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FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#321

Post by jquery »

cat199 wrote: post #298
jquery wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t call people shills on HN. That’s very rude. Selective throttling has worked great to make my t-mobile mobile data usage seamlessly switch between email, websites, and video on an “unlimited” plan. They even doe sample my videos to 480p to save bandwidth unless I vpn. So there’s one non-trolly example of innovation that has made my life better that net neutrality would prevent. I do not buy the doomsday s…

> We started with AOL internet and moved to a freer internet over time, all without net neutrality. no, we started with 'the real internet' and then AOL showed up.

No true Scotsman. Before AOL we had Usenet with its own issues. AOL helped bring the internet to the masses.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#322

Post by pwagland »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

Assume that this is the case… then just do the same as they already do in Australia, and put caps on how much you can download. I assume that you are totally cool with that, and indeed they already do this with a lot of mobile plans. Then Granny, who obviously doesn't watch Netflix, can get a cheap very limited plan.

The issue here is that what comcast really want, is to sell Granny a cheap plan, and sell Netflix a plan, and google, and Apple (that app store and updates you know). Oh but wait, Netflix you are already paying a bunch to throw data on the net by the bucket? That doesn't matter… you have your last mile, and you also need to pay for everyone else's last mile as well. Oh, and Google, you also need to pay for everyone's last mile as well. It's just like a Winfrey episode: You can pay! you can pay! You can all pay!!

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#323

Post by wishinghand »

ams6110 wrote: post #290
raarts wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your ISP owns you. They will charge YouTube and Amazon as well. You'll end up paying $120/Mo for your connection again.

I won't, because it's not worth that to me. I pay nearly $100/mo now and the value is already borderline at that price. I guess others might feel it's worth more or that they have no choice.

Right, but you're not seeing that everything else will most likely get higher charges. So you'll stop paying for Netflix and whatever else and they may or may not survive with others making that decision. Amazon will because it has all of these other revenue streams, but its AWS offerings will probably rise in price.

Free alternatives, like being able to stream Youtube, could be in danger of fees too. Google might have some sort of bargain with the government to keep it charge-free (like selling more data on its users). But any other video provider without Google's deep pockets will be in trouble, like Vimeo, Twitch, VHX, or some other company that hasn't even started up yet but might not be able to afford the double-dip.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#324

Post by swozey »

orthecreedence wrote: post #254
swozey wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess, you live in some mecca of ISP options like the Valley? Because the rest of us don't. I live in a major tech city of 1mil+ pop, to the point that a quarter of the city has Google Fiber, and the only ISP options my neighborhood has (12 miles from downtown and in a vastly tech area) is 1 Cable provider, 1 DSL provider, and Directv. That means my speed options are 300mbps, 3, or 1.5 with 400ms latency. Such…

> live in some mecca of ISP options like the Valley Oh man, I wish. I live in the heart of SF and the only option I have is Comcast. I suppose I could try Monkeybrains, but I'd have to get landlord approval and that may be an issue. The point is, in the US, even in the tech capital of the world, we are still encumbered by private ownership of internet infrastructure. It's fucking pathetic. To be clear, I'm a supporte…

Yeah. It's an absolute slap in the face to be told "Just pick another provider, you have 2 alternatives!" when those alternatives are 10x slower and my main source is already below the fastest in the city (gig). It's like telling me to turn in my cell phone for a rotary land line or to just suck it up.

Internet should've been made a utility a decade ago.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#325

Post by tmaly »

If the ISPs go that route, they are creating a massive amount of regulatory debt in the same sense as programmers create technical debt. When a different party takes over the Whitehouse, they will be scrambling to manage all this regulatory debt.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#326

Post by vaishaksuresh »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

I don't get what you're saying. How am I making Granny pay more? There are bandwidth caps and data usage caps, I pay for what I use. If I'm paying less than the cost of the resources I'm using, charge me more. Why does Granny or Netflix have to pay comcast for what I do on the internet?

My electricity provider does not charge differently for setting up and maintaining the connection based on what I do with the electricity, they just charge me for what I use. Why should an ISP be treated differently?

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#327

Post by acdha »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

That's like saying UPS should be able to charge Amazon more per-package because they ship a lot of packages rather than, say, changing their per-package or bulk discount rates.

Nobody is saying that ISPs cannot charge for usage, only that they shouldn't be allowed to do so in a discriminatory manner: if, say, they wanted to set a cap or QoS shares they should be able to do that as long as it's applied to everyone rather than just the companies which don't / can't pay the danegeld.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#328

Post by Sacho »

jandrese wrote: post #211
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #102

I feel like the making the examples about Netflix/Google misses the point. This is way more dangerous than that - without Net Neutrality rules there's nothing to legally stop an ISP from "prioritizing" and "deprioritizing" any number of political and social sites. Digital fundraising for politicians is a very real and active thing. Would they be upset with if their side was suddenly hit with a 30s / page load penalty…

It's not hard to imagine 15 years ago Google is a new player on the scene but has a lot of trouble getting traction because their links are being constantly saturated and they have no money to pay the ISP ransoms to provide decent service. We could still be using Altavista today.

You mean 15 years ago when NN didn't exist? Or 10 years ago? Or 5 years ago? Or 3 years ago? How did Google/Facebook/Netflix even make it when ISPs had all the way up to 2015 to ransom them?

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#329

Post by jermaustin1 »

The worst part of this is that the major ISPs are also cable companies, and every cable company is anti cord-cutting. With this, they can now shape your bandwidth to degrade netflix and hulu and slingbox to the point that cord cutting is impossible.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#330

Post by 0xfeba »

mtgx wrote: post #36
cwyers wrote: post #22

I don't know, the Internet got on fine without those rules for a lot longer than we've had those rules, I feel like the gloom-and-doom over this is highly overstated.

It's not overrated. Comcast and Verizon were already caught drastically slowing down Netflix and Youtube the last time around, before the net neutrality rules passed, until those companies "paid up". Netflix and Youtube are probably safe from such actions now, but what about the much smaller services that try to compete with Youtube or Netflix, or podcast platforms, and so on? Also this recently happened in Portugal,…

That image is from a cell data provider, for paying a monthly fee for zero-rating those specific services. Not quite the same.
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