Genre Group Presentation
In recent news there has been a lot of commotion about ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) and the FCC(Federal Communications Commission). After having read a few articles on the topic there were really only 2 sides to the argument.
The FCC sees the ISP's recent actions as somewhat scary. They think ISP’s ( e.g. Comcast, Charter, etc.) are beginning to head down a treacherous route that could lead to the censorship of certain content from their viewers. They could restrict your access to websites they (or their stock holders) find disagreeable. One very good example of this would be Comcast’s decision to limit the bandwidth allotted to people using BitTorrent (a file sharing application). Although this client does tend to facilitate piracy, there is a large majority of users that utilize it for sharing completely legal files.
The people who side with ISP’s, believe that the internet should not be controlled in any way be the government. There is a mentality of "If it aint broke, dont fix it.” They believe government intervention will actually harm the market. The problem is letting the companies reign free may harm consumers much more than they realize.
Rules and Audience of this Genre:
1. The commentary must discuss a current topic that has multiple sides to the argument. It should present all sides of the discussion to the audience in as fair a manner as possible. It will, although, take a particular side and explain why it seems to be better in the author’s opinion.
2. Your paper should provide examples to why one side of the case is more beneficial, in comparison, to the other.
Audience – The type of discussion would be very interesting to the somewhat tech-savvy group of people. It would also attract attention from politicians who disagree with a certain ISP’s political standing (I will go deeper into this with the example).
Example (This is completely untrue… for right now):
Comcast president Neil Smit released the outlines for the new premium internet bundles, earlier today. It entailed that there would be large changes from their previous packages. There would be two main bundles for Comcast users to choose from.
The first is a very limited version of the internet. When it comes to news, in this bundle, you have one choice, Fox News channel. The ISP has recently signed a contract with Fox News stating they will be the main choice of news for Comcast customers. This package also doesn’t allow users to access Hulu, a very popular TV show site. If you wish to watch your favorite TV shows you’ll have to head over to Apple’s new Apple TV. Also, if there are any gamers out there, you won’t be able to use this package as it has very limited bandwidth, in order to prevent you from slowing down internet speed for other users. Along with many other restrictions, I don’t know if many people will be opting to pay for this deal. If you do end up choosing this, it will cost right around $100.
The premium version, although, does allow for far more leniency when it comes to your browsing options. One option that is not available in any Comcast package is the use of any applications that utilize torrent files. Record companies have recently convinced Comcast to help crack down on torrent users in an effort to prevent piracy from taking place. It doesn’t matter if you only use torrents to download legal items, they have cut download speeds for torrents so drastically that it is almost impossible to transfer files via P2P file sharing. That being said you can get this bundle for $180 per month.
All in all, this seems to be somewhat unreasonable, especially when it comes to censorship of different sides of the news. When you add in the $180 price tag for a decent service, you may want to cringe.
Citation:
Marguerite Reardon. "FCC details plan to reassert authority over Internet. "
CNet News. May 6, 2010. Web. September 9, 2010.
< http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004313-266.html >
Focus Editors. "Which Types of Businesses Will Be Affected by Net Neutrality (And How)."
Focus. Aug 11, 2010. Web. September 27, 2010.
< http://www.focus.com/fyi/information-technology/which-types-businesses-will-b... >.