FCC Chairman Calls Net Neutrality a 'Mistake' (theverge.com) 319
FCC chairman Ajit Pai said today that net neutrality was "a mistake" and that the commission is now "on track" to return to a much lighter style of regulation. The Verge adds: "Our new approach injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market," Pai said during a speech at Mobile World Congress this afternoon. "And uncertainty is the enemy of growth." Pai has long been opposed to net neutrality and voted against the proposal when it came up in 2015. While he hasn't specifically stated that he plans to reverse the order now that he's chairman, today's speech suggests pretty clearly that he's aiming to. [...] Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules and that the new ones have hurt investment.
FIX SLASHDOT ALREADY (Score:5, Informative)
Godamn ads covering the content!
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What ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been flagging every as I could as "covering content".
You see ads? I have them all blocked and never see any. No I don't give a shit about slashdot's bad business model. I'd happily pay a subscription but they can't be bothered to give me the option. So fuck 'em and the ad networks they rode in on.
Re:What ads? (Score:5, Funny)
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I've been flagging every as I could as "covering content".
You see ads? I have them all blocked and never see any. No I don't give a shit about slashdot's bad business model. I'd happily pay a subscription but they can't be bothered to give me the option. So fuck 'em and the ad networks they rode in on.
I block them with Noscript on my desktop. But I spend most of my time on my work-provided laptop which means no ad blockers.
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Yes, selfish pricks like you are indeed the reason the ad landscape has become so hostile. Excellent point.
I do not understand. It does not matter if I do not see ads or if I just ignore them, there will be the same zero benefit for the sellers/advertisers, so there is no rational reason for them to be against ad blockers.
If I want to buy something, I will search for it.
My Fix (Score:2)
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or maybe start using ablock or ublock?
Bingo. ublock blocks the extremely annoying, content-covering, page-jump-inducing add at the top of the page, and an average of 13 other adds per page.
Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong Definition of Neutrality (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it would be better if they simply stated that:
1. If you advertise X speed, then the users gets X speed, every time, all the time.
2. Get rid of this, "Up To" bullshit. no one is interested in some speed you might get once in a while.
3. No traffic is EVER restricted for ANY reason.
4. If you can't support your sales pitch, then either build out to where you can or change your pitch.
Re:Wrong Definition of Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with point 3. There are filtering measures required to combat spam, botnets, DDOS attacks, etc.
You want to move those costs as close to the source as possible to put pressure on them to eliminate the problem. A totally unfiltered Internet just means the consumer pays for a choked pipe they can't actually use.
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Oh God I just had a vision of the ISP's acting like the post office and offering bulk discounts for junk mail. Imagine if the spammers paid ISP's to punch through spam filters.
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I'd actually be OK with that - so long as customers don't have to pay.
You could still filter at the customer end (you'd be foolish to trust your ISP anyway), and you'd legislate it so the ISP can't count identifiable spam traffic as part of the customer's network utilization. They'd have to provide extra bandwidth to handle it, and couldn't charge for bit transfer.
I doubt any spammers would pay for that service, because they thrive on parasitic abuse of the network to avoid the already minimal costs for se
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because partially in the present, and totally in the future, TV is just one of many services on the Internet.
I haven't used regular TV for 15 years, except when I'm in a hotel room that has one.
Re:Wrong Definition of Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
You just broke the net.
Any net neutrality law that make QoS illegal breaks the net. Any law that doesn't, has to micromanage what QoS is. Which means that the trustworthy folks in DC are in charge of yet another thing.
Your ISP can't control how fast the server you connect to is. How are they supposed to guarantee end to end speed?
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They're just not supposed to limit that speed in a manner that is discriminatory to one packet source over another.
If your content provider can't provide fast serving of content, at source or CDN, you'll switch to a better content provider.
Point is, it should be you, the end-user's choice, made in a fair competing market of content sources, not in a market distorted by the presence of highwaymen robbers on some of the data highways.
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So, you're in favor of the government specifying exactly what is and isn't QoS? Can you say 'regulatory capture'? What happens when a video streaming site claims to be a gaming or VOIP site to get higher packet priority? What if it actually makes efforts to do both and hide the distinction?
I'm in favor of increased competition in ISPs. Like all the wireless services recently bringing back 'unlimited' data plans.
It's not simple. Even if their was a simple rule that could be made, I have faith in governm
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Ok, you say you're in favor of ISP competition. Great. So am I.
But since the number of last-mile lines into everyone's house/apartment is usually limited to one or two (the cable company and the phone company), that implies that to get that competition, we would need a strong law that forces those few and thereby almost monopolistic last mile providers to open their data networks to fair-priced wholesale rental by competing ISPs.
If you're in favor of that, then maybe we can agree that further regulations mi
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1. If you advertise X speed, then the users gets X speed, every time, all the time.
It you download from a third party server who's owner has it throttled to 1Mb/s per connection you're never going to get anything but 1Mb/s out of it. You might have a 100Mb/s ISP connection but it doesn't make any difference if the server is implementing throttling. Many people do not understand this and complain to their ISPs about slow download speeds.
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Most people that complain, Dont actually understand how the Internet really works. And who manages what.
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Most people that use commas, Dont know how to fucking punctuate for shit.
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It you download from a third party server who's owner has it throttled to 1Mb/s per connection you're never going to get anything but 1Mb/s out of it. You might have a 100Mb/s ISP connection but it doesn't make any difference if the server is implementing throttling. Many people do not understand this and complain to their ISPs about slow download speeds.
You sir are correct, BUT I should be able to access third-party speed check sites AKA Speedtest.net and see a speed that is within 10% of my advertised rat
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There may be many transit providers between you and that third party speed test site. Any one of those transit provider could be the reason why you can't get 10Mb/s. I'm not defending the last mile ISPs. I agree that many of them are underprovisioning their interconnects. I am just pointing out that it is difficult for a normal consumer to accurately identify where the problem is.
I dropped FIOS a couple of years ago when Verizon was fighting with Netflix and Level3. Verizon refused to provision more ports
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As others have stated, QoS is fine for ISPs to do. If you wanted to slow down e-mails slightly so that video streams went faster, that would be perfectly fine. Nobody's going to notice their e-mails arriving 3 seconds late, but people would notice their videos buffering for an extra three seconds. The problem is when ISPs make "video from Netflix" a low priority so that their own video streams can go faster. A better version of #3 would state:
3. No customer requested traffic is EVER restricted based on sou
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Everyone is confusing providing data with delivering data.
If I connect to a site with crappy network cards or they paid for slower connections, that'd not the provider's fault. Everyone knows that.
If I'm at site A and I'm getting X speed and then I switch to site B and get X+100 (which matches the advertised speed), then it's all good and I know that Site A sucks.
I see this all the the time with YouTube telling me that interrupted videos is the network's fault while Pornhub and screaming along just fine. Yo
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Except for point four, your requests are impossible. When the net is busy, it's busy. We all get filtered through bottlenecks at some point. What would be better is if they had to advertise average speeds, and include peak and non-peak hours, so that consumers would get a much fairer assessment of what they're buying into.
For me the issue of net-neutrality is that content being pulled by your customers should not be restricted, for any reason. Netflix is NOT Comcast's customer, I am - and if I choose to
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There is no point in arguing with people that want everything handed to them. I view it like this. To get 100% garuntee all times. You would have to spend BUSINESS CLASS INTERNET money. My father has Business class Internet. Thru cox, He pays the same for 20/5 as a residential customer that wants the 150/50 package. But his bandwidth is GARUNTEED. If they would shut up and put their money where their mouth is. They could have everything they are complaining they dont have. But when the price of Internet sky
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I should be able to get that speed most of the time from a Google server that is across the country.
Your ISP cannot guarantee, and should not be expected to do so, data speeds to any service that is not on the network controlled by that ISP. You "should be able to" is an admission that sometimes you won't, and that would break any promised fixed data rate.
Unfortunatelly, the advertised speed seems to be only to the IPS' own speed test servers which the ISP has tweeked to maximize internal ISP traffic.
Yes, which is logical. The ISP controls only their own network. Thus, speed tests can only show ISP data rates when run on the ISP network exclusively. You sound like you don't want the ISP to tweek internal data speeds on its own network.
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The job of the government shouldn't be to make sure companies can make as much money as they possibly can but to protect the citizens.
You know that's not the GOP stance, right? They feel that $ helps people and companies making $$$, ends up being $ for people, so helps them. Maybe not all of them...
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These people still literally believe the trickle down theory works perfectly.
Very delusional.
Re:Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:4, Insightful)
That's their official policy only because saying "We believe in giving more money to the rich because we don't care about poor slobs - only people who make over a million a year" wouldn't get them votes. So they say "we're giving this billionaire $1 million, he'll definitely use it to hire people and not spend it on a third yacht like he used the last $2 million. Eventually, that million will go into your pockets. Aren't we generous? Vote Me!" The sad thing is that, no matter how many times "trickle down" is disproved, people keep flocking back to it and thinking it'll work perfectly this time. All they need are even LESS checks on the wealthy so that they'll deign to use some of their immense wealth to people who are struggling to make ends meet.
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I'm not someone who believes the government solves all problems, but it does have its place. In many situations, removing the government doesn't make people work harder, but just makes big companies and the wealthy take advantage of people more. Less regulations can lead to more unsafe products, dirtier air/water (as they dump their waste where ever they feel like it), or worse employee benefits/pay/working conditions.
In the case of Network Neutrality, I currently have only one option for wired, high speed
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Re: Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:3)
He is simply ensuring that his past and future bosses are happy.
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And its made harder for many companies to make money once net neutrality gets removed. It essentially brings ISPs into the position to extort large sums of money from the service providers, and obviously on their own discretion. So it harms all companies which provide a service. Net neutrality also drives innovation by giving new and young service providers a more equal playing field with more established ones. Google can just say "well, then search, youtube and drive will be utterly slow", and can use this
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Is Net Neutrality a good substitute for competition, or is it more of a consolation prize? Why should we be satisfied with that?
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And the rulings, as enacted, did no such thing and did NOT protect the citizenry.
AT&T and Verizon still gave preferences to their content through their ISP connections
Except they did protect the citizenry, and if you had been paying attention, you'd have seen that there were inquiries regarding such illegal actions on AT&T's and Verizon's part. Unfortunately, the processes moved too slow for anything to come of it before the changing of the guard.
and Google, Facebook and Twitter all block and censor content and access to webpages at their hearts desire - customers be damned.
When did Google, Facebook, and Twitter become ISPs?
Re:Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, so by your logic we need stronger net neutrality legislation, that also prohibits zero-rating, not weaker/non-existent net neutrality legislation as is being implemented by Trump's new FCC leadership.
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NN was supposed to preven the bullshit that Verizon did to Netflix. Slowing down content based on point of origin/destination. If the worst we see is partnered content being free, we'll have gotten off lucky.
Re:Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:5, Insightful)
And the rulings, as enacted, did no such thing and did NOT protect the citizenry.
AT&T and Verizon still gave preferences to their content through their ISP connections and Google, Facebook and Twitter all block and censor content and access to webpages at their hearts desire - customers be damned.
A monopoly (or duopoly, triopoly) ISP should not be able to give preference to any of "their" content. They shouldn't control both the pipes and the content.
If you don't like Google's "censorship", then you're free to use Bing or another search engine. But if, for example, AT&T has a deal with Google, they may force you to use Google even though you'd rather use someone else -- and sometimes AT&T is your only option for ISP service due to the huge barriers to entry to becoming an ISP.
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A monopoly (or duopoly, triopoly) ISP should not be able to give preference to any of "their" content. They shouldn't control both the pipes and the content.
And on second thought maybe the FCC shouldn't have been in the business of trying to prevent illegal anticompetitive business practices through technical regulations. If only we had an agency of government that was supposed to work to prevent this sort of collusion in restraint of trade... and false advertising of a service that isn't being provided... Oh wait the FTC.
Or the various municipalities should be ensuring that "franchise" license agreements aren't screwing over their customers. All it would t
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Or the various municipalities should be ensuring that "franchise" license agreements aren't screwing over their customers. All it would take is some large enough subset of municipalities to include net neutrality clauses to ensure that customers aren't getting defrauded.
Won't work, the ISPs will then lobby the state governments to make net neutrality clauses illegal. Just like they have lobbied state governments to make municipal ISPs illegal.
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This exactly. ISPs are a Monopoly or Duopoly utility. It is high time that they were treated as such. If they don't like it, tough cookies. Any time they can jack up rates 30% in 5 years, introduce data caps, throttle 3rd party content and not lose any subscriber base, you know it is a monopoly.
Re:How were consumers not dong fine??? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I can:
https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/186576-verizon-caught-throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more-bandwidth
I'm sure there is more.
Re:How were consumers not dong fine??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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For many years, whenever I wanted to watch netflix during peak time, the connection was laggy and low-quality. If I wanted to watch pay-per-view from my ISP (also a video provider, so a competitor to netflix) I always got perfect quality.
This was because my ISP purposely kept their bandwidth to netflix low. The other ISP in my area did the same thing.
So... there is a single example. You can never again say that you have never heard a single example.
I also recall a few cases of ISPs (who also sold telepho
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This was because my ISP purposely kept their bandwidth to netflix low. The other ISP in my area did the same thing.
Peering and network egress. They want predictable charges (and profit!) and so push their own service in liew of those outsiders that they have to pay to access.
It's not just NetFlix, it's access to the entire internet. NetFlix and YouTube are just a (large bandwidth) part of it. I don't see why people don't mention the larger picture.
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You've got Mr. Comcast's house and Miss AT&Ts house, next door to each other, but completely separate. Both are completely wired and have lots and lots of roo
Re:Companies doing fine; not comsumers (Score:5, Insightful)
"Net Neutrality" became a thing as a result of Netflix trying (and failing) to bully Comcast into peering agreements by appealing to the public.
Yeah, I hate when huge companies bully helpless startups like Comcast.
A more accurate description: Comcast is being paid by you and me to deliver the internet, including netflix. But comcast sells movies, so netflix is a competitor. So they decided to limit the traffic from netflix to their customers, so that netflix movie quality would be terribly but comcast movie quality would be good.
Netflix offers free caches to solve this problem, and free peering to solve this problem, but comcast doesn't want to solve this problem, because to them it is a feature.
In a free market we could move to another ISP. In my case, I could also use Verizon... who is doing the same crap as comcast. ISPs are a natural monopoly, based on the economics and physics of running cables.
With net neutrality, all companies can compete based on quality. Without net neutrality, vertically-integrated ISPs have an major advantage. Now, you may like government picking winners and losers, but I'm a fan of market competition, so I choose net neutrality.
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umm wasnt this tried in the 90s and failed miserably?
I don't know what was tried in the 90's, but here in Europe we have mandated competition on the local loop, and it works. I can choose between more than a dozen ISPs. My current ISP allows me to run servers (ssh/mail/http/games/...), I have a fixed IPv4 address, a custom host name, IPv6 support, 100/33 Mbps uncapped bandwidth. Just tested my speed on speedtest.net, and I got 97/30 Mbps.
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umm wasnt this tried in the 90s and failed miserably?
Loop unbundling didn't fail at all. It was politically manoeuvred out of existence. The Baby Bells offered access to their loops to competitors in exchange for being permitted entry to the long distance telephone market. Once the agreement was signed, their lobbyists went to work progressively watering down the unbundling provision to the point where it could no longer provide meaningful competition.
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Tried in the 90s and was working until the government suddenly allowed the giant mergers of the large ISPs that owned the local loop and then stopped mandating that the smaller ISPs be allowed non-discriminatory access to the last mile.
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Hold your tongue pleb, lest I remove it!
(whips pleb)
"Release the hounds anyway! It pleases me to see them at work."
#MAGA (Score:2, Flamebait)
Clearly we're going to Make America Great Again by getting rid of net neutrality.
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Clearly we're going to Make America Great Again by getting rid of net neutrality.
Clearly. Since Trump took office and Pai took the FCC my cellphone bill has gone down 40$ a month and I now have unlimited data vs the 2GB I had before. People keep talking about this being bad but all the evidence is pointing the other way.
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The cellphone market is different.
Most people have either one or two ISPs offering service to their residence. That's insufficient for competition. How many cellphone companies are offering service to you?
No Mention of Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules..."
This tells you everything you need to know about Pai's priorities. When the customers don't even merit a mention in a position statement, you know the FCC has been entirely co-opted to a corporate agenda.
The lobbyists have won. Kindly tell me where the nearest lobbyist pocket is so that I can fill it with cash, cocaine and hookers. Who will think of the poor, poor lobbyists?!
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Technically, he is right. The ISP's WERE doing fine under the old rules. The "old rules" were that Network Neutrality was assumed. The problem came up when the ISP's themselves started talking about doing away with what were essentially long-standing "Net Neutrality" policies in the hunt for more money. For example, they claimed that Netflix was using their bandwidth for free (Netflix paid for their own bandwidth) and said they would slow down Netflix's streams unless Netflix paid them money. Of course, the
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>This tells you everything you need to know about Pai's priorities
Well, his remarks were made at trade show of mobile industry, so of course they were going to be more business centric than consumer oriented. duh.
But here's a few comments from his speech that the Verge didn't bother to share.
First, during the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, American policymakers forged a
historic consensus across party lines that the Internet should be free from heavy-handed
regulation. Instead of government telling broadband operators where to invest, how much to
invest, or how to run their networks, we let market forces guide these decisions. Regulators made
a conscious choice not to apply to the Internet the outdated rules crafted in the 1930s for a
telephone monopoly. After all, complex rules designed to regulate a monopoly will inevitably
push the market toward a monopoly. Instead, our policy was a modern one that gave the private
sector the flexibility it needed to innovate.
Today, there are nearly 250 million smartphones
in the United States alone that consumers use for everything from uploading live-stream videos to
playing games—and even placing the occasional phone call. In all seriousness, though, we
would not have seen such innovation if, in the 1990s, the government had treated broadband like
a railroad or water utility.
However, two years ago, the United States deviated from our successful, light-touch
approach. The FCC decided to apply last-century, utility-style regulation to today’s broadband
networks. Rules developed to tame a 1930s monopoly were imported into the 21st century to
regulate the Internet. This reversal wasn’t necessary to solve any problem; we were not living in
a digital dystopia. The policies of the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, and the
first term of the Obama Administration had produced both a free and open Internet and strong
incentives for private investment in broadband infrastructure.
Two years later, it has become evident that the FCC made a mistake. Our new approach
injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market. And uncertainty is the enemy of
growth. After the FCC embraced utility-style regulation, the United States experienced the first-ever decline in broadband investment outside of a recession. In fact, broadband investment remains lower today than it was when the FCC changed course in 2015. And we have seen much concern about whether the FCC would permit or ban service plans.
Of course, an article honestly addressing those points would have been preferable to the sorry Verge cherry-picking text and then proceeding to simply state the opposite without citation or evidence of data contradic
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Pai is a former Verizon lawyer and industry lapdog. He is doing his master's bidding waiting to cash in on the Washington revolving door like his predecessor Michael Powell, former Republican FCC chair and now the chief lobbyist of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Instead of empowering subscribers to manage their own Quality of Service (QoS) preferences Pai wants his industry buddies to have unfettered access to snoop on Internet traffic and reverse the IP convergence trend that has c
Well this is ass backards (Score:2)
It's not hard to figure out. If your traffic gets prioritized higher over others on existing infrastructure, that's less infrastructure you have to invest in to run your business. Net neutrality actually makes those who use more bandwidth have to spend more to get what they want over those who sip at the pool of bits and bytes. Pai clearly wants to kick the plebes out of the pool, build a wall around it, and allow his capitalist buddies free reign while the rest of the crowd lines up at the gate.
The inte
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Of course, most businesses use a service for hosing. S3, godaddy, whatever. So then instead of paying for internet directly, they pay a provider, and then THAT company is paying for both bandwidth and upload.... No one is getting anything for free.
Re: Well this is ass backards (Score:2)
This one must get paid by the post
Re: Well this is ass backards (Score:2)
They were indeed doing just fine. (Score:2)
Well this is all fine and dandy (Score:2)
Sounds great. If there's one guy you know you can trust, it's the one that gets paid for lying and selling you out to corporate interests.
I feel how America is getting greater and greater every day - in my anus.
Thanks Trump Supporters (Score:2, Insightful)
We're being dragged back to the "good old days" of robber barons and into a bold new era of corrupt foreign influence thanks to an alliance of racists, dominionists, terrified old people, nihilistic young people, and those who are so bitter and ignorant
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And you'd fight for the little man by electing Hillary as president? Almost all GDP growth since the 1970s have gone to the richest, average people feel they're getting buttraped by the establishment. And they could either bite and claw the rapist or lube up and take it with as little pain as possible. Maybe it's ultimately stupid, futile and will make everything worse but they put Trump in office because the whole establishment told them it was Hillary's turn. It'll be an interesting four years but maybe a
There can be only one 'implementation' (Score:2)
So far as the so-called 'investment' by ISPs is concerned, they're not 'investing', they're doing what they always have done: grossly 'overbooking' their network capacity, spin-doctoring advertised throughput speeds, and price-gouging everyone in the process, all in the
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QoS is a necessary thing, you moron. Not all packets are the same.
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So that somehow sets precedent making it okay for, say, Comcast to delay or throttle Netflix packets, or CBS streaming video packets, because they're a competitor?
Congestion at a border gateway obeys the law of net neutrality, for it is source agnostic.
Or to charge an extra fee to consumers so that trottling or delay doesn't happen?
Suppose I buy a 1Mbps down service from my ISP. Should I object to having to paying "an extra fee" (paying for 10Mbps) so that my streaming Netflix never buffers? The idea of paying more for a better Internet connection is not a violation of net neutrality, but that sure sounds like what you're saying.
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Move the goalposts. QoS makes it necessary to prioritize some types of packets over others. Your proposal breaks the net.
Allowing QoS under network neutrality, requires the government to micromanage exactly what is and isn't QoS. Can you say 'regulatory capture'? It's inevitable and bad.
You realize that the real Comcast vs Netflix battle was about paying for colo space in Comcast's racks. Everybody involved knew that a hog like a big streaming service needs servers at big ISPs. Netflix wanted the space
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It's not that no packet should be higher priority than another packet, but that no two packets of the same type are different priority. So a Comcast.com video would get the same QoS as a Netflix video over Comcast's lines even if a GMail packet is slowed down to let both of those video streaming packets go faster.
The only exemption would be for network threats like spam or DDOS - and even then, you need to be careful that Comcast doesn't deem Netflix a "network threat" because people aren't paying more for
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Comcasts servers sit on comcast's network. Netflix's servers will be slower for Comcast customers unless they put a server in Comcast's data center. That server spot should _not_ be free to Netflix.
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And just to be clear, I don't feel that "this data doesn't count against your service limits" isn't prioritizing;
One too many negatives. I don't feel it IS.
And I'm fairly sure that (Score:5, Insightful)
Net Neutrality calls Ajit Pai "a mistake". I'm with Mr. Neutrality on this one!
uncertainty is the enemy of growth
Unchecked growth is a cancer - it needs a few more enemies. Besides, uncertainty favours innovation.
Pai’s general philosophy is that the commission shouldn’t involve itself with basically anything unless there’s a huge market failure
Umm... shouldn't you be trying to prevent "a huge market failure" Mr. Pai, rather than getting involved after the fact? Also, if you ask your constituents, (you know, the people whose interests you're supposed to protect - not to be confused with the corporations from whom you're currying favour), I'm pretty sure they'll tell you that the market is already in a huge state of failure.
Ajit Pai - just another self-serving disaster on the American political scene.
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No, you see "huge market failure" is now defined as "companies aren't making as much money as they could." If they kill Net Neutrality and other FCC rules, ISPs can spike their prices, sell our information, make even more profits, and the market will succeed! (He doesn't care about what happens to us so long as we're forking over those monthly ISP payments.)
What's he's mistaken about (Score:2)
What's he's mistaken about is that the Internet fundamentally operates on the principle of network neutrality. The net has been more or less neutral since it's inception. To call NN a mistake just shows that he's conflating NN and regulations trying to keep NN in place.
Now, there's plenty of ways to screw up regulation. But we don't want the handful of consolidated ISPs to be allowed to tear down the neutral networks as they've been trying to do. I'd fully support any alternative choices for an ISP th
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Company uncertainty may not be bad for consumers (Score:2)
.
Is it the responsibility of the FCC to maximize the profits of ISPs?
I don't believe one word (Score:3)
out of the mouths of trash appointed by our faux president.
ISPs should not be content providers & vice-ve (Score:2)
An entity can sell bandwidth or content, not both.
Any QoS or other throttling must be done by class of data (e.g., email, HTTP, RTP streaming) rather than by content provider favoritism. So for example Google vs Bing is a content issue, and an ISP should not be able to favor one search provider over another, but could favor streaming video over HTTP generally.
Bandwidth and data caps can apply as necessary, but need to be honestly metered and reported to customers (so as to allow, e.g., a parent to figure ou
Moot (Score:2)
It's really moot anyway, what little net neutrality rules we had were barely being enforced, rather obviously.
Prepare yourselves for the tiered internet!
Since the Government basically wants to disengage from the issue, guess we as consumers will have to vote with our wallets. Let's hope sanity prevails, against all odds.
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I'm not clicking your link, but you're correct.
When it was first talked about net neutrality was a good thing. It was quickly shot down and resurrected as a piece of shit that did anything but protect the neutrality of the internet.
Re:Good way to kill the golden goose! (Score:5, Insightful)
Charging content providers for bandwidth in addition to end users is the opposite of the right idea.
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Yes... but now anybody with a piece of hardware in the middle can set up a toll booth. It's the opposite of a free and open internet.
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DHCP killed that one.
If I could have my own permanent IP address, that would be a great idea.
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You can have a fixed IP, but it isn't free.
Dynamic DNS can make it all work anyhow.
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Why is it every gloom&doom prediction I see about net neutrality is WHERE WE ALREADY ARE...?!
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No we aren't. I run a dozen web sites for myself, my family, my home business, my wife's home business. None of those are Facebook pages.
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Do you pay for a domain? Do you pay for hosting? Were those guys you paid money to huge, soul-less corporations, or neighborhood ma&pa domain registrar and hosting shoppes?
How the fuck do you run a website when you can't THINK?!
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Buy domain name: $10-15 a year (depending on which registrar you use)
Get a Managed VPS server: $40 a month.*
Set up WordPress: Free**
Use a free WordPress theme: Free
Spend some time setting up the theme: Essentially free.
Now, you might want to hire a web developer (such as myself) to fine tune the site and tweak the design to make it look nicer, but at a base you're talking about spending under $500 a year to host a website without any connection to Amazon, Facebook, or another large organization.
* You could
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Good thing you didn't have to deal with any of those soul-less corporations to have the privilege of a web presence.
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"...but Obama was for it, so I know I'm against it."
Under Obama I lost unlimited data and my cell phone bill tripled in 8 years. Trumps been in office for a month and Pai has had the FCC for a few weeks and my cellphone bill is down 40$ a month and I now have unlimited data again. So yes, Obama was for it and I am against it. Thank you Trump.
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Under Obama I lost unlimited data and my cell phone bill tripled in 8 years.
Do you know what else happened in the last 8 years? iOS and Android were released (Ok, iOS technically was released in 2007, but close enough). About 1.3 billion smartphones were added to the market globally. And speeds increased from about 1Mbps to close to 100Mbps. Do you think maybe it's supply and demand that drove your price up, or do you think it's Net Neutrality and Obama that did it? I'm not a fan of everything Obama did, but Net Neutrality was the right answer for the consumer.