Parking And Net Neutrality

[sashas]

I was just reading the Rolling Stones interview with Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.
He kept on stressing the importance of net neutrality, and about how we should stop the big corporations from taking over the web, being placed higher in search engines, pushing the small publisher down.

I'm sure everybody here will agree that maintaining net neutrality is of vital importance if the internet is to maintain its growth and live to its promise of 'everything for everyone'.

But when you think about it, we domainers are a major cause for this erosion of net neutrality.

Why? Or rather, How?

Go to any parked page. What are the links that you see? Usually, its some major publisher.
For example, go to IndianRestaurant.com.
Click on the first link: Indian Food.

What do you see?
Ads by YellowBook.com, Target.com, Shopzilla.com, Overstock.com...
Clearly big publishers backed by big corporations.

Now type in "Indian Restaurant" in Google.
The top results are for: IndianDinner.com, Thokalath.com, TandooriIndian.com, Pasand.com...
Clearly smaller publishers with smaller budgets.

So where does this lead us?
Parked pages direct the user to a website run by bigger publishers (since they can pay for the advertising), not by small publishers who may have more to offer when it comes to information/services. Sure, the surfer who types in IndianRestaurant.com will find the info he needs about Indian Restaurants from the links in the parked page, but he'll find it at a major website (Target.com, for instance).

Parked pages essentially give the power to the big players.
Clearly, this is not net neutrality. Net neutrality would assume that no matter how small or big the player is, he should have the chance to direct traffic by providing good services and info. Google maintains this. Parked pages do not. Parked pages simply reward the ones with the highest advertising budget.

This, to me, is akin to the internet being taken over by the corporations. At least for the 15% of the population that types in the domains in the address bar.


Does anybody else see this as a concern?

 

[npcomplete]

It certainly is thought provoking! One thing I would add is that a lot of my ppc traffic comes from google. I have not done a careful breakdown but I am thinking that at least 50% comes from the search engines. My pages, even NEW domains (month or two old) frequently get *excellent* placement on the first page. I can get this excellent placement by carefully focusing on the domains I purchase, looking at competing sites, etc. If I see a poorly monetized site using a low quality monetization service I can usually blow them out of the water with a .net versus their .com (we are talking generics here, I do not infringe). So google is linking to my sites that then use the big advertisers that you are talking about, so the end result is the same but I get a few bucks as a middleman.

I also get a lot of traffic on religious domains. My Moniker rep was telling me at the beginning that there is no money in religion. My response was "there is more money in religion than any other field, it is just better hidden". He agreed. I am not saying that is the way religion should be (I believe just the opposite, it is ruining religion), just the way that it is. Some of my religious domains link to individual churches. The concept is the same though. The "mega-churches" have bumped most of the smaller churches from view. I am *not* a mega-church kind of guy. The analogy is that the mega-churches are now like the huge corporations, squeezing out the small competition, and in many cases (most?) the smaller competition is much more informative, and genuine.

Marc

 

[domainer50]

You must once be small before you can be big and powerful. Overstock.com was never a household name but through smart advertising among other things, they became a household name. I think we have to use it to our advantage and help these corporations as they help us.

 

[sashas]

I think we have to use it to our advantage and help these corporations as they help us.

Come on...do you really think any corporation is out there to 'help us'? Its all about the bottom line for them. Its capitalism. The profits are all that matters in such an economy. There is no 'helping us'. Its all done in the view of collecting greater profits.

I don't think you got my point though. I was talking about the freedom of the internet being in jeopardy. Thats was the promise of the internet, where everyone was free, without boundaries. That promise is in danger of being taken over by corporations, and that is why net neutrality is so so important

 

[accent]

The corporations try to control a lot more than the net - look how much money is being raised by the presidential candidates in the US. But then, if they controlled everything then they would not need to contribute - they would already own them.

So -- how to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem?
I have envisioned taking back my names (nice concept, eh?) and creating minisites on each. Of course prime placement would go to my own business, or I could just forward the lot there. Didn't realize it would be a blow against the man! Wonder if I can sell jewelry to people typing in random LLLL.coms?

 

[sashas]

The corporations do not control the net. Not yet.
Thats why its so important that they don't. The internet is the only form of media that we have today that is independent. TV, radio, newspapers, films...they were all commercialized a long time ago, and they're all controlled by somebody or the other (ask Rupert Murdoch that..). The net is still without any control, no censors. And thats how it should remain.

Wikipedia has an interesting article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

 

[unholy1]

Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web
[/url]

Al Gore invented the internet. :hehe:

The net is still without any control, no censors. And thats how it should remain.
[/url]

Tell that to the people in China and the Middle East. There will always be censorship rules in one form or other, not every culture views the internet and its uses the same way.

Net neutrality would assume that no matter how small or big the player is, he should have the chance to direct traffic by providing good services and info.
[/url]

Yes, in an ideal world.

 

[sashas]

Al Gore invented the internet. :hehe:


Tell that to the people in China and the Middle East. There will always be censorship rules in one form or other, not every culture views the internet and its uses the same way.



Yes, in an ideal world.

Yes, I know about China and the Middle East. But that is 'external' control by the governments. The net as such is free and neutral there too. It has just been put under a leash by the governments.
But if corporations take over the net, then the control would be 'internal', not external. And that will be really harmful.

 

[npcomplete]

The point I was making in my post above is that money has a way of taking over, regardless of opinions. I am not saying this is the way it should be, but a stark reality.

The question is whether consumers that use more of a product or service should pay more for that product or service, and whether enhanced quality should carry a premium.

While I list my career as "math", I have never mentioned what I do with that math. I am in the research group of a large Seattle area company, where the primary focus is networking. I specifically focus on performance and reliability of large distributed systems, which are known to be both NP-Complete and #P-Complete (I also developed the main solver for state management of DARPA Ultralog - a survivable distributed system). Needless to say, "Quality of Service" is a big thing in our work in addition to reliability. This is where the money comes in. In particular, some customers would like to pay more for better QOS, and get some paid-for preferential treatment in both routers and other queued resources, and have this QOS guaranteed (in a probabilistic sense) in their service level agreements. This same ability to pay more in a QOS driven world would be available to me. *Obviously* we are not talking about rejecting traffic at the low end of the QOS agreements.

What we are seeing here is a natural extension of the free market into areas associated with service level agreements. As much as I may like to see the pictures of my brother's pet dog, I fail to see why an emergency medical situation, or security situation, etc., should not get preferential treatment. This is one of the reasons QOS is a hot topic in distributed computing. I realize that there may be abuses, and that some well-heeled individuals may pay for better performance, but as mentioned above we are not talking about rejecting existing traffic, just apply market dynamics to the existing situation.

Marc

 

[accent]

Ahhhh ... The invisible hand raises his -- er - head.

Communalism or Capitalism?
There is a third alternative. Live simply so there is abundance for everyone.
Not much interest in that one.

 

[DomainMayhem.com]

To get the best idea of what Net Neutrality is go to SaveTheInternet.com

 

[KingDon]

When you are able to qualify where I will stand in line, then you are censoring me. If society needs to have systems in place for emergencies, let them build additional technologies to handle these situations.

I don’t want to move aside for what others believe are more important reasons. I don’t want any small group deciding what the larger masses should endure. This is all coming to be because our internet population is growing fast; and free flowing ideas are dangerous to all governments, cartels and corporations.

This isn’t about making sure someone gets the proper health care, or communication, it’s about social control. Without Net Neutrality, you might as well go get your national ID cards and look for a line to stand in.

In ten years, all the reasoning used to put these new procedures into place, will morph into unchangeable laws that favor corporations and the corporate lawyers who wrote the new laws. This equation seems to play out over and over again in our society, and people are conditioned over long periods of time not to care.

I like when the little guy has just as good a chance of making it to number one, as the big powerful corporations; that’s my America!

 

[npcomplete]

...snip...
I like when the little guy has just as good a chance of making it to number one, as the big powerful corporations; that’s my America!

This kind of America never existed. Since the beginning of our nation, we have been a market economy where people that used more of a product or service paid for that product or service. People that wanted higher quality of whatever paid for that higher quality. The market driven economy has touched every aspect of American life since the beginning of our nation...

Simplistic solutions to complex problems seldom work, and socialist economies serve as testimony. This is similar to the healthcare debate where people think "everything should be free", and where people with emergencies are put in the same queue as people with a stubbed toe. Free things are abused, and I worry about living in a world where there is no sense of prioritization. In Seattle they decided to start a program to totally eliminate homelessness by xxx date. The plan was to build and offer free housing for the homeless. Sounds noble, but of course people will flood here from all over the country (world) to get free housing, food, medical care... "Whatever you reward, you get more of". Why should I work, I already live in a socialist utopia where everything will be free? Sometimes I wonder about who will pay for that...

Marc

 

[KingDon]

When speaking in terms of the Internet, it certainly does exist; and may quite possibly be the last strong hold of free speech. Once you create channels and sections, it's only a matter of time before controls are set into place; this is the danger of qualifying levels instead of having net neutrality.

Controls will then be adjusted according to the needs and desires of those in power; every new controller will then test the edges of their control for further expansion. Inevitably the controllers will have absolute power over the internet, as they have with all other forms of mass media; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

On a side note, I do agree with your sad situation in Seattle; I can imagine state institutions offering free bus tickets to Seattle "if" the plan ever fully comes through.

 

[npcomplete]

I am sure there will be some safeguards for lower levels of QOS. I suppose I can also compare it to mainframes/supercomputers where you can pay for improved prioritization in the job queue. I *certainly* understand and sympathize with the media control comments, and that this is perhaps the LAST area not monopolized by the Main Stream Media with their agendas. My guess and hope would be that there would be a mix of market economics mixed with buffers to ensure minimal levels of QOS at routers etc are reasonable. In computing you typically can buy higher QOS on large computers, but the other jobs in lower QOS levels have an aging mechanism that raises the job priority for time slicing etc so they get reasonable service too. Remember, "monopoly" is not a free market concept, and there are laws against that too.

Basically we are talking about buffered market dynamics here.

Marc