FIOS Users -- You are Warned!

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I believe you are talking about the new 3 strikes policy that they are putting in place. So, if you are caught and logged downloading copyrighted content 3 times (movies, games, etc) that you haven't paid for, you have your access cut off.

Seems pretty fair to me. How many chances do you get to rob a store before they arrest you?

The "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" proposal is allegedly that you are to be banned from the Internet for life if you are accused of copyright violation three times. I can't find the actual text of the ACTA -- which is apparently by design, as most of the references I found refer to it as a treaty being negotiated in secret.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Verizon's lines are Verizon's lines, if they want to tell me that I can't use them to transmit a picture of dinosaur bones because Verizon is anti evolution that is their right.

Yes, that is true. Although the scale of the whole system generally limits their ability to 'watch' anything for most customers.

In general, you are not nearly as free or anonymous as you may believe. But also in general, that lack will not affect most people during their lifetime.

Originally Posted by bobwrit

and email purposes(Which just about accounts for all of the traffic on the internet right now).

No, not at all. It is actually peer-to-peer file transfers that consume the majority of internet traffic. eMail is a somewhat small fraction.

Also note that "excessive" is not defined anywhere, it's what they say it is whenever they want.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Really? Why is that?

The AUP is limiting what Verizon users can push out via their network, not limiting what they user can receive. I thought Net Neutrality was all about limiting the bandwith of certain content.

If I want to post off topic comments on message boards who is Verizon to act like the censorship gatekeeper to prevent me?

Know who else acts like a gatekeeper, censoring what their citizens see and do on the Internet? China. Iran. North Korea. Cuba.

I don't want to see the United States go down that path. The Internet should be just like speech or print: so long as you aren't found guilty of infringement on the rights of others in court, you can do whatever you want. Off topic comments don't infringe on anyone's rights, and if I really want to post about how the traffic cones ate pierogies while singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in the chocolate rain because Desmond forgot to push the #iranelection button, then that's my right.

The real push behind the anti-net neutrality is that ISPs want to charge consumers more to access the same Internet. They want to make the Internet like Cable TV, where they can arbitrarily brand certain websites as "premium content" and charge you extra to access them. Yahoo might be free, but Google? That's an extra $5 a month. Like iTunes more than Amazon? That's too bad, because we signed a behind the $cenes deal with Amazon and that means we have to charge extra for you to access iTunes. Want to access websites of non-profit organizations? Sorry, we'll make them load really slow because they don't give us financial kickbacks.

This may make sense with Cable TV, where starting a television station takes millions of dollars, but the Internet is much more intrinsically democratic. All it takes is a $5 domain name, internet connection, and a computer, and you can post whatever you want on a website for all the world to read (although you may have a melted lump of plastic if they all want to read it at the same time!). Any attempt at scuttling net neutrality, thereby opening up behind-the-scenes deals between ISPs and and the content providers for financial kickbacks will only hurt the little guys, the small businesses, the non-profit organizations, and anyone without the $$$ to be considered "premium".

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Verizon's lines are Verizon's lines, if they want to tell me that I can't use them to transmit a picture of dinosaur bones because Verizon is anti evolution that is their right.

There used to be this thing called segregation. If a business decided they were racist and didn't want to serve "colored" people at a "white" seating area in a restaurant, or that "colored" people had to give up their seats on a bus or streetcar for white people, they were allowed to do so under Plessy v. Ferguson. Then the Civil Rights movement made this rightfully illegal.

How exactly is a company deciding that 'not allowing pictures of dinosaur bones' is okay because they're anti-evolution any different than a company deciding that not allowing "colored" people to sit in the front of the bus is okay because they're racist? Discrimination is discrimination.

[Schnabel]

NET NEUTRALITAH FTW!

[Roger]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Do they really have FIOS in North Korea?

They must; I finally got it on my street and my street is always the last place everyone gets to, so North Korea must have FiOS.

I can't believe I'm the first to quote Ernestine (Lily Tomlin):

"We don't care.
We don't have to.
We're the phone company."

And to conclude my trivia about our Telephone Overlords, I present "The President's Analyst", a 1960's satirical comedy spy spoof film starring James Coburn in the title role, who gets chased for the presidential secrets he has -- not by the bad guys or the good guys, but by The Phone Company.

This is going to be one of those things that will take years to shake out how The Real World deals with new technology, and how the powers-that-are resist change. Technology exploded when the AT&T breakup occured, but unfortunately it ended up with incompatable parallel equipment and "you can only use our wires by our rules".

Originally Posted by squirrel

I had to look up the word FiOS to see what it means.

All I could find was that they like to spell it "FiOS" and its a Gaelic word meaning knowledge. Fiber Optic Service? Fiber OpticS? Flannelcakes is an Obvious Standard?

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Off topic comments don't infringe on anyone's rights, and if I really want to post about how the traffic cones ate pierogies while singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in the chocolate rain because Desmond forgot to push the #iranelection button, then that's my right.

Ummm ... no, you can't.

You can post what you wish as long as the owner of the site allows you to, and the owner of the media in which you transmitted it allows you to. Otherwise, you do not have the right as the site, and the media, are private property.

Verizon is well within their rights to monitor and disallow access to their property (Re: Fiber optic lines) should they deem it needed (within federally mandated laws for utilities).

It's the same with most newspapers that can refuse any ad that they consider not in the best interest of the newspaper.

[BrendanB]

HAHAHA that made me laugh today!


Come to the darkside...we have Comcast!

Just out of curiosity for those whom use Fios, how is the service? My family had it for two years, and every week there was one day in which the internet was down and sometimes took several days to get back. And the funny part was that India kept on telling us that our house was the problem and that there were no problems in our areas. To bad they overlooked that our several of our neighbors also had verzion and they too didn't have it. And then Verizon moved out of town. Good times good times. I love Comcast.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" proposal is allegedly that you are to be banned from the Internet for life if you are accused of copyright violation three times. I can't find the actual text of the ACTA -- which is apparently by design, as most of the references I found refer to it as a treaty being negotiated in secret.

Though oddly enough, it's not much stricter than many US laws; you can be imprisoned for filing a counterclaim to an accusation of a copyright violation and you lose the case.

I uploaded a video that had 10 seconds of a Metallica song on it to Facebook as part of the Minnesota 10,000 Lakes Regional earlier and filed a counterclaim on site so I could hear the announcer. If record labels took me to court and argued my interpretation of fair use laws, as arcane as they are, were incorrect, and the judge agreed... I wouldn't be on Delphi so much.

Cool, huh.