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Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

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Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#191

Post by Shivetya »

caburlingame wrote: post #6

Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.

it depends on what we mean about "net neutrality". Too many just assume what it means and does. considering how well we did before the agency changed the rules in 2014 I fail to see how it was all going to implode.

Oh, forgot about the big money players who want to exploit it for their own purposes and thus portray anything which interferes with it as end of the world; namely google and similar service providers. throw in big money investors like Soros and the Knight group and you can see this is being played just like politics, people putting their money where the biggest return is. The biggest return is having super large companies free reign to use the net how they want regardless how it impacts smaller providers and smaller ISPs.

Which side was I on? Can you tell? That is the issue. People are assuming too much.

oh, since 2014 broad band deployment has dropped. odd how that works.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#192

Post by bko »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #42
caburlingame wrote: post #6

Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.

There really isn't a sound argument against net neutrality. Many do argue that the FCC shouldn't have the authority to regulate the internet, and often argue that idea to subtly change the subject. If someone argues to abolish something, they should either argue in favor of a replacement, or argue that that thing should not exist at all. Unfortunately, I haven't heard even a flawed version of either argument. Another…

There are arguments against net neutrality. Check out the NoNetNeutrality subreddit if you're curious [0].

The most convincing argument IMO is that it hurts people's internet access by sniffling innovation. It happened in India when Facebook tried to provide free "basic internet" access to poor rural Indians [1]. It was blocked on the ground of net neutrality since although it would provide access to very useful sites (weather, news, wikipedia, and yes, facebook), it was a sort of walled garden. Considering the alternative of no internet access or limited internet access, I think most people would agree that basic internet could have been a life saver to these people.

The other strong argument against net neutrality is that it's a trojan horse for internet regulation. When you have a legal framework for a regulatory body to tell and ISP you have to provide equal aaccess to "legitimate" content, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to consider that the natural extension of this is to tell the ISP they must block all "illegitimate" content

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoNetNeutrality/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#193

Post by pjc50 »

folknor wrote: post #185
nnneuter wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was not making myself clear; the top comment seems to imply that there's some sort of natural connection between anti-globalism (in the popular sense of the term) and a rejection of net neutrality laws. I am a fierce proponent of net neutrality, and I don't understand how you can reasonably conclude that I must therefore be pro-globalism. Or how you can say that someone who is anti-globalist is probably also anti n…

Neutral networks converge on natural monopolies, globally. So a neutral net ends up with Facebook and Google "on top" in every country. This is globalisation in the Naomi Klein sense: the same brands dominating every market.

Of course, a non-neutral net ends up with the ISPs as natural monopolies instead, but these are local and a lot closer to the state in most places.

How well this is linked to populist anti-globalism is not clear. The issue is obscured in America because the big players are American, but I think it plays better in Europe where privacy concerns about exporting data matter.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#194

Post by zaarn »

patrickaljord wrote: post #184
lallysingh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. My internet is completely useless at peak times - as in even HN won't load. Expecting competence out of ISPs is simply too much. My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.

Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to…

A small town can still service two or more ISPs, the lack of competition is what's ruining it and the lack of NN won't make it a bit better.

You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country. You should not equate your own capabilities in life with those of others.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#195

Post by lallysingh »

patrickaljord wrote: post #184
lallysingh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. My internet is completely useless at peak times - as in even HN won't load. Expecting competence out of ISPs is simply too much. My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.

Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to…

Nope. I live in a very large NJ suburb of NYC. Only one ISP

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#196

Post by Eupolemos »

fractalf wrote: post #77

Every two three years we have to do the same fight over and over again? :/

Well, not after you lose. I think this time is it.

However, it is "merely" a symptom of the US political system not being sensitive to the citizens' wants and needs. Or no longer being a democracy by modern standards, if you want to be dramatic.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#197

Post by patrickaljord »

zaarn wrote: post #194
patrickaljord wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to…

A small town can still service two or more ISPs, the lack of competition is what's ruining it and the lack of NN won't make it a bit better. You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country. You should not equate your own capabilities in life with those of others.

> You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country.

After living years in Syria and then in Peru, I can say that small towns folks most likely to leave to big cities are not the ones that are well off but the poorest one on the contrary in order to find a job to sustain them. So yeah, I would say it's mostly rich people that can afford to stay in small towns, the rest move to bigger places where there is more chance in finding people willing to invest in them even for low skill workers.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#198

Post by kurtisc »

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…

>China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back.

The UK does have net neutrality. The UK internet is still loosely censored. I understand that a monopoly might mean a non-neutral net could be privately censored, and therefore functionally similar, but this is a distinct issue from state censorship.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#200

Post by zimpenfish »

kurtisc wrote: post #198
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…

>China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. The UK does have net neutrality. The UK internet is still loosely censored. I understand that a monopoly might mean a non-neutral net could be privately censored, and therefore functionally similar, but this is a distinct issue from state censorship.

> The UK does have net neutrality.

Do we have any protection of that? As best I know (which isn't much), UK net neutrality is more along the lines of a polite understanding than anything enshrined in law.

(And it seems to be wobbling - cf. Three now offering you free data for Netflix/Spotify streaming, etc.)

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