This net neutrality move seems a good thing.

a reply to: nwtrucker

Worst case scenarios are always happening with information. Look at the news.

Most of the public seems to be clueless how manipulated they are by the divide and conquer partisan media networks.

Now those networks (who own isp's) can also control the Internet.

The Internet is a free market. It needs some regulation to control a metaphorical child labor law say.

Do not underestimate the peoples need and want for the Internet even if for dumb reasons. If it effects their bottom line they will become enraged.

This is as dumb a move imo as going after medical Marijuana for the midterms.

a reply to: intrptr

So where's the actual distinction? Gov't does it, in the case you cited for good reason, I'm sure not always, though.

Corporations do it. Google and the rest. I don't see an 'out' where control isn't assumed by someone no matter what the freedom or regulation is in place, and by precedent, in other endeavors free eventually will cost and there's no getting away from it.

From my viewpoint, at least so far, what else is new?? Not much.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
As a lay person, almost a computer moron, I have little knowledge of these 'ins and outs'.

I've read many posts on the subject in today's thread pushing how this will 'do in' the Republicans...or Trump, perhaps both. How the biggies will control everything from what we see, how much we pay, if and when.

I don't like big corporations, I really don't like international corporations and I'm a Trumpster...go figure...

Later on, i saw more balanced opinions on this move, they struck as more rational, although I could be wrong and I'm sure some will point out where and how that is the case.

Bottom line is the original Obama effort gave control, at least potentially, to the UN. The right to control virtually everything. TO THE FREAKING UN. ( And , as usual, the cowards in the Republican Party did little to nothing about it.)

So is that true? Or is it a lie? Perhaps the usual ambiguously worded text that 'could' allow it to be interpretated as such. Perhaps even unwritten agreements? So it looks to me that this is a huge blow to the one-world crowd. A major setback.

Yes? No?

Ok, now the other side of the coin. The big greedy corporations. That they surely are. Yet, to this day, I can find alternatives to AT&T, Verizon and the rest of those bastards. Cheaper options to TV connections, internet service. Where the big boys seem never be able to shut down innovative thinking, ways to do it as well for cheaper. My examples are correct? Yes? No?

Worst case scenario is they find an way, meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho. to divvy up the territories, who to buy and at what price...all the worst results. Isn't it more possible that they can be controlled than the UN??

Yes, there's the lobbyists, the crony Capitalism to contend with, but things are changing in DC. More exposure of corruption-that was business as usual- than ever before.

There is a chance, a slim chance perhaps that we can correct/fix that a bit down the road? Certainly a better one than the NWO crowd that Obama was driving the US towards.

So not a perfect solution, for now, but better than it was under Obama's rules. Yes or No.

Educate me please, I'm all ears.

You basically completely misunderstand the issue. It's ok, you're a computer moron... maybe you should get educated on it though.

The UN thing you're referring to is ICANN which isn't really internet control in the first place, they just manage domain registration.

What Net Neutrality has to do with is how data is processed over servers. Under NN, data is processed on a first come first serve basis. Without NN what it does is it allows data to be prioritized, and processed in that order instead. The effect of this is it allows ISP's to choose to process some information after long wait times and others with no wait times. Where this gets to be an issue is in visiting websites, because websites are accessible through ISP's which don't host that website. For example ATS is hosted by godaddy, which in turn pays a large ISP such as Time Warner Cable for internet service. But you could be on Comcast. ATS could be paying for the highest speed tier package, and you can also be paying for high speed internet through Comcast. Without NN though, Comcast can look at traffic from ATS specifically and decide they want to slow that traffic down over their network.

So now, despite both companies paying for service, the content provider has to pay yet another company that isn't even involved in their business, just to have their content delivered at a reasonable rate.

To give you an analogy, it would be like if your electric company could give independent billing rates to every appliance in your home. Lets say you buy an LG TV. The electric company decides they're going to charge 10 cents/kwh for that brand, but if you go buy a Samsung they'll only charge you 2 cents/kwh for electricity going to that device. Then further, lets say Samsung gets in a contract disagreement and suddenly the electric company refuses to supply electricity for that brand at all. That's data in a world without NN. The items you purchase cannot be guaranteed to work or may have their service altered by a third party regardless of the status of your contract with the provider of the goods.

This then gets even more messed up because ISP's operate as regional monopolies. Not only is there no way for competing ISP's to spring up without duplicating literal trillions of dollars in infrastructure, but even if they could... most towns have non compete agreements in place with the companies that give 30-100 year exclusivity agreements to the ISP's. And these agreements are very real things, they stopped Google from building their own fiber optic network in several towns in order to preserve the monopoly.

originally posted by: luthier

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
No matter the argument or the complaint, the idea that government regulation is the answer is fundamentally absurd. Net Neutrality is a euphemism for government regulated internet.

This is what is wrong with conservatives these days. Just declare all regulation bad without actually looking into why the regulation exists and how effective it is. Conservatives back in the day weren't 100% against regulation you know?

Repeal child labor laws and take away women's right to vote I say.

I agree, return blacks to the plantation, the government never should have got involved.

originally posted by: Ameilia
Net Neutrality wasn't a thing before 2015.

And now it's not a thing again.

If we weren't censored and throttled before 2015, why should be now? Exactly what differences have occurred pre-2015 Net Neutrality and post 2015 Net Neutrality that were are now going to lose due to its being repealed?

Title 2 classification wasn't a thing before 2015. Net Neutrality was.

Here's a small list of offenses that occurred in the years leading up to 2015.

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.

I find that second to last one, the AT&T 2012 case particularly ironic because in his speech Ajit Pai called out Facetime as an example of a technology brought about by innovation and a lack of NN, yet Facetime very nearly failed precisely because AT&T blocked Facetime in order to push customers to their own knock off product until that was defeated in court under NN guidelines.

originally posted by: Ameilia
Do you have a source for Obama's Net Neutrality rules being in place before they were put in place by the Obama administration? Because seriously - there is NO WAY the Obama administration Net Neutrality rules existed previous to Obama being the President.

They weren't Obama era rules. The big ones were put in place by W. Others were put in place by Reagan. The Obama era rules primarily did two things, they made a distinction between wired and wireless networks (which is why anti competitive practices like zero rating have been on mobile plans for years now), and later in his term there was the title 2 classification.

a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks for pointing out the issue with regional ISP monopolies. I was researching that yesterday. It turns out that in the UK, the government mandated that major ISPs rent their pipelines at cost to newer ISPs. This resulted in more competition and lower rates.

In the U.S. taxpayers spent over 400 billion on this infrastructure that is owned by the major ISPs, so it would only be fair.

a reply to: Aazadan

Ajit Pai is a real life cartoonishly evil caricature of a corporate toadie. It would be more humorous if literally 99% of us weren't going to be paying more for less internet in the next couple years.

originally posted by: JinMI
Sounds like a great reason to not use Verizon.

Should these corporations decide to throttle, sensor or even paywall sites, will it be public knowledge?

Unknown, the new rules state the ISP's have to announce it, but no system to do so was specified. Technically, they could post it on a bulletin board in the main office and it would count.

Second, if they do announce it... what difference does that make? You're locked into a multi year mobile contract, so you can't switch easily, and you've got 1 (2 if you're lucky) wired ISP's available.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks for pointing out the issue with regional ISP monopolies. I was researching that yesterday. It turns out that in the UK, the government mandated that major ISPs rent their pipelines at cost to newer ISPs. This resulted in more competition and lower rates.

In the U.S. taxpayers spent over 400 billion on this infrastructure that is owned by the major ISPs, so it would only be fair.

The solution we're going to eventually have to come up with in the US is to break up the large telecoms into providers of content like tv stations, and maintainers of the network who actually own the lines. Then force the line owners to let anyone on them and offer services... kinda like we did with dial up internet. That was a healthy market because the phone company owned the lines as a utility, and anyone could start up their own business using those lines.

originally posted by: Wayfarer
a reply to: Aazadan

Ajit Pai is a real life cartoonishly evil caricature of a corporate toadie. It would be more humorous if literally 99% of us weren't going to be paying more for less internet in the next couple years.

Started off as a bigwig for Verizon.

Appointed to the FCC by Obama.
Appointed by head of the FCC by Trump.

And, how appropriate, many Trump supporters are defending the regulation of the internet - by the government.

They'll realize once it hits their wallet that this was nothing to celebrate about.

I truly do not understand the obsession some have with being pro-government cheerleaders - especially when cheering against their own well-being.

This nation is fueled by greed - and people love it.

a reply to: Aazadan

Thank you for that explanation. You're the only one that has bothered.

So in your electricity analogy, is there laws in place that stops that scenario from occurring?

originally posted by: Wayfarer
a reply to: Aazadan

Ajit Pai is a real life cartoonishly evil caricature of a corporate toadie. It would be more humorous if literally 99% of us weren't going to be paying more for less internet in the next couple years.

I would imagine if you put horns on Ajit Pai, he would look exactly like the Devil...even talks like him! lol

The FCC knows how to pick them, and they know how to take your money. It's never a good thing with Big Brother and the Devil involved.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: nwtrucker

I should mention that some companies are trying to use a fleet of low orbiting satellites to provide high-speed internet access, but there is by no means a 100% chance of success and it is still an idea for the future. This model would, however, provide real competition to the current ISPs and their monopolized landlines, although I’m sure the ISPs would find some way to shut it down if they could.

It's a nice idea, but there's not enough bandwidth available in the EM spectrum to provide the necessary speeds. Economics don't even factor into it, it's a matter of physics.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks for pointing out the issue with regional ISP monopolies. I was researching that yesterday. It turns out that in the UK, the government mandated that major ISPs rent their pipelines at cost to newer ISPs. This resulted in more competition and lower rates.

In the U.S. taxpayers spent over 400 billion on this infrastructure that is owned by the major ISPs, so it would only be fair.

The solution we're going to eventually have to come up with in the US is to break up the large telecoms into providers of content like tv stations, and maintainers of the network who actually own the lines. Then force the line owners to let anyone on them and offer services... kinda like we did with dial up internet. That was a healthy market because the phone company owned the lines as a utility, and anyone could start up their own business using those lines.

Is that almost an inevitablity? If so, what's the big deal? This probably speeds that process up, yes?

a reply to: nwtrucker


Soon everyone will know whether or not striking down net neutrality is good for consumers. If prices go up and content is blocked or throttled, then we'll feel it in our pocket books and experience what it is like to be told that we can't access such and such site without paying the ISP a toll.

I'm not enthusiastic about the rule change and believe it is bad for consumers. But I would love to be proven wrong.

The internet did not get started through cable TV companies. It was started by a think tank organization called RAND back in the 60's and its purpose was to determine how government could stay connected to each other if there was ever a nuclear war. This network was built with taxpayers money as well. a reply to: nwtrucker

a reply to: Aazadan

I can only imagine the massive lobby interest this will create. You could alter elections with sort of stuff. I only have a choice of one provider. Theoretically they could greatly hinder grass roots organizatio.

a reply to: luthier

Ok, I got it, thanks.

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
So Trump promised to get rid of NN, then he was elected.

The people had their say.

Nuff said.

It's almost as if people aren't single issue voters. If you poll on the topic 83% of people, including 70% of Republicans approve of NN.