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Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

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Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#21

Post by topspin »

jcadam wrote: post #17
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, that is exactly what they'll end up doing. Hope you have alternatives.

AT&T Uverse has instituted a 1TB monthly cap on residential internet service. Unless you also buy TV service, in which case it's unlimited. Clearly they're targeting customers who want to stream all of their TV via sling etc. with this. Now, the AT&T small business-class internet (which I've just recently switched to) is still unlimited, though it does cost more.

"AT&T small business-class internet"

Charter/Spectrum has a similar "business" class service. Yes, it costs more. I get a lower contention ratio, no caps and fast state-side customer service. My complaints are poor upstream speed and frequent, brief, early morning outages when they service the network.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#22

Post by matt4077 »

colanderman wrote: post #5
byuu wrote: post #3

I'm all for everyone commenting so at least it's well known how far this FCC is going against public opinion, and encourage everyone to make their voices heard. But, and I hate to be the cynic here, does anyone really believe that even if all 323 million Americans commented in opposition to killing net neutrality, that Ajit Pai would relent? It's all but guaranteed he's going to do this. The only question is when, no…

What are the checks and balances here? He's not an elected official (so he can't be voted out), and he knows his time is up as soon as the executive branch turns blue again. So of course he will do his best to please the ISPs in whose coddling arms he will find refuge after his tenure. Best I can think of is Congress passing a law to enforce net neutrality.

It's the same as for any government employee. First, obviously, the law. It's not actually within his power to just write something down and sign it to make it the law of the land. There's a process that has to be followed, of which the comment period is but one step.

Regulatory decisions are also required to, in general terms, make sense and be fair. The new EPA head is currently coming to the realisation that there are limits to his power, especially when he's trying to change rules which had just recently been created: quickly flip-flopping on regulatory issues is an open invitation to be sued by, for example, companies that have based decisions on the assumption of regulatory stability. It's also really hard to argue convincingly to abolish a rule, when the almost unchanged group of people has just made the convincing case for that rule a year ago.

But beyond those squabbles, he is accountable to the people who hire and fire people in his position: the President and Congress. The assumption being that people realise it is the Republican Party who deserves the blame for this disaster of an idea.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#23

Post by matt4077 »

_5ysi wrote: post #20
shuntress wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net Neutrality is the idea that ISP cannot target only specific addresses/services when they throttle your connection.

This idea is the problem with net neutrality. The reason people support net neutrality is that ISPs are monopolies even more so than Google, Facebook, etc and we understand that monopolies are unfair, corrupt, renters, etc. Therefore it easy to be blinded into supporting rules that purport to punish ISPs, even if the rule itself is illogical and loaded for unintended consequences. Reasonable people can oppose Net Neu…

> [..] economic illogicality of an enterprise not being allowed to negotiate prices with its customers.

See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs don't want to argue prices with their customers. They want to extort businesses that have never decided to be their customers.

And you're assuming peoples' motives in the face of these people telling you that you're wrong: I actually don't have grudge with my local ISP. What is scaring me shitless is a future where the internet is just Cable TV, and where the chance to have an idea and get it out there essentially unhindered is dead, because selling your fun little game or whatever would require you to sign agreements with every single ISP in every single market that you want to target.

This isn't about google. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are large enough that throttling them or blocking them would lead to a customer revolt. The large fish will be the last to ever pay.

This is about the business you and I don't yet even know about, because it doesn't exist, or because it's small. No customer will ever complain if their ISP blocks your new idea, because they will never know about it.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#24

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

I soured up on Net Neutrality after seeking what YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit did to silence voices that they don't like on their platforms.

How does net neutrality matter if what travels on a perfectly neutral net is controlled anyway, actually controlled much more effectively, by a very few with agenda that goes far beyond just greed for money?

"Don't open and judge my TCP/IP packets. But, I will open and judge your video uploads all day, every day." - YouTube

How is that fair?

No, thank you. I refuse to be fodder for something, only to be surrendered at a later point in the fight for fairness.

"Bernie" taught me that lesson. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#25

Post by maxxxxx »

aphextron wrote: post #19
byuu wrote: post #3

I'm all for everyone commenting so at least it's well known how far this FCC is going against public opinion, and encourage everyone to make their voices heard. But, and I hate to be the cynic here, does anyone really believe that even if all 323 million Americans commented in opposition to killing net neutrality, that Ajit Pai would relent? It's all but guaranteed he's going to do this. The only question is when, no…

This is just a microcosm of the greater political climate created in the US over the past 40 or so years. Business interests completely control every single legislative decision made. We're all just along for the ride now.

With the importance of lobbying the people who will benefit financially from legislation will be able to afford most lobbying and ultimately almost always get their way. That's a real problem.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#26

Post by etplayer »

aphextron wrote: post #19
byuu wrote: post #3

I'm all for everyone commenting so at least it's well known how far this FCC is going against public opinion, and encourage everyone to make their voices heard. But, and I hate to be the cynic here, does anyone really believe that even if all 323 million Americans commented in opposition to killing net neutrality, that Ajit Pai would relent? It's all but guaranteed he's going to do this. The only question is when, no…

This is just a microcosm of the greater political climate created in the US over the past 40 or so years. Business interests completely control every single legislative decision made. We're all just along for the ride now.

There's an interesting essay about democracy in America (well, there are hundreds if not thousands probably) but what's unique is that it's a criticism levelled against the idea of democratic pluralism, and from where it emerges - the 'tolerance' of the democracy, the idea that rather than the individual action expounded by the classical liberals (for all their faults) there is now a system in which representative voices are heard - whether those are religious or ethno-groups or worker groups or business groups. The key part, though, is that the group is recognised as legitimate by the others and only then will it be tolerated.

The idea of this tolerance is a kind of peaceful existence, which, the author argues, is inadequate for democracy but makes us feel good.

The essay is "Beyond Tolerance" by Robert Wolff, and it's part of a three essay book called Critique of Pure Tolerance, which as the name may not suggest to the reader is written from a strongly left-wing point of view (it even contains an essay by Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse!). You can read the PDF of it here, I hope others are as enlightened by it as I was: https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#27

Post by matt4077 »

anotherbrownguy wrote: post #16
shuntress wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net Neutrality is the idea that ISP cannot target only specific addresses/services when they throttle your connection.

I know what Google and Netflix want to tell you what it is but I also know what it actually is ( https://www.fcc.gov/document/restoring-internet-freedom-noti... ).

That's actually a fun read. Just loom at this section where they are making an absurd logical Yoga move to get ISPs classified as "information providers" and not a "telecommunication provider":

    In contrast, Internet service providers do 
    not appear to offer “telecommunications,” 
    i.e., “the transmission, between or among 
    points specified by the user, of information
    of the user’s choosing, without change in the 
    form or content of the information as sent 
    and received,” to their users. 

    For one, broadband Internet users do not 
    typically specify the “points” between and 
    among which information is sent online. 
    Instead, routing decisions are based on 
    the architecture of the network, not on 
    consumers’ instructions, and consumers 
    are often unaware of where online content 
    is stored.
So instead they're classifying ISPs as "content providers", when any plain reading of the law can only result in the conclusion that a "content provider" is supposed to be a third party such as a newspaper's website or HN.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#28

Post by devopsproject »

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #24

I soured up on Net Neutrality after seeking what YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit did to silence voices that they don't like on their platforms. How does net neutrality matter if what travels on a perfectly neutral net is controlled anyway, actually controlled much more effectively, by a very few with agenda that goes far beyond just greed for money? "Don't open and judge my TCP/IP packets. But, I will open and judge…

net neutrality ensures you can get to youtube\twitter\reddit\facebook without the ISP charging you more or throttling sites. It has nothing to to with free speech or altering the policies of individual sites.

Think of it like water. Your water company doesn't care if you are flushing the toilet or taking a shower. They just give you water and charge a rate. The internet works this way now and we want to keep it that way.

Opposing net nutrality means you will end up with this: http://www.wordstream.com/images/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-...

They are going to create a "slow lane" and charge you more to use it.

Re: Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

#29

Post by bvinc »

cjslep wrote: post #9
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #4

It's unfair to ISPs (some of it is their own doing like introducing "unlimited data" purely based on the assumption that most users wouldn't use their data at the same time, which companies like Google and Netflix capitalized on by building high bandwidth services on top of it) but since Google and Netflix are capable of manipulating consent of internet users and will not let FCC rollback "net neutrality", ISPs will…

Maybe running with net neutrality should be the next ISP innovation? It's clear that there's enough consumer market demand that they could make money from it, I don't understand where the ISP's tunnel vision of "only way to innovate is if net neutrality is killed" comes from.

Consumer demand is not a factor. ISPs in the US have a monopoly over areas and can effectively prevent new competitors from coming in. There is no innovation. The only plan is to extract the most amount of money from customers while spending the least amount of money to maintain the system. Killing net neutrality allows them to extract even more money from both sides: customers and content providers.
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