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FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#211

Post by jandrese »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #102

I feel like the making the examples about Netflix/Google misses the point. This is way more dangerous than that - without Net Neutrality rules there's nothing to legally stop an ISP from "prioritizing" and "deprioritizing" any number of political and social sites. Digital fundraising for politicians is a very real and active thing. Would they be upset with if their side was suddenly hit with a 30s / page load penalty…

It's not hard to imagine 15 years ago Google is a new player on the scene but has a lot of trouble getting traction because their links are being constantly saturated and they have no money to pay the ISP ransoms to provide decent service.

We could still be using Altavista today.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#212

Post by dragonwriter »

jandrese wrote: post #199
bcoates wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, I like spectrum-formerly-timewarner-formerly-roadrunner cable Internet just fine. There are a lot of alternatives to using it for home Internet around here, and I'm pretty sure the two are related. If you want better internet access, instead of begging the FCC for scraps get on repealing legislated monopoly rights for kinds of wires and/or unbundling last mile from ISP. Then ask yourself why internet re…

Because high fixed costs make it very expensive for competitors to enter the market. It's like asking why someone doesn't just open up a competing water company in a place like Flint. More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the coun…

> More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the country in order to insure healthy competition?

I think people would be more confused than anything, since this FCC just voted to drastically restrict choice under the existing universal service find.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#213

Post by vel0city »

rhino369 wrote: post #163
jjoonathan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To where? Or are you one of those lucky few who have a choice of ISP?

The vast majority have some choice. The average household can choose between their telecom or their cable company. In some areas one or both of those companies don't provide broadband, but in the bulk of locations they do. And while 4g service isn't a true replacement, it provides enough competition to prevent the AOL-ization of the internet. At a certain point, people would choose more expensive wireless over absurd…

Only a little over 50% of households have at least 2 high-speed internet choices[0]. I wouldn't call that the "vast majority".

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#214

Post by ni-hil »

vel0city wrote: post #197
username223 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to your neighbors and offer to split the internet bill. This doesn't solve the long-term problem, but at least it hurts the local internet monopoly.

From what I gather in the brief comment, the apartment complex only allowed AT&T to install cabling to the building, so those apartment buildings are only serviced by AT&T. The apartment complex will not allow another ISP to dig up their property to install internet service for tenants, leading to an exclusive AT&T monopoly. I've had friends in similar apartment buildings. Calling other ISPs operating across the stre…

I think what he was suggesting was sharing one AT&T contract with his neighbors

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#215

Post by Fnoord »

pmoriarty wrote: post #85
fokinsean wrote: post #18

Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…

">On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom." Freedom for whom?

1984 rhetoric.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#216

Post by jquery »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #156
jfaucett wrote: post #152

As someone who is not in the US and will not suffer any negative consequences of this, I'm interested to see what will happen. We know the catastrophe hypothesis - ISPs will throttle content, customers will lose badly, innovation will plummet, etc. We also know people outside the tech field disagree with that and some seem to think the opposite could happen [1]. Honestly, I wish our societies would do way more experi…

are you a paid troll? what good comes from selective throttling?

Please don’t call people shills on HN. That’s very rude.

Selective throttling has worked great to make my t-mobile mobile data usage seamlessly switch between email, websites, and video on an “unlimited” plan. They even doe sample my videos to 480p to save bandwidth unless I vpn.

So there’s one non-trolly example of innovation that has made my life better that net neutrality would prevent.

I do not buy the doomsday scenarios. We started with AOL internet and moved to a freer internet over time, all without net neutrality.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#217

Post by rkowalick »

rglover wrote: post #195
ams6110 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

> Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? When you control what people see, you control what people think. Dismiss that as tinfoil malarky if you will.

I don’t think it as as ‘tinfoil’ as people may suggest. Moves like this combined with the lift on local news station ownership restrictions make plans to ‘control what people see’ more and more plausible.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#218

Post by orthecreedence »

Dangeranger wrote: post #13

Note that there is a discussion about how to fight this plan here: “Ask HN: How can we stop the plan to end net neutrality?” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745057

I'm going to sound like a broken record in these comments, but the most permanent way to save Net Neutrality is if the public owns the infrastructure, not the telecoms.

We need grassroots municipal fiber campaigns across the country until Comcast et al are forced to compete with local ISPs on public infrastructure.

Then Net Neutrality won't be an issue anymore: the market actually will solve it. No need to regulate. You'll have 20 local ISPs to choose from, and chances are they will all support Net Neutrality because it'd be suicide not to.

This isn't an issue in places with real market competition. The best path to that is publicly-owned infrastructure.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#219

Post by jlgaddis »

colemannugent wrote: post #136

Is it time to go full decentralized peer-to-peer wireless mesh yet? I know it would be slow, but that's par for the course in most of the US anyway. Routing would be painful, but something like IPFS would encourage peers to cache content in order to ensure faster access to the content they want. It could be done if only the barrier to entry for normal folks was lower. I'm thinking a dedicated piece of hardware in a f…

Oh, you want to use IPFS? That's gonna be an extra $25/month. For the first 5 GB.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#220

Post by jquery »

Spivak wrote: post #189
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you a paid troll? what good comes from selective throttling?

Just as an example, not getting shit internet speeds around 7:30 when everyone turns on Netflix.

I remember my former large apartment building’s internet slowing to a crawl everyday around this time.
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