Net neutrality repealed!

[SunsetBengal]

(12-14-2017, 08:09 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Make it a public good, set it up as a public utility. Done.

Actually, I agree.  In this day and age, how can communications not be considered essential to a successful general public?  Go to a volume used system, like Electricity, Water, Gas, etc.  But, everyone should get what they pay for, at full strength.

[Yojimbo]

(12-14-2017, 07:03 PM)bfine32 Wrote: How many people here would like the federal government controlling their private business?

Pretty sure federal, state and local governments already control every private business through regulations, permits, fee, etc.

[*bfine32*]

(12-14-2017, 07:12 PM)Millhouse Wrote: That argument can also be used in reference to chemical companies being regulated of dumping their wastes directly into rivers. So by that line of thought, all companies and corporations shouldnt have any regulations for how they conduct their business by the government.

I agree if ISPs damage our environment they should be held accountable. Has nothing to do with what service(s) they should provide to their customers. 

Vas Deferens Wrote:No one.

Quote:Would you like to go back to the days when you had 1 provider control the entire telephone industry?  Would you like your private tax dollars go to subsidize a private companies infrastructure then maintain a stranglehold monopoly on how you use said infrastructure?

Sorry bud.  The tired old GOP arguments don't hold up in this instance.

I wouldn't like to go back to any of those things and as far as I know; net neutrality will have zero effect on how many ISPs there will be. Perhaps someone else's argument doesn't hold up in this instance . The government shouldn't be allowed to tell private businesses who to serve and how to serve them; as long as they do not discriminate or break the law. I consider that a Free Market argument and not a "GOP" one.


  

Yojimbo Wrote:Pretty sure federal, state and local governments already control every private business through regulations, permits, fee, etc.

Quite a bit different than the issue of Net Neutrality. Folks are reaching for reasons to OK the federal government regulating the product a private company provides to private citizens. 






Private citizens already pay more for additional bandwidth (hell I pay over $100/month for internet only, but I get 300 mpbs); why shouldn't companies that use it not be required to? 

[*bfine32*]

(12-14-2017, 08:09 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Make it a public good, set it up as a public utility. Done.

Don't electric companies charge more depending on how much electricity you use?

[*Nately120*]

(12-14-2017, 07:03 PM)bfine32 Wrote: How many people here would like the federal government controlling their private business?

I know my buddy who sells drugs and runs a whorehouse is pretty sick of it.

[*bfine32*]

(12-14-2017, 09:44 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I know my buddy who sells drugs and runs a whorehouse is pretty sick of it.

Hell, I'm sick of it too. I wish both were legal. 

[*Nately120*]

(12-14-2017, 09:47 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Hell, I'm sick of it too. I wish both were legal. 

You can thank the moral majority for making that stuff only legal if you are rich and connected.

[Dill]

(12-14-2017, 09:38 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Don't electric companies charge more depending on how much electricity you use?

when privatized, they tend to charge much more.

"Burn baby burn!" You are old enough to remember rolling black outs, right?

[Dill]

(12-14-2017, 07:03 PM)bfine32 Wrote: How many people here would like the federal government controlling their private business?

I don't think the internet is a private business, or if it is it shouldn't be.  It is frequently compared to a highway.

Federal and state governments control our highways.  Private businesses have the same access as everyone else.

But they have to obey the laws like every one else.  That is how I like the federal government controlling private business.

I would not want private business controlling highways and finding ways to link access to private profit and monopoly.

[*bfine32*]

(12-14-2017, 10:10 PM)Dill Wrote: I don't think the internet is a private business, or if it is it shouldn't be.  It is frequently compared to a highway.

Federal and state governments control our highways.  Private businesses have the same access as everyone else.

But they have to obey the laws like every one else.  That is how I like the federal government controlling private business.

I would not want private business controlling highways and finding ways to link access to private profit and monopoly.

Using your analogy the Internet is the highway, but we are talking about private companies that provide service to that highway (ISPs). Should the government control services provided along the highway?

I think folks are all spun up about Net Neutrality repeal because Trump passed it and they are told by the media (many who may now have to pay more) that it is bad for them. When in reality the measure will most likely have zero affect on the consumer despite the "ISPs can now control what you can access" mantra. 

In that last line did you really say you would not want private businesses  controlling access to private profit?   

[*bfine32*]

This is what our Nation has become:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-users-tell-fcc-chair-205500591.html

Quote:"Today Ajit Pai took away our freedom of speech. Our freedom of information. Please, somebody kill this man. Make it painful too," one user tweeted, while another wrote: "Sincerely, and I mean this with 100% seriousness and honesty. Kill Yourself."

Others even went as far as to tweet death threats.

"If I can not open my internet tomorrow and it says I have to pay for anything I will hunt you down and kill you myself," one user fumed, while another tweeter wrote alongside a photo of three men holding guns: "We lost #NetNeutrality now you lose your life.

I wonder how genuinely clueless the guy that tweeted he has lost his freedom of speech is?

[hollodero]

(12-14-2017, 10:28 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Using your analogy the Internet is the highway, but we are talking about private companies that provide service to that highway (ISPs). Should the government control services provided along the highway?

I feel that's the wrong analogy. It's rather a private company in charge of deciding which destination you got access to, or in short where you can go on the highways. They could decide to let you go wherever you want like you're used to, or they could replace the highway to certain places with a graveled road - or they could start asking said places to pay a little so they don't get the graveled road.

Or it's just the media.

[*bfine32*]

(12-14-2017, 11:48 PM)hollodero Wrote: I feel that's the wrong analogy. It's rather a private company in charge of deciding which destination you got access to, or in short where you can go on the highways. They could decide to let you go wherever you want like you're used to, or they could replace the highway to certain places with a graveled road - or they could start asking said places to pay a little so they don't get the graveled road.

Or it's just the media.

What do you know? You guys are still on Dial Up down under.


Yeah, my analogy was more of a correction of Dills that seemed to confuse the Internet with the companies that provide access to it than it was an original thought on my part.  

Don't like the conditions of the road you're on, pay more to help get it fixed or take an alternate route (satellite)..... 

OK, enough with the analogies. Internet service is provided by Private Companies and today's move simply stated the Government cannot tell them how to provide their service. I guess I'm one of the few people that really didn't notice a difference in my internet on February 26, 2015 nd most likely will be one of the few that really won't notice a difference on my internet tomorrow.

It's a free market, the government shouldn't be required to ensure everybody gets a juicebox. 

[GMDino]

Let's take a look back to the wild west days of the internet....2014

https://www.vox.com/2014/5/5/5683642/five-big-internet-providers-are-slowing-down-internet-access-until

Quote:Five big US internet providers are slowing down Internet access until they get more cash

If you're the customer of a major American internet provider, you might have been noticing it's not very reliable lately. If so, there's a pretty good chance that a graph like this is the reason:


These graphs comes from Level 3, one of the world's largest providers of "transit," or long-distance internet connectivity.
The graph on the left shows the level of congestion between Level 3 and a large American ISP in the Dallas area. In the middle of the night, the connection is less than half-full and everything works fine. But during peak hours, the connection is saturated. That produces the graph on the right, which shows the packet loss rate. When the loss rate is high, thousands of Dallas-area consumers are having difficulty using bandwidth-heavy applications like Netflix, Skype, or YouTube (though to be clear, Level 3 doesn't say what specific kind of traffic was being carried over this link).

This isn't how these graphs are supposed to look. Level 3 swaps traffic with 51 other large networks, known as peers. For 45 of those networks, the utilization graph looks more like this:

The graph on the left shows that there is enough capacity to handle demand even during peak hours.  As a result, you get the graph at the right, which shows no problems with dropped packets.

So what's going on? Level 3 says the six bandwidth providers with congested links are all "large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market." One of them is in Europe, and the other five are in the United States.

Level 3 says its links to these customers suffer from "congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content."

The basic problem is those six broadband providers want Level 3 to pay them to deliver traffic. Level 3 believes that's unreasonable. After all, the ISPs' own customers have already paid these ISPs to deliver the traffic to them. And the long-standing norm on the internet is that endpoint ISPs pay intermediaries, not the other way around. Level 3 notes that "in countries or markets where consumers have multiple broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers." In short, broadband providers that face serious competition don't engage in this kind of brinksmanship.

Unfortunately, most parts of the US suffer from a severe lack of broadband competition. And the leading ISPs in some of these markets appear to view network congestion not as a technical problem to be solved so much as an opportunity to gain leverage in negotiations with other networks.

So some steps were made to help the consumer.

Then, in 2015...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/major-internet-providers-slowing-traffic-speeds

Quote:Major internet providers slowing traffic speeds for thousands across US
Study finds significant degradations of networks for five largest ISPs, including AT&T and Time Warner, representing 75% of all wireline households in US


Major internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday.

The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US.

The findings come weeks after the Federal Communications Commission introduced new rules meant to protect “net neutrality” – the principle that all data is equal online – and keep ISPs from holding traffic speeds for ransom.

Tim Karr of Free Press, one of the groups that makes up BattlefortheNet, said the finding show ISPs are not providing content to users at the speeds they’re paying for.

“For too long, internet access providers and their lobbyists have characterized net neutrality protections as a solution in search of a problem,” said Karr. “Data compiled using the Internet Health Test show us otherwise – that there is widespread and systemic abuse across the network. The irony is that this trove of evidence is becoming public just as many in Congress are trying to strip away the open internet protections that would prevent such bad behavior.”

The study, supported by the technologists at Open Technology Institute’s M-Lab, examines the comparative speeds of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which shoulder some of the data load for popular websites. Any site that becomes popular enough has to pay a CDN to carry its content on a network of servers around the country (or the world) so that the material is close to the people who want to access it.

In Atlanta, for example, Comcast provided hourly median download speeds over a CDN called GTT of 21.4 megabits per second at 7pm throughout the month of May. AT&T provided speeds over the same network of ⅕ of a megabit per second. When a network sends more than twice the traffic it receives, that network is required by AT&T to pay for the privilege. When quizzed about slow speeds on GTT, AT&T told Ars Technica earlier this year that it wouldn’t upgrade capacity to a CDN that saw that much outgoing traffic until it saw some money from that network (as distinct from the money it sees from consumers).

AT&T has strongly opposed regulation of its agreements with the companies that directly provide connectivity between high-traffic internet users and their customers. Cogent, Level3 and others have petitioned the FCC to make free interconnection to CDNs a part of the conditions for the proposed merger between AT&T and DirecTV.

“It would be unprecedented and unjustified to force AT&T to provide free backbone services to other backbone carriers and edge providers, as Cogent et al seek,” said the company in a filing replying to the CDNs’ suggestion, part of a brief opposing the merger. “Nor is there any basis for requiring AT&T to augment network capacity for free and without any limits. Opponents’ proposals would shift the costs of their services onto all AT&T subscribers, many of whom do not use Opponents’ services, and would harm consumers.”

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has taken an aggressive regulatory tack when it comes to mergers in the telecommunications sector. “History proves that absent competition a predominant position in the market such as yours creates economic incentives to use that market power to protect your traditional business in a way that is ultimately harmful to consumers,” he told industry leaders at the Internet and Television Expo last month.

The dispute over traffic speeds comes as the telecoms and cable industry readies legal challenges to the net neutrality rules. Most telecoms are content letting their lobbyists, notably trade associations Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and USTelecom, sue the FCC over net neutrality rules, but AT&T has been one of the few companies to sue the FCC directly.

So I guess I can see there is very little chance the providers will do the same thing, again.  Right?

[Bengalzona]

I'm told there was a poll that said 83% favored net neutrality. Not sure if that is accurate or not. Anybody got figures?

[*bfine32*]

(12-15-2017, 12:54 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: I'm told there was a poll that said 83% favored net neutrality. Not sure if that is accurate or not. Anybody got figures?

Hell, I'd like to help you with the research, but suddenly my internet speed has slowed to a crawl for some reason and I thought I saw a little piece of the sky fall today.

[hollodero]

(12-15-2017, 12:27 AM)bfine32 Wrote: What do you know? You guys are still on Dial Up down under.

That's right. We're down under, we need to dial up, while the US needs to dial down. Yeah, that probably sounds better in my head as in real life. Whatever. Also, your crocodiles ain't real and your president's a dumbass.

(12-15-2017, 12:27 AM)bfine32 Wrote: OK, enough with the analogies.

Ok. Too bad though, I had wonderful ones prepared, including 100.000 SUVs, a construction crane and a beautiful fairy. Ah well.

(12-15-2017, 12:27 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Internet service is provided by Private Companies and today's move simply stated the Government cannot tell them how to provide their service. I guess I'm one of the few people that really didn't notice a difference in my internet on February 26, 2015 nd most likely will be one of the few that really won't notice a difference on my internet tomorrow.

It's a free market, the government shouldn't be required to ensure everybody gets a juicebox. 

Sure, I get it, I just disagree. I think the government should absolutely ensure that. But that's probably because I am sceptical about the effects the free market arguments aim for. That this move will increase competition, potentially leading to cheaper internet access overall and all that. What I see is that net providers are given additional power while adding nothing benefitial in return, best case equals status quo, which to me is a bad deal for the public. They get a tool to gouge customers on both sides of the cable, so to speak. But sure, I'm used to a more socialistic government concept where some basic services are absolutely a government affair and the government actually ensures that everyone has equal access. No better water for richer folk, and in the same sense no faster net for richer content providers. - But, I get it still. Different stances, can't really prove mine is wiser.

And these different stances probably just stay exactly that. I really just wanted to meddle in these analogies.

[treee]

(12-14-2017, 09:28 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I agree if ISPs damage our environment they should be held accountable. Has nothing to do with what service(s) they should provide to their customers. 



I wouldn't like to go back to any of those things and as far as I know; net neutrality will have zero effect on how many ISPs there will be. Perhaps someone else's argument doesn't hold up in this instance . The government shouldn't be allowed to tell private businesses who to serve and how to serve them; as long as they do not discriminate or break the law. I consider that a Free Market argument and not a "GOP" one.


  




Quite a bit different than the issue of Net Neutrality. Folks are reaching for reasons to OK the federal government regulating the product a private company provides to private citizens. 






Private citizens already pay more for additional bandwidth (hell I pay over $100/month for internet only, but I get 300 mpbs); why shouldn't companies that use it not be required to? 

A better analogy would be if the power company also made toasters and TVs and charged you more to use your electricity for appliances other than the one's they produce. 

[Goalpost]

(12-14-2017, 08:31 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Actually, I agree.  In this day and age, how can communications not be considered essential to a successful general public?  Go to a volume used system, like Electricity, Water, Gas, etc.  But, everyone should get what they pay for, at full strength.

It all sounds good.  I just think it is counter to what tech companies are.  They aren't utilities.  Here they exist in a Capitalist society thru purpose of innovation and competition.  I cant imagine what Microsoft or Apple would look like today if we classified them as utilities 20 years ago.  Tech advances so rapidly without managing their boundaries.  

[Belsnickel]

(12-14-2017, 09:38 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Don't electric companies charge more depending on how much electricity you use?

Yup, and I have no problem with that. To be quite honest, I don't know much about the idea of net neutrality. It's not a policy issue I've delved into much. My statement isn't so much about net neutrality as it is about any issue surrounding the internet. It is an essential part of our infrastructure at this point and we are already seeing market failures with regards to local/regional monopolies and lack of access in some areas. Making something a public good and providing it as a utility through either a public agency or a quango is one way to resolve market failures, and I am in favor of it.