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An Open Letter to the FCC

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Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#171

Post by cokeandsympathy »

paul7986 wrote: post #153
hysan wrote: post #69

I'm one of the people who has had part of their identity used to submit false comments. Found out when a journalist emailed me asking me to do a survey and some additional comments months ago. I proceeded to sign up for an API key[1] to confirm what was being claimed and turns out, it was true. The API is a bit limited, but I was also able to do searches using the falsely submitted comment to find others like it as w…

I believe that there are a lot of fake comments(possibly threads) appearing on Hacker News. I'm sure on Reddit and everywhere on the Internet that influences peoples' oomph to stand up for something like Net Neutrality. I mean why in the world in 2017 are we so apathetic about something so important? We were up in arms about in 2013 and stopped SOPA then!!!

While there's a good amount of outrage in some online niches, I don't think Net Neutrality has been on the radar of the general public. A lot of friends and family I've spoken to over the past few weeks don't understand the power that repealing net neutrality will give to ISPs.

Also, I think people are so emotionally worn out by the mass distraction machine that is the Trump presidency, the over-saturation of outrage in the media, and the fact that so many democratic and political institutions are under attack that people either can't keep track of each one, feel hopeless, or have just tuned it all out for their own sanity.

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#172

Post by moosey »

rhino369 wrote: post #124
moosey wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had it before, and the way forward is very simple: Internet Service resale at cost. The major internet providers would be forced to resell to other internet providers access at the costs to the company, including labor, maintenance, etc. Resellers then compete with the company to produce the lowest overhead.

That would get you very cheap ISP with terrible speeds and a lot of downtime. There is no incentive for investment if they have to resell at (or near) cost. And we've seen this in action. DSL service was covered by Title II originally, which meant it had to be unbundled and resold. But cable internet had no requirement. Investment flooded to cable rather than telecom. Why would Verizon invest billions in a network th…

And that situation would push us towards internet as public utility, or at least internet infrastructure as public utility. Also, investment into additional infrastructure could be baked into the resale cost. In my opinion, internet as public utility is not a bad thing, although I'm sure there will be many detractors to the idea.

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#173

Post by cookiecaper »

s73ver_ wrote: post #89
monkseal wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to the latest "Fifth Column" podcast where they interview this "evil" Ajit Pai guy. I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC or state's attorney generals and not the FCC and there is no real market failure here. http://wethefifth.com/ https://play.radiopublic.com/the-fifth-column-analysis-comme...

That's a completely different topic altogether, though. Even if there were 100 ISPs, Net Neutrality would still be an issue. When there was plenty of competition among long distance phone carriers (back when people needed to worry about that kind of thing), there still was "phone neutrality", meaning that no phone operator could slow down or otherwise interfere with your call based on who you were calling, what provi…

It's not the exact same thing. Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges (in some cases you may have a conference call with a few other parties on the line). No single party could be responsible for a huge majority of the load on a phone network without seeing proportional billing; that is, if you wanted to have 300 simultaneous calls from your office, you had to pay for 300 open phone lines.

Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines. ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players, and that's not entirely unreasonable when you consider that some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day.

Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar.

Ultimately I don't know if that's good or bad, but I think it's important we recognize the fight over net neutrality for what it is: an arm wrestling match between industrial juggernauts to decide who is going to pick up the tab for the infrastructure that makes the net tick. The consumer is virtually a non-entity and just watching from the bleachers.

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#174

Post by [deleted] »

npsimons wrote: post #159
epistasis wrote: post #5

It's been really interesting to see the interplay between State Attorneys General and the federal executive branch over the past decade. I don't know enough legal history to know if this contention is new or has always happened. But the contrast between what happened with regulation of carbon and coal is fairly striking. The federal judicial brach said that it had to be regulated in order to meet the laws that the le…

> This type of regulation, where particular parties are favored, rather than particular principles, is madness. It's plutocracy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy ), plain and simple. Some have been pointing out things like this and calling it plutocracy for a long time, but until now it wasn't so blatantly obvious.

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#175

Post by [deleted] »

null000 wrote: post #164
jessaustin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corruption of the judicial branch is more obvious to its victims than it is to the average citizen, but it does quite a bit more direct harm than Congress does. For example, the courts that fund their municipalities on the backs of the poor, all the shady arrangements with the incarceration industry, the seemingly deliberate destruction of families and children perpetrated by the divorce courts, the horrific exce…

Pretty sure the most of what you're talking about is the executive branch. They're in charge of enforcing the rules - e.g. deciding who to prosecute for drug crimes and which prisons to put them in to serve their term. Likewise, the executive branch is the one that decides to go after offenders based on profitability over public good (although you could also lay that on the legislative branch for allowing the executi…

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#176

Post by paul7986 »

null000 wrote: post #161
paul7986 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that there are a lot of fake comments(possibly threads) appearing on Hacker News. I'm sure on Reddit and everywhere on the Internet that influences peoples' oomph to stand up for something like Net Neutrality. I mean why in the world in 2017 are we so apathetic about something so important? We were up in arms about in 2013 and stopped SOPA then!!!

Apathetic? Have you seen Reddit today or yesterday? The top post in 90% of subreddits are pro-net-neutrality posts, even where it makes no sense. I can't think of a time when that much of a stink was made, including SOPA. The reason it's not working this time around is because you have an FCC chair whose not really interested in what the public thinks - you're not his constituents, and you're not the constituents of…

Well there was a ton more action happening on Hacker News in 2013 then present day.

Glad to hear Reddit isnt being passive!

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#178

Post by outsidetheparty »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #43

To play devil’s advocate, are we really ready for Internet to be regulated like a public utility? Like water, we will need to pay more the more we consume. You and I can pay but what about poor people? Will this discourage Internet usage?

You’re talking about metered or tiered pricing, which is already allowed and has nothing to do with net neutrality.

Net neutrality means ISPs can’t favor some traffic over other traffic.

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#179

Post by openasocket »

dragonwriter wrote: post #133
openasocket wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think those are good examples of states' rights legislation. Just because some NC Republican state Senators enacted a bathroom bill doesn't necessarily mean those Senators think the issue should be left to the states to decide, they could well prefer that their bathroom bill be made federal policy. Pushing legislation at the state or local level instead of federal can simply be a strategic decision rather tha…

> Obamacare specifically allows individual states to choose whether or not to participate in Medicaid expansion Well, no. Pre-existing law allows states to choose whether or not to participate in Medicaid. The ACA made the expansion a core and integral part of Medicaid; the ability to stay in Medicaid but opt out of the expansion was a (rather bizarre) result of a lawsuit by States against the expansion. > and gives…

I forgot the optional expansion part was only the result of a lawsuit, my mistake.

Re: An Open Letter to the FCC

#180

Post by aeontech »

So, if I as a private individual ignore and refuse to provide information to an active investigation by a State Attorney General, I am liable to be charged with something (obstruction of justice perhaps)?

Are there no additional avenues to escalate to compel compliance from FCC, other than writing this type of public letter?

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