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F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

nytimes.com

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Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#541

Post by fjabre »

tptacek wrote: post #127

The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods. As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican la…

Actually the voters elected a Democrat. The electoral college elected the Republican.

Not your issue? I've followed your account for years. This is exactly your issue, and everyone in this community's issue.

Without the Internet you have no chance of fighting against things like the new tax bill. It takes away your voice. It takes away all of our voices.

This might not be 'your' issue, but make no mistake, it is more important than all of the issues you mention, in that without a free and open Internet, your free speech is essentially gone, and that severely handicaps any efforts to organize and protest against the other issues you talk about.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#542

Post by sowbug »

new-account-9 wrote: post #360
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA democracy is failing and this is something to freak out about.

It's not failing. North America is fine; people still want to move from other places to our place. Let's not be drastic. Let's sit down and listen and be calm.

There must be a stronger argument than observing that worse places exist in the world.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#543

Post by 0culus »

noetic_techy wrote: post #263
juris wrote: post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

I totally agree. Who cares if the worst case scenario is tiered pricing, as long as their is REAL competition, a competitor can come along and say "we offer it all for one flat fee because our infrastructure is better." Boom, done. These municipal exclusion deals are the real problem. I also think this is going to backfire and bite the telco's in the ass if they try to roll out tiers. The legislative outcry when joe…

But going after Netflix, for instance, will result in a price increase for the consumer, no? When Netflix's costs for bandwidth go up, they are going to pass that cost on to you.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#545

Post by ansible »

There was a discussion about all this during NPR's Morning Edition.

The FCC chair talked about how there was very loose regulation of the Internet back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration. And this should be a model for regulation of the ISPs going forward.

Except that the world was quite different in 1996. You actually had a lot of competition with ISPs, because most people were doing dialup. If I didn't like AOL, I could just switch to Prodigy (yes, I know), or one of the local ISPs. That was easy.

People like me can and did switch ISPs on a regular basis. In my case, looking for a reliable Net News feed.

Compared to today, where there is only one (or if you are lucky) two ISPs for the area. You don't have a choice, so these ISPs are defacto monopolies.

The reasons given for repeal are just wrong, and this is a transparent attempt by the big ISPs to make more money, without benefit to the average citizen or even the other Internet companies which made the Internet awesome to begin with.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#546

Post by tazelo123 »

I think all comments so far have missed the point. So called "net neutrality" is really just a big government handout to Google, Facebook, Amazon and others who want a free ride on the infrastructure built over decades by private company investments of billions of dollars. Putting a chokehold on the telcos has made it so these large companies don't have to make similar investments and put large infrastructure assets on their balance sheets that would depress their stock prices dramatically. If Google, FB, etc. want a free rider internet, they can go pay for it themselves. All of these companies have enough cash on hand to make the investment right now if they wanted to -- it would just make the billionaire ceos a lot less wealthy. I'm surprised nobody has pointed this out yet.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#547

Post by oflannabhra »

komali2 wrote: post #300
juris wrote: post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…

This is essentially how cable worked in the beginning[0]. In lots of rural areas, it is still the case that communities band together into co-operatives to provide power, cable, and broadband[1].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television#History_in_th...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_cooperative

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#548

Post by nickik »

chaosite wrote: post #410
alexpetralia wrote: post #387

Can someone clarify this for me? Perhaps my assumptions are incorrect: > 1. Bandwidth is limited > 2. Real-time streaming services, such as video, consume much more bandwidth (by sending more packets through the pipeline) than non-streaming services > 3. Net neutrality guarantees that each packet is delivered with the same priority Say Netflix takes up 20% of the bandwidth through its streaming services - each packet…

A. The rule isn't that packets must be delivered at the same time, the rule is that you can't shape based on source (but you CAN shape based on other things - so, you can prioritize VoIP for example). Basically it means the telecoms can't favor their own streaming services over Netflix. B. The clients are literally paying the telecoms in order to get access to Netflix. That's what they use their internet connection f…

I don't know about the specific rules in the US. But in Eurpean hacker circles when talking about net neutrality the strong definition is used. Meaning the provider should not be allowed to change quality at all.

Some think it would be fine as long as the user indicates the quality level he wants, others are against it completely.

There have been a number of debates of the years, at the Chaos Communication Congress for example.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#549

Post by 33W »

RyanZAG wrote: post #467
JohnTHaller wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. I live in NYC. I have access to exactly one broadband provider. So, if Spectrum starts blocking Vonage because they want you to pay for their VoIP instead (ISPs in the US have done this in the past), I'll have to drop Vonage and use Spectrum's VoIP. Repeat for blocking P2P, Google Wallet, Facetime, Netflix, etc (all of which have previous incidents in the US).

As someone from a country without net neutrality, I have to say this hasn't happened. Generally you get very cheap or free plans that are sponsored by Facebook or others that give priority to Facebook, but ISPs are always happy to take a little bit more money for an unlimited plan that gives you full access. And at least in my country, they're not unreasonably priced. Even without net neutrality, your single monopoly…

What type of competition do you have among your ISPs? I think this is a fear in the US because many people are locked into a single ISP because of geography.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#550

Post by r2dnb »

From my perspective, the positive to this is that it will incentivize tech giants to accelerate the development of the web platform (WebRTC, WebGL, Web Assembly, Web Torrent and the like) as stuffing everything in HTTP and using encryption will protect them from the dirty blocking of services, and will allow them to focus their efforts on fighting throttling. For this reason, I hope Comcast and others will scare the hell out of them and do some big time media-covered dirty throttling.

I can already see for-a-better-web.org where Apple, Microsoft, Google and others explain why they have finally decided to move their ass and get serious about implementing the modern web in their browsers. With their level of funding, the time all of this is taking is ridiculous. When Netflix and YouTube get their first bill from tier 1 providers, Web Torrent and libtorrent will receive a pull request within a week and chrome will be patched overnight.

I do not think that the small guy will be hit by these rules, mostly because I think that by the time it comes to that, politics will have changed. The end result will be that everybody will benefit. Implementing the modern web seriously is the one thing that web giants can do to protect themselves, as it would enable a fully decentralized web. The difference between that and NN is that the modern web would actually help the small guy by making it easy to for example start a decentralized YouTube. So it's easier to cry fool on NN, and look like you're concerned about the small guy when in reality you too are concerned about protecting your interests in the most convenient way possible.

Not saying all of this is a conspiracy, just saying tech companies are far from being disarmed, they also have their monopolies they want to protect. Keep it in mind before crying over this vote, or spending money and time on volunteering. Let Tier 1 dudes give them the hardest time of their life and watch. If it gets to hitting the average Joe, do something but my take is it won't have the time to get to that.

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