The Digital Education Coalition, comprised of The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the Media Education Lab at Temple University and the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), has offered comments to the Federal Communications Commission in favor of Net Neutrality.
The document (PDF here) notes why net neutrality is important to coalition members:
The digital education community needs access to a wide variety of online content, which broadband service providers are currently able to block or filter. Further, members of the community need to transmit and access content such as videos, speeches and photos, which require large amounts of bandwidth. The only way to protect educational interests online is to prohibit content-based discrimination.
The group also seeks to persuade the FCC to require internet service providers to act more transparently and to disclose network management practices on their websites.
Members of the digital education community currently have limited access to the network management practices of service providers. Yet, this information is needed to help educators to plan their curricula, enable media literacy educators to teach about network transmissions and assist game developers in the creation of innovative teaching tools.
Disclosure: GamePolitics is a publication of the ECA.
Comments
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
So what does that mean for my online college courses? But I read the article & still don't understand what this means, other than it (net neutrality) being gotten rid of......could someone please tell me what this article is about.
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
keep the net neutral the only other option is unfair bias
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
Lobbyists are going to try their damned hardest to kill it like they basically killed healthcare reform.
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
I agree with you on this one.
"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
Because the FCC is known as the champion of protecting against content-based discrimination?
And I, as someone who has a degree in telecommunications but don't work in the industry (yay economy), ask for evidence that my education is actually incomplete (or at least was when I graduated) because of this limited access to network management practices of service providers.
I highly doubt that any form of government intervention will have the interest of video gamers at heart.
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
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Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
What I cannot understand is how something that is outlined in black and white before, and supports what gamers and most consumers want could ever do the opposite.
Yes the FCC has censored in the past, but does that mean it can't also keep things from being censored?
There has yet to be a major censoring by an internet provider but the fact that it could happen, and that it could be done withhout anyone's knowledge right now is what is so worrysome. I cannot see how net nuetrality could possibly hurt any consumer, and for that matter if no internet provider does discriminate right nowit shouldn't affect them either except to prevent them from trying it in the future.
I can understand why people can gaina natural distrust of the government, it does do a lot of stupid things, but can you not simply acknowledge it when they want to do something good? I personally distrust the companies more than the government and the fact that they are lobbying so hard against it worries me as to whether some really are blocking or limiting certain types of data or sites.
Re: Digital Education Coalition Offers FCC Net Neutrality ...
Let's get to my initial problem of the FCC being involved first. Does anyone remember when Net Neutrality was supposed to be legislation? Why now go through the FCC? Because the FCC is an unelected official body that does not answer to voters. A bill in Congress must have debate on the floor of the repective houses. Voters can call and discuss the issue with their elected representatives, who know that they have to answer to voters. By moving this to the FCC lobbyist letters, like this one here, are the only outside influence involved. You can call the FCC all day to express your opinion, but they have zero incentive to listen to you because you do not affect their job status in any way. So, the question has to be asked, if the lobbying groups in favor of net neutrality care about the consumers, why have they moved the issue to a place where consumers' voices have little to no effect? The move away from the ability to have open debate (I bet CSPAN would even air it) and full transparency is enough to make me question this entire thing.
Now, currently it may easily look like some favorable consumer protection thing, but the moment the precedent is set that the FCC has authority of Internet content bandwidth usage they could easily limit bandwidth for things such as video games so that educational or medical institutions never see a reduction in bandwidth. And any lobbying group in favor of gaming will look like a villain, wanting to harm educational or medical institutions' ability to work in the name of video games. Hey, its not censorship, so its not illegal, it is just protecting the greater good.
I stil don't understand how my education was affected when I was in college, as this letter implies. I also don't understand how anytime a problem, or potential problem in this case, arises people feel the need to run to government to "fix" it.
And for the record, I do not consider any entity or person that will give themselves increasing power as doing anything good, even if their reasoning sounds like it is full of good intentions.