Again, headline is enough, but the link is there too: For Every 1 Net Neutrality Comment, Internet & Cable Providers Spent $100 on Lobbying Over Decade
$572M
Fucking money & politics.
$572M
Fucking money & politics.
The Internet will never satisfy its lust for Net Neutrality and Bandwidth
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
GasBandit
Staff member
Verizon users on both the Verizon subreddit and Howard Forums are reporting speed throttling for both Netflix and Google to 10Mbps. Verizon also admitted to throttling the users and uses "video optimization" as their pretense.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...rently-now-throttling-netflix-youtube-10mbps/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/...-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii
https://arstechnica.com/information...parently-throttles-streaming-video-to-10mbps/
https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...rently-now-throttling-netflix-youtube-10mbps/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/...-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii
https://arstechnica.com/information...parently-throttles-streaming-video-to-10mbps/
And that's basically the thrust of it. Making more money off of everyone is nice, but the real benefit of this is that the cable providers don't have to upgrade their ground networks anymore. And then once wireless is good enough they can start broadcasting it from towers, they'll charge a fortune for it because "it's so much faster" than the fiber they've successfully killed.
Though really, I'm wondering how long until somebody like Netflix files suits.
I'm on Verizon, and have noticed over the past week that data stream to YouTube will sometimes just stop. It'll load fine, and then halfway through a video it just won't load anymore.
GasBandit
Staff member
Lawmakers Demand Investigation of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
GasBandit
Staff member
I'm not surprised by the corruption, but I WILL be surprised if something actually comes of the investigation.
This is interesting:
I hope there's a legal way to slow down all internet to this guy. And make sure to offer up a "premium" plan for $4B or something that takes him to 28.8k... and the full plan is only available if ALL people get it, ie: he changes the regulations back to neutrality.
Note: the person replying there is the CEO of Cloudflare.
I hope there's a legal way to slow down all internet to this guy. And make sure to offer up a "premium" plan for $4B or something that takes him to 28.8k... and the full plan is only available if ALL people get it, ie: he changes the regulations back to neutrality.
Note: the person replying there is the CEO of Cloudflare.
But aren't ISP owners the ones most against net neutrality?
Once that tech billionaire buys the ISP, he'll just be part of the club.
GasBandit
Staff member
I miss Brunching Shuttlecocks.
GasBandit
Staff member
No links cuz I'm lazy atm, but some noteworthy shenanigans have been going on at Tumblr. Many users started complaining through other media (like Imgur) that they found themselves being mysteriously automatically unsubscribed from monitoring tags like #netneutrality and that previously known/bookmarked pro-net neutrality posts were disappearing. This seems odd, since David Karp, the founder and CEO of Tumblr has, in past years, been loudly and obstinantly pro-NN.
Until Verizon bought Yahoo last year, which owns Tumblr.
And now today, David Karp is resigning.
The Tumblrinas are not happy.
Until Verizon bought Yahoo last year, which owns Tumblr.
And now today, David Karp is resigning.
The Tumblrinas are not happy.
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm reading an editorial on Net Neutrality, and it dismisses the social justice side of NN. One of the points the writer makes is this:
"One hears lots of stories about how activists are using the Internet, and how small, typically minority-owned, businesses rely on the Internet and therefore on net neutrality. The reality is that there is exceptionally little reason to believe that any ISP would ever do anything to hurt these users."
Except for the fact that they have repeatedly done just that. Early on in the days of Revision 3, they tried to distribute their content via Bitorrent, and repeatedly had their content blocked by ISPs. They'd talk to the ISPs, tell them it was legitimate and legal traffic, only to find it blocked again later. It happened over and over again, until Rev3 finally moved on to other distribution methods. ISPs had enough plausible deniability in this case to keep it from going to court, but can you imagine how much more they'll be able to do when they're not pulling something illegal?
ISPs have proven themselves, time and time again, willing to screw over their customers. They're hated and distrusted for good reason.
"One hears lots of stories about how activists are using the Internet, and how small, typically minority-owned, businesses rely on the Internet and therefore on net neutrality. The reality is that there is exceptionally little reason to believe that any ISP would ever do anything to hurt these users."
Except for the fact that they have repeatedly done just that. Early on in the days of Revision 3, they tried to distribute their content via Bitorrent, and repeatedly had their content blocked by ISPs. They'd talk to the ISPs, tell them it was legitimate and legal traffic, only to find it blocked again later. It happened over and over again, until Rev3 finally moved on to other distribution methods. ISPs had enough plausible deniability in this case to keep it from going to court, but can you imagine how much more they'll be able to do when they're not pulling something illegal?
ISPs have proven themselves, time and time again, willing to screw over their customers. They're hated and distrusted for good reason.
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm honestly a little worried that most people think the joke images about internet getting priced just like cable TV are the reality of what will happen if Net Neutrality is abolished. Because it's probably not going to be that blatant right out of the gate, and ISPs know they'll have a hard time shaking down consumers for more money than they're already raking in.
What's going to happen is a lot of plausible deniability, "protection racket", type of asshattery. It's not going to be that all of YouTube suddenly disappears unless you get an add-on to your bill. It's going to be that any video about Net Neutrality might pause and buffer a lot, and "we're sorry, there seems to be some technical difficulties outside our network" or "that's not a very popular video, so we didn't give it priority in our system, and it wasn't cached on our local servers like streams from our partnered sites are!"
Think about it in telephone terms. If Common Carrier status were revoked for telephone systems tomorrow, you wouldn't see them start charging for a "Pizza package" to be able to order pizza from a local store. What might happen, is that you'd just get a busy signal 9 out of 10 times when you tried to call any place that hadn't paid for prioritization. All the big chains would either pay up (cutting big deals because of their size), or would already be owned by the mega conglomeration that also own a telco. Which would then screw the local pizza places who would either have to pay up at exorbitant prices, or hope that customers will keep trying to get through to them. And they'd lose a lot of business that way. "I called my phone company to complain about the busy signal, they just said I should try another pizza company because the busy signal wasn't an error on their end."
Removing Net Neutrality is carte blanche for ISPs to shake-down, or even shut-down, any business that relies on the internet for customers. They want to compete with GrubHub? Start up service in any city they want, then suddenly GrubHub (and all other food delivery services) start getting error messages during peak hours, but the new ComcastFood never goes down. How many "network timeout" errors do customers put up with before finding another service, do you think?
What's going to happen is a lot of plausible deniability, "protection racket", type of asshattery. It's not going to be that all of YouTube suddenly disappears unless you get an add-on to your bill. It's going to be that any video about Net Neutrality might pause and buffer a lot, and "we're sorry, there seems to be some technical difficulties outside our network" or "that's not a very popular video, so we didn't give it priority in our system, and it wasn't cached on our local servers like streams from our partnered sites are!"
Think about it in telephone terms. If Common Carrier status were revoked for telephone systems tomorrow, you wouldn't see them start charging for a "Pizza package" to be able to order pizza from a local store. What might happen, is that you'd just get a busy signal 9 out of 10 times when you tried to call any place that hadn't paid for prioritization. All the big chains would either pay up (cutting big deals because of their size), or would already be owned by the mega conglomeration that also own a telco. Which would then screw the local pizza places who would either have to pay up at exorbitant prices, or hope that customers will keep trying to get through to them. And they'd lose a lot of business that way. "I called my phone company to complain about the busy signal, they just said I should try another pizza company because the busy signal wasn't an error on their end."
Removing Net Neutrality is carte blanche for ISPs to shake-down, or even shut-down, any business that relies on the internet for customers. They want to compete with GrubHub? Start up service in any city they want, then suddenly GrubHub (and all other food delivery services) start getting error messages during peak hours, but the new ComcastFood never goes down. How many "network timeout" errors do customers put up with before finding another service, do you think?
Honestly?
My expectation is that we'll see a few ISPs start lowering costs in some competitive markets. I'll never see it, but if comcast can extract $$$ from netflix, amazon, and others, then in those markets where they're fiercely competing with ATT, Google, Verizon, etc they'll drop their $29/mo packages down to $10. It's possible that in some markets they'll start bundling beyond phone an cable. Rather than paying netflix directly the ISP will include netflix service in its cost. You will be free to pay for netflix seperately and just have their basic internet, but they may not give you the full HD stream unless you're on one of their higher tiers (ie, 100mb service, rather than the 25mb service).
So the funny images are probably correct in that bundling will start to happen, but the implication that unless you buy the bundle you won't have access to certain internet sites at all is probably incorrect.
Beyond that, though, I fully expect things to be worse for the consumer, particularly for people like me in rural areas.
I have no doubt we will see a lot of market segmentation, though, extracting money from the highest grossing services, and the most affluent customers at a more profitable rate than they can do now.
I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm a pragmatic engineer. I'll manage, and at the end of the day if it's really bad, trust me - it will be fixed, with or without the help of the ISPs or government.
The internet - or rather, the people that make the internet - routes around damage. Whether it be new laws and regulations, or simply home-grown networks spanning the country, it will be hard to keep people down.
My expectation is that we'll see a few ISPs start lowering costs in some competitive markets. I'll never see it, but if comcast can extract $$$ from netflix, amazon, and others, then in those markets where they're fiercely competing with ATT, Google, Verizon, etc they'll drop their $29/mo packages down to $10. It's possible that in some markets they'll start bundling beyond phone an cable. Rather than paying netflix directly the ISP will include netflix service in its cost. You will be free to pay for netflix seperately and just have their basic internet, but they may not give you the full HD stream unless you're on one of their higher tiers (ie, 100mb service, rather than the 25mb service).
So the funny images are probably correct in that bundling will start to happen, but the implication that unless you buy the bundle you won't have access to certain internet sites at all is probably incorrect.
Beyond that, though, I fully expect things to be worse for the consumer, particularly for people like me in rural areas.
I have no doubt we will see a lot of market segmentation, though, extracting money from the highest grossing services, and the most affluent customers at a more profitable rate than they can do now.
I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm a pragmatic engineer. I'll manage, and at the end of the day if it's really bad, trust me - it will be fixed, with or without the help of the ISPs or government.
The internet - or rather, the people that make the internet - routes around damage. Whether it be new laws and regulations, or simply home-grown networks spanning the country, it will be hard to keep people down.
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm beginning to wonder if part of the attacks on Net Neutrality are part of a long-term plan to get telephone networks out from under Title II regulations. I've heard that one of the changes being proposed drops IP addresses from a mention alongside telephone numbers in the listing of what constitutes a public network. If they can get VOIP calls to no longer be regulated by Title II, and then they start transitioning customers away from phone numbers (all under the guise of making it easier for consumers, of course), pretty soon phone networks are no longer legislated, either. Or at least a huge volume of voice calls are no longer considered part of the telephone network.
So a bunch of entities vested in Internet stuff wrote this letter to petition for a delay to the NN vote coming on the 14th. They just want to wait until after a final decision is reached in the AT&T throttling case (which is under review) which should ultimately decide whether it is the FCC or the FTC which is in charge of regulating these things. The FCC's response?
Really, if they are telegraphing so strongly how they intend to vote and what they expect the outcome will be, why even bother having a so-called election?
--Patrick
Or, in other words, "No, and you can't make me."
Really, if they are telegraphing so strongly how they intend to vote and what they expect the outcome will be, why even bother having a so-called election?
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
The stupidest arguments against Net Neutrality I've heard this week:
- We already don't have Net Neutrality because you can't make your Amazon Echo run Siri, or your Apple Homepod run Google, etc.
WHAT? Unlike cable providers, 30% of the population isn't forced to choose only one of those. Also, the convenience of those aside, they don't do anything you can't do any other way, and anyone is free to create their own competing version.
- Net Neutrality is bad for video services that want to compete with Netflix because new startups can't pay ISPs to catch up to the CDN that Netflix already has. Allowing startups to pay cable providers for prioritized service is a cheaper option than having to build Content Delivery Networks of their own.
No, really, this was the argument I heard. I'm not sure if the person who proposed this was ignorant, or hoping their readers would be. First, there's no way that prioritization beats out actual hardware, unless you're doing something shady to undermine the hardware. More servers, closer to customers beats out paying for snake oil. Second, what's stopping companies from leasing out CDN space... OH WAIT, that's what a lot of cloud computing companies already do.
- We already don't have Net Neutrality because you can't make your Amazon Echo run Siri, or your Apple Homepod run Google, etc.
WHAT? Unlike cable providers, 30% of the population isn't forced to choose only one of those. Also, the convenience of those aside, they don't do anything you can't do any other way, and anyone is free to create their own competing version.
- Net Neutrality is bad for video services that want to compete with Netflix because new startups can't pay ISPs to catch up to the CDN that Netflix already has. Allowing startups to pay cable providers for prioritized service is a cheaper option than having to build Content Delivery Networks of their own.
No, really, this was the argument I heard. I'm not sure if the person who proposed this was ignorant, or hoping their readers would be. First, there's no way that prioritization beats out actual hardware, unless you're doing something shady to undermine the hardware. More servers, closer to customers beats out paying for snake oil. Second, what's stopping companies from leasing out CDN space... OH WAIT, that's what a lot of cloud computing companies already do.
GasBandit
Staff member
Potential Pat Tallman notwithstanding, there’s some argument about whether the FCC truly doesn’t understand how the Internet works, or whether they are deliberately misstating/misrepresenting things so that their proposal will match.
—Patrick
I would rate this post informative but it's not actually telling me anything I wouldn't have guessed anyway.
Now the link further down that page to Portugese DRM laws is a surprise. I never thought I would say this about any government but THAT is how you write reasonable, well thought out laws to cover DRM.
figmentPez
Staff member
Yup, they're trying to reframe what an ISP is in the minds of the public. I'm not sure it matters if that's because they don't understand themselves, or if they're deliberately trying to spread misinformation.
I've used this analogy before, but I can't remember if I've posted it here: ISPs are trying to sell the idea that they're merely the driveway that connects your house to the roads that are the internet. They want people to think that what they're paying for in their monthly bill is a nice driveway that connects them to the roads and highways, so that they can drive out and do things, and that packages can come in. Then, they can claim that they need to charge tolls for highways, or for building more roads, or for maintenance. They don't want to admit that an ISP isn't a driveway company, it's a roads and highways company; and customers have been paying for (more than) their fair share of those roads and highways all along.
I feel like it’s the latter, since what Pai is using as his justification for reclassification is the assertion that the Internet is merely an information service, not a telecommunication service. I find this assertion to be exceedingly disingenuous, if not outright deceitful. I mean, I get that politics is about saying stuff and hoping nobody finds out the whole truth, but when people give the lie to him about what he says, you’d expect him to be all, “you caught me, and I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you miserable activists,” but instead his reply has consistently been, “that evidence conflicts with my beliefs, so I choose to ignore it.”
...sound familiar?
—Patrick
I suspect that this redefinition actually serves the purpose of allowing the ISPs, and by extention the government, to control the content of the internet. Regulating the ISPs as information services they are allowed now to care about the content, and thus restrict it (not just charge extra) according to other guidelines.
So, like the ATF, who can't prevent ownership of weapons, they can regulate the transfer of information.
So, like the ATF, who can't prevent ownership of weapons, they can regulate the transfer of information.
I don’t know if that’s the whole story, but I figure the model of “information service” just fits whatever it is they want to do more than “telecommunication service” does, and so they believe it will be simpler to convert to info than it would be to graft all the riders and stuff they want into the definition of telecom.
—Patrick
—Patrick
...and "informing", of course, juist means "put it in a huge wall of text like a EULA which nobody will read". Also, regional monopolies will just get that much stronger. "I only have one choice for an ISP" used to mean "I get shafted on price". Now it will also mean "so there's no way for me to read CNN.com, only Fox.com."
figmentPez
Staff member
Nearly a third of Americans only have ONE option for broadband internet. I sure hope someone has the legal resources to sue when they get throttled. This is blatant abuse of a limited monopoly.
And that's just the commercial concerns. I sure hope an ISP messes up and manages to find themselves in a 1st Amendment case over this.
And that's just the commercial concerns. I sure hope an ISP messes up and manages to find themselves in a 1st Amendment case over this.
That’s ok, they’re actually planning to reduce the requirement to be called “broadband” back down to what phone and satellite internet can deliver. Problem solved!
—Patrick