So Long Net Neutrality; It was nice knowing you

Snowcone · June 2007

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has turned thumbs down on net neutrality.

In a report on broadband availability and connectivity, the FTC found little reason to protect consumers and content providers from attempts by large telecommunications providers to charge more for faster delivery.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/06/ftc_net.html

Sometimes I wonder about organizations like the FTC. Whose interests are they really looking out for? Do they honestly think the telcos, whom have been broken up for monopolistic practices in the past, will behave when given a free ticket to gouge content providers AND customers at the same time? It's almost like the FTC is so jaded that they honestly think this is a smart decision.

urahonky · June 2007

That's all I can say.

PiptheFair · June 2007

OH AWESOME

PiptheFair · June 2007

note: not actually awesome

Accualt · June 2007

God damn it. The FCC, FTC, and Supreme Court are really on a roll when it comes to screwing over Americans.

Goomba · June 2007

Well let's be honest here, it's not like this is all that different than having the companies pay congress to regulate their way.

Szechuanosaurus · June 2007

Well that's pretty fucked.

Re: nholder · June 2007

:x

I remember trying to fight this months ago. Calling local senators, hordes of e-mails, etc. Really breaks my intarwebs heart knowing now I won't be paying for service, rather I'll be paying for service, content, AND extra content!!!11

In the future, if I have to pay extra for "channels" on the internet as I do for cable now, it's a very sad time. Free information is on it's last breath.

Snowcone · June 2007

urahonky wrote: »

Wow, I'm seriously glad that's over with.

EDIT: Wait... shit... I can't remember: Net Neutrality... good or bad?

I tried to not think about it, for fear of my sanity.

Net neutrality is what would prevent the AT&Ts of the world from saying to content providers "Pay us $500,000/month and we'll prioritize your traffic". Net Neutrality is good.... this ruling is bad.

Imperfect · June 2007

It's times like this when I'm pretty glad I'm a Canadian.

...and then I remember that most of my internets come from You Guise.

And then I weep for us all.

Narian · June 2007

Still lots of room up here in Canada.

urahonky · June 2007

Snowcone wrote: »

urahonky wrote: »

Wow, I'm seriously glad that's over with.

EDIT: Wait... shit... I can't remember: Net Neutrality... good or bad?

I tried to not think about it, for fear of my sanity.

Net neutrality is what would prevent the AT&Ts of the world from saying to content providers "Pay us $500,000/month and we'll prioritize your traffic". Net Neutrality is good.... this ruling is bad.

I thought so.

chaossoldier · June 2007

Narian wrote: »

Still lots of room up here in Canada.

Wasn't Canada starting to debate the same thing?

INeedNoSalt · June 2007

>:\

Marty81 · June 2007

According to my senator, service providers are still not allowed to intentionally block or degrade someone's connection based on what site they're trying to connect to. If they do, it's something like a 500,000 dollar minimum fine. This is usually the first thing that people talk about when net neutrality comes up, and it's not what net neutrality is about. Net neutrality is about not allowing prioritization or guaranteed speeds for anything.

Basically, service providers want to offer streaming HDTV that, unlike when youtube is slow, you don't have to click pause and wait for the thing to load before you can watch it. There's no way to do that without offering a "better" service, where the traffic from those sites is given a guaranteed transfer rate. Existing connections and connection speeds are not going to change, nobody is going to block your access to google, etc. There are laws in place to prevent that, regardless of how crazy AT&T's CEO is.

Personally I think streaming HDTV is a pretty dumb idea so I'm not going to pay for it, and I'm perfectly happy with the way the internet is structured now, but I think a lot of people are misguided about what net neutrality is and how it bears on the future of the internet. It's not all doom and gloom.

Snowcone · June 2007

Marty81 wrote: »

Personally I think streaming HDTV is a pretty dumb idea so I'm not going to pay for it, and I'm perfectly happy with the way the internet is structured now, but I think a lot of people are misguided about what net neutrality is and how it bears on the future of the internet. It's not all doom and gloom.

Not yet anyway. I am sure the telcos will find a way to use the lack of neutrality to bend us all over.

yalborap · June 2007

Well, humanity's boned.

Goomba · June 2007

yalborap wrote: »

Well, humanity's boned.

wut

cfgauss · June 2007

Marty81 wrote: »

Personally I think streaming HDTV is a pretty dumb idea so I'm not going to pay for it, and I'm perfectly happy with the way the internet is structured now, but I think a lot of people are misguided about what net neutrality is and how it bears on the future of the internet. It's not all doom and gloom.

... but I can already get streaming HDTV.... from my ISP.... which is my cable provider... from HD cable TV... which I have to pay extra for........

Aroduc · June 2007

So... correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole thing was about whether or not to enact new laws to ensure net neutrality.

As in... there's nothing in place now to absolutely ensure it.

Meaning that nothing is changing from how it's been the last few years.

...

DAMN THE FTC.

o_O

Marty81 · June 2007

cfgauss wrote: »

Marty81 wrote: »

Personally I think streaming HDTV is a pretty dumb idea so I'm not going to pay for it, and I'm perfectly happy with the way the internet is structured now, but I think a lot of people are misguided about what net neutrality is and how it bears on the future of the internet. It's not all doom and gloom.

... but I can already get streaming HDTV.... from my ISP.... which is my cable provider... from HD cable TV... which I have to pay extra for........

The point is to offer it to regular (non-cable) internet users as well...and they'll have to pay extra for it if they want it.

The point is that it's not going to affect your access to penny arcade or google or anything like that.

Lucky Cynic · June 2007

This shouldn't affect any MMO's... Right? I just don't want to find out that ISP's will call up an MMO and say something like "Oh hey, MMO Devs, your servers use up too much traffic, pay us $10million and we will help you out! Till then, yeah sorry, your sort of restricted." and some move like that will fuck the players because then you go linkdead and have a weaker connection due to this...

Malkor · June 2007

The FTC can reverse this decision when we start to lag behind other countries more than we do.

imbalanced · June 2007

My opinion on net neutrality is about in line with Cisco's corporate stance, as in the concept is a good one, but don't start legislating on the issue unless there is a clear and present problem. Once you start regulating an industry or medium, you can create severe technological cooling based on political barriers.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/corp_031506b.html

Malkor · June 2007

imbalanced wrote: »

My opinion on net neutrality is about in line with Cisco's corporate stance, as in the concept is a good one, but don't start legislating on the issue unless there is a clear and present problem. Once you start regulating an industry or medium, you can create severe technological cooling based on political barriers.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/corp_031506b.html

Right, but at the same time we don't want a repeat of the American domestic auto industry's situation, where it's becomes more and more obvious that they just can't compete because they moved too slowly too late in the game.

Dritz · June 2007

Malkor wrote: »

The FTC can reverse this decision when we start to lag behind other countries more than we do.

We aren't lagging behind now? Doesn't the US consider anything above 512kbits to be high speed?

imbalanced · June 2007

Malkor wrote: »

imbalanced wrote: »

My opinion on net neutrality is about in line with Cisco's corporate stance, as in the concept is a good one, but don't start legislating on the issue unless there is a clear and present problem. Once you start regulating an industry or medium, you can create severe technological cooling based on political barriers.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/corp_031506b.html

Right, but at the same time we don't want a repeat of the American domestic auto industry's situation, where it's becomes more and more obvious that they just can't compete because they moved too slowly too late in the game.

Well keep in mind you'll see a lot of new service providers opening up, as well as new networks being formed simply through wireless. That could make data service providers a moot point. Imagine WiMax just destroying Comcast's hold on the network. Or better yet, any cell phone company once the spectrum gets deregulated -- or at least rearranged with the death of analog broadcast tv.

Malkor · June 2007

Dritz wrote: »

Malkor wrote: »

The FTC can reverse this decision when we start to lag behind other countries more than we do.

We aren't lagging behind now? Doesn't the US consider anything above 512kbits to be high speed?

That's why I said more than we do. Someone posted the speeds and prices we get compared to other places.

. Things like FiOS and such are a step in the right direction, but Verizon spent big bucks to make that happen which I think is reflected in the bills of everyone even if you don't pay for the service.

Vincent Grayson · June 2007

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

This shouldn't affect any MMO's... Right? I just don't want to find out that ISP's will call up an MMO and say something like "Oh hey, MMO Devs, your servers use up too much traffic, pay us $10million and we will help you out! Till then, yeah sorry, your sort of restricted." and some move like that will fuck the players because then you go linkdead and have a weaker connection due to this...

I could be wrong, but I don't think MMOs use nearly as much bandwidth as a game like Halo 3 might.

cfgauss · June 2007

Marty81 wrote: »

The point is to offer it to regular (non-cable) internet users as well...and they'll have to pay extra for it if they want it.

The point is that it's not going to affect your access to penny arcade or google or anything like that.

But there's nothing stopping them from doing that now (and, in fact, some places DO let you do that!). And there's nothing stopping them from deciding to segregate traffic and say:
"if you want to use ports associated with HTTP you have to pay $20/mo. If you want to use ports associated with FTP you can pay an extra $15/mo. If you want to use ports associated with WoW, you can pay an extra $30/mo, since that uses a lot of bandwidth..." Even though it's all the same kind of information.

Aroduc · June 2007

imbalanced wrote: »

Malkor wrote: »

imbalanced wrote: »

My opinion on net neutrality is about in line with Cisco's corporate stance, as in the concept is a good one, but don't start legislating on the issue unless there is a clear and present problem. Once you start regulating an industry or medium, you can create severe technological cooling based on political barriers.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/corp_031506b.html

Right, but at the same time we don't want a repeat of the American domestic auto industry's situation, where it's becomes more and more obvious that they just can't compete because they moved too slowly too late in the game.

Well keep in mind you'll see a lot of new service providers opening up, as well as new networks being formed simply through wireless. That could make data service providers a moot point. Imagine WiMax just destroying Comcast's hold on the network. Or better yet, any cell phone company once the spectrum gets deregulated -- or at least rearranged with the death of analog broadcast tv.

Also, part of why the FTC slapped it down is -because- the trend at the moment is more competition in the ISP field, not less. ISPs sure as hell are not going to want to sacrifice valuable customers and their reputation simply for some pittance from company X.

cfgauss · June 2007

Also, I don't think everyone's quite understanding how bandwidth works. If they can't do things now because there isn't enough bandwidth, they're going to go the easy route and charge us money to limit other bandwidth use to "make room" for "special premium gold diamond membership $150 a month bandwidth," instead of building more infrastructure (which is what they'd need to do to catch up to other countries).

Bandwidth doesn't come out of nowhere. This is only enabling them to screw us over more.

imbalanced · June 2007

Comcast and Verizon will learn very soon, if they haven't already figured it out, that it's about the content, not the connectivity. If you can find everything you want with one provider and not the other, people are going to go to the one that offers more. For example, AOL was the king of connectivity until broadband came around. They were really the only show in town. Now that they're basically toilet liner in the world wide web, they're promoting content (AOL Videos, AIM, etc) and security over the connectivity stuff.

I see the same shaky ground that Comcast and Verizon are walking, and they have to be careful or they'll cave in as well. So yeah, I'm not too concerned with the neutrality of the Internet.

Marty81 · June 2007

cfgauss wrote: »

Also, I don't think everyone's quite understanding how bandwidth works. If they can't do things now because there isn't enough bandwidth, they're going to go the easy route and charge us money to limit other bandwidth use to "make room" for "special premium gold diamond membership $150 a month bandwidth," instead of building more infrastructure (which is what they'd need to do to catch up to other countries).

Bandwidth doesn't come out of nowhere. This is only enabling them to screw us over more.

The most recent telecom act was passed intending to be good for 10 years. There will be more infrastructure and more bandwidth available as time goes on. It's not a decision that's meant to change things overnight.

And there's nothing stopping them from deciding to segregate traffic and say:
"if you want to use ports associated with HTTP you have to pay $20/mo. If you want to use ports associated with FTP you can pay an extra $15/mo. If you want to use ports associated with WoW, you can pay an extra $30/mo, since that uses a lot of bandwidth..." Even though it's all the same kind of information.

Nothing other than the laws that say they can't do that, you mean, right?

Frugus · June 2007

Narian wrote: »

Still lots of room up here in Canada.

Seconded.

Lucky Cynic · June 2007

Vincent Grayson wrote: »

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

This shouldn't affect any MMO's... Right? I just don't want to find out that ISP's will call up an MMO and say something like "Oh hey, MMO Devs, your servers use up too much traffic, pay us $10million and we will help you out! Till then, yeah sorry, your sort of restricted." and some move like that will fuck the players because then you go linkdead and have a weaker connection due to this...

I could be wrong, but I don't think MMOs use nearly as much bandwidth as a game like Halo 3 might.

8-meeellion!

I don't play WoW, but it could be a problem for smaller MMO's like DAoC and such that still have a good amount of players, but not really as much as say in their hayday. I also do wonder if this would affect an MMO's lifetime.

"Hey guys, sorry, we know you like our game, but it has been out for nearly 10years. Yes yes, we know 20,000 of you still play very regularly but we only get X-amount of bandwidth and would rather it go towards our next big MMO!

Goomba · June 2007

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

Vincent Grayson wrote: »

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

This shouldn't affect any MMO's... Right? I just don't want to find out that ISP's will call up an MMO and say something like "Oh hey, MMO Devs, your servers use up too much traffic, pay us $10million and we will help you out! Till then, yeah sorry, your sort of restricted." and some move like that will fuck the players because then you go linkdead and have a weaker connection due to this...

I could be wrong, but I don't think MMOs use nearly as much bandwidth as a game like Halo 3 might.

8-meeellion!

I don't play WoW, but it could be a problem for smaller MMO's like DAoC and such that still have a good amount of players, but not really as much as say in their hayday. I also do wonder if this would affect an MMO's lifetime.

"Hey guys, sorry, we know you like our game, but it has been out for nearly 10years. Yes yes, we know 20,000 of you still play very regularly but we only get X-amount of bandwidth and would rather it go towards our next big MMO!

I... what?

Djiem · June 2007

Goomba wrote: »

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

Vincent Grayson wrote: »

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

This shouldn't affect any MMO's... Right? I just don't want to find out that ISP's will call up an MMO and say something like "Oh hey, MMO Devs, your servers use up too much traffic, pay us $10million and we will help you out! Till then, yeah sorry, your sort of restricted." and some move like that will fuck the players because then you go linkdead and have a weaker connection due to this...

I could be wrong, but I don't think MMOs use nearly as much bandwidth as a game like Halo 3 might.

8-meeellion!

I don't play WoW, but it could be a problem for smaller MMO's like DAoC and such that still have a good amount of players, but not really as much as say in their hayday. I also do wonder if this would affect an MMO's lifetime.

"Hey guys, sorry, we know you like our game, but it has been out for nearly 10years. Yes yes, we know 20,000 of you still play very regularly but we only get X-amount of bandwidth and would rather it go towards our next big MMO!

I... what?

Too many "you", "we" and "they" that don't actually refer to existing people or groups.

Lucky Cynic · June 2007

Okay, let's try this example, all though I am sure Mythic (makers of DAoC and WAR) will never do anything like this in the near, near future, it still would be good to know if this ruling on net neutrality will affect how they run the servers. They all use a lot of bandwidth and what if the costs for Mythic go up because they need their servers running at a fairly high priority. DAoC has many servers, but not that many players and it seems to decline more and more every day. Now, what if Mythic can only have so much bandwidth on their current agreement with the ISP. What they may do would be to axe DAoC early, killing those servers and instead putting them forward into WAR.

Am I crazy or is this plausible?

Aroduc · June 2007

Lucky Cynic wrote: »

Okay, let's try this example, all though I am sure Mythic (makers of DAoC and WAR) will never do anything like this in the near, near future, it still would be good to know if this ruling on net neutrality will affect how they run the servers. They all use a lot of bandwidth and what if the costs for Mythic go up because they need their servers running at a fairly high priority. DAoC has many servers, but not that many players and it seems to decline more and more every day. Now, what if Mythic can only have so much bandwidth on their current agreement with the ISP. What they may do would be to axe DAoC early, killing those servers and instead putting them forward into WAR.

Am I crazy or is this plausible?

Pretty much the former.

Without even taking into account that the ruling on net neutrality is "keep on doing what you've been doing."

Azio · June 2007

Imperfect wrote: »

It's times like this when I'm pretty glad I'm a Canadian.

...and then I remember that most of my internets come from You Guise.

And then I weep for us all.

Canada is in even worse shape. The few people who even know what the fuck Net Neutrality is are a very small and unprofitable minority, compared to the 5 million nubs who happily pay $40 a month for 1.5 megabit "broadband" to check their emails. Our government, and the four gigantic corporations that own most of the broadband service, couldn't give a shit.

Penny Arcade

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So Long Net Neutrality; It was nice knowing you

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