The End Of The Internet?

[Scourge]

Kinda defeats the whole idea of email.

[hax103]

We already pay for different levels of Internet access - i.e.

- basic speed - 256kbit/s vs. 3000kbits/s
- fair usage bandwidth per month - i.e. 10GB/month or unlimited

You could call it silver or gold access if you wanted. Pay more, get a better connection.

There are also already free utilties to do the encryption so nobody can snoop. Any website with anything remotely secure will already be using secure sockets. Secure email is free.

And as long as there are some universities and charitable people, there will also always be proxies for anonymous surfing.

The part which is just ridiculous is that they would control what would appear on your computer monitor.

ROFL.

an interesting article that would certainly change the way alot of us get online if somethihg along these lines came true. within the article, make sure you read the bit named "mining your data" using deep packet inspection. yay.

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

[+JuggerNaut+]

Why would anybody pay to send an email?

Kinda defeats the whole idea of email.

it'll sell though because people don't know how to deal with whitelists, etc within an email client and whine and complain about spam. "omg why do i still get email from these people? i replied to the email about unsubscribing!!!11"

We already pay for different levels of Internet access - i.e.

- basic speed - 256kbit/s vs. 3000kbits/s
- fair usage bandwidth per month - i.e. 10GB/month or unlimited

You could call it silver or gold access if you wanted. Pay more, get a better connection.

um. yes.

[mjrpes]

From my perusal of slashdot comments, if you don't pay the AOL fee then your email will still go to the inbox, except images will be removed and links will be unclickable.

Seeing how spam is mainly text based anyway, it is difficult to see how this fee will decrease spam.

Looks like AOL is out to make a quick, dirty, filthy, whore-filled, slut-inspired, bitch-mediated, fuckface-impressed buck.

[+JuggerNaut+]

more talk of Google's moves and acquisitions

[Scourge]

Kinda what I thought might happen. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

[^misantropia^]

- basic speed - 256kbit/s vs. 3000kbits/s
- fair usage bandwidth per month - i.e. 10GB/month or unlimited

You could call it silver or gold access if you wanted. Pay more, get a better connection.

That's traffic limiting, not quite the same thing as the traffic shaping + QoS the article mentions. The latter means your ISP will decide what kind of traffic it will give preference, e.g. first and foremost video-on-demand, followed by VoIP, regular internet traffic and, eventually, P2P. It probably won't require too many changes to the ISP's infrastructure; ADSL DSLAMs already have such functionality built in, as do newer/higher-end cable headends.

On a side note, you can be sure P2P will be the ugly duckling in the Qos queue: the business plans of ISPs are based on the assumption that consumers only utilize 1-10% of their allotted bandwidth.