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Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

blog.mozilla.org

101–110 of 180 posts

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#101
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countless cities and towns where there is only one ISP, or a duopoly in cahoots to keep prices high and service low, and freezing competitors such as Google Fiber out of the market. This isn't exactly new information, if you haven't noticed the problem by now, you must have been living under a rock. There are hundreds of credible reports and articles about this problem.

More deregulation would provide the threat of having more competition later, so it would be a factor of development. There are others factors at play too of course, and net neutrality doesn't seem to be going in the right direction.

So, deregulating sewer pipes will cause a second set of sewers to be built, which will lead to more competition and cheaper prices?

Last-mile networks are natural monopolies, building even only two networks necessarily causes half of the capacity to be unused, which is extremely inefficient, which is why it doesn't happen (among other reasons).

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to understand Mozilla's actions, just treat them like a proxy for Google. Things google cannot publicly speak about, Mozilla does it for them. In this case, nn by design takes power away from infrastructure companies (ISPs) and gives it to internet services companies (google, facebook, etc.). So Mozilla is very actively supporting it.

In no way can Mozilla's actions be taken as a proxy for Google. Yes, most of their revenue comes from Google now, but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract gave Google any control. Next, Google has already voiced their support for net neutrality. They even have a real "proxy," the Internet Association, pledging to support lawsuits like the Mozilla one. https://www.google.com/takeaction/…

> but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract gave Google any control.

You're not thinking hard enough then I guess. Mozilla gets 97% of its funding from Google. That's implicit control right there. Google can fail to renew the contract and Mozilla goes poof!

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#103
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone can't just "enter" the internet service market. It takes billions of dollars. All the incumbent has to do is temporarily lower prices to keep people from switching and raise prices again once the new player goes bankrupt.

So if nobody can enter it how did it create itself in the first place ?

Because cable companies and phone companies got local government approved monopolies like the electric companies and phone companies. They were thus guaranteed to have a return on investment. They also had to be given right of way privileges by the government to install cable.

There were no incumbents.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#104
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It truly is a terrible thing when people want "less regulation" without pausing to think whether the particular bit of regulation benefits them or not. "Regulation" has become a bogeyman you can invoke to reliably get people rallying against it.

As a customer, NN does not benefit me. The opposite. I will lose access to zero-rated services if it's implemented. I don't want that to happen because then I will have to pay more money for the same service.

You do understand that ISPs do implement zero-rated service because it makes them money, right? Who do you think this money comes from if it's not from you? Who is the nice person who decided they wanted to subsidize your internet connection?

If you think that zero-rated services save you money, all that is happening is that you don't understand how you pay for it. So, maybe it is time to find out how you do pay for it?

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#105
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose asking for laws to prevent people from controlling and regulating the internet is technically asking the government for more control and regulations, but that's a rather weird way of putting it.

What if those laws reinforce the power of bad corporations it was supposed to crush down ? Oops

What if the absence of those laws reinforces the power of bad corporations it was supposed to crush down ? Oops

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#106
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer, NN does not benefit me. The opposite. I will lose access to zero-rated services if it's implemented. I don't want that to happen because then I will have to pay more money for the same service.

You do understand that ISPs do implement zero-rated service because it makes them money, right? Who do you think this money comes from if it's not from you? Who is the nice person who decided they wanted to subsidize your internet connection? If you think that zero-rated services save you money, all that is happening is that you don't understand how you pay for it. So, maybe it is time to find out how you do pay for…

>Who do you think this money comes from if it's not from you?

The zero-rated services themselves.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no way can Mozilla's actions be taken as a proxy for Google. Yes, most of their revenue comes from Google now, but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract gave Google any control. Next, Google has already voiced their support for net neutrality. They even have a real "proxy," the Internet Association, pledging to support lawsuits like the Mozilla one. https://www.google.com/takeaction/…

> but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract gave Google any control. You're not thinking hard enough then I guess. Mozilla gets 97% of its funding from Google. That's implicit control right there. Google can fail to renew the contract and Mozilla goes poof!

Mozilla doesn’t get 97% of it’s funding from google, and until very recently it didn’t get very much at all from them — it’s primary revenue source was yahoo.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#108
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract gave Google any control. You're not thinking hard enough then I guess. Mozilla gets 97% of its funding from Google. That's implicit control right there. Google can fail to renew the contract and Mozilla goes poof!

Mozilla doesn’t get 97% of it’s funding from google, and until very recently it didn’t get very much at all from them — it’s primary revenue source was yahoo.

> Mozilla doesn’t get 97% of it’s funding from google

They do. Look up Mozilla's latest annual report.

Edit: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/

Royalties of $503k out of total revenue $520k. Almost 100% of the Royalties are from thier search engine agreement with Google.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#109
this is tangentially related but what are mozilla's plans for autoplay in Firefox?

Chrome just effectively broke net neutrality in Chrome by whitelisting a bunch of websites. They claim chrome will learn your preferences and auto-magically whitelist others sites you run videos on but that hardly seems fair. Why did the other sites not have to pass that hurdle? Worse, it only works if you're logged in where as whitelisted sites work always. Use a public computer or an incognito window and non-whitelisted sites stop autoplaying.

Consider youtubecompetitor.com trying to autoplay videos like youtube. Users have a bad experience because the videos don't autoplay so they are unlikely to ever do as well as youtube.

Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that net neutrality is trying to avoid, picking winners and losers. I want to make youtubecompetitor.com do I now have to pay off Chrome (and Firefox, and Safari, and Edge) to get them to whitelist my site for autoplay? Why does youtube get a pass? Similarly if Firefox doesn't use a whitelist then users will have a worse experience on may sites vs chrome so there's certainly an incentive for Firefox to use the same or similar whitelist to Google.

I don't know what the best solution would be. Off the top of my head I'd prefer browser disallow autoplay by default and let me manually give sites permission to autoplay via a butterbar or other prompt "Can this site autoplay? Yes/No". One click and youtube gets whitelisted. One click and youtubecompetitor gets whitelisted. That seems far more "neutral"

In any case I'm curious what Mozilla's response is to Chrome's whitelisting winners.

Re: Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)

#110

this is tangentially related but what are mozilla's plans for autoplay in Firefox? Chrome just effectively broke net neutrality in Chrome by whitelisting a bunch of websites. They claim chrome will learn your preferences and auto-magically whitelist others sites you run videos on but that hardly seems fair. Why did the other sites not have to pass that hurdle? Worse, it only works if you're logged in where as whiteli…

Chrome != The Net. Huge difference here. People have a choice when it comes to browser, social network, news, search engine, ecommerce... As long as what's coming down the pipe is equal. Net neutrality is about the pipe, which is a layer above Chrome.
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