Does any one remember the world before the current Internet?

[puppetmaker]

There was an appeals court ruling recently that said that Comcast was not in the wrong for slowing down some sites for downloads. The reason being that the FCC does not, currently, have the legal right to regulate the use of the Internet by individual companies. And there has been an outcry on the Internet about fair use and monopolies and half a dozen other things that include the end of the World as we know it.

Am I the only one who remembers when you had to dial into the Internet to use a service that would allow you to participate in the World Wide Web? I was a member, still am I think, of AOL. I got the software that allowed me to go onto the web through a phone number from my computer. I paid monthly for the privilege to use that phone number. I had an e-mail address, groups that I belonged, and access to the rest of the web. Now I pay the phone company to have an Internet portal in my home but my e-mail is through my Mac account and my G-mail account. I have a Yahoo email for the groups that I belong to. And I have those AOL accounts that I haven’t looked at in years but I know they are still there.

AOL did regulate where I could go on the web and what I could do. I knew that going in. Only occasionally was I stymied by trying to get to a website in Europe or Russia. AOL would slow down things that caused them to lose bandwidth and we all knew it. There was talk of a two-tiered system and one would pay more for a faster connection for a while but then the phone companies got into it and AOL sank faster than the Titanic.

While I was on AOL, I worked for the Academic Assistance Center aka the Homework Helpers. I did a lot of work with kids and their homework. I also told a lot of kids to go DO their homework and stop trying to get me to do it for them. AOL has used some of my articles as part of the homework help for years. And for this work, I got to use AOL unlimited for no fee other than my work for a certain number of hours. Apparently I am part of a class action lawsuit and settlement against AOL for the number of hours I put into the program. I have to recall all the names I used but it is hard because I had to change the name with the policy changes.

What Comcast is doing is no different than what AOL did. The disconnect is in the short term memory that people have about how the web worked and works. The service providers are not there for their health, they are there for profit and they are still figuring out how they can profit from the web. Yes, I have read the doom and gloom scenarios about censorship and slower downloading times for certain sites leading to the banning of sites. And how these services try to get you to use their search engine before Google. It is for the ad revenue plain and simple.

No one screams censorship because certain sites are blocked at their workplace or slow download for certain sites (that maybe they shouldn’t be on). I couldn’t access AOL on my work computer and that was fine. I did what I needed at home. MP-3s were banned on the server at my work because it was eating up bandwidth like no one’s business and a lot of it was illegal downloads of music. The exception was the music department and the audio department but that made sense. It’s their servers and their rules. And for Comcast and all the rest of the providers it is the same thing, their bandwidth, their rules.

On sort of a tangent, when one owns a website or bbs or whatever that they run, it is the same thing. They own the space. It is a private company and they can set the rules as they want. They can ban people because they have seen pictures of the people wearing orange if they want. Screaming 1st Amendment and “I have rights” just shows how much the shouters don’t know about either the first amendment or the rules of private property. One choice that people who are bent out of shape when the rules change is to go start their own whatever and compete with the person they think is wrong by showing them up by doing it better. But I see more complainers than doers out there. Also there are very sloppy ideas about copyright. I swear everyone bends it to the point they are making rather than looking at the real legal implications of what they are trying to do. But that’s a whole other rant.

I am grateful that my service provider hasn’t stopped me from doing what I want on the net.

Comments

[reddheart.livejournal.com]

Things I remember about the "old days" of the internet (or what feels like old days to me):

-when 56K was a Major Speed increase.
-when AOL didn't go on the web, nor did CompuServe.
-The Red Dragon Inn
-when I spent the majority of my time not on the web, but on ISCA BBS (which still exists, but my account expired)
-when the Terminal client was used as much as an email client.
-when people knew what the telnet command meant.
-for that matter, when they figured out how to FTP through said telnet connection.
-when there was a lot less crap (ads, popups, etc) between you and what you wanted.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

We get used to paradigms, and when they shift we freak. Even if they shift to something they were before.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

I started off on local BBSes way back when, in the late 80s, early '90s, before graduating to Prodigy as my link to the Internet as such. From Prodigy, I went to GEnie. Those lasted me until I went off to college in '92, at which point I discovered the joys of Internet sans dialup. Newsgroups and telnet were mine for the exploration.

I resisted the switch to cable Internet access for a while, but finally gave in to the inevitable some years back, and as soon as I grasped the potential, that was it. Never looked back. I still have my email address from the dialup days; it's stayed with me through thick and thin and several corporate buyouts and mergers.

I remember the joys of trying to "borrow" a phone line to connect to the Internet, but on the whole, I like being connected near-permanently via cable, wifi, or my Blackberry. Still, I remember the good old days. :>

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

People seem not to realize that if Comcast et al is forced to provide uniform download speeds regardless of quantity, they will have to raise their prices across the board. That's what we're seeing with some of their "business class" services, where they are offering enhanced download speeds for a higher price.

People don't seem to understand the relationship between cost and service. More bandwidth use = more work Comcast has to do (laying more lines, etc). That costs money.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

That's not quite what people are worried about with respect to the ruling, at least as I understand it. There's no general problem with, say, Comcast charging more if you download a Terabyte every month than if you download, say, 50 Gigabytes (i.e. 1/20th as much). But it appears this ruling would allow Comcast to charge X when you interact with, say, microsoft.com sites and 2X when you interact with google.com sites. It also potentially means they can charge more if the data is, say, video or audio related than if it's text related. Not based on how much data is downloaded (although video and audio will almost certainly need more than text to be useful), just that bit A is part of a video while bit B is part of text.

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

*applauds enthusiastically* THIS. Thank you.