Obama wants to make the internet a utility

[92tide]

The most punchable face in the world no longer belongs to Martin Shkreli.

what a tool

 

[Jon]

but. her. emails.

"I just couldn't vote for Hillary so I wrote in X"


Well Glad X could help keep the internet free

 

[CharminTide]

With half the states in the union suing the FCC, I expect this to be stuck in the courts for a while. Dems should shout their support for net neutrality from the rooftops as a 2018 rallying cry.

Things like the fraudulent comment period and the FCC's own CTO outright stating that this repeal is not in the public interest should be adequate legal fodder until midterms. I hope.

Leaked E-mail Shows Even The FCC's Own CTO Thinks Gutting Net Neutrality Harms The Public

 

[CharminTide]

what a tool

To make it even better, he's dancing with a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist at the very end.

 

[chanson78]

I may not agree with the cause they chose to do this for ( I would have preferred the Republican Congress grew a spine over the tax plan than over this) but I love the fact that some of these guys are breaking away from the party line and standing up to Trump.

There is always a possibility that Congress can pass legislation to counter this move. The whole reason that the decision was made through the FCC in the first place was because the people in Congress would never have done it during the Obama administration. I will consider them having broken away from the party line once they actually pass legislation that the president might veto. For now, this is all just a bunch of congresspeople who are creating soundbites so they can stand up on reelection and tell the younguns that "hey remember when I stood up and grumbled loudly when Idjit Pai took away your interwebz?"

The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them

For what it is worth, this article is skewed heavily left. They have none of the Democrat representatives who also took money.

This one is a little better, as it shows the democrats who also have received money from the telecom industry.

CONGRESS TOOK $101 MILLION IN DONATIONS FROM THE ISP INDUSTRY — HERE’S HOW MUCH YOUR LAWMAKER GOT

This one lists the congress people who explicitly sent a letter telling Pai to kill net neutrality. I believe they are all Republican, but I can't confirm it.

Here's a List of the Members of Congress Who Just Told Ajit Pai to Repeal Net Neutrality

A link to their letter is: Here

Why am I posting all this? Pai is a .... of the highest level, however he has the backing of a whole slew of even larger turds who if they really were upset about all this they could introduce legislation. Lawmakers making vague gestures regarding how upset they are is only playacting.

 

[92tide]

There is always a possibility that Congress can pass legislation to counter this move. The whole reason that the decision was made through the FCC in the first place was because the people in Congress would never have done it during the Obama administration. I will consider them having broken away from the party line once they actually pass legislation that the president might veto. For now, this is all just a bunch of congresspeople who are creating soundbites so they can stand up on reelection and tell the younguns that "hey remember when I stood up and grumbled loudly when Idjit Pai took away your interwebz?"

The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them

For what it is worth, this article is skewed heavily left. They have none of the Democrat representatives who also took money.

This one is a little better, as it shows the democrats who also have received money from the telecom industry.

CONGRESS TOOK $101 MILLION IN DONATIONS FROM THE ISP INDUSTRY — HERE’S HOW MUCH YOUR LAWMAKER GOT

This one lists the congress people who explicitly sent a letter telling Pai to kill net neutrality. I believe they are all Republican, but I can't confirm it.

Here's a List of the Members of Congress Who Just Told Ajit Pai to Repeal Net Neutrality

A link to their letter is: Here

Why am I posting all this? Pai is a .... of the highest level, however he has the backing of a whole slew of even larger turds who if they really were upset about all this they could introduce legislation. Lawmakers making vague gestures regarding how upset they are is only playacting.

so two definitions of word tool are appropriate for pai.

 

[crimsonaudio]

I know we've been round and round about this, and I fully understand both sides of the argument.

My question is this - until February 2015 there was no net neutrality, yet somehow we all survived. The internet thrived, even. I guess my question is this - why is this NOW suddenly a seemingly life or death issue to some folks, when just three years ago few were complaining about the status quo?

 

[TIDE-HSV]

I know we've been round and round about this, and I fully understand both sides of the argument.

My question is this - until February 2015 there was no net neutrality, yet somehow we all survived. The internet thrived, even. I guess my question is this - why is this NOW suddenly a seemingly life or death issue to some folks, when just three years ago few were complaining about the status quo?

Well, today, Disney acquired 20th Century Fox. This is just one example...

 

[crimsonaudio]

Well, today, Disney acquired 20th Century Fox. This is just one example...

How does net neutrality (or the lack thereof) affect that acquisition?

 

[92tide]

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.

hey ca, this was posted a couple of weeks back and may answer some of your questions

 

[jthomas666]

Idle thought...Do you suppose the GOP extracted a promise from the telecoms not to do anything until after midterms?

 

[TIDE-HSV]

How does net neutrality (or the lack thereof) affect that acquisition?

Um, serious? Vertical/horizontal integration? How few combo content/distribution providers would you accept before you started getting worried about oligopoly price control?

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Idle thought...Do you suppose the GOP extracted a promise from the telecoms not to do anything until after midterms?

Wouldn't surprise me at all...

 

[2003TIDE]

How does net neutrality (or the lack thereof) affect that acquisition?

Actually the acquisition will probably negatively impact Fox News. They won't be attached to a company that owns the last mile connectivity and subscribers and would probably have to pay for streaming access. Comcast owns MSNBC and ATT will own CNN if that merger is approved.

I'll say this one last time. Cable companies are losing money from cord cutters. They will use this to extract that lost money. You will end up having to pay to stream off services they don't own.

 

[crimsonaudio]

hey ca, this was posted a couple of weeks back and may answer some of your questions

Yah, I even posted one of those - but all of those cases occurred before 2015 and were all (afaik) rectified without net neutrality.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Um, serious? Vertical/horizontal integration? How few combo content/distribution providers would you accept before you started getting worried about oligopoly price control?

Antitrust laws already exist and it's not like these mergers happen overnight - this has been worked on for a long time. And these purchases have been happening for decades - the near monopoly we have now across the board didn't stop / reverse in 2015.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what net neutrality rules would have stopped this acquisition.

I'm not being obtuse - I just thought about it and can't recall any major issues happening before 2015 that made me decide net neutrality was a major issue. To read most people on the web, this is akin to the FCC revolting the first amendment and I just haven't seen a big difference in my internet experience over the last decade - with or without net neutrality.

 

[NationalTitles18]

Disney/21st Century Fox talks have been going on for quite a while. The marvel collection is under one roof now, which for the MCU is good. Don't know about everything else except that Disney is intent (as are others) to control content distribution. I'm not happy with the CBS decision to distribute Voyager via paid service when I already pay for CBS. That happened with net neutrality in place.

I think this is slightly overblown. I may change my tune at some point. I wouldn't mind a light regulatory touch here keeping some basic tenets of neutrality, but rarely does a light touch happen in government.

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Antitrust laws already exist and it's not like these mergers happen overnight - this has been worked on for a long time. And these purchases have been happening for decades - the near monopoly we have now across the board didn't stop / reverse in 2015.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what net neutrality rules would have stopped this acquisition.

I'm not being obtuse - I just thought about it and can't recall any major issues happening before 2015 that made me decide net neutrality was a major issue. To read most people on the web, this is akin to the FCC revolting the first amendment and I just haven't seen a big difference in my internet experience over the last decade - with or without net neutrality.

Aye, and there's the rub. There's a continuing concentration of both vertical and horizontal, reducing the number of distributors and, in this case, combining a very large combination generator of content/distributor with another sizeable content provider. As the sources for the consumer keep shrinking into fewer and fewer hand, the ultimate result will always be higher prices, whether it's happened to you personally since 2015 or not. The situation is not what it was in 2015 and not what it will be in 2020 at the present rate. If you don't agree, there's no point in discussing it further...

 

[crimsonaudio]

Aye, and there's the rub. There's a continuing concentration of both vertical and horizontal, reducing the number of distributors and, in this case, combining a very large combination generator of content/distributor with another sizeable content provider. As the sources for the consumer keep shrinking into fewer and fewer hand, the ultimate result will always be higher prices, whether it's happened to you personally since 2015 or not.

Again, I get that, but I'm not clear as to how net neutrality laws would have stopped this (or any other) merger.

The situation is not what it was in 2015 and not what it will be in 2020 at the present rate. If you don't agree, there's no point in discussing it further...

Indeed - rates are lower now than last year, and they were lower last year than they year before, on and on for decades.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just wondering what the doom and gloom is about. Before net neutrality natural competition kept rates in check, I don't see why that will suddenly change. To read Facebook you'd think the internet was going to shut down tomorrow, or that suddenly our bills were going to skyrocket.

Just seems a bit chicken-little to me when I stop and think about it. We had net neutrality for about 2.5 years and honestly I never saw any difference whatsoever in my service, costs of access, etc.

 

[Jon]

audio

the short version

in 2010 The FCC created a compromise rule to change rules that were in place from 2002, you can read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Open_Internet_Order_2010 but essentially this was a rule that enforced a kind of flimsy net neutrality with a good deal of leeway for the ISP's but also named them Common Carriers which the ISP's didn't like.

so in 2014 Verizon sued, and won https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v._FCC_(2014)

which changed the rules again in 2015. The Obama admin responded by reclassifying. Ironically Verizon brought this on themselves when they had an OK Deal. From what I recall ATT, Comcast and other were annoyed at Verizon as the old deal was workable for them even if it was sorta crap for us.

that lead to this and it's why saying "We didn't have this before 2015" is both true at a very specific level and not true at all on a functional one. We had a version of Net Neutrality but not the same one we got in 2015 which was much better for consumers

Oh and we also developed deep packet inspection and have been able to effectively deploy it at scale making it more and more technology feasible for ISPs to actually implement their bad behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection