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Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

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Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#141

Post by kelnos »

neuterlize2 wrote: post #118
19guid wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes sense because retail ISPs operate in a two-sided market. Comcast provides access to Internet services, which customers want and are willing to pay for. Similarly, Comcast provides access to customers, which the Internet companies who provide those services (and associated CDNs and transit providers) want and are willing to pay for. I don't think there's anything especially wrong with this business mo…

> I think it makes sense because retail ISPs operate in a two-sided market. Comcast provides access to Internet services, which customers want and are willing to pay for. Yes, but this is where your analysis breaks down: it's not a free market. The customers are a captive market. > Similarly, Comcast provides access to customers, which the Internet companies who provide those services (and associated CDNs and transit…

> > It's similar to how a newspaper charges both readers and advertisers for access.

> This is just a bad analogy, again.

Not to mention a poor choice of industry to use for comparison: it's not like the newspaper business is doing all that well these days.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#142

Post by nnneuter »

adventured wrote: post #20
_m8fo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that without net neutrality, internet providers could provide substantially cheaper internet services -- e.g. just Facebook for $1 a month. However that breaks down once you consider the fact that it's not practical at all. Not to mention that providers would have no reason to offer such cheap offerings, either.

> Not to mention that providers would have no reason to offer such cheap offerings, either. Sure they might. Large companies with deep pockets subsidize the premise to their own benefit (whatever that happens to be). In your example, let's say instead it's $3 per month for just Facebook services (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc). Comcast partners with Facebook on the effort, in which Facebook pays a few dollars per mont…

A subsidized Internet connection is just wishful thinking.

Online services (Google, Facebook, ...) make just a few bucks per user. This is peanuts compared to what broadband costs. The fixed costs alone are tens of dollars per month.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#143

Post by kelnos »

19guid wrote: post #117
neuterlize2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect. Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP. > For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with ma…

> Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP. Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality. As I said in another comment, even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. > This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix tra…

> Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality.

> If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper.

> My solution is to increase competition, actually.

> Competition will spring up overnight.

You keep saying this, but I don't think you understand:

1) That businesses like this do not spring up overnight, even in the figurative sense.

2) The incumbent ISPs lobby to reduce competition (often getting laws on the books to make it illegal for municipalities to offer internet access), and are largely very successful at it.

3) Rural areas basically get fucked, because there won't be enough money in new competition.

4) In the meantime, we have nothing to protect customers. Let's say you're right, and we can somehow increase competition. No, it's not going to happen overnight. What's going to protect customers in the meantime, after current net neutrality regulation is rolled back? Nothing. Removing regulation that has been obsoleted by other measures is fine and the right thing to do, but there's nothing to replace it right now that will have the same effect.

> For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers.

So why is this kind of "anti-free-market" regulation ok, while net neutrality rules aren't? (Also, we tried this. Most smaller players that took advantage of it failed because, while the Comcasts of the US were required to _provide_ access, there wasn't really a way to require that they provide it easily, or provide good service and reliability with it. And I believe this ended up getting repealed due to... you guessed it, lobbying efforts from the incumbents.)

I'm just really getting tired of all this "increase competition" rhetoric coming from people who seem to think they live in a fantasy world where it's easy, or even possible, to get these sorts of things done, especially in the current political climate.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#145

Post by folknor »

narrator wrote: post #95

China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these…

> It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization.

I've never managed to connect anti-globalization with no net neutrality.

Please explain how you made that connection.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#146

Post by zouhair »

BoorishBears wrote: post #107
memeCrasher wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just bribe people in the government and have them appoint one of your lawyers to the governing body meant to regulate you. Why care how egregious your actions are when the government listens to you and your bags of money, and not the people you're fucking over?

This is pretty much circular at this point. I’d say the risk/reward (no matter how much money can divert risk) is not great enough or we’d have already seen this happen pre-Open Internet

Ajit is literally an agent of the industry that is changing the rules to profit said industry and when it is done he will quit and move back to the private sector.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#147

Post by Dylan16807 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #70
veidr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Targeted policy? Hmm, good idea. Let's see... maybe we could have a policy something like If you are one of the few companies providing Internet service, and are protected by various laws and regulations that limit who may provide such service to end users, then you must not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. H…

I don't have a problem with zero rating, the policy you describe prohibits it. I identify with the fundamental concept that "it's all just bits streaming" and that it could "stifle competition". But to me both are an oversimplification. "It's all just bits" except sometimes it's 100 megabytes of video a second and sometimes it's a 100kb HN post and delivering those things satisfactorily does not take the same levels…

> "It's all just bits" except sometimes it's 100 megabytes of video a second and sometimes it's a 100kb HN post and delivering those things satisfactorily does not take the same levels of resources.

Don't strawman. "It's all just bits" is talking about the resources needed per bit.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#148

Post by erk__ »

narrator wrote: post #95

China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these…

That is not a question of net neutrality, every contry have blocked websites, for some reason or another.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#149

Post by nnneuter »

folknor wrote: post #145
narrator wrote: post #95

China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these…

> It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization. I've never managed to connect anti-globalization with no net neutrality. Please explain how you made that connection.

With no NN, you need to make deals with every ISP for your online services. It is only cost effective to do such deals in your main markets. Thus we Balkanize the Internet.
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