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Net neutrality
andre369
Member UncommonPosts: 970
I have no idea how this will affect me personally, probably not that much since I have fiber connection and all. But it will affect what content, games and all in between that I can access/will succeed and of course niche or up and coming sites/companies.
Letting this pass will let big companies if they are not too dominant already, be able to strangle up and coming companies and pretty much strangle their competition. Who knows what will happen behind closed doors, as if it dont already. With this passing it will just get worse and worse.
I know this is not directly game related but I will just paste this link here to show your support of changing FCCs mind.
https://www.battleforthenet.com/
https://www.battleforthenet.com/
Comments
Has nothing to do with net neutrality; you're still getting your service from one of the biggies. This would put a stranglehold on us all if the providers get their way.
I do not live in the US so I do not know about that. Although companies in the US might have limited speed and has to stranglehold their customers.
So yes, my connection may not matter if the provider they are connected to decides to fuck them. That is why I am even worried about this.
Who knows what will happen, it will certainly happen slowly. With a lot of excuses and biased graphs showing how this is "necessary".
Considering how much propaganda and misinformation there is out there, it would help if you would say what the whole dispute is about. Or at least if you knew what the whole dispute was about before taking sides. Which you probably don't.
In a word, this is about Netflix.
Contrary to popular belief, ISPs don't hate their customers. Nor do ISPs wish to go out of their way to make customers miserable. They do want to make money, of course, but as with any business, happy customers who will gladly pay their bill every month are good for business. If ISPs can make customers happy cheaply, they absolutely will.
But you know what makes it harder to do that? When one site all by itself wants to use up something like 30% of your total bandwidth at peak times. Now, if that one site is paying a bunch of money so you're compensated for building out your network more to accommodate the extra bandwidth demands, the ISP is happy. But if that one site expects to use up hundreds or thousands of times as much bandwidth per customer as most other web sites without compensating the ISP, then ISPs aren't happy about that.
So what do ISPs do about this? If they throttle back that one site that eats up enormous bandwidth, they anger a few customers that they were losing money on, but can at the same cost provide better service for every single other site on the entire Internet, and thereby offer most of their paying customers unambiguously better service. Offering better service to most of your paying customers at the expense of angering a handful who you were losing money on is a sound business move. Hence, ISPs like to either get Netflix to pay up for the bandwidth they're using or else throttle back the site.
You know who isn't happy about that? Netflix. Netflix wants for the entire rest of the Internet to be effectively forced to subsidize them. They call it "net neutrality" because that sounds nicer than "make everyone else subsidize Netflix". But that's what it's about.
Of course, if net neutrality becomes law, this won't just be about Netflix. Other services will figure out how to use massive amounts of bandwidth and force the rest of the Internet to subsidize them, too. Desperate to recoup costs, ISPs will probably try to lean much harder on customers who use massive bandwidth. The alternative would be raising prices for everyone.
But net neutrality does absolutely nothing to help the overwhelming majority of the sites out there. In particular, it does nothing to help gaming sites, unless you expect for OnLive-style rendering of a game remotely and then streaming it to you to be the future. Which has basically no chance of happening unless you expect gamers to suddenly stop caring about graphics quality, frame rates, and control responsiveness. And no, this wouldn't provide any advantages to game mechanics, either, in case you were hoping to gain something by trading away all of that stuff.
Proponents of net neutrality claim that ISPs could do all of this obnoxious stuff without it. Well yes, they already can. And they don't. They love sites that use relatively little bandwidth, and try to offer excellent service on those sites. For example, online games. That's a cheap way to keep customers happy and keep them paying their bills.
It's only when a handful of sites uses up a large fraction of bandwidth that they take action. So far, that has meant going after file sharing (commonly but not always piracy), Netflix, and that's about it. Without net neutrality, I'd expect them to find about as many new things to clamp down on in the next twenty years as in the last twenty.
Advocating net neutrality is fundamentally about raising costs for everyone on the Internet to subsidize a handful of places that use massive amounts of bandwidth. You might philosophically be in favor of that, or you might be against it, but let's at least be honest that this is what it's about.
Bandwidth limits.
Net neutrality does not prevent operators billing based on bandwidth used, and it does not prevent operators throttling net speed based on bandwidth used. It's about treating your net connection to website A equally with your connection to website B. The operators are still able to influence how much bandwidth you use, it's just taking away their opportunity to influence which websites or services their customers will or won't use.
The big deal about net neutrality and if it fails:
It won't matter what the speed of ~your~ connection is anymore.
You could be on the fastest fiber in the world. If either you, or the entity you are trying to get data from, don't pony up for "privileged access", your going to get a slow lane, if you can connect at all.
A semi-hypothetical "for example":
Let's say you have Verizon FIOS. It's a 50 Mbs+ connection. I'm not trying to single out Verizon, I'm just using them as an example: it could be any ISP and any set of services.
Now let's say that Verizon wants you to use their FIOS TV service to get movies. They could very intentionally make Netflix and Hulu slower, and make their own On-Demand service very fast. That pushes you to bundle in FIOS TV service as well, so you get speedy and reliable movie streaming, rather than losing out to rivals Netflix or Hulu for the privilege. That, or charging you even more for the privilege of being able to watch Netflix/Hulu.
Not that Verizon could possibly already be doing this. At least with net neutrality, it's illegal. Without it, it's perfectly acceptable, and they could go even farther - much farther.
This is a big reason why net netutrality matters to everyone, especially if you already have really fast internet now - you won't if net neutrality fails, at least without paying a lot more money for privileged access for each and every service you want to have speedy and reliable.
If you think about it: That's what your paying for, access to "The Internet". Not "Verizon's internet". THe providers on the other end have to pay their ISP as well. Everyone buys into this common access called "The Internet". Now we have ISPs trying to double dip - we've already paid for access, but they want us to pay even more for stuff that's popular, or competes with one of their products, or just pay more because they can get people to do so.
I would actually be ok with metered internet, so long as it's priced fairly and competitively, and I can easily and readily track the usage for which I will get billed, and it's traffic-neutral.
I already pay for metered electricity, and "metered" trash service, and cell phone use. Most municipalities meter water use.
I would much prefer a straight meter than a data cap with steep overage consequences.
Net Neutrality isn't just about Netflixs, and by saying such you are blatantly spin doctoring this whole issue.
ISPs have been wanting to do away with Net Neutrality long before Netflix. However they haven't had much success until now with the head of the FCC(regulator for Net Neutrality) Tom Wheeler (former lobbyist for the ISPs).
Problem is if internet was metered "fairly" ISPs would lose money across the board sense the average person doesn't even use enough to actually make up for the cost they pay now.
I don't see Netflix as being the perpetrator here.
They use a lot of bandwidth. They pay for that.
No problems there.
Now comes the customers. THey are paying for bandwidth too. Problem is, their ISP oversold their bandwidth. Your house has a "50 MBs" connect, and so does the person next door, and the person next door to them, and everyone on your block. But in reality, the ISP only laid one or two 50 Mbs cables, and can't support everyone being on at 50 Mbs at the same time.
Now, when everyone on the block wants to watch Netflix, that ISP craps out. Netflix doesn't crap out itself, they have procured enough bandwidth to deliver. The Customer has thought they purchased enough bandwidth to receive. But the customer's residential ISP doesn't really have that capacity when everyone tries to use their rated bandwidth at the same time.
So the ISP wants more money, not so they can upgrade their "last mile" infrastructure, but so they can push the blame off onto someone other than themselves in this.
So your saying they are losing money now? Or are you making some assumption on what the ultimate price per byte would be - because I didn't mention anything about what the cost would be - only that it should be fair and competitive.
You're arguing that without net neutrality, ISPs will suddenly start doing obnoxious stuff that they could have done for years, but didn't because it would have been suicidal.
Suppose that ISPs throttling data was purely on a per customer basis, not a per web site basis. So then you use Netflix a bunch, go over, and Verizon has to throttle you for the rest of the month. But they can't just throttle Netflix, which was the entire problem and what made you go over in the first place. Instead, they have to also throttle your access to mmorpg.com, which uses virtually no bandwidth and Verizon would love to have you spend hours here because it's so cheap for them. What would be the point of that, other than spite?
Well yes, that's how ISPs work. If they had to have a dedicated 50 Mb/s connection for every single customer, that gets really, really expensive, really fast. They'd probably have to charge at least several times what they do now just to break even--and for all of the cost of laying so many extra cables, they'd sit nearly idle, nearly all of the time. I'd much rather deal with the occasional hiccups of shared bandwidth than pay the outlandish price tag of not having it.
ISPs trying to throttle Netflix is precisely a way to make the shared bandwidth model still work. If they can't do that, costs go up for everyone.
In the case of Netflix, I think that the real solution is probably time-of-day dependent throttling. Given cables can carry the same amount of traffic regardless of the time of day, but there is much more time-sensitive demand at some times of day than others. If you're going to throttle Netflix during prime time, tell people that if they leave the computer on overnight to download what they want to watch tomorrow, those downloads will go really fast at 3 am or so.
Realistically, what they'd probably do is a flat fee plus a per GB fee. For example, instead of paying $80/month, you'd pay $50/month + $1/GB or something, at least for a fixed cable connection. Mobile data plans would be much more expensive on a per GB basis, of course. But the people who want to use 300 GB/month would howl about that.
If i leave my heateron all night long, my electric bill is high. It's high regardless of if it's the heater running, or clothes dryer, or computer, or a critical life support machine. The electric company doesn't come in and "meter" off my heater just because they think it's drawing too many amps. I have a set limit on how many amps I can draw at any one time, and if all the residents in my neighborhood start drawing more than the utility can handle on the common backbone, they come in and upgrade the infrastructure. They don't go after the heater manufacturer and tell them to give them more money because their heater draws too much electricity.
If I decide I want to spend my bandwidth on Netflix, or Disney, or MMORPG.com - I'm the customer that's paying for access to the bandwidth, and I should be able to decide what I want to use it on, not have the ISP decide what I should or should not be able to do online. If I use a lot of bandwidth, yes, I should pay more for it - just like if I want to water my lawn, i"m going to have a higher water bill, or if I want to keep my electric heater on all night.
Maybe that would keep people from streaming torrents 24/7, or letting Netflix run in the background while they aren't watching it - the same way people turn the lights off when they leave a room, or turn off the water tap while they are brushing their teeth.
Bad analogies maybe, but very pertinent. I take a lot of issue with an ISP telling me what I can do with the access I have purchased, regardless of if it's good for other customers or the ISP itself. If that means I need to pay more for intenet, ok. These $30/mo "Unlimited" plans are scams anyway, and as long as their is fair and open competition, the market will sort out what the real cost of providing that service is.
I live in California.
We have "Time of Day" dependent electric prices. It works technically to address the problem of brown outs during peak electric use periods by encouraging people to shift electrical loads to the off peak periods (washing clothes, running the vacuum, etc). I do not recommend it as a model to emulate from a customer standpoint though. The "peak" period gradually creeps longer and longer
We also have a "tiered' structure. Your first XXX amount of power is cheap, if you use over that, the next YYY is a bit more expensive, so on and so fourth out to 5 total tiers. The 5th tier, it would be cheaper to build your own nuclear power plant. They do this because, as a utility, they are federally mandated to keep an artifically low price point for power for critical services (at-home medical, baseline use, etc). That being said, there is no federal mandate for how much electricity they have to provide at that price, so you very quickly escalate into upper tiers.
Indisutral and Commercial clients also have an added charge, called a demand charge - where you are charged an infrastructure fee for upgraded infrastructure and cables based on what your peak draw was during the month. Your electric use spikes for any 15 minute period in a month, and you get a huge surcharge on your bill. For many compnaies, this is actually greater than their actual kWh charge. Oh, and there are "Time of Day" tiers for this charge as well.
Combine all of this, and now try to estimate what your electric bill will be on any given month, and it's an exercise in advanced calculus.
I'd be very ok with a low monthly fee for equipment and basic access, and a per-Gb charge for that. Right now I pay for a dedicated 3Mbs connection with no data cap - it isn't very fast, but it's dedicated, and in my rural area it's better than the alternatives (cellular at approximately 12Mbs with a 4Gb monthly cap, or satellite at around 5Mbs with a 20Gb monthly cap), and for my personal + business use it's sufficient.
You could almost make the case that the plans with data caps are "metered", in a sense they are. But the caps are low, the overage charges are fairly extreme, and often they come with other consequences (connection slowdown is the most common).
Following this example, something tells me that the ISPs would not go down from $80/month to $50/mo +$1/GB. They would most likely go $80/month + $5-10/GB. If the information that is out there is correct (i dont know), we would be paying more money for the same speed we have now, or get slowdown. I think Video games are one of the areas that will suffer the most. I dont think a random website will use more bandwith than an online game.
Which is what Comcast is doing now. They are testing packages with extra fees per GB for going over and other structures. Their site has a page that lets you view how much bandwidth you've used for the last few months to current. While they test, the previous 250GB cap has been lifted.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Yes, The phone company also offers internet access. Not at the speeds (for my area) that cable can offer. Matter of fact, I wanted to avoid the cable company. The speed I got from the phone company was at worst, less than a 56K modem. At best, about 700K. Let me just say that YouTube was unwatchable.
I think some of the larger cities (LA, New York, and such) may have multiple cable company options, but I would guess that 80-95% of Americans do not have a choice.
Net Neutrality. A tricky subject. On either hand, you have greedy companies trying to grab for more. In the middle, you have the customers being stomped on by either side.
When you look outside of the debate, you see a simple solution: Improve the delivery of the access. Expand the network to handle this new demand on bandwidth. Sure, it costs money, but it is the providers responsibility to keep up with the services they offer. If a few sites are using too much, add more to cover that.
Too simple, I know. Since most providers just want to sit back on the infrastructure they have built and just collect income, I do not see this happening. And what can customers do?
Ab-so-lute-ly nothing. They have us by the balls, so to speak, because they have little to no competition.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I'm not saying that this is good or bad. I'm saying that this (speed throttling) happens now, today.
Mobile access I have no clue about, as I do not use it
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The simple fact is internet providers don't want to replace their already obsolete networks and instead would like to throttle consumers to get the most use out their hardware because they greatly underestimated the amount of traffic. It is much cheaper to spend on lobby efforts and software to monitor and limit " power users ", than to fix their mistake.
The government could stop it with very simple regulation. Ideally a simple regulation would work just as effectively as the regulations that forbid using pesticide as food ingredient.
No regulation is 100% foolproof and it wouldn't likely stop all of it, but it would be effective enough to stop the most significant problems.
Rich people don't want pesticides. They want to control the internet. Rich people fund the government campaigns.