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Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#71

Post by Jtsummers »

marknutter wrote: post #58
an_account wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) happens naturally in most markets. Without net-neutrality I believe that it would be harder for these companies to be dethroned if something better came along. 2) I think will only continue to be true for a short period of time. With products like Netflix and amazon, and with traditional television channels like HBO and ESPN starting to charge for streaming online, I think consumer attitude will shift as they real…

> 1) happens naturally in most markets. Without net-neutrality I believe that it would be harder for these companies to be dethroned if something better came along. In what way would it be harder for them to be dethroned exactly?

Remove net neutrality or any semblance of it. ISPs now control who has access to their customers. Big businesses (Netflix, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft) can afford these costs. DuckDuckGo cannot. Wikipedia cannot. Startup #9 cannot.

Yeah, sure, the data maybe still gets through. But now it's getting through at a reduced rate and (potentially) lower quality of service. This prevents new businesses from being able to enter into many markets. Having to establish peering arrangements with many ISPs individually instead of just with the few that they directly use.

Want an alternative to AWS/Azure? Good luck, not only do they need the physical infrastructure for hosting, they now need individual peering arrangements with many ISPs to provide the same QoS.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#72

Post by bkeroack »

I've written it before and I'll write it again (despite the massive downvotes from those who want to silence dissent): Title II regulation of the Internet is not the net neutrality panacea that many people think it is.

That is the same kind of heavy-handed regulation that gave us the sorry copper POTS network we are stuck with today. The free market is the solution, and must be defended against those who want European-style top-down national regulation of what has historically been the most free and vibrant area of economic growth the world has ever seen.

The reason the internet grew into what it is today during the 1990s was precisely because it was so free of regulation and governmental control. If the early attempts[1] to regulate the internet had succeeded, HN probably wouldn't exist and none of us would have jobs right now.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act (just one example from memory--there were several federal attempts to censor and tax the Internet in the 1990s)

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#73

Post by sleepingeights »

jfaucett wrote: post #16

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

Net neutrality simply means that all content is treated equally by the ISPs, backbones, etc...

As for the massive monopolies, that was born of US businesses. US tech monopolies are not original. Monopolies are a traditional form of how the US does its business. Just because the founders and their employees where shorts and shirts instead of suits, it was sold as "radical and new" when it was in fact the same old game.

Now that these major monopolies have established a significant foothold, they find it in their interest to remove net-neutrality to prevent anything disruptive from occurring to their bottom-line.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#74

Post by nannePOPI »

zepto wrote: post #53
liveoneggs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is the greatest barrier-lowering device to starting a business ever conceived. You can, using just your skills and barely any money, compete with google and facebook this afternoon ! (google and amazon will even give you a month to try for free) Your chances at winning are pretty low, but eventually someone will do it.

This makes no sense. Using just your skills and barely any money, you cannot acquire a corpus of decades of historical searches and click data nor can you employ the thousands of human raters, both of which Google uses to make the search algorithm work. Please stop spreading this misleading idea.

And why you should get something without work.

Also nobody forces me or you to use google. It is a free choice, if a better search engine comes up we can use it and nobody forbids you to use other search engine or any site.

With net neutrality you are free. Without net neutrality you are bound to the services of the friends of the ISP. You have cable tv 2.0

no more freedom

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#75

Post by Bartweiss »

aplaice wrote: post #47
scoates wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HTML of the page doesn't contain "888". This makes it impossible for some disabled people to get the number at all. This makes it a practical concern in addition to bad taste.

It's rather sad that none of the images (that I checked — I might be wrong) on blog.mozilla.org seem to have an alttext. (For the record, while I generally dislike gifs, I don't have strong feelings, either way, regarding the animated image here.)

That is unfortunate. I'm not generally opposed to sensible use of images or (occasionally) gifs, but the practice of describing their contents in alttext is excellent - it enables both usability and machine-readability, and I really hope it catches on more widely.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#76

Post by baublet »

jfaucett wrote: post #16

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

Net neutrality has only existed since 2015. It's vital because it halted a bunch of attempts by cable companies to shake down businesses (small and large) and their potential customers for extra money for prime access to pipes. Dismantling net neutrality won't open up new markets. It will make cable companies the gateways to those markets, and essentially cripple innovation the same way cable companies crippled television by having an iron grip on channels, packaging, and all the other nonsense we deal with today in cable TV.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#77

Post by 1_2__3 »

bkeroack wrote: post #72

I've written it before and I'll write it again (despite the massive downvotes from those who want to silence dissent): Title II regulation of the Internet is not the net neutrality panacea that many people think it is. That is the same kind of heavy-handed regulation that gave us the sorry copper POTS network we are stuck with today. The free market is the solution, and must be defended against those who want Europea…

Most of the POTS system is fiber and has been for some time. The "sorry copper POTS network" enabled the future through any number of amazing technologies up to and including SS7 and lots of modern tech. If you're saying NN gets us something as long-lasting, ubiquitous and powerful as the POTS system, sign me up.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#78

Post by Maken »

marknutter wrote: post #63
shallot_router wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. By giving them the power to selectively control what they're sending down the pipe, the monopoly problem will grow far far worse. Net neutrality is not the cause of the problems you listed, and removing it won't solve any of them.

> ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. This is simply not true. With the wide availability of cellular service that provides broadband speeds pretty much everyone in the country has multiple choices of ISP.

How many of those companies actually have their own network and aren't subcontracting from one of the top companies?

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#79

Post by Klathmon »

zepto wrote: post #53
liveoneggs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is the greatest barrier-lowering device to starting a business ever conceived. You can, using just your skills and barely any money, compete with google and facebook this afternoon ! (google and amazon will even give you a month to try for free) Your chances at winning are pretty low, but eventually someone will do it.

This makes no sense. Using just your skills and barely any money, you cannot acquire a corpus of decades of historical searches and click data nor can you employ the thousands of human raters, both of which Google uses to make the search algorithm work. Please stop spreading this misleading idea.

No, but you could create a better note taking app than Google Keep, or a better email client than Gmail, or a better chat platform than Hangouts, etc...

Sure, not everything is that easy, but an open internet does allow for a massive leg up that many other industries could only dream of.

Imagine being able to take on Honda's lawnmower division competitively with less than $100 and a few months!

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#80

Post by Bartweiss »

weberc2 wrote: post #23

I wasn't impressed with this article; it reads like fear mongering. More importantly, I don't think the fix is regulation, I think it's better privacy tech + increased competition via elimination of local monopolies. Do we really want to depend on government to enforce privacy on the Internet?

Privacy aside (it's a different question), I think this undervalues the degree to which we don't have any competition.

Yes, I think monopoly-breaking and increased competition between ISPs is vital. But right now, we don't have that. In fact, we have generally have state/local governments protecting monopolies - there's no chance at a free market when competition is criminalized.

So at the moment, the question is "given these unbreakable monopolies, do we want them behaving well or poorly?" And that doesn't seem hard to answer.

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