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So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?
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Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
And the funny thing is once you lose net neutrality, you are all going to be crying salty tears to have it back.
And you will never get it back.
Because Amurica is all about the corporations, and the rest of you are just the sheep.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
The isps were given about 450 billion dollars from tax payers over the years for infrastructure build out and enjoy many many protections (many of the things they use to shield themselves from competition in some areas are actually things title II providers and they've used for years and yet don't want to be regulated as title II)
We have consumer protection stuff for a reason and it is largely because companies can't be trusted. Not to mention antitrust laws and well as anti monopoly laws that we need to start to enforce in relation to the isps. Too many politicians in too many companies pockets sadly.
The drive is gone largely because ISPs in most of the US have no actual competition with one another and largely that is because they opt to not try and compete with one another short of some areas that are just to population dense for multiple companies to ignore and that is where they compete.
There isn't an "offering better service than someone else to get your money" when that " someone else" doesn't exist. We'd basically need to actually force a situation that created proper market competition for what you are saying to actually even exist in any way. All net neutrality does is make sure that verzion or comcast can't say slow down a website because that website isn't paying them even though verizon or comcast or any isp already has peering agreements with the ISP carrying that website, that video service, that service in general.
What the isps were doing was throttling services (particularly video) to try and get companies to pay for upgrades to their infrastructure hardware wise and to get direct peering agreements with companies like netflix etc and predatory practices must not be allowed in near monopolistic practices.
For you the type that espouse "free market capitalism" as an answer I say look at real world practices and realize what I said that it can't exist without regulation to be the truth. Unchecked/de-regulated/unbridled free market capitalism would simply lead to a singular entity buying up the smaller entities in any space and us having singular companies for any service (or multiple services in some cases). There is a reason regulations exist and it is because free market capitalism proved that it can't work without it already.
I don't want to see a situation where people are allowed to have their net traffic for free if they use Windows store or Origin, but must pay premium traffic fee if they purchase something from Steam, GOG or Ubisoft store.
Currently right now they are overselling their networks and largely there is congestion because of it. They offer speeds "up to" (this is a predatory practice as they can realistically offer any speed so long as you can potentially hit that speed during off peak hours) They blame netflix for their woes even though their networks could handle it fine if they actually didn't oversell their lines (netflix uses way less bandwidth than they'd want you to believe realistically as it's not uncompressed video).
Title II again if enacted certain ways could include price fixing and Local Loop Unbundling (a feature a large portion of the rest of the world does where an incumbent company can own the lines, but has to sell use of the lines at a reasonable rate and allow other companies to put up their own hardware and offer their own solution to internet using those lines (it has lead to stead investment and more vibrant competition everywhere it has been enacted). The FCC when they did Title II under Tom Wheeler actually did incredibly light touch regulations and basically enacted very little that Title II would allow the FCC to do. In fact one of the few things they even enacted was net neutrality and some privacy laws that stated that isps couldn't sell our data without our consent.
No one that actually understands net neutrality thinks it will increase competition among the isps as the isps are already far too entrenched as they are monopolies, duopolies and seldom (it happens, but not as much as it should) actual competition with one another.
The only thing that will bring actual competition to the US landscape as far as ISPs go is municipal broadband at this point and the municipal government could wholesale the lines to allow competition to come into certain areas, but lets not forget that comcast and other companies will sue if that happens (and they have multiple times)
As it stands the way that things were before title II and after won't really change in competition. The ISPs had little drive before and little drive after. Only when there is a scare of actual competition do they get off their asses and actually do something. Notice how google even mentioning fiber is coming to an area seems to scare the isps into suddenly rolling out gigabit speeds even though before that they were dragging their asses for as long as possible.
I'd agree with your sentiment, if we actually had a competitive marketplace in the entire country where everyone had multiple choices (more than 2) and no wireless (phone based) internet is not a real alternative.
And very well stated I must add.
Along with the Free Market Capitalism is good mantra, comes the All Government is Bad misconception. By blindly believing in these two principles, and listening to lies being spewed by the FFC itself its no wonder people are divided.
The government isn't regulating the internet. It is making sure that the companies that provide the service to you, don't have the opportunity to regulate it for their own benefit and to the detriment of yours.
Anyway it seems a given that net neutrality is about to be quashed. How long before you begin to see the effects and what will they be, is now the question.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Regulations are there because it has been shown that sometimes state laws and corporations are not to be trusted. There is a reason regulations exist largely and repealing them for the sake of large corporations so they can eek out more money and create an uneven playing field where they can pick winners and losers in what is an important medium for services of all sorts is asinine. This is a necessary regulation and you libertarian types are batshit crazy.
If he understood the core concept the only logical choice would be to be for it unless you are a higher up at an ISP or a shareholder that thinks they are going to make bank off it.
So to break this down for Gorwe I will explain the core concept in an unbiased fashion. With net neutrality in place an ISP like Comcast cannot take extra money for a "fast lane" concept in which they provide people paying them with their full network speed while slowing down people that do not pay them extra money. They can't have google pay them and get fast speeds for youtube while relegating a video startup to excruciatingly slow speeds. As both are video services that are the same type of packet they have to treat those packets the same and cannot favor one over the other. With net neutrality out of the picture they could have fast lanes and it creates an uneven playing field where people with money are able to stay ahead while the startup may be unable to pay this on top of their other fees (particularly when paying a tier 1 provider directly or a CDN that already have peering deals with the ISPs as is)
The isps are wanting to get extra money from the companies their customers want access to for their customers to access them at full speeds and comcast did just this with netflix to force them into a direct peering agreement. Verizon has publicly stated that the only thing stopping them from creating fast lanes / slow lanes is Title II/ Net Neutrality regulations and the isps have stated that net neutrality is not affecting their investments/profits to their shareholders whom they are legally obligated to tell the truth to. What Ajit Pai is doing is attempt to cow tow to the ISPs in order for them to have their way so he can land a big cushy job. Everything that is his "reason" for repealing net neutrality has been dismantled over and over and even in some cases proven wrong (such as him stating that it is hurting investment which is contrary to what the isps are telling shareholders so either they are illegally lying to their shareholders or ajit pai is lying).
This is basically corporate cronyism in action with the repeal. Those of us for it that actually understand it understand its importance. If you were to attempt to make a business online would you want to have to worry about the big guys paying the ISP to keep you down from the get go? As it stands now a company online has to compete on how good their product is compared to others. We that are for net neutrality want to keep that intact.
We had this problem in Canada and folks got tired of it and some changes were made and now ISP are forced to share their lines, say for example if wanted to switch from Bell internet to Teksavvy or distributel or other reseller I can actually get a better price than from say bell, or cogeco or videotron (the big three) with same speeds etc as it's all using their lines (copper of fibre last mile included) and funny part is you don't even have to talk to your current ISP (big) you set it up with the reseller and THEY contact and make it happen so there's no shenanigans.
Same thing with the whole locked cell phone BS starting Dec this year they wont be allowed to sell you locked cell phones even if your on a "2 year plan that cheaper" and they will have to provide unlock codes for existing phones free of charge...no more 50$ charges or poop like that.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
For example cheques: I live in Finland, with much heavier regulation on electronic money transfer than USA. I'm now 30 years old. I've only seen one cheque during my entire life. It was about 16 years ago, and at the time I was surprised that they were still in use. Back then I though cheques were something that only existed in old comics and TV shows that were made before electronic money transfer.
USA has much less regulation that Finland. It hasn't resulted innovative behavior. It has resulted in existing services being able to defend their places that much better, and much slower spread of new innovations.
The big three still make lots of cash but so do smaller ISP using their lines and we the consumer get much better prices and service.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
The idea that a neutral zone could be established that went beyond our social bounds was a grand one. But it was a naïve one too. I am still in favour of one speed for everything, but not the idea that no censorship is required. I guess I grew up.
The internet is a relatively new beast, it's a little like the wild wild west where huge rich ranch owners kinda made up laws in smaller areas until the west was tamed so to speak and the "laws these ranchers made" were put down and proper laws fair to all were made by the ones that are suppose to be making them in the first place.
Right now some of the huge ISPs in the USA are wanting to make up their own laws as they go , like them ranchers did, when it shouldn't be up to them to make laws for these new areas of business.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/22/fcc-under-fire-ignoring-massive-scheme-corrupt-net-neutrality-comment-process
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
MAGA
So anyone who voted against it most likely was uniformed or has stock in a major company that wants to see it removed. No it doesn't make new ISP's appear or anything like that, but what it does is protect small businesses to rely on the internet to survive, protects customers across the board really from predatory business practices. There are countries in place now that have ISP's that can control everything you see and do online depending on which one you use. Do some research yourself and see if that is truly what you want for this country.
The only reasons I can think of to allow an ISP to prioritise / throttle content are:
1) In order to be able to charge us more - I am obviously against this. Considering the millions of websites and web services out there, there is noway any ISP will be able to match what I want without me taking the "give me everything" package, which is what I already have now.
2) For personal bias - I don't want an ISP to be able to throttle content based on personal bias. Chances are, their bias won't match mine but even if it did, openness is the key to progress. Getting rid of net neutrality is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "not listening, not listening". Man the fuck up.
3) For safety reasons - If people's lives are directly dependant on the internet, for example, some critical part of a nuclear power station (remote shutdown controls), then I am happy for that traffic to have priority. However, I would hope that there aren't many safety critical things relying on the internet.
4) If the line is full - I am assuming the hardware of the internet has an absolute cap on the amount of traffic it can support. When it reaches that physical limit, I would want "fairness" to kick in and to have the bandwidth shared proportionally. E.g. if there are 100 people using a line and the line becomes full, every user should be able to reach 1/100th bandwidth. I wouldn't want 1 power user to hog 50% of the bandwidth whilst the other 99 share the remaining 50%.
Now, I believe reasons 1 and 2 are why companies are lobbying to remove net neutrality, and I believe there are already exemptions for 3 and 4 in existing laws.