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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

#631

Post by martin_ »

kilroy123 wrote: post #514
martin_ wrote: post #360

Disclaimer: Resistbot engineer For the past 7 months a group of volunteers has been building and scaling out Resistbot. Almost 5 million faxes and 1 million e-mails have been sent on behalf more than 1.4 million citizens. Super easy and low friction to have your voice heard - simply text RESIST to 50409, or Resistbot on Messenger, Viber, Telegram, we will find your officials, and help you craft your letter. It's impo…

I think at this point that isn't enough though. We need people writing handwritten letters. People actually showing up to their representative's offices and talking to them directly. People showing up to where their representatives are and protesting against those who are for this. Then, more importantly, actually voting people out of office who support this.

You're absolutely not wrong. Resistbot has a team of volunteers who will write out, and deliver your letters. Of course, this is hard for us to scale to all of our almost 1.5 million users, but as we speak volunteers are targeting states and districts producing thousands of handwritten letters.

We're actively trying to drive for better engagement through targetted alerts regarding town halls in your area or helping you with voting ( https://resistbot.news/find-your-polling-place-620d1ea5faf7 ). Resistbot is more about helping get people engaged through low friction than be the alternative to showing up and having a face to face conversation with your officials.

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

#632

Post by tbabb »

wang_li wrote: post #469
ghewgill wrote: post #89

For those who don't understand why net neutrality is important, it is worthwhile to read about the history of communications (telephone, radio, TV). There is an excellent book by Tim Wu called The Master Switch [0] which investigates the history of communications (with an American focus), describes how each industry start out open to all (farmers using fences for telephone, independent radio broadcasters), and each o…

The problem with the current net neutrality debate is that it seems to stop at layer 3 of the ISO stack. There's no reason why we should have dozens of incompatible video calling apps, why media streaming only works with a particular vendor's application. Not to mention that many of the big players in silicon valley like to jump back and forth over the line of "is a provider" / "is not a provider". Twitter and Google…

It sounds like you are suggesting we make forum moderation illegal.

That's like the difference between saying who's allowed on the sidewalk vs. saying who's allowed in the bar.

EDIT: In case it's not clear, this comment is pro-net neutrality. I am pointing out the absurdity of disallowing site owners from curating their own content.

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

#633

Post by tbabb »

webXL wrote: post #583
tbabb wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising prices for all information: Fine (as long as you're not a monopoly, which unfortunately many ISPs are). Raising prices for some information: Exerting control over what people see and can say; exerting control over the market and preventing fair competition. NOT OK. The whole issue at hand.

> Exerting control over what people see and can say Who has done this? If monopolies can just raise prices, why would they bother only doing it for certain information? Seems like a BIG money loser!

Because differential pricing gives you power over human behavior, allowing you to make even more money. For example, by influencing public discourse and attaining regulatory capture.

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

#634

Post by isostatic »

smnrchrds wrote: post #608
wang_li wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the current net neutrality debate is that it seems to stop at layer 3 of the ISO stack. There's no reason why we should have dozens of incompatible video calling apps, why media streaming only works with a particular vendor's application. Not to mention that many of the big players in silicon valley like to jump back and forth over the line of "is a provider" / "is not a provider". Twitter and Google…

I remember having to explain to my younger sibling that "yes, you can send an email to a Yahoo address from your Gmail account. No, seriously, try it, I am not kidding." They are much younger than I am and they grew up in a world of walled gardens. To them, that's just the way things are and have always been. It's a shame.

When I was a kid, compuserve, aol, even msn later were all walled gardens. It was shocking when compuserve opened up gateways to the fledging web.

The open network existed as "normal" for maybe a decade.

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

#635

Post by isostatic »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #516
dmix wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that ISP shills that make these decisions don't care about public opposition But they do care most about making money from the public and no one has convinced me that filtering internet packages by website makes any technical, marketing, or business model sense at all. This has proven to be incredibly unpopular idea with the public for over a decade as well, whenever it has come up in the press. It w…

The majority of Americans can't choose their broadband internet service provider. I live in NYC and have access to exactly one broadband provider. You don't think they'll come up with any reason they can to make up new service levels and add-ons to pad my bill?

You have no 4G in NY?

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

#636

Post by isostatic »

zaroth wrote: post #579
wang_li wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the current net neutrality debate is that it seems to stop at layer 3 of the ISO stack. There's no reason why we should have dozens of incompatible video calling apps, why media streaming only works with a particular vendor's application. Not to mention that many of the big players in silicon valley like to jump back and forth over the line of "is a provider" / "is not a provider". Twitter and Google…

Wait, what? You think government regulation should dictate how I let competitors access my L7 application servers to host their own content in the name of "neutrality"? I think I must be misunderstanding what you mean. How could a "neutrality" argument possibly apply to my proprietary application stack?

That's fine if you want to operate a proprietary platform, however you should be held liable for what your users do with it.

Facebook etc want the control of a private operator but the protection of a common service, which seems wrong.

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

#637

Post by EnderMB »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #93
EnderMB wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, so I don't know how this works, but would it not be a good idea to fight lobbying with lobbying? Create a lobbying group, funded by a mix of regular people and businesses that push towards the ultimate aim of net neutrality being a part of national and international law. I think a lot of people are sick of having to contact their representatives, or don't do it because it's a burden. I imagine many…

> I think a lot of people are sick of having to contact their representatives, or don't do it because it's a burden. Contacting representatives is not what the lobbyists are selling. Neither is taking them to dinner and buying them a filet mignon. What they're selling over those dinners is future donations to their election campaign and future cushy jobs after they leave the bureaucracy and go into industry. A privat…

This is why I suggested donating to a "lobbying group" that is pro net neutrality, and is run by figure-heads that would always side with net neutrality.

If Reddit is anything to go by, a lot of people are being asked to contact their representatives. For a number of people, it won't be their first time contacting a rep on this very issue, so it's clearly going to be an ongoing battle.

If sponsorship is possible, not just from big companies but smaller ones that ultimately rely on a free internet, I think $20m is just about doable.

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

#638

Post by jhasse »

dragonwriter wrote: post #490
sbov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Netflix doesn't care about net neutrality anymore - Reed Hastings claims they are now big and popular enough for it not to matter for them: https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-netflix-reed-hastin...

> Except Netflix doesn't care about net neutrality anymore Yes, they do: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/933042368156123136

That's just a tweet.

On the other hand they partnered with Telekom (most popular ISP in Germany) for a service called "StreamOn". With that you can stream Netflix (and other partnered streaming sites) without affecting your monthly data cap.

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

#639

Post by roryisok »

milankragujevic wrote: post #630
roryisok wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What magical country are you from? I'm going to guess at somewhere in Northern Europe?

It's Eastern Europe, Serbia to be precise. You can get unlimited high speed 4G for $30/mo without a contract. Vip mobile.

Nice.

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

#640

Post by ngcazz »

bluetidepro wrote: post #159

What I don't fully understand is why isn't larger tech companies like Facebook, Netflix, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. making a big fuss about this on their sites to warn their users and help fight against it? Are they not as worried about this? Does it actual benefit them in some ways cause they can box out smaller competition since they can afford to pay ISP's or something? For example, if Facebook saw this as a re…

I think it's clear as water those companies you refer to stand to gain from "free and open internet" (for getting ransacked by businesses) because they're incumbents.
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