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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

#341

Post by pcnix »

creaghpatr wrote: post #282
singlow wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Orwellian standards of not censoring? I am not a fan of hate speech - but I'm also not a fan of corporate oligarchs deciding how it is defined.

The question is which group of oligarchs would you allow this unchecked power? Personally, I'm not a fan of either, but I'd rather see competition in this area rather than government-sanctioned neutrality.

That competition should not be decided by who has the most money, it should be based on the weight of public representation, hence democracy.

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

#342

Post by murjinsee »

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…

I read Wheeler's statement as sarcasm. He said the decision was "tragic" right before that line. It seems like he is implying that nobody likes cable companies, and now they're going to hate the similarities in internet service providers if this bill passes.

Wheeler, despite being a former industry man, definitely pushed for the consumer agenda despite industry pressure.

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

#343

Post by stanmancan »

I feel so helpless as a Canadian. Is there anything I can do to help? As a web developer, this type of thing scares me to no end. We run a few SAAS products, have a site that makes pretty decent ad revenue, and host sites for customers. A large number of the website visitors for all services are from the USA. If that traffic disappears...

Is there anything meaningful a non-american can do to help?

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

#344

Post by nathan_long »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

> Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction?

You've got it backwards. Granny and can I both pay per byte. We can even pay surge pricing based on congestion.

The question is this: why should I have to pay more for bytes from Netflix than Granny pays for bytes from Ravelry?

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

#346

Post by revmoo »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

Good lord, this is just so.. _wrong_. What in the world gave you this idea?

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

#347

Post by JustSomeNobody »

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…

Someone posted an Ask HN the other day asking "What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?"

Mesh networking was mine. I really really wish this would happen.

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

#348

Post by maxxxxx »

EnderMB wrote: post #14
ryanmarsh wrote: post #11

This fight will not end until we enact legislation codifying net neutrality into law. This issue is to important for a notice to simply be overlooked in the federal register before a ruling is made.

I'm not American, so I don't know how this works, but would it not be a good idea to fight lobbying with lobbying? Create a lobbying group, funded by a mix of regular people and businesses that push towards the ultimate aim of net neutrality being a part of national and international law. I think a lot of people are sick of having to contact their representatives, or don't do it because it's a burden. I imagine many…

The problem with lobbying is that the people who can directly make money off their proposals have much bigger incentives to spend money on it than people who don't. So the telecoms will always have more money for it than consumers. Same for the medical system. Pharmaceutical have a lot more incentive to spend than people who want to save money.

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

#349

Post by geon »

barrkel wrote: post #297
nathan_long wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix . Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell . Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing. Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

I allready pay for bandwidth.

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

#350

Post by IronWolve »

niftich wrote: post #137

Repealing net neutrality would only make sense if the layer underneath (the PHY consisting of fiber/copper/coax/wireless/whatever infrastucture including last-mile connections between every node) were subject to net neutrality instead [1], such that "anyone" could start an ISP that offers differentiated services on top of the same infra. Of course, today the last-mile infra and the ISP on top are tightly coupled, and…

True. Access (services) vs. censorship, you want to avoid the monopolies from restricting new access providers, but also don't want access providers from censoring the access.

The right wants isp/telcos to be able to bundle and offer more speeds/services. Assuming it won't censor.

The left assumes isp/telcos will offer services/bundles (tiers) but will censor its services/bundles. (Like it did with netflix.)

As most places have a monopolistic type access (or worse, no access) thats the primary cause for concern. Nobody loves their cableco. If we had a plethora of choices for internet access, that would be the cure for censorship.

But we don't. We are stuck at fighting censorship due to lack of access.

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