“Net Neutrality”. I love how they put a bow on this crap with glowing terms.
Why don’t they call it what it is:
“Massive Regulation”
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
[quote]tedro wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
The argument is that there is no choice for netflix because the ISP’s don’t have a competitive market. The problem with that argument is the existing 100 years of regulatory capture is what created the noncompetitive ISP market in the first place.
The government is getting on board because once ISP’s are under title 2, Internet service prices can be regulated as well, giving the federal government de-facto ownership of all the entire ISP industry through price controls like they do with other public utilities.[/quote]
But this is no longer true. Title II assumed that telecom would forever be like an electrical or water/wastewater utility, where there is (to date) really only one way of moving ‘product’. Cable and telephone have always been regulated separately, typically by a local government that either owns the infrastructure or delegates its use. We can still only distribute electricity by aluminum or copper wire and water by pipe (and perhaps this will remain true forever, but the point is to recognize that we don’t have the foresight to predict what future technology will bring).
Today we have internet over traditional cable media, cable over phone & internet media, VoIP that allows phone use over cable, google fiber that does both and is quickly becoming a leader in the KC area, and numerous wireless/satellite options. Federal regulation for consumer protection is completely unnecessary with the ever increasing options. AT&T, Comcast, and Dish are all current options for me. Google is close and Verizon may be another option in the near future. All can provide both cable/satellite & internet. I think I have more cable choices than I do grocery stores, and with wireless communications the barrier to entry no longer relies on access to municipality infrastructure. Side note: It relies on the FCC who controls the wireless spectrum!
CB has really already hit the main points. Certain websites demand much more ISP resources than others. What net neutrality amounts to is populist government action so that Netflix, Hulu, et al subscribers don’t see an increase in price for those subscriptions. One of two things will ultimately happen, you can let the ISP’s charge their content providers in the EXACT SAME WAY THAT CABLE COMPANIES DO, or you can say goodbye to unlimited access to the internet and say hello to data caps with every ISP, which is the necessary conclusion to net neutrality with the added benefit that the FCC now gets to regulate it.
The crux is that Netflix (and others but they are really the main culprit here) cannot get their product to consumers at a rate that allows both Netflix and the ISP to profit. Netflix aims to push the burden of their own profitability and consumer reach onto the ISP and needs government intervention to accomplish it.
[/quote]
I’m not sure where we are disagreeing. I think you might have assumed that I thought that treating ISP’s like other utilities would be a resounding success because of the their success of water, etc…
That’s not what i meant at all. Government takeover of “utilities” has been a disaster and will be always and forever.
Imagine a future where they are able to buy votes by providing “free” internet access to “underprivileged classes”.
THAT is where this is going.[/quote]
That will be beneficial to a certain party when online voting becomes a real thing (very likely in my lifetime). Recently on social media after the midterm elections some liberals posted this article highlighting the fact that democrats could have won more if there was more voter turnout, younger people tend to not be interested in non-popular elections. Summary is many of the young people who just don’t care enough about politics would vote democrat if they actually made the effort, now imagine if voting was as simple as logging into a website on election day for a few minutes.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
That will be beneficial to a certain party when online voting becomes a real thing (very likely in my lifetime). Recently on social media after the midterm elections some liberals posted this article highlighting the fact that democrats could have won more if there was more voter turnout, younger people tend to not be interested in non-popular elections. Summary is many of the young people who just don’t care enough about politics would vote democrat if they actually made the effort, now imagine if voting was as simple as logging into a website on election day for a few minutes.[/quote]
I hadn’t even considered that angle. You are very likely correct. That being said, I suppose maybe we could trade net neutrality for a repeal of the 26th ammendment.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
From the Time piece:
-
stop ISPs from blocking access to legal content - Okay… Does this even happen now? I mean outside when google does this to you on every search, and tracks you to micro target ads
-
prevent them from ?throttling? some types of Internet traffic - Doesn’t all their traffic get this?
-
apply net-neutrality rules between ISPs and the rest of the Internet - no fucking clue as to what that means, and this article is pissing me off with lack of detail right now.
-
and ban paid prioritization of content, which involves a content provider paying an ISP to get its offerings to your home faster than other content is delivered - Maybe this is where I’m confused. This certainly sounds like “Comcast can’t charge Netflix more than Joe’s Porn Stash, even though Netflix is 300x the strain on the system, because HD Netflix requires faster speeds than low quality homemade fart porn.”[/quote]
-
Not sure if it happens now, but I believe the idea is to make sure it doesn’t. Imagine an ISP owned by members who had some kind of agenda and decided to block any content not serving them…
-
ISPs can look at the headers on packets (data being sent and received) and determine what kind of content it is. ie. many cable ISPs will throttle torrent traffic to ensure that it doesn’t eat up all the bandwidth
-
not really sure
-
here’s where I think you’re a little off. To my knowledge ISPs do not currettly charge content providers. They charge customers and give them access to the content. Either way, the idea is to prevent an entity like McDonalds from coming along and handing a bunch of cash to the ISPs to ensure that traffic to their content always get priority over Burger King or Wendey’s…
I could be off, but this is my take on the subject
I think many people may be confusing ISPs with hosting providers. Joe Porn doesn’t pay ISPs any money. They likely pay a hosting service money for use of their servers and bandwidth. Someone like Netflix may own their own servers and pay for domain rights and whatnot.
ISPs simply provide customers with access to content. Many ISPs though are also in competition with content providers like Netflix. So they want to be able to limit netflix’s availability so people are forced to use their television services…
The idea behind net-neutrality is to stop the things many of you are worried about.
It is still more regulations though…
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
That will be beneficial to a certain party when online voting becomes a real thing (very likely in my lifetime). Recently on social media after the midterm elections some liberals posted this article highlighting the fact that democrats could have won more if there was more voter turnout, younger people tend to not be interested in non-popular elections. Summary is many of the young people who just don’t care enough about politics would vote democrat if they actually made the effort, now imagine if voting was as simple as logging into a website on election day for a few minutes.[/quote]
That’s a good point and probably worthy of its own thread.
“Should Voting Be Made Easier?”
My thoughts are NO. Requiring a deliberate, thoughtful, concerted effort should be the goal – not a difficult effort, mind you, but one that takes more ambition than just logging on to a website.[/quote]
I most certainly agree with you, Push…
The “problem” is that in many ways…the way in which we Vote now (at least for people who are growing up learning computer skills before they can even write) is akin to writing a paper check; having a land phone; or keeping up with appointments with a paper “At-A-Glance” calendar.
Whether the way we Vote “has” to change is certainly up for debate…but I’m afraid it will. What we do now is just lagging too far behind our Technological capabilities.
Mufasa
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
So you guys are saying it takes the same amount of resources for Comcast to transmit an HD at a speed that prevents buffering, to 3-4 million users, at hones, for 2 hours straight, as it does to load a single facebook timeline at the same speed?[/quote]
No, what I’m saying is that an ISP shouldn’t be able to manipulate the speed at which the resources are provided. I agree they should absolutely be able to charge for the volume of resources used.
Government = regulation = layers of unnecessary complexity = consumers get fucked (but low income consumers get free shit)
Isn’t that how this always plays out?
Here’s a thought:
If it’s an action taken/initiated by the Obama administration, the only, and I mean ONLY, motivation is furthering the interests of his political agenda.
As has been brought up already in this thread, we just need to ask ourselves the following:
“How does this benefit the progressives?”
“What piece on the board is this, and how does this move set up opportunities for the government to further restrict our freedoms and prop up the nanny state?”
“How can this lead to more CONTROL over our daily lives?”
“Can the free market correct this? If not, why not?” (answer: too much regulation in place already)
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Government = regulation = layers of unnecessary complexity = consumers get fucked (but low income consumers get free shit)
Isn’t that how this always plays out?
Here’s a thought:
If it’s an action taken/initiated by the Obama administration, the only, and I mean ONLY, motivation is furthering the interests of his political agenda.
As has been brought up already in this thread, we just need to ask ourselves the following:
“How does this benefit the progressives?”
“What piece on the board is this, and how does this move set up opportunities for the government to further restrict our freedoms and prop up the nanny state?”
“How can this lead to more CONTROL over our daily lives?”
“Can the free market correct this? If not, why not?” (answer: too much regulation in place already)[/quote]
I think you’re overreacting at bit
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Government = regulation = layers of unnecessary complexity = consumers get fucked (but low income consumers get free shit)
Isn’t that how this always plays out?
Here’s a thought:
If it’s an action taken/initiated by the Obama administration, the only, and I mean ONLY, motivation is furthering the interests of his political agenda.
As has been brought up already in this thread, we just need to ask ourselves the following:
“How does this benefit the progressives?”
“What piece on the board is this, and how does this move set up opportunities for the government to further restrict our freedoms and prop up the nanny state?”
“How can this lead to more CONTROL over our daily lives?”
“Can the free market correct this? If not, why not?” (answer: too much regulation in place already)[/quote]
AC:
You can take this to the Bank…
Conservatives ALSO find ways to make a buck off of anything the Government does; and they are probably much better at it than Liberals/Progressives.
Mufasa
[quote]hmm87 wrote:
Yes I agree Netflix requires more bandwidth which they should pay for. But speed of the actual data transmission isn’t a resource. There’s no reason for an ISP to slow down the traffic of a content provider.[/quote]
You didn’t answer the question. Again:
So it takes the same amount of resources to deliver 2 hours of HD video to 2 million users between 9pm and 11pm on a Saturday at speed X as it does to refresh 1 user’s facebook page every couple of seconds for that same time frame at speed X?
You said speed and bandwidth are two different things, so forget bandwidth. Meeting speed demands takes resources. So just speak on the speed in your answer.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
So you guys are saying it takes the same amount of resources for Comcast to transmit an HD at a speed that prevents buffering, to 3-4 million users, at hones, for 2 hours straight, as it does to load a single facebook timeline at the same speed?[/quote]
No, what I’m saying is that an ISP shouldn’t be able to manipulate the speed at which the resources are provided. I agree they should absolutely be able to charge for the volume of resources used.
[/quote]
So on a Wednesday night when 35 million people are watching TRON in HD from netflicks, the ISP can’t prioritize Netflix so their customers are happy?
Yeah, sounds just like the conditions government would create.
[quote]corndiggity wrote:
- Not sure if it happens now, but I believe the idea is to make sure it doesn’t. Imagine an ISP owned by members who had some kind of agenda and decided to block any content not serving them…[/quote]
So the government using their agenda is an improvement?
Great. Can’t wait until this is used like the IRS or the Fed to manipulate the masses. Wonderful.
So… I’m not going to be able to even load Joe’s Porn videos after this because the torrent (or say iTunes) downloading will have to be given the same priority as my spank-ta-vision?
[quote]
4) here’s where I think you’re a little off. To my knowledge ISPs do not currettly charge content providers. They charge customers and give them access to the content. Either way, the idea is to prevent an entity like McDonalds from coming along and handing a bunch of cash to the ISPs to ensure that traffic to their content always get priority over Burger King or Wendey’s…
I could be off, but this is my take on the subject[/quote]
So the ISP can’t do what Google and other content providers do?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Government = regulation = layers of unnecessary complexity = consumers get fucked (but low income consumers get free shit)
Isn’t that how this always plays out?
Here’s a thought:
If it’s an action taken/initiated by the Obama administration, the only, and I mean ONLY, motivation is furthering the interests of his political agenda.
As has been brought up already in this thread, we just need to ask ourselves the following:
“How does this benefit the progressives?”
“What piece on the board is this, and how does this move set up opportunities for the government to further restrict our freedoms and prop up the nanny state?”
“How can this lead to more CONTROL over our daily lives?”
“Can the free market correct this? If not, why not?” (answer: too much regulation in place already)[/quote]
AC:
You can take this to the Bank…
Conservatives ALSO find ways to make a buck off of anything the Government does; and they are probably much better at it than Liberals/Progressives.
Mufasa
[/quote]
No, I think not.
Conservatives, generally speaking, believe wealth belongs to he who generated it.
Progressives, generally speaking, believe wealth belongs to the collective.[/quote]
Yeah, there is no denying that “republican” politicians line their pockets, but the idea that they are any better or worse at it that “democrats” is straight up partisan bullshit.
It also totally conflicts with the lefty narrative that big money controls politics. So if we take Muf’s logic here, no one but “republicans” would ever win an election… So one (or both) of the statements are wrong.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]hmm87 wrote:
Yes I agree Netflix requires more bandwidth which they should pay for. But speed of the actual data transmission isn’t a resource. There’s no reason for an ISP to slow down the traffic of a content provider.[/quote]
You didn’t answer the question. Again:
So it takes the same amount of resources to deliver 2 hours of HD video to 2 million users between 9pm and 11pm on a Saturday at speed X as it does to refresh 1 user’s facebook page every couple of seconds for that same time frame at speed X?
You said speed and bandwidth are two different things, so forget bandwidth. Meeting speed demands takes resources. So just speak on the speed in your answer.
[/quote]
Beans, I don’t think ISPs vary their speed based on what data they are transmitting. As far as I understand it, an ISP can serve X homes/business at X speed per second. It doesn’t matter if the data is a key board cat video or an email. To them it’s just 1’s & 0’s.
Where they should charge more and probably do would be in the volume of data. A Netflix video is 300+mb where as an email is kbs.
Maybe we are just looking at two different sides of the same coin. My line of thought is this:
I sign a contract with Comcast to provide internet at a download speed of say 100mb/s regardless of how I, the consumer, use the product. So if I want to use Netflix, I should be able to stream Netflix at the contractual speed of 100mb/s, right? If a “fast lane” is created then all of a sudden my internet speed is at the mercy of the ISPs and the ISPs have 3rd party providers like Netflix by the balls. So you’re going to end up with the Have’s (YouTube, Google, FaceBook, Netflix, etc…) and the Have Not’s (T-Nation, TheChive, EliteFTS, all small business’, etc…) of the internet.
I am not sure regulation is the answer.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
So you guys are saying it takes the same amount of resources for Comcast to transmit an HD at a speed that prevents buffering, to 3-4 million users, at hones, for 2 hours straight, as it does to load a single facebook timeline at the same speed?[/quote]
No, what I’m saying is that an ISP shouldn’t be able to manipulate the speed at which the resources are provided. I agree they should absolutely be able to charge for the volume of resources used.
[/quote]
So on a Wednesday night when 35 million people are watching TRON in HD from netflicks, the ISP can’t prioritize Netflix so their customers are happy?
Yeah, sounds just like the conditions government would create. [/quote]
No.
Comcast is required to provide the service it is contractually required to provide. If they say 50mb/s, they have to provide 50mb/s regardless of what it is for.
I should get what I pay for no matter what I am doing on the internet.