That is bullshit. God I hope they get lots of shit and are force to back away from that.
Again, this is what happens when you put industry lobbyists in charge of the organization that's supposed to serve as the industry's regulator and watchdog
Yeah, would have been nice if that shithead Gingrich hadn't knee-capped the one government agency (name currently escapes), that would have given us a nice stable of non-big business ass kissing lobbyists. Seriously fuck the "free market will fix it" wankfest that has taken hold of this country because the free market seems to just fuck people over, for the benefit of few shitty elites.
Guess I'll be firing off some more e-mails to my Congress critters. God do I hate sending shit off to that shithead Cantor because I'm pretty sure I'm wasting my time and it's really fucking tempting to call him a fucking idiot in the e-mails.
That is bullshit. God I hope they get lots of shit and are force to back away from that.
Again, this is what happens when you put industry lobbyists in charge of the organization that's supposed to serve as the industry's regulator and watchdog
The technical term for this is regulatory capture.
Hope everyone enjoys paying for their 'Gold' or 'Platinum' or whatever packages to maintain a half decent connection.
In fairness, I guess it was naive to think that we'd have contemporary levels of Internet / communications access for very long. It's sort of amazing that we've held onto it until now.
I can barely afford my internet connection now, I can't wait until I really will be priced out of having internet at all .
Oh no, don't worry - you can still have your Internet connection. They'd hate to not be able to squeeze what they still can out of you.
You'll get the 'Budget' package, with speeds up to at least 50 kbps! With included access to up to 6 websites of your choosing!
...What? Oh, you didn't know? Yeah - net neutrality was one of the things preventing ISPs from... err... presenting users with a sensible browsing experience catered to their interests. But I'm sure you don't need access to most of the Internet anyway, right? And if you did, don't worry; ISP content paywalls I'm sure will be totally and completely reasonable.
With Love and Courage
+1
Options
Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Keep in mind who is on our side (I would hope): Microsoft and Google, among others. There will be blood.
I can barely afford my internet connection now, I can't wait until I really will be priced out of having internet at all .
Oh no, don't worry - you can still have your Internet connection. They'd hate to not be able to squeeze what they still can out of you.
You'll get the 'Budget' package, with speeds up to at least 50 kbps! With included access to up to 6 websites of your choosing!
...What? Oh, you didn't know? Yeah - net neutrality was one of the things preventing ISPs from... err... presenting users with a sensible browsing experience catered to their interests. But I'm sure you don't need access to most of the Internet anyway, right? And if you did, don't worry; ISP content paywalls I'm sure will be totally and completely reasonable.
Websites packaged like channels. Its a dream come true for them
I can barely afford my internet connection now, I can't wait until I really will be priced out of having internet at all .
Oh no, don't worry - you can still have your Internet connection. They'd hate to not be able to squeeze what they still can out of you.
You'll get the 'Budget' package, with speeds up to at least 50 kbps! With included access to up to 6 websites of your choosing!
...What? Oh, you didn't know? Yeah - net neutrality was one of the things preventing ISPs from... err... presenting users with a sensible browsing experience catered to their interests. But I'm sure you don't need access to most of the Internet anyway, right? And if you did, don't worry; ISP content paywalls I'm sure will be totally and completely reasonable.
as useless as these are, i'd ask you all to sign it anyways: http://wh.gov/lwhr8
it's one of those We the People petitions. if it garners enough signatures, the Obama Administration has to respond.
but really, if you want to have the most impact, contact your Congress critters. let them know as voting Americans that you won't put up with this nonsense.
But seriously, write your congress critters. I'll probably get something written up tomorrow [got some assignments I've got to get in tonight before midnight]
Keep in mind who is on our side (I would hope): Microsoft and Google, among others. There will be blood.
That's not quite correct; some of the upper management of Google & Microsoft, including Google's CEO, are in favor of net neutrality for ethical reasons. Google & Microsoft have no business reason to fight for it. The large players in the market could probably leverage it to their advantage, in fact.
Net neutrality was probably never going to last, given the demographic with the most leverage in Washington.
Websites packaged like channels. Its a dream come true for them
Hail Hydra!
I mean, it's sort of amazing that we've gone without anything like that on the Internet side for so long, isn't it? Most other telecommunications systems have the 'package' model... in fact, I can't think of any other aspect of telecom where content isn't gated & user access isn't tiered.
It's almost as if net neutrality was a precious piece of legislation or something.
Keep in mind who is on our side (I would hope): Microsoft and Google, among others. There will be blood.
That's not quite correct; some of the upper management of Google & Microsoft, including Google's CEO, are in favor of net neutrality for ethical reasons. Google & Microsoft have no business reason to fight for it. The large players in the market could probably leverage it to their advantage, in fact.
Net neutrality was probably never going to last, given the demographic with the most leverage in Washington.
Websites packaged like channels. Its a dream come true for them
Hail Hydra!
I mean, it's sort of amazing that we've gone without anything like that on the Internet side for so long, isn't it? Most other telecommunications systems have the 'package' model... in fact, I can't think of any other aspect of telecom where content isn't gated & user access isn't tiered.
It's almost as if net neutrality was a precious piece of legislation or something.
This is the attitude that allows the telco s to get away with so much shit here that they wouldn't even dream of attempting in Europe or Asia.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
When the overwhelming reaction to the news about the legislation's endangerment from the demographic it would most impact was, '...huh? soz tldr. man liara so hoooooot. fapfapfapfapfap' it's kind of difficult to be anything other than cynically pissed-off. There should've been a lot of noise over this, and there just wasn't.
instead we'll just get a bunch of childish whining after the fact, when price structures have changed, about how the apathetic consumer was totes failed by the system.
(Background: The federal government has been forcing banks to do a better job of not dealing with criminals, after things like the HSBC scandal a few years back. The banking industry, never seeing a regulation they didn't absolutely detest, has been engaging in a "okay, you want enforcement? We'll show you enforcement" strategy where they are denying banking services to anyone who has a profession that might be in any sense questionable. It's a pure strong-arm tactic meant to force the government to back down, and stuff like the EFF piece just give banks cover to blame the government.)
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
So what can realistically be done to stop this and what major players, who are capable of putting up a good fight, are on our side? Or are we thinking that nothing short of massive protests will actually bring back net neutrality?
So what can realistically be done to stop this and what major players, who are capable of putting up a good fight, are on our side? Or are we thinking that nothing short of massive protests will actually bring back net neutrality?
Right now writing congress critters and protests are the top things that individuals can do. I know Sanders has been raising the issue in his PR stuff lately
We can hope that maybe we'll see one asshole giant start filing lawsuits against the other asshole giants in favor of net neutrality where it serves their interests that the latter asshole giants don't discriminate content. That's probably me being cynical about what the actual method of fixing the issue is going to be.
Giving what assholes most of the industry are, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say they'll leverage fees against content providers that aren't part of their company because "fuck you, we only care about the bottom line and we see no reason not to charge you." They'll figure that the content providers will pass on the costs to the consumers for them, so that they won't have to take the heat for fucking everyone over.
What does this mean for gaming? Could providers also sell priority to bigger companies, effectively destroying the indie online gaming world?
Eh. Aside from Xbox gold/PSN I doubt most of the providers notice online gaming much. So of course, this means it will just get relegated into the general "unpreferred" traffic pool. Which they now have an incentive to make kinda shitty so companies want to give them cash to get the hell out of it...
I think the thing that really gets me is that language like this gets used:
On May 15, the FCC will decide to reinstate laws that would “allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers,” the New York Times reports.
Yes, "allow" service providers to pay the monopoly for faster speeds. Because it's surely not going to be a situation of "pay or face downgrades from what you're facing now"
But as Wheeler, Werbach, and Weiser concede, he will permit paid fast lanes. He will even permit cable and phone companies to offer fast lanes exclusively to one competitor and not to others. The only real restriction is that fast lanes can’t be offered exclusively to a company also owned by the cable or phone company. So Comcast wouldn’t be able to offer a fast lane only to NBC.com—which it owns—but could offer it only to Netflix or only to Apple, and nobody else, under the terms of his proposed rule.
So the chairman hasn’t changed his views in face of the backlash, but he is providing some excuses for his proposal. Here are the four main justifications:
1. It’s better than nothing. The chairman and the professors are saying that we should be happy that Wheeler is guaranteeing a slow lane because without that guarantee, the carriers could block sites and there’d be no rules against it. But “better than nothing” shouldn’t cut it. We should ask instead whether we are getting the right network neutrality rule—one that would preserve all the equality, innovation, and free expression we’ve seen on the Internet. Or whether Wheeler is fulfilling President Obama’s network neutrality promise (which is no fast lanes), rather than whether his order is better than a lump of coal in a stocking.
2. The other options aren’t that great, either. The chairman and the professors argue that the only alternative to allowing paid fast lanes and slow lanes is some rule against “unreasonable discrimination.” Wheeler suggests that the “unreasonable discrimination” rule would be flimsy and could lead to abuse. But the FCC can define some things in advance as reasonable or unreasonable. It did so in the 2010 order, saying that it doubted paid fast lanes could be reasonable and that the language was so “ominous” that the court effectively treated it as a ban.
3. My heart’s in the right place. The chairman emphasizes that his proposal is intended to allow “no unreasonable discrimination.” Werbach and Weiser claim that the chairman’s plan would stop the carriers from “arbitrarily favor[ing] certain applications” and require them to offer the “same terms” to all. But a court decision in January made it clear, under the FCC’s legal own conclusions, that the commission must allow cable and phone companies to charge “similarly-situated edge providers [the court’s term for websites] completely different prices,” and can charge websites for an exclusive fast lane “while limiting all other edge providers to a more standard service,” known as a slow lane. The FCC can’t generally require the “same terms” for all.
4. It’s just too hard to do net neutrality. Wheeler has said that he wants to get new rules on the books soon and not get tied up in court—“opening an entirely new [legal] approach” just “invites delay.” So basically, he wants to move quickly—to authorize slow lanes on the Internet. That is just giving up. Plus, he will be sued anyway, either once he adopts rules or anytime the FCC ever tries to enforce them, when a startup’s business may be on the line.
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
So the chairman hasn’t changed his views in face of the backlash, but he is providing some excuses for his proposal. Here are the four main justifications:
1. It’s better than nothing.
2. The other options aren’t that great, either.
3. My heart’s in the right place.
4. It’s just too hard to do net neutrality.
So the chairman hasn’t changed his views in face of the backlash, but he is providing some excuses for his proposal. Here are the four main justifications:
1. It’s better than nothing.
2. The other options aren’t that great, either.
3. My heart’s in the right place.
4. It’s just too hard to do net neutrality.
I literally have no words for this
I have words
they probably violate the forum rules though
+8
Options
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I just don't understand how someone who makes those kinds of excuses ends up in a place of power like he is in.
I just don't understand how someone who makes those kinds of excuses ends up in a place of power like he is in.
I just...arghblaghgaghr
Connections and strong lobbying ties and a belief in Washington that people tied to the industry will know how best to regulate it despite any and all conflicts of interest?
Obama's first pick to lead the FCC, Julius Genachowski, was initially a strong proponent of net neutrality. Genachowski made a video explaining why he wanted to reclassify ISPs as "telecommunications services," a legally bulletproof way of preserving an open internet that had long been favored by consumer groups. But he ultimately backed off in the face of an onslaught of lobbying by ISPs. By then their main trade group, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), was spending about 95 times more money lobbying the FCC than the Internet Association, which represents the tech companies that favor net neutrality.
Last May, two months after Genachowski stepped down, Obama replaced him with Tom Wheeler, a veteran telecommunications lobbyist who'd served as president of the NCTA before taking the helm of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CITA), the lobbying arm of the wireless industry. Obama called him "the Bo Jackson of telecom." The New Yorker's John Cassidy suggested that a more apt sports metaphor might have been "to compare him to one of the lawyers who helped finagle a lucrative anti-trust exemption for professional football and baseball."
I can barely afford my internet connection now, I can't wait until I really will be priced out of having internet at all .
Don't worry, it's not you who has to pay to get the fast lane, it's content providers. It's what they're doing to Netflix right now, which is that they intentionally drop packets from streaming services and then claim that they can pay more to get a more reliable connection to the people.
So, it's not you who has to pay. It's YouTube, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, Valve, EA, Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, HBO, GOG, Bing, Yahoo, Penny-Arcade, Ars Technica, Wired, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Wikipedia, SomethingAwful, Cracked, Aero, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, WalMart, Target, Centas, Level 2, every server farm in existence, every supercomputer, every university, every government agency, ect. ect. Then you have to pay more for those services. So they aren't charging you, they're charging content creators.
So hey, after I did a speech about net neutrality in one of my courses I solicited the audience for write letters that they, or I, would mail out to Tom Wheeler. I got 2/3 of the audience to write a quick letter to him telling him to regulate ISPs as common carriers, and sent them out through the mail.
May I suggest that others do the same?
Here's the business address.
Tom Wheeler
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
I can barely afford my internet connection now, I can't wait until I really will be priced out of having internet at all .
Don't worry, it's not you who has to pay to get the fast lane, it's content providers. It's what they're doing to Netflix right now, which is that they intentionally drop packets from streaming services and then claim that they can pay more to get a more reliable connection to the people.
So, it's not you who has to pay. It's YouTube, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, Valve, EA, Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, HBO, GOG, Bing, Yahoo, Penny-Arcade, Ars Technica, Wired, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Wikipedia, SomethingAwful, Cracked, Aero, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, WalMart, Target, Centas, Level 2, every server farm in existence, every supercomputer, every university, every government agency, ect. ect. Then you have to pay more for those services. So they aren't charging you, they're charging content creators.
Just gonna say that the spin on that price hike seems a bit sketchy. Given the portion of Netflix's costs related to content (rather than bandwidth), and given the money they've been spending to get new content, it seems a bit of a stretch to say that a $1 increase is because of Comcast/Verizon/etc. peering disputes. I'd go so far as to say it's more likely that if it was just these direct peering deals, Netflix probably would have absorbed the cost.
Their rates were going up anyway. Inflation alone would have had them going up in the next year, most likely, even absent the push to get content. But, by doing the increase now, they've managed to convince the internet that it's all Comcast's (and Verizon's, and other large ISPs) fault. Stinks of bullshit to me, regardless of what side of that fight you're on. Brilliant PR move, though.
Posts
Again, this is what happens when you put industry lobbyists in charge of the organization that's supposed to serve as the industry's regulator and watchdog
Guess I'll be firing off some more e-mails to my Congress critters. God do I hate sending shit off to that shithead Cantor because I'm pretty sure I'm wasting my time and it's really fucking tempting to call him a fucking idiot in the e-mails.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I would have to imagine so
The technical term for this is regulatory capture.
Hope everyone enjoys paying for their 'Gold' or 'Platinum' or whatever packages to maintain a half decent connection.
In fairness, I guess it was naive to think that we'd have contemporary levels of Internet / communications access for very long. It's sort of amazing that we've held onto it until now.
Oh no, don't worry - you can still have your Internet connection. They'd hate to not be able to squeeze what they still can out of you.
You'll get the 'Budget' package, with speeds up to at least 50 kbps! With included access to up to 6 websites of your choosing!
...What? Oh, you didn't know? Yeah - net neutrality was one of the things preventing ISPs from... err... presenting users with a sensible browsing experience catered to their interests. But I'm sure you don't need access to most of the Internet anyway, right? And if you did, don't worry; ISP content paywalls I'm sure will be totally and completely reasonable.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Websites packaged like channels. Its a dream come true for them
Hail Hydra!
*WEEP* !
it's one of those We the People petitions. if it garners enough signatures, the Obama Administration has to respond.
but really, if you want to have the most impact, contact your Congress critters. let them know as voting Americans that you won't put up with this nonsense.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
But seriously, write your congress critters. I'll probably get something written up tomorrow [got some assignments I've got to get in tonight before midnight]
Paul "starve the poor" Ryan
I suppose I can contact him
That's not quite correct; some of the upper management of Google & Microsoft, including Google's CEO, are in favor of net neutrality for ethical reasons. Google & Microsoft have no business reason to fight for it. The large players in the market could probably leverage it to their advantage, in fact.
Net neutrality was probably never going to last, given the demographic with the most leverage in Washington.
I mean, it's sort of amazing that we've gone without anything like that on the Internet side for so long, isn't it? Most other telecommunications systems have the 'package' model... in fact, I can't think of any other aspect of telecom where content isn't gated & user access isn't tiered.
It's almost as if net neutrality was a precious piece of legislation or something.
This is the attitude that allows the telco s to get away with so much shit here that they wouldn't even dream of attempting in Europe or Asia.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
There will only be blood when Comcast starts pricing in pints.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Basically.
When the overwhelming reaction to the news about the legislation's endangerment from the demographic it would most impact was, '...huh? soz tldr. man liara so hoooooot. fapfapfapfapfap' it's kind of difficult to be anything other than cynically pissed-off. There should've been a lot of noise over this, and there just wasn't.
instead we'll just get a bunch of childish whining after the fact, when price structures have changed, about how the apathetic consumer was totes failed by the system.
(Background: The federal government has been forcing banks to do a better job of not dealing with criminals, after things like the HSBC scandal a few years back. The banking industry, never seeing a regulation they didn't absolutely detest, has been engaging in a "okay, you want enforcement? We'll show you enforcement" strategy where they are denying banking services to anyone who has a profession that might be in any sense questionable. It's a pure strong-arm tactic meant to force the government to back down, and stuff like the EFF piece just give banks cover to blame the government.)
Right now writing congress critters and protests are the top things that individuals can do. I know Sanders has been raising the issue in his PR stuff lately
We can hope that maybe we'll see one asshole giant start filing lawsuits against the other asshole giants in favor of net neutrality where it serves their interests that the latter asshole giants don't discriminate content. That's probably me being cynical about what the actual method of fixing the issue is going to be.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Eh. Aside from Xbox gold/PSN I doubt most of the providers notice online gaming much. So of course, this means it will just get relegated into the general "unpreferred" traffic pool. Which they now have an incentive to make kinda shitty so companies want to give them cash to get the hell out of it...
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Yes, "allow" service providers to pay the monopoly for faster speeds. Because it's surely not going to be a situation of "pay or face downgrades from what you're facing now"
I mean to keep everything perfect, all you'd have to do is 'nothing'
jesus, if he's that hard up for things to fuck with, we all need to buy him some model airplanes and tell him not to come into work tomorrow.
I literally have no words for this
I have words
they probably violate the forum rules though
I just...arghblaghgaghr
Connections and strong lobbying ties and a belief in Washington that people tied to the industry will know how best to regulate it despite any and all conflicts of interest?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/charts-why-fcc-ditching-net-neutrality
one bit:
And a couple interesting images
Don't worry, it's not you who has to pay to get the fast lane, it's content providers. It's what they're doing to Netflix right now, which is that they intentionally drop packets from streaming services and then claim that they can pay more to get a more reliable connection to the people.
So, it's not you who has to pay. It's YouTube, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, Valve, EA, Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, HBO, GOG, Bing, Yahoo, Penny-Arcade, Ars Technica, Wired, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Wikipedia, SomethingAwful, Cracked, Aero, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, WalMart, Target, Centas, Level 2, every server farm in existence, every supercomputer, every university, every government agency, ect. ect.
Then you have to pay more for those services. So they aren't charging you, they're charging content creators.
May I suggest that others do the same?
Here's the business address.
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Just gonna say that the spin on that price hike seems a bit sketchy. Given the portion of Netflix's costs related to content (rather than bandwidth), and given the money they've been spending to get new content, it seems a bit of a stretch to say that a $1 increase is because of Comcast/Verizon/etc. peering disputes. I'd go so far as to say it's more likely that if it was just these direct peering deals, Netflix probably would have absorbed the cost.
Their rates were going up anyway. Inflation alone would have had them going up in the next year, most likely, even absent the push to get content. But, by doing the increase now, they've managed to convince the internet that it's all Comcast's (and Verizon's, and other large ISPs) fault. Stinks of bullshit to me, regardless of what side of that fight you're on. Brilliant PR move, though.