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FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

arstechnica.com

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Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#81

Post by super-serial »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #44

What are our alternatives for wireless and wired ISPs? I'm done with the incumbents. I'm familiar with Republic Wireless and Google Fi, but I'm a long-time iPhone user who doesn't really want to switch. Are there any similar carriers who fully support iOS? Given the control wired home ISPs have, what are the alternatives? Is there a good, reasonably affordable wireless alternative?

I was thinking of Project Fi but Google just buys the data from TMobile/Sprint/US Cellular. So the same carriers just get richer, giving them more power. There's really no way to hurt the carriers or ISPs bottom line.

The only thing I can think of is supporting municipal broadband. I wish there was some generic nation-wide municipal broadband fund I could pledge to donate to if net neutrality is revoked. I'd even pledge the same monthly amount I pay my ISP.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#82

Post by CompuHacker »

Blaiz0r wrote: post #59

Is there really no alternative to using an ISP for a connection? Is it possible to build a decentralised and encrypted network on our mobile phones? I guess we still have to run traffic through mobile service providers...

Use an educational or national institution for an Internet connection, bypassing commercial networks.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#83

Post by maxerickson »

arca_vorago wrote: post #21
EGreg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I said. Trump selected lots of people like that to head up agencies. They either have no experience, wanted to destroy the agency earlier, or will put their ideology before the will of the people every time.

Let's be clear about something here. These are most likely not organic Trump picks. This is about the biggest donors getting their quid pro quo in the form of cabinet picks due to regulatory capture... and leaks of the Obama admin indicate the same thing happened with him, the same with Bush before him, and likely with presidents for a long time. With Obama it was citigroup who got most of the picks if I remember cor…

What would an organic Trump pick be if not based on some sort of quid pro quo?

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#84

Post by backtoyoujim »

grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

no offense ... but stick your "just the way it is" up your desk drawer and lock it real tight.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#85

Post by HuggableSquare »

arise wrote: post #66
artursapek wrote: post #34

Honest question, what changes can we expect as ISP consumers if this happens? A follow up, if all it is is them charging customers more for using more bandwidth, how is that any different from any other fundamental resource like water, electricity, etc? Why should I pay as much money for my SSH and Hacker News as the guy down the street streaming Netflix all day?

There are countless ways you can use traffic discrimination to pad your own pockets without adding any value to the economy. In the past we've seen ISP's block apps and websites that compete with their own services. For example, Verizon blocked tethering apps and AT&T blocked FaceTime at one point. A slightly different example is the time Comcast imposed a monthly cap on users (250 GB), but then exempted their own st…

With regards to exempting services from data caps, it's called "zero-rating" and as far as I am aware, the net neutrality laws we have on the books don't mention it (which is why mobile carriers have been doing it for years).

I do believe that if you exempted only your own services you would start to fall into anti-competition territory though.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#86

Post by BFatts »

doubt_me wrote: post #22
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

Its now December 2017. Everybody knew about his plan the day he was sworn in as chairman. Between the resources at Google/ Yahoo/ FB/ Ycombinator alone they have the money, lawyers, know how, and have had since November of last year to do something about this, anything. anything at all. Actually, any fortune 500 company. Not a single whisper from wall street. not a single whisper from the private sector. Obviously in…

"Between the resources at Google/ Yahoo/ FB/ Ycombinator alone they have the money, lawyers, know how, and have had since November of last year to do something about this"

They did. They petitioned, used their own money, tried to convince Pai that his changes were bad. They did their part and Pai ignored them - flat out ignores them as if they don't matter. So... what about your argument works?

Pai was "hired" to screw the Internet and help the big ISPs make more cash. Trump is only there to overturn everything Obama did, nothing more. So Pai is just there to overturn NN, nothing more.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#87

Post by craftyguy »

pwinnski wrote: post #12
fotbr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it won't be. Anything involving this will be handled by gov't lawyers, not by him, and you can bet if he does end up in front of the court, his responses will be 100% coached by those lawyers.

Federal court cases have already been influenced by the current administration's actions (speeches, interviews, tweets) outside of court documents and statements by attorney. What Pai says now can indeed be referenced within court proceedings. Whether that will be effective or not is unclear.

The court system seems to be looking the other way with this current administration though, so I wouldn't get your hopes up too high that his actions would have any effect on any court case.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#88

Post by srmatto »

Delmania wrote: post #17
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

He doesn't. Ignoring the public comment period and making comments like demonstrate he's not acting in the interest of the consumer. There's a good chance a federal judge will strike this down.

But what move comes after that? If congress intervenes next and its not in our favor, the outcome could be far worse and harder to reverse.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#89

Post by craftyguy »

rocketpastsix wrote: post #10
thrillgore wrote: post #7

I feel more helpless now than I did on November 9th, 2016.

Make sure you are registered to vote if you are in the United States. And vote in every election. Even something that seems small like school board has more implications then we know.

Give me candidates worth voting for first.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#90

Post by bo1024 »

artursapek wrote: post #53
tangent128 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metered usage is not a violation of neutrality. Varying prices or manipulating quality of service based on the endpoint's identity is.

So if I understand, they're disguising this as "Netflix eats up so much bandwidth" but really it's "we want an unfair advantage over Netflix"? Otherwise, I have no idea why republicans would support this.

Yes, that's a good assessment. You can think of it this way: ISPs act like roads between people's houses and the sites they want to access. People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed.

The ISPs say things like "xx% of traffic is Netflix -- that uses up an unfair portion of bandwidth". But a more accurate phrasing is that xx% of people on the road choose to fill their purchased slots with Netflix traffic.

Right now, since all traffic on the road is routed fairly and equally under NN, all video services can compete on a fair footing. But after eliminating NN, ISPs will be able to charge users a big premium based on what kind of traffic they route down the road, even though there's no difference given that they already paid to reserve that portion of the road. So ISPs can route their own video service faster and everyone else's slower (or charge you extra to regain equal speeds), which squashes competition.

> I have no idea why republicans would support this.

I don't get it either. I think that most republican politicians have little understanding of the issue and how anti-competitive it would be to eliminate NN. Instead, they just hear superficial arguments that "NN is a regulation, and regulations are bad for competition" and since this comes from other Republicans, they trust and believe it. Unfortunately the ones it's coming from are lobbied really hard by ISPs, perhaps they believe their own propaganda.

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