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Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

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Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#51

Post by RK »

dansingerman wrote: post #17
rue wrote: post #2

I'm more stunned by the price: I pay 20€ for unlimited and unrestricted data access with a double SIM (one mobile broadband, other for phone). And they want to charge more for other video access?

Mobile data seems very expensive in the US compared to Europe, but the States seem to be cheaper in most other areas: e.g. Petrol/Gasoline - $3 per gallon in the States, over $8 per gallon in the UK now.

Mobile data seems very expensive in the US compared to Europe

Just don't get on a train for a couple hours and stop in another country. Roaming data rates will kill you in Europe!

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#52

Post by roc »

JonnieCache wrote: post #34
maeon3 wrote: post #12

Facebook Fee: $.95 Youtube Surcharge: $1.53 blogging package: $.25 Roaming charge (non approved sites): $5.21 Wikileaks download penalty: $10.00 Destroying net neutrality, killing what made the Internet great in the first place: priceless.

Potential cost to the establishment of forcing all the hackers onto darknets: who knows?

The ssh and vpn charges will predictably be outrageous and seriously curtail the popularity of darknets. Similarly with any alternatives that are centralized by service or protocol. It'd be an awfully tall technological order to create a distributed Tor-style traffic relay to the darknets.

Or are you suggesting pirate wireless carriers?

That said, if such a too-difficult-to-effectively-filter Tor-style relay came into being, that certainly would be a Big Deal.

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#53

Post by jokermatt999 »

motters wrote: post #9

Blocking sites because they're "not on the service plan" is likely to be much more acceptable in western countries than explicit censorship, as in Iran or China. It's authoritarianism dressed up as commercialism. In the post-Wikileaks era my bet is that governments will either encourage, or at least not do anything to hinder, the erection of walled gardens which make it more difficult for the average internet user to…

I'd be surprised if it came from a Wikileaks angle. Most (government) arguments I've seen against NN have been from the angle that it's corporations right to create plans like this and to block it infringes their freedoms.

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#54

Post by rmc »

w1ntermute wrote: post #25
abstractbill wrote: post #18

Well that really sucks. I wonder how they'll be implementing it, and how plausible it will be for other video sites to make themselves unblockable.

> I wonder how they'll be implementing it, and how plausible it will be for other video sites to make themselves unblockable. Yes, I'd like some information on this as well. Will it be possible to circumvent their block using encryption? The article says only the videos themselves will be blocked, not the websites.

It will almost certainly be possible for technical folks like us to bypass their filters but that will still exclude about 99% of their customers. That 99% will probably grudgingly pay the few dollars more and complain about phone companies screwing them again.

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#55

Post by JonnieCache »

roc wrote: post #52
JonnieCache wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potential cost to the establishment of forcing all the hackers onto darknets: who knows?

The ssh and vpn charges will predictably be outrageous and seriously curtail the popularity of darknets. Similarly with any alternatives that are centralized by service or protocol. It'd be an awfully tall technological order to create a distributed Tor-style traffic relay to the darknets. Or are you suggesting pirate wireless carriers? That said, if such a too-difficult-to-effectively-filter Tor-style relay came int…

http://www.i2p2.de/

If they start banning the protocol from routers, we can tunnel it through other protocols. You can push anything you want through an HTTPS link. Good luck banning that protocol.

Or we can do the wireless-mesh thing. There are a lot of people working on mesh-based peer to peer routing layers and DNS. Wish I could remember what the projects were called...

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#56

Post by [deleted] »

aw3c2 wrote: post #49
maeon3 wrote: post #12

Facebook Fee: $.95 Youtube Surcharge: $1.53 blogging package: $.25 Roaming charge (non approved sites): $5.21 Wikileaks download penalty: $10.00 Destroying net neutrality, killing what made the Internet great in the first place: priceless.

I can't wait for the censorship-resistant, anonymous, redundant worldwide network that would be created. The internet is terrible on many levels, it works though, so the incentive for change is just not there.

[deleted]

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#57

Post by w1ntermute »

rmc wrote: post #54
w1ntermute wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how they'll be implementing it, and how plausible it will be for other video sites to make themselves unblockable. Yes, I'd like some information on this as well. Will it be possible to circumvent their block using encryption? The article says only the videos themselves will be blocked, not the websites.

It will almost certainly be possible for technical folks like us to bypass their filters but that will still exclude about 99% of their customers. That 99% will probably grudgingly pay the few dollars more and complain about phone companies screwing them again.

If they complain loud enough, it might be possible to get them to reverse their stance. From my POV, the problem is that only technical people are complaining, and no one else cares.

I'm guessing that people will respond the same way most people in China do to censorship - with relative apathy. They have better things to do than worry about whether the internet is censored or not.

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#58

Post by evgen »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #39
jonknee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population density of Germany is 229 persons per km/sq. In the US it's 32. It's a lot more expensive to run the infrastructure for a country 27 times the geographic area and 1/7th the density.

Finland has a population density of 17/km^2. From a campaign, I can right now get unrestricted data at 384kbps for 3€/month, or "as much as the connection can handle", up to 14,4Mbps, typically 4Mbps, for 14€/month. Lower population density actually helps wireless internet -- the cost is mainly not about the transmission equipment, it's about the very limited amount of total over-air bandwidth.

Lower population density actually helps wireless internet

Not quite true. Wireless internet is most cost effective when population density is at an extreme on the scale. If the density is low then you can use fewer towers that have larger cells and if the density is high then you need more capital for the higher-capacity infrastructure, but your backhauls are shorter and you have a larger userbase to recoup the investment. I would bet that for wireless operators in Finland the Helsinki area, Turku, and low-population areas make money while Kuopio is probably a break-even region at best...

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#59

Post by mindslight »

How is this scary new development? The budget option of proprietary bundled services has always existed, with the upsell being the unfettered internet. Youtube and facebook are not "the internet", but proprietary services that have been developed upon it. Surprise surprise, network providers used to bundling services look for a lowest common denominator for their base product line. That these services happen to deliver over IP is of little consequence.

However, don't think that I'm advocating for walled gardens - the important part is to keep innovating and creating a wide demand for The Internet at large so that carriers are unable to presume that most customers only want bundled discrete services in the first place (thereby pushing competition on generic bandwidth. bittorrent+RC4 has done wonders for wired net neutrality).

Re: Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans

#60

Post by mortenjorck »

grantheaslip wrote: post #37
motters wrote: post #9

Blocking sites because they're "not on the service plan" is likely to be much more acceptable in western countries than explicit censorship, as in Iran or China. It's authoritarianism dressed up as commercialism. In the post-Wikileaks era my bet is that governments will either encourage, or at least not do anything to hinder, the erection of walled gardens which make it more difficult for the average internet user to…

Oh come on, do you really think that governments are so shook up over WikiLeaks that they might encourage ISPs to turn the internet into a series of walled gardens? For that matter, do you really think that they're that evil? Obviously they're not happy about WikiLeaks, and I'm not saying that governments or ISPs are perfect, but some perspective is badly needed here. What you've written screams hyperbole and is veer…

Just as the majority of hackers are decent people, so are the majority of people in government. But just as there are black hats among hackers, there are black hats in government. Just as it would be imprudent to ignore the potential threat of black hats on computer security, it would be imprudent to ignore the potential threat of black hats on freedom.
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