Net neutrality: Todays desicion isn't the end

I personally disagree with one thing in the article. If e-mailing an elected official gets no attention what good is a text. Whereas a phone line lighting up does indeed turn their head. I’m in a district with only democrats but if not I would be lighting up some lines. Also if I’m not mistaken the court system could very well get involved here. And, if all else fails keep the faith because in less then two years the voters will have a shot.

I’m hoping the ISPs keep their promises and don’t crap on the little guy (i.e., the end-users). If a service provider decides to say, charge Netflix more for the same amount of bandwidth they are using now, Netflix will have to pass that extra $ down to the users. That could happen across the board, but what really worries me is getting charged to use websites that are free right now, in the form of higher internet usage costs. Comcast could say, “Oh, I see you spend a lot of time at Blenderartists.org, so I’m going to have to add $5 to your bill. Amazon? They fought against ending Net Neutrality. $5. Walmart.com? $5…” and so on. Don’t laugh – it could very well happen. Maybe not as blatant as that, but watch your internet bill carefully from now on.

Thank you Pai (a-hole) for destroying the internet.

Relying on corporations to keep their word in the face of temptation is a big leap. There’s lots of cash to be made. And I doubt they’re too concerned how they go about getting it. I don’t think out right abuse will happen immediately after it’s finalised. People have short memories. So I’m sure they’ll wait a sufficient length of time before getting down to business.
Just long enough for people to get used to it.

I don’t fully understand how this would work. It just seems to me that net neutrality is what users universally want so if one ISP starts ignoring it, what would stop another from remaining neutral and taking all of the unhappy customers from the first one? Who is going to want to use censored services? I think net will remain neutral no matter what politicians do. It’s just not a choice someone can make. It is as it is. It’s not possible to change it by laws. How is it going with piracy?

Well there are companies and groups out there who are getting set to go to court to ensure NN stays intact. Even members of Congress are looking to block this decision, so I wouldn’t give up hope yet. The internet was always meant to be free for everyone with regards to where you can go and what you can accomplish, so if some large ISP decides to circumvent that and start charging folks for stuff that should be free, then I think the users will eventually win that battle. I hope so anyway.

Surely you don’t believe there is any competition in that business. Well not in many locations at least. Here we have Verizon and Cox and they are both high. And, yes it’s understood the content providers are milking them especially sports in the US. Many localities by law can only have one carrier. Hell many rural areas are lucky to have one.

By the way several years ago the president of Verizon told a business group he owned The Internet. With that line of thinking who knows what they will or will not do. The fact is unbridled capitalism has never worked. My parents realized that early on in the 20th century and it has been proven again and again. It does however line the pockets of the already rich.

And sadly my understanding is much net traffic runs through the US. So if they pull down the net I have to assume that effects our European friends. So once again something is underway the vast majority of Americans oppose.

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Maybe it’s really different in different locations. I did not think about it. I don’t know, I am lucky enough to live in a place where 100 - 300 Mbit/s connections are standard. Most of us will not care if somebody cuts Netflix speed in half. There is not much chance for funny business for ISPs in Lithuania with everybody used to these speeds. People will just switch to whatever provider is faster. We are past that point where somebody is able to offer something less than convenient and get away with it no matter the law. I am just thinking, how far behind can US be from a country most of you will not find on the map?..

One thing that Net Neutrality supporters must answer is the reason why they think it’s wrong to have internet traffic management so the existing infrastructure won’t break down with gridlock.

For instance, why should a simple HTML page get the exact same bandwidth as a game streaming site? Outlawing the management of the billions of bits that flow every millisecond means the companies are forced to take the dumb approach to the problem of making things run smoothly (it’s like outlawing traffic flow management techniques and expecting cities to just make the roads wider).


Also, the mandate that cities only give the option of one carrier, wouldn’t that count as government interference in the marketplace (ie. constraining the very concept of what the free market is supposed to look like)? Sounds then like Net Neutrality is the perceived answer to a problem created by the state and not the companies.

I think you’re missing the gist of it. It’s not just about bandwidth – it’s about devious practices by ISPs… basically doing whatever the hell they want with your access to the internet. Title II was put in place to prevent ISPs from doing shady things.

Limiting bandwidth is just one of those shady things. Small companies that rely on the internet to stay in business are now at a disadvantage because they may not be able to afford to pay to NOT have their site put in the slow lane. Google searches give priority to sites with faster connections, so if a small company is having access to their site slowed down because they can’t afford to pay, then you can see the disadvantage they have. It’s bad news any way you slice it.

Why would you need Net Neutrality as a separate concept at all then, most of that could possibly be solved by requiring companies to live up to whatever they advertise on TV and being honest about it, the web, billboards, and other mediums (there’s a heck of a lot of misleading, dishonest, and even false claims).

The companies would not be able to give you claims like full/unlimited internet access if parts of it is accessed only with an additional fee (and combined with a ban on state-sanctioned monopolies, an ISP that blocks YouTube would give an opening to a competitor because many consumers won’t buy into it).

In a sense, you boil down entire packages of regulations to a simple set of general bulletpoints and commandments.

I’m just thankful it’s at an ISP level, meaning that only Trump’s US is affected. And what do you expect from a man that came from business (many failed businesses at that). Just another way to feed business that can afford it, and screw the little guy.

Trying to explain this to a democrat is like trying to explain why a $15.00/hr minimum wage won’t work for the same reasons.

Unless, of course, you’re a democrat in which case the “trickle down” you just described doesn’t exist and if it does exist then it doesn’t work.

Either way, good post.

One of the things I think you are missing here is that telecommunications because of the cost of infrastructure is a long way from an ideal marketplace. This means that the idea that competition will solve these problems won’t necessarily materialise in practice. Ten years ago I would say that the problem with removing net neutrality is that it allows the large ISPs to distort the market (making sure the platforms that they can extort money out of win over better products and services) today I think the big players are entrenched enough that they will simply cough up the money to ISPs to get the fast channels and this will further entrench those platforms as new competition will face a significantly larger barrier to entry. In effect it will increase flexibility of what the ISPs can do at the cost of innovation else where.

The fact many places have only one carrier by law was a condition years ago to even get a carrier. And, it’s something locations have regretted ever since.

Think of cable TV where you can hardly afford the second tier package yet the gated community down the road hardly has anyone not receiving the mega poloosa top tier package with all the bells and whistles. They can wipe a kids ass from the second tee. And since they have parked their money on Wall Street it’s all good. But, the majority of us are not trust fund kids so that divide simply gets bigger.

However, that is entertainment pure and simple. Well almost in spite of PBS. Whereas The Net was conceived to transfer knowledge. And if I was some cracker politician in Po-Dunk that would scare me. Why hell the unwashed masses can now access anything in counties where one family ran things for years. Indeed they were the only college graduates in the county. So while they think of knowledge as a birthright the creators of The Net viewed it as simply a right.

Ace Dragon I remember such days whereas you do not. Now imagine The Net with tiers like cable. The reason we don’t have the bandwidth other countries do is there was no incentive. With contracts locking localities in it’s simply charging what the market will tolerate. And, with many localities connected by bridges built doing the depression and struggling to pay employee pensions cable is the least of their concerns. Especially since they realize federal sharing in the coming days will be less. This ruling has facets we can’t even imagine Hell I can’t even voice some concerns without taking this into a political realm which is prohibited in this forum.

But, I will say this. Young people are dying defending our right to vote. My uncle hit that beach in France many years ago just trying to survive but in doing so I can get off my ass and vote. It’s a gift he protected although that day I’m sure that was the last thing on his mind.

Now I’m out of here because I’m a second away from a rant closing this thread down probably. Happy Blendering and keep the faith.

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ad hoc mesh net could fix this but we need a orchestration app based on 4d
(worldPos+(linv*timestep))

I think repealing it was a bad move. However, I suspect big ISPs will abuse it and wind up regulated as a utility again. It’s why they were classified under Title II in the first place.

It should be easier today than it ever was to start an ISP company that promises to do what the big carriers won’t (which will be even more true if local governments are banned from constraining the marketplace in the area of competition).

With options like Kickstarter and IndieGogo, we see everyday folks throwing millions of dollars at startups doing everything from video games to coolers (many being ideas that traditional investors won’t even consider because of concern that profits won’t grow fast enough).

Also, we need to remember that we now have web technology that powers great and innovative services, but some of them such as game streaming consume so much data and bandwidth it makes YouTube look like an HTML page (so the ISP’s have a choice to either spend tens of billions annually on expanding the infrastructure or find ways to manage data so the existing network can last longer before it becomes obsolete).

As I mentioned before, if the companies were required to be honest about their marketing and live up to their advertising, then it will be up to consumers as to whether or not they want to be enablers by choosing to spend additional money.

Finally, someone noted that this is a way for them to get revenue from cord cutters. Have you seen the trend where you would have to subscribe to a dozen or more streaming services just to get the shows you want, the cord will wind up being significantly cheaper in the long run and the Internet/Cable providers will see a decent amount of revenue come back.

Mr.Musk may handle this one as well.

Google already gave the ISP’s a kick in the pants when they started Google Fiber, now we are seeing gigabit internet speeds taking root in dozens of cities across the US.

Perhaps the same can be true for ensuring that unlimited web access remains a thing (could be Google again but also a different company). The ISP’s would have to make changes if they want to keep their marketshare.