U.S. Appeals court kills Net Neutrality

In a roundabout way, this ruling may only help the cause, by spurring us on to retake/recreate the internet.

projectmeshnet.org...

Time to charge up the DarkNet.



P.S. Yes, what Orwell's Ghost also said. We have options. We always have options.

ScientiaFortisDefendit
This will absolutely kill small businesses that depend on web traffic for customer acquisition. Do you think that is one of the goals? I do. This about two things: Control of the internet and consolidation of profits.

Imagine what happens when you want to sell the awesome product you designed, that you make in your little factory by the American workers you hired. You won't be able to afford outbound access through the internet, so you'll be forced to sell through Amazon and pay Amazon their premiums.

We need to stop this Communism creep.

edit on 14-1-2014 by ScientiaFortisDefendit because: (no reason given)

^quote for truth about it all being a push to control as much with the power being held by the few.

It isn't Communism though, it is Mussolini's dream... it is Corporatism.

Derek

reply to post by Aazadan


I may not be understanding it right, but it appears net neutrality is trying to ensure transmitted information is not discriminated by the provider in their payment plans? So what this means is net neutrality would forbid companies from restricting gamers by requiring them to buy a special account to play effectively? Net neutrality means the company has to treat all its customers as equal and cannot discriminate them to save money or for whatever reason.

The problem I see with it is what if I'm a user that wants large bandwidth but I don't care about latency? Or what if I want very low latency but don't care as much about bandwidth? Or what if I don't care much about either because all I do is a small amount of browsing? Wouldn't it make sense to discriminate the transmitted data so companies can appeal to specific consumers and potentially save money? Otherwise they have to make broader judgments that're not specific. For example, they may give someone who only uses email much more bandwidth than necessary. Or they may have a list of plans which is too cryptic and not specific to the user. If the plan doesn't say "For Gamers" then how do gamers know what to buy? By not discriminating it puts more pressure on the consumer to know the facts. This may not be popularly desirable, as many consumers favor convenience.

In a nutshell, it seems net neutrality wants to prevent potential "exploitation" by stopping companies from conserving their resources and targeting better their consumers. Generally, regulating companies this way is noble but perhaps overdone. I'm probably misunderstanding since I only read the wiki for a minute before posting here. I realize it's impulsive, but I don't have all day.

I agree with people who say some regulation is necessary to stop monopolies from forming or to stop a few from controlling the many. From my brief reading this is not what I got. What I got from it was what I wrote above.

Just avoid the major ISPs and I guess you avoid this problem.

Even small ISPs will be trying to stay in business, and so for them, offering a deliberately limited service would just be suicide.

The other question is would this just affect users in the US, or would ALL traffic be limited?

It's more than just the payment plans. In a system where you have net neutrality packets can not be discriminated against, you have to process all packets equally in a first come first serve fashion. When you start breaking these rules a lot of things become possible, and the majority of them equate to a worse experience for the majority of users.

For example with the payment accounts this already exists. Depending on the game you need a certain level of upload/download speed, gamers on average have higher speed connections because it results in better performance. What the elimination of net neutrality does however is it enables the ISP to say that regardless of what speed you're paying for, they can degrade or even outright stop the transmission of packets for you that are on ports used by games, or that come from games. Then they can charge say a gamer fee to allow transmission of those packets. Where they're trying very hard to apply this technology is to video streaming sites.

The telcoms are more than just internet providers, in most cases they're also providing a TV subscription. Because the technology has improved and the internet offers sufficient speeds the tv companies have noticed that people are cutting their TV service in favor of watching a program online. As a result people are only paying for internet service. They want to go back to a model where people have to pay for TV and Internet. If they get to do this, they can make huge profits because they'll not just get both revenue streams back but they'll add a third one as well. They get to charge the end user for TV service as well as collect the associated ad revenue, then they get to charge for internet service, but then they get a third revenue stream by for example telling youtube that unless they pay $10 million each month comcast users won't be able to use their service. Then multiply this by every single ISP across the country.

In your other examples, the internet is designed so that packets move across the fastest network at any given time, there is no priority transmission here to reduce latency. The only thing that can be done is packets from a particular user can go first in the que rather than first come first serve. This reduces latency a little bit but not by nearly as much as you're imagining. The much bigger factor in latency is what technology is being used to connect to the internet.

Under the current system for example a user who only wants email isn't concerned with speed, they can buy whatever the lowest priced service in their area is (in my area this would be 768k DSL for $20/month) and be happy. If someone wants large bandwidth but doesn't care about latency, satellite internet is an option for them, but most people shy away from it due to price. I'm not sure how taking a superior cable connection and degrading it to satellite quality to give that high latency experience does them any favors. Particularly when it involves more work (money) for the ISP to do so.

With the idea of having more bandwidth available to others, that's not how internet service is sold. A company will have a line of fiber coming to their servers lets say it's a 5 gigabit line. This means they have a maximum throughput of 5 gigabits per second. They will then divide this up into say 10/20/50/100 mb portions and sell it. Using the same types of theories as fractional reserve banking they will oversell the line until they reach a point where they're making as much use of the throughput as possible. If they need another line at this point they'll add one at considerable expense (though the government tends to heavily subsidize this) and then add more customers.

Saying "you can have high speed internet but you can't use high bandwidth activities without paying us an additional fee" doesn't suddenly increase the bandwidth for everyone else, because more of these lines are sold until they reach maximum throughput again. It saves the company money because they're putting more users on the same line but that's all, it doesn't give a true broadband experience in using the global definitions. It's essentially just rebranding a 56k or similar line.

The only thing the elimination of net neutrality does is reduce the average quality of internet service while simultaneously making it more expensive.

mirageofdeceit
Just avoid the major ISPs and I guess you avoid this problem.

Even small ISPs will be trying to stay in business, and so for them, offering a deliberately limited service would just be suicide.

The other question is would this just affect users in the US, or would ALL traffic be limited?

Small ISP's don't own fiber, they lease a portion of it from the major ISP. As a result they're subject to any restrictions the major ISP puts on their network.

In theory this could have global implications because US providers would be able to demand money from overseas companies in order for their websites to appear, they could even demand Switzerland for example pay $2 billion or access to them going through American servers is degraded, but in practice it will likely only affect the US, even more so because there's a major global push right now by corporations and countries to totally isolate themselves from anything technology related that has to do with the US (and for good reason).

Aazadan

fractal2
reply to post by Aazadan

 

In my area (rural US) there is one choice for high-speed internet. When I lived in the city, I had two or three choices. Satellite internet is available almost everywhere but it is low-speed, like a fast dial-up connection. I hope you all enjoyed the peak years of US internet structure.

Even three choices doesn't give you a whole lot of options. It's not like back in the days of 56k (which depending on broadband options with net neutrality might become a thing again... maybe I can break out my old ISDN modem) where literally anyone could set up an ISP. Part of me is morbidly curious to see what happens, if using TOR the packets will be encrypted so the ISP can't single something out. But this goes back to what I said before, what if the ISP's start blocking encrypted packets? The NSA certainly wants them to do that. We could have a really screwed up internet really soon.

I agree that three choices is weak.

I believe that encrypted packets will always be impossible to block because of the strategy of Steganography.
en.wikipedia.org...

While typically image data is used, it can work with any data including text, audio, video, and informational data. While statistical analysis is possible to discover it in some cases, I doubt that it would be mathematically possible to detect in all methods. However, I have not seen any claims by cryptographers either way.

The concept of Steganography could be expanded into embedding physical objects with data using hundreds of different practical methods. For example, one could put dimples in a plastic cup invisible to the naked eye. One could use invisible inks of various sorts. One could shape a cup in a way where all its curves are set to reveal data. One could fashion a shirt where each thread is woven or tied in a pattern revealing data. One could vary any physical properties(melting point, reflectivity, etc), molecular composition, texture, geometry, size, etc etc.

The only way of stopping encrypted communications is to read peoples minds in real time 24/7. Imagine that, a world without any crimes. Except those committed with total impunity by the evil elites reading them.

I keep feeling net neutrality is not innocent like people here are saying. I think it's more an attempt to regulate and control the "free" market out of fear access will be unequal. The problem is it starves the system to make things equal.

I'm reminded of micro-transactions in mmo's. Rich players are increasingly being favored over poor players because the rich players can afford far more transactions. The thing is the rich players can feed the system and cause it to progress faster than if rich players were prevented from spending substantially more. By capping how much rich players spend or the things they can buy you cut yourself off from some of those profits and it limits your growth.

Fact of the matter is 20% of the population can theoretically give you 80% of your profits. A small portion of the population has much greater amounts of money to spend. If you're prevented from fully making use of it then it'll hurt you. Fundamentally, this is about 20% of the population having access to 80% of the wealth. The problem didn't start with the MMO, it started in the real world. How do you fix it? How do you make those 20% equal to the other 80%?

This is about being equal to the 80% and unequal for the 20%. This is about giving equal access to the majority while restricting access to the minority. In fact, this is about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Some would say it's about stealing from the most ambitious and resourceful and redistributing it.

Whether all the above is relevant I'm not sure, but when I read about net neutrality on wiki I get a strange feeling there're parallels between the two.

Unfortunately - if these parallels exist - they'll get buried by the do-gooders who speak of "equal-access" and of how evil the companies are. This kind of kumbaya-speak is common in society and popular in media. Almost every single movie tells us how corrupt rich and/or powerful people are.

Here's an interesting article:
www.discovery.org - The Coming Exaflood...

.............
By 2000, the U.S. had fewer than five million consumer "broadband" links, averaging 500 kilobits per second. Over the past two years, the reverse has been true. As the FCC has relaxed or eliminated regulations, broadband investment and download speeds have surged -- we now enjoy almost 50 million broadband links, averaging some three megabits per second. Internet video succeeded in the form of YouTube. But that "explosion of innovation" at the "applications and content layer" was not feasible without tens of billions of dollars of optics, chips and disks deployed around the world. YouTube at the edge cannot happen without bandwidth in the core.

Messrs. Lessig, Dingell and Conyers, and Google, now want to repeat all the investment-killing mistakes of the late 1990s, in the form of new legislation and FCC regulation to ensure "net neutrality." This ignores the experience of the recent past -- and worse, the needs of the future.

...............

Wall Street will finance new telco and cable fiber optic projects, but only with some reasonable hope of a profit. And that is what net neutrality could squelch. Google, for example, has guaranteed $900 million in advertising revenue to MySpace and paid Dell $1 billion to install Google search boxes on its computers; YouTube partnered with Verizon Wireless; MySpace signed its own content deal with Cingular. But these kinds of preferential partnerships, where content and conduit are integrated to varying degrees -- and which are ubiquitous in almost every industry -- could be outlawed under net neutrality.

Ironically, the condition that net neutrality seeks to ban -- discrimination or favoritism of content on the Internet -- is only necessary in narrowband networks. When resources are scarce, the highest bidder can exclude the others. But with real broadband networks, capacity is abundant and discrimination unnecessary. Net neutrality's rules, price controls and litigation would prevent broadband networks from being built, limit the amount of available bandwidth and thus encourage the zero-sum discrimination supposedly deplored.
.............

I am so tired of seeing the internet get steadily beaten down from the beauty that it was originally. This needs to be permanently stopped once and for all.

www.savetheinternet.com...

Please take action. The internet is the only hope we have left for liberty and true communication.

reply to post by gottaknow


"Save the Internet" has a bad strategy of simply trying to get politicians to solve their problems for them. Not going to happen. If you have a problem, then fix it. Don't count on others to do the job for you.

Possible solutions include:
1. Form consumers unions who will send their business to companies who respect and support net neutrality.
2. Start an ISP that ignores the government entirely, thereby solving all problems related to internet reguations.
3. Strategies that render a packets unclassifiable by ISPs, such as using deepweb, VPNs, etc.

Corporatism, communism, socialism? Lets call it what it really is; organized crime. The "Iron law of oligarchy" reigns supreme.

en.wikipedia.org...

ScientiaFortisDefendit
This will absolutely kill small businesses that depend on web traffic for customer acquisition. Do you think that is one of the goals? I do. This about two things: Control of the internet and consolidation of profits.

Imagine what happens when you want to sell the awesome product you designed, that you make in your little factory by the American workers you hired. You won't be able to afford outbound access through the internet, so you'll be forced to sell through Amazon and pay Amazon their premiums.

We need to stop this Communism creep.

edit on 14-1-2014 by ScientiaFortisDefendit because: (no reason given)

this isn't communism...this is corporatism....political control of nations by corporations...this type of transitive social-economic government has been in the works since the end of WW2, when it was realized by the global wealthy that neither fascism nor communism worked to insure that the wealthy have the control they wanted. the leaders of those previous governments became arrogant enough to think that they themselves could rule the world.

well cant this be taken to a higher court, i am truly against this type of thing different tiers for service crap when i started using broadband service years ago it costed me 20 dollars a month now its 55 and recently i started getting charged another 15 dollars for using the cable companies modem. now don't get me wrong i can download huge amounts of data in no time but really its all a money grab recently my isp started offering a 100 dollar a month plan with supposed faster service sttill and the ability to remote control my house from anywhere in the world wth. why woulod i want someone to be able to hack my house? but i digress the service i had at 20 dollars a month seems to be the exact same service i am getting now

Guess its not the internet anymore but a propaganda centernet, maintained and sifted for our safety, exclusively by the NSA. Built to watch how you react when you use it. I can't wait for brain chips, so I can download their brainwash directly and be tracked and throttled as necessary for their needs. What great single opinionated slaves we could be, the amazing fruitless possibilities of our secured future.

This changes nothing.

If anyone on here seriously thinks that this is going to change anything, you are seriously mistaken.

The infrastructure is there, the connections are in waiting, and it will be a mere matter of time before some networkers discover how to connect to these whilst circumventing normal connectivity methods.

You can't just one day up and change all the protocols used for internet connection, these protocols are exploitable, just as any other computer coding. All it requires is a small bit of manipulation.

I can only wonder if/when some of these hacker groups are going to rear their head at this. I have a feeling any ISPs that start throttling people may become targets for groups such as ANON or LulSec.

Even if that were the case, most people aren't technical. I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now, and the people behind me are discussing online stuff and here's a summary of the conversation:
"I've got a lock, my internets are secure"
"My neice has a laptop it has hifi" (not a typo)
"It doesn't matter what happens, we'll live"

Those with some technical skills will be able to get around net neutrality to an extent. Whether that's through TOR or it's though breaking into connections where people are paying for privileged access people will find a way. What matters is what happens to the average user. Their experience will get worse (artificially), and their internet access will get more expensive.

And the corporations win another one....

Is anyone surprised? Time for Al Gore to invent the next internet.