Net Neutrality: not a neutral issue

The issue of Network Neutrality is heating up more and more each day. There is an ongoing battle between internet service providers (ISP’s) and websites like Google and Yahoo! as to whether or not Net Neutrality laws should be passed. What is it? ‘’Net Neutrality prevents the companies that control the wires bringing you the Internet from discriminating against content based on its ownership or source.’’ What does this mean? It means that without Net Neutrality, your ISP could speed up or slow down your internet connection, or even block you from using some internet services or features. They could also charge you more money based on your internet usage.

So what is the debate exactly? ISP’s want to charge or tax big websites like Google in order to deliver content quickly to us. ISP’s want to speed up their own content (think Time Warner/AOL’s homepage) and they want to slow down their competitors. Some say they that ISP’s would even go as far as to block out websites that are on the opposite ends of their political agendas. Google, eBay, Amazon.com and many others feel that this is absurd, and everyone should have equal access to websites and features on the internet.

So what is at stake and who will this affect? In addition to affecting websites like Google and Yahoo! to name a few, it would also affect us, the consumer. Imagine you are trying to access the website for an anti-abortion campaign, but the webpage mysteriously fails to load. What if you’re trying to watch streaming videos on Youtube, but they take forever to load. What if it took you 5 days to download a movie from BitTorrent, if you were even allowed to download it at all. You may no longer be able to get your news from MSN.com because its political affiliations aren’t the same as your ISP. All of these are possible outcomes if Net Neutrality is overlooked. Additionally, if we can’t view the content above, or use the services like BitTorrent, these companies and many more could be put out of business.

If you haven’t figured it out already, I am for Net Neutrality. After reading the assigned material and a few other sources, it is fairly easy to see that ISP’s are simply trying to make more money as well as advance their own interests. Time Warner has its own internet phone service, why would they want us to use Vonage? Comcast has its own internet homepage, why would they want us to look at Yahoo! or MSN.com? ISP’s are well aware that many people use websites like eBay and Amazon.com so it makes sense that they would try to coax these websites into paying the ISP’s to deliver their content more quickly than others. I don’t like the idea that someone else could potentially pick and choose which information can be delivered to me. It takes away the principle that the internet was founded on and everyone should have equal and complete access to it.

Net Neutrality is a very serious issue and is already starting to affect consumers just like us. Comcast has already started to block file sharing by cancelling uploads of complete files. If the person who is sending you a music file is suddenly cut off, you can’t download it, can you? An ISP in North Carolina has already been fined for blocking its users from using Vonage because it is a competitor. These are just a few examples of what’s already beginning to take place and it will only continue to get worse unless Net Neutrality laws are put into place.

Net Neutrality Debate Remains Contentious

Network Neutrality on Wiki

A Battle for Control of the Web

Save the Internet

Second Life can be your second life

Once upon a time, actually last winter or so, I had a Second Life account. Aside from the tutorial, I probably had well over 100 hours invested in this virtual world. In this amount of time I was able to experience most of what the game had to offer, and I was able to see that Second Life really can be a second life.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Second Life, an in depth description would take pages. Basically it is an online game where you make a character to represent yourself (or whoever you’d like to be) and you essentially make a second life for yourself. You can build a house, buy a car, or get a job. You can meet people, make friends, and interact with them in similar ways that you interact with your own friends. Other ‘’players’’ in the game can create shops where they sell clothes, they can make casinos with slot machines and blackjack tables, they can build shopping malls, and they can host parties and raves. You can interact with all these things in the game. You can shop at the mall and purchase clothing items, you can use your money to gamble in the casinos, and you can actually make your character dance at a rave (the music is generally provided by DJ’s which are real people DJ’ing music through their computer live.)

Just like in the real world, you need money in Second Life if you want to better the life of your character. There are only 2 ways to earn money in the game. You can either pay a fee (in real money of course) which will get you a plot of land in the game to build things on, and it will also give you in game money to use on whatever you’d like. At any time you can also purchase additional game currency using real money. The second way is to get a job, just like in real life. You can work at someone’s shop, you could DJ a party, and you can do any number of real life jobs. Most jobs will pay you by the half hour or full hour that you work, and just like in real life, you typically have set hours to work on certain days of the week.

Houses, buildings, shops, cars, etc. are built mostly using code. Like creating a video game or computer software, players in the game write the code for a slot machine or they write the code for an airplane. The creator of the item can then set the code to be open source so people can edit it, or lock it to sort of copyright it and protect it. The creator can sell his or her items to other players in stores, or just through player to player interaction. Someone I had met in the game was good at creating clothing items, so she (or it could have been a he, I’ll never know) would make shirts and pants for my character to wear and would give them to me free of charge.

While it may not sound fun to play a video game and have to get a job in it, it’s actually really fun. It isn’t really working if you think about it, and you are constantly interacting and talking to new people. There is no way to beat the game, there aren’t any objectives. All you really need to do is live a second life, any way you wish.