Saturday, February 28, 2015

And there was much rejoicing... or was there?



Well it's been an eventful few days. Blogger decided to back down, kinda/maybe. They aren't gonna set the blogs to private, but the will be "stepping up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn". Whatever the fuck that means. Maybe it just applies to photo porn like with Patreon. Maybe it applies to even just having links to places like my site, or Affect3d, or Rotica. Who knows. It's the usual shit of being vague to keep their options open. So gonna leave the blog here for the moment. Will do the groundwork so I can transfer it to my site if need be. But don't wanna spend the time actually setting it up unless I have to. Got more important stuff to be doing right now - like learning game development. So in any case here's Google's statement on the matter...
An update on the Blogger porn content policy

This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy stating that blogs that distributed sexually explicit images or graphic nudity would be made private.

We’ve received lots of feedback about making a policy change that impacts longstanding blogs, and about the negative impact this could have on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

We appreciate the feedback. Instead of making this change, we will be maintaining our existing policies.

Great. Thanks for being indecisively bad, Google.




In other news, there was the FCC vote on the whole net neutrality thing. Which is yet another giant tangled mess. Should service providers be able to charge for premium service or excessive usage? The raving capitalist in me says "yes". I mean it's kinda bullshit that most of the burden on the internet is imposed by a relatively small minority of sites - movies streaming, communications, large merchants, etc. Shouldn't they have to pay more? Plus, it's the ISPs business, they should be able to do what they want with it. And if they offer shitty service then somebody else will rise to replace them. Except of course, it's not that easy. Since internet providers have long-long-long running contracts with cities preventing the installation of other high-speed cables, thus preventing competition. Seriously, how is that legal?

And then there is the issue of - what is to prevent providers from extorting people for better service? ISPs already limit the traffic speed on the internet. It could run much much faster, they just prevent it for a variety of reasons both legitimate and nefarious. So what is to prevent them from choking it even more unless users pay higher fees? Well other than a sense of decency and good customer service, neither of which seem to matter much when you are the only game in town. The only option is of course, regulation. *queue ominous music*

Thus we end up with the FCC's vote. All data treated the same, no blocking, no prioritization. Seems fairly decent. Kind of. So yeah. Except something keeps nagging me. I mean, being from 'Murica, I recognize that we control the entire world. Oddly enough though, people in other countries don't always seem to agree on that absolute fact. (Weird, I know.) So are ISPs in other countries bound by the FCC's rules? Obviously they should be, but what happens if they block, throttle, or prioritize content? Do we invade them? Send a strongly worded letter? Pull a China and put up a Great Firewall against them? How do these rulings matter on a worldwide stage? Which is annoying enough, but there is something else in these rules.

"Broadband providers may not block access to legal content." "Providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic." "Providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic." Yeeaaahh. What exactly is the definition of "legal" and "lawful" again? How set in stone are those definitions? How does one even determine if specific content is illegal or unlawful? Is one instance of illegal content enough to justify illegal traffic? Or does it have to be repeated offenses? If Youtube users upload copyrighted material, does that make the traffic illegal? How does any of this shit work? How is it enforced? I know it's quibbling over details, but those things do tend to come back and bite us in the ass.




And finally, sucks that Leonard Nimoy died. Not surprising, cuz the guy looked... well "not good" in the last Trek movie. Like if you gave him a light push he would fall over dead. But still sucks.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Mongo,

Yeah I cried about Spock. So sad. He's in a cool Bruno Mars video really funny so watch that if you need a cheer up Good memory smile.
I know you look at me like Sisko or Worf looked down at Quark but even though my family is crazy as Ferengi and my step dad is like Gul Dukat I'm really a good guy even though I'm small I have strength. Your art gives me strength and I really miss it a lot.
You are still the best. I think I'm not really into playing games. I hope if you want to make movies make stuff like Studio Fow. I think you could be better than them ! Have you seen their epic film Broken Princess? Also check out the great beasty work they made with the sophia and Minotaur! Reminds me of your SAO epic Leafa set! Anyway please create your great art for us, pics or movies or animations I will buy them all !
I mean what I said! I support you and am sincere! I can't control that I have a bunch of weirdos for family even though I like then alit cause they are fun and mean no harm.
So thanks for saying hi and sharing the good news.

Your Big Fan Supporter,

Little Matty

joeannie said...

Adding my voice to "Net Neutrality" ... i do NOT stream video, so I do really dislike the idea that my cable bill MUST be raised to make all the NetFlix/Amazon streamers happy, it does piss me off. Charging the "streamers" more than me is a great idea!

I do understand the theoretical "poster-child" idea that some new mind-blowing startup can't start because they can't pay the piper, but hey, the opposite is also true - other startups will fail because they CANNOT get enough bandwidth to impress users slogging through slow internet caused by their neighbors streaming Netflix.

Post a Comment