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Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

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Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#201

Post by wmf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #42
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #12

Thanks in part to net neutrality, the open internet has grown to become an unrivaled source of choice, competition, innovation, free expression, and opportunity. Unless my history is wrong, and please correct me if that is the case, until the Title II decision in 2015, there were no regulations preventing an ISP from discriminating network traffic. So to say that Net Neutrality has been key to an open internet from 1…

Net neutrality regulations were adopted to protect (and in some degree restore) the net neutrality condition ; the internet was largely neutral from its inception; though by the early 00s threats to neutrality in practice were becoming clear, and the FCC began discussion the issue, adopting open internet principles that it first attempted to promote via case-by-case action (which was limited by the courts), then Titl…

One thing I've wondered is why ISPs turned evil after so many years of voluntary net neutrality.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#202

Post by mattferderer »

lend000 wrote: post #138
mabbo wrote: post #19

If Google were actually serious about Net Neutrality, they would use their insane market power to protect it. How? Well, a simple statement saying "any ISP who abuses net neutrality will have their customers cut off from Google products". No Google search, no YouTube, no Gmail. Have those requests instead redirect to a website telling the customer what their ISP is doing, why Google won't work with them, and how to c…

No ISP is abusing net neutrality yet (to my knowledge), so they haven't had the opportunity. Also, as others have said, that worsens the problem and makes the Internet less neutral.

This explains net neutrality really well. https://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-vs-netflix-is-this-really-...

It discusses the use of faster lanes that only companies with money would have access to. At first this seems fair that companies should be able to purchase better technology to improve their speed. The question then becomes what happens to traffic on the slower lanes? I could argue this both ways. At the end of the day, the history of most ISP companies makes me not trust them.

Here's an article about Comcast trying to find loop holes https://www.wired.com/2015/11/comcast-may-have-found-a-major...

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#203

Post by komali2 »

zabana wrote: post #191
komali2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea because I read too much cyberpunk. Why doesn't Twitter flex its muscle and cause a national crisis by tweeting "watch out China, nukes are coming" from Donald Trump's Twitter? That ruins trust in the platform, but what if they just banned the US president's account for TOS or something? Enormous amount of power. What if Musk's first ship to Mars had a hidden Railgun on it? "Anybody else that wants to…

> I love this idea because I read too much cyberpunk. Can you recommend some novels ? (I'm also a cyberpunk nerd) Thanks in advance

+1 to jacquesm's suggestion, as well as pretty much the entirety of Neal Stephenson's library of work. Diamond Age and Anathem in particular.

For me there's a lot of crossover between Cyberpunk/scifi, the only difference being time period, so I'd throw in the Culture series and the Revelation Space series.

The Stars my Destination (grunge as fuck)

Neuromancer, though I'm sure you've already read it.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#205

Post by toomanybeersies »

tyrrvk wrote: post #180

I see a lot of shills posting their anti-Network Neutrality stuff here, so I wanted to chime in reminding folks of a few things: Telco's were forced at one point to share phone lines. Remember all those DSL startups? Remember speakeasy? This was called local loop unbundling. What did the Telco's do? everything possible to break or interfere with these startup service provides. The telco's felt that it was "their line…

New Zealand too. The state of broadband was abysmal, since Telecom had a monopoly on the lines, so you'd pay a small fortune, and get a tiny (like 5 GB, small even for 2007) data cap. After the unbundling, we had a bunch of competition pop up and drive the prices down, and data caps up (these days, data caps are very uncommon, the opposite direction the USA is going).

These days, we've gone one step further, and the majority of lines are owned by wholesalers, who don't deal directly with the consumer.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#206

Post by drcube »

ucaetano wrote: post #151
mabbo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this proposal is antithetical to the concept of network neutrality Exactly the point I'm trying to make. If Google turns around and says "Fine, you don't like net neutrality? Let me show you how this works both ways". The ISPs do not make the product, they sell the access to the product. If the product goes away, then they aren't selling anything at all- and their customers will stop paying them.

You talk like customers actually have a choice in ISP...

There's always a choice. Suppose your ISP started charging you $10,000 per month for the service you have now? Would you pay it? Could you? No, you'd probably just go without home service, or rely on your cellular data plan, or get dialup, or just take an internet sabbatical until the ISP cleaned up their act.

For some people, their tolerance for bullshit is less than others. For those people, perhaps charging a dollar extra for YouTube access is enough. It only takes a fairly small percentage of customers to put a lot of pressure on service providers. Monopoly or not.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#207

Post by pelbred »

nickysielicki wrote: post #134

(This comment is a little bit disorganized, so I apologize for that.) Far too many people don't seem to understand the arguments against net neutrality as it has been proposed... There's been much made about the "astroturfing" and automated comments on the FCC website that go against net neutrality-- but what about the reverse? John Oliver doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Reddit and HN provide warped pe…

> My grandmother pays $30/mo for internet access that she barely uses, and I don't think it's right to enshrine into law that Comcast can't offer her a plan where she pays $5/mo instead for limited access to the few sites she uses.

ISPs are too greedy for that nonsense. You're more likely to see $30 becoming the base price, and $50 is what it costs to access more content. Price shouldn't be based on what sites you like to visit. Under the title 2 designation, the internet is treated as a utility, so ISPs can't charge consumers based on how they use the internet, akin to how your water company can't charge you a premium if you decide to drink the water instead of using it to water your lawn. Abolishing net neutrality would allow for just that.

> As a bandwidth-hogging internet user, a lack of net neutrality will probably mean that I will pay more.

Why? ISPs already have data caps to charge customers more. Data caps are another story altogether... The cost of increasing broadband capacity has declined much faster than the increase in data traffic. For that reason alone Sonic doesn't impose data caps. If an ISP as big as Comcast says data caps are because heavy users are costing them more money, or saturating their network, it's a bunch of bullshit. One of the big reasons some ISPs have data caps is to keep customers from cord cutting cable TV. AT&T owns DirectTV, Comcast is a huge cable TV provider, they don't want customers relying solely on services like Netflix. If they can get customers to pay for both internet and TV, they will.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#208

Post by komali2 »

imcrs wrote: post #184
komali2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly my point - the US government has the kinds of enforcement power that deals with sending in troops to kick down doors and lock people in steel cages. Google has the kind of power that staves off that from even happening in the first place. The US government isn't a singular entity, it is comprised of several hundred individually powerful people. Three branches, plus several military branches, each w…

After issuing their threat, and getting "no" back, they would say -- "We do not negotiate with terrorists" and go in with the guns. Collateral damage be damned. That's how wars happen, and why it's a bad idea to make ultimatums to the US government.

Again, I'm not suggesting Google issues a public statement before a congressional panel - "do the thing we want, US government, or we'll get ya!" I'm saying they could be much more insidious with the kind of power they have.

Like the King's head Surgeon - he could never take on the King in hand to hand combat, but he can certainly poison him slowly, over time and invisibly, in return for more consolidated power or money or some other such thing from the King's son.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#209

Post by wmf »

thehardsphere wrote: post #132
EdSharkey wrote: post #87

I don't understand the logic of ISP's throttling certain sites based on the traffic to those sites. As a consumer on ISP's last mile lines, I make a series of TCP requests and I expect responses. Fill my pipes with those responses as best you can and charge me for the privilege. If you're not making enough money on that, charge me more for the bandwidth. Market-wise, why would an ISP anything else than fill my pipe w…

You're correct to ask these questions. The truth is that the entire motivation behind Net Neutrality is predicated on hypothetical behavior by an ISP that nobody has ever actually observed in reality for the exact reasons you describe.

Hypothetical? https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... (and a rebuttal: https://hightechforum.org/fact-checking-net-neutrality-viola... )

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#210

Post by shmerl »

abtinf wrote: post #199
tyrrvk wrote: post #180

I see a lot of shills posting their anti-Network Neutrality stuff here, so I wanted to chime in reminding folks of a few things: Telco's were forced at one point to share phone lines. Remember all those DSL startups? Remember speakeasy? This was called local loop unbundling. What did the Telco's do? everything possible to break or interfere with these startup service provides. The telco's felt that it was "their line…

This is a complex issue with many possible approaches. Calling those who disagree with you "shills" is intellectually dishonest and wrong.

Those who support monopolies can only be shills. There are no "approaches" here. Other option can be someone severely misinformed, which also can't be called an approach.
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