The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers.
Sounds great to you right? Let me give you an example of what might happen in the near future:
Dear Descentbb.net admins,
Your bandwidth costs Comcast roughly $300 a month*, due to Comcast customers visiting your site. Please cover this cost or we'll adjust your site's speed to all Comcast users over the next six months.
-Comcast
*estimate based on sites of this type, not descentbb.net specifically.
Dear Descentbb.net admins,
Your website has been deemed not "premium quality"*. Since Time Warner only offers premium quality internet, we must block descentbb.net until it has A) improved or B) subscribed to our premium website payment plan.
-TWC
*Judgement made based on sites of this type (forum), not descentbb.net specifically.
I'll admit. I liked Obama the first time he ran, because he promised to fight for net neutrality, while the whole GOP was for a tiered net. Obama tried once to pass a net neutrality law, but FOX came out and called it "Government take over of the internet". After that Obama quit. Not much of a fighter...
F@#k Obama. Now here's a good reason to hate Obama, for all you Obama haters. He's just another corporate butt kisser. I thought I was voting for a Democrat way back then too. I guess not.
Yes, soon the internet will be like cable TV, you will be forced to pay for 250+ crap sites you will never visit for each site you do actually want to see.
before you all go blaming Presidents, and calling Senators, note....this was an FCC decision. The GOP appointees were all behind this, but the Dems were split. These positions go back over three Presidential appointment cycles.
Second, note that they agreed to 'consider' it. That allows for the appropriate blowback and pressure upon elected officials to apply even more pressure. My guess is that the outcry will keep this from getting anywhere. Time will tell.
"The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell---"1984"
Isaac wrote:Well, is there something I can do? I can't stand doing nothing while this is happening.
you CAN contact those elected officials, and stoke any only petition pressure you can. I just wanted to warn folks not to blame President Obama or Congress for this one. This is an example of what happens if you appoint industry-friendly people to the oversight board, so it DOES speak to why elections matter, but the matter won't be settled here by elections, but by public outcry.
Now, if the thing ever goes through....then, I am sure, it becomes a matter for the Supreme Court to settle.
"The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell---"1984"
For all of you bitching in this thread, spend your time typing to your representatives instead. I have. I made calls. I will continue to make calls and write emails and sign petitions.
This week I spent several hours writing and responding to candidates for the June 3rd primary election in California trying to determine their views on Net Neutrality and Internet Law. When I go to the polls in three weeks I will vote for only those who share my views.
I suggest you do the same this year.
Isaac: Representatives are legally required to listen those call and consider them. It does make a difference so keep up the good work.
Isaac wrote:Well, is there something I can do? I can't stand doing nothing while this is happening.
you CAN contact donate to those elected officials, and stoke any only petition pressure you can. I just wanted to warn folks not to blame President Obama or Congress for this one. This is an example of what happens if you appoint industry-friendly people to the oversight board, so it DOES speak to why elections matter, but the matter won't be settled here by elections, but by public outcry the new Comcast/TWC mega corporation.
Now, if the thing ever goes through....then, I am sure, it becomes a matter for the Supreme Court to settle. rubber stamp.
Fixed it for you.
This is a case where I think the Republicans are dead wrong. It's also a case that challenges my libertarian leanings. I tend to think that it's in the ISP's interest to be fairly low-profile about actually doing the drastic slow lane thing... They got away with squeezing Netflix for some cash but if they start trying to do it to everyone, they're going to get the blame from the "mass" customers and then there will be hell to pay.
Arch Linux x86-64, Openbox
"We'll just set a new course for that empty region over there, near that blackish, holeish thing. " Zapp Brannigan
snoopy wrote:This is a case where I think the Republicans are dead wrong. It's also a case that challenges my libertarian leanings. I tend to think that it's in the ISP's interest to be fairly low-profile about actually doing the drastic slow lane thing... They got away with squeezing Netflix for some cash but if they start trying to do it to everyone, they're going to get the blame from the "mass" customers and then there will be hell to pay.
What hell to pay? They are monopolies, it isn't like we have a choice. They can and will get away with it, that is how monopolies work.
snoopy wrote:My understanding is that Republicans want to fully commercialize it all...
That's not all bad. In Europe there's so much competition between ISPs that commercializing it has made their internet connections faster and cheaper than it is over here.
Spidey wrote:
snoopy wrote:This is a case where I think the Republicans are dead wrong.
For voting against this plan…please explain.
I can't say all Republicans are against a neutral net, but certainly its loudest members are. Here in the U.S., John McCain, a few years ago, was leading the charge on the "Internet Freedom Act", which would have essentially given Comcast and Time Warner what they wanted: the freedom to operate however they liked. Ted Stevens once tried to convey his opposition to net neutrality too, with his whole "the internet is not a big truck, it's a series of tubes" speech. Mitt Romney was caught on tape saying the government should have almost no interference with enforcing an open net. I don't think they fully understand what they're doing, though.
The GOP wants to appear to be pro-business, so, when they block neutral net rules, I think they don't understand its effects on the small business and their dependence on streaming data, which can be used for things like syncing, monitoring, and other non-entertainment services.
Even if you cut the cord woody, it won't be that long before whatever company you are getting internet finds a way to still get their five pounds of flesh from you. For instance the push for metered broadband in the US is still going strong from all the major cable and telco companies even as most other countries in the world have abandoned metered billing on fixed line broadband because it was stupid and pointless. And the thing is, even if they go metered it won't be like your gas line or your electric bill; if you use much less bandwidth than the "average" household your bill won't go down. The base price for service will still be several times more expensive than in most developed countries, it is just now they will charge EVEN MORE if you stream Netflix (even though Netflix now pays them directly for that bandwidth!).
Ok, I haven't looked up the FCC proposal yet, but having digested the article a little bit my thoughts are these: it sounds to me that rather than resulting in direct throttling of lesser websites, the plan is to allow for increased speeds for premium content (i.e. the increased revenue from premium websites is used to beef up architecture for this purpose). Basically allowing for the creation of a subset of the internet which is subscribed to and paid for much like cable TV. The side effect, in my mind, will obviously be a shift of funds and focus from the whole to this more lucrative subset, which IMO would slow growth to the whole overall.
Thoughts:
1) This would drive a price increase for better service from Netflix, etc.
Questions:
1) If we continue to use the TV/Cable TV analogy, what becomes of non-premium internet as time goes by? (that's a big question, IMO)
2) Any chance this could free up non-premium bandwidth for non-premium content?
I really don't see a clearly-defined answer to this yet. IMO it is legitimately in various companies business interest to want to pursue a premium path for more premium content, because there is money there. But this is going to have a long-term effect on the internet as we know it. I don't think that effect will look like what Isaac thinks it will, unless I've underestimated. The internet could grow together, much to the chagrin of the content providers, or it could lose a portion of its growth vigor to a new off-shoot for premium media. That's what I see so far.
Yes, having thought about it I would say the difference between the "TV and Cable TV" analogy and the situation at-hand would be that we have the same architecture for internet and premium internet, so there would necessarily be throttling at work, because I'm sure they don't want to maintain two simultaneous architectures. Personally I feel that the internet belongs both to the informational interests that birthed it, and the media interests that drove a lot of its advancement, so from that perspective I would not necessarily be against throttling, as long as speeds never decreased, and also increased at a fair rate for non-premium traffic. There would be money coming from both. I think our government needs to fulfill it's purpose in the whole equation and mandate a certain percentage of architecture be available to non-premium content, and I don't know that this percentage should be purely dependent on present profits.
Just a thought, maybe a bit of a conspiracy theory, but you don't suppose this could be a maneuver to capitalize on a speed increase already in the works, do you? I wouldn't put it past a business executive to see a major speed increase on the horizon due to some tech advances, and try to find a way to get a bigger piece of the pie.
Cable companies already do that, nothing conspiracy about it. Look at the transition from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS 3 a few years ago, maximum performance of a cable line went from ~30 mbps to 160 mbps (320 mbps on an 8 channel bonded line). The base price for 1, 2, 5, or 10 mbps service didn't go down even though the cost for delivery for that bandwidth was reduced by 80%. They eventually offered faster speeds, but at an even higher price. In couple years DOCSIS 3.1 will be rolling just as part of routine maintenance, the available bandwidth will boosted to 10 gbps but don't expect them to offer any big speed improvements right away or without a big price premium.
The lack of net neutrality actually creates a overwhelming incentive for the ISPs to NOT upgrade their systems, because they can use the slow performance of aging infrastructure to their advantage by selling premium access (and this works because they are monopolies). Basically this is exactly what happened with Netflix and Comcast/Verizon. Netflix purchased transit from Cogent who interconnects (peers) with Comcast, but as Netflix traffic increased to eventually saturate these links/peering points Comcast refused to upgrade them (even when Cogent offered to pay for the upgrades), as a result Netflix streaming performance fell dramatically for Comcast customers. What is even worse is that the other 70% of internet traffic which also comes over those peering points ALSO got degraded by the same thing. Basically Comcast hurt every one of their customers, every Netflix customer, and quite possibly every last American with internet access just so they could get some money out of Netflix (money that ultimately comes from us). Even though both Netflix and Comcast's own customers have already paid for the bandwidth, so now they are now paying for it twice.
It is a total failure of government when an industry gets to the point where there is more incentive for them to perform poorly than to perform well.
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Bit of a side note, 10 gbps is basically the practical physical limit on electrical over copper signalling so DOCSIS 3.1 will likely be the last cheap upgrade for coaxial cable. To go faster you would need a higher frequency, but higher frequencies have higher attenuation/losses so it is basically physically impossible go much faster on coaxial cable. Which is why various sane countries are currently undergoing national fiber-optic network projects. Why fiber you may ask? Because the practical physical limit on fiber optic communication has yet to be found, but at the very least we have already hit more than 1 million times faster than 10 gbps. Further, the signal attenuation on good quality coaxial cable is 5.65 decibels per 100 feet, on good optical fiber it is 0.17 decibels per kilometer. To make a good analogy, if the ocean was as low attenuation of light as optical fiber, from a ship on the surface you would be able to see clearly to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, 36,000 feet down and back.
When citizens petition government to regulate an industry, it’s is almost impossible if not totally unfair to regulate that industry without throwing it a bone or two. Does anyone believe the regulations could possible end up all one sided?
When they deregulated (partial to get competition) electric power here…I got a price increase, because part of the bargain was to eliminate residential heat.
So be careful what you wish for, and if it ain’t broke…don’t try to fix it.
Government should regulate as needed…not all at once.
I also doubt many of the fantasy business models I have heard, will even work with the internet.
Spidey wrote:So be careful what you wish for, and if it ain’t broke…don’t try to fix it.
So what do you do when it actually is really, horribly, fdollersignpercentked up beyond recognition, broken and the people in charge are deliberately working to make it worse?
This whole telecom internet clusterfrack would be the equivalent of privatizing the interstates. Those who could pay would get the better paved high speed lanes while everyone else gets the chuck-holed slow lanes. I can see how well THAT would work for everyone.
Well, well, I finally get in the mail from CenturyLink an offer to upgrade my DSL to 12Mbps/865Kbps. I guess all that fiber they invested in along Walnut Blvd. helped make that possible. But I'm still too far from the DSLAM and remote terminal to get their top offered speed of 40Mbps/5Mbps. Too bad. I seriously doubt they'd put in that extra mile of fiber to my house. All those regulations.............
Cat (n.) A bipolar creature which would as soon gouge your eyes out as it would cuddle.
I already HATE cable for that very reason. I'm almost ready to become a Luddite after this.
