Why the FCC Will Probably Ignore the Public On Network Neutrality 336
walterbyrd writes The rulemaking process does not function like a popular democracy. In other words, you can't expect that the comment you submit opposing a particular regulation will function like a vote. Rulemaking is more akin to a court proceeding. Changes require systematic, reliable evidence, not emotional expressions . . . In the wake of more than 3 million comments in the present open Internet proceeding-which at first blush appear overwhelmingly in favor of network neutrality-the current Commission is poised to make history in two ways: its decision on net neutrality, and its acknowledgment of public perspectives. It can continue to shrink the comments of ordinary Americans to a summary count and thank-you for their participation. Or, it can opt for a different path.
I got this one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't even need to read the summary:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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Corps = funding rich
Corps = win
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Think of it as Taxation with representation when it is convenient and doesn't chew into the payola.
How is this article illustrating something new? Oh, I guess it shows the Fed being more blatant and less secretive about our role as NGP drones for the elite overlords.
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GNP not NGP
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It shouldn't act like a democracy, because democracy equates to rule by the uninformed masses.
However, input from the masses should be read and considered, and then a decision should be made based upon rational points made by each side.
The above rarely, if ever, happens.
Re:I got this one. (Score:4, Insightful)
They learned from the Chinese how to control ideologies by manipulating access to information
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Do you mean, like, back to the Qin Emperor?
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Perhaps. But I'm inclined to think that Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] applies here in spades.
The key word is adequately
Stupidity isn't sufficient to adequately explain the wrongdoings, therefore Hanlon's razor does not apply.
That doesn't mean that malice is the only other option, personally I find greed more likely.
Fortunately... (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC does not regulate torches and pitchforks.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:5, Funny)
Homeland Security is responsible for the torches and pitchfork list.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC does not regulate torches and pitchforks.
That will never happen.
Sure it could. The only thing the keeps it from happening is the bread and circuses.
In the USA, if you are moderately ambitious and/or moderately intelligent then you can be moderately successful.
So basically, it's not worth rocking the boat because you're doing "ok".
Polititians aren't stupid. They know that as long as they mostly appease the people with ambition or intelligence
then those people aren't likely to start a rebellion because the risk/reward ratio is not in their favor.
The (longterm) walmart and mcdonald employees are either not ambitious or not intelligent (or else they would
quickly find a better job) and therefore don't pose any threat as you need both a little bit of intelligence and
a little bit of ambition to organize a successful rebellion and if you have either intelligence or ambition then
there is usually much safer ways of getting ahead than plotting an overthrow.
Changes require systematic, reliable evidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
... so where is the systematic, reliable evidence that not being neutral in the way you treat traffic is somehow better for the future of the Internet? There are two parties: money grubbing corporations looking to maximize profit by double dipping and "the people" that require net neutrality in order to be able to build their future on it. Sure, the party that donates the most money will win.
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These networks are owned by the ISPs. It seems to me that government, before it steps in and tells them how best to run their networks, should have the burden of showing how net neutrality is better for the network than prioritization schemes.
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I wish I had points to vote this up.
What you describe is exactly how it's supposed to work. If the government wants to control the hundreds of billions of dollars of network infrastructure that private companies have invested it, it has an obligation to show that such control is the least burdensome method of achieving a compelling state interest.
And - frankly - it's not. Motivating competition in the last-mile space is a MUCH more effective method for achieving the same interest, AND has lots of other bene
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that those private companies have received 1. direct subsidies, 2. Free intellectual property usage (basic TCP/IP technologies) and 3. free usage of rights of way.
So, since we, the public, have heavily subsidised those privately owned networks, we should also have the right to regulate them. Finally, since the ISPs have been pushing for local monopoly status, they should accept that they are treated like a local monopoly (subject to regulation).
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No, that's not how it works. You don't get to (essentially) trick them into using technologies, and then say, "well, since you're using that thing we put into the public domain, now we get to tell you what to do with it." The same thing with subsidization. Just because I donated to a kickstarter campaign today doesn't mean I get to go to the company five years down the road and say "Remember that $100 I kicked in? Now I get to tell you how to run the company, even though you never agreed to that at the ti
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
300 billion$.
In 2006 dollars.
That's how much tax subsidy the ISP industry has recieved from the public.
subsidy that was SUPPOSED to pay for expanding the "last mile" across the country, to every nook and cranny the they did with telephone decades before.
Only they pocketed the money instead and delivered nothing in return for it.
And yes, they very much were given.
You're nothing but a shill.
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Fine, then local municipalities should be allowed to establish their own publicly funded internet services without any interference from private service providers in the form of lawsuits because of "unfair" competition.
I have absolutely no problem with that. I would argue that they shouldn't be doing that without also opening up that last-mile infrastructure they're building to "all comers" (ie, if the taxpayers have paid for outside-plant for high speed bandwidth specifically to force competition against a
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:4, Interesting)
He's right: idiot.
Read this before you comment more:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5... [theverge.com]
Essentially, these companies claim Title II status whenever they want to build something because under Title II they don't have to pay for right of way to government or private entities, get to use poles and tunnels without having to pay, etc., -- in other words they get a subsidy -- but when it comes to charging customers, they disclaim Title II status.
This is a corollary of "Privatize profits, socialize expenses" -- "Privatize profits, socialize business expenses."
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You invested? like with a prospectus and such?
I've addressed this fallacy elsewhere: the parts of tax subsidies which had actual contractual, regulatory, or statutory "requirements" tied to them have been either upheld, or worked out through the existing oversight processes. What you're asking for is something new which (frankly) nobody thought to include in the requirements when such things were being done decades ago. That's not the ISPs' fault, it's "ours" collectively for having something of buyer's rem
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, it's the ISPs that want to change things. Previously, if you tried to get a video from YouTube, NetFlix, or some website owned by your cable company, they would have been treated the same. ISPs then realized three things:
1) Those Internet video upstarts were making the ISPs' own cable TV offerings less popular.
2) Those Internet video upstarts were making lots of money. (Cue dollar signs in the eyes of the ISPs.)
3) They (the ISPs) were duopolies or monopolies in most areas and thus can do whatever they want without fear of competition.
With this realization, they implemented caps and overages to "manage network traffic" (really to make it more expensive for you to utilize Internet video to replace cable TV) and they want to make "Internet fast lanes" to extort money out of Internet Video providers (further raising the cost of these) or to slow them down (making them unusable and making cable TV seem better by comparison).
It's the ISPs that want to change the status quo of every bit being treated equally so they should be the ones presenting proof as to why they need to do so. So far, they haven't presented anything compelling. Unfortunately, their lobbyist money and political influence might count as "compelling arguments" to the FCC even when the vast majority of the public scream against it.
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Yeah, I find those kinds of arguments disingenuous, especially when there have been municipal Internet projects blocked by those private companies in favor of maintaining their own monopolies.
We should be sending these companies a message: Either you act like our own public infrastructure, or let us build our own public infrastructure. But don't take hundreds of billions of dollars of government money to build our public infrastructure, block our attempts to build our own infrastructure, and then claim th
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
it has an obligation to show that such control is the least burdensome method of achieving a compelling state interest. And - frankly - it's not.
Yes, it is. See common carrier. It has been tested empirically for more than a century including physical carriage networks. The empirical testing has shown that when carriers are prohibited from discriminatory behavior, the resulting increase in competition among merchants and manufacturers who use the carriage networks results in greater overall economic expansion. It is why FedEx is not permitted to negotiate preferred carrier status with one manufacturer to inhibit shipments made by a competing manufacturer.
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It is why FedEx is not permitted to negotiate preferred carrier status with one manufacturer to inhibit shipments made by a competing manufacturer.
Except FedEx does do such things. The rate you pay Fedex versus the rate I pay FedEx, versus the rate Amazon pays FedEx are all different, because it IS in fact doing such negotiation.
Further, The government hasn't shown that there is any actual harm caused by the model that folks like Comcast intend to use regarding cost-recovery of high-bandwidth content-provid
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to assert that the internet is like "a series of UPS trucks", as you do, is not in any way an apt analogy, and you know it (or should, at any rate, if you're hanging out on a site like Slashdot).
Of course the Internet isn't a series of UPS trucks.
When something is shipped via UPS, only one party pays UPS. Sure, sometimes the other party pays the first party so they can pay UPS, but UPS doesn't collect money for the same package from multiple parties. On the other hand, ISPs do collect money for the same packet from multiple parties. This is a bad thing and net neutrality should prevent it.
If you can't understand why it's important that ISPs not be able to be paid more than once for the same packet, then you really shouldn't be in a discussion about whether the government should or shouldn't impose regulations on ISPs.
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If you can't understand why it's important that ISPs not be able to be paid more than once for the same packet, then you really shouldn't be in a discussion about whether the government should or shouldn't impose regulations on ISPs.
Ah, yes, let me paraphrase that sentiment: "If you can't agree with me, then you really shouldn't be in a discussion about the topic of debate."
You, sir, can take that sentiment and retire to your echo-chamber of choice with it.
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So why should ISP's be paid twice for moving the same packet? I'm asking since you deftly ignored the actual argument.
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand your assertion, and simply disagree with it profusely.
There was no "understanding" associated with the tax-relief. If there was, it'd be codified in the laws and regulations surrounding such tax relief. If there had been such codification, this wouldn't even be a discussion, it'd be "no, your statutorily prohibited from doing that," or "OK, that's fine, but to do it, you need to repay the $nnn,nnn,nnn,nnn.00 in tax relief that was predicated on not doing so." Instead, folks like yourself - who actually don't understand the issue at all, get all hand-wavy about "we gave them tax relief" and assume that there was some actual agreements codified around it, which weren't actually there.
Let me be clear on something: you haven't paid for "a packet". You've paid for a pipe, capable of a given flow-rate. In this case, Netflix (for example) has also paid for "a pipe", capable of a given flow rate, into the system you get your data from. It's not nearly big enough, though, to service all the people who want to consume data from Netflix. Now, your argument is that the people who sell the pipes should just give Netflix a bigger pipe and take it on the chin because goddamnit you want to watch your Breaking Bad reruns. But the pipe Netflix needs, to do what you're asking, is really goddamned big. Big enough that if Netflix wants a pipe that big, it should damned well pay for upgrading it themselves. That includes both just the physical pipe, but also whatever the people who sell the pipes need to charge in order to able to handle the inflow of data from a pipe that big, sending it on to all the various places where those bits are going to drop back out into your laptop.
Your attempt to fixate on "charging for packets" is laudable. It certainly makes for a more compelling argument, or it would if there were any companies charging "by the packet" instead of "by the width of the pipe."
By all means, though, if you want to go to "paying by the packet" billing, I suspect the telcos and cable companies would be happy to oblige. It's a much more tenable business model for everyone involved, charging metered service, so that those who put the most actual strain on the network pay the most. But the last time a carrier tried that (TWC, 2008, in field trials in Texas) there was a hue and cry from folks - on this very site [slashdot.org] - against such "paying by the packet".
So, believe me, I very much understand the issue, and have been paying attention to it before you had even heard the phrase "net neutrality."
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Sure enough, giving electricity utilities a very strong incentive to become the common carrier (using Fiber + passive splitting + GPON), would certainly be the best solution. Lots of ISPs would be interested in operating in such a scenario, but this is exactly what has been tried and exactly what Comcast and others have invested very hard against, with local govt lobbying, lawsuits and every dirty trick in the book.
In the end, net neutrality mandated by the FCC would be a nationwide solution that would prev
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You don't need net neutrality for that. All you need is for the PUC/PSCs (for telcos) and the local Franchise Authorities (for cable) to mandate competitive wholesale access to last-mile facilities.
What you're trying to un-do in this case is decades of government assisted monopoly, so even the radical libertarian in me says that it's up to the government to regulate the "undoing of that damage". In order to renew their franchises, cable providers would have to provide up to "n" (let's assume n=2 for an arg
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
These networks are owned by the ISPs. It seems to me that government, before it steps in and tells them how best to run their networks, should have the burden of showing how net neutrality is better for the network than prioritization schemes.
You've got your cart on the wrong side of your horse, young man.
It's up to the ISPs to demonstrate to the people (via government) that they're using the resources —to which they have been granted limited monopoly rights— in the public interest, and that their pursuit of profits is not leading them into anti-consumer activity such as creating artificial scarcity for extortionary purposes when negotiating with other network operators, holding their users hostage, arbitrarily throttling bandwidth to customers whom they have testified are causing network congestion when in fact no such congestion exists.
For example.
Network Neutrality is the neutral position. It's not telling ISPs how to run their network - it's telling them to stop fucking with their customers' traffic. It's telling the ISPs to stop indulging in funny business and get back to making money the old-fashioned way: by providing an actual fucking service.
But yeah, fuck big government and Ayn Rand and America Fuck Yeah and all that because... Oh, I don't know, because who the fuck cares any more? This stopped being a dialogue years ago.
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It should also be noted that most Network Neutrality proponents would, ideally, not want the government getting involved. The only reason we're doing so is that the ISPs have made their plans clear to violate Network Neutrality and, given that they are large monopolies, we the people can't rely on "the free market" to push them back in line. Our last resort is the government saying "You can't do this." Is it ideal? No, but it's better than having your video shoved into the slow lane because your monopol
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The networks run physical infrastructure across public lands. Furthermore, they hold natural monopolies at both local and state levels. The government - and citizens - have an interest in equal access to that infrastructure. Particularly since open communication access is crucial to a functioning market. These ISPs are engaging in restraint of trade, hobbling competition not just in their own market but across whole swaths of the economy with potential for vast damage to market competition.
Even Milton Fried
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I think some of the ISPs are worried that legitimate packet prioritization is going be outlawed along with other sorts of prioritization due to ignorance of technology by legislators or regulators.
I've had discussions with coworkers in IT that were very sharp but still couldn't understand why it might be beneficial to prioritize voice packets over web traffic, for example. They really believed FIFO was the only fair way to treat packets and that anything else was somehow morally wrong.
And before some people
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If you need to prioritize voice traffic on your network then you're network is in serious need of an upgrade. 20 years ago when VOIP was brand new this was a necessity as 6.4k/channel was actually a chunk of your connection. In the modern world we live in with 10, 40, and 100gig ethernet available to the players being discussed in this thread and you're talking about 6.4 being a laughable amount of traffic. The only reason it needs to be prioritized is because of the DPI systems imposing completely unnecess
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At work we have a 100/100mbit internet connection (fiber), "business class" from a very solid ISP. We're 10 people here. Not long ago internet was horribly slow to the point that it took literally a minute to load my usual news site. Ping was up in the 1-2 second range.
Turned out one of my coworkers was downloading the some Windows ISOs from Microsoft.
If we didn't have QoS on the VOIP I'm pretty sure we would have noticed quite quickly.
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This is pretty much the way I see it, working in the field. On the "pro-net-neutrality" side there are those with reasonable views on balancing common carriage with legitimate needs for priority, some with a basic level of network literacy with a wide range of conflicting specific suggestions who don't usually understand the consequences of what they are asking for, and a whole lot of people who don't even understand what it is they are asking for and prefer to converse in vague terms and catch phrases. I
It's also hard to find a good balance (Score:3)
So it would be easy to say "FIFO, anything else is illegal." That solves any kind of throttling and such nicely and has no way around it. However, as you note, it has the problem of making any kind of useful QoS undoable. It isn't like QoS is something that nobody wants either, there's a reason why all the nice business gear you get has support for it. Ok so we'd like to allow that. Thing is, how do you write the law so that it doesn't mess with legit QoS, but doesn't have loopholes that allow companies to
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"You may throttle based on protocol (e.g. http, ftp, sip, bittorrent) but not by packet origin or destination."
Gee, that wasn't so hard after all!
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"You may throttle based on protocol (e.g. http, ftp, sip, bittorrent) but not by packet origin or destination."
This is the recipe of an idiot that isnt capable of foreseeing the vast amounts of inefficiency that will happen when everyone begins to use whatever packet type has the highest priority, rather than what is the most efficient. Disguising packets as HTTP has already been suggested as the "solution" to bittorrent throttling.
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And what kind of "legitimate packet priorization" would that be? Because I can't really think of any right now. If you have trouble delivering your real time dependent services, you can either up your bandwidth or not offer them rather than keep overselling 1:1000 and throttle everything else into oblivion.
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That's pretty simple. Allow the user to prioritize their own traffic. There is even 3 bits set aside for this in the IP header known as precedence. Then do QoS using that as your indicator on what to drop first if connections become overtaxed. Which, was the exact purpose of those bits but no one ever actually implemented them. I'd be more than happy to tell my browser, etc to please mark those packets as "Best Effort", but please mark my actual browsing as "Priority", my netflix and pandora as "Immedia
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Then then need to work on their English comprehension.
NETWORK Neutrality means I treat one network as equal to another. Therefore, I will treat packets from Akamai the same as Netflix and the same as Comcast.
What you're thinking of is PACKET or APPLICATION Neutrality, where I treat each packet the same regardless if it is voice, email, FTP, torrent, or video.
In Network Neu
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If I have to choose between allowing traffic to be prioritized by which sender has given the biggest bribe or prohibiting that along with prohibiting prioritizing by packet type (i.e., QoS)... then I'll choose to prohibit QoS because preventing bribe-prioritization is worth it!
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You present this as if net neutrality was a simple policy choice. But what does that even mean? Does net neutrality mean that every connection has the same latency and bandwidth guarantees as every other? Why is that a good thing? What do you even mean by net neutrality?
Actually, those "money
Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, frell off. you know, I know, everyone knows that net neutrality doesn't mean every connection has the same latency and bandwidth. It doesn't mean you can't prioritize a skype connection over a download.... It means you can't prioritize Company A's traffic over Company B's traffic because Company B didn't pay the ransom. It especially means you can't prioritize your own content over everyone elses to stifle competition.
Damn Trolls...
gp is right, draft language didn't even allow spam (Score:4, Insightful)
> everyone knows that net neutrality doesn't mean every connection has the same latency and bandwidth. It means you can't prioritize Company A's traffic over Company B's traffic
You and I know somewhat what a REASONABLE set of rules of rules might be, but GP is right as to the draft language. It basically said every packet has to be treated the same. As to company A and company B, if company A is a hospital and company B is a Nigerian prince, that's a difficult situation to write legislation for. Is it okay to deprioritize email from known spammers and allow the email from a search and rescue team to go through first? That's not allowed if the rule is "all users must be treated the same."
How about ads? On a slow wireless link, is it okay to deliver the text of a web page before the ads from DoubleClick ? They are both http web traffic.
Administrators making case-by-case decisions can make reasonable decisions in most cases. Coming up with simple rules deciding what admins must do in all cases for the next 20 years is much trickier, especially for bureaucrats who don't know the tech as well.
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You and I know somewhat what a REASONABLE set of rules of rules might be, but GP is right as to the draft language. It basically said every packet has to be treated the same. As to company A and company B, if company A is a hospital and company B is a Nigerian prince, that's a difficult situation to write legislation for. Is it okay to deprioritize email from known spammers and allow the email from a search and rescue team to go through first? That's not allowed if the rule is "all users must be treated the same."
I don't see how "the ISP should treat every packet the same" is unreasonable. The ISP should guarantee latency, throughput, jitter, availability, etc. per their SLAs. The end user can do their own QOS and decide whether they want netflix or remote robotic surgeries to take priority. If the user needs a stronger guarantee, they should get a better connection with a better SLA. None of this is illegal or unreasonable.
How about ads? On a slow wireless link, is it okay to deliver the text of a web page before the ads from DoubleClick ? They are both http web traffic.
Data should be delivered as determined by the client and the server, not the ISP. I'm no
you contradict yourself, proving my point (Score:2)
> I don't see how "the ISP should treat every packet the same" is unreasonable. ...
> If the user needs a stronger guarantee, they should get a better connection with a better SLA. None of this is illegal or unreasonable.
In your first sentence you made it ILLEGAL to sell New York City a more reliable connection with a better for emergency services to use for emergency commications. Everyone has to have the same SLA that Netflix does. Remember, every packet has to be treated the same.
It truly is a no
You're right of course. Inconsequential mistake (Score:2)
Your point is certainly right, and your explanation of why is pretty much on target. One very minor point:
> for VOIP it is essential that each packet be delivered, in order, and as quickly as possible. Delays of even 100ms create audible distortion. For email ...
For EMAIL, "it is essential that each packet be delivered". You wouldn't tolerate an email service that dropped words out of the middle of your email. For VOIP or other live streaming, you want the packets NOT be delivered if they can't be de
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As to company A and company B, if company A is a hospital and company B is a Nigerian prince, that's a difficult situation to write legislation for. Is it okay to deprioritize email from known spammers and allow the email from a search and rescue team to go through first?
No, that's not ok. Email is already a best-effort service without guaranteed delivery. If the S&R team actually needs a particular piece of information delivered immediately, they should choose a service that is optimized for that purpose. It's not the job of every internet middleman between here and Beijing to rank the moral value of each IP packet or source.
Note that this is different from an ISP determining that an email source is "spam" and blacklisting that source.
How about ads? On a slow wireless link, is it okay to deliver the text of a web page before the ads from DoubleClick ?
Aside from the technical fact th
The opposite. Streaming is best effort, smtp relia (Score:2)
> Email is already a best-effort service without guaranteed delivery.
> If the S&R team actually needs a particular piece of information delivered immediately, they should choose a service that is optimized for that purpose.
You are mistaken. Most streaming protocols are best effort and layered on top of UDP, which is explicitly defined as a best-effort service. Packets may or may not arrive, and may arrive out of order.
SMTP is defined as a reliable service, and runs over TCP, also defined as a re
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Is it okay to deprioritize email from known spammers and allow the email from a search and rescue team to go through first?
If that were really the problem, I'm sure someone could have simply added in something saying that emergency services' traffic can be prioritized. Hell, I think it would be fair to say it *must* be prioritized, as long as you can determine which traffic is being used for emergency services.
But part of the problem is, who decides what's spam? I'm sure that Time Warner, Comcast, and Verizon don't think their ads are spam.
How about ads? On a slow wireless link, is it okay to deliver the text of a web page before the ads from DoubleClick ? They are both http web traffic.
Again, who decides which ads you want to see? If you're on a slow connection and don'
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... so where is the systematic, reliable evidence that not being neutral in the way you treat traffic is somehow better for the future of the Internet?
This is the part that grabbed my attention. The whole piece is pretty disingenuous in the way it frames the issue. Just check out this quotation from an FCC staffer:
"I find the whole rulemaking context almost hilarious in many instances, because you know you're reading something, and you know it's not true. And you're guessing, you know, the person is hallucinating." Ordinary comments were, in other words, prone to error and lacked truthfulness, in the eyes of many of the Commission's staff.
It's a subtle bit of work, but the author of the piece implies not only that:
a) The FCC gets to ignore most comments because its rules require arguments to be made on technical grounds (true); but also that
b) The public opinion is not just wrong, it's 'hallucinating' (false).
The paternalistic tone of the article was a little much, too. Allow
Expected (Score:2)
The FCC chair is a shill for Comcast and that ilk.
Re:Expected (Score:4, Informative)
Much of the failure was in explaining... (Score:4, Insightful)
... what was actually going on here. The republicans are against lots of government regulation. They just don't like it in general.
So if you put things to them in that context they're going to be biased against it.
The failure on our part was to explain properly to them that the situation only exists because government regulation makes it very hard for anyone to compete with the big ISPs. If you made that clear it would change the context of the regulation to them and would sway some of them.
Understand where different people are coming from on these issues or you can't reason with them.
Re:Much of the failure was in explaining... (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are saying that the fix to a lot of bad regulation is to add more regulations on top of it? That's supposed to convince Republicans? Or independents (like me)?
Net neutrality regulation has really wonderful goals and intentions, it always does. But after lobbyists are through with it, net neutrality regulation will just be another vehicle for harming competition and subsidizing special interests.
The problem isn't your failure to explain what net neutrality is supposed to achieve, the problem is that you think like a gambler with a gambling addiction: "just one more regulation, this time we're going to win; this time, it's finally going to do more good than harm". Thanks, but we don't want to partake in your madness.
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Not only that, but existing law and regulation should already solve his concerns anyways.
Consumer protection laws should already cover having an isp slow a connection purposely. You buy a connection that is supposed to be 10meg and if they purposely slow it down for any reason they are intentionally defraudint the consumer by not delivering the services they charged for. And the up to language does not save them because you can never get up to 10megs if they are purposely limiting it to 2 megs.
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You buy a connection that is supposed to be 10meg and if they purposely slow it down for any reason they are intentionally defraudint the consumer by not delivering the services they charged for. And the up to language does not save them because you can never get up to 10megs if they are purposely limiting it to 2 megs.
They can deliver you 10 MB/s even while they throttle the connection between you and Netflix to 2 MB/s or less. This is, in fact, what was done during the "negotiations." Bandwidth is throttled upstream of the client link, so the client, if he tried, could run a "speedtest" in parallel with his crappy, stuttering video, that would show healthy, full-bandwidth connection to other upstream sites. He could, if he tried, see a perfectly fluid Hulu video in one window, next to a crappy, stuttering Netflix vid
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When did strawmen become an accepted rhetorical device? Oh that's right... it didn't.
What I said was that there is a lot of regulation that causes the problem and that the republicans AND democrats could come together to get a mutually desirable result by focusing on increasing competition in the ISP market rather then simply forbidding ISPs from doing what is in their interest.
If every neighborhood had an option of six or so IPs with independent cable then it would be almost impossible for any of them to p
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... what was actually going on here. The republicans are against lots of government regulation. They just don't like it in general.
Definitely true in corporate and financial interests. Not as true for women, minorities, and immigrants.
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Hmmm... As to women, you're talking about the religious evangelicals. That faction is their own distinct kettle of fish. They almost exclusively care about the religious stuff and pretty much nothing else.
They used to be southern democrats. ;-)
As to minorities... Republicans don't do anything hostile against minorities. Cite something they did. I dare you. The sort of thing used to justify that republicans are against minorities is that they are for welfare reform. That has nothing to do with minorities. It
Re: Much of the failure was in explaining... (Score:2)
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No... neither one of them is any smarter then the other. The only reason the dems are for this thing is that it expands government power and they're generally in favor of that all things being equal. They rarely see a regulation or tax they don't like. By the same token, the republicans tend to reflexively reject any new regulation or tax. When the two cooperate it is typically with the republicans caving for some reason which tends to give us lots of new regulations and taxes.
My point here was that the rep
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Big infrastructure projects lead themselves to being natural monopolies, with or without government interference. So removing government regulation unfortunately does not solve the problem.
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For instance, who put the current head of the FCC [wikipedia.org] in place, and where and for whom did he work prior? To summarize:
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I know. They're both a little like wind up toy soldiers. They just march in whatever direction they're going... even if that is directly into a wall... and then they continue to do so long after they've hit that wall.
What I'm saying is that if you change the nature of the question for them they might change their opinion.
If the question is more regulation on a vital US industry... they might say no more. If you say increase market competition by removing government induced barriers to new start ups and smal
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Then just get it over with and start shooting people. I have no patience for closed minded bigots and zealots that are unable to grasp that to get anywhere we need to come to common cause. You cannot win totally and neither can they. Simply trying to get everything your way over the opposition's objections gets you what we have now. Enjoying it?
We get deadlock until the two sides are willing to come together and draft policy that they can both live with.
YOU WILL NOT get everything you want or everything you
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And democrats are against regulation whenever it suits their own financial or political gain as well. What is your point?
Are you saying the parties are prone to corruption and hypocrisy? I'm shocked.
The "public comment" is a charade (Score:5, Insightful)
Rulemaking is more akin to a court proceeding.
No, it's more akin to negotiating a price over some martinis and sending the courier to the bank to make a deposit. The "court proceeding" is also a charade. It doesn't have to be this way, but nobody gives a shit, and will reelect the same scum who are doing this, next month, and again in two years. Let's not talk about the government any more. Let's discuss why people want it like this. The government is just a reflection of it.
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This post got me thinking about those elected to represent me and my community.
Senator Dianne Feinstein opposes net neutrality
Senator Barbara Boxer supports net neutrality
Representative Lois Capps supports net neutrality
How many here even know about how their elected officials stand on net neutrality? Honestly I doubt most people think this is a pressing issue when they vote(/.ers being the exception).
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[...] and will reelect the same scum who are doing this, next month, and again in two years.
Whoa whoa whoa. Since when were any of the people involved in the decision making process currently being discussed elected? Last I checked, they were all appointees, and the only way we can hold them accountable in the least is by letting the President who appointed them and the Congress who legislates them know that if those appointees screw up, it will be those elected officials who will have their heads rolling. Not that it ever actually happens that way, of course.
Re: The "public comment" is a charade (Score:2)
the real reason (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason is we don't live in a republic anymore but a plutocary. Even a fair courtcase would find in favor of net Neutrality
Hrmm, Really . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
US Reality (Score:2)
Let's take a realistic approach to what will happen: Who can provide the FCC the most economic encouragement to go their way? That's the way they will good.
"It'll be good for the economy," they'll say. The fact they have a new summer retreat on Martha's Vineyard will have nothing to do with it. "Don't worry, we won't let the gap between 'normal' speed and 'high-speed' be very big," they'll tell us. While many people are still waiting to get the minimum of 4 Mbps that qualifies as 'broadband.' by their
popular democracy (Score:2)
Contrary to what people think, opinions expressed in comments submitted to the FCC are not the same as democratic majorities. Neither, for that matter, are preferences expressed in polls.
What don't they understand about (Score:3)
"government of the people, by the people, for the people". our system seems to have lost track of the basic principles. just as the courts ignore portions of the constitution, such as "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", or "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".
Re: What don't they understand about (Score:2)
then fund the study (Score:3)
Evidence has a loose definition, of course, and a responsible regulator will do their homework to tell the difference between shoddy evidence and strong evidence. But when evidence is submitted that explains how a policy decision plausibly leads to [xyz] effects, that wins real points.
What is sure is that on the other side, even millions of people getting together won't produce hard evidence that a court/rule-making body can rely on. In the end, even millions people's opinions will only amount to a few soft statistics.
Filling this gap on the "people's side" is somewhat the role of academia/thinktanks/non-profits to fill, but in a fast moving industry they are unlikely to move faster than a corporation that wants to back something.
I have two things to say about this. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Thank God they don't pay attention to most public comments. Can you imagine the magnitude of the disaster that would result from a California style of mob-rule in Washington? We definitely DON'T need THAT.
2) They pay far too much attention to their corporate sponsors instead of doing what they are paid to do- use their brains and think about how to give us the best possible services. It's no surprise that the Republicans have a major hand in screwing us all, after all, their platform includes denial of science.
The end result (Score:2)
I wonder, why the request for submissions? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why did they ask for submissions on the subject? Wouldn't an online poll have been sufficient to ignore?
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Two theories:
1) They honestly didn't think the American public would pay attention and comment like this. They thought they'd get 200 or so comments which they could safely ignore.
2) They will come up with a "compromise" solution that they can point to as having "listened" to the American people. This compromise will, in fact, be a total capitulation to what the ISPs want dressed up with some totally ineffective "now don't abuse it you scamps" finger wagging.
Ownership is 90% of the battle (Score:4, Insightful)
Network Neutrality is a great concept for the consumer, but not for the provider. So given that there are millions of comments broadly in favour of NN in the "Public Consultation" phase and a small group of lobbyists/back-room power brokers against NN, we get to see where the power lies - with the public who vote into power the politicians who set direction for the FCC, or the corporate interests behind the scenes.
The biggest part of the problem, though, is that there is no real choice in the domestic internet provider markets in the US. There is certainly the illusion of choice, but in each market, the vast majority of consumers have access to a single incumbent backbone provider who also provide "last mile" connectivity, or one of a small number of alternatives which are either themselves clients of the backbone provider re-using and reselling that provider's last-mile capability or alternative access methods which offer a service which is either inferior or significantly more expensive.
The traditional capitalist approach to this is for a smaller, hungrier, competitor to the incumbent to set up shop and offer a better service for lower cost, thus enticing customers away from the incumbent and providing the new competitor with the revenue to expand services. In this scenario, centrally enforced Network Neutrality is not required - if one provider chooses to prioritize traffic in a way that its' customers do not like, they can leave in favour of the alternative. However, the massive initial infrastructure costs associated with setting up as a backbone ISP with last-mile connectivity, so that the new competitor is not dependent on the existing incumbent breaks the model, and you need high-value independent actors, such as Google, going in and setting up their own networks, because they can absorb the huge initial capital outlay.
The alternative to having several "backbone plus last-mile" providers with broad or total coverage in each region (which would be eye-wateringly expensive) would be for the backbone elements to be treated as utilities/managed by independent Not For Profit entities, and for all ISPs to be resellers of bandwidth competing on services and price.
Once you have genuine competition, Net Neutrality becomes something that individual providers (resellers) can offer to their customers or not (although verifying that a provider actually IS offering Net Neutrality would probably be beyond Joe Public and most of them would not know or care, anyway). A customer can choose to sign up to a service provider who guarantees low latency for online gaming, or one with high video streaming bandwidth, or the odd one who offer a life-size Lara Croft blowup doll, if they choose to. Because the free market with a low barrier to entry encourages providers to provide the services that the customer wants and is willing to pay for.
Evidence? (Score:2)
3 million people having a coherent opinion on the subject is as systematic, reliable evidence as any other survey of public opinion. That the bulk of those 3 million are likely saying that network neutrality is a really good idea should be considered a fairly reliable data point. I'm not sure it would be a good idea for the FCC to just brush it off.
sure. (Score:2)
I know, we should do one of those White House petitions online, I'm sure that will make a difference?
'systematically collated' my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC got three million responses, or almost one percent of the entire US population. And FCC staffers deride the public comment process as filled with 'hilarious hallucinations.' Because, according to this staffer, those comments submitted by 'legal and economic experts' prepared under the employ of institutions with a vested interest "collated information in a more systematic way" and "from a much broader population of consumers."
Think about this. Actual citizen voices don't matter because private interests have the money to hire people and staff time to organize large submissions with systematically collated information about the population of Net product consumers. Do you see how citizenship to impact public policy has been stripped from the process, leaving the public as nothing more than consumers of product in a rigged market?
They think we don't understand. That we're simply unqualified to understand the nuance of policy. But that's clearly not the case. As highly qualified Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org], including Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig [technologyreview.com] have been stumping for Net Neutrality for the better part of a decade. These people are not policy stupid. They've submitted comments with 'systematically collated information' by nationally and internationally recognized experts.
These FCC staffers quoted would have us believe the public is misinformed and uneducated. That is the spin they want to present to the press.
It's offensive. Regardless of what position you take on the matter.
Antitrust is not an emotional response (Score:2)
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Changes require systematic, reliable kickbacks.
He should have worded it that way. It's worse PR material but more honest.
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Umm... that's the first time I heard Europe is in an alternate universe.
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You got an amazing amount of Democratic party talking points in that post, almost enough to make someone ignore how little any of them have any meaning to the subject at hand. Close, though.
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That means about 1% of the public thought it was worth commenting on. That's not enough to make a lot of waves unless that 1% is planning to make a lot of campaign donations or something.
Or if they are fucking nutters. This is larger than the percentage of Muslims in the USA [wikipedia.org] but look at all the concessions they get [blogspot.co.uk].
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