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Net neutrality on it's way out?

Started by Iniquitous, January 14, 2014, 01:04:16 PM

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Iniquitous

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/verizon-wins-net-neutrality-loses-court-ruling-opens-door-tiered-2D11922702


Well, here we go. If this isn't overturned we will soon have our carriers telling us what we can and cannot have on our phones/tablets/pcs. Though, honestly, I am not so sure the Supreme Court would overrule this.
Bow to the Queen; I'm the Alpha, the Omega, everything in between.


Hades

Given the ideological make-up of the court, I'm dubious that they would take an anti-business position if the case did get to them.  I mean, this is the court that gave us the Citizens United decision after all.   And not only that, but considering in a recent case (I think the Winsor/DOMA case) it was revealed just how technologically illiterate the justices are, I suspect that there would be exploding brain-bits as they tried to understand all this new-fangled technology.

But yeah, I hope that this is reversed on appeal since I'd rather AT&T not decide what I have easy access to.

IStateYourName

The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

gaggedLouise

Yes, really crappy decision. It's easy for anyone to see why the ISPs are eager to get a bigger share of the actual money after they have tried to corner shares of a growing market with (often) deliberately underpriced offers to new subscribers. If you can demand extra cash by the customer for access to Youtube, Facebook or Flickr or "extra large full access" to the net, or from people running smaller sites (like E and a thousand others) for the privilege of being in the same outbound lane as Google and Youtube, why shouldn't you jump on the opportunity?

The internet should remain an open and non-discriminating medium in the same sense that a newspaper or a magazine can (in many countries, including the US) be started and circulated by just about anyone, without any high barriers to the field.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Neysha

Quote from: IStateYourName on January 14, 2014, 08:47:42 PM
The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

Thank you for that.
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Callie Del Noire

Quote from: IStateYourName on January 14, 2014, 08:47:42 PM
The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

gaggedLouise

#6
Quote from: Callie Del Noire on January 15, 2014, 10:33:34 AM
Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

It's a long-haul struggle for sure. And the day somebody writes a book called A History of the Internet as a Free Medium, or something, this decision and the legal and civic wrangling over it is going to make up a chapter by itself.

I would say the EU has been a bit better than the US at standing up for the idea of civic guarantees of freedom against governments messing with what kind of content, what kind of sites, you're allowed to access. And against companies effectively buying up the means of accessing the web (hey, we fined Microsoft to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros/bucks for monopolizing tactics!). I'm thinking of the union parliament and EU-wide legislation here, not some outlier ideas by national cabinets such as Cameron's "anti-porn wall" project (which could get challenged on a European court level).

The idea of net neutrality is fairly entrenched around here, and I think seeing the web as essentially a public utility, a free-access public medium (even if many of its parts, sites, tech companies, ISPs, platform software etc are often run by private holders) and not a privatized entertainment park has become the dominant view. So far...

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

IStateYourName

Quote from: Callie Del Noire on January 15, 2014, 10:33:34 AM
Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

kylie

#8
Quote from: IStateYourName on January 15, 2014, 01:10:05 PM
Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

        I tend to put it like this:  In the US, the corporations are starting to own the government (if they didn't always).  In China, the government owns the corporations.  You can get squeezed in either case, and arguably some big wigs get the lion's share either way.  It's a small difference perhaps, but a notable one to me.  Anyway, there are days E loads just fine...  And then there are the days I have to turn on the proxies or VPN.  I'm not sure that's censors playing with the channels so much as dubious connections, but it's been more of the latter lately and I don't know how else to explain it.  Regardless, there are plenty of other sites I can never see from here without proxies or VPN.

        China is actually a rather infamous example...  But one downside to the Snowden reveal was, lots of areas started fussing about how to secure a more regional internet infrastructure.  That could be somewhat good if they made the data and connections equally available to lots of visitors, but it's also a new excuse for those areas where the government has always wanted to meddle from the engineering on up.
       
     

Callie Del Noire

Quote from: IStateYourName on January 15, 2014, 01:10:05 PM
Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

Do you honestly think that big business won't try to corner their market elsewhere?

If you're ..say.. looking at Newscorp and their UK subs, do you think they wouldn't try to 'choke' bandwidth with their competitors? Or that the Japanese media companies won't step on the smaller asian companies that come up with something innovative that might be market changing?

chaoslord29

The question is, if we can't rely on the supreme court and governments to protect our rights to freedom and privacy online, what are we going to do about it?
My Guiding Light-
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Neysha

#11
From what I read in the newspaper, the court decision was as a result of a legal technicality of the FCC overreaching its supposed authority with regulating information services on the internet.

Congress is probably going to have to get off its fannies and see about pushing the existing bills on Internet Neutrality through committee finally.
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chaoslord29

Quote from: Neysha on January 15, 2014, 09:04:19 PM
From what I read in the newspaper, the court decision was as a result of a legal technicality of the FCC overreaching its supposed authority with regulating information services on the internet.

That's entirely too tempered an interpretation. I demand alarmist extremism so that I might fight the good fight!
My Guiding Light-
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My ideas and O/Os:Darker Tastes and Tales

Neysha

Quote from: chaoslord29 on January 15, 2014, 09:08:57 PM
That's entirely too tempered an interpretation. I demand alarmist extremism so that I might fight the good fight!

I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!
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chaoslord29

Quote from: Neysha on January 15, 2014, 09:10:08 PM
I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!

Really? When you get there, can you confirm for me the existence of the fabled "Free Blowjobs & Icecream for Everyone" program as officially demanded and sanctioned by the Swedish Government?

Seriously, though, I'd emigrate there but it's too damn cold. Can't some nice Mediterranean country get behind ultra-progressive populist policies?
My Guiding Light-
'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'- Lord Havelock Vetinari
My ideas and O/Os:Darker Tastes and Tales

Neysha

Quote from: chaoslord29 on January 15, 2014, 09:14:39 PM
Seriously, though, I'd emigrate there but it's too damn cold. Can't some nice Mediterranean country get behind ultra-progressive populist policies?

Well they tried, then the rich people stopped paying taxes, the lower classes demanded more subsidies and the Germans wouldn't loan them money anymore.

Basically, it's all Germany's fault... again.  :P
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chaoslord29

Quote from: Neysha on January 15, 2014, 09:28:57 PM
Well they tried, then the rich people stopped paying taxes, the lower classes demanded more subsidies and the Germans wouldn't loan them money anymore.

Basically, it's all Germany's fault... again.  :P

Now, now, we can't keep blaming good Germans for the mistakes their leaders make.
My Guiding Light-
'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'- Lord Havelock Vetinari
My ideas and O/Os:Darker Tastes and Tales

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Neysha on January 15, 2014, 09:04:19 PM

Congress is probably going to have to get off its fannies and see about pushing the existing bills on Internet Neutrality through committee finally.
(my bold)

Now I see why the expression is "sitting on their hands". There are clearly things going on in the dark... :P

Quote from: Neysha on January 15, 2014, 09:10:08 PM
I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!

You're welcome, bring your skis!

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Oniya

Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
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gaggedLouise

Quote from: Oniya on January 15, 2014, 11:25:28 PM
Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*

I was thinking of "insider crime" for sure.  :D

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

chaoslord29

Quote from: Oniya on January 15, 2014, 11:25:28 PM
Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*

o_O

I c wat u did thar
My Guiding Light-
'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'- Lord Havelock Vetinari
My ideas and O/Os:Darker Tastes and Tales

Vekseid

For the record, 'network neutrality' does not affect Elliquiy in the slightest. For everything, the US has been pretty big on the freedom of speech, and this is reflected in a lot of both legal and corporate culture. I wouldn't dare host Elliquiy from anywhere in the British Commonwealth or European Union.

This will probably not get overturned on appeal - the judge couldn't make a ruling any other way. The better solution is to lobby for the regulation to be put into place, or to ensure a separation of content providers, backbone providers, and end-connectivity providers. It's not like Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and the like are nobodies. By their very nature these are extremely powerful companies with their own resources to fight this fight, since they're the ones whose bottom line risks the greatest impact.

WendySlaveGirl

Quote from: Vekseid on January 16, 2014, 07:01:13 PM
For the record, 'network neutrality' does not affect Elliquiy in the slightest.

Actually, Elliquiy is EXACTLY the type of page that would be affected. The biggest downside to this ruling is that the ISPs can charge differently for different types of access both to the consumers and to the owners of websites.

Let's say they make it 3 tiers.

Tier 1 is the big boys - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. You get the same speeds you always got with them.
Tier 2 is the smaller companies - Local stores, smaller computer companies, game companies. They're slower than Tier 1 and it is noticeable but it is not slooooowwww.
Tier 3 are the independents. - Pages made by everyday people who have bought server space somewhere and that's about it. These will be lucky to load at dial up speeds.

The companies will charge website owners to move up Tiers. They will also charge consumers to have higher speeds on tier 2 and 3, basically you'd pay more to have what we have now.

This will have many effects. 1) It will drastically lower traffic at places like Elliquiy as people get tired of waiting for the page to load. It will also stifle the emergence of new businesses on the web because not only will you have all the traditional fees to deal with (credit card processing, LLC formation, legal fees, web server fees) but now if you want any chance at competing you'll have to pay more to the ISPs for them to load your page faster. Oh AND you'll have to pay to each ISP. Why do you think companies like Google, Amazon, and others are against this? They know that even for them it will drastically increase their cost of business.

Vekseid

Err, no, not in the slightest.

You are arguing that ISPs would be willing to polish their routing tables to be able to give special tiered treatment to IPs on an individual basis. That is, simply put, not going to happen. They have to handle these issues based on networks - people controlling /24s or more (in addition to being the smallest routable subnet, it's also the minimum anycast size, for much the same reason). If you don't own or at least dominate a /24 or equivalent (/48 for IPv6, etc) you're not going to be individually targeted. I own a lot of IPs for a small-time operation, yes, but I control a /28, a few /29s, and a few individual ips, that's it. Not even a /26 in total.

Go here, scroll down. That's who our datacenter peers with, click on Chicago and you'll see we have a direct line to Cogent, also.

Any proposed bill for privileged access would never reach us. It would either go to our connectivity providers, who would have to divvy up the cost based on bandwidth (as they already do), or possibly directly to our top host - Steadfast - who would do the same.

The day when Elliquiy uses enough bandwidth to get on that radar will surely be a happy one, but it's certainly not today.

WendySlaveGirl

I think they will do just that. Likely what they will do is slow all traffic down, much like what Comcast did to Bittorrent traffic. They will then contact companies and say "if you want consumers to get your stuff faster it will cost $X." Amazon, Google, etc, will be able to afford it. Some of the hosting companies might be able to afford it as well. Some won't though and you'll see that traffic slow to a crawl which will kill new business start ups.

Oh, and those companies that can afford the extra cost? They'll pass those costs on to the consumers. Hosting will cost more. Amazon Instant Video and Netflix streaming prices will go up. Most alarmingly in my opinion though is what will happen to innovation. At the moment the internet represents the one brightest spot for new companies to start and get a foothold. If Net Neutrality dies that is threatened.

Callie Del Noire

Or at the least.. companies like comcast will throttle their rivals @ apple, netflix, hulu and so on. I already have 'odd' timeouts and lags using my apple tv and/or netflix.

Vekseid

Quote from: WendySlaveGirl on January 17, 2014, 06:38:07 PM
I think they will do just that. Likely what they will do is slow all traffic down, much like what Comcast did to Bittorrent traffic. They will then contact companies and say "if you want consumers to get your stuff faster it will cost $X." Amazon, Google, etc, will be able to afford it. Some of the hosting companies might be able to afford it as well. Some won't though and you'll see that traffic slow to a crawl which will kill new business start ups.

"Like what Comcast did to Bittorrent traffic."

No, not like that. When I switch Elliquiy to ssl-only, the only information Comcast has is
1) Originator IP, port
2) Destination IP, port
3) Packet flags
4) Amount of data transferred

One of those ports is going to be 443. Where does most small-scale traffic over SSL go to? In theory, Comcast could shut off all external ssl connections. In theory, the CEO and board could also take shotguns and fire them at their feet.

And for what? The ~3 mbps Elliquiy and similar sites use really warrants the attention of an individual router entry on every border router they own? Every single preferential policy has an added performance cost to it, and each preferential policy is its own entry. When Comcast shut off outgoing bittorrent traffic, bittorrent was responsible for something like 40% of all Internet traffic. It saved them a lot of money in comparison to the real cost of performing that filter.

Quote
Oh, and those companies that can afford the extra cost? They'll pass those costs on to the consumers. Hosting will cost more. Amazon Instant Video and Netflix streaming prices will go up. Most alarmingly in my opinion though is what will happen to innovation. At the moment the internet represents the one brightest spot for new companies to start and get a foothold. If Net Neutrality dies that is threatened.

Based on bandwidth.

I would be ecstatic if we passed 10mbps, sustained, much less 10gbps, which is the level of traffic Comcast whines about.

WendySlaveGirl

Well, all I'll say is I hope you're right and I, and lots of others like me are wrong. What I really hope is the FCC appeals or rewrites the rules to cover broadband or fixes how cable companies are classified so the rules cover them. Either that or the courts pull their heads out of their rear ends. Net neutrality is absolutely critical.

Oh, and what the cable companies would care about wouldn't be bandwidth. It'd be making all the other companies out their pony up the dough to get the fastest speeds to get to the consumers.

Vekseid

I'm not claiming this isn't something that needs to be resolved eventually. It should - but it's far from a doomsday scenario at the moment. Talk to your congresscritter or better, ask them about it during their primary - along with their opponents.


CriminalMindsFan

I hate the idea of only being able to access certain websites because certain ones are owned by company A, while others are owned by company B, C and ect.

Valthazar

Totally unrelated to this net neutrality issue: 

Without realizing it, almost all of the outlets we access on the internet, be it media content, businesses, forums, sites, etc. are the result of time (and often money) intensive marketing initiatives.  Even though we may like to think that we sought out E because of our interest in roleplaying, the reality is that E attracted us as roleplayers to join through Vekseid's marketing initiatives.  There could easily be another roleplaying forum out there that is far superior to this one, but they have failed in their overall effort because they did not devote sufficient time and resources for promotion. 

For example, those popular gaming channels on YouTube, and big prank channels like OwnagePranks and Roman Atwood, are the result of heavy promotional efforts (and in many cases, money).  Even those stories we hear of some random business or idea getting internet attention through reddit or another outlet are not entirely organic in nature - there's a clear marketing plan at play in accomplishing that, which frequently requires time and money.

So this net neutrality issue is simply another hurdle that the internet entrepreneurs will have to navigate around.  And trust me, the motivated self-starters will always find a way, that's just how it goes.

gaggedLouise

#31
Quote from: WendySlaveGirl on January 17, 2014, 12:50:44 PM
Actually, Elliquiy is EXACTLY the type of page that would be affected. The biggest downside to this ruling is that the ISPs can charge differently for different types of access both to the consumers and to the owners of websites.

Let's say they make it 3 tiers.

Tier 1 is the big boys - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. You get the same speeds you always got with them.
Tier 2 is the smaller companies - Local stores, smaller computer companies, game companies. They're slower than Tier 1 and it is noticeable but it is not slooooowwww.
Tier 3 are the independents. - Pages made by everyday people who have bought server space somewhere and that's about it. These will be lucky to load at dial up speeds.

The companies will charge website owners to move up Tiers. They will also charge consumers to have higher speeds on tier 2 and 3, basically you'd pay more to have what we have now.

This will have many effects. 1) It will drastically lower traffic at places like Elliquiy as people get tired of waiting for the page to load. It will also stifle the emergence of new businesses on the web because not only will you have all the traditional fees to deal with (credit card processing, LLC formation, legal fees, web server fees) but now if you want any chance at competing you'll have to pay more to the ISPs for them to load your page faster. Oh AND you'll have to pay to each ISP. Why do you think companies like Google, Amazon, and others are against this? They know that even for them it will drastically increase their cost of business.

The thought that’s been cropping up first to me, personally, about this – being mainly a ‘consumer’ and online poster/communicator, not a site manager, owner or moderator of any kind – is the risk of drift towards a cable-tv packaged internet. A system of walled gardens, sort of, where ISPs and their deals with site owners and companies would largely decide what the ordinary internet user in any local place would get to see for their monthly fee. And a much less transparent system than it is today.

Many people (and many companies and households) use a relatively limited array of websites and web functionalities. My parents don’t ever use chat/IM programs or chatrooms, almost never read personal blogs or dedicated discussion forums (or Facebook), don’t use gaming sites, dating sites or sex sites – in fact they barely ever use truly realtime interactive features beyond booking tickets or buying books and dvd’s at Amazon (or similar sites around here). For e-mail, they use locally installed programs like Outlook, not web-based mail. It’s 98% read-only, and reading (or occasionally watching) at well established sites, and they’re probably fairly typical of hundreds of millions of people over sixty. Even with a slightly wider use, I bet an ISP could easily sell a “standard package” giving quick and good access to the following groups of sites – and (in smaller print) much less speedy access or no access at al, to other kinds of sites beyond them – and supposing it was a U.S. ISP:

-   search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and their affiliated sites
-   major computing/phone companies like Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Dell,  Vodafone etc
-   a “wide selection” of newspapers, magazines and news sites” (including a hundred US newspapers and some foreign ones, plus many magazine titles, but still at the discretion of your ISP)
-   government and public sites: let’s say all .gov sites hosted within the US plus the main state sites of one other country, of your choice
-    major travel, vacation, booking, retail and entertainment sites (but excepting Netflix, Spotify and so on)
-                a number of tv and radio network web sites
-    a couple of leading gaming sites
-    Facebook, Hotmail and some other social sites and the like.

Access to anything beyond those would be severely slowed down or disappearing into a cloud of uncertainty (unless you pay thirty dollars more a month for the next tier). Or effectively cut off. I bet many people would be okay with that kind of package, and of course the ISP could argue that there was a trade-off between “luxury full access to the web for everyone” (what we have now) and the realities of clogged internet highways if everyone wants to watch Netflix or play EVE-online all the time, but it would also spell a major cut in the freedom of ordinary users to pick what they want, to roam freely – and the freedom to compete with your own unestablished site. Personally I don’t want anything from my ISP except the connection bandwidth itself plus assistance if there is trouble with the modem or the local network, it’s only that I pay them for when it comes to the web: no selection, nannying or cutting up of what I can access.

Maybe this is something that’s some way into the future in any case, but I think it’s a real concern, and it would bump solidly into the idea of the internet as an open-access space, a medium where it is fairly easy for the end user to get to see what one might find and for content providers and site owners to get in and show their stuff.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Vekseid

That's definitely a threat. At the moment, however, ISPs have to deal with the reality of managing the size of their routing tables, and it is orders of magnitude easier for them to only target a few problematic ASNs or protocols rather than attempt to provide special access based on the individual /24 or /56 that someone is in. Not only that, but there is also the issue of - if somehow Elliquiy gets its own subnet someday (say), and I pay their toll - they assume legal liability for their network connecting to me in a consistent fashion. Right now I can't sue Rogers or Time Warner when one of their routers fucks up, but if I'm paying them, then I am their 'customer' and if I am managing enough to justify owning an entire subnet, then I also have legal staff.

Just like every bank, law office, etc. also has legal representation. I'm not convinced that ISPs are keen on opening themselves up to that degree of legal and political culpability. It's an even bet that the first one that does it on the sort of scale that you mention is going to get slaughtered.

Kythia

Hmmm.  Before I start, here's a huge and necessary caveat:  I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Up until recently I had my tech savvy neighbour make buttons on my desktop that would take me to my frequently visited sites.  He still has an account on this computer for when I download something I shouldn't have and he needs to sort it out.  I'm as minimally technologically literate as I can be while still being able to reliably find and use this website.  A conversation I had in Elliquiy U inspired me to learn more and more, but I'm still at the bottom of the curve.

With all that in mind, I simply don't understand the objections to net neutrality.  It's their wires, their infrastructure.  Why shouldn't they charge what they want for what goes through them - when I go to the time and effort of digging up your street to lay my cables I'll certainly be charging as much as I can get away with to send stuff over them.

I'm not talking about this high court ruling or that legal wrangling, I'm talking more fundamentally than that.  How is the statement that "Companies can charge what they like for using their infrastructure" not correct.  There are enough people who know what they're talking about saying its incorrect that I'm inclined to believe them, and that's fine.  I don't, however, understand the objection to it.
242037

Oniya

This isn't so much about their ability to regulate their prices, but the ability to regulate the content.  Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.  (Thank you, Wikipedia.)  Would you want your ISP to be able to prevent you from accessing a site just because they didn't agree with what it had on it?

Suppose your ISP was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and he and his board decided to charge extra for the 'privilege' of accessing news from other sources.  Or if the owner of your ISP was a member of the WBC and decided to charge extra - or even completely restrict your ability - to access any sites that disagreed with their views.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Kythia

But...the TV news is owned by companies.  They show me what they want to show me (leaving aside the slightly special relationship of the BBC for the moment).  Newspapers are the same.  I get why its undesirable, but, well, "Suppose your ISP was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and he and his board decided to charge extra for the 'privilege' of accessing news from other sources" requires the internet to be different to every other medium I can think of. 

I should rephrase my question: why is the internet expected to be special in this way?  Is it simply that there is a feeling we now have a chance to make something so?  Because that seems kinda gross: screw you "majority of the world that don't have internet access" - we're writing off any medium you can access.
242037

Valthazar

Quote from: Kythia on January 18, 2014, 10:34:51 PMI should rephrase my question: why is the internet expected to be special in this way?  Is it simply that there is a feeling we now have a chance to make something so?  Because that seems kinda gross: screw you "majority of the world that don't have internet access" - we're writing off any medium you can access.

This is a very legitimate perspective I have also thought about, and one that I am also interested in knowing the answer to.

Vekseid

Quote from: Kythia on January 18, 2014, 09:54:18 PM
Hmmm.  Before I start, here's a huge and necessary caveat:  I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Up until recently I had my tech savvy neighbour make buttons on my desktop that would take me to my frequently visited sites.  He still has an account on this computer for when I download something I shouldn't have and he needs to sort it out.  I'm as minimally technologically literate as I can be while still being able to reliably find and use this website.  A conversation I had in Elliquiy U inspired me to learn more and more, but I'm still at the bottom of the curve.

With all that in mind, I simply don't understand the objections to net neutrality.  It's their wires, their infrastructure.  Why shouldn't they charge what they want for what goes through them - when I go to the time and effort of digging up your street to lay my cables I'll certainly be charging as much as I can get away with to send stuff over them.

I'm not talking about this high court ruling or that legal wrangling, I'm talking more fundamentally than that.  How is the statement that "Companies can charge what they like for using their infrastructure" not correct.  There are enough people who know what they're talking about saying its incorrect that I'm inclined to believe them, and that's fine.  I don't, however, understand the objection to it.

Why should an ISP be allowed to claim it is an ISP if it is not actually providing access to the Internet?

gaggedLouise

#38
Quote from: Kythia on January 18, 2014, 09:54:18 PM
With all that in mind, I simply don't understand the objections to net neutrality.  It's their wires, their infrastructure.  Why shouldn't they charge what they want for what goes through them - when I go to the time and effort of digging up your street to lay my cables I'll certainly be charging as much as I can get away with to send stuff over them.

I'm not talking about this high court ruling or that legal wrangling, I'm talking more fundamentally than that.  How is the statement that "Companies can charge what they like for using their infrastructure" not correct.  There are enough people who know what they're talking about saying its incorrect that I'm inclined to believe them, and that's fine.  I don't, however, understand the objection to it.

A small number of major ISPs do own the bulk of the actual cables and telefibre networks in a particular area (or a country), the main grid. That will sometimes be the old national phone companies that are now turned ISPs and broadband providers, with every other ISP being sort of a "tenant" on their cable grid. Most ISPs only really own, or control, the stretch just at your wall and the "out" where you plug in plus their own system of routers, hubs and control lines along the way. If it's mobile and your signal goes through thin air, the situation is a bit different again of course, but the "hard owner" of most of the highways of the web tends to be state-owned fibre companies and phone providers. Anyway, there's no single owner of the entire network of course, any more than there's a single owner of the network of European (E) interstate highways.

I think my main argument against the idea that private companies have a right to charge what they want and the way they want for web access, as long as they can get people to pay, is that the web and its tech wasn't built by private businesses. In most places it has relied heavily on state spending, public-sponsored network/LAN building and state-funded technological development, research and education about computers and phone/network technology.

Much of the basic technology and concepts - methods of routing, automated data modulation and translation, wireless methods of control, better and faster circuits, satellites etc - are legacies of the '60s and '70s space race which was massively funded by the US government. The early networks in many countries were built by universities or by the military, with lots of support by the state. The fibre networks, or the cables that used to do the job on the same stretches. are essentially the old national phone grids. The merging of a lot of scattered small networks, which were often only giving access to researchers or officers with special permit, into a wide, open and tightly-knit international network that carpets all of our lives, has been heavily pushed by states, not just by private corporations. If it had been left to the companies and local civic initioatives, we would never have had the kind of internet rollout we have seen over the last quarter of a century, nor would there have been this kind of raising of broadband speeds, because there wouldn't have been any demand for them. Maybe something like the tight web as we know it would have existed in a few regions, like California, southern England, some Chinese and Japanese urban areas and so on, but in most parts of the world it would have been much, much sparser. In my view that goes a long way to motivating why the web should be seen as a public and open utility, a medium which should stay open and without arbitrary barriers to its entry and use by all of us, just like no one would accept if some highways were only open to people who could tell the highway officers where they were going, who could show a proof of income above a certain level for last year or who were citizens in the country (that many motorways are payroads is an entirely different matter).


Quote from: KythiaI should rephrase my question: why is the internet expected to be special in this way?  Is it simply that there is a feeling we now have a chance to make something so?  Because that seems kinda gross: screw you "majority of the world that don't have internet access" - we're writing off any medium you can access

Because the web has now become so pervasive, the managing and handling of so much that used to be done "the analog way" has been moved online, that it's become undoable to handle everyday things and get ahead in life without steady web access on your own terms. If I'm to order train or plane tickets these days, I need to do it online, same with managing my daily bank business and bills - doing it on the phone /edit: I mean making an old-style voice call for railway or airplane tickets, not doing it with your smartphone screen, of course/ or (still worse) going to the bank and paying or cashing in a bill or a money order over the counter takes an impossible amount of time, not the time of dialling a number or riding to the bank but the time you'll be kept waiting. That kind of service has been winded down to the point of discontinuing, and many bank offices in this country don't even handle cash over the counter anymore. For several years before that, they took out extortionate fees if you wanted to send or cash in a money order on paper or settle a bill there - it was very clearly about "educating" everyone that you do it at home or not at all...

If I'm looking for a new job or even checking up on a particular job offer I've heard of, checking out what's on at the movies or on the tv, looking for somebody's phone number and address*, if you're communicating with school about the children's latest projects and homework or their grades, then you need to do it online and you need to be able to do it on your own terms and when you have the time - a public library or internet café pc in the daytime often won't do. If you've got kids, they need the computer and the web to prove themselves through their homework and their studies, many schools these days take it for granted that every kid has broadband at home. I could go on and on, but I guess the point has been made: the broadband era is here - it's been here for a long time - the old analog ways of doing things have often been discontinued (remember when post offices and banks were packed with people on many afternoons and especially during the weeks before Christmas? Remember when we bought most of our books and music in actual book stores and record shops?). You need web access just about every day now and while it's okay if you've got the hardware and the highway at home, as a state of affairs it's not something where most of us have had the choice whether we could stay outside and do things the old way.


*Phone books on paper were discontinued in Sweden in 2012, and had been much more unreliable and incomplete than the online variety for several years.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

gaggedLouise

#39
Just for the record after this outline of the broadband-borne society, I do think there should be a bit more active planning for backup systems to use if there's a large and lengthy network blackout or a wipe-out of data from servers, for whatever reason (terrorism? war? extreme solar storms? weather or climate disasters? a kind of reversal of the original goal of Arpanet, the forerunner of the internet...) Or if old data have become unreadable on current devices and systems - that one's a problem that's sure to grow in the future, for every new change of platforms, programs and tech standards: a huge challenge for libraries, education and archives of all kinds.

There needs to be some systems to fall back on even during a temporary downtime when we've become this dependent on the online sphere. But unfortunately, making plans for events that might happen once every ten years or even less often in a given area, and implementing those plans to stay safe, isn't a hot priority in today's world.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

gaggedLouise

#40
One more reason why the internet is not comparable to tv networks or newspapers and their right to charge what they want and choose the kind of content they want to publish. Most people, companies, homes or schools only have one ISP - at most, you might have one for the stationary computer and one for mobile broadband, but that's rather rare and having two different ISPs wired to your wall connection is impossible in most homes or offices, given how the fibre/cable network is set up, just like you can't have two different electricity providers for the same home/single-user building unit. With newspapers and magazines, we're free to balance out their bias by holding or reading a couple of different titles on a daily basis, that option doesn't really exist with broadband providers without prohibitive costs and efforts. That's a strong reason why ISPs should be seen as having a kind of public duty, and should be required not to give privileges to one group of sites, or to some kinds of content, or to bleep out some sites from what their customers might access.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Kythia

That makes a whole load of sense, thanks for taking the time to explain that, Louise.

Next question:  There are five or six websites I visit regularly.  If the rest of the internet was cut off from me it might well take me a few weeks to even notice.  Is it not easier for my internet guys to say "Oh, Kythia is looking for a website.  Probably either Elliquiy or Jezebel", speed that up with a corresponding slowdown in everything else?  And would that ease not translate into cheaper fees for my wifi?  Sort of like the packages you, Louise, mentioned above.
242037

gaggedLouise

#42
Quote from: Kythia on January 19, 2014, 09:05:08 AM
That makes a whole load of sense, thanks for taking the time to explain that, Louise.

Next question:  There are five or six websites I visit regularly.  If the rest of the internet was cut off from me it might well take me a few weeks to even notice.  Is it not easier for my internet guys to say "Oh, Kythia is looking for a website.  Probably either Elliquiy or Jezebel", speed that up with a corresponding slowdown in everything else?  And would that ease not translate into cheaper fees for my wifi?  Sort of like the packages you, Louise, mentioned above.

Yes, possibly, but I'd say it would set a bad precedent of customer relations. ISPs run, I suppose, to some extent on what they judge they can get away with versus customers, web site owners and other operators and agents on the web. If "pick twenty web sites that you'll have access to and we'll speed those up for you, and slow down or block all others" became a permitted and current alternative, it would inevitaböly pull the corollary that everyone else would have to pay more if they wanted wider web access, or free and indiscriminate access, because that's how marketing works these days. So you'd get those sites, but a rapidly growing number of other people would be threatened by rising costs without any improved service, even by other ISPs than the one you're dealing with, and they would most likely also think this new scheme was

-intrusive: we don't want to have to spell out to our ISPs or any other general businessmen that we frequent Elliquiy, various sex-related sites or let's say read underground comics or Batman fanfic. Not because it's shameful but 'cause it's private.

-difficult if there are more than one person using the pc or smartphone regularly.

-a downgrading of the entire idea of searching things and options freely, without having to know in advance who you're going to ask or what you're going to end up reading or buying.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Kythia on January 19, 2014, 09:05:08 AM
That makes a whole load of sense, thanks for taking the time to explain that, Louise.

Next question:  There are five or six websites I visit regularly.  If the rest of the internet was cut off from me it might well take me a few weeks to even notice.  Is it not easier for my internet guys to say "Oh, Kythia is looking for a website.  Probably either Elliquiy or Jezebel", speed that up with a corresponding slowdown in everything else?  And would that ease not translate into cheaper fees for my wifi?  Sort of like the packages you, Louise, mentioned above.

I think the problem is that if they are paying that much attention to you individually in the first place, they could do what you suggest or instead cut your speed for everything and offer a 'personalized package' that restores speedy access to the websites you frequent most often. One of these two options gives them more money.

Vekseid

Quote from: Kythia on January 19, 2014, 09:05:08 AM
That makes a whole load of sense, thanks for taking the time to explain that, Louise.

Next question:  There are five or six websites I visit regularly.  If the rest of the internet was cut off from me it might well take me a few weeks to even notice.  Is it not easier for my internet guys to say "Oh, Kythia is looking for a website.  Probably either Elliquiy or Jezebel", speed that up with a corresponding slowdown in everything else?  And would that ease not translate into cheaper fees for my wifi?  Sort of like the packages you, Louise, mentioned above.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'speed up'. Unless something is seriously wrong, you make a request to E's server, and it fires off a set of packets containing a ~quarter-megabyte or so of data to you. In most cases, Elliquiy can't feasibly be made 'faster' on your end, unless you have your own local cache turned off or somesuch, and most cases of hosts making E faster 'normally' (imposing their own cache) tends to fuck more up than it solves - thus my planned move to https.

The ~100-200 packets per request Elliquiy sends is not a particularly noticeable in terms of overall routing - they get to you as fast as they can. Blocks on E would not be based on QoS, but rather on politics (movements to ban adult content, for example). Moreover, accessing Elliquiy involves you sending a lot of data to E (polling and such), so Elliquiy is a much more 'bandwidth-neutral' site than say, Youtube is (by some orders of magnitude).

This complicates arguments for the sort of NN violations currently being discussed - it would be more likely for your ISP to just block access to E altogether, but if we're on https, we look more like a bank than a porn site