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FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

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Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many government regulations, it has a great name, "Net Neutrality," which, when it is actually implemented, will do much more than make the 'Net neutral. Maybe, at first, it will have something to do with "you can't throttle Web services," but it will morph into "you MUST throttle this particular Web service, it spreads disinformation, which makes the Net less neutral." It is what always happens. It is more reli…

What? How would regulation that “you must not throttle” lead to regulation for “you just throttle”? That makes no sense.

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Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#293
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why did the mega providers so desperately want net neutrality to die? Why did so many lobbyists work to kill it? because they want more leverage in their negotiations with netflix, amazon, google, spotify etc. That's all it boils down to, how much one major corporation has to pay another major corporation. There's a reason why they're only pushing for neutrality on the ISPs, if they were actually concerned about lar…

> if they were actually concerned about large corporations abusing their control over critical online infrastructure they'd be pushing to regulate other classes of "service providers" like google, amazon, cloudflare, etc. Many of the people who are pushing for net neutrality are also pushing for this. It's such an easy strawman counterpoint to just say "If people really cared about educating children, why are they on…

You might be and if so then I'm glad you are, but in my post above I was specifically referring to all the large silicon valley corporations pushing for NN.

As for the legislation in the OP, they're not trying to accomplish that and TBH I really doubt the democrats[1] even want it to go further than the ISPs because they've been the beneficiaries of policies at companies like AWS that have deplatformed right-wing organizations[2].

[1] by which i mean the democrats that actually wield institutional authority in the american government, not every DNC party-member in general

[2] not that i agree with the organizations that are being deplatformed but there is a principle at stake.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most typical way this is done is through selective enforcement. You create rules that most of anybody can be argued to be breaking, but only enforce it for individuals or organizations that you have an issue with. With net neutrality it's pretty easy to see how this would happen. The previous net neutrality rules, under Tom Wheeler, included a carveout for nearly all rules under anything that could be justified a…

this is like arguing against speeding tickets because it gives cops too much discretion to enforce it and drives them to corruption.

It's all about risk vs reward for both parties. If a cop pulls you over for a speeding ticket, trying to bribe him is a high risk option that could suddenly see you facing felony charges to try to get out of a low cost ticket. And similarly for the officer. You're not going to pay more than the ticket in the bribe, certainly not much more, so it's negligible, and accepting it could completely destroy his livelihood if found out.

On occasion it still does happen, but it tends to be because the mutual risk/reward ratios are changed. One of the most common bribes cops are found taking is sexual stuff. That may have a much higher value for the officer than the bribe price would, and a much lower risk for the briber since they can be overtly flirtatious without ever making it clear (from the point of view of a criminal prosecution) they're offering to exchange some sexual favor for a way out.

By contrast in the government scenario the risk for both parties is effectively zero since much will go on without a single word even needing to be said. When various government agencies were pressuring Twitter to censor all sorts of things, they never made a single overt threat - yet they simultaneously spoke both threateningly and demandingly. It's the same sort of relationship. The people making the "requests" of Twitter had a million ways of going after Twitter, or the people in charge of it, and Twitter knew this. So they played ball. Even if you got access to every single email, you wouldn't be able to prosecute anybody over it. It was all completely legal, which creates a near infinite risk:reward ratio.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this site, I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. Shockingly to me, someone else in this thread writes how this is a conservative site... Well that guy must have a wildly different perspective from me!

On a global scale, the Democrats in the US are extremely conservative. "There are two major parties in America - a conservative party, and a very conservative party".

As SV_BubbleTime said, that is nonsense no matter how often the claim is repeated.

I'll give two more examples. Voter ID is uncontroversial everywhere in Europe and Canada. Formerly government-run postal services have long since been privatized almost everywhere in Europe, while no one advocates doing so with the USPS (despite the TDS-driven hysteria over the so-called sabotaging of same in 2020).

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#296
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a global scale, the Democrats in the US are extremely conservative. "There are two major parties in America - a conservative party, and a very conservative party".

As SV_BubbleTime said, that is nonsense no matter how often the claim is repeated. I'll give two more examples. Voter ID is uncontroversial everywhere in Europe and Canada. Formerly government-run postal services have long since been privatized almost everywhere in Europe, while no one advocates doing so with the USPS (despite the TDS-driven hysteria over the so-called sabotaging of same in 2020).

> Voter ID is uncontroversial everywhere in Europe and Canada.

Voter ID is controversial in the UK:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/voter-id-elections-act-frau...

https://www.politico.eu/article/punch-ups-at-the-polling-boo...

https://theconversation.com/six-reasons-britains-impending-v...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/11/voter-id-in...

https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2023/03/voter-id-is-t...

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#297

One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the…

They don’t upgrade their interconnects with other residential ISPs which is making it hard for decentralized alternatives to displace the big cloud based vendors.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#298

One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the…

We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited P…

Playing devil’s advocate here. But why is it so controversial that not all the traffic is the same. It is much easier for an ISP to serve Spotify very efficiently if they patterns, data centers and even have some private links in place with Spotify. The issue I have with it is they should not be calling it unlimited.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#299

One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the…

We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited P…

How do carriers supposedly cap streaming quality? As long as the data is encrypted, isn't it impossible for the carrier to tell what quality a video is?

I'm limited to standard definition streaming, yet can stream 1080p just fine on mobile data.

Re: FCC aims to reinstate net neutrality after us Democrats gain control of panel

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not correct at all. The internet developed with "net neutrality" because that's how ARPANET and later the internet had always worked. Peering agreements developed based on symmetrical traffic loads and providers regularly upgraded links as needed. NN was originally imposed by the FCC because Verizon started blocking VPNs, requiring customers to pay for a "business" plan if they wanted VPN support. That was th…

> The internet developed with "net neutrality" because that's how ARPANET and later the internet had always worked. OP is making a claim about de jure net neutrality, you are making a claim about de facto net neutrality.

Because the context is relevant here. Net neutrality is not some government over-reach. It was a specific reaction to a captive telco trying to fundamentally change how the internet works by having an intermediary convert certain packet traffic into a "premium" service.

The only reason net neutrality wasn't already law or part of the peering or ARIN contracts to even be on the internet at all was that no one could imagine that ISPs would become monopoly/dualopolies that might try to block traffic to extract extra rents from from both their existing paying customers and the owners of the servers their customers wanted to connect with.

In retrospect it should have been part of the contract to get a netblock from one of the NRO organizations (like ARIN) that such conduct is prohibited.

And before anyone raises a straw man: the policy could have been clear that traffic-shaping for fairness, QoS, network health, or even non-service-specific transfer caps was allowed.

In some ways how ISPs handle transfer caps is similar: their stated reasoning is garbage. The cap does nothing to discourage high use during peak periods and punishes customers who do bulk transfers at midnight when the ISP's network has plenty of capacity. The real purpose of caps is to extract more rent for doing nothing.

The ILEC and Cable ISPs look back on the $1/minute long distance telephone days of Ma Bell with sparkles in their eyes. Funny for a service that entirely depends on the government giving them free access to my and your property for right-of-way.

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