Access to your pr0n is safe, for now

[Steelgrave]

I'm not actually concerned about the level if service. If I pay for 3 mbps that's what it is. Just don't tell me that one site gets preference over another. Infrastructure should be neutral.

Exactly. If I pay for a decent internet connection and pay for Netflix, I shouldn't be penalized with slower Netflix service because Comcast is squeezing them for more money. If there are any questions of "rights" here, how about the right of the consumer to get what he pays for? That's what I want to see. Comcast and the other big players act like they own the internet, and because of the monopoly they enjoy and the lack of competition due to payoffs campaign contributions, they get away with murder. All I want is what I pay for and maybe the chance to take my business somewhere else if I'm not happy. That's called competition.

[bayonetbrant]

I must live in another country called the United States from you guys, because never once has my access to any site been regulated or controlled. 

http://www.missingremote.com/news/2014-02-11/student-provides-evidence-comcast-throttling-netflix

[bayonetbrant]

tl;dr = I'll take gov't over the options on this one

the full monty:

The way the system has evolved over the past 15 years is that those with the 'delivery' infrastructure (cables, routers, switches, etc, at the city level or at the neighborhood level, not inside your house) have also become those with a 'content' infrastructure. 
It is economically advantageous to them to force you to use their content on their delivery platform.  It is economically advantageous for the company, and for their shareholders, and based on local taxes, it may be economically advantageous for the local municipality, too.  Advantageous for everyone, except the consumer.

Imagine you wanted to ship a present to grandma.  You place an order for flannel PJs for Christmas from LL Bean.  Grandma's local area is covered by FedEx under an exclusive deal with the town, so UPS doesn't even deliver there.  Well, because 'package neutrality' was struck down by Congress, FedEx doesn't have to deliver every package that comes through the sorting facility with the same urgency, and, well, darn if they don't have a promotional deal with Land's End to bump all their packages to the top of the queue.  Your Christmas present to Grandma shows up on President's Day.  Her neighbor got a box from her grandkids in time for Christmas, because they ordered from Land's End.

Classifying the 'net as a utility does give the feds the legal right to regulate many aspects of it.  Classifying electricity does, too, which is why we have two standard voltages in the country, and not 87 of them, depending on your local electric provider.  Moreover, classifying the 'net as a public utility also allows the government to set market-minimum rules that the companies have to follow or face federal legal action.


Here's one last bit on the cable and phone companies, and who you're dealing with -

Comcast, AT&T, TWC, etc have all made HUGE capital investments laying new fiber over the past 15 years or so.  The fiber-optic cables they've laid run between cities, and within the cities they connect the major neighborhood switching stations to the central boxes in the cities.  This was a major driving factor behind the ability to deliver so many HD channels once HD became the standard, and it's a major reason why they can offer so many bundled 'two way' services, like games on your set-top consoles, and on-demand movies.

These lines were dig, installed, connected, tested, etc with a pretty significant investment by the telecoms companies over a period of many years.  So when a third party comes in and wants to over you alternate service, the telecoms (quite rightly) want to charge a premium for access to the infrastructure in which they invested so much vision, time, sweat, and money.  If you want to start "LongBlade's Cable Service" and push content over TWC's lines, TWC is going to want you to pony up to push content through their pipes.

Except that come tax time, TWC insists that the current value of those lines is . . . ZERO.  They're claiming capital depreciation, just like an office claims on a photocopier.  And since most of these lines were laid over 7 years ago, they've effectively depreciated to nothing.

So you've got a cable company claiming that their lines are so valuable that a third party has to pay through the nose to use them, but they're so worthless that they shouldn't have to pay any taxes on them as an asset.


You've got commercial companies out there playing cutthroat games with each other and the federal government, all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar to the exclusion of everything else.  Yes, they're looking out for the shareholder - as they should - but taking it to the extreme that the market gets so distended that it's almost a parody of a free-market system.  They've figured out how to rig the game, and we're just Mongo's in the game of life.

So do I trust the telecoms to do what's right by the consumer?  Not on your life.  But I also don't have another market option.  In the Grandma's PJ's example above - the consumer can't get screwed because if FedEx yanks them around the consumer goes to UPS.  But if TWC, with an exclusive local contract, yanks you around, what are your choices?

So given the options of self-regulation by Comcast, TWC, AT&T, DirecTV, etc, or regulation by the gov't, I'm going with the gov't in this case, because if they fuck it up, I have the option to vote out the gov't idiots.  But I have to keep paying the telecom idiots to keep screwing me over.

[Bison]

Ok so that's the Gold Standard? And you do get that a lot of people have done away with landline phone service?

That's not the gold standard that is the original reason behind the phone service.  Now it's expanded to include text messaging and phone calls on cell phones.  And nearly every house built in the last 70 years or more has hard line service that's nothing new.  It's also why you pay several taxes on your phone, cell or land line.  How much are you willing to pay in taxes to insure everyone has a basic level of internet service?  I know exactly how Comcast did it.  Those who could afford the bill got the privilege of paying more every month to provide cheap or free service to others. 

The transfer of data from one site being slowed or not is a completely separate issue from a basic right to have the internet. 

[Bison]

So given the options of self-regulation by Comcast, TWC, AT&T, DirecTV, etc, or regulation by the gov't, I'm going with the gov't in this case, because if they fuck it up, I have the option to vote out the gov't idiots.  But I have to keep paying the telecom idiots to keep screwing me over.

How many shitty laws or taxes have been repealed over the last few decades following a vote?

[Bison]

Ok so that's the Gold Standard? And you do get that a lot of people have done away with landline phone service?

I'm fairly sure that cell phones are capable of that, too, even without paid service.  What I am not seeing, unless I missed it (which is possible), is what YOUR base line is for Internet service?  Is it DSL access for all?  Maybe reduced Mbps for all?  Public Internet kiosks, like old phone booths where you dump your change in for x minutes of Internet access?  All homes hardwired with Internet access, just put a deposit down at the local Internet Utility office and we'll turn you on from there?

Cell phones do have that capability.  Every home with a landline can get the internet.  Remember dial up?  It still exists and is used particularly in rural areas.

[Bison]

I'm still waiting for this magical compilation of regulation that was voted on by the FCC board to be made public record.  I'm sure there are sweet kick backs to favorable interests and wonderful surprises to be had by all.

[Bison]

Interesting interview with one of the FCC board members.  Not saying there's no bias, but at least this guy is out talking about the regulation.  Unlike the chairman Wheeler, who isn't talking and still hasn't published the regulation. 

[bayonetbrant]

How many shitty laws or taxes have been repealed over the last few decades following a vote?

actually, there's a bunch here in NC just within the past 18 months or so.  A lot of people are screaming about the legislature doing away with a bunch of tax incentives for different things like shooting a movie in NC.  The legislature promised to simplify the state tax code (which was almost as bad as the feds) but you do that by taking out all the exceptions and special cases.
Well, when you do that, the people for whom those exceptions and special cases were a boon start yelling and screaming.  But to their credit, they did it anyway.
Now there are some things they did that they shouldn't have, like repeal the Teaching Fellows program, but at least they started repealing something.

[bayonetbrant]

My biggest issue with all the yelling and screaming about this is how it's coming down right on party lines for all those folks who had never heard of "net neutrality" until 8 weeks ago.

Net neutrality has been a core principal of the internet since it was opened up beyond the DoD.

Since the mid-90s, commercial interests have been fighting to change the way they route traffic to give preferences to certain kinds of traffic, and effectively balkanize the internet into 49572340952874309 fiefdoms each with their own 'packages' of preferred content and everything else at crawling speeds.  This is not a new development.

About 5 years ago, the telecoms realized that there was no legal structure in place that could force them to respect net neutrality and started quietly nosing around about how they start fucking people over for more money on internet speeds.
Unfortunately for them, the most knowledgeable people out there, and the easiest to widely mobilize around the country, are those for whom Net Neutrality is most important - the über-web-connected computer geeks.
They were able to stave off this blatant money-grab with enough PR fights and quasi-legal battles for a while, but finally Comcast, like an elephant-sized asshole in a broom closet, just decided to sit down wherever they damn well pleased and start choking off Netflix until they ponied up a huge bribe to get their HD content flowing again.
That's the point at which the gov't realized that they needed a legal structure with which the could shove Net Neutrality down the telecoms throats, and regulating the internet as a utility became the answer.

Why do you need a 300+ page set of regulations to say that?  Because Comcast has an army of lawyers that's going to give a rectal probe to every single "i", "t", and comma looking for a way to exploit whatever was (or wasn't!) put in that regulation to squeeze just one more penny out of the public.  Which, if I was one of their shareholders, I would want them to do on my behalf.


But now that "net neutrality" has entered the public discussion, the only positions you see staked out by people that had never held an opinion before this past Christmas are straight party line positions.  And the only "reasons" they can articulate are the same parroted talking points that started bouncing around political talk radio around the second week of January.

That is my biggest problem in all this.

"Obamacare for the internet"?  Please.  That tells me you're a Rush Limbaugh / Ted Cruz fanboi with zero understanding of how the internet works, and an oversensitive gag reflex for anything that a Democrat does.
"The government is taking over the web"?  Hardly.  No more than the government ran Ma Bell for 70 years before allowing them to break up into the Baby Bells.
Whenever I start hearing those phrases, it tells me that either (1) they've done -zero- research into the issue, or (2) the only research you did was underwritten by the Center For Right Wing Luddism and Reflexive Disdain.

Have an opinion, but have your own opinion instead of having someone give it to, gift wrapped and prepared to be regurgitated on their behalf.

Don't be someone else's internet parrot.

[Steelgrave]

tl;dr = I'll take gov't over the options on this one

the full monty:

The way the system has evolved over the past 15 years is that those with the 'delivery' infrastructure (cables, routers, switches, etc, at the city level or at the neighborhood level, not inside your house) have also become those with a 'content' infrastructure. 
It is economically advantageous to them to force you to use their content on their delivery platform.  It is economically advantageous for the company, and for their shareholders, and based on local taxes, it may be economically advantageous for the local municipality, too.  Advantageous for everyone, except the consumer.

Imagine you wanted to ship a present to grandma.  You place an order for flannel PJs for Christmas from LL Bean.  Grandma's local area is covered by FedEx under an exclusive deal with the town, so UPS doesn't even deliver there.  Well, because 'package neutrality' was struck down by Congress, FedEx doesn't have to deliver every package that comes through the sorting facility with the same urgency, and, well, darn if they don't have a promotional deal with Land's End to bump all their packages to the top of the queue.  Your Christmas present to Grandma shows up on President's Day.  Her neighbor got a box from her grandkids in time for Christmas, because they ordered from Land's End.

Classifying the 'net as a utility does give the feds the legal right to regulate many aspects of it.  Classifying electricity does, too, which is why we have two standard voltages in the country, and not 87 of them, depending on your local electric provider.  Moreover, classifying the 'net as a public utility also allows the government to set market-minimum rules that the companies have to follow or face federal legal action.


Here's one last bit on the cable and phone companies, and who you're dealing with -

Comcast, AT&T, TWC, etc have all made HUGE capital investments laying new fiber over the past 15 years or so.  The fiber-optic cables they've laid run between cities, and within the cities they connect the major neighborhood switching stations to the central boxes in the cities.  This was a major driving factor behind the ability to deliver so many HD channels once HD became the standard, and it's a major reason why they can offer so many bundled 'two way' services, like games on your set-top consoles, and on-demand movies.

These lines were dig, installed, connected, tested, etc with a pretty significant investment by the telecoms companies over a period of many years.  So when a third party comes in and wants to over you alternate service, the telecoms (quite rightly) want to charge a premium for access to the infrastructure in which they invested so much vision, time, sweat, and money.  If you want to start "LongBlade's Cable Service" and push content over TWC's lines, TWC is going to want you to pony up to push content through their pipes.

Except that come tax time, TWC insists that the current value of those lines is . . . ZERO.  They're claiming capital depreciation, just like an office claims on a photocopier.  And since most of these lines were laid over 7 years ago, they've effectively depreciated to nothing.

So you've got a cable company claiming that their lines are so valuable that a third party has to pay through the nose to use them, but they're so worthless that they shouldn't have to pay any taxes on them as an asset.


You've got commercial companies out there playing cutthroat games with each other and the federal government, all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar to the exclusion of everything else.  Yes, they're looking out for the shareholder - as they should - but taking it to the extreme that the market gets so distended that it's almost a parody of a free-market system.  They've figured out how to rig the game, and we're just Mongo's in the game of life.

So do I trust the telecoms to do what's right by the consumer?  Not on your life.  But I also don't have another market option.  In the Grandma's PJ's example above - the consumer can't get screwed because if FedEx yanks them around the consumer goes to UPS.  But if TWC, with an exclusive local contract, yanks you around, what are your choices?

So given the options of self-regulation by Comcast, TWC, AT&T, DirecTV, etc, or regulation by the gov't, I'm going with the gov't in this case, because if they fuck it up, I have the option to vote out the gov't idiots.  But I have to keep paying the telecom idiots to keep screwing me over.

Outstanding analysis, BB. It's amazing what having real competition does for the consumer, isn't it? Funny, your example.....UPS lost the last two packages I sent via them, as in literally they don't know where the hell they are. So guess what? I'm using FedEx next time. UPS has lost my business for the foreseeable future. If Comcast screws me over? Tough luck, sucker!!!

[bayonetbrant]

just to clarify my remark about being an internet parrot:
I'm not talking about people here specifically, I have seen far far worse on Facebook. Don't even get me started on some of the idiots at work

[Bison]

Thanks for being patronizing.  :)

[mirth]

The hysteria around the issue is astounding:

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20150302/08162630183/hysterical-facts-optional-assault-fccs-new-neutrality-rules-has-commenced.shtml

If the Republican Party wants to tow the line for big telecom, it may be time for me to start voting Democrat. Never thought I would think that again.

[bayonetbrant]

Thanks for being patronizing.  :)

it's Tuesday, so it's my day on "patronizing" duty around here.  I think Star's covering for LB tomorrow, though.