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wallstreetpirate

Net Neutrality

Post by wallstreetpirate »

Subject: Obama: Don't sell us out on net neutrality

Dear Friend,

This is a do or die moment for a free and open Internet, and President Obama needs to decide which side he is on -- ours or the side of the giant telecommunications corporations.

On Wednesday, Obama appointee and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced plans to issue weak, industry-friendly regulations when the FCC meets on Dec. 21st. And in a cynical ploy Genachowski is calling the regulations "net neutrality," when they're nothing of the sort.

President Obama, who promised on the campaign trail to be an advocate for net neutrality, can stand up now and call for stronger rules to protect American consumers, or he can sell us out to the narrow interests of the telecoms.

Will you join me in asking Pres. Obama to not sell us out on net neutrality?

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/oba ... &rc=paste1
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viking777

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by viking777 »

I wish you the best of luck with your campaign, over here in the UK net neutrality is already dead, viz this quote from a BT spokesperson a few months ago:
"[A]t the moment with our TV service, BT Vision, we deliver entertainment content, video, at peak time to consumers via our network and we prioritise the traffic in order to be able to do this."
So if you ever needed a reason to not use BT Broadband then that is it, but you won't find a place to run to for long.

If you have ever used mobile broadband you will know for sure how pervasive 'traffic shaping' is. Of course the difference is that most mobile isp's aren't daft enough to tell you how they 'shape' their traffic so you can't actually accuse them of prioritising more commercial products when your connection drops off every night.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by majpooper »

I have looked into this with a great deal of interest and have a different opinion.

The fact is the internet grew for 20 years (1995-20015) before net neutrality was put in place in 2015 and in reality the many scenarios we are warned of are considered illegal with or without net neutrality.

In the USA, at least, we are protected by the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, same as we were prior to net neutrality being passed in 2015 and will continue to be.

The assertion that “ISPs will be able to practice paid prioritization, blocking, and throttling” to limit competition or that some entity has an advantage in streaming their content over the internet because they will pay millions to buy better access is and will still be illegal.

Fact: net neutrality has resulted 18% reduction in investment in the wireless space in the past two years. We need robust investment over the next decade to build out 5G networks and the 1,000 requirements of Title II has created tremendous uncertainty.
DAMIEN1307

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by DAMIEN1307 »

alexander addison wrote "To bypass these new restrictions, it is imperative you invest in a Net Neutrality VPN solution, before they are banned too!"
if VPN "were" banned it would be to no avail to invest in an imperitive manner as you suggest...they are already banned in china and north korea i believe...if as you think that having such tools before they are banned would help you in any way you are sadly mistaken...your ISP would automatically know your using a vpn and like china and north korea, would immediately report you...a vpn does to quite a degree protect your privacy and to a dgree your anonymity but by no means makes you invisble to your ISP...they may not know what sites your visiting but rest assured the see the fact your using a tunnel...this is a knee jerk reaction to a media hyped "problem" which may not be a "real" problem whatsoever...contrary to popular belief of the tin foil hat crowd, we are not in a totalitarian society as of yet and at least at this stage of the game, i so far side with majpoopers analysis of the situation as stated in his post...he has even using well known statistics and existing laws to prove his points...i seriously doubt that we will see much of any change first off because its just not in the ISPs interest to alienate its customers...they ARE in the game to make money after all and would not be inclined to "throttle" their own financial interests...DAMIEN
DAMIEN1307

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by DAMIEN1307 »

just as a side point...when i looked at the site you provided, i blocked the 12 different "trackers" and ads that are eagerly awaiting our arrival over this non-issue...also dont count on obama...he is occupied right now in world travel and golf plus former presidents by custom tend not to interfere nor voice opinions very much on the job their successor is involved with or other gov't agencies as they are now out of power and their clout is diminished...just ask bill and hillary,they will tell you just how diminished they have become...DAMIEN
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by all41 »

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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by Moem »

DAMIEN1307 wrote:also dont count on obama...
Please note the date on the original post.

And a general remark: this thread cannot become political, or we'll have to close it as per the forum rules. Let's keep that in mind.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by BenTrabetere »

majpooper wrote:The fact is the internet grew for 20 years (1995-20015) before net neutrality was put in place in 2015 and in reality the many scenarios we are warned of are considered illegal with or without net neutrality.
Net neutrality was not an issue prior to 2014. It became an issue because of the Verizon v. FCC decision that determined the FCC had no authority to enforce network neutrality rules as long as service providers were not identified as common carriers.
In the USA, at least, we are protected by the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, same as we were prior to net neutrality being passed in 2015 and will continue to be.
The FTC has effectively turned its back on regulating ISPs, content providers, etc. And it is unlikely the current Justice Dept will take on any antitrust investigations.
Fact: net neutrality has resulted 18% reduction in investment in the wireless space in the past two years.
This reports shows investments increased by 5% over the past two years and that the reduction in investment claims are based on manipulated data from ISP analysts.

https://www.freepress.net/press-release ... ation-fccs
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by majpooper »

"This reports shows investments increased by 5% over the past two years and that the reduction in investment claims are based on manipulated data from ISP analysts".

I agree data can be manipulated and usually is - however freepress.net is hardly a reliable source as their political agenda is transparent. On the other hand when it comes to where to invest ones $$$ Wall Street annalists are much more reliable IMHO.

And you also express a real concern that I share - the anti-trust/anti-competition laws are on the books. And like all our laws and regulations having confidence that they will be faithfully enforced by the courts and regulatory agencies . . . well that's a separate issue that transcends net neutrality doesn't it ?
CoffeeFiend

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by CoffeeFiend »

This whole net neutrality argument has really shown group-think in motion, especially among many of the left-leaning "news" articles and comment sections (just stating the facts based on what I have read in the news... not trying to be political or anything :mrgreen: ). Most of those against repealing net neutrality are saying that it is basically rolling out the red carpet for ISPs to "throttle bandwidth" and to give preference for those who pay higher premiums for Internet connectivity, and of course, the good old "now costs are going to skyrocket because the US government won't be able to regulate the ISPs" . Funny, I don't recall those things happening prior to net neutrality. But hey, only time will tell and maybe I'm way off base.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by trytip »

if i pay for a service i should have control of it. if net neutrality goes away then the internet should be free of charge then they can do what ever the hell they want with it.
net neutrality is like installing a governor in your car and telling you "we will drive your car to the store we choose and if you go somewhere else we will turn off the engine"
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by BenTrabetere »

CoffeeFiend wrote:Funny, I don't recall those things happening prior to net neutrality. But hey, only time will tell and maybe I'm way off base.
Funny, but some of the issues you raised were the reason for arguments for an open internet and net neutrality. It was discussed at the FCC as far back as 2005, and some of the concerns at that time were ISPs and wireless carriers would throttle service to the 'bandwidth hogs'.

This was codified with the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 which, among other things, established that internet service providers could not discriminate against content. It also established two classes of internet access: for fixed-line providers and wireless providers.

Then it became an issue again with the Verizon decision, where the court determined the FCC had no authority to enforce network neutrality rules because service providers were not identified as common carriers.

The results from the recent FCC ruling remain to be seen. For consumers things could remain the same or things might get better. But since it now is effectively a self-regulating industry, the safe bet is it will get worse for consumers.
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CoffeeFiend

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by CoffeeFiend »

BenTrabetere wrote:
CoffeeFiend wrote:Funny, I don't recall those things happening prior to net neutrality. But hey, only time will tell and maybe I'm way off base.
Funny, but some of the issues you raised were the reason for arguments for an open internet and net neutrality. It was discussed at the FCC as far back as 2005, and some of the concerns at that time were ISPs and wireless carriers would throttle service to the 'bandwidth hogs'.

This was codified with the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 which, among other things, established that internet service providers could not discriminate against content. It also established two classes of internet access: for fixed-line providers and wireless providers.

Then it became an issue again with the Verizon decision, where the court determined the FCC had no authority to enforce network neutrality rules because service providers were not identified as common carriers.

The results from the recent FCC ruling remain to be seen. For consumers things could remain the same or things might get better. But since it now is effectively a self-regulating industry, the safe bet is it will get worse for consumers.
Good information! I also recall some people arguing that killing net neutrality would be handing control of the Internet over to countries like NK, China, and Saudi Arabia and it would result in mass censorship of web content. There is so much disinformation out there that sometimes it makes it difficult to weed out the BS and get the real facts.
By the way, what part of Mississippi are you from? I was born and raised in McComb and lived a few years in Vicksburg.
trapperjohn

Re: Net Neutrality

Post by trapperjohn »

Once upon a time an internet connection was not needed for equal access to government services. Once connectivity became necessary for public services, it became necessary to regulate it and make it equally available. Note that this is more far reaching than simply providing access to government sites. Government also has a madate to provide equal access to educational resources. How can a kid do his homework if he/she only has the Netflix channel?

Trouble is, most folks just want to know that they can still put pictures of their food on Facebook.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by felemur »

Anyone have any idea how / if this affects Canada?

I don't think it would mean anything, as Canada's CRTC is considered one of the best examples of corporate capture.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by borg101 »

Trusting in corporations to do the right thing is absolutely folly. Look into the history of the FDA. The whole reason people started caring about what was in food and we, as a people started demanding it be regulated, was basically because people were peddling food either falsely labeled and killing people, or with unsafe chemicals and biproducts which ended up killing people. The "trust people to do the 'right' thing" approach is absolutely folly. We have a ton of adages and expressions in our respective languages and cultures to warn us of this. "Give an inch, take a mile", "Absolute power corrupts absolutely", "The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall", etc, etc, etc.

The whole reason the discussion of Net Neutrality came around was because in the mid 90s telecom companies were already trying to figure out how they could lobby legislation to in order to increase profits. The FCC tried and lost the "soft touch regulation" battle many times over. The likes of Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, etc have deeper pockets than most. Earlier this decade (~2010...I'm not sure of the exact date) the major mobile carriers in the US banded together to block, successfully I might add, Google Wallet in favor of their own form of branded payment.

If you think private company regulation is a bad thing, it frequently isn't. More often than not, it is proposed by the masses to help protect families and individuals from already experienced strife.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by jimallyn »

CoffeeFiend wrote:This whole net neutrality argument has really shown group-think in motion, especially among many of the left-leaning "news" articles and comment sections (just stating the facts based on what I have read in the news... not trying to be political or anything :mrgreen: ). Most of those against repealing net neutrality are saying that it is basically rolling out the red carpet for ISPs to "throttle bandwidth" and to give preference for those who pay higher premiums for Internet connectivity, and of course, the good old "now costs are going to skyrocket because the US government won't be able to regulate the ISPs" . Funny, I don't recall those things happening prior to net neutrality. But hey, only time will tell and maybe I'm way off base.
I'll bookmark this thread so I can say "I told you so" later. If you have an alternative explanation for why the big ISPs lobbied so hard for this, I'd like to hear it. In the meantime, I will continue to believe that it is indeed for the reasons you mention above.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by Pierre »

felemur wrote:Anyone have any idea how / if this affects Canada?

I don't think it would mean anything, as Canada's CRTC is considered one of the best examples of corporate capture.
it most likely will only affect the CONUS area, rather than any other Country.
& it will be an interesting thing to watch, in order to see if it does affect any other Countries,
as the Major part of any Internet Traffic is funneled through CONUS & yes - - they do have Fast Servers,
but, that is still a bad bottleneck, to the Internet, as a whole.

Also2: on a side note: when this Fed Gov't stated that it would collect Meta data,,
the the Local Use-age of VPNs spiked by some huge value & stayed way up, too.
ie: the average Joe doesn't really Trust any Gov't or any Corporation . . . .
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by CoffeeFiend »

jimallyn wrote:
CoffeeFiend wrote:This whole net neutrality argument has really shown group-think in motion, especially among many of the left-leaning "news" articles and comment sections (just stating the facts based on what I have read in the news... not trying to be political or anything :mrgreen: ). Most of those against repealing net neutrality are saying that it is basically rolling out the red carpet for ISPs to "throttle bandwidth" and to give preference for those who pay higher premiums for Internet connectivity, and of course, the good old "now costs are going to skyrocket because the US government won't be able to regulate the ISPs" . Funny, I don't recall those things happening prior to net neutrality. But hey, only time will tell and maybe I'm way off base.
I'll bookmark this thread so I can say "I told you so" later. If you have an alternative explanation for why the big ISPs lobbied so hard for this, I'd like to hear it. In the meantime, I will continue to believe that it is indeed for the reasons you mention above.
I won't pretend to know why the big ISPs lobbied so hard for it. I can only assume that it was for the very same reason any other big company lobbies for anything... $$$. Of course there is always the threat that ISPs will jack up the costs for users. But there's just as much of a possibility that they won't. Only time will tell, but I certainly hope that in the end the lack of government regulation will actually spur growth and investment in infrastructure that would actually provide the end users with a better overall product. Again, the reasons I listed above are not my own. I was merely summarizing the arguments against the repeal that I have read on various news sites, and the point was that there is so much information out there from both sides of the argument that it is hard to weed out what is fact and what is fiction.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by borg101 »

CoffeeFiend wrote:I won't pretend to know why the big ISPs lobbied so hard for it. I can only assume that it was for the very same reason any other big company lobbies for anything... $$$. Of course there is always the threat that ISPs will jack up the costs for users. But there's just as much of a possibility that they won't. Only time will tell, but I certainly hope that in the end the lack of government regulation will actually spur growth and investment in infrastructure that would actually provide the end users with a better overall product. Again, the reasons I listed above are not my own. I was merely summarizing the arguments against the repeal that I have read on various news sites, and the point was that there is so much information out there from both sides of the argument that it is hard to weed out what is fact and what is fiction.
If you're not sure, you only have to look at the very "soft touch" years (2005-2010) and the increasing amount of lawsuits against the FCC from 2010 to 2015. ISPs and other telecom companies haven't exactly been tight-lipped about any of it. Information isn't hard to find, nor is fact from fiction. There are literally multiple websites that fact-check very popular news stores, snopes, factcheck org, politifact, etc. And those are just the popular ones. Netflix already mentioned ~2015 that Comcast has charged them for customers using their service. Is it any wonder that literally a day after Net Neutrality was repealed I got an email stating my bill would go up in 2018 for "more quality programming"? Netflix has notoriously hiked/modified their billing structure every ~2 years. Two rate hikes in a one year period? I'm skeptical.

People only don't want Net Neutrality because they either don't understand it, or they don't like government regulations. When you don't regulate companies/corporate bodies....especially larger ones (spoiler alert.....there's not very many small telecom companies left).....they exploit you, legally.
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