FCC and Net Neutrality thread

[itroitnyah]

So apparently, the FCC is signing their bill thing or whatever that will pretty much destroy net neutrality as us Americans know it.

To be honest, I haven't followed it or any of the debate for it. Simply because I don't feel that I should be that concerned with it. The internet seems to think that now that net neutrality is compromised, prices for the internet will hike, and the bigs will oppress the smalls. ISPs will run an internet dictatorship and completely destroy the internet, enslaving the users to constant costly fees and biased service between big and small sites. I feel that it's mostly the NSA and data collection, which again, doesn't concern me because I couldn't care less if the NSA knows I watch my little pony and I don't feel that they're going to blackmail me into submission to make me their slave any time soon.

Or perhaps I just don't quite understand what this bill they're signing is all about. Which I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case.

Anyways, I feel that this needed a discussion thread, since it's a huge topic all over the internet and I haven't seen one here yet.

Also, it'd be fun to know what people in foreign countries think of this, since quite a few people on this forum aren't from the USA.

[eery]

Honestly not sure if this warrants its own thread, but eh, might as well stay here.

The problem with net netrality isn't that the internet will be more expensive just like that. The problem is how it would be more expensive. You could get charged website per website, much like how television charges you channel by channel.

You might get packs of sites,like 50 sites, and honestly, for most people, that would be well enough. But the principle though. A friend comes over and wants to show this sickass new game, but you cant see it because your plan doesn't cover the site. You're going to have to pay money,not the the developers of the site or the game, but to your ISP.

But even not from a consumers view, what does that do to the internet? Small sites, like this one would probably not survive, because new users wouldnt choose to use it. Too expensive to choose like one website. Pretty much no sites could survive of ads anymore, since the only traffic that would be generated would come from people who have the website from before.

In norway there was a breach of net netruality a few years back. A major provider buckled up with this web tv provider, and hosted their servers at the ISP. Meaning that customers that had the major provider could get amazing speeds to that one web-tv provider. This wasn't really a bad thing, but for the competition, it was unfair.

[itroitnyah]

I thought it deserved a thread because it's a big issue and it would just get lost in the official discussion thread anyways. Besides, the forum looks really dead when the only active topics are the discussion thread and forum games.

Anyways, that does sound awful.

[ph00tbag]

Right now, the principle of net neutrality that is being threatened is the principle that all traffic is equal. It's not so bad (yet) as eery describes, but it is unsettling; Basically, an ISP can charge extra fees "within reason" (which is a loophole the size of the Grand Canyon) to services that use a lot of bandwidth. So streaming and filehosting become much more expensive.

For the consumer, it's not huge. Netflix prices jump anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar. Youtube has more ads. But where it's really felt is in the entrepreneurial sphere; because high-bandwidth services are more expensive, start-ups that need a lot of data use suddenly become prohibitively expensive to all but the most well-to-do venture capitalists, usually established names in web-enterprise. Basically, it makes the market significantly less fair to small businesses, and stifles creativity by cutting off a large percentage of online enterprise.

Of course, the ISPs argue that it's not fair that streaming and filehosting services get to take up so much of their bandwidth and the ISP is saddled with the cost of maintaining the infrastructure to support it. Personally, I don't see why their income can't take a hit from 2.8 billion to 2.5, but I guess this is why I'm not a CEO.

[Navron]

The net neutrality (or lack their of) scenario that everybody is worried about is that ISPs will be given power to throttle connection speeds based off websites.

For example, you could have an awesome 50mb/s connection and watch movies all day without a single hiccup on Netflix, but say you venture over to The Pirate Bay to download something, and suddenly you can barely even load the website, simply because your ISP doesn't like it.

That's the net neutrality scenario that scares people, where ISPs are given power to essentially regulate what websites people can or cannot visit, which opens up many potential issues such as, what if an ISP's CEO is a religious fundamentalist and wants to make it so people can't access porn?

That's not what the current net neutrality debate is about.

The issue at hand revolves around what impact companies themselves can have over the internet, by paying ISPs more money in order to establish "fast-lanes" to access their websites. The FCC has stated that this would be only for the purposes of boosting an already established speed, and that ISPs won't be allowed to slow down the standard connection speed the end user is paying for.

For example, say you have a 30mb/s connection. You might be able to access Netflix at 50mb/s, but all other websites will be at the 30mb/s that you're paying for.

At first glance, this doesn't seem like a very big issue, but it opens up a big can of worms and a lot of questions, such as:

- Would ISPs start advertising their speeds based on preferred websites? (Ex: They say the connection speed is 50mb/s, but it's only 50mb/s for a select few websites).
- As internet speeds continue to increase, will ISPs only increase their speeds for preferred websites?
- If a new website wants to launch, how will it compete with similar websites that have a similar concept but at much faster speeds? (Ex: Imagine Google Video was 20x faster than YouTube when YouTube was launched. Would YouTube have survived?)

Overall the BIGGEST issues I see is that this puts too much power in the larger companies, who already have a monopoly over many things.

For example, the success of an Indie film largely depends on how it's rated by the MPAA, and the MPAA is funded and run by the big Hollywood companies.

So essentially in the end, this is what the FCC and companies WANT people to think about these new regulations:
- Any companies can pay to give priority access to their websites.

Now, what the real issue is, and what the FCC and companies DON'T WANT people to see in these new regulations:
- It gives more power to the largest companies that already have a monopoly over nearly everything.

[itroitnyah]

Wow, alright. Those are both great responses. Overall I think that I'm still not too concerned with net neutrality, since I know that the internet will still find a way to do things, unless it gets to the point where big companies are literally running the internet and determining what can and can't be posted.

Then I can imagine that people would launch their own internet. Lol.

[ExoBassTix]

I've heard that we as Europeans have all kinds of laws that protect net neutrality. I can't even imagine how out of control things might go if the FCC is allowed to enable the slow lanes.

[Stuntddude]

Of course, the ISPs argue that it's not fair that streaming and filehosting services get to take up so much of their bandwidth and the ISP is saddled with the cost of maintaining the infrastructure to support it.

That's not even a real issue for the vast majority of cases with ISPs - you're already paying them for a set amount of bandwidth. In theory, if you're paying for a 10 mbps connection, they throttle your overall bandwidth so you never get above 10 mbps at any given time, but other than that leave your internet untouched (in reality this is far from how things really work, and a 10 mbps connection roughly translates to 5-8 mbps at best, much less when your neighbor is watching netflix while torrenting 200GB of porn, but that's another issue entirely). Because of the way the internet is built, it doesn't really matter what site this data is coming from - 10 mbps from netflix costs roughly the same as 10mbps from the pirate bay, which costs roughly the same as 10 mbps from MLR, etc.

Ultimately, ISPs profit from customers buying more bandwidth, regardless what they're using that bandwidth for. If netflix is taking 50% of an ISP's bandwidth, it doesn't cost them any more than the other 50% that comprises all the other sites that anyone ever visits, and they don't make any less profit off of it either.

[Stuntddude]

since I know that the internet will still find a way to do things

I don't need to be bothered with any serious issues that directly affect me. I'm sure other people will find a way to do the work I was too lazy to involve myself with.

You clearly don't understand how the internet works in any capacity if you think "oh, people will just launch their own internet, it's as easy as that! No problem!" Not to say that's necessarily what you meant, but that's the clear message I got out of your post. True, it's not necessary to have a fully understanding of every detail of how technology you use works, but you could at least try to understand it a little bit. It's not some magical stream of information that exists in a void regardless of human activities, that you can take totally for granted. It requires real, massive infrastructure, which requires real money and real work by real people to set up. It's not something that can, or will, ever just spontaneously happen.

[itroitnyah]

You clearly don't understand how the internet works in any capacity if you think "oh, people will just launch their own internet, it's as easy as that! No problem!" Not to say that's necessarily what you meant, but that's the clear message I got out of your post. True, it's not necessary to have a fully understanding of every detail of how technology you use works, but you could at least try to understand it a little bit. It's not some magical stream of information that exists in a void regardless of human activities, that you can take totally for granted. It requires real, massive infrastructure, which requires real money and real work by real people to set up. It's not something that can, or will, ever just spontaneously happen.

Yeah, I know how the internet works (the basics, not the advanced like you seem to). But I'm pretty certain that if the internet got that bad that ISPs were restricting what can and cannot be posted as well as blocking off sites it doesn't want people to visit, I'm sure that the internet would fund building these massive infrastructures. Then just start up their own internet service that competes with today's prices and speeds while costing similar or less than.

[CaptainFluffatun]

Here's a petition to save net neutrality

Even if you don't think it's a big deal, is there any harm in signing it?

[Stuntddude]

I'm sure that the internet would fund building these massive infrastructures. Then just start up their own internet service that competes with today's prices and speeds while costing similar or less than.

I agree that's an interesting possibility, but just... I don't envy anyone who has to try to get the internet to do billion dollars of capitalism. Honestly, it's better to just nip this whole net neutrality issue in the bud and do what we can to stop it from possibly getting that bad in the first place (see the above petition).

[Navron]

You clearly don't understand how the internet works in any capacity if you think "oh, people will just launch their own internet, it's as easy as that! No problem!" Not to say that's necessarily what you meant, but that's the clear message I got out of your post. True, it's not necessary to have a fully understanding of every detail of how technology you use works, but you could at least try to understand it a little bit. It's not some magical stream of information that exists in a void regardless of human activities, that you can take totally for granted. It requires real, massive infrastructure, which requires real money and real work by real people to set up. It's not something that can, or will, ever just spontaneously happen.

Yeah, I know how the internet works (the basics, not the advanced like you seem to). But I'm pretty certain that if the internet got that bad that ISPs were restricting what can and cannot be posted as well as blocking off sites it doesn't want people to visit, I'm sure that the internet would fund building these massive infrastructures. Then just start up their own internet service that competes with today's prices and speeds while costing similar or less than.

The problem isn't the nature of computers accessing other computers. The problem is the capabiliy for computers to access computers.

For example, I could easily set up my computer to directly access another computer, but in order to do that, I need an actual, physical connection between my computer and the other one.

That physical connection is made possible through hundreds and thousands of cables that connect each computer in a network. There's even cables that run along the bottom of the oceans to connect countries together.

Who controls those cables? The FCC and ISPs.

In order to bypass the FCC and ISPs entirely, internet users would literally have to build their own network of cables, including ones that run across the bottom of the oceans, aka not going to happen.

[itroitnyah]

not going to happen.

It may seem absurd to suggest that the internet could throw together funds to do this, but it could happen. Yes, I know all of yall are going to say "far fetched", and it is, it wouldn't be something that the internet would just... Do, it would of course take months or even years of funding and building, as well as setting everything up, but I think that if the people decided that is what needed to be done, then it's what would be done.

Mind you, I'm not saying it will be done, and to be honest, I still don't think that this whole net neutrality thing is as big of an issue as people are making it out to be, but I'm just saying, that if it ever progresses to beyond a certain breaking point, the possibility of it happening is there.

[eery]

ISPs wouldn't make the net unusable. They'd make it more expensive and more controlled and whatnot, that people have descibed well over here, but it wouldn't be unusable. Thats just suicide, and they'd have no reason to destroy themselves. They want to earn money. They want you to buy their shit.

Most people have a job, most people have a family and friends to care about. They have lives. Setting up some underground internet, dedicating time and resources to this isn't something most people would do. We're both examples of it. We don't think this is an issue enough to be taken seriously, really. We wouldn't drag cables cross country to make this work.

Hell nah, we'd deal with their shit, we might buy less of their shit, out of neccecity and economy, but we'd deal with their shit, because we got to.

At most, I think the local underground net would be small and local and comparable with pirate radio stations, for especcially intrested people.

[Stuntddude]

See the above infographic via Navron - a few companies have pretty much a monopoly over internet service at this point, to the point where it's virtually impossible for any new competitors to be introduces. That alone is an issue in itself, but getting rid of net neutrality means these few companies can do just about whatever they want, and you have no other option. There is not capitalism that you can do in response - you just have to live with whatever they do.