101–110 of 452 posts
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?
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> not the content they want This is FUD. Any ISP that decided to break the internet is going to fail. All they'd do is offer other services as alternatives to the big dollar ones like YouTube. A last mile ISP does two core things. It arbitrages bandwidth for residential usage patterns and it deals with the last mile communications link. Net Neutrality forces a very specific arbitrage strategy on ISPs that severely li…
>All they'd do is offer other services as alternatives to the big dollar ones like YouTube. And they'd put data caps on competiting services, while allowing unlimited streaming of their own (we've already seen them do this). In markets with 1 or 2 viable ISPs, what is your solution?
I watch about 1 hour of Youtube per month and about 5 hours of Netflix. Why should I subsidize people who watch 5 hours each day?
Let's not pretend bandwidth is not a scarce resource. ISPs have to pay for upstream bandwidth. If they can affordably colocate systems to serve specific content at a fraction of the cost by eliminating upstream costs, why shouldn't they?
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You don't understand why a talking point that's been attacked and discredited every single time it's been brought up, every single time net neutrality is rearing its head is downvoted? Why don't you just honestly say: "stop downvoting" instead of feigning this absurd obtuseness. There were 7 top level replies to the comment before you came along, hardly lacking discussion even with the downvotes.
> a talking point It's a question. There isn't any statements or manipulation in it. > Why don't you just honestly say: "stop downvoting" I effectively did. I said it "shouldn't be downvoted" > There were 7 top level replies to the comment before you came along, hardly lacking discussion even with the downvotes. That's my point. Hopefully others get to read those comments if this question isn't already pinned to the…
You missed this part: "without feigning this absurd obtuseness".
And for the record I'm addressing the dopey false concern, not your stance on net neutrality.
Have an honest day.
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I stopped reading after your analogy to a highway. In a highway, slow users affect everyone and cause congestion. In a data pipeline, that is not the case. Most real world analogies for the internet are contrived and do more harm than good. We need to understand this technology is unlike anything we have had before, and its closest cousin is communications. And we have already qualified our communications pipelines a…
> In a data pipeline, that is not the case. You misunderstand my point or you misunderstand QoS. The capacity of a data pipeline can be significantly increased by QoS. Not its absolute, theoretical maximum, but its ability to achieve high throughput amid disparate traffic types. Ultimately it's all buffers and queues. > And we have already qualified our communications pipelines as neutral infrastructure Right, but PO…
As for bandwidth allocation, that is an entirely other issue that has nothing to do with latency or congestion. You pay for the bandwidth tier you can afford, as an end-user. And business pay proportionate to the amount of bandwidth they require. This need tends to scale directly with customer load, so this arrangement is sustainable and scalable. ISPs can also profitably scale as they get more premium-tier users.
The issue is that business would now have to pay premiums in order to offer premium services. This further enhances existing monopolies and prohibits fair competition. It also reinforces the idea of, "We will treat you better if you have more money" which is a classist approach that has no basis.
Not to mention the fact that most of our leading ISPs are directly tied to many media platforms, and the ones that aren't wish they were. The drawbacks are so plainly obvious that it's hard not to suspect that anyone who doesn't openly admit a nascent understanding of the issue around "net neutrality" is following a playbook given to them by employers.
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> 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) Many years ago your list wouldn't have included facebook, it would have included myspace. If FB was required to make a deal with every ISP in the US, do you think they would have been able to grow? Ditto for Google and Amazon. > 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. I do…
" If FB was required to make a deal with every ISP in the US, do you think they would have been able to grow" It would be much more difficult obviously. But it would also have been much more difficult for myspace in the first place and if they got too big the the gov't could easily split them up. There might be many such companies providing facebook-like services in such a scenario. Maybe not, but its not something I…
How do you compete against competing services owned by ISPs?
If your alternative is that ISP are prohibited from owning content producers, you're the only one pushing that plan.
The only serious alternative being offered is that the invisible hand will deal with all the problems.
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…
I find it hilarious that so many people have forgotten why there is such good access to internet in this country in the first place. The US government made a deal with the devil (the telecoms) to run copper to every back assward town and county across the heartland. This has proved to be an awful deal, however, there would be no internet outside of the metro areas if not for the big scary government.
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> 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?
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…
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.
So, net neutrality is an attempt to fix regulation problem with more regulations. Which obviously cannot work for long, they are too big and have too much influence to push regulations that benefit them. At some point this could cause enough problems to become a political thing and new people in power would be forced to actually take action against them.
Someone whom has read and UNDERSTANDS the Net Neutrality legislation AND code of regulation, please comment. If you have only stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, please restrain yourself :-) Having been a user of the Internet prior to the birth of the HTTP standard, I find these arguments spurious, straw men, and red herrings. But, I am open (probably more open, than my progressive peers) to being better informed. So pl…
You can publish your blog all you like, but you need people to be able to route to it and have bandwidth to download from your server. If you don't have an agreement with every ISP (not just the ones you already pay access to) then they could simply say, no sorry we're not going to route to your content or say "OK, we'' route to your content but you get 2kbps on our network".
> Why wouldn't other Internet services step into the void, to fulfill a demand? Perfect example: As in China, the Great Firewall has caused a boom in VPN / tunneling technology, to fulfill a consumer demand for government-free access to information.
Many ISPs have total monopolies enforced by law in the US. You cannot create a competing ISP.
> Any honest person would refute the assertion that "investment in innovation would dry up." There will always be wild-cat investors seeking huge multiple returns and willing to dump stupid cash on a bunch of white dudes in hoodies.
To get funding you need users, if users can't access your site to begin with you don't get any users.
> I do, however, think that revenue-sharing concepts that include the transmission companies, modeled after the cable monopolies of olde (cable cutting is killing that model) could be a suitable alternative to todays two-tier model (transmission vs. content).
These already exist, these are the companies you peer with.
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> 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 competitive are they with regard to latency, speed and pricing?