FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see and use

a reply to: CriticalStinker

This will end up just like the GOP plans on health care. Their claim:

"This will be the best health care plan EVER! More people covered with better coverage for less cost! YAY US!"

And we've seen how that actually was going to work out... less people covered, with crappy coverage for way higher cost.

This will be the same. Note their claims:

"This will result in the best internet EVER! More people will get faster access for less cost! YAY US!"

When in reality, this is another sop to the folks that already own everything. You can count on crappy access for most people, for higher cost. Only those that have extra income to re-distribute to the mega providers will be able to get decent access, albeit at a higher cost.

Anything the current GOP does is pretty much guaranteed to be something to further enrich the already wealthy, at the cost of everybody else.

But what the hell, those folks have to eat too, right?

a reply to: CriticalStinker

We should be flooding the @realDonaldTrump twitter feed with don't kill net neutrality tweets.

Perhaps such as :

@realDonaldTrump I'm very glad that Hillary didn't win, but for the love of [insert your deity here] replace the head of the FCC with someone that is not a lobbyist wh0re. DON'T KILL #NetNeutraility PRINCIPLES . Don't give the most hated companies such as comcr@p more power

If ATS is excluded from the plans, it could really effect our favorite website.

And if traffic dries up here, we are going to have issues.

a reply to: intrptr

The "inter" in internet referred to connection of computer networks.

"We're moving packets for companies that are paying to force you into viewing their advertisements. You'll get your desired web site content when we get around to it."

By the way, it's proposed that companies are going to be "transparent" in stating what they are doing. Goodie, the old "transparent" promise.

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
If ATS is excluded from the plans, it could really effect our favorite website.

And if traffic dries up here, we are going to have issues.

It looks like comcast already did a trial run on throttling and ATS was effected

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's absolutely amazing how far behind the US is when it comes to the internet. We pretty much invented the damn thing and yet in Europe they're getting much faster speeds for way cheaper. And now the government wants to give the ISPs free rein to throttle it back even more?

a reply to: Xcalibur254

That's how it works, though: America often invents/innovates, and after all of the American citizens subsidize the R&D of the product, other countries get to use the technology for much cheaper.

The medical field and its costs are a perfect example.

As far as Net Neutrality goes, any time the government asserts authority over something, it concerns me. I'm against Net Neutrality for that reason, because any time the government starts mandating and regulating, they tend not to have a finish line, and it starts to get out of control.

I would rather have out-of-control private industry than out-of-control government.

hackernoon.com...

The internet is a living ecosystem of free speech, where all content can be created and shared. It is a means by which we can communicate with our loved ones, share ideas, and laugh at cat GIFs. We can create, access, and share applications and services — reaching audiences far and wide. More importantly, we can craft our own pursuit of happiness.

We can go where we want and consume anything — we have the liberty and personal freedom to choose for ourselves what we want or don’t want to see.
Liberty, by definition, is the freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions. It is a power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, according to personal choice.
It is with this liberty that we have been able to innovate as a nation, proliferate new technologies, and share transformative ideas.

content we want and that the press is not abridged from creating and disseminating its own content.
In a non-neutral world, your internet service providers (ISPs like Verizon and Comcast) can gate which websites and applications you get to access. They can make you pay more to use Google to search, yet make Yahoo free (sorry Yahoo..). They can prevent you from accessing information from your favorite news sources.. they can prevent you from reading this Medium article.

2017, this has shifted dramatically. The internet… this connection of wires and computers all around the world has become the primary utility for exchanging and accessing information.
When you curtail that freedom of access, you curtail our freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.

This is not a political issue — this is a fundamental constitutional issue. This is an issue that impacts every one of us.
What we do online, who we vote for, what websites we visit… all of that doesn’t matter. We are all internet users and we all belong to this connected web of people and things

a reply to: SlapMonkey

I would rather have out-of-control private industry than out-of-control government.

That IS what we end up with due to greed and companies buying government.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
This is not the "control of information" any more than a store deciding not to carry books by a certain publisher is. IPs are corporations, they have provided an infrastructure and charge for the use of it, same as with any other privately owned resource or commodity. The fact that the internet has become massively pervasive into our lives is immaterial to the base argument here. The same could be said for cable TV, yet we frequently see pay-to-play in that venue... hell, two years ago we lost AMC here on GCI cable because of a dispute between AMC and the provider.

Net Neutrality is a federal overreach which never should have been passed and needs to be removed ASAP.

And is TV the model we want to replicate? That's what the ISP's want, but is that what's best for the consumer?

originally posted by: Lurker1
I have a question for those who understand this issue -

Does this mean we're going to lose unlimited browsing on mobile again?

Please go easy on me. I just got home. I'm beat and I haven't read the thread yet.

Personally, I don't think there should be many restrictions on or control of the internet. It is information and education. You shouldn't have to pay ridiculous fees to use the library.

It's too soon to say. If this goes through, we're probably going to see a huge explosion in zero rated content, which is content you can use that doesn't impact data caps (a very popular, but simultaneously anti competitive behavior). At the same time though, we're probably going to see ISP's pushing us to their proprietary content services, especially for movies and tv.

I think that what we need to do is break up the network owners from the content providers. Let one company own the network, and let a bunch of local companies spring up to lease access to the lines and provide service. Similar to the model we had under dial up ISP's. That's the only way that repealing NN makes sense.

originally posted by: Irikash
This could be a good thing. Blockchain Internet is on the horizon, and this could be a nice catalyst to push us in that direction.

Blockchain internet is a buzzword that makes no sense. What you may be getting it confused with is meshnets. The problem with meshnets is that because of how they transmit data, each additional node creates an exponential increase in the amount of data that has to be sent. Past about 100 nodes they don't work. As such, they can only function in small communities.

originally posted by: Ksihkehe
So you found a made up infographic? Cool. It's fake.

Was your internet like this before? Mine wasn't.

In the US we have had Net Neutrality ever since ISP's came out. Though in the early days where we had dial up content providers, it actually was like that. For example, when I was growing up we had Prodigy. Some content was labeled free and you could access it at any time. Other content was priced such that you only had a certain amount of data per month. And with other data, they would arbitrarily determine who could see what. It was not a good model, and that's why it didn't last.

However, back then there was competition with ISP's because of the nature of the dial up network. Anyone could build their own ISP (and many did). Broadband is not built the same way, there is no competition in service.

originally posted by: DupontDeux

originally posted by: CriticalStinker
a reply to: burdman30ott6

Net Neutrality is a federal overreach which never should have been passed and needs to be removed ASAP.

So your argument is it should be like cable (which is trash) because they're a private company?

That would not be a bad argument, though, would it?

Imagine if cable providers *had* to provide any and every station/channel out there, both present and future ones in 4k, 8k and whatever, to every subscriber, just because it exists.

Imagine of all anyone had to do was to open a station, put any crap on it they wanted, to be assured a place in any available plan by any cable provider.

I assume you normally are able to choose between a number of plans and pick the one that suits you the best. Imagine if you had to chose the plan that included every channel HD, 4K, and 8K, because the FCC had said so.

That would be sort of annoying.
And expensive.


I am all for net neutrality, but there are definitely valid arguments against it.

That's not really how it would work. It would be more like, you pay your ISP for access to a particular station. Then you may or may not be able to view that station. Most likely, you would then have to pay that station itself a subscription fee for access to that content. Then it may or may not be viewable based on if their host for that region (which you have no control of) decides to throttle them.

Basically, you pay for service and then you may or may not get it. And you end up paying more.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: dug88

Next time I am at a restaurant, I'm gonna complain so hard if they don't have Borden's milk on hand... I'm so sick of these high assed business owners making choices of what to provide me for the agreed upon prices and then demanding I actually stick to their menu or, the horror, take my business elsewhere.

How do you take your business elsewhere with an ISP? In most cases there is only one option.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
Satellite is always an option.

Obviously some folks are not going to be happy with their options. This is where invention and competition comes in. If enough people are mad, then someone will setup a competing provider in a community of 200,000.

Satellite is not an option. It typically offers 56k upload speeds and carries an 800 ms ping. If you're doing anything interactive that does not work.

Also, it costs an average of $5000 per home to run fiber to a house. Building a competing network in a town of 200,000 people involves an initial investment of $1 billion with a projected 25 to 30 year turn around time to pay off the infrastructure. And that's only assuming that no other competitors move in and split the business.

It is essentially impossible to come in and build competing wired networks. In many cases it is legally impossible, because the ISP's own exclusivity agreements with the cities they're set up in.

originally posted by: darkbake
I found this:

Check it out, you have to pay extra for things like Netflix or even Steam. Hell, you have to pay extra for pretty much everything. With all that is available on the internet, how can anyone afford that?

Or you could say - you pay LESS if you don't want to access certain sites.
This is all good... if ISPs get their pricing wrong they will go bust, or be discounting very quickly.

Net Neutrality is a horrible idea and the kind of thing communists often dream up.

originally posted by: blend57
If nothing has changed before or after the NN law went into effect. Why do we need to change it again? It is a honest question..why keep pushing back and forth if what it is categorized as (utility versus information service) doesn't matter? There must be a reason...

Because repealing Net Neutrality gives ISP's a huge power boost. Not only will they be able to charge hosting fees for servers, and charge users fees, where each gets charged for access to the network, but then they'll be able to charge fees on each connection made.

Imagine a road. The road is your network, the car is the packet of data. They can currently charge a fee for a business to connect to the road, and a fee for your car to legally access the road. What they want to do is monetize every single destination you visit. Imagine if you had to pay a $1 road fee every time you drove to a specific gas station, or a $5 fee to drive to the grocery store. That's what the ISP's gain by repealing NN.

On top of that, it will give them the ability to demand certain things of businesses. What if a city went up to a private business and said "nice business you have here, sure would be a shame if we had to set up road construction at your driveway for the next 6 months... $5000 and we won't have to". That's highly illegal. But with NN gone, ISP's gain the ability to do this to every content provider. Beyond just access to the network which is bought via hosting, they can tell the content provider that people visiting their website will be slowed down unless they pay additional fees.

Now imagine you're a small business, maybe a political blog. What do you do when you have to pay every single ISP in the country $1000 in order to keep access to your website stable? This isn't hosting fees. It's companies you don't even have a relationship with. Maybe you're hosted by Cox out of Arizona and someone on TWC in New York wants to visit your site? Despite your host and your speeds, you now have to pay TWC to not block that potential customers access to your website. This will crush smaller businesses, and maybe even some large ones because if one company is first to the gate to sign exclusivity agreements, maybe MSNBC becomes the only functional website for politics in the US.

originally posted by: CriticalStinker
a reply to: burdman30ott6

Many of us can't take our business elsewhere. I live in a city of 200,000~ and we have one cable internet provider and very crappy dsl.

You'll benefit when competition ramps up - to facilitate that the govt should focus not on net neutrality but on making sure that physical network owners open up their access so that others can compete...