Another channel to consider, but much more of a long tail play is to put some effort into the state level political races. Many politicians with the exception of wealthier business people get started at the state level.
Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
131–140 of 469 posts
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#132I don't understand the logic of ISP's throttling certain sites based on the traffic to those sites. As a consumer on ISP's last mile lines, I make a series of TCP requests and I expect responses. Fill my pipes with those responses as best you can and charge me for the privilege. If you're not making enough money on that, charge me more for the bandwidth. Market-wise, why would an ISP anything else than fill my pipe w…
You're correct to ask these questions. The truth is that the entire motivation behind Net Neutrality is predicated on hypothetical behavior by an ISP that nobody has ever actually observed in reality for the exact reasons you describe.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#133FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Why He's Rejecting Net Neutrality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1IzN9tst28
I love how Ajit keeps saying 'it does not happen' where traffic is limited or blocked. It was limited, we saw this by Comcast with Netflix back in 2014. This is what we are getting ready to get back into. I do not want to have an internet where the ISP can hold me (the consumer) hostage to other companies to increase the ISPs bottom line. It isn't a good experience for the consumer, it isn't a good experience for pro…
> It was limited, we saw this by Comcast with Netflix back in 2014.
This was due to a peering dispute with Cogent over link saturation and maintenance costs, not Comcast throttling Netflix traffic. Netflix ended up peering directly with Comcast in order to bypass Cogent's bottlenecked links. Neutrality regulations have jack-all to do with peering mutual maintenance agreements.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#134(This comment is a little bit disorganized, so I apologize for that.)
Far too many people don't seem to understand the arguments against net neutrality as it has been proposed... There's been much made about the "astroturfing" and automated comments on the FCC website that go against net neutrality-- but what about the reverse? John Oliver doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Reddit and HN provide warped perspectives on the issue.
Don't you guys realize that no matter what policy is chosen, someone is getting screwed and someone going to profit? Don't get me wrong, the ISPs are not exactly benevolent organizations. But I don't think they're evil either. Plain and simple, if you think this is a cut-and-dry, good-versus-evil, conglomerates-versus-littleguy issue, I think you're not hearing both sides of the issue. This issue is between content providers that serve far more bits than they take in, and ISPs, and there are billions of dollars on both sides.
In other words, don't think for a second that this is about protecting small internet websites from having to pay ransom. That's not what is going to happen. The only people who are going to be squeezed are the giants like Google, Netflix, etc., and it's no surprise that these are the people who are making such a fuss about it today.
The particular event that made me reconsider net neutrality was digging into the details of the Comcast/Netflix/Level3 fiasco a couple years ago. Everything I had heard about that situation made it sound to me like Comcast was simply demanding ransom. The reality of the situation is that L3 and Netflix acted extremely recklessly in how they made their deals, and IMO deserved everything that came to them. Much is made about "eyeball ISPs" and the power it gives them. In reality, I think Netflix has more power in swaying consumers, and I think they used that power to bail themselves out of a sticky situation by badmouthing Comcast.
I don't see how compensatory peering agreements would work out well in a net neutral world. Specifically, the FCC proposal for Title II classification (paraphrasing here) said that the FCC would step in when it believed one party was acting unfairly. It is far too open-ended, doesn't list any criteria for what that means, and it's not the FCCs job anyway, the FTC should be doing that.
But in general I don't think net neutrality is a good idea. I think that people are out of touch with internet access in rural parts of the US, and I don't think NN is beneficial for that situation at all. My grandmother pays $30/mo for internet access that she barely uses, and I don't think it's right to enshrine into law that Comcast can't offer her a plan where she pays $5/mo instead for limited access to the few sites she uses.
As a bandwidth-hogging internet user, a lack of net neutrality will probably mean that I will pay more. But maybe that's how it is supposed to be. The internet didn't turn out to be what the academics once hoped it would be. And that's okay. The internet should serve everyone, however they want to use it, and the market should be built around that principle-- not around decades-old cypherpunk ideals.
I think it's incredible that behemoths like Google have the nerve to paint this as if they care about an open internet. It's obvious that their dominance is what makes an open internet irrelevant.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think parent's overall point is that the private sector has amassed quite a lot of power that could overstep / bypass the government entirely. It's not outside the realm of possibility that a team of rogue people in one or more social companies could literally trigger a war or worse. It wasn't about one specific, small example but the big picture. Since these companies care about profit and the people running the c…
> the private sector has amassed quite a lot of power that could overstep / bypass the government entirely I understand and that's a fantasy at best, which was my point. The US Government is radically more powerful than any corporation inside of its domain. It's not even remotely close. They're more powerful than every corporation in the US combined. The moment they send federal agents to shut down Google HQ (even if…
> The US Government is radically more powerful than any corporation inside of its domain. It's not even remotely close.
For sure, that was never in dispute. No one pretended there wouldn't be consequences, either. That was never the point of my post or parent's. Take a look at the examples for what was being referred to.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even though there were no explicit rules requiring something, there were nevertheless unofficial norms that were followed. If (almost) everyone does something without a rule, then making a rule is pointless. But when you get enough people skirting those norms, it then becomes necessary to codify them. For instance, the Special Prosecutor law that Ken Starr operated under was put in place in the wake of Watergate and…
But when you get enough people skirting those norms, it then becomes necessary to codify them. Is that what was happening, because if so it was never made clear to me. The first I remember this coming up was with the internet "lanes." AFAIK, again tell me where I'm wrong here please, there was nothing preventing an ISP from creating a "fast lane" before 2015.
Hasn't actually happened, no. The closest thing was some deal between YouTube and MetroPCS, though competing streaming services didn't have the technology required implemented and MetroPCS said they would add other sercices once that happened.
I'm very shaky on the details there, so don't take my word for it.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hasn't the spirit of the Internet always been about a neutral Internet? That spirit was being threatened and so regulations were put in place to keep it neutral.
We have retroactively latched on to this RMS style idea of a digital library of alexandria that has somehow been abandoned. It's like nobody remembers the internet of the 90s and how blatantly over the top siloed it was for the average AOL style user. I mean I remember my paid dial up internet service came on a floppy and had it's own browser and pop-up ads. The "free" services required that you click on header links…
The Internet of the 90's I remember was a small, local ISP that basically gave me creds to a unix system. I had access to ftp, telnet, usenet, web, email, etc. I knew the people working there and could drive over and have lunch with them. They were eager to share how it all worked. As long as you didn't (regularly) go over your storage quota, you were good.
This is the neutral net that I recall and so wish I still had.
I never once dipped my toes into the AOL muck.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#138If Google were actually serious about Net Neutrality, they would use their insane market power to protect it. How? Well, a simple statement saying "any ISP who abuses net neutrality will have their customers cut off from Google products". No Google search, no YouTube, no Gmail. Have those requests instead redirect to a website telling the customer what their ISP is doing, why Google won't work with them, and how to c…
No ISP is abusing net neutrality yet (to my knowledge), so they haven't had the opportunity. Also, as others have said, that worsens the problem and makes the Internet less neutral.
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of the telephone network is also packet switched these days anyways.
Precisely. These "things" don't come out of the air. They have a history and there is a reason why they behave like they do. Trying to argue that the internet should be like the [insert old behaviour here: cable tv, telephone, etc...] is ignoring the story as a whole and trying to push the argument for the wrong reasons. Here is a fallacy, but feel free to look into others: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon…
How is the type of switching relevant, exactly?
Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet
#140If Google were actually serious about Net Neutrality, they would use their insane market power to protect it. How? Well, a simple statement saying "any ISP who abuses net neutrality will have their customers cut off from Google products". No Google search, no YouTube, no Gmail. Have those requests instead redirect to a website telling the customer what their ISP is doing, why Google won't work with them, and how to c…
To state the obvious, this proposal is antithetical to the concept of network neutrality. Also, the belief that there would be "competitors in the user's area that don't play stupid games" that offer comparable services (eg, within a factor of 5x bandwidth-per-dollar value) seems to be a misunderstanding of the utility/monopoly/duopoly economics in play in many regions of the USA.
> this proposal is antithetical to the concept of network neutrality
Exactly the point I'm trying to make. If Google turns around and says "Fine, you don't like net neutrality? Let me show you how this works both ways".
The ISPs do not make the product, they sell the access to the product. If the product goes away, then they aren't selling anything at all- and their customers will stop paying them.