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FCC ready to roll back and gut Net Neutrality issues


AluminumHaste

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Well that fucking sucks, but I can't say i'm surprised that corporate interests hold more importance than citizen interests.

 

There is absolutely no benefit to the people having net neutrality undone, it purely benefits ISPs. And with no net neutrality they no longer have to treat all internet traffic as equal.. so I wonder what payment plan access to TDM will be on? Will it be only an extra $5.99 Mod Community Package or the $7.99 Classic Forum Site Package? :P

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Correction: Ajit Pai wasn't filled into "the swamp" by Trump. Pai was already an FCC commissioner. He was appointed in May 2012 by Barack Obama (big mistake) at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell, even though the Democrats had control of the Senate at that time. Pai was elevated to the position of FCC Chairman by President Trump. Apparently, only three members of the five FCC Commissioners can be of the same party, but that is enough to get a party line majority vote on many issues.

 

The net neutrality scaremongering is entirely overrated, however. There is a lot of doom and gloom talk when the reality is that most ISPs are going to continue shifting your packets regardless of origin/destination and your quality of service is still mostly determined by your observed throughput (megabits per second) rather than crazy zero rating anti-net neutrality schemes, which are only really relevant for mobile/4G data use. You don't need a "fast lane" if your Internet service is already faster than your needs (probably 50 Mbps is enough for a lot of people).

 

Let's say your ISP does implement a "fast lane". Why would TDM Forums or you need to pay for faster access? It's mostly text with some images. "Fast lanes" are mostly relevant in the case of video providers like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc. (and again, much more relevant on mobile Internet than wired). But the average throughput people have to those sites is on the order of just 3 or 4 megabits per second. Here's Netflix's October 2017 report. Who leads the list of large ISPs? The EVIL COMCAST at 3.88 Mbps... and it's not even an optic fiber service. Add the "small ISP" pro-net neutrality 1 GIGABIT PER SECOND Google Fiber and you can see it is only 1.8% faster than Comcast at a whopping 3.95 Mbps.

 

Furthermore, the amount of throughput needed to stream video is decreasing due to new codecs. VP9 and H.265 have decreased requirements, and AOMedia Video 1 is likely to do so again. So if you are just streaming 720p quality video (which is good enough for most people unless you are getting into VR video), then your throughput/bandwidth requirements will decrease in about 3 years as the new codec(s) start to get used. At the same time, bandwidth will get cheaper as it always has and adoption of 10GbE to 100GbE switches will increase (25 and 50 GbE have been added into the mix).

 

I like the EFF as much as the next guy, but the death of net neutrality will not be as dire as everyone is saying. The elimination of ISP privacy rules was a bigger deal, but even those had only existed for some months and hadn't gone into effect (meaning no change).

Edited by jaxa
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I'm leaning towards maintaining Net Neutrality but I must admit that I'm a little torn here.

 

Net Neutrality is largely beneficial to big "new" media corporations like Google who have used

it as part of their loss leader strategy to gain monopolistic market share. With that fuel

they have just about established "Regulatory Capture". Google, now emboldened with this power,

now regularly performs their own violations of the Net Neutrality standard by de-prioritizing

search results or marking sites as dangerous or spam if they don't match Google ideological

stances or financial interests. We have the appearance of Net Neutrality regulation but the

reality is that Google has made much of the Internet appear the way that Net Neutrality

proponents feared it would.

 

What needs to happen is both a Net Neutrality standard for ISP's and another for Search providers.

And proper anti-trust regulation...

 

Only Europe seems to be trying to keep Google in check to address the latter.

 

Finally, though I'm not terribly convinced of it, I can also see another side of things with regard to

the notion of "throttling" too.

 

In theory, without the strictures of the current Net Neutrality in place, a new ISP could offer

less costly service by managing data based on QoS requirements and data prioritization other factors.

It would also be more environmentally responsible to allocate only needed bandwidth rather than allocating

100% bandwidth for all use cases.

 

Net Neutrality has made some strange bedfellows recently. The normally "anti-globalist" Julian Assange and

Kim Dotcom have both come out in favor of it (NN) while also seeing George Soro's "Open Society Foundation"

heavily lobby for it. No doubt, the former simply trying to prevent ISP's from double-dipping their

bandwidth costs while the latter trying to keep their partners Google, Twitter, etc fed with free bandwidth

to spread their globalist agendas.

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Correction: Ajit Pai wasn't filled into "the swamp" by Trump. Pai was already an FCC commissioner. He was appointed in May 2012 by Barack Obama (big mistake) at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell, even though the Democrats had control of the Senate at that time.

 

That's called being bipartisan and is what governments should be doing.

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Well seeing as how Comcast has been asking for "reasonable paid prioritization", I would say yeah, it's very Doom and Gloom.

Remember that most regulations are in response to something, and whenever companies want those regulations relaxed or removed, it's rarely in the interest of the public or their own customers.

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Jaxa, I vehemently disagree.

 

Quality reply. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are too busy to write up any arguments right now.

 

There is a lot of misinformation and propaganda out there on a lot of topics. Your recovery will be slow, but worthwhile.

 

 

That's called being bipartisan and is what governments should be doing.

 

Let's see Trump appoint a liberal Supreme Court Justice, or the next Democratic President appoint a conservative.

 

FCC is already "bipartisan" by design since only 3 of a particular party can be appointed.

 

Regardless of his party, Ajit Pai hasn't shown much quality as a commissioner.

 

Finally, though I'm not terribly convinced of it, I can also see another side of things with regard to

the notion of "throttling" too.

 

There is a gulf between what is possible (the fearmongering) and what will actually happen based on economic realities.

 

If your site doesn't need much speed to work (isn't serving video), fast lanes are not a problem for you.

 

If the user's wired ISP is offering a decent amount of dumb pipe speed, fast lanes aren't moneymakers for the ISP.

 

Zero rating (making it so that certain sites do not count against a monthly cap) is mostly relevant to mobile traffic where speed and caps are much lower and bandwidth is more expensive.

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I'm leaning towards maintaining Net Neutrality but I must admit that I'm a little torn here.

 

Net Neutrality is largely beneficial to big "new" media corporations like Google who have used

it as part of their loss leader strategy to gain monopolistic market share. With that fuel

they have just about established "Regulatory Capture". Google, now emboldened with this power,

now regularly performs their own violations of the Net Neutrality standard by de-prioritizing

search results or marking sites as dangerous or spam if they don't match Google ideological

stances or financial interests. We have the appearance of Net Neutrality regulation but the

reality is that Google has made much of the Internet appear the way that Net Neutrality

proponents feared it would.

 

What needs to happen is both a Net Neutrality standard for ISP's and another for Search providers.

And proper anti-trust regulation...

 

Only Europe seems to be trying to keep Google in check to address the latter.

 

Finally, though I'm not terribly convinced of it, I can also see another side of things with regard to

the notion of "throttling" too.

 

In theory, without the strictures of the current Net Neutrality in place, a new ISP could offer

less costly service by managing data based on QoS requirements and data prioritization other factors.

It would also be more environmentally responsible to allocate only needed bandwidth rather than allocating

100% bandwidth for all use cases.

 

Net Neutrality has made some strange bedfellows recently. The normally "anti-globalist" Julian Assange and

Kim Dotcom have both come out in favor of it (NN) while also seeing George Soro's "Open Society Foundation"

heavily lobby for it. No doubt, the former simply trying to prevent ISP's from double-dipping their

bandwidth costs while the latter trying to keep their partners Google, Twitter, etc fed with free bandwidth

to spread their globalist agendas.

 

 

Google is not an Internet Service Provider so does not fall under the purview of Title 2 at all.

I do agree though that they, like all companies, want to treat their own services/data with priority and that's not good when you're as big as Google.

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Zero rating (making it so that certain sites do not count against a monthly cap) is mostly relevant to mobile traffic where speed and caps are much lower and bandwidth is more expensive.

 

That's not correct either.

When an ISP is both content creator and content deliverer, then there's a conflict of interest when they will zero rate their own streaming service. This give an unfair advantage to their service that other providers of content providers like Netflix or Hulu can't compete with. Right now that's prevented by Net Neutrality, but that will go away soon.

 

I know this is doom and gloom subject and it's not as bad as one side says and it's not as benign as the other side says.

 

However, companies like Comcast and Time Warner and Bell etc, are reducing data caps and charging more for overages every year.

What are you going to do when you have 100Mbps internet, but only a 25GB cap with $2.50/GB over? Are you going to watch Netflix to the tune of about 1-5GB per movie (1080p-4k) and pay the $100's of overages every month? Or are you going to get your ISP's streaming service which is Zero Rated?

This isn't doom and gloom, this is a clever revenue stream.

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Let's see Trump appoint a liberal Supreme Court Justice, or the next Democratic President appoint a conservative.

 

That was my point lol, Obama was attempting to be bipartisan, something that Donald will probably never do unless it suits him at the time. But lets be honest here, Obama was probably being bipartisan because he was getting something else from the Republicans.

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I guess I should mention that I work for a local ISP in my city so I've been front and center through all of these changes. From Bell's DPI Throttling schemes to the UBB and AVP etc.

 

While I'm in Canada and we have our own issues with Bell (mostly), the stuff that happens in the States does really affect us as most servers are in the US.

The only saving grace that we have is that ideas like Net Neutrality are built in to our regulations already.

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Well seeing as how Comcast has been asking for "reasonable paid prioritization", I would say yeah, it's very Doom and Gloom.

Remember that most regulations are in response to something, and whenever companies want those regulations relaxed or removed, it's rarely in the interest of the public or their own customers.

 

Let's say an ISP offers a 25 Mbps Internet plan, but certain services can get "up to" 100 Mbps. Did the addition of the fast lane hurt anybody? Not the user directly. Will users flock to a faster service, possibly one run by the ISP or paying a fee to the ISP? Maybe, maybe not. We are talking about computers connecting to other computers here (networking). Why should the ISP not be allowed to connect to some with faster connections than others?

 

If you are still worried about fast lanes, there is a solution: eliminate anti-competition laws (such as laws banning or hobbling municipal broadband) and encourage more ISP competition. That will lead to higher broadband speeds. If you already have a gigabit symmetric (upload = download speed) Internet connection, fast lanes are useless for the ISP to provide or go unnoticed by the users. Unless the fast lane decreases latency or something.

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@Jaxa, try not to quote mine with that embedded link and read the whole thing from the verge.

 

 

 

This makes Comcast’s position pretty confusing. Comcast says it opposes prioritizing one website over another. It even suggests the commission adopt a “strong presumption against” agreements that benefit an ISP’s own content over competitors’ work, but it’s not clear how benefiting one car company or telemedicine company over another is any different.

 

It might sound altruistic when Comcast says they could use a "fast lane" for medical calls or autonomous driving cars, but only if that company pays extra for the fast lane.

All they should be doing is letting all data flow across and through their network via peer exchanges, and upgrade their network to keep up with faster speeds. Which is expensive and something they would rather not do.

 

Also, it will hurt the user directly, are you just naive to think that companies like Netlfix and Hulu will just eat the extra cost of paying for these fast lanes? No, they'll pass the cost down the line to the consumer.

 

I'm not talking about mobile providers here, as they aren't under the purview of Title 2 classification.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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If you already have a gigabit symmetric (upload = download speed) Internet connection, fast lanes are useless for the ISP to provide or go unnoticed by the users. Unless the fast lane decreases latency or something.

 

There's a big difference between last mile speeds (1Gbit) and the speeds at which data flows from one ISP's network to your ISP's network and through to your house.

If your ISP (eg Comcast) decides that you streaming Netflix is going to be throttled to 5Mbps during 5PM-12PM because of "congestion issues" or whatever they decide, but you can get it unthrottled for you for a small fee of 5$/month, where's the harm in that?

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Let's say your ISP does implement a "fast lane".

ISPs won't target things like TDM forums with this scheme, because it would be a complete waste of their time. They will target competitors; the online video delivery services. Since the ISPs have merged with cable/satellite providers, they want you to be paying for and using their video delivery services, not third party ones online.

 

They already charge you more for Internet service if you don't want a TV subscription to go with it.

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You know what, maybe this needs to happen. When people get used to paying $500/Month for their TV/Phone/Internet bill, or they can't afford it and put up with freezing and not being able to watch Netflix, maybe they'll finally wake up and realize that deregulating them was bad idea.

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After reviewing further, the 2014 Net Neutrality law included backdoor provisions to allow Government censorship,
propaganda, and broad powers. This works in tandem with the 2016 "Ministry of Truth" bill:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_and_Disinformation_Act

can we please get Net Neutrality without giving Delores Umbridge the ability to censor whistle blowers?

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

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After reviewing further, the 2014 Net Neutrality law included backdoor provisions to allow Government censorship,

propaganda, and broad powers. This works in tandem with the 2016 "Ministry of Truth" bill:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_and_Disinformation_Act

 

can we please get Net Neutrality without giving Delores Umbridge the ability to censor whistle blowers?

 

 

The bipartisan legislation was written in March 2016

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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