ADVERTISEMENT

Net Neutrality

sadiehawkins

HR All-American
Sep 21, 2008
3,691
4,671
113
I'm trying to understand what going on with this. From what I'm understanding is internet provider and or cable producers are for it. In the jist what I get is internet is squeezing out cable and with everybody turning to netflix and hulu and these cable services are losing revenue and now want to bundle your internet by content. F*** NO this is lobbying at its finest. This makes no sense and is scary when you really think about it.
 
Attempted cash grab. True story: My 10 year old in incensed by this, and is convinced it will lead to a bloody civil war.
 
companies will be able to throttle down certain sites and improve speeds on others. hypothetically, say comcast owns netflix (i know this isnt real) so they can say hey if u use our company as your internet provider we will speed your netflix up....from an article i read: the Internet experience we now know will look a lot more like cable television, where you have the provider choosing which sites you can access, what you can watch, and what you can do.
 
Corporate cronyism at its finest. Governments die a death of a thousand cuts. This could be a big gash.
 
You know if ISP's are for undoing it, that its good for consumers.

The answer to this would be to form coops that give equal carry.
 
I don't think the Feds have done a good job controlling monopolies, which is what we have now in internet connectivity. Kind of. We have options, especially in urban areas.
My concern is as others have stated. We will have an unbelievable concentration of power to certain companies, and they will drastically control the individuals ability to watch/consume what they want to without a hodgepodge of added on fees. Companies will choke away content they don't want you to see, or they can't bill you for. In a free society I don't like this, and it's going to hurt rural areas the most. I will literally be surprised if in a year we don't see some red state Senators and House members starting to gripe as their constituents begin to get pinched first.
 
  • Like
Reactions: E.RogerCoswell
I don't think the Feds have done a good job controlling monopolies, which is what we have now in internet connectivity. Kind of. We have options, especially in urban areas.
My concern is as others have stated. We will have an unbelievable concentration of power to certain companies, and they will drastically control the individuals ability to watch/consume what they want to without a hodgepodge of added on fees. Companies will choke away content they don't want you to see, or they can't bill you for. In a free society I don't like this, and it's going to hurt rural areas the most. I will literally be surprised if in a year we don't see some red state Senators and House members starting to gripe as their constituents begin to get pinched first.

Getting rid of Net Neutrality only guarantees monopolies.
 
The bottom line is that ISPs and large network owners like Verizon are forced to treat all data the same with net neutrality in place.

If you revoke it, those companies have a right to say "OK, video data like Netflix now costs $5 a gigabyte and porn site traffic is now $50 per gigabyte."

They'd be allowed to charge different rates for different content to different people. Not good for the consumer at all.
 
ISPs are willing to throttle your internet speeds or make you pay more for popular sites.
Who cares? Are you there crying when google and other sites censor users and content, as well as favoring certain groups? That’s where the real problem is.
 
Getting rid of Net Neutrality only guarantees monopolies.
The Bigs are behind it.

On Net Neutrality
By Robert Wenzel

Economic Policy Journal

January 18, 2014

I have received a ton of emails asking me to comment on the recent court ruling regarding net neutrality. Here goes.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down a Federal Communications Commission order from 2010 that forced internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable to abide by network neutrality regulations.

Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers should be forced by government to treat all data on the internet equally, that is, the government plays the role of enforcer by not allowing ISPs to discriminate or charge differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.

The libertarian position is pretty clear cut here. Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want. The ISPs, using their own equipment, are providing a service and should be allowed to use their equipment and provide their service in any fashion they choose without interference from the government. Thus, the court ruling is is consistent with a libertarian view.

The interventionists are up in arms over the ruling. Betsy Isaacson at HuffPo under the headline, Why You Should Be Freaking Out About The End Of Net Neutrality writes:

1. No more net neutrality means ISPs can now discriminate against content they dislike.

Well yeah, but what web site is going to use the service of an ISP that blocks content that user wants?

She goes on:

No more net neutrality means ISPs can now force websites to PAY for faster content delivery.You know how some sites you go to just load slower than others? Usually, that’s just because the slower site is image heavy, poorly coded, or dealing with intense server load. But with net neutrality gone, ISPs can now start charging hefty fees to websites that want quick content delivery — shifting the long load times to poorer sites that can’t pay up.

Isaacson’s “logic” here is just free market hate. Some content will be slow in delivery under any rules, it is just a case of which content. It will either be content where there is huge demand, which allows content suppliers to pay for fast delivery, or poorer sites, with heavy demand on the servers with little public demand for the service, which is why they are poorer. The free market would favor sites that can pay for the services they are using.

And there is more, she writes:

Destroying net neutrality is bad for small businesses. If ISPs force website owners pay for faster load times, tiny retailers and personal websites will be the ones to suffer from slower content delivery.

This is not necessarily so. If a small business has a strong following, it will be able to pay for faster downloads. Again,this is all about the allocation of delivery speed. It has to be allocated in some fashion. The non-interventionist manner is to allow the highest bidders to get the prime speed, samll or large.

Net-neutrality law can be compared to law that would force out of retail malls top retailers to be replaced by, say, a greasy spoon diner in the name of “mall neutrality.”

Bottom line: Net neutrality is evil government meddling. Let the markets rule!

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.
 
The Bigs are behind it.

On Net Neutrality
By Robert Wenzel

*snip* bunch of propaganda *snip*

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.

What a load of propaganda bullshit. I pay for my internet service. I pay content providers for access to their content. I don't pay my internet service provider for permission to then pay for access to another web site. ISP's don't get to do that. Or they shouldn't, at least. But gullible suckers are biting this stuff hook, line, and sinker. Here's something that's not propaganda:

This history of abuse revealed a problem that the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality protections solved. Those rules are now under threat from Trump’s FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, who is determined to hand over control of the internet to massive internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon:

MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.

COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.

TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.

AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.

MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.

AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.

EUROPE: A 2012 report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications found that violations of Net Neutrality affected at least one in five users in Europe. The report found that blocked or slowed connections to services like VOIP, peer-to-peer technologies, gaming applications and email were commonplace.

VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.

AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling app on its customers’ iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.

VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.

And remember, this was when it was illegal to do these things. So, tell me again about how it's the government, who has had "control" of the internet since its inception, and has never done anything even approaching these violations, is the one I should be worried about.
 
The response by consumers should be coops like South Slope or forming municipal telecom utilities that will sell open Internet.
 
The response by consumers should be coops like South Slope or forming municipal telecom utilities that will sell open Internet.

That's great for large cities and wealthy areas. Enjoy your dial up if you live somewhere else though.
 
I assume we will soon find out that Trump or one of his minions is heavily invested in an ISP or working to buy or start an ISP.
 
The bottom line is that ISPs and large network owners like Verizon are forced to treat all data the same with net neutrality in place.

If you revoke it, those companies have a right to say "OK, video data like Netflix now costs $5 a gigabyte and porn site traffic is now $50 per gigabyte."

They'd be allowed to charge different rates for different content to different people. Not good for the consumer at all.

DESPITE the FACT that you're ALREADY paying for "10 Mbps" or "25 Mbps" speeds.

Gutting net-neutrality will LEGALLY allow them to NOT honor that contractual structure, and you'll pay for 10 Mbps, but could get less than 1 Mbps, if you are streaming from a site that "isn't part of our package".

This would be akin to your electric utility dropping your "current limit" to your house if you have LG appliances, instead of GE appliances. Or if you wanted to set up a garage workshop and decided to ACTUALLY USE your 200 amp service more routinely, they'd "decide" for you that it was "overuse" and would "throttle down" your electric service.

That's what "net neutrality" is all about. Charging you for a service, but not being contractually obligated to actually deliver it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sadiehawkins
What a load of propaganda bullshit. I pay for my internet service. I pay content providers for access to their content. I don't pay my internet service provider for permission to then pay for access to another web site. ISP's don't get to do that. Or they shouldn't, at least. But gullible suckers are biting this stuff hook, line, and sinker. Here's something that's not propaganda:



And remember, this was when it was illegal to do these things. So, tell me again about how it's the government, who has had "control" of the internet since its inception, and has never done anything even approaching these violations, is the one I should be worried about.
For one, you’ll still get your content. Two, They can actually, as the content providers are using the ISP’s roads to send their data down. It’s their equipment, their infrastructure and their property. You make it a public utility and you make our internet controlled by government, which hasn’t worked out well for China.
You’re falling for a false cause. Do you even know how networking works?
 
DESPITE the FACT that you're ALREADY paying for "10 Mbps" or "25 Mbps" speeds.

Gutting net-neutrality will LEGALLY allow them to NOT honor that contractual structure, and you'll pay for 10 Mbps, but could get less than 1 Mbps, if you are streaming from a site that "isn't part of our package".

This would be akin to your electric utility dropping your "current limit" to your house if you have LG appliances, instead of GE appliances. Or if you wanted to set up a garage workshop and decided to ACTUALLY USE your 200 amp service more routinely, they'd "decide" for you that it was "overuse" and would "throttle down" your electric service.

That's what "net neutrality" is all about. Charging you for a service, but not being contractually obligated to actually deliver it.
None of which will happen. Keep the fear mongering going though. You’re wanting government to do something about the monopolies it helped create......falling for the same tricks I see.
 
None of which will happen. Keep the fear mongering going though. You’re wanting government to do something about the monopolies it helped create......falling for the same tricks I see.

And....REPORTED
Go back to your hole, troll.
 
For one, you’ll still get your content. Two, They can actually, as the content providers are using the ISP’s roads to send their data down.

And...GUESS WHAT!!!??

THEY are paying for certain bandwidth, TOO!!!
So, why should ISPs be able to throttle bandwidth THAT IS PAID FOR?
 
And...GUESS WHAT!!!??

THEY are paying for certain bandwidth, TOO!!!
So, why should ISPs be able to throttle bandwidth THAT IS PAID FOR?
Is your bandwidth suffering? Can you prove that your bandwidth is actually being throttled? Or is it possible that there are issues leading to said throttled internet? Is it possible that bandwidth, in the age of 4K streaming(minimum 25 Mb needed) is needing balanced out distribution?
 
Is your bandwidth suffering? Can you prove that your bandwidth is actually being throttled?
If there's no "regulation" of it, you'd never have a chance to.

Get it?

Netflix pays ISP for 100 TBps service for their customers; they insist their systems are working fine.
You pay ISP for 25 Mbps service. Your check on Speedtest.net shows you are getting it.

The only way to "sue" your ISP for throttling is to get IT experts into their systems to LOOK for it; and that ain't happening w/o LOADS of legal costs.

"Regulations" are not "bad"; that's something Conservatards like yourself have a difficult time understanding. Yet, nearly ALL of your "electronic gadgets" and your house wiring is subject to "regulations", that make things both reliable and safe.
 
If there's no "regulation" of it, you'd never have a chance to.

Get it?

Netflix pays ISP for 100 TBps service for their customers; they insist their systems are working fine.
You pay ISP for 25 Mbps service. Your check on Speedtest.net shows you are getting it.

The only way to "sue" your ISP for throttling is to get IT experts into their systems to LOOK for it; and that ain't happening w/o LOADS of legal costs.

"Regulations" are not "bad"; that's something Conservatards like yourself have a difficult time understanding. Yet, nearly ALL of your "electronic gadgets" and your house wiring is subject to "regulations", that make things both reliable and safe.
So you’re worried about nothing then?
 
Um...no. My post states the opposite.
Do you need to be REPORTED for trolling AGAIN?
I don’t believe I am trolling. Are you not trying to convey that the ISP’s have a plot to hinder their business? They aren’t the ones using algorithms to censor content in favor of other content. That’s where the real battle for Net Neutrality lies. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have all been caught and admitted to deleting content and censoring users based on them own discretions of what is right and wrong.
The ISP’s the have one job, get you to the internet, that’s it. You’re willing to hand over regulatory control to an entity that has ever reason to want to censor and block certain types of traffic.
It doesn’t make sense and only a troll would fail to see that.
 
I don’t believe I am trolling. Are you not trying to convey that the ISP’s have a plot to hinder their business?

When they hold "monopolies" over cities around the country, they don't "hinder their business", they extract more money from you and gain legal ways to NOT honor their marketed service speeds per their contracts.

One more try: WHY should an ISP be able to LEGALLY NOT deliver marketed speeds to you, when you are PAYING for those delivery speeds?

Should an ISP be able to throttle you to <1 Mbps, when you are paying for more than 10?

This is simply a way for ISPs to legally "sell" more bandwidth than they can actually deliver, then play 'shell games' and throttle certain content, because they 'oversold' their capabilities. If they can only handle 5 Mbps per customer, they SHOULD NOT be legally able to "sell" 25 Mbps, and then throttle certain content due to their lack of infrastructure investment.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BioHawk
Attempted cash grab. True story: My 10 year old in incensed by this, and is convinced it will lead to a bloody civil war.

Can you imagine how many children will end up murdering their parents when YouTube isn't made available to them bc mom and dad didn't think it was worth the $5 per month extra???
 
  • Like
Reactions: longliveCS40
If there's no "regulation" of it, you'd never have a chance to.

Get it?

Netflix pays ISP for 100 TBps service for their customers; they insist their systems are working fine.
You pay ISP for 25 Mbps service. Your check on Speedtest.net shows you are getting it.

The only way to "sue" your ISP for throttling is to get IT experts into their systems to LOOK for it; and that ain't happening w/o LOADS of legal costs.

"Regulations" are not "bad"; that's something Conservatards like yourself have a difficult time understanding. Yet, nearly ALL of your "electronic gadgets" and your house wiring is subject to "regulations", that make things both reliable and safe.

If the US govt actually did its job in regards to monopoly regulations I don't think this would be as much of an issue as there would be more providers available to move ones business over to that didn't play these sorts of games. I also think that actually upholding anti-monopoly regulations would have a positive impact on wages in our nation as well.
 
If the US govt actually did its job in regards to monopoly regulations I don't think this would be as much of an issue as there would be more providers available to move ones business over to that didn't play these sorts of games. I also think that actually upholding anti-monopoly regulations would have a positive impact on wages in our nation as well.

It's not even "just US"; local governments sign up with providers for 'exclusive contracts' as well, in part because they do not have the funds themselves to 'wire up' all the houses in their towns and then 'shop around'. Few cities have more than one 'wired' content provider for cable TV, and that's not really a "US government" fault. It's a failure on multiple levels.

Now that broadband has 'caught up' and is fully capable of allowing true competition, the providers are literally 'freaking out', and scuttling net neutrality is their last "true play" to protect profits.
 
  • Like
Reactions: unIowa
For one, you’ll still get your content. Two, They can actually, as the content providers are using the ISP’s roads to send their data down. It’s their equipment, their infrastructure and their property. You make it a public utility and you make our internet controlled by government, which hasn’t worked out well for China.
You’re falling for a false cause. Do you even know how networking works?

The internet is a public utility so there's that. It is very difficult to function in modern society without it. Second, we aren't China. Please, list the number of times our government has restricted internet use. I've provided multiple times ISP's have, but go ahead. I'm waiting. Remember, the government has had "control" of the internet for over 30 years now. That's 3 times as long as was needed to see how private companies will run it.
 
It's not even "just US"; local governments sign up with providers for 'exclusive contracts' as well, in part because they do not have the funds themselves to 'wire up' all the houses in their towns and then 'shop around'. Few cities have more than one 'wired' content provider for cable TV, and that's not really a "US government" fault. It's a failure on multiple levels.

Now that broadband has 'caught up' and is fully capable of allowing true competition, the providers are literally 'freaking out', and scuttling net neutrality is their last "true play" to protect profits.

The town I just moved from had one wired ISP possibility or 1-2 satellite providers. Cell companies couldn't provide wireless service there, neither could other hard wired providers. Our old service contract was for 12mb upload speeds, but because it was run through the phone line, we were lucky to get 1.5-2mb. During high usage times, even getting dial up speeds would have been an improvement. I have no idea why the town had an exclusive contract with this provider, but it was crap.

The town we are moving to when our house is finished is part of a coop (similar to what JR mentioned above). From everything I've been told, you get right at or very close to whatever your contracted speeds are from them. They offer plans up to 100mb, the tech teacher at school showed me his speed test, he was getting within 5% of that (they have the 100mb option at home).
 
ADVERTISEMENT