The Internet Must Go

The Internet Must Go

2013, Technology  -   62 Comments
8.04
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Ratings: 8.04/10 from 286 users.

Excellent mockumentary about how and why Internet service providers such as Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Comcast are pushing to eliminate or suppress the net neutrality.

Over the years they've spent billions to build the pipes and towers that bring Americans the Internet. Today they face a crisis, there's just too much traffic. (Un)fortunately they have a solution - the Internet as it exists today must go.

Instead of everything going at the same speed, the way it does now, they will create a fast lane and the slow lane on the Internet. Giant companies who can pay them more will be in the fast lane where will be easier for people to find them. Everyone else can take the slow road. They'll also create innovative new ways to charge Internet users for the sites they want.

What's stopping them? Well you've probably heard a lot of hype about net neutrality and keeping the Internet open. What do those buzz words really mean? On an open Internet they're supposed to treat everything equally whether it is profitable for them are not. This stands in the way of their freedom to make the money they think they deserve, but the public wants the Internet to stay open.

That's why they need a market researcher (John Wooley) to get out there and talk to people and help them figure out how to sell their new vision so they can eliminate net neutrality and reach their maximum profit potential.

Basically is the way the Internet's been since the beginning. You wanna get FOX news and you wanna get a friend's blog at the exact same speed. And what certain Internet service providers have talked about now is charging for faster lane and the only people that could really pay for the faster lane would be corporations.

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Beverly Scofield
Beverly Scofield
10 months ago

It would help us understand if the person writing the explanation could write correct English!
Edit: I just realized that even though the article is new, all the comments except mine are from three to eight years ago! What's going on?

Last edited 10 months ago by Beverly Scofield
bob
bob
4 years ago

internet simply make people as stupid as they looks now, and now there is so much of them that it became the new standard, a worldwide standard of simplistic idiocy, push button touch screen lol screen lol me selfie me me lol watch watch watch, never stop, then you don't see the world collapsing around you, because you and we are all already dead inside

buzz lightyear
buzz lightyear
4 years ago

lol,,, the sad thing is this is what's happening anyway, so you got it, whether you want it or not... sometimes it takes an entire minutes to download sites that i want to visit,,, sometimes they time out... the answer is for everyone to get a longwave radio and upload over that... they'll make it illegal, they may have already,,, but they can't arrest us all... lol...

GeTreel
GeTreel
5 years ago

The problem the marxist socialist-communist-progressives have IS the free flow of information. They want to make alternative news sites too difficult to find, cut off their income. If they could they would ban all information except their lies.

You cannot transform a nation of personal responsibility and opportunity ...to a central planned and controlled welfare state hell hole of total control without being able to get the majority of the people to believe your lies.

The bankster's CIA propaganda machine controls the major media, proven by the Church commission years ago. Now they are looking for some way to control the internet. Marxists require control of the information; knowing people will jump to the conclusions they lead them to by limiting the information to what supports their agenda.

Richard
Richard
6 years ago

CAG_1337
I hate it when a good message gets lost in a bad documentary.

Bad documentary?

karuna
karuna
7 years ago

this whole title is wrong. The internet must NOT go. We , the ordinary sheeple in the world, use this WWW to connect and share information to expose the truth about things. Without it, we go back to living in the dark age and there is not a sophisticated, well built platform besides the internet that can support millions of users today. Its a problem if we don't have the internet. Anyone who thinks the internet is evil, you are being brainwashed successfully by the Elite who run this world. WAKE UP.

Griffin
Griffin
7 years ago

Bull****. If anything its an attempted coup on the free flow of information, which serves no one but the system and the f***ers who milk it.

mike mathwig
mike mathwig
7 years ago

Amend the constitution. Take away personhood from corporations. There are a few different groups up and running and trying to do just that right now. It would take corporate money out of politics. I don't think very many of you really care tho. To much trouble to call state government and all that stuff, right? See,.......I was right. You'll get what's commin to ya too! This country has had too much college wreckin their head.

awful_truth
awful_truth
9 years ago

You have to love the Stephen Colbert approach of 'appearing to support while being against' satire that John Wooley uses to make his point. It really is sad (not unexpected) that ISP corporations will force their control over the population, even to the point of having 19 states prevent community broadband services, via manipulation of political powers. If this doesn't expose to the layman the fascist nature of corporate control, and greed, then I can only say that people deserve what they support.

Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
9 years ago

Tim Wu's eyebrows seriously distract me everytime he pops up for a statement

Richard Neva
Richard Neva
9 years ago

He says we want to get Fox News, I would not be caught dead watching that batch of lies and garbage!

David Sciortino
David Sciortino
9 years ago

why is everything in this video spooffed and fabricated. i find it hilarious but i'm worried that sarcasm and deceipt is the right path to explaining a valid concern

Nothing_Is_Real
Nothing_Is_Real
9 years ago

The only traffic on the internet is there because the isp providers are not allowing full potential of the equipment they have or are not building equipment that is capable of true hi speed internet

DocHollywood_2
DocHollywood_2
9 years ago

I lived in East Texas while working for a small college and I found our own "Death Hill" outside of town where I could get a 3-G phone signal. The rest of the area was a dead zone.

Mock
Mock
9 years ago

I honestly wish the corporations would just implement their ridiculous ideas already, so that the populace would revolt and force them into bankruptcy by immediately discontinuing their subscriptions. Perhaps we would see more competitors arise with a philosophy to actually entertain their customers and treat them well, rather than focusing everything around profits and invading privacy.

Without competition, corporations can misbehave and get away with poor service connectivity, poor technical support, overages on bills, and a plethora of every day misdeeds. The small town I live in used to have 5 different ISPs, now it is just one corporation that has monopolized the area. No one should be forced into doing business with a single company that is selling something that is a necessity by today's standards in the information age.

rik
rik
9 years ago

Well just three years later and teh FCC is looking at "rule" changes to allow companies, errr, corporations such as TIme Warner, Com Cast, DirectTV and AT&T to initiate the "tiered" system. Oh, btw, all COMCAST and Direct tv have approved a merger of 45 billion (with a B) making that "corporation" the largest holder of highspeed internet acces in the country. I bet the price goes DOWN for their customers; right?
Sigh, how come a 100 billion dollars a year, in pure, UN-TAXED profit, is not enough?

Hey, I'm just saying it's now time to bend over.

31jetjet
31jetjet
9 years ago

This doc rates higher than 7.94. It was very funny & informative. just what I needed after long week. Everyone should watch only 30min very eye opening.

Patrick Smith
Patrick Smith
10 years ago

You may think this is a new concept on ISP but I hate to brake the news to you. Your documentary is ten years to late. Just the first 30 seconds, listen.

Craig
Craig
10 years ago

"OK, not in professor speak"..."but what else" Absolutely brilliant!!!

avd420
avd420
10 years ago

I found the style in which this documentary was made to be demeaning. Who, What, Why, Where, When, How. You won't find any of those questions here, just a bunch of preaching and shouldsayers.

miguel_gomez
miguel_gomez
10 years ago

For *********** who think that there's too much traffic, a standard fiber-optic infrastructure can carry several terabytes of data per second. Just saying.

Signed,
A capitalist, a real one.

Prodromos Regalides
Prodromos Regalides
10 years ago

The worry that there's so much traffic in the net is just ridiculous, to put it lightly. Centers of political and financial power watch helplessly how new tech takes away their control over masses and start mumbling every possible nonsense they can think of. Panic just describes their emotional status perfectly and Inferno by Dan Brown artistically.
They can't get over the fact of how they lost their " divine " rights 500 years or so ago. It is just devastating to them to realize that what they thought of as a reversing trend is simply an illusion. Eons of efforts to undermine the liberties of societies and the democratic rights of the individual seem to be cancelled under an unprecedented sea of change. Cheerios, you won't be kings again!

Justin
Justin
10 years ago

Important message, some compelling story attached to it, but all in all not very good delivery. Senator Franken and even John Hodgman must have been able and willing to provide more insight on the issue than just be the butt end of the mockumentary angle.

Jo McKay
Jo McKay
10 years ago

a funny and sad parody on 'big medias' attempt to sell the idea of an internet that looks and charges more like cable tv... I am reminded of the fact that all information through media was once 'free'. Newspapers charged advertisers not their customer; when they did start to charge the fee was nominal. TV was free in the beginning (you needed an antenna - and almost every community, large and small had their own local station); again advertising paid the network costs. Radio is still free (if you can put up with the 10 minutes of program to 100 minutes of Ads...or thereabouts), until satellite radio came along, now we are invited to pay for that too. What has continually mystified me is how corps got away with this in the first place. Telephone costs did actually go 'down', but that trend is reversing, and now people don't just have the home phone they have one or more expensive cell phones as well. TV went from minor costs to huge costs for hundreds of stations that nobody watches, and now we are paying premium for simple access to the internet - more - if you want access on your phone or tablet or laptop, etc. away from home. So 'information' and basic communication is already costing most families hundreds every month, while the media moguls make embarrassingly large profits, and still don't want to have to maintain their infrastructure (so service continues to fail) or expand or improve it. Thats the "way the cookie crumbles" as my Mom would say. You buy their BS, they'll keep dumping it, and you soon need a shovel to get away from the smell ... cheers

Kaz
Kaz
10 years ago

Even the simplest things left to their own motion and duplication create complexity where we can never imagine the ultimate outcome.

Capitalism is an economic process, the formula might seem simple...but in reality what it is creating is a complex processes of interdependence and dynamics that were never intended. We are watching as the ocean is being killed, we are seeing year over year increasing carbon dioxide...etc..we are literally a victim of our own creation.

Wayne Siemund
Wayne Siemund
10 years ago

The faster the speed the more the ISP can charge you. Why wouldn't they want to build better and faster?
Oh, wait. Google is building that high speed system at rates about the same as slower providers and even giving away free 5mb service. I guess competition can be inconvenient for ISPs that like the profits of sitting on their laurels.
Well, at least the cost of internet will never go down. Even Google will eventually begin to inch up their rates. So there's that good news.

Jimmy James
Jimmy James
10 years ago

Great documentary... it really nailed how Telco monopolies are screwing with consumers.

yellowmattercustard
yellowmattercustard
10 years ago

Netflix and Youtube account for half of all internet traffic in North America. I just can't get fired up to defend someone's "right" to watch Honey Boo Boo and cute cat videos.

CAG_1337
CAG_1337
10 years ago

I hate it when a good message gets lost in a bad documentary.

Jim Greenfield
Jim Greenfield
10 years ago

very clever and also quite appropiate, as verizon and the other big boys are preparing the tort against the f.c.c

Michelle
Michelle
10 years ago

Pray for Google fiber to go nationwide -- and fast. Google fiber in KC is giving away broadband and charging only for 1GBps speed. This would knock the cable companies out of the broadband business which is what I would love to see happen. These cable companies were successful in buying off enough public officials to ensure their monopoly power and resulting obscene profits in cable tv. Since they created a monopoly over cable tv hasn't anyone noticed that the prices for this service have gone up and up while the cost of providing them has gone down every year. In Florida back in the 80's I had a choice of three different cable companies at about $10 per month each. They paid for an aggressive propaganda campaign saying that in some areas where there was only one cable company instead of two or three that the customers had to pay more. Well duh, this is where the free market would help encourage other cable companies to come in and steal customers from the first company by charging less. Back in the 80's I literally had people knocking on my door offering cable tv for less than whatever I was already paying and I switched several times saving money each time -- this is the way a free market is supposed to work. They passed this alleged consumer protection bill back in '93 which said that a cable company couldn't charge different prices to customers in different areas to "protect consumers" and they completely killed off any incentive for competition, and within a couple of years the other cable companies folded and now we have no choice only one company per district and basic cable tv is now $50 per month despite the fact that the cost of the electronic equipment they use has fallen drastically since the 80's. Now they are trying to do the same thing with broadband to make obscene profits while giving all of us americans much less bandwidth for our money than in other countries. They have already bought off enough state legislatures to make it illegal for you to set up your own competing broadband network even in areas that aren't profitable enough for them to service, thus ensuring their monopoly power. They have made competition illegal. God help us. This is not capitalism at work. It is a fascist monopoly enabled to exist by our corporatocracy form of government. The current propaganda campaign has the same goal -- obscene profits for providing less service while killing off any incentive to upgrade the infrastructure.

IndustryOfBlame
IndustryOfBlame
10 years ago

The issue right now with providers trying to exclude or compartmentalise certain web services from their networks has everything to do with video streaming, and the unwillingness to invest in network architecture to accomodate the bandwidth requirements for these services to reach their end-users. In the eyes of the internet service providers, unless they get a slice off the profit cake of commercialised video streaming, any future expansion of network capacity is technically a zero-return investment, charity in other words. Customer relations and goodwill is not part of that profit equation, and as far as I'm concerned that's what needs to improve. It's not going to happen through legislative means, so in the end it's up to consumer choice. Unless of course if you live in the US, where in large parts of the country you have no choice in what provider to use.

As far as the general concept of net neutrality goes, these companies have no interest in censoring or excluding our political blogs, small-business websites or lolcat pics. Why? Because they hardly take up any bandwidth at all. Obviously no one should take my word for that, but it's what I've concluded after doing a little bit of research into this isse.

caban13
caban13
10 years ago

"if you are in favor of capitalism?"
every day I am less and less in favor...
we need a new system...

1concept1
1concept1
10 years ago

I hope they leave our internet alone!

englishjakes
englishjakes
10 years ago

sweet, loved the ending the best one ive ever seen. I dont know how the guy kept a strait face while doing the interviews. so awsome im going to forward this to all my friends and family. if the internet ever became fast tracked i would probly not even use it.

Janeen Clark
Janeen Clark
10 years ago

people do not want to live in a world where profit is more important than freedom, however in a monetary system those with the largest pockets "get what they want". if you feel like you can connect to the concept of net neutrality, imagine what the world could be like applying the same understanding of net neutrality to the rest of society to create a open source resource based economy. so instead of large corporations controlling the planets resources , the earths resources can become the common heritage of all the world's people. and instead of companies controlling patents and copyrights , open source could grant any individual the right to improve on any existing product to make a better world for us all. if you feel like the internet needs to be free, how do you feel about the entire world being free as well? because after all what is the difference between corporations and banks controlling all the money and resources on this planet, and corporations controlling all the internet on this planet?this topic grants us an opportunity to bring our awareness to the rest of the world where the same domination strategies are being employed in the sake of profit and at the expense of humanity.