will fly like a lead balloon. Consumers aren't going to pay more for some "feature" which isn't a new bell-and-whistle thing (since they always had it before but never understood it) and which can't be explained to 90% of them, even if you had their whole attention for 5 minutes. So it will be said that "Lo, the market hath decided!" and net neutrality will be a forgotten curiosity of internet history, for the "market is always rational" and the market is always right. Only in this case, like so many others, the market decided nothing. Powerful corporate interests decided the shape of the future by re-writing the nation's laws and buying votes in Congress--which I guess is a kind of market, so maybe the market is always right.

[hedgehog]

10. Which is why I posted this question.

Try and get the average person to understand net neutrality and his/her eyes will glaze over. Tell them that it'll make it harder to find and download free recipes, tool tips, sports news, whatever, and I think you'll get their attention. Tell a certain demographic that it will intefere with finding and downloading porn and you'll have them by the balls (so to speak).

It wouldn't be the first time that free access to porn and free acces to political speech were tied together.

[fishwax]

14. That won't work b/c the few companies who control the pipes will be

the ones who charge. In the coming years, all cable/internet/phone service will come over the same pipes, basically.

So even if an ISP that sprang up were willing to charge, they would be sending information over phone/cable/internet lines owned by, say, SBC/Cingular. Companies like that are desperate to charge, and are the impetus behind this bill.

[zalinda]

6. Okay, I've been on this board since the 2004

election. I've understood most of the abreviations, but meme. I've deducted what it means, but not where it came from.

zalinda

[lectrobyte]

7. memetics. It's not an acronym, it's a term that basically means a

"viral idea".

[Orrex]

8. Not an abbreviation per se

Think of it as a "mental virus" that takes on a life of its own in the public consciousness.

Whenever someone on DU requests information, someone always posts a Wikipedia link, so here it is: MEME