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FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

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Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#121

Post by skykooler »

super-serial wrote: post #81
TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #44

What are our alternatives for wireless and wired ISPs? I'm done with the incumbents. I'm familiar with Republic Wireless and Google Fi, but I'm a long-time iPhone user who doesn't really want to switch. Are there any similar carriers who fully support iOS? Given the control wired home ISPs have, what are the alternatives? Is there a good, reasonably affordable wireless alternative?

I was thinking of Project Fi but Google just buys the data from TMobile/Sprint/US Cellular. So the same carriers just get richer, giving them more power. There's really no way to hurt the carriers or ISPs bottom line. The only thing I can think of is supporting municipal broadband. I wish there was some generic nation-wide municipal broadband fund I could pledge to donate to if net neutrality is revoked. I'd even ple…

Project Fi also locks you into Android phones. Good luck running an iPhone, or Windows phone, or Sailfish OS phone on that.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#122

Post by nrhk »

jvagner wrote: post #46
nrhk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, the real innovation moves on. Telecommunication is a history of openness followed by control, radio, tv, internet and whatever comes next. At least hopefully this isn't the end.

It's disturbing the degree to which this attitude is common for things like climate change, tax reform, net neutrality, etc. To some degree, of course we have to adapt to what will happen. But as a society, we're supposed to have standing on important issues for the population as a whole. There will be harm, routing around it is inhuman to those immediately affected. Seeing "opportunity" in every case is capitalistic…

It's just a tendency for things to become more restrictive and less open as the masses get on board.

It's a problem with human scale. We're not meant to scale to the billions despite technology enabling that. Once the internet scaled, all the human problems came with it. The innovators are part of a smaller and smaller % of the population. The inertia of current systems bogs down potential future changes. Innovation is traded for security, convenience and entertainment. Certain things become ingrained.

So, all the people move on and start again in a greenfield. Maybe its not the best but honestly, taking the lessons of the past and applying it to a new greenfield can't be the worst approach.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#123

Post by monocasa »

FilterSweep wrote: post #65
arca_vorago wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear about something here. These are most likely not organic Trump picks. This is about the biggest donors getting their quid pro quo in the form of cabinet picks due to regulatory capture... and leaks of the Obama admin indicate the same thing happened with him, the same with Bush before him, and likely with presidents for a long time. With Obama it was citigroup who got most of the picks if I remember cor…

I didn't downvote you. I fail to see a Betsy Devos type character in either the Bush or Obama admin. She even wrote in a tax benefit to her neocon college in the Northeast.

I mean, Pai was an Obama pick for FCC commissioner.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#124

Post by timthelion »

paulmd wrote: post #110
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

How do you determine which party an appointee belongs to? Why didn't Obama appoint someone from the green party?

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#125

Post by rev_null »

rocketpastsix wrote: post #10
thrillgore wrote: post #7

I feel more helpless now than I did on November 9th, 2016.

Make sure you are registered to vote if you are in the United States. And vote in every election. Even something that seems small like school board has more implications then we know.

Wasn't Pai appointed by Trump instead of by election?

Didn't most of the voting Americans vote against Trump?

It seems like a better approach to US politics is to be rich.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#126

Post by carry_bit »

bo1024 wrote: post #79
artursapek wrote: post #34

Honest question, what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? A follow up, if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth, how is that any different from any other fundamental resource like water, electricity, etc? Why should I pay as much money for my SSH and Hacker News as the guy down the street streaming Netflix all day?

> if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth It's not -- this is currently legal. Examples of what they can do if NN is repealed are: charge you extra per month to use SSH, VPN or other forms of encrypted traffic; and charge the guy down the street extra per month to stream Netflix (but Comcast video comes bundled free). > what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? It's ha…

> 3. Censorship. This I think will start slow but is the biggest medium and long term threat.

We already have that under NN (the Daily Stormer incident a few months back).

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#127

Post by artursapek »

legoforte wrote: post #77
artursapek wrote: post #34

Honest question, what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? A follow up, if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth, how is that any different from any other fundamental resource like water, electricity, etc? Why should I pay as much money for my SSH and Hacker News as the guy down the street streaming Netflix all day?

That's a good question. Net Neutrality is not about whether an ISP can charge you more for using more bandwidth. It's about whether an ISP can charge your more (or restrict your usage) based on which websites you communicate with . One way to think of it is that we already have "electric neutrality" (not a real term), which is to say, you pay for the amount of electricity you use, but you're free to plug in any appli…

OK, thanks. That's a great explanation. Now it's clear why everyone hates this. Fuck.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#128

Post by dragonwriter »

timthelion wrote: post #124
paulmd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

How do you determine which party an appointee belongs to? Why didn't Obama appoint someone from the green party?

> Why didn't Obama appoint someone from the green party?

Because aside from the law governing appointments, there is also the Senate confirmation process, and such a violation of both the spirit of the law and the established informal norms would both be unlikely to survive that process, and complicate other matters before the Senate, which was blocking more routine nominees.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#129

Post by wwweston »

tzs wrote: post #107
tangent128 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metered usage is not a violation of neutrality. Varying prices or manipulating quality of service based on the endpoint's identity is.

> Metered usage is not a violation of neutrality According to the document the FCC released trying to justify this stuff, ISPs can't always figure out how do that, so they need paid prioritization: "Without paid prioritization, ISPs must recover these costs solely from end users, but ISPs cannot always set prices targeted at the relevant end user". See paragraph 252, which starts on page 142, of this document: http:/…

> Without paid prioritization, ISPs must recover these costs solely from end users, but ISPs cannot always set prices targeted at the relevant end users.

Is there any way this statement is not a straight up pants-on-fire lie? Why wouldn't an ISP have metering built into its infrastructure? And the only other thing you'd need in order to make it happen is the freedom to set your price -- are there places in the US where ISPs aren't free to price on bandwidth usage?

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#130

Post by bzbarsky »

legoforte wrote: post #77
artursapek wrote: post #34

Honest question, what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? A follow up, if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth, how is that any different from any other fundamental resource like water, electricity, etc? Why should I pay as much money for my SSH and Hacker News as the guy down the street streaming Netflix all day?

That's a good question. Net Neutrality is not about whether an ISP can charge you more for using more bandwidth. It's about whether an ISP can charge your more (or restrict your usage) based on which websites you communicate with . One way to think of it is that we already have "electric neutrality" (not a real term), which is to say, you pay for the amount of electricity you use, but you're free to plug in any appli…

> you pay for the amount of electricity you use, but you're free to plug in any appliance you want

You can get metered at different rates for different uses for electricity. A simple example I found just now is shown in https://www.eversource.com/content/docs/default-source/rates... (see Rate 1 vs Rate 5 vs Rate 18), but that sort of setup is pretty common.

Now, this is metering based on _type_ of use (heating vs hot water vs whatever else), not based on the manufacturer of your water heater. But to be a devil's advocate for a moment, this is the sort of thing ISPs _claim_ they want to do: prioritize certain _types_ of content over others. Now I don't believe them on this, of course...

But a priori, there is not necessarily a problem with an internet where you pay one rate for data streams that need certain bandwidth and latency guarantees and a different rate for ones that don't. That would be equivalent to the different-uses electrical billing above.

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