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President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

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Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#431

Post by roc »

dragonwriter wrote: post #380
roc wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "My question to Obama is: why now?" My guess? The FCC is probably close to deciding and Obama knows which way they're leaning. So he wants to build some distance between the DNC and the FCC, before the FCC inevitably announces they're going to let the ISPs do what they will. If Obama says nothing, Net Neutrality will continue to be a sub-headline issue even if/after the FCC allows it to die. Inasmuch as anyone noti…

> The FCC is probably close to deciding Given that the FCC Chair, who has repeatedly says he agrees with Obama on the need for neutrality (both before and after the recent statement), and specifically agreed that paid prioritization should be avoided, just announced that the final rules may be delayed into 2015 (he earlier said he wanted to get them out by the end of the year) because of legal work required by the co…

If the ISPs were on-board with an acceptable compromise, they'd presumably not lobby strongly against it. The decision would likely stay in the land of wonks and be largely ignored.

So why would Obama turn that -- getting what he wants (or nearly so) -- into a highly-politicized position, essentially guaranteeing that it's strongly fought, blocked and/or legislated away in the next session?

There's no up-side for him or the hypothetical acceptable compromise and a huge down-side risk.

And given how many years the FCC has avoided this issue, and insisted on preserving the farcical distinction between "communications" and "information" networks, I see no reason to be optimistic about the terms or lifespan of any compromise short of Title II, regardless of what has leaked.

Even if something workable were agreed upon, it wouldn't be likely to last any longer than previous compromises -- such as the FCC's last stab at Net Neutrality, or the short-lived DSL open-access rules.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#432

Post by CWuestefeld »

nathan_long wrote: post #363
CWuestefeld wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds very George Orwell, like "Freedom is Slavery". It's going to take a very strong argument to support the idea that freedom is enhanced by limiting freedom. Not that it's impossible; my glib statement plays fast-and-loose with "freedom", using the same word in one sentence to mean both the overall amount of freedom as well as in a microcosm. But even so, the apparent contradiction should make us think befor…

Freedom can be enhanced by limiting freedom. In the US, you may not have a slave or be a slave. It is illegal, even if both parties are willing. Why can't we decide? Because if we could, it would open the door to trickery and coercion. The fact that no slavery arrangement is legal keeps a lot of people from being tricked or coerced into one. Hence, limiting freedom (of agreements) can enhance freedom generally (no sl…

We want a market where houses below a certain level of quality just don't exist, because it's better for everyone.

But are we sure that's true?

A couple months ago I recall seeing that one of the major wireless providers was planning a level of service that was (a) very cheap; (b) allowed unlimited access to Facebook and a couple of other major social apps; and (c) was very expensive for data usage outside that area. It would be marketed toward poorer people as a cheaper means of getting that basic connectivity.

One outcome of the arguments for net neutrality, and your argument in particular, is that there's no means for providing low-cost services designed for the less-rich. It's not obvious to me that setting a bar this high is a good thing for the lower economic rung in our society.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#433

Post by saraid216 »

smsm42 wrote: post #371
guelo wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least theoretically, the government bureaucrat can be influenced for the general good. The corporate monopoly bureaucrat will fuck everybody over if it serves his interest.

True, but corporation can be influenced for the general good too - by its customers. In fact, you can argue customers have more control than the voters - if the politician has 50%+1 votes in his pocket and appoints the bureaucrat, the opinion of the rest of 50%-1 voters have absolutely no weight to him (unless he is of a special rare breed of saint which is so rare in real politics). However, for the corporation losi…

> if the politician has 50%+1 votes in his pocket and appoints the bureaucrat, the opinion of the rest of 50%-1 voters have absolutely no weight to him (unless he is of a special rare breed of saint which is so rare in real politics).

This sounds plausible, but it isn't correct. Remember, first of all, that no politician has real access to who did and did not vote for him. He has access to polling data, which generally scrubs well enough to reduce people to demographics. Conveniently, we generally engage with our politics through the lens of demographics anyways. But demographics are effectively never 100% accurate: samples are only samples.

Second, votes matter to politicians only if they want to be re-elected. They also matter on ballot measures and propositions and so on, but those are generally not what people mean when they talk about politician-voter relationships. Obama, since 2012, has no real reason to care about who voted for him in 2012 because he's not going to get any votes in 2016. There are other reasons in play, yes, but electoral votes are irrelevant when a politician has no interest in retaining his seat at the next cycle.

Third, politicians care about public opinion. They balance this against other competing interests, to be sure, but public opinion is the reason most of them ran for office in the first place. Those competing interests run the gamut from commercial interests to legal interests to moral interests to realpolitik, and ultimately, their job is to reconcile every interest with every other interest. That's what a politician is. People are afraid of politicians because they do not understand or recognize the interests they have outside of public opinion.

Public opinion is not votes, because public opinion is not tied to the electoral cycle. It suffers from the same problem of votes--that it is polled and often reduced to demographics--but from a far smaller degree because public opinion is also expressed by individuals who are willing to identify themselves.

The problem with public opinion, though, is that it's extremely rare to get anything solid resembling 50%. Nowhere close to 50% of a population is generally willing to identify themselves, meaning such a thing will always come down to polling data.

The advantage that corporations have in influenceability isn't that 50% could walk away (which will basically never happen on solely moral grounds); it's that it can track their interests with far, far more precision. It can know if you stop spending money, and it can calculate exactly what effect that will have on its bottom line. A politician, on the other hand, cannot track your personal opinion, and even if he could, he cannot determine how that would play out against the myriad other priorities he must keep in mind, not least of which is the rest of his constituency's opinions.

A politician makes a marketer look like an engineer in comparison. And yeah. Improving this would basically be a privacy risk. So we're fucked.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#434

Post by JoeAltmaier »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #432
nathan_long wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom can be enhanced by limiting freedom. In the US, you may not have a slave or be a slave. It is illegal, even if both parties are willing. Why can't we decide? Because if we could, it would open the door to trickery and coercion. The fact that no slavery arrangement is legal keeps a lot of people from being tricked or coerced into one. Hence, limiting freedom (of agreements) can enhance freedom generally (no sl…

We want a market where houses below a certain level of quality just don't exist, because it's better for everyone. But are we sure that's true? A couple months ago I recall seeing that one of the major wireless providers was planning a level of service that was (a) very cheap; (b) allowed unlimited access to Facebook and a couple of other major social apps; and (c) was very expensive for data usage outside that area.…

But those are artificial bottom-rung services. We all know that an internet connection is an internet connections, right? So restricting this bogus program to certain websites was an attempt to capture the consumer, nothing more. Its somewhat like offering the poor special-price moldy bread, deliberately poisoned to make them have to buy your medicine or whatever. There's no point to it, except evil.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#435

Post by mikecb »

padobson wrote: post #56

I hope no one is getting excited about this. President Obama is a lame duck. His party just got tossed out of the Senate, relegating his political capital to basically 0. In the wake of this, he's decided to take maybe the most important economic issue of the next 20 years and politicize it. Neither the red team nor the blue team could say they owned this issue, but one of the most divisive voices in politics just st…

A lame duck occurs after the new President has been elected, but before he has been sworn in. Obama will not be a lame duck for two years.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#436

Post by jobposter1234 »

ablesable wrote: post #336
jobposter1234 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you explain how the Stasi kidnapped and killed lots of German citizens, while the NSA has yet to do the like? I can understand if you're saying you fear the NSA's power grab because of similarities with the Stasi. I have trouble believing that you think there is literally no difference between the Stasi and the current NSA, given their body of work has significant differences.

The NSA spies on far more people than the Stasi could have ever hoped to. The NSA is just the intel branch of a government that has killed and imprisoned more people than the East German government did. Arguing about the niceties of barbaric practices is fruitless anyway, but we can argue about the size of the weapons wielded by the barbarians.

I'm in agreement that the NSA shares certain characteristics with the Stasi - spying on its own populace is one of them. I also get it if you don't differentiate between citizen/non-citizen in terms of targeting. Heck, I'm with you in regards to (most of) what I believe to be your position.

However, your tone and word choice, along with the hyperbole of your statements, serve to weaken your point.

The Stasi created a culture of fear in the populace of the nation they were supposed to protect. They used the citizenry against itself; fathers doubting children, wives were suspicious of neighbors.

German citizens and residents found sufficiently undesirable were imprisoned or executed by the Stasi.

While the US has committed some terrible acts abroad in the name of anti-terrorism, I still contend there is a significant difference between the current NSA and the Stasi.

It's similar to how I object when people equate the US internment of their Japanese residents with the Nazi Final Solution. Similarities, sure. Both awful, sure. But there is a difference between immorally and illegally imprisoning people based on race for a few years and trying to wipe an entire race from the face of the planet in a systematic and sick environment.

Anyone who conflates arguments like that sound like they're shouting with an agenda, and it only serves to weaken what would be, in a more measured tone, a strong argument.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#437

Post by corobo »

arthurcolle wrote: post #376
emcrazyone wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. ISP owner here. Not all web sites or IP addresses contain 100% illegal material. Virtual hosting (hosting more than one web site from same IP address) poses problems as does content among sub-domains. I don't have the resources to monitor and track such things and if I were forced into it, I would either go out of business or try to become a search engine.

I've actually wondered how do you go about providing access to internet? I write a lot of code and spent a good amount of time on the internet and it's always made me wonder how exactly one goes about providing internet to customers. Really curious for any resources to read about this if you have any resources to read or just your personal experience!

Basically it's a reselling system no matter which way you go. You buy access into a bigger ISP's network and then provide services on top of it.

If you've got a huge wallet you could run your own physical infrastructure but it would be hugely expensive for anything more than a small userbase [1]. If you went that way you'd make peering agreements with your closest internet backbone providers to hook into the rest of the internet (backbone providers being even bigger ISPs than those mentioned earlier, the ISP's ISP if you like)

[1] It has been done in the past: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/how-to-start-your-own...

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#438

Post by CWuestefeld »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #434
CWuestefeld wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want a market where houses below a certain level of quality just don't exist, because it's better for everyone. But are we sure that's true? A couple months ago I recall seeing that one of the major wireless providers was planning a level of service that was (a) very cheap; (b) allowed unlimited access to Facebook and a couple of other major social apps; and (c) was very expensive for data usage outside that area.…

But those are artificial bottom-rung services. We all know that an internet connection is an internet connections, right? So restricting this bogus program to certain websites was an attempt to capture the consumer, nothing more. Its somewhat like offering the poor special-price moldy bread, deliberately poisoned to make them have to buy your medicine or whatever. There's no point to it, except evil.

Its somewhat like offering the poor special-price moldy bread, deliberately poisoned to make them have to buy your medicine

No, that's a completely unfair characterization. There's nothing "poisoned" about the lower level of service being contemplated here, it's just a lot less capable.

You seem to be putting yourself into the position of deciding for these hypothetical poor customers that if they can't have the A+ level of service for top dollars, then they shouldn't have anything at all. It's all or nothing.

If you think that we should limit things in this way, then let's be up-front about it. Admit from the beginning that the result will be that we're preventing low-cost plans, so the industry will be forbidden from selling plans designed for disadvantaged people.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#439

Post by dasmithii »

venomsnake wrote: post #160
AndrewHampton wrote: post #9

Here's the thing that bothers me the most about a lot of the talk about net neutrality by government officials: > If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. Specifically "and the content is legal" is what raises a flag for me. I've seen similar phrases in nearly everything I've read coming from any government official regarding net ne…

I think that it is preventative of headlines "Obama wants pedophiles to be able to download kiddie porn fast" that the other party pundits are sure to make. Edit: I am not defending any party, just assume that in current poisonous climate ANY action of ANY high position party official of ANY party will be stretched and twisted by the other side. Inspection of traffic with the coming certificate pinning and https impl…

Good point. It could be doubly motivated as well, by (1) anticipated twisting of words, and (2) potential censoring of content.

Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet

#440

Post by dasmithii »

thizzbuzz wrote: post #412
Bud wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. Bullying should be illegal already, and internet bullies should be aggressively prosecuted. This is currently a law enforcement blind spot, but that needs to change. BTW, putting quotes around the world "bullying" isn't actually effective in mocking it as something actionable; it just communicates to us that you are perfectly ok with bullying.

The worry is that "bullying" can be redefined to mean almost anything. A scathing critique of a bad business or politician could be construed as bullying. We should also be careful about criminalizing bullies, since a large portion of them are young (and quite possibly bullied or abused themselves). It's a problem, and it needs more attention, but rushing to criminalize it seems hasty to me.

Agreed. Criminalizing antagonism would provide dirt on just about everyone. Hell, half of YouTube [commenters] would be prosecutable.

Not all wrongful doings ought be illegal.

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