51–60 of 415 posts
> But this idea is under attack, and I'm surprised the tech community isn't speaking out more forcefully. Although many leading tech companies are now the incumbents, I hope we'll all remember that openness helped them achieve their great success. It could be disastrous for future startups if this were to change--openness is what made the recent wave of innovation happen. Is it surprising? What organization is suppos…
Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every si…
It's not so hard to imagine the harm that comes from Verizon or AT&T picking winners based on the relationships they have and blocking innovation.
Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every si…
Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every si…
I'm not sure I agree with the premise you baldly assert: could you explain why it is true?
If you believe that it is OK that Iraqis can access Wikipedia for free via zero rating, then there are exceptions to NN, because zero rating is inherently anti-NN. From then on, it is a slippery slope. Is it OK to zero rate data only in "poor" countries? The moment they get rich enough, must we ban it? Is any non-profit allowed to zero rate, but all for-profits are not?
My point is, once you open the door to anti-NN practices being acceptable, you must then start analyzing all situations individually.
I respect NN absolutists although I disagree with them. At least they have a coherent philosophy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comparison is invalid. Consumers generally tolerate that network management for some things is ok, for example, constraining the transfer speed of users at peak times. This is a different scenario - the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy, for example, if you buy and use only samsung appliances, you get a cheap…
> the comparable scenario would be that your electricity company charges you a variable rate depending on which manufacturers appliances you buy The scenario you introduce is different from the specific line I was responding to. My intention was to show that some more consideration and rework of the idea could bring more clarity. You have helped refine Sam's point and now I understand it better, but as I read it, it…
In your example you are choosing to accept interruption of service in exchange for a preferential rate.
Net neutrality preserves the integrity of internet access by stating that ISPs may not interfere with traffic based on it's origin or destination for competitive reasons (e.g. to coerce payments from service providers a consumer may choose to access). The core premise of Internet access is that a consumer is paying for access to the Internet. If a consumer chooses to permit the service provider to modulate service at the consumer side in order to gain preferential treatment (better price, etc), then this is a consumer choice.
> I could have a switch to change my water heater to the non-interruptible service if I needed to use it during a time of peak demand. How does "pay more for priority" fit into the net neutrality picture?
There are numerous ways to "pay for priority"; even with electricity you can pay a supplier to upgrade capacity in your area to ensure that you have the ability to more consistently draw power, especially at peak times (granted this is not a trivial process). With Internet access the same thing is available - if I want a 10Mbps connection, that has minimum bandwidth of 1Mbps at peak times, and 99% uptime, then I could reasonably expect to pay more than someone who only wants a 1Mbps connection, can tolerate a minimum bandwidth of 512Kbps at peak, and only needs 90% uptime.
This is not a net neutrality issue, and this should be consumer choice (I am old and from Canada, so the numbers above are low :P); allowing lower cost terms of service for less guarantees is a time honored tradition in delivering utilities and services, but most utilities in many parts of the world have a minimum standard that must be met to achieve regulatory compliance for consumer services (e.g. water pressure upper and lower limits, natural gas line pressure, electricity amperage and voltage, etc). Anything above that regulation-blessed "consumer grade" is an opportunity to extract value for priority, and is compatible with net neutrality.
The Net Neutrality issue is that your provider can then regulate the service which you have bought and paid for (network access to your ISPs network peers, and via those access to the Internet) to prevent you from access resources from specific sites and resources, and deliberately applying QoS to degrade a users experience with those third party sites and services in order to coerce the upstream services to pay the ISP.
This is why I say that a service that does this is not Internet Service, but rather a curated network service.
Today's software can enable multiple ISPs to share the fiber/spectrum. I could then have 10 ISPs today and 15 ISPs tomorrow. I might use ISP #1 for certain content, and ISP #2 for certain services.
ISPs essentially become a function of the services and content they provide, and how they provide it, in an ultra-competitive, granular market. The way it should be.
I think the tipping point last time (SOPA/PIPA protests) was when Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, etc. went dark. It's sad we don't have Aaron Swartz to help this time around. It's good to see Sam offering help, but who is actually going to step up?
What's needed for "another Aaron"? I know he had a pre-existing following; is that required? Do you think someone could fill those shoes this time around, starting from scratch?
Courage. The cynic in me answers "Someone who doesn't mind being becoming a target?" I notice nobody is jumping up and down volunteering to be "another Assange" or "another Snowden". Different topics but similar level of fortitude needed.
1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option. It should be a market decision, not a national government decision.
2) The real problems with lack of NN are due to lack of competition in the access provider market. Focus on fixing that. A lot of this is due to local governments requiring providers cover entire markets to cover any of a market -- if someone wants to build another WebPass or CondoInternet and only serve high-density developments, that's great! Trenching fiber to single family homes is marginal anyway, but if you have low take-up in a neighborhood it is even worse. If you are going to push for regulation, have it be regulation to empower actual competition in the network access market.
3) Zero-rating in emerging markets (e.g. FB in India) is really the only way for many lower income users to afford services at all -- particularly for video services.
Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every si…
I don't accept this premise. This is a false dichotomy because these are not the only two options. There is a third, better option: to get access to the entire internet.
A company offering you that choice is using a classic game-theoretic bargaining approach: commit to only allowing a restricted set of possibilities, of which the other person's best option is the one you want to happen. This makes it sound like the company has no chioce in the matter: they are just presenting you with the options, and you are the one who has to choose between eliminating this poor Iraqi's internet or giving her partial access. In reality, the company has stacked the deck by presenting you with this particular pair of options.
I'm not saying it's completely illegitimate for a company to want to sponsor free partial internet for those who don't have it in some places of the world.
But I am saying it is opposite from the ideal we should be working towards in already-developed countries like the USA. Ideally, the company providing internet should not at all be vertically integrated with the company providing websites on it and should have no incentive to prioritize one over the other.
Net Neutrality absolutists need to tone down their rhetoric. When NN activists say zero rating is unfair, they are speaking from an ivory tower. It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all. Once you accept this premise, you must then accept that exceptions to NN exist. Once you accept that, you must then take every si…
We're also talking about Net Neutrality in the United States, largely, and I would reckon almost explicitly. What does that have to do with Iraq and its internet access?? Not that it isn't important. It just has nothing to do with internet access in the United States. you're not exactly elaborating on how that example applies. I see no evidence here, yet you claim Net neutrality 'absolutists' need to tone down their…
If you do believe that Iraqis should be able to have zero rated Wikipedia, because they are poor, shouldn't poor Americans (of which their are millions living in abject poverty) be able to get zero rated services as well?