Net Neutrality Vote

Kinda surprised I haven't seen a thread about this so if there is one please disregard this post and link me to the proper thread please

Net neutrality vote coming up. What does this mean? I know what the issue is, just curious if you guys had any thoughts about it.

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Bl8ckr0uter

mickeycoronado wrote: »

Kinda surprised I haven't seen a thread about this so if there is one please disregard this post and link me to the proper thread please

Net neutrality vote coming up. What does this mean? I know what the issue is, just curious if you guys had any thoughts about it.

I saw. Aren't they doing a meeting at 10:30 est?

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that net neutrality will fail because big business wants it too (as does Fox apparently).

mrgreggie

I'm not familiar with what is actually being voted on in detail, but I'm generally for net neutrality. My only fear is censorship and/or excessive government control in the name of neutrality.

Bl8ckr0uter

mrgreggie wrote: »

I'm not familiar with what is actually being voted on in detail, but I'm generally for net neutrality. My only fear is censorship and/or excessive government control in the name of neutrality.

Care to elaborate?

veritas_libertas

mrgreggie wrote: »

I'm not familiar with what is actually being voted on in detail, but I'm generally for net neutrality. My only fear is censorship and/or excessive government control in the name of neutrality.

This is my fear as well. I would prefer the Internet just be left as it is.

ehnde

I don't follow this kind of stuff because it's usually a waste of time and a source of stress. But I can say that if we (the public) are treated unfairly by big business and government, we will circumvent whatever is done. This is especially true with the internet.

mrgreggie

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Care to elaborate?

Well essentially I believe in the promise of net neutrality. I don't believe Comcast/Xfinity should be able to promise bandwidth, and then complain to Netflix that everybody is streaming movies and try to charge them exuberant fees or face extreme throttling and such. I don't believe their should be a "fast lane" for the big corporate sites while a mom an pop site gets overlooked because the site takes forever to load.

FCC looks into Level 3, Comcast content dispute | ITworld

By the same token, government interest in controlling the internet has picked up significantly. Whether it's the Wikilieaks stuff (lets not get into that), content filtering, or IMO downright scary stuff like what homeland security wants.

House bill would give DHS authority over private sector networks - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

All internet **** will be blocked to protect children, under UK government plan | News.com.au

You can argue it either way, but overall I think Internet access has become ubiquitous to the point of access being comparable to electricity or running water. In fact, some countries have passed laws mandating that access be available (last link I swear, LOL). I want net neutrality, we just need to keep a very watchful eye on exactly how it is regulated.

Finland makes broadband access a legal right | Technology | guardian.co.uk

RobertKaucher

mrgreggie wrote: »

All internet **** will be blocked to protect children, under UK government plan | News.com.au

The irony of this being blocked by the forum makes my day... It's been a slow day.

tpatt100

I am kind of in the middle. I understand issues with providers providing reliable and consistent speeds. I also remember reading "somewhere" that torrent traffic makes up a large portion of current usage. I guess I can see the point in prioritizing traffic but I could see the abuse of this power and providers selling "premium" packages to access content that uses more traffic.

apena7

tpatt100 wrote: »

I am kind of in the middle. I understand issues with providers providing reliable and consistent speeds. I also remember reading "somewhere" that torrent traffic makes up a large portion of current usage. I guess I can see the point in prioritizing traffic but I could see the abuse of this power and providers selling "premium" packages to access content that uses more traffic.

Right, but I would much rather leave those decisions to the ISPs instead of our government. In my opinion, the ISPs can charge whatever they want for their services since they were the ones who built/maintain the lines that make the Internet possible. If I don't like their prices, I'll go back to NetZero

RobertKaucher

tpatt100 wrote: »

I am kind of in the middle. I understand issues with providers providing reliable and consistent speeds. I also remember reading "somewhere" that torrent traffic makes up a large portion of current usage. I guess I can see the point in prioritizing traffic but I could see the abuse of this power and providers selling "premium" packages to access content that uses more traffic.

The issue I see with this sort of thing is when providers throttle competitors traffic and then bundle in their service with these premium packages.

If cable company X throttles NetFlix, forcing you to buy their premium service which then comes with their own movie service we will be entering into an era like the late 19th early 20th centuries before anti-trust laws.

If we force companies like NetFlix, Hulu, and FaceBook to pay fees to ISPs for bandwidth, we will be doing something akin to the Mafia charging "protection" fees. It's like the government privatizing the roads and the company that buys the roads charging businesses a tax if they want customers to be able to use the roads (they don't pay, their drive ways are blocked) and then turning around and charging the customers a tax for using the roads in the first place.

These issues need to to be dealt with - and the sooner the better.

mrgreggie

tpatt100 wrote: »

I am kind of in the middle. I understand issues with providers providing reliable and consistent speeds. I also remember reading "somewhere" that torrent traffic makes up a large portion of current usage. I guess I can see the point in prioritizing traffic but I could see the abuse of this power and providers selling "premium" packages to access content that uses more traffic.

Just want to point out that torrent traffic doesn't necessarily mean movies and music. Not that you implied this at all, but torrent traffic these days seems to have that connotation. As an example, I downloaded CentOS a few days back, and seeded for a long while after the download was complete. It's hard to fairly prioritize consumer bandwidth, with the exception of VoIP.

Comcast advertises my maximum bandwidth as 10Mbps and a data cap of 250GB. I don't expect that speed consistently, but my traffic shouldn't be delayed because they have determined that disney.com is more important than me downloading an Ubuntu ISO. If you can't provide adequate bandwidth to support your promised services, then it is your infrastructure at fault.

And again tpatt100, that was just a general commentary, not an attack on your opinion.

mas:

mrgreggie

apena7 wrote: »

If I don't like their prices, I'll go back to NetZero

Gosh, the good old days, where Metallica hated me for spending 45 minutes to download one of their tracks on Napster.

tpatt100

mrgreggie wrote: »

Just want to point out that torrent traffic doesn't necessarily mean movies and music. Not that you implied this at all, but torrent traffic these days seems to have that connotation. As an example, I downloaded CentOS a few days back, and seeded for a long while after the download was complete. It's hard to fairly prioritize consumer bandwidth, with the exception of VoIP.

Comcast advertises my maximum bandwidth as 10Mbps and a data cap of 250GB. I don't expect that speed consistently, but my traffic shouldn't be delayed because they have determined that disney.com is more important than me downloading an Ubuntu ISO. If you can't provide adequate bandwidth to support your promised services, then it is your infrastructure at fault.

And again tpatt100, that was just a general commentary, not an attack on your opinion. mas:

But the problem with torrent traffic is you go from one user downloading a big file to one user downloading a big file and sharing bits and pieces for the "swarm". Its easier for the company that distributes material because they offload traffic to everybody else.

mrgreggie

tpatt100 wrote: »

But the problem with torrent traffic is you go from one user downloading a big file to one user downloading a big file and sharing bits and pieces for the "swarm". Its easier for the company that distributes material because they offload traffic to everybody else.

Good point, with torrents there are a lot more connections being formed.

I did run a TOR node under FiOS many months ago (I moved), and they didn't seem to have any problem at all

RobertKaucher

tpatt100 wrote: »

But the problem with torrent traffic is you go from one user downloading a big file to one user downloading a big file and sharing bits and pieces for the "swarm". Its easier for the company that distributes material because they offload traffic to everybody else.

This is a very valid point. It's not just a download by a single user from a single web site, but the counter point is - if they promise they have x amount of capacity (up or down) for me to use, I should be able to use it and the ISP should not decide for me which type of traffic is more important.

hypnotoad

I work at a uni. Are we an ISP? Kind of, because we provide service to people's "houses"/apartments and we have an AS and IP block.

We limit things -- bittorrent, netflix is throttled, youtube, we boost educational stuff. pretty much all universities do this.

Are we breaking the law?

RobertKaucher

hypnotoad wrote: »

I work at a uni. Are we an ISP? Kind of, because we provide service to people's "houses"/apartments and we have an AS and IP block.

We limit things -- bittorrent, netflix is throttled, youtube, we boost educational stuff. pretty much all universities do this.

Are we breaking the law?

Do you offer a service that competes with NetFlix and then throttle their network traffic when it is on your infrastructure?

Imagine if you purchased a Toyota but Ford owned all the gas stations in your area and supplied you with gas that actually made it harder for you to opperate your Toyota (it ran slower and sometimes broke down during rush hour) but did not do the same to cars made by Ford.

There is no way this should be allowed without some public discourse on the topic.

RobertKaucher

Timothy Karr: Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality -- Tuesday Betrayal Assured

apena7

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Timothy Karr: Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality -- Tuesday Betrayal Assured

Huffington Post....

Net Neutrality is the freedom of speech, freedom of choice issue of the 21st century. It's the guarantee of a more open and democratic media system that was baked into the Internet at its founding.

exampasser

If anything you can blame many local governments for establishing companies such as TWC, Comcast, etc. as monopolies which allows them to get away with throttling and such against sites such as Netflix.

Just my two cents.

Bl8ckr0uter

apena7 wrote: »

Huffington Post....

So they believe in making the FCC regulate the internet ? Nice...

eMeS

FCC's Net neutrality vote hit from both sides - Computerworld

Several Republicans in Congress, including Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, said Tuesday they will attempt to overturn the FCC's decision when lawmakers return to Washington early next year.

The story fails to mention that this is because they are squarely in the pockets of big business, and they will do whatever it takes to keep their campaign donors happy. See my picture and the movie it's from...Idiocracy in action.

Internet services need to treated exactly like public utilities. What the corporate side of this wants is the equivalent of the electric company being able to tell you if you buy their services, you're only allowed to use appliances that you purchase from them.

This rant brought to you by large corporations, to whom the Republicans would like to apologize....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDwUC3utq-8

MS

Ahriakin

I think a company should be allowed to decide how it wants to transport data across it's own backbone. However this needs to be open, above board and clearly identifiable to the user. The real issue is that right now it is all done quietly, people assume vendor-X's service is shoddy because it is glitching when in reality the ISP is deliberately disrupting what they consider to be a competing service.
I work for a cell phone company, essentially an ISP in this day and age with a much smaller available Pipe (spectrum) to work with so I know full well the need to maximise valuable data. But it has to be done fairly and honestly.

The thing that sickens me most are folks like Bailey outright lying to the masses, telling them that Net Neutrality will lead to worse services, more censorship etc. That woman needs to be sentenced to a 2400 Baud modem for the rest of her life

RobertKaucher

apena7 wrote: »

Huffington Post....

Yeah, should have followed that with an LOL. My favorite is how they call this Obama's "Mission Accomplished." Regardless of your political stance that should obviously be more than hyperbolic.

eMeS

Ahriakin wrote: »

The thing that sickens me most are folks like Bailey outright lying to the masses, telling them that Net Neutrality will lead to worse services, more censorship etc. That woman needs to be sentenced to a 2400 Baud modem for the rest of her life

She's worthless. I recently requested that she add a "Senate Republican Behavior" choice to her contact me form.

MS

eMeS

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Yeah, should have followed that with an LOL. My favorite is how they call this Obama's "Mission Accomplished." Regardless of your political stance that should obviously be more than hyperbolic.

Yeah, I would say like most things in politics it's never "Mission Accomplished" as much as it is about kicking the ball down the field.

MS

mickeycoronado

Ahriakin wrote: »

I think a company should be allowed to decide how it wants to transport data across it's own backbone. However this needs to be open, above board and clearly identifiable to the user. The real issue is that right now it is all done quietly, people assume vendor-X's service is shoddy because it is glitching when in reality the ISP is deliberately disrupting what they consider to be a competing service.
I work for a cell phone company, essentially an ISP in this day and age with a much smaller available Pipe (spectrum) to work with so I know full well the need to maximise valuable data. But it has to be done fairly and honestly.

The thing that sickens me most are folks like Bailey outright lying to the masses, telling them that Net Neutrality will lead to worse services, more censorship etc. That woman needs to be sentenced to a 2400 Baud modem for the rest of her life

Agreed.

"All internet **** will be blocked to protect children, under UK Government plan"

Nevermind the children, WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK ABOUT THE ****!?!

TheShadow

Well the rules are starting to filter out. It looks like the big guys are going to have to look for better loopholes. Here is a decent read so far. I an sure the EFF and the trade magazine pundits will have more to say after the holidays.

FCC: Yup, we're going to stop "paid prioritization" on the 'Net

Lizano

Ahriakin wrote: »

That woman needs to be sentenced to a 2400 Baud modem for the rest of her life

That made my day....

mrgreggie

My first computer (IBM PS/1) had a 2400 baud modem, and it kicked tail with AOL!

I read somewhere that it's all meaningless because the FCC currently lacks the power to enforce these rules. Anybody care to look into that? My link post limit has been reached for this thread!