Fight for Net Neutrality

cranberries wrote: I personally think that the rise of streaming media is essentially moving the consumption model of traditional networks into the internet space, leading to bandwidth monopolization and hampering the growth of what I wish was a more eclectic, anarchic internet experience.

There is no way for the internet to be more eclectic and anarchic when the home-to-network infrastructure is a Title 2 public utility operated with strict oversight from the FCC. Your son's concerns while perhaps more assertive than they should be regarding perceived motivations are not entirely off-point. Similar concerns are expressed on the left-progressive side also. The gate-keeping (censoring, shadow-banning, outright-banning) of media and communication enforced by the usual Large Internet Content Companies is an issue for anyone outside of the Overton window.

If you're a libertarian, you would push for repeal of Title 2. If you trust the government more than ISPs you would fight against it.

"If these Net Neutrality "activists" actually cared about a free and open internet they would be campaigning to change internet infrastructure building laws to break Comcast's monopoly on adding to the network."

That actually is a very strong argument in favor of having both net neutrality as well as relaxed rules on building network infrastructure.

Someone at Reddit is cataloging the fuckery they have already committed .

• 2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.
• 2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
• 2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.
• 2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)
• 2011-2013, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace
• 2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (they were fined $1.25million over this)
• 2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.
• 2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.
• 2014, Verizon throttling Netflix traffic, in an extortion scheme to force Netflix to pay 'tolls' for delivering their service unthrottled. blaming Netflix and other peering & CDN providers (Level3, Cogent, Akamai) for the degradation in service. They fucked up and inadvertently admitted to committing tomfoolery. Basically Verizon made a graph that showed, during their most busy time of the day they had a bunch of unused utilization. Level 3, a backbone provider (now owned by a different company) shared their network utilization information as well pointing out that the problem is that Verizon doesn't want to spend a couple thousand dollars on 10Gbps card between Verizon and L3. We talk about bottlenecks all the time. This is a very clear bottleneck.
• 2016, Netflix already has to pay ISPs to not fuck with their traffic to you.
• 2017, Time Warner Cable slowed down connections to League of Legends servers, while they were negotiating contracts with Riot in an effort to strong-arm Riot into paying TWC money. Spectrum (bought TWC) is now being sued by the state of New York over this.

Netflix, pornography sites, and other users of absurd bandwidth should have to pay more.

I'm a fan of net neutrality, but seems like it could be accomplished more readily not being shoehorned into communication regulations under the FCC that were developed 60 years ago. The regularity burden really is too much for small ISPs to compete.

Space Ghost wrote: Netflix, pornography sites, and other users of absurd bandwidth should have to pay more.

I'm a fan of net neutrality, but seems like it could be accomplished more readily not being shoehorned into communication regulations under the FCC that were developed 60 years ago. The regularity burden really is too much for small ISPs to compete.

Now, this is the rub....Netflix hosts their own shit and broadcasts it to the world. ISPs are the interchange that routes the traffic. The consumer pays ISP’s from their MPOE to Comcast. Why should Netflix have to pay more to allow ISPs to route traffic to consumers? If Netflix went P2P with their own client which acted as a sole site ISP that connected Netflix to its consumers, the net traffic change is zero because the same number of bytes is being transmitted. Comcast is simply a middle man in the deal, no?

Space Ghost wrote: Netflix, pornography sites, and other users of absurd bandwidth should have to pay more.

I'm a fan of net neutrality, but seems like it could be accomplished more readily not being shoehorned into communication regulations under the FCC that were developed 60 years ago. The regularity burden really is too much for small ISPs to compete.

They do pay more. That's the purpose of net neutrality, that traffic costs are based on quantity of traffic, not the source. When you have preferential treatment depending on whether your packets come from Netflix or Google or Hulu, that's when fuckery ensues. I guarantee the consumer is the loser in that fuckery, every time.

Netflix is already paying for bandwidth. They find it cheaper to give away caching servers to ISPs (literally) to reduce their bandwidth costs. What they don't want (and I fucking don't either) is someone like Comcast (owners of NBC, etc, etc, etc) to double-dip them for bandwidth to the customer, just because those packets are painted Netflix red.

The FCC is the only thing we have to regulate the Internet as a common carrier. I'd be all for new regulations to ensure the health of the Internet, but I don't expect any such thing from the "burn it down" crowd in Washington right now. Honestly, just not destroying what we have would be a huge step.

The bullshit monopoly aspect of the carriers is a real problem. However, ending net neutrality while content providers and carriers are owned by the same conglomerates is doubling down on the exploitation. What the Internet carrier market needs is some anti-trust enforcement, but that hasn't been popular in a very long time, and I don't see it coming back any time soon.

This is a pure kleptocratic move with no upside for anyone but the major Internet carriers, who will be able to play shenanigans to benefit their own subsidiaries.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with ISPs being unable to compete (again, last-mile monopoly bullshit), but it has a lot to do with new or growing internet services continuing to be able to. If "glrbr.com" has to negotiate preferred-bandwidth with every major ISP in the country, the barrier to Internet startups becomes a lot higher.

SuperflyTNT wrote: If Netflix went P2P with their own client which acted as a sole site ISP that connected Netflix to its consumers, the net traffic change is zero because the same number of bytes is being transmitted.

Netflix is an extremely strange case in almost everything in tech. They're hard to generalize with.

They're surprisingly close to P2P already, because their OpenConnect CDN (given away for free to every ISP with any significant number of subscribers) caches the content locally, in the ISP datacenters. That means Comcast (or Tumbleweed Internet or whoever) only get Stranger Things once from Netlfix per physical location, regardless of how many consumers end up streaming it from that location. (It's also pre-loaded days before it's needed).

Netflix is giving the cache layer to the ISPs, letting them preserve (ie not pay for) all that incoming bandwidth. And yet, the ISPs still want to charge the customer extra, because they've oversold the last-mile connections and don't want to give the customer what they've promised in bandwidth.

Wanna break the monopolies for cable companies, have the rules change on pole permits. In most cities, the top of the pole is power. Four feet down is CLEC (typically ATT), one foot down from that is either cable or CLEC Fiber, one foot down from that is either cable or MSO Fiber, then one foot down from that is the other. So thats seven feet. Your average utility pole in a mixed use area twenty feet and you have to have clearance of twelve feet. You have no space to fit another provider unless the attach distance is changed. Yes many poles are 40-120 poles, but those are not what connect to your building or house.

You cannot just repeal the rulings since that will either cause the issues like what happened in Nashville with Google Fiber. Google had Nashville try to change the make ready laws to one touch, meaning Googles contractors can move the LEC and MSO wires. What happened was that they went up there and just started moving or unhooking the wires. One decided to put the cable line IN the negative space for the power system (that four feet) which caused a power surge into the cable line and burned out a bunch of hardware.

"Small ISPs" shouldn't have to compete, in the same way you don't have to pick your water supply from a bunch of different competitors.

The Internet is a public resource. Nationalize it.

But what about the big bad government? That's what people keep saying to me. Why would you want the government to control it? I don't know, maybe because everyone uses it and if left uncheck, people will fuck each other right out of the ability to do so.

that’s basically what this boils down to, do we trust for profit corporations or do we trust the government who’s representatives are often in the chequebooks of for profit corporations?

I think we’re much better off with the government in this case.


edit: thank you Shell for posting this, btw. I submitted a filing today to support net neutrality. They're calling this thing the internet freedom act or something

Both ISPs and government are insidious entities whose sole goal is the acquisition of power and profit, but the difference is that you can get rid (theoretically) of shit politicians and you can redress grievances in the court system against the government. When there’s usually ONE ISP to choose from in any given city, you have zero leverage.

The internet is a vital national security and national commerce resource. It should absolutely be controlled by the public, via its representatives. I’m with Dave on this - it should be nationalized.

Tax dollars should pay for all costs, upgrades, etc. it should be “free” for everyone in the US and administered by private companies under intense public scrutiny. That would get the internet into every home in the US, at which point the poor and disenfranchised could use it for education, commerce, etc.

If there's anything out there that should be subsidized, it's internet access. This is is like keeping people out of the sections of the library.

The only people outside of telecoms that I've seen against Net Neutrality are some weird strain of libertarians who distrust anything the government touches. I'm not sure why these people aren't afraid of concentration of power in general. I'm not sure how the profit motive automatically makes people more moral than the political power motive. Maybe I should pray to Joel Osteen to find out.

Jexik wrote: If there's anything out there that should be subsidized, it's internet access. This is is like keeping people out of the sections of the library.

The only people outside of telecoms that I've seen against Net Neutrality are some weird strain of libertarians who distrust anything the government touches. I'm not sure why these people aren't afraid of concentration of power in general. I'm not sure how the profit motive automatically makes people more moral than the political power motive. Maybe I should pray to Joel Osteen to find out.

I've seen the libertarian opposition to Net Neutrality lately, and also some opposition by obvious corporate shills, who try to use different definitions for everything from net neutrality to packets. Most people who understand the issues are in favor of net neutrality, but unfortunately a lot of people don't care because they don't understand.

I generally consider myself a Libertarian, but just because the government is “involved” doesn’t automatically make it bad. Political dogma is still dogma (i.e. bad). I don’t even see this as the government regulating anything. I know they are, but it’s weird because it’s flipped. “You know how the internet has always operated and always worked great that way without us doing anything? Well now you are trying to fuck it up so we have to force you to leave it alone.”