Net Neutrality...

[jesmu84]

Is a big unnatural carnal knowledgeing deal. And the FCC/lobbyists/ISPs are trying to kill it.

Here's a ELI5:

You're probably familiar with your electric bill, right? You get charged for what you use, not how you use it. The power company doesn't care whether you have a drill press in your garage, a server farm in your basement, or an herb garden under some heavy-duty lights.

The argument happening now is about the same thing, but with Internet access.

Since the creation of the Internet, the federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission, has required your Internet provider to treat all of your activity equally. Your Internet company is not allowed to charge you differently for what you do with your Internet. They're certainly allowed to charge you more if you use more, but they're not allowed to charge you more if you use it for video games instead of streaming video, or for running your own server. That's the principle of Net Neutrality.

The announcement today was an expected one from the new chairman of the FCC, who was appointed by the new president of the United States. On Dec. 14, the FCC will vote on whether or not Net Neutrality should exist.

If the proposal passes as expected, companies will be allowed to charge you differently, based on what you use the Internet for. They might also decide to simply not provide Internet access to specific applications, websites or uses.

Nothing requires these companies to do this. The repeal of Net Neutrality simply allows them to do so, if they wish.

People are concerned by this because in most places within the United States, there is limited competition for Internet access. If a consumer is unhappy with a company's practices, there may not be an easy alternative.

If you're outside the United States, this would have indirect effects on you. If companies do take advantage of Net Neutrality repeal and institute preferential treatment, it would affect how people use the Internet. Users in the United States would have an economic incentive to use particular websites, and those websites would receive more traffic. For websites that rely on user-created content, that would have a significant impact.

In short, your access would not be affected, but what you access would be affected.

What can you do?
-Call/email/tweet/fax/etc your local reps
-Go to battleforthenet.com

A few more videos on net neutrality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtt2aSV8wdw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak

Please note: I do NOT think this should be a partisan issue whatsoever. Unfortunately, Congress and lobbying has turned it into a partisan issue in the last 5-7 years.

The really bad part is that each bill that was sent through the house or senate (SOPA, etc) that threatened neutrality was rejected due to voter influence. Now with it going through the FCC, it is less subjected to voter influence. 3 republicans and 2 democrats are voting to determine the next step. (Un)Shockingly, they're voting along party lines.

[Vander Blue Man Group]

This cannot be allowed to happen.

[#TheThing]

It should be killed. Dumbest thing out there to regulate based on a 1930's utility.  Don't you guys understand the world changes. The constitution is a living document.  We continue to evolve.  Net neutrality is an oxymoron.  This is a great area where light touch of gov't is correct in my opinion.  Other areas of gov't require a heavy touch.  Let the market innovate and create, get gov't out of the way on this one.

What you have posted doesn't address at all the stifling effects of net neutrality.  You make it sound like your side didn't have the FCC supporting this just last year under a different administration, their own lobbyists.  Let's not pretend that didn't happen, because it did.  Powerful corporations on both sides of this, not the one side you are portraying in my opinion.

[jesmu84]

It should be killed. Dumbest thing out there to regulate based on a 1930's utility.  Don't you guys understand the world changes. The constitution is a living document.  We continue to evolve.  Net neutrality is an oxymoron.  This is a great area where light touch of gov't is correct in my opinion.  Other areas of gov't require a heavy touch.  Let the market innovate and create, get gov't out of the way on this one.

What you have posted doesn't address at all the stifling effects of net neutrality.  You make it sound like your side didn't have the FCC supporting this just last year under a different administration, their own lobbyists.  Let's not pretend that didn't happen, because it did.  Powerful corporations on both sides of this, not the one side you are portraying in my opinion.

You couldn't be more wrong. Though, I can see why you have such a strong bias.

Further, I didn't say anything about sides. Actually said it shouldn't be partisan. Way to project your own shortcomings.

Internet should be treated like power, water, etc. As a commodity you pay to use, without companies influencing the use.

[Jockey]

Let's see if the little lady (chicas) can destroy another thread.

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

This should really be a both side of the aisle agreement. Cmon now, net neutrality is just common sense...This seriously sounds like something at the start of a authoritarian novel.

[#TheThing]

The other perspective, including the astute analysis that investment in infrastructure went down for the first time after these rules were put in place in 2015.

This country should be encouraging investment in broadband and fixed wireless, not the other way around. This is the necessary fuel to do so.

I read yours, will you take a moment to read mine?

http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-net-neutrality-podcast

[Tugg Speedman]

The 2020 democratic nominee for President, Mark Cuban is against net neutrality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/24/why-mark-cuban-opposes-net-neutrality-i-want-there-to-be-fast-lanes/?utm_term=.33e7bda82908

The example above about electricity is way off.  You pay for the electricity you use, kilowatt/hours.  In other words, a variable cost.  So yes if you have a drill Press in the basement, you pay more for it than another person that only has a reading light in their basement.

If the net was the same, you’d pay by the downloaded gig.  You don’t, you pay a flat fee.

37% of All North American internet traffic is Netflix

https://www.google.com/amp/appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-share-of-internet-traffic-in-north-america-compared-with-3-for-apples-itunes/amp/

30% is porn

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3187682

So two-thirds of internet traffic is Netflix and porn streaming.

It clogs everything for everyone else.  You should pay more to jack off so everyone else can have a better online experience.

[buckchuckler]

Great.  Can't wait for my comcast bill to get more partitioned, complicated and nickel-dimed.

Probably leads to more invasion of privacy issues as well.

[#TheThing]

You couldn't be more wrong. Though, I can see why you have such a strong bias.

Further, I didn't say anything about sides. Actually said it shouldn't be partisan. Way to project your own shortcomings.

Internet should be treated like power, water, etc. As a commodity you pay to use, without companies influencing the use.

Your words absolutely projected which side you are on this in the very first post, just as most of your threads do.  Otherwise you wouldn't start the threads in the first place. 

The internet is not a utility. It most certainly isn't a commodity.  Not yet anyway. The cost of running broadband into rural areas is enormously expensive in a country this size.  Even dense urban deployment is not cheap, but at least you get bang for your buck with users per bits. 

You want to stifle investment, stifle growth, just like we have with water and power, then go for it. That's exactly what happened starting in 2015, with almost $4 billion in fewer investment.  I find that to be a really bad idea.  The pipes used to allow the internet to foster and grow were largely (not entirely) done so by business investment.  Now all of a sudden people want that for free without allowing those that put the billions into building it to recoup their investment?  Plus, if companies are willing to spend more to be on the fast lane, why is that a problem?  Big powerhouses like Google want this to go through. They were in the pockets in a major way with the previous administration.  Those that built the pipes don't want it to go forward, corporations like Verizon.  Powerful arguments on both sides, but we are close to 2020 and applying 1936 laws to govern this space?  Relic thinking in my opinion.

[#TheThing]

Great.  Can't wait for my comcast bill to get more partitioned, complicated and nickel-dimed.

Probably leads to more invasion of privacy issues as well.

But that is exactly what will happen if net neutrality continues.  The gatekeepers will charge like a utility.  You want utility options like Jesu states? OK, then you get it.  We pay by the kilowatt, we pay by the gallon of water consumed.  Get ready to pay by the megabit purchased.  Is that what you want?  That's how a utility operates.

[Vander Blue Man Group]

But that is exactly what will happen if net neutrality continues.  The gatekeepers will charge like a utility.  You want utility options like Jesu states? OK, then you get it.  We pay by the kilowatt, we pay by the gallon of water consumed.  Get ready to pay by the megabit purchased.  Is that what you want?  That's how a utility operates.

This isn't all about commerce. Or maybe you realize that and just don't give a sh*t.

[Jockey]

This isn't all about commerce. Or maybe you realize that and just don't give a sh*t.

Of course he knows that.

Why is the little fellow always allowed to come back after being banned?

[Vander Blue Man Group]

Of course he knows that.

Why is the little fellow always allowed to come back after being banned?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Get banned five or more times and keep coming back then you've got some issues.

[tower912]

In this thread, all Chico's has done is express an opinion multiple times.  Save the outrage for when it is earned.

[Lennys Tap]

I don't know enough about net neutrality to have an informed opinion. But there are obviously two sides.

In this thread, side#1 insists there is only one side and when a poster brings up the reasons behind side #2's thinking side #1 attacks the person rather than answering his argument.

Hmmm....

[Hards Alumni]

But that is exactly what will happen if net neutrality continues.  The gatekeepers will charge like a utility.  You want utility options like Jesu states? OK, then you get it.  We pay by the kilowatt, we pay by the gallon of water consumed.  Get ready to pay by the megabit purchased.  Is that what you want?  That's how a utility operates.

You are actually CONSUMING something when you pay for power and water.  When you pay for data, NOTHING is consumed.  A much better example of the internet are state and federal roads.  We don't pay per mile, we pay for the service... since that's what it is.

There should be no change in how internet is brought into people's homes.  NO to throttling, NO to content blocking, and NO to forced advertisement. 

The 2020 democratic nominee for President, Mark Cuban is against net neutrality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/24/why-mark-cuban-opposes-net-neutrality-i-want-there-to-be-fast-lanes/?utm_term=.33e7bda82908

The example above about electricity is way off.  You pay for the electricity you use, kilowatt/hours.  In other words, a variable cost.  So yes if you have a drill Press in the basement, you pay more for it than another person that only has a reading light in their basement.

If the net was the same, you’d pay by the downloaded gig.  You don’t, you pay a flat fee.

37% of All North American internet traffic is Netflix

https://www.google.com/amp/appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-share-of-internet-traffic-in-north-america-compared-with-3-for-apples-itunes/amp/

30% is porn

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3187682

So two-thirds of internet traffic is Netflix and porn streaming.

It clogs everything for everyone else.  You should pay more to jack off so everyone else can have a better online experience.

Nothing is 'clogged' you simpleton.  This isn't sewer pipes.  I'm not even going to address the Mark Cuban comment, since you are just trying to be inflammatory.

Your words absolutely projected which side you are on this in the very first post, just as most of your threads do.  Otherwise you wouldn't start the threads in the first place. 

The internet is not a utility. It most certainly isn't a commodity.  Not yet anyway. The cost of running broadband into rural areas is enormously expensive in a country this size.  Even dense urban deployment is not cheap, but at least you get bang for your buck with users per bits. 

You want to stifle investment, stifle growth, just like we have with water and power, then go for it. That's exactly what happened starting in 2015, with almost $4 billion in fewer investment.  I find that to be a really bad idea.  The pipes used to allow the internet to foster and grow were largely (not entirely) done so by business investment.  Now all of a sudden people want that for free without allowing those that put the billions into building it to recoup their investment?  Plus, if companies are willing to spend more to be on the fast lane, why is that a problem?  Big powerhouses like Google want this to go through. They were in the pockets in a major way with the previous administration.  Those that built the pipes don't want it to go forward, corporations like Verizon.  Powerful arguments on both sides, but we are close to 2020 and applying 1936 laws to govern this space?  Relic thinking in my opinion.

Absolute horse plop.  The tax payer has subsidized the telecom companies running of cable and fiber for DECADES, and what is worse is that they haven't even done what they've promised while still keeping a pile of money.  You can preach all you want about government waste and inefficiency, but the telecom companies have been fleecing the American public to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars for decades.  We've paid all this money for what?  Slow internet and high prices.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394.html

The internet has been funded like the Interstate highway system, yet we're getting gravel roads with potholes instead of the four lane highways we were promised.

[warriorchick]

Let's see if the little lady (chicas) can destroy another thread.

Someone who is as socially progressive as you claim to be should know that trying to insult someone by calling them a woman is offensive.

[jesmu84]

On top of what Hards posted, here are examples of what ISPs would like to be able to do more of:

Also for anyone who tells you that "Net Neutrality is solving a problem that doesn't exist"... or anything along those lines:

Here's a brief history on what the internet companies were doing that triggered Net Neutrality to be put in place:

MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.

COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.

TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.

AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.

MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.

AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.

EUROPE: A 2012 report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications found that violations of Net Neutrality affected at least one in five users in Europe. The report found that blocked or slowed connections to services like VOIP, peer-to-peer technologies, gaming applications and email were commonplace.

VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.

AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling app on its customers’ iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.

VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.

Source has links to each case where you can read the legal documents about it: https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history

[jesmu84]

In terms of the "flat fee" pricing and the "fast lanes", people already pay for tiered speeds or data caps. So, it's not like it's all-you-can-eat and everyone is paying the same.

If current providers feel they aren't getting their investment back with increasing access by building infrastructure, then don't. Let the market dictate. Another company may come in and try it instead. Municipalities/local gov'ts/cities may give it a try. Let them have at it. Supply and demand.

[MU82]

I am strongly in favor of net neutrality.

Having promised JB that I will try harder to refrain from political talk even if others start it, I'll leave it at that.

Except to say that if chicos and Smuggles are against it, it makes me feel better about being for it.

[GB Warrior]

I disagree strongly with the premise that the internet is not a utility. It is the bedrock of our economy, which granted is already highly walled off to most of America, but this puts it over the top. I'll agree with the Chicos that the constitution is a living document. Let's talk about the First Amendment. At some point, the freedom of speech evolves too. What the end of net neutrality threatens is access to that speech, and that's just as dangerous.

It's not hard to see how this gets abused. The comment about how people should pay more for their Netflix and porn bandwidth? Sure, in principle, that makes sense. The problem is that you have deregulated, so you've now lost the ability to have an opinion on the WHAT gets restricted. If it's porn, no one openly cries about it. But what if, all of a sudden, you're throttling access to, say, a politician's website because he or she favors safeguards that are suboptimal to the ISPs. Or to take a slightly more optimistic view of the world, what if this happens just because one candidate had deeper pockets? It's really only a matter of time before this finds its way into campaign finance.

In a completely distopian view of American society, I think this makes a bad problem of disinformation and "information silos" worse. Coupled with Pai's edict that a single company can own more than one media medium in a single market, you'll see more consolidation and a greater disconnectedness in the content Americans consume.

[Hards Alumni]

Someone who is as socially progressive as you claim to be should know that insulting someone by calling them a woman is offensive.

[Tugg Speedman]

In terms of the "flat fee" pricing and the "fast lanes", people already pay for tiered speeds or data caps. So, it's not like it's all-you-can-eat and everyone is paying the same.

If current providers feel they aren't getting their investment back with increasing access by building infrastructure, then don't. Let the market dictate. Another company may come in and try it instead. Municipalities/local gov'ts/cities may give it a try. Let them have at it. Supply and demand.

The current pricing is unfair.  Why not allow for a "non-streaming" option for access?  This takes so little bandwidth it is could be free.  What not allow for ad-supported access at a lower cost?  Net Neutrality will not allow this. (Right now, Net providers can charge for differing speeds, not differing access.  But, if you understand MIPS, most way overpay for fast access they do not need.  Eventually, they will understand this and this way of pricing will get more efficient).

If you don't like any of this, pay more and not deal with it?

Lastly, this conversation assumes that net access is a done and stable technology.  Hards diatribe has this as its assumption ... just lay the fiber and you're done. This is a utility type of thinking, just lay the pipes and water access is done, same as it has been for 2,000 years.

But net access is not "done," a lot of R&D and innovation is to come.  Net neutrality discourages this innovation.

[Tugg Speedman]

Most of the net neutrality supporters are afraid that the loss of neutrality means they are going have to pay to get access to free streaming porn (or Netflix)

This is the root of the support for net neutrality.