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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

#571

Post by s73ver_ »

webXL wrote: post #500
shmerl wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would be a boon to any ISP who DIDN'T do this. Competition, and obvious lack of business sense, has always been a far larger counter-balance to this idea. Competition surely can help, but currently there is no competition in a lot of places. It's basically monopoly / oligopoly situation, with collusion and market division to boot. So increasing competition is a good goal, but it shouldn't block preventing mono…

> Competition surely can help, but currently there is no competition in a lot of places. Places with a lot of people? People who have been harmed by what NN is intending to fix? > Monopolists also created a lot of blockers that prevent increasing competition. Facilitated by government. If government was responsible in the first place, why not just undo what they did?

I live in Orange County, CA. I have access to literally one provider.

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

#572

Post by s73ver_ »

ghrifter wrote: post #439
dmix wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that ISP shills that make these decisions don't care about public opposition But they do care most about making money from the public and no one has convinced me that filtering internet packages by website makes any technical, marketing, or business model sense at all. This has proven to be incredibly unpopular idea with the public for over a decade as well, whenever it has come up in the press. It w…

Shh you are going against the hive mind of people that watch a fucking comedian and accept his word as gospel and that this removal of title 2 "hurts muh free speech" Internet companies didnt make fast lanes and shit for 20 years, removal of title 2 and suddenly they are? the fuck.

I honestly don't get your argument. You're saying that, because they didn't do it while they were under regulation, they're not going to do it in the future?

If they're not going to do it, then why remove the regulation?

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

#573

Post by s73ver_ »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #201
imglorp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's unlikely popular and profitable services will be hindered by the lack of net neutrality. Huh? Did you forget already that both Verizon and Comcast throttled services like Netflix? They both argued they should get a cut if they were going to carry the traffic to their customers. Now they're getting exactly what they wanted. 1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/veriz... 2. https://consumeris…

What is the actual reason they shouldn't? This is a highly politicized topic but it's hard to find rational discussion. If I built a network I would expect to be able to charge whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted in exchange for the use of my network. Is the answer that taxpayers helped fund the network so now feel they deserve not to pay twice? How much of the current internet infrastructure is paid for by taxpay…

Why should you get paid more because your users were streaming Netflix as opposed to doing anything else with the traffic?

You, as a network provider, are already peering with other network providers, and so you're getting paid for (and paying for) the bandwidth that's getting used. What you're after is an extra slice of the pie from Netflix.

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

#574

Post by s73ver_ »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #275
opportune wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These ISP companies use legal shenanigans, coupled with the unavoidably large startup costs of creating a new/competing ISP, to effectively run regional monopolies. Google kind of gave up their master plan for Fiber after they were litigated in multiple jurisdictions essentially over bullshit that they were legally within their right to do, such as use shared lines - and that was Google, which had a ton of cash to th…

Thanks for the detailed reply. It seems like a lot of the disagreement hinges on the fact that ISPs have a monopoly and many people cannot easily "vote with their wallet" if the ISP does something they don't like. I wonder if focusing on making it easier for competitive ISPs to start up would do more towards bridging the gap between the two sides. I think a lot of the anti-NN crowd is based on a more philosophical ar…

Many of those ISPs took government funds to pay for those networks.

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

#575

Post by wuliwong »

wuliwong wrote: post #523
wavefunction wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though this strongly contrasting view is not mainstream by any measure.

I think the Austrian school is considered legitimate school of economics though, right? It's not like these are amateur economists or anything.

@wavefunction I can't comment on your last message (I guess to prevent flamewars?), hopefully this doesn't get too confusing to follow.

My understanding of the argument is that EM frequencies in a geography are a limited resource and therefore are best treated as property with "homesteading" giving the initial claim to that property. (Which re-reading what you wrote, I think you understand)

The first time I heard that argument, I found it quite interesting. And in fact, I shared it because it appears not to be mainstream but well worth a look IMO.

I do disagree with your characterization of the general discussion. I think parks and radio frequencies on the whole are treated differently by the govt. There are govt owned frequencies of radio which would be like a public park but I believe this discussion is more about the regulation of the private radio frequencies. There are lots of private frequencies, they are just distributed and regulated by the FCC.

The question as I see it is would it have been better to let "homesteading" distribute the initial ownership or the FCC?

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

#576

Post by s73ver_ »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #419
mediocrejoker wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think hardware stores are maybe not the best comparison because if a hardware store was doing that then it would be pretty easy for a competitor to open a hardware store across the street and undercut the first on shovels and steal all the business. I think this might be a better solution than a law that specifically mandates the price at which a hardware store can sell shovels, since I think that law would only ad…

To agree with your initial point: hardware stores do sell different kinds of shovels, for different digging tasks.

They do. But that's not the question being asked. It is, should a hardware store be able to charge different prices for the same kind of shovel?

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

#577

Post by s73ver_ »

ams6110 wrote: post #34
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…

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.

If your ISP decides to do the same thing, where are you gonna go? The vast majority of Americans do not have significant choice when it comes to service providers.

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

#578

Post by s73ver_ »

mring33621 wrote: post #379
guiambros wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd. Absurd for you, not for the carriers. And, unfortunately, they are the ones dealing the cards now. Outrageous, for sure, but according to Chairman Pai's plan, carriers will be able to charge both consumers and content providers.

That's fine. If the charges are onerous enough, then the content providers may choose to build new carriers of their own.

I'd rather not hope and pray that they're able to do this. Plus, I know that in many parts of the country, they won't be interested.

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

#579

Post by zaroth »

wang_li wrote: post #469
ghewgill wrote: post #89

For those who don't understand why net neutrality is important, it is worthwhile to read about the history of communications (telephone, radio, TV). There is an excellent book by Tim Wu called The Master Switch [0] which investigates the history of communications (with an American focus), describes how each industry start out open to all (farmers using fences for telephone, independent radio broadcasters), and each o…

The problem with the current net neutrality debate is that it seems to stop at layer 3 of the ISO stack. There's no reason why we should have dozens of incompatible video calling apps, why media streaming only works with a particular vendor's application. Not to mention that many of the big players in silicon valley like to jump back and forth over the line of "is a provider" / "is not a provider". Twitter and Google…

Wait, what? You think government regulation should dictate how I let competitors access my L7 application servers to host their own content in the name of "neutrality"?

I think I must be misunderstanding what you mean. How could a "neutrality" argument possibly apply to my proprietary application stack?

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

#580

Post by s73ver_ »

logfromblammo wrote: post #484
lotsofpulp wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a lawyer and suing the owner is not a reasonable thing to ask of people living in apartments.

No, it isn't, but nor is it reasonable for an apartment owner to establish service monopolies on their property at the expense of their renters. What alternative would you suggest?

Violent armed revolution?
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