So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?

gervaise1 · November 2017

ScotchUp said:

linadragon said:

ScotchUp said:

You guys think it's great to have Government regulate internet.

Bet, you think VA is doing a LOT of good for our Veterans?

More Government isn't the answer and never will be. But keep spreading the liberal talking points, luckily majority isn't listening.

The government needs to be investigating the VA more regularly and punishing those cooking the books among other things.

LOL Government can't investigate itself. I love you guys that debate the topic with thousands of words where it all comes down to "Does the Government run anything well" the answer has always been no.

One other small point, what they will end up doing is start acting like Facebook, Twitter, Forums, they will only allow what they think is allowed not freedom of speech. I can see it now, liberals going well you broke the rules by posting what Info wars said about Obama....or Hillary......elections will be interesting, only hear what Government wants us to hear. I believe China already does this.

Get rid of the armed forces surely. Just hire private contractors when there is a war yes? After all the government - your words - is never the answer.

(Or have something along the lines of (historically) the East India company - that features in Tom Hardy's brilliant TV series Taboo.)

Quizzical · November 2017

DMKano said:

Throttling down or downright blocking access to sites that belong to your competitor is an extremely shitty practice. Net neutrality is here to prevent that, without it - Comcast, Time Warner etc... they will have free reign of how they are going to control your internet access.

They had exactly that free rein that you're so scared as recently as 2015. Did they use it to wantonly block sites that they didn't like? Most of the scandals of American Internet companies blocking sites are bowing to pressure from some foreign government to censor sites that said government doesn't like, only block foreign access to the sites, and are against the wishes of the American company. Let's not rush to impose costly regulations to ward off hypothetical problems.

Quizzical · November 2017

FlyByKnight said:

Also, I see people talking about political bias as part of the convo. We're all gamers and this effects us across party lines. I'm a little lost how the following infographic isn't pretty straight forward. I don't think it's a lefty/righty issue.

I would submit that what actually happened in real life when ISPs had exactly the power you're so terrified of in the years leading up to 2015 are a better indication of how ISPs would like the Internet to be than the fevered, paranoid imaginations of random people with Internet access.

Quizzical · November 2017

SomethingUnusual said:

Horusra said:

What makes people think Net Neutrality means more providers and better speeds. Everyone always paints the rosiest future for Net Neutrality and the worst for the other side. Maybe Net Neutrality means slow speeds because there is no incentive to make it faster and less providers because there is no cash for providing something better.

Because net neutrality has literally nothing to do with investment and predictions. Improving the networks requires the same money whether net neutrality is present or not. Investment incentive is also non-existent in the US. These giants are only out to make money, not spend it giving neighborhoods better connection services.

The telecomms would just love net neutrality to go away, they can maximize profit without spending a dime on infrastructure investment. And that's all this garbage is that the chairman is pushing through. With net neutrality in place, the telecomms have been trying to skate by wireless investment -- which is still an unstable technology -- where they can do this practice of throttling and service funneling that should also be regulated. In most of the US, cell service still sucks, they still do the unethical service charges, and have barely spent anything other than signal boosting existing towers.

If you think there hasn't been any investment in wireless Internet infrastructure in the last 20 years, then I assume that you're still using a 2G cell phone. Because that's all that we'd have without any infrastructure upgrades in the last 20 years. Quite the opposite: four major carriers all built out nationwide 3G networks, and then 4G networks.

Quizzical · November 2017

SomethingUnusual said:

Addendum:

Gaming... You know how much everyone hates microtransactions? It's now coming from your ISP after this nonsense is pushed through. 10 dollars a month to access free to play games, on top of what you are already paying, or have no access at all.

You know how it's kind of nice being able to jump around and trial MMOs? MOBAs? All the other "free to play" games. Gone. Now you have to pay a service charge just to try them.

Did ISPs do that in 2014? If not, why not? They had just as much ability to do so then, and had had exactly that ability for many years, as they would under the proposed reversion to how things were then.

Ranyr · November 2017

Quizzical said:

FlyByKnight said:

Also, I see people talking about political bias as part of the convo. We're all gamers and this effects us across party lines. I'm a little lost how the following infographic isn't pretty straight forward. I don't think it's a lefty/righty issue.

I would submit that what actually happened in real life when ISPs had exactly the power you're so terrified of in the years leading up to 2015 are a better indication of how ISPs would like the Internet to be than the fevered, paranoid imaginations of random people with Internet access.

So rampant abuse via blocking of services or platforms you want to hurt the business of. Illegal collaborations of denial of services or app availability. Charging fees for competing services on their data plans. It's not paranoid imagination, they already were doing it.

Horusra · November 2017

SedrynTyros said:

Ozmodan said:

Cleffy said:

Title II regulations doesn't adhere to the tenant of the internet. Communication companies were removed from title II in the 90s. Most of what we would attribute to being the internet age was under Title I regulations. Title II regulations would handle ISPs worse as it was made for copper telephone service using switch operators.
The FCC was budget neutral. It was funded through licensing RF spectrum. They don't really levy a tax, but operate more like a business. The subsidies they provide are gained through fees and licenses they charge to ISPs.

Well sorry, but just because they did not do it in the past does not mean they won't do it. To start with most of the big ISPs are monopolies. Only a few big cities have any choice of ISP, they tend to avoid areas serviced by other providers. So there is really nothing a subscriber can do if an ISP decides to do such. These big ISPs are in the business of making money and as cable fees continue dropping you can bet they will be looking at these other methods of making income and it will not be good for the consumer.

Of course they will. It is insanely naive to believe otherwise.

I mean, I get the anti-government ideology, but do the people who believe in that ever come up for air and look at what happens when government regulations are removed? We have to live in the real world and deal with things as they are not as we believe they should be. And the truth is that given half a chance the corporations would own us. The only thing stopping them is government.

Look what regulation gave us...Obama Care crap

MadFrenchie · November 2017

Quizzical said:

DMKano said:

Throttling down or downright blocking access to sites that belong to your competitor is an extremely shitty practice. Net neutrality is here to prevent that, without it - Comcast, Time Warner etc... they will have free reign of how they are going to control your internet access.

They had exactly that free rein that you're so scared as recently as 2015. Did they use it to wantonly block sites that they didn't like? Most of the scandals of American Internet companies blocking sites are bowing to pressure from some foreign government to censor sites that said government doesn't like, only block foreign access to the sites, and are against the wishes of the American company. Let's not rush to impose costly regulations to ward off hypothetical problems.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/186576-verizon-caught-throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more-bandwidth

https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/fact-checking-isps-claims-of-support-for-net-neutrality

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/net-neutrality-violations-history/

2.5 minutes of internet searching.

Quizzical · November 2017

linadragon said:

ScotchUp said:

Against, the whole idea is smaller Government, not bigger! Plus once Government controls something they screw it all up for the citizens. We already have laws on the books to control companies, along with consumers pocket books.

And yet Ajit Pai wants to get rid of states ability to do anything about net neutrality. Not to mention that someone using spectrum can't go unregulated. Regulation is a key to making the free market work and while there are laws on the books they are not enforced in any meaningful way. Smaller government and larger government isn't the answer. It is smarter government that is the answer. Your type need to realize that sometimes regulations are a necessity because they are to protect consumers when other laws put in place fail to do so. The FCC regulates telecommunications.

Wired connections don't use any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Wireless connections do, but there's already a ton of competition in wireless Internet, with four national carriers and a whole lot of regional ones. If one carrier does something you dislike, you can switch to another.

Quizzical · November 2017

linadragon said:
Folks like him think that because we might say republicans are vile on an issue that we are biased about it. It has nothing to do with political bias when we actually understand the core concepts of it. We say republicans are vile or in the corporations pockets not because of political bias, but because of how things tend to go.

So apparently deciding to follow the law is now "vile"? Whether there should be greatly increased regulation of the Internet is a political question that should be handled by the political branches of government, not by some unelected commission that runs off and does whatever it pleases.

FlyByKnight · November 2017

Quizzical said:

FlyByKnight said:

Also, I see people talking about political bias as part of the convo. We're all gamers and this effects us across party lines. I'm a little lost how the following infographic isn't pretty straight forward. I don't think it's a lefty/righty issue.

I would submit that what actually happened in real life when ISPs had exactly the power you're so terrified of in the years leading up to 2015 are a better indication of how ISPs would like the Internet to be than the fevered, paranoid imaginations of random people with Internet access.

So you're submitting that throttling of services that competed with the cable companies did NOT happen?

What episode of Fringe was this?

Bellomo · November 2017

Net Neutrality makes net giants like google the gate keepers of information going in and coming out. Don't be fooled into thinking the internet was broken and needed obamas dumb ass to save it.

Bladeburaiba · November 2017

Quizzical said:

I would submit that what actually happened in real life when ISPs had exactly the power you're so terrified of in the years leading up to 2015 are a better indication of how ISPs

I'm really quite surprised by your reaction. The internet is still very new, though it seems like it's been here forever. Net neutrality became a thing when concerned people realized this was the next direction the companies were going. Net neutrality didn't come out of a vacuum, it was 5-7 years ago there were discussions and rumblings in the industry about creating and monetizing fast lanes on the internet. The only reason we're able to have discussions now is because some very smart people got out ahead of this thing.

Real life examples? Verizon a few months ago rolled out a throttling of Youtube and Netflix on Verizon phones. No, they WEREN'T ready before, but now they are. There was an article about Time Warner being ready now.

More real life examples? Portugal and UK are the only European countries that have "anti-net neutrality" rules, as reported by the NY Times. In those countries, the consumer pays a basic fee, then you pay separately for packages like unlimited social media, video media. etc. Obviously, they also charge those companies in the fast lanes, who in turn charge back those fees to customers. This is only the legal stuff, not the borderline stuff like screwing your competitors.

Bellomo · November 2017

Net Neutrality makes net giants like google the gate keepers of information going in and coming out. Don't be fooled into thinking the internet was broken and needed obamas dumb ass to save it.

Quizzical · November 2017

cameltosis said:

I am 99% for net neutrality.

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.

You're missing the one that is arguably most important: complying with regulations costs money, and costs of doing business are always passed on to consumers one way or another. Even the most customer-friendly ISP that you could imagine cannot afford to assume that the regulations allow them to keep doing what they've already been doing. The costs of accidentally violating some goofy provision can be enormous, so you have to hire lawyers to figure out what you can and cannot still do.

Traditionally, ISPs haven't shown much enthusiasm for throttling connections except for when the line is full. They genuinely don't want to gratuitously annoy their customers, as that's not good for business. When the line is full, they've sometimes tried to give customers who tend to use relatively less bandwidth all that they need, and throttle back those who use more bandwidth to make room, as they're commonly charging a fixed rate regardless of how much bandwidth you actually use.

Quizzical · November 2017

Asm0deus said:

Wow almost prophetic ...lolz
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171030/12364538513/portugal-shows-internet-why-net-neutrality-is-important.shtml

This idea is just as awesome as building the Trump wall....but hey Trump will make America great again.....sure!

Why NN should stay and is still needed.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mathias-dopfner-tim-berners-lee-world-wide-web-interview-2017-5

I'll bet you that a whole lot of people who don't use the Internet all that much would love to get access to everything they actually care about for less than they pay today. American ISPs traditionally haven't gone for that because it would result in too many people paying too much less than what they pay today. It's actually very similar to the cable bundling argument, where you might actually watch 5 channels, but in order to get the five you want, your cable company makes you pay for access to 100 channels.

FlyByKnight · November 2017

I think we're capable of having this conversation without injecting party politics and what President or political party you think it is dumb. Save that f#$% s#!% for your social media feeds.

You're a gamer, you know about games and how you are able to play them. Talk about that.

Quizzical · November 2017

gervaise1 said:

A question for people who do not support net neutrality on the basis of political ideology.

Do you also believe that all roads (or maybe all future roads) should be toll roads? The principles are the same after all - why should government build roads, shouldn't it be left up to companies (or communities!) to build (if they wish) and charge a toll? Why should someone living in a rural community have miles have miles of roads built to them subsidised - in essence - by those who live in cities?

Same deal for electricity, gas and water distribution, sewage collection, telephones, postal services etc. As it used to be in Britain say in the early 19th century at the dawn of the industrial revolution?

And - in the spirit of true, unfettered capitalism - surely the government should remove all trade barriers and tarrifs and all federal/state/county/city subsidies to companies should be abolished.

Whats good for the goose is good for the gander afterall.

It has traditionally been too much of a pain to collect tolls. Taxes on gasoline were an alternative sort of user fee to accomplish about the same thing, while being much easier to collect. Today, there are electronic ways of paying tolls, so things could plausibly be headed in that direction. The question isn't whether people who drive will pay for the roads, but how, whether tolls, gas taxes, red light cameras and speeding tickets, taxes on the general populace, or whatever.

Quizzical · November 2017

MadFrenchie said:
I don't disagree that Hillary poorly campaigned, nor am I a general fan of the idea of a Hillary Presidency. However, none of that absolves Facebook from the culpability of allowing a foreign power exert real influence over our election process. That should be, like, Cold War level of paranoia inducing to Americans, but many have shown they absolutely don't care because it helped "their side" win. Partisanship won out over patriotism, ironically in support of a President who is in no way qualified for the position and who mockingly encouraged the very interference that actually occurred. But like you said, we're drifting.

If you seriously believe that $100k in Facebook ads, a majority of which ran after the election ended and most of which didn't target swing states were the deciding factor in an election in which over $1 billion was spent supporting each of the major candidates, I'm really not sure what to say to you beyond that your understanding of political campaigning is unorthodox.

Bladeburaiba · November 2017

Quizzical said:

You're missing the one that is arguably most important: complying with regulations costs money, and costs of doing business are always passed on to consumers one way or another.

Are you really seriously making this argument? You said it yourself, they weren't throttling before, and everything was peachy for them (personally I think no one had conceived of monetizing the net this way before).

Now you are saying it is expensive for them to follow regulations that require them to basically do nothing. We are only talking about net neutrality here. No regulation is making them build a hyper expensive filter for toxic gases, as this isn't the environmental regulations.

Quizzical · November 2017

SomethingUnusual said:
I don't know, why don't you ask one of the hundreds of users on MMORPG.com here from socialist countries and find out? Average speeds in the US availability is 100-200mb/s where they are looking at 100gb/s fiber.

But I have to ask... At what point did I mention anything about socialism or anything related to it? Market regulation is just as much part of capitalism. Do you like reimbursement and pain and suffering for when you get ripped off? That's a regulation. Do you like protection of assets? That's a regulation. And also written in the constitution.

You are bad at this.

Internet connection speeds are considerably correlated with population density. The fewer customers you have per mile of cable you lay, the more it costs to build your network per customer you have. There are a lot of confounding variables when it comes to comparing Internet speeds across countries.

Quizzical · November 2017

SedrynTyros said:

Ozmodan said:

Cleffy said:

Title II regulations doesn't adhere to the tenant of the internet. Communication companies were removed from title II in the 90s. Most of what we would attribute to being the internet age was under Title I regulations. Title II regulations would handle ISPs worse as it was made for copper telephone service using switch operators.
The FCC was budget neutral. It was funded through licensing RF spectrum. They don't really levy a tax, but operate more like a business. The subsidies they provide are gained through fees and licenses they charge to ISPs.

Well sorry, but just because they did not do it in the past does not mean they won't do it. To start with most of the big ISPs are monopolies. Only a few big cities have any choice of ISP, they tend to avoid areas serviced by other providers. So there is really nothing a subscriber can do if an ISP decides to do such. These big ISPs are in the business of making money and as cable fees continue dropping you can bet they will be looking at these other methods of making income and it will not be good for the consumer.

Of course they will. It is insanely naive to believe otherwise.

I mean, I get the anti-government ideology, but do the people who believe in that ever come up for air and look at what happens when government regulations are removed? We have to live in the real world and deal with things as they are not as we believe they should be. And the truth is that given half a chance the corporations would own us. The only thing stopping them is government.

For example, when they deregulated the airlines, it resulted in planes becoming more cramped--but with airfare much cheaper than before. Apparently most fliers wanted cheaper flights--in multiple senses of the word--that the airlines couldn't offer while heavily regulated.

MadFrenchie · November 2017

Quizzical said:

cameltosis said:

I am 99% for net neutrality.

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.

You're missing the one that is arguably most important: complying with regulations costs money, and costs of doing business are always passed on to consumers one way or another. Even the most customer-friendly ISP that you could imagine cannot afford to assume that the regulations allow them to keep doing what they've already been doing. The costs of accidentally violating some goofy provision can be enormous, so you have to hire lawyers to figure out what you can and cannot still do.

Traditionally, ISPs haven't shown much enthusiasm for throttling connections except for when the line is full. They genuinely don't want to gratuitously annoy their customers, as that's not good for business. When the line is full, they've sometimes tried to give customers who tend to use relatively less bandwidth all that they need, and throttle back those who use more bandwidth to make room, as they're commonly charging a fixed rate regardless of how much bandwidth you actually use.

Verizon throttled Netflix and YouTube after stating they don't manipulate said content less than a year before.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/verizon-wireless-apparently-throttles-streaming-video-to-10mbps/

Dvora · November 2017

Horusra said:

For me has less to to with political bias and more to do with economic belief. I believe free market capitalism is the driver of innovation. When someone can make some cash people will compete for it. Net Neutrality removes that drive. While without there is, I hope, a desire for companies to provide new and better service than someone else to get your money.

it only removes *some* of the drive for one sector. Imo the internet should be treated like a utility. There are too many abuses providers could and do implement, net neutrality or no. I'm no socialist democrat at all but a few things have to be regulated. Small internet startups won't have much chance without some at least basic regulation.

Or I could be wrong and comcast and the rest are benevolent and misunderstood.

Ridelynn · November 2017

Net Neutrality is a poor compromise between actual market competition in local markets and the total monopoly oversight that being declared a utility entails.

It's not uncommon in the US for large swaths of the population to only have a single high speed provider, and maybe in larger markets a couple of lower speed options. It is almost always either a cable or telecom provider. And those providers protect their territory against even potential competition vigorously, using a lot of political leverage. But only in areas where there is sufficient population density. Live a ways outside of the suburbs, and you have trouble finding people that can monetize that - largely because companies attempting to provide rural service don't have any larger urban areas to help balance out costs like the telecom and power folks have had.

Just because a company prior to 2015 hadn't figured out how to "more effectively monetize" their infrastructure investment doesn't mean that, now that a very obvious method has been pointed out to them, they won't proceed to do so now unless it's not allowed. All signs seem to indicate that they very much will be moving in that direction - the big payout by Netflix to ISPs, providers imposing data caps or bandwidth restrictions ~unless~ you use their preferred service providers, auto-downgrading of video unless you use a preferred service, etc.

I"d prefer to have open and honest competition in marketplaces and just a dumb pipe to the internet that I can do with as I choose, from a company of my choosing. My (distant) second choice would be to declare internet availability a nationwide utility requirement and allow these monopolies, albeit heavily regulated. But if we can't have any of that, then let's at least agree to keep the service we have consistent across carriers.

There were some movement in that direction - federal money is available for companies to provide "Broadband" service to underserved areas. The problem was they only defined broadband in terms of speed, not actual capacity. So a lot of cellular and satellite providers get federal dollars for everyone they can sign up, and they do provide 25Mb (or faster) service -- with a catch, you only get a few gigabytes each month before they throttle you down to dialup speeds.

It's very common where I live, with Wildblue, for people to be on a 25Mbps plan, with a 10G cap, which means your internet really only works for about 50 hours a month. Verizon is the other player in my neck of the woods, and they have up to 54Mbps service, with a 4G cap - you only get about 10 hours of internet, but those 10 hours are gloriously fast.

You may say - well how much content do you need a month? I probably don't watch 50 hours worth of Netflix each month, if I'm honest I probably don't even watch 10 hours. But take one nice Windows update that occurs in the offhours - that's a couple of gigabytes right there, and each weekly update is usually a few hundred. There are a dozen other programs that keep updated as well - Office, iPhones, routers, etc. And each computer I have needs to update. That's a big chunk of my cap right there, before I even turn on a service at all, just in keeping up with security updates.

In terms of content apart from that, I could download about 1/4 of a PS4 game - they weight in around 50G each. I could watch somewhere between 1 and 3 1080p movies. I could watch maybe 30 minutes of 4K video. I could back up or restore about 1/100th of my local computer to an online backup service.

Even older folks who are doing nothing but Facebook are hitting these caps. I get calls all the time: "Why does my internet always slow down at the end of the month?", and they certainly aren't hosting torrents or streaming 4K videos all day long - that's just from looking at baby pictures and cat videos.

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So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?

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So, Where Are YOU on Net Neutrality?

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