Net Neutrality

According to... whom? You? Did a judge rule this? Can you produce a document saying this is *literally* what they did?

Comcast imposes data caps... you mean the 1 TB limit before there are overage charges? I don't know about you, but I never exceed 200GB and that's with two computers surfing the net all day, near constant music streaming, and a couple hours each of gaming and Netflix every day.

I don't exactly know what people are doing to exceed 1 TB a month of data, but whatever it is, I don't have a problem with them paying more for the service. Whether they pay Comcast more, or whether they pay more for the service they stream through Comcast (i.e. Netflix) is irrelevant, in the final analysis.

Why shouldn't users consuming massive amounts of bandwidth pay more?

 

Here's an article from around then describing the FCC looking into it. This was before Net Neutrality and Title II classification so it wasn't illegal. I can't offhand find an article describing what the ISPs were doing because it's complicated and technical and most articles won't go into that kind of detail. To summarize: normally when traffic from a domain increases, routers dynamically increase peering to that domain to handle the load. Comcast and Verizon refused to do that for Netflix, resulting in congestion and slow speeds for anyone using those ISPs at the time. Congestion that magically cleared up the instant those two companies got a check from Netflix.

Address the main thrust of my point please. That was an offhand, tangential comment which is why it was in parentheses(and the answer is because those users don't actually increase costs - why should they pay more? And if they do, why are ISPs also charging companies like Netflix?).

 

The article says:

From this quote it looks like the circumstance you bring up is actually NOT under the domain of "net neutrality" as that typically governs the relationship between an ISP and consumers, and not "traffic between ISPs and other networks and services".

Therefore, the answer to your question is simple:

Because charging the consumer more would violate principles of net neutrality, while charging Netflix more does not.

You claim that users accessing multiple TB of information per month doesn't actually increase costs. Why not? Can you show me evidence to support this view? It seems counterintuitive to me.

 

http://lifehacker.com/sponsored-data-is-the-newest-biggest-threat-to-net-neu-1754054173

also, this is what you could be looking at relatively soon:

 

I'll ask a direct non-political question that is a real life concern...

I have been providing free content on the internet since the 90s. I was even was one of the first people to openly provide direct downloads and links to mass quality images at a time when most companies were scared to host any image for another site. Of course I paid for the bandwidth from the hosting provider, but I never charged or made a penny. I am the user/provider that the internet was created for. It was never created to be commercialized.

My question is what protection would sites like I provided have from having to pay every ISP the site users are using to provide this free service? Further, what protection from the censorship that each ISP may independently impose?

Maybe I am wrong, but net neutrality protects me and my users from company's whose only interest is profiting shareholders.

(Edit.. in today's terms that is the same as Blu Ray videos)

 

So, I could keep the "traditional" plan, where all my traffic counts toward my data cap.

Or I could choose one of these other plans, and not have traffic coming from the "sponsored" services count towards my cap.

Sounds like more choices to me. What's the problem here? Am I missing something?

 

Greetings Outlander,

Which flaws are you refering to exactly?

 

Well... The fact that you don't see an issue with paying extra for the "privilege" of visiting certain websites tells me all I need to know.

Good day, sir!

 

You truly are touched by his noodly appendages.

 

The issue at hand is that there in fact exists traffic that requires priorization in a certain degree. ICS operations, PTP payload, remote chirurgy orchastration, etc.

Measures to address these valid use cases will most certainly be missused. Actually, they are already used in this moment to de-prioritize specific overlay-network protocols in the provider scope.

 

But that's not what the mockup pricing tiers you posted actually says. First of all, it doesn't say anything about limiting certain websites. It also doesn't mean I can't use Dropbox unless I pay for the sponsored service. It means I can pay for the sponsored service and not have it count toward my limit.

So, I guess the fact that you don't see an issue with spreading misinformation, and then blithely dismissing a person with a when they point out the error in your reasoning tell me all I need to know as well.

 

Unfortunatly, I think yes. The choice here is to run into data plan limits if you are usimg a smaller streaming service that does not have the power to get these carrier contracts.

If you cannot get a carrier as a partner to provide unlimited volume for your specific service to customers, you are being discrminated, per definition.

 

Does anyone remember when compuserve claimed all the users on the internet we're violating it's gif patent and wanted everyone worldwide to pay $1 per year to see images? Or when pkzip did similar with zip? How about when sco claimed that Linux was using it's ip and refused to reveal what the IP was while insisting all users pay royalties? How about when netware wanted to own and lease every IP address? Corporations and capitalism cannot be trusted with vital services. That will always be true because money is not on the side of the hungry.

 

This happened before Net Neutrality, and Wheeler ended up changing his mind on that - the Open Internet order banned that sort of behavior from ISPs.

Not directly, because nobody publishes that kind of data, but I can point you to secondary evidence: despite performing in many ways the same basic tasks as an ISP, private VPN proxies do not charge based on bandwidth or limit your bandwidth, and they are also significantly cheaper. These are for power users, I am 100% sure people use them to hide (for example) torrent traffic, if bandwidth was a major concern they would charge for it. There's also the memos I mentioned.

Something I don't think you're aware of: ISPs do not do business with corporations like Netflix - companies like that pay for connections from the backbone providers. Comcast et al are what's called "last mile providers" that provide consumers with a connection to the internet. It's as if your power company determined that most power was used by IKEA lamps and did rolling blackouts until IKEA paid them a bunch of money.

 

This really hits a nerve with me. I have not had cable service for almost 20 years for two reasons.

1. I don't want to pay for channels I don't use.
2. I don't want to subsidize religious evangelism.

If the internet turns to this, I will become a modern caveman. I am almost retired anyway.

 

What smaller streaming service would carry the kinds of programming that appeals to the mass market, yet not have the negotiating power to bring the carriers to the table?

I think I can see your point that these kinds of arrangements can make it more difficult for new competitors to break in, but how is that different from anything else? Or why should it be different?

New companies have to be scrappy. They have to innovate.

They also have to deal with a constantly changing regulatory environment. Which is one thing that I think people often times forget about. It's not like whatever is decided this year can't be completely overturned a few years from now. It happens all the time. It's happening right now.

 

Lol... You know, you actually made me go and double check what I posted. Nowhere in that mockup does it say anything about websites 'counting towards my limit.' What it does say, however, is "websites included" with each prospective tier, with the amount of included websites increasing with each more expensive tier.

In other words, exactly what I said.

Misinformation, indeed.

 

That doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a cost associated with the amount of traffic that passes through their servers. Rather it might suggest that "unlimited bandwidth" is simply a feature that consumers have come to expect, and so they recoup those costs in other ways. Yes, they are cheaper. However, the "price per bandwidth" doesn't constitute the whole of one's broadband bill.

I would be interested to see them.

I pretty much loathe Comcast and are sure they are a bunch of jerks. However that doesn't mean I feel all up-in-arms that they want to charge some kind of extra fee to Netflix, either.

Let me put it another way. I get a sense that this debate over "net neutrality" is just a proxy battleground for "business as usual" going on with Google, Apple, and Netflix on one side, and Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T in the other.

They've all been very clever getting people to fight their battles for them. But really at the end of the day, the consumer is going to get screwed out of an extra few dollars a month. What we are essentially debating here is which companies bill those dollars show up on, and whether or not it's "OK" for these companies to backdoor deal with one another to further obfuscate where the money is ending up at the end of the day.

 

LOL- no seriously go back again and corroborate it with the article you posted. It says:

It is the companies that are paying for the privilege of being excluded from the data cap. It is not the consumer that is paying for the privilege of using that company's website. Although of course, in the case of video streaming services, they ARE paying for the privilege of using those services.

Now look at the mockup again:

"Preferred Internet" is up to 22 GB per month, but includes "325+ websites" some of which have their logos featured there. Those websites do not count toward the data cap.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that the total cost is the total cost. At the end of the day, what you the consumer pay in total to your ISP and to the streaming services is going to be the same. The only difference is which bill is going to go up, and which company has to deal with irate customers when it does.

 

Er... OK. I realize now that I was was not clear about this, and my post could have been misleading.

The picture I posted was not linked in any way to the article, and was not a representation of sponsored data; rather, my post was intended as an example of two separate but equally crap possibilities once the Title II protection is revoked.

So, that being said, the image mockup is very possible and exactly what it looks like. Paying for the sites you want to visit, and being blocked from those you don't pay for.