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May 5th - The End of the Free Internet?

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Politics & Debate
http://blackouteurope.eu/

I mean 'free' as in freedom btw, not free as in free beer. They are going to make it legal for an ISP to charge you different rates, depending on what kind of websites you want to visit. For a budget rate, you can have amazon, you can have google, you can have wikipedia. For a standard rate, you have a load more websites. For a premium rate, you can go on thepiratebay or something.

It might be scaremongering, or it might be the beginning of the end. They said a few years ago when we had to get permission to protest that it would just be for security. Then gradually there have been more cases of legitimate protestors either being denied their right to protest or even being attacked.

This could open the floodgates for an internet where big business like amazon pays millions to the like of BT, Virgin Media, etc. in order that they may give you their websites free, but you don't get others. Then why would anyone need other websites? So they cut out the independent guys who have a passion or an internet and their own website and carve up the internet into domains between the large businesses who can afford to stay accessible to everyone.

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Chances are someone will give you the current option of pay a fee and visit what you want and everyone will flock to that.

    If you remember there was a scare story a while back about banks ending free banking. It didn't happen because the banks know the industry is so competitive that if only one bank stuck to free banking everyone would go there...
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Economic law of 'no money on the table' will put paid to this; unless of course there is a monopoly or cartel operating.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ISPs should be able to package their products however they want. Second degree price discrimination is perfectly acceptable imo, it hasn't spoiled any other highly competitive markets.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    minimi38 wrote: »
    ISPs should be able to package their products however they want. Second degree price discrimination is perfectly acceptable imo, it hasn't spoiled any other highly competitive markets.
    Try saying that when you're charged through the roof to visit facebook...
    I can't see the idea taking off tbh, for starters how would it be regulated? There's no way in hell any company would be able or have the resources to track every single website on the net and thats not even taking into account the thousands that appear everyday
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The problem is if they enter into agreements with the big content providers, i.e. amazon gives virgin media a cut of their ad revenue or something daft in exchange for making amazon free to visit.

    Then web sites become available based on how much money they are willing to spend. Something about net neutrality.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The internet isn't like television where there are only a few hundred or so channels. The vastness of the internet would make price of packaging websites huge and subsequent prices wopuld be far too easy to undercut. Imagine the amount of information that would have to be gathered, then all the deals that would have to be made.

    I'm all for internet anarchy but I'd put money on it not going beyond basic packages, e.g. +£2 for rapidshit pr0nz and £>9k for chans.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is there a link to these proposed EU rules because I can't find one anywhere on that website?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I wondered when the EU were going to get around to trying to censor the Internet - they've certainly taken their time with it. How dare all those websites and blogs criticise this organisation's endemic corruption - an organisation whose accounts have not been signed off for 13 years, for example. If any private company were run like that, its management would have been jailed long ago.

    Cunts.
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