Back off my bandwidth.

So as I haven’t been told that my blog is wrong, I will continue writing in the way I see fit. Again, reiterating a point from a previous post, I am just going to be writing about what I think fits the definition of internet politics under the subject of the entertainment industry. I was in class today having a discussion about the internet and how ISP’s control the content and volume of their customer’s internet usage. In Europe for example, European internet users receive an alloted data transfer quota. This number falls roughly around 100 gigabytes per month. This is in contrast to typical American ISP policy of unlimited data for a single monthly payment. This made me start thinking of the ISP’s (like AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner) that have the ability to view the transfer of their customers data, a virtual wiretap if you will. I happened to check CNN’s website and stumble upon this article. I find it oddly coincidental that I was talking about this in class and managed to find this article that pretty much answered all the questions I had had about this. The initial stance of ISP’s was to retain a “net neutrality” if you will. A sort of blind, non censored eye towards their customers internet habits. Certain ISP’s have started examining this content and are finding that a majority of the internet “power users” use a significant portion of their bandwidth for illegal movie downloads. This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue, but as available internet bandwidth shrinks these ISP’s are looking to curtain these excessive bandwidth suckers and more evenly distribute the available bandwidth. “The goal for ISPs is to ensure that “some bandwidth hog can’t knock your mom off, who’s just trying to get her e-mail,” said Rob Malan”. This so elegantly states the main principle behind there madness. AT&T took a little bit different stance on this issue. They said they would take an active step in curtailing the illegal downloads. The articles stated that it was akin to the postal service examining mail to make sure there were no photo copies of books inside them. I think that the internet needs to be kept completely free of ISP’s censorship of downloadable content. The ISP’s make there money by connecting us to this massive network, they don’t need to meddle anymore beyond that. Maybe it’s my republican father speaking through me on a contemporary issue. He was never huge on government interference in your everyday life, and disliked being told what he could and couldn’t do. I feel the same way about this issue. We built the internet just like our government: trial and error, amending old rules, and by ultimately having the majority rule the land (that may be a terrible analogy, but I feel like it makes sense in my head, I mean, just think about it, it makes sense, right?). Either way, back to me trying to make a valid point. I don’t want my ISP telling me what I can and cannot do. It’s’ not really there problem anyways, the FCC, MPAA, and RIAA are the ones who should be worried about what I’m doing.