Apr
28th
2017
Call to Arms · 11:02am Apr 28th, 2017
The head of the FCC, Ajit Pai, would very much like to end net neutrality. Given how most ISPs would prefer net lawful evil if given the option, this is decidedly a bad thing.
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to know that Mr. Pai is formerly of Verizon.
There isn't much we can do, but at least there's an online petition we can sign. If you live in the US, you may want to get on that if you haven't already. If you're not in the US, here's another reason to point and laugh or shake your head. Or both, if you'd like.
Unfortunately, even if this next round of legislation doesn't pass, it will only come up again. And again and again until the ISPs get what they want. They have too much money and too much at stake to let silly things like principals to get in the way. They will lobby this until they break the bank.
Also, I'm pretty sure the current White House administration would love to see this happen. The good times are nearing an end.
Surprisingly, most businesses (except for the ISPs) probably don't want this, since it'll mean increased cost of doing business for all businesses if they have to pay extra to maintain any sort of internet presence, which is pretty essential nowadays.
Best of luck to all of you over there. Not much I can do as a non-American, but I'm rooting for you guys.
Not a chance. I don't want the government controlling what can and can't be on the internet. You can point and laugh at me all you want, but I prefer to be able to say what I want to say without some faceless, nameless bureaucrat removing it because it doesn't align with their political agenda. The internet ran perfectly fine for decades without the government, it'll continue to run fine without it in the future.
*prepares to be barbecued*
Heh, the world of 1984 becomes more and more real as the years pass.
4512554
It's not a matter of the government controlling what's on the Internet, it's a matter of your ISP being able to control what you can access. Among other things. The linked site explains it in far greater detail.
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Oh, you mean all those things they weren't doing from the very beginning, and yet groups like Facebook and Google can get away with Scott free (and even be named heroes over)?
And why would the cable company attack the internet – i.e. the very thing they are selling and which they have to sell correctly in order to stay in business? The internet isn't cable's 'competition', that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. The companies aren't going to slow the internet service to a crawl, they'd lose all their business to the next upstart wanting to do it right.
Capitalism isn't the enemy, and big cable company execs aren't sitting behind gold-plated desks counting wads of cash while trying to think of the next big scam to steal from their witless customers. Don't like your cable company? Switch to a different one. Or go satellite (which doesn't suck anymore, surprisingly). Net Neutrality is painted in pretty pictures and noble declarations to make people think it's meant to protect them, and maybe right now that's the intention, but I promise you there are political figures down the line who will be salivating at the opportunity it presents for mandating what companies are allowed to show. I don't care what side of the political aisle you're on, it should be frightening.
4513001 So, I didn't respond to the original comment because I thought you were just taking the piss, but now I'm not so sure. Just in case you, or innocent passersby, actually believe this, I'll break it down. Apologies to FoME for the possible wall of text.
Except for when they were. Net Neutrality was the defacto status quo for some time because nobody ever pushed the envelope. Then some ISPs started (and continued) to get cheeky by extorting Netflix for more money. Sad thing is, it worked. Proper NN legislation would prohibit this kind of behavior.
Not to be confused with this story, which deals with mobile services with data caps.
Facebook and Google (not Fiber, anyway) aren't ISPs, and therefore aren't subject to Net Neutrality regulations. NN simply means that ISPs treat all data traveling across the Internet equally.
See above. It happens.
The thing about ISPs and cable companies is that it takes huge money to get into the game. That's why, to my knowledge, the only non-telecom player to even step onto the field is Google. Few companies have their level of drive and resources. So, in all likelyhood, there won't ever be a feisty upstart to step up to the plate if the ISPs start to gouge more.
Making money is the sole purpose of a for-profit business (it's in the description), so this is actually what they do, exaggerations aside.
Assuming you mean ISPs and not ye olden cable company, because who gives a shit about cable anymore, switching isn't always an option; at least not a meaningful one. This graph is a little dated, but shows pretty clearly that options are generally very limited for Internet access. Unless you're okay getting 3-10Mbps access, but at that speed it's faster to walk to the damned library in the next county.
It's painted that way because that's exactly what it is. NN regulations maintain the Internet as a level playing field, which is a large part in why it succeeded so well to begin with. Imagine someone created a video sharing site to compete with YouTube, and had a modicum of success. Without NN regulations, there's nothing to stop ISPs from winking at YouTube and whispering, "I hear you have a pesky problem. We could take care of that for you, if you want," and then throttling the new site into oblivion. Or, as above, extorting more cash from digital content providers.
You seem to be confusing Net Neutrality for censorship. It's basically the exact opposite of that, and I'm honestly not sure where people keep getting these strange interpretations of NN from, but c'est la vie I guess.
Time for my workout.
4512554
...I don't think you understand what net neutrality is. It prevents your ISP from charging websites more to make them load faster (or more accurately, it prevents them from deliberately slowing down service to websites that don't pay them for faster load times). The government doesn't gain any power to take down content from net neutrality.
Also by all accounts Americans get fucked pretty hard when it comes to selection, so "switch providers" is not likely to be an option for a lot of people. Admittedly I can't speak from experience, and as a Canadian I'm too busy laughing at the shitshow the US government has become to confirm the poor selection.
Are they trying to slip another SOPA type bill through? You may be thinking of that in regards to your concern about the government being able to take down websites. SOPA would have put that power in the hands of corporations (mainly the larger ones that can afford to scour the internet for torrents of their property), but technically the government would only have made it legal.
4513001
Switching cable providers is, aside from minor considerations, largely academic. All the major telecom companies play by largely the same rules, through mutual agreement. No one company can get a monopoly, that's not legal, so they settle for an oligopoly. A relatively few companies maintain a largely singular status quo, know that they won't lose any business because their competitors are very much the same. They also generally try to keep new meat out. It requires a lot of capital to get into this business, and there are laws in place that make it difficult to impossible for new companies to actually acquire customers.
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Y'know, I just wasted an hour-and-a-half of my morning reading the linked articles and doing research on your arguments so as to develop my own and show why I don't agree with anything be said here (except the base definition of Net Neutrality, which I'm not confused on, I just see a lot of negative consequences to). And then I realized something: it doesn't matter.
I'm outnumbered, won't receive any backup, was never good at arguing my points (God help any debate team that has me as a member), and won't convince any of you about the very real dangers of Net Neutrality regulation. I should have just ignored this blog and moved on, but no, I had to open my stupid mouth. And worse, I've wasted time that should have been used getting some reviews ready.
I know some people will see this and think I'm backing out because I don't have an argument, and they can think that if they want. But I'm not going to waste my time and yours stumbling around the literary ring like a rookie in a champ's match. I'd probably end up doing more harm to my cause than good. Someday I'll learn to keep my (highly unpopular) opinions to myself.
Much as I dislike that Pai guy and what he's doing... my area has one provider, measures data rates in Kbps, and regularly refuses service to people simply on the grounds of their infrastructure being unable to support it, no matter how much we offer to pay them. I'm perfectly serious. You want to buy service from them, you sign up for a lottery and if they lose a customer, you get a chance to be drawn and offered a connection, period. No new companies can come into play; they buy everything that tries. And forget about them actually upgrading their infrastructure; who would do a silly thing like that?
'Murica's network situation is already hopeless. I wish things like Pai were all I had to worry about.
4513410
What negative consequences? I'm honestly not seeing a downside. Admittedly I'm not looking too closely (not an hour and a half, at least) but so far the arguments against mostly come from people claiming that it impedes business in some way or that the internet "has been fine without for this long." I don't really trust the first claim because it almost exclusively comes from business people that stand to make a lot of money if they could legally charge a website to stop slowing their load times. I don't trust the second argument because there have already been cases of providers slowing or blocking services to demand more money from Netflix or try to cripple a competing service. I'm honestly not sure what dangers you're referring to, and if you don't even mention them then yes, I'm going to assume that you are in fact backing out because you don't have an argument.
4515396
Let it go, Tracking. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Political arguments on the Internet never end well, and I regret not trying to defuse this one earlier.
4515579
Oh, alright. I wanted to respond with a video of Vader saying "as you wish" all after Tarkin makes him stop choking Motti, but YouTube doesn't seem to have a video that just contains that line. Disappointing.
The problem with non-Americans pointing and laughing is that most of the Internet's core infrastructure, in terms of both routers and organizations, is located in the US. ICANN, the ultimate authority on who gets to use what IP addresses and domain names, is a US (nonprofit) corporation. While the standards are specified such that the US could be cut out of the loop, Canada doesn't have the physical infrastructure, and even in the rest of the world there would be a period of mass confusion and hysteria.
Oh please, this is just the latest in a LONG line of things that both make me shake my head and laugh in disbelief. Why is it that for every wonderful human being and great human invention, there's idiots and idiocies like this? Is it SO much to ask for humanity to just STOP being stupid? Even if it's just for one year, one glorious stupidity free year? I try to be optimistic, but things like this make it quite difficult.