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FCC Approving Pay-As-You-Go Internet Plans
An anonymous reader writes "As details emerge about the Federal Communications Commission's controversial proposal for regulating Internet providers, a provision that would allow companies to bill customers for how much they surf the Web is drawing special scrutiny. Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry, handing a victory to cable and satellite TV providers. Public interest groups say that trend will lead to a widening gap in Internet use in which the wealthiest would have the greatest access."
Whenever you have to ask where something is in the Constitution, the answer is "Interstate Commerce". Even when it shouldn't be or isn't. Especially when it shouldn't be or isn't.
TFA = about 20k
Web 2.0 crap plus ads= 1.6 megs
or some such
Lynx Lives Again!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
With people being oblivious to the "as they go" part, that's not in the consumer's interest. Besides, you don't really want students to worry "Oh I'd really like to read about integrals, but don't like to pay extra for going to the Wikipedia article, or watch a course on youtube".
How about pay as you type for forum responses?
Then maybe you won't get the posts like:
FIRST POST! Woo!
It's funny how cable companies all want us to pay as we go for internet access, yet still insist on pushing bundlings of hundreds of TV channels on us if we want to use cable TV.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
I remember when CompuServe charged $12/hour.
Then GEnie came along and charged $18/hour during business hours and $6/hour at night.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
you can't use visa or mastercard to pay....HAHA
[The Congress shall have the power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes
Article I, Section 8.
The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.
...if the telecoms also give me pay-as-i-go cable TV plans. Why haven't they caught up with customer demand? Just let me pick which channels I want to watch and pay less for only those channels instead paying a premium for a bunch of channels I wont watch. The options they give are baffling. Pay very little for local channels, or pay a fuckload for 200+
They will also want to charge content creators on the same bandwidth so they can profit more on the same bandwidth, but not actually invest into upgrading their infrastructure to handle the traffic and thus negating the need to have tiered or metered plans.
Captialism, ho.
As soon as they provide me at least a 30 mbit connections with a maximum fee of $50 per month. Companies seem to be able to do that just fine outside of the US and Australia.
When the commercial Internet started it was all PAYG at least in my corner of the world. You paid fixed price per connection and price per meg. Only large ISPs and their like managed to get fixed rate deals. Joe Casual user and Joe's Company Ltd paid per MB.
One of the first thing I had to write when I became employee No 6 in what was to become a large ISP in my country was exactly that - the traffic data collection, accounting and billing system.
The Telcos, Cablecos, etc _REMOVED_ all this when they entered the Internet market because it did not align with their legacy billing systems for legacy services. However, now the Internet is more important that the precious legacy voice or PPV so it is not surprising that things have come around full circle and "does not fit our billing system" is no longer a valid business reason.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Isn't not allowing them to bill via pay-as-you-go regulation as well? I am not a free-market idealist, I understand that it is not a perfect laissez faire system, but if ISPs started switching to this model, what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?
Unless they all collude and the FTC (with the actual teeth) doesn't step in, or if it is decided that it isn't colluding by the govt. if they all go to this model, well, either way its pretty gay. I think the fact of the matter is big-business (telcos,media) has the politicians too in-debted via contributions for any argument to matter. It will just be a continual decline in the quality of service we as consumers receive, as the rest of the world surpasses us here in the US. Their might be another veil on it, but we can never divorce the pig as long as corporations can donate money to politicos like they currently do.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource. I know this is an alien concept for you younger slashdot users who only know the world your marxist prof has taught you about but consider this a learning experience. Deal with it.
When the usage levels between users can be more than 100 to 1 it can't be fair. Either you have the low usage customers subsidizing the net hogs or you price the service where the low usage customers simply cannot justify the service. Or the government meddles and makes things go from bad to worse.
Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.
We do tend to have flat rate cable because a) until recently it would have been hard to meter and b) it doesn't cost the cable company more if you watch more. On Demand changes that model and guess what, most on demand programming carries a charge. But the biggest pushback against paying for cable by usage is the advertisers wouldn't like people getting into the habit of switching off unless they were actually paying attention and it would end useless (often bundled) channels being able to collect fees per set when nobody was watching.
So yes, if you are using more of a scarce resource you should expect to pay more. This is econ 101, which I realize is a scarce skill here but ignorance of reality doesn't mean you can ignore it.
Democrat delenda est
@Anonymous Coward
Actually, states can't create their own communications commissions and still be operating within the Constitution. As Kenji said, this is clearly an interstate commerce issue, which is a power that was explicitly given by the Constitution to Congress, not the states. In any case, do you think it is conducive to commerce at all to have to contend with 50 separate communications commissions all having conflicting regulations about how interstate communications can be undertaken?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
I would say 10 cents a GB would be great. Those could even be per GB at a certain rate, or time of time. So they can sell higher speeds or different usage patterns.
Electric is nothing like this, more than 60% of my bill is some sort of non-variable having electricity fee.
The Interstate Commerce Clause ("To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes") was only intended to keep the states from entering trade wars, not to dictate how, where, who, when trade will occur.
How much do ISPs pay for their connectivity? Can they get flat rate access and if yes, how much does something like an un-metered gig/sec connection cost per month/year?
What about off peak usage? Should someone using bandwidth during peak usage hours be charged the same as someone who uses it off-peak? Bandwidth is a resource whose scarcity depends on others' use. How you are charged should be based on time of use and bandwidth used. The total amount used shouldn't be the only factor.
For once, you really can say "Blame Canada". Our oligopoly is raping us on the cost, the monthly caps, the limited 3rd-party choices who are also getting raped with bandwidth costs.
In the near future it might very well be worth it to live 100 meters of the border and get wireless internet from an USA provider.
>Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry,
No, it won't. Like advanced cellphone systems earlier this century the industry will simply move to where it is viable. America will limp on with inferior general service then deny that the service is inferior and proclaim it a world besting triumph of technology.
Wouldn't it be great if someone would start a pay-as-you-go scheme for electricity? Or long-distance telephone service? Or gasoline?
Flat-rate services rely on light users subsidizing heavy users. If the rates are fair, pay-per-use is a good idea -- certainly better than arbitrary data caps that might get enforced god-knows-when.
And yes, people with lots of money can afford to buy more stuff. That's how it works.
the majority of customers will pay about the same price as they are paying now. the price is set according to how much the companies can milk. the detail doesn't matter.
if you have to download 10x movies than the average population, why is it that the other customers should fund your hobby?
You'll take metered internet (or not internet at all) when the providers serving your area decide that's the only thing they want to offer.
Yeah, I bet the other 40% is based on the number of kilowatt-hours you use. For me, 70% of my electric bill is based on the amount of energy I use, which makes sense.
Seriously, why do we have to pay more as improvements in technology drive the costs towards zero?
I don't much care if we go to a "Pay as you go" as long as the cost of such access continues to drive towards zero the same way everything else with computer systems has done historically. However, if we do not have competition, and we allow the big companies to erect huge barriers to entry against competition, then not only will this cost us as consumers, but will bash our ability to compete in the world, and bash our economy into the ground.
The FCC has no responsibility to safeguard the income for Internet providers, Cable providers, or Media companies. Their responsibility is to the citizens and to establish fair rules for competition. However, competition doesn't have the political clout that corporate America has.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It used to just be patched by them but politics has allowed it to be fully paved several layers deep.
Remember to maintain your supply of
Yeah, the other 40%. Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist", please ignore the fact that this makes no sense as he is pretty uneducated.
I think it's important to note what's been pointed out many times here on slashdot.
In many, many areas there isn't another ISP to jump ship to - there is only one, or dialup.
That's not much of a choice in my book.
> The total amount used shouldn't be the only factor.
Probably not. And even electricity is some areas is priced that way. If we had a free market in Internet service it would work itself out soon enough.
Too bad we don't have anything like one. In one corner we have The Phone Company, a huge bloated government granted monopoly so old and senile it almost let the Internet slip through its fingers. So tied to the government it is difficult to see where the government stupid ends and the corporate idiocy begins. In the other is the new scrapy upstart cable monopolies, not quite as tied to the government but desperate to fix that defect. Circling the two lumbering behemoths are a few hopelessly out of their league wireless providers... ignoring the majority who are just divisions of The Phone Company.
Wireless isn't going to meet the demands of broadband hidef content, probably won't ever even handle YouTube on smartphones. And forget sat, latency kills.
Democrat delenda est
Technically, the companies should be able to charge whatever they want, and the playing field should be a level one with multiple choices so the consumer can choose which company it wants to get service from. Theoretically, this is how capitalism is supposed to work, and if it was left alone to work, it would do just fine. But then the FCC and Congress has to fuck up and get involved and consumer choice goes tits up in regulated monopolies.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Tle old International Packet Switch Stream used pay-as-you-use and it was in a hell of a lot more countries than the Internet, with far more secure services. It died.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
... that it is definitively legal for communities to install their own fiber and operate city-owned internet services. If metered internet and traffic shaping is actually being done to give the best price to the greatest amount of people, then certainly some small down in nowhersville Iowa is no threat. No need to sue them at all. Right?
Unless this is all an elaborate scheme to maximize profit to the detriment of the consumer. Then one self sufficient city-owned internet provider with great speed and low cost could be a dangerous thing indeed.
I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars". If one of the reasons was to prevent trade wars, then it succeeds, sometimes. If another was to ensure the equitable distribution of federally-funded trade protections and infrastructure improvements, then it succeeds, sometimes.
Electricity: Mostly constant network costs, variable power production costs.
Internet: Mostly constant network costs, no data production costs (for the carriers).
Electricity: Billing mostly for the variable power usage (price per kWh)
Internet: Billing mostly for the variable data volume (price per MB)
Can you not see what's wrong with this picture?
We have been the victims of market share building exercises since 1995. The concept of offering service to people at rates that are unsupportable doesn't work long term. Clearly.
The problem with IPTV is the physical capacity on both cable and DSL doesn't exist. You can't support a star configuration fed from the head end where the combined bandwidth at the "node" is higher than can be served with any reasonable physical connection. The way things have been built today doesn't support IPTV even at fairly low resolutions and high compression. What we have today is a few early adopters trying out HD resolutions. If this grows, and it probably will, nobody is going to have decent service until they dig up all of the cables and replace everything with dedicated fiber from the head end to every house. Which is silly and isn't going to happen anytime soon.
IPTV? Get it while you can, because it isn't going to last out of the early adopter period. There simply isn't the bandwidth available to every home. Or even half.
Somehow, I'd expect prices to skyrocket as this happens. Or demands for payment from anyone with a financial interest in delivering content to homes. Or both.
War driving time baby!
The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
and the Commerce Clause:
[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.
. The two basically provide a (legally if not logically) solid defense against unconstitutional takedowns in the supreme court, plus the fact that the supreme court hasn't been all too active in judicial review of late. Also, as a side note, the constitution is not an exclusive document. There are implied as well as enumerated powers, in addition to ones granted by law and tradition.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Guess what... the wealthy are always going to be able to have nicer things than the poor. Nothing in life is going to change that, despite how hard some people try.
what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?
Nothing, except that most of those people won't actually be able to jump ship, since, if they're lucky, they'll be choosing between two providers who both have pay-as-you-go plans. Your idea assumes people can easily switch to a new provider, which when it comes to high speed internet in the U.S. isn't generally the case.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
What about the ISPs of ISPs? Will T1's get usage costs, too? Where does it end? Can the owners of the trunk lines charge for usage? Will the government start taxing Internet usage?
The scary part is that usage costs can trickle upstream very easy. You pay your ISP for usage and then they have to pay their upstream for usage, etc., etc., etc. How many times can the same data be charged for? This could easily cascade into an Internet meltdown. Especially if you consider other countries might be charged for their traffic to and from the US and the the rest of the world gets in on the game.
It's a doom and gloom scenario, but one that is very much possible.
Remember to maintain your supply of
I've never much minded internet advertisements as long as they weren't popups, popovers, or popunders. But if I have to start paying for every bit delivered to me, my hosts file is gonna get big fast, adblock and javascript blocking will become required addons for all my web browsers. Every business that advertises on the web should be screaming bloody murder at internet providers to not implement this. It will decimate the internet revenue model for many companies.
Here ya go, net-neutrality proponents: a per-byte charge. Did you really expect otherwise?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
They're just abusing their monopoly (sometimes a geographic monopoly, sometimes regulatory too) to extract more money from you. There's nothing good and righteous and wonderful about that, really.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It's going to be a bit humorous when 90% of Americans shit their pants at not being able to watch kitty cat videos on Youtube for less than $50 per month. Or when the cost of their Netflix services suddenly triple. I'll start stocking up on popcorn now.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I already pay for use by buying the top-tier bandwidth option and fitting into their stochastic model of peak usage.
But usage patterns have changed and they think they can ask for more money because now I'm using my Internet as a TV, which is outside the stochastic model they used to produce the cost apportioned to me when they set the tiered pricing model.
But the resource isn't actually scarce. I paid for unlimited usage of a 30-mbps link. It will be scarce when I need to get more than 30 mb of data into each second. And then I'll go to their competitor, who is now offering a 40-mbps option (but I'm leery of the reality of that, since it's DSL).
This isn't about the Constitution, this is about why lobbyists need to severely regulated, or done away with altogether. If voters went to the capital and claimed to be lobbyists they'd be laughed out the door and probably thrown in jail (or just jailed). Yet we allow corps, wealthy non-profits, and anyone else with cash to by-pass the voting process and influence lawmakers??? What the hell???
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
> Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist"
Not all flat rates are bogus. Yes there IS a cost involved with just having an electric meter. The electric company has to maintain the fixed infrastructure to service a customer regardless of usage. The billing department's expenses are pretty much fixed per account, etc. There are fixed regulatory fees to pay, etc. When the fixed portion is so high though you should be a bit suspicious that they haven't bribed some politicians to let em hose ratepayers or the politicians aren't imposing 'Robin Hood' surcharges to subsidize the rates of preferred groups. First be sure you aren't on the electric company's rate leveling plan as it will screw with the numbers big time.
Democrat delenda est
There's two reasons for consumption based-billing:
1. Make Netflix a lot less inexpensive in order to keep the profit line strong on their own video offerings.
2. Raise prices. Consumption based billing won't be less expensive for people who are light users because broadband service will be $50 for the privilege of having the coax terminate at the house, and *then* you pay what the meter says. And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte. By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing, and a service pricing structure that encourages you not to use the service.
I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.
Let me get this straight, an ISP could bill you for forwarding your email spam that you didn't want in the first place? Looks like they have zero incentive to do anything to prevent it.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Bandwidth isn't like gas. Nobody's mining extra bandwidth or depleting our nation's bandwidth reserves. The cost of data transfer, for a provider, doesn't scale linearly with customer use like a commodity might; up to a certain capacity, it should cost them more or less (not exactly, but close to) the same to operate a network at peak capacity or one at lower than peak capacity. So if I'm transferring 1 MB/hr or 1000 MB/hour, as long as the network isn't being overtaxed and slowed down by my usage it shouldn't matter how much I'm transferring. This is why a flat rate (or bandwidth tier) makes sense for ISPs, and is a fair arrangement with the consumer.
Pay as you go makes it easier to bilk customers and introduce ridiculous fees out of proportion with the cost of the service. Consider the massive disparity in how much you pay in terms of the actual bandwidth used for text messages, as opposed to voice or data.
Now, I'm not an expert in this. It may be that there's some aspect of this I'm not seeing. But as near as I can tell, pay as you go is strictly bullshit that will lead to consumers paying more for the same service and is a gateway to greater price hikes and obfuscation of actual costs.
As long as the per-byte rate is in line with current costs, I don't see the problem with it. Moving bits costs money, and moving more bits costs more money. I've always thought broadband providers should behave more like public utilities given their government endorsed monopoly of the infrastructure.
If we paid by the byte, it would eliminate the need for arbitrary data caps. If I want to pull down a terabyte in a week, I can. I just pay more than my neighbor who only downloaded a few GB in that same week. That seems fair, right?
The problem though, as it always is with telcos, is that the pricing will NOT be fair. The cable companies in particular are trying desperately to make a grab for the lost revenue in their PPV and other cable TV cash cows as people opt for cheaper alternatives like Netflix.
This is all the more reason to start blocking ads. Not only do they intrude on the Web pages, provide avenues for blackhats to compromise people through addon exploits, and obtain persistant tracking data, but one has to pay for their presence with this system.
If they move ahead to a pay-as-you-go model, I believe more people will knowingly and willfully become software and media pirates. It will create a huge black market for downloaded media files, which will get exchanged via sneakernets around the country. Once they start charging per Mb/Gb, more and more people will take the risks associated with piracy, because it will make the relative cost of digital media far too high.
I have a friend who lives in a rural area where his only Internet access options are Deep Blue or Hughes.net. He's been trying to leave Deep Blue because their service has been horrible (very inconsistant throughput rates), but Hughes.net has caps set at 200Mb,300Mb, and 400Mb, depending on the plan you choose. They come straight out and call it their "Fair Play" policy--that they automatically throttle anyone who reaches a daily bit limit, and they specifically note that their service is not suitable for streaming video services like Netflix. The funny thing is that they push potential customers who want to download streaming video toward their premium plan, which still has a 400Mb cap--it still would be largely worthless for pulling online video.
Phone company plans always used to be pay-as-you-go. The development of unlimited use plans arose as a marketing tool to win more customers in competitive markets, and it eventually became a very common option in the consumer market (businesses almost always have pay-as-you-go plans). If this really happens, it won't take a rocket scientist to realize that any ISPs who stick to no-cap unlimited use plans will immediately have a competitive advantage over others (like [...ahem..] Comcast) who are likely to try to milk the new cash cow afforded by such changes.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I was just talking to a coworker about this.
I use an above-average amount of bandwidth. Between Netflix and gaming and youtube and the occasional bittorrent, I feel like, without having any hard numbers at-hand because Comcast's bandwidth meter can't be found on their website (despite their steamroller media blitz that hyped up how proactive it makes people at watching their usage. Way to fail, Comcast,) I fall on the higher end of the usage spectrum but nowhere near the 250gb/month cap; probably 80gb - 100gb if I had to guess, maybe even 50-60gb most months.
It would make sense to me that, since I fall on the upper-end of the usage spectrum compared to, say, bittorrent seeders on one end and grandmas who check their email every couple days on the other, my bill would stay more or less the same on a metered plan, grandma's would drop significantly and Mr. torrent freak's would go up; a reduction would be nice, but I would be okay with not paying more.
However. If (heh. If.) the cable companies see this as a way of milking all their customers for all they're worth as an incentive to get them to pay more for an unlimited plan by scaring them with an inflated per MB bill...
Yeah. This could be good if the rates are reasonable, but I'll eat my hat if that turns out to be the case.
To the days of the 56k.
Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource.
Except bandwidth is not a resource. Water, electricity, and gasoline are examples of resources paid for by consumption, because once the resource is expended it is gone. Hence the reason why those are paid for by the amount used.
Bandwidth is similar to renting. You pay your rent whether you are there or not and this ensures that it is there when you want it. "Renting" does not use up the residence for the next guy who rents the place after you (under most circumstances). So, the parallels to other utilities are pointless comparisons. The comparison to current cable TV is valid, except your post ignores any "resource" argument, instead citing advertisers. There are many other valid comparisons as well, such as monthly subscriptions to newspapers, gaming services (MMOs, others), and entertainment such as NetFlix.
I do not think the idea of pay per MB/GB (or whatever) is a good idea in the slightest. The average technical savvy of an end user is simply not sufficient enough to handle it, and there were examples of this pay-per-usage already for mobile phones with data plans (some of the early iPhones always accessing the internet, racking up a bill in a month of 1000+ dollars unknown to the phone owner). I do not dispute that those who abuse bandwidth, (un)knowingly or not, should not be limited in some fashion, but monetarily is the wrong way to go here.
In most cases I'd agree with you (e.g., anti-marijuana laws), but you don't think the internet has anything to with interstate commerce? Never heard of eBay or Amazon?
Free Martian Whores!
Article I section 8 goes on to say:
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
It's called the "Elastic Clause" for a reason... you can use it to justify practically anything. From there it's a matter of what "necessary" and "proper" really mean, which is arbitrarily difficult, but it should suffice to shut down the "but it ain't in the Constitution" meme.
(If, of course, that meme were actually applied rationally, rather than intermittently trotted out for powers of government you disagree with and conveniently ignored for those you like. In the absence of a rational argument, evidence is pointless, and the meme can continue indefinitely.)
The convention which wrote the US constitution was convened over several months and produced a document of only 4543 words. Many clauses had hours or entire days of debate dedicated to them. The idea that any particular clause was "only" intended for one thing is absurd (maybe for any particular delegate it served only one purpose. Furthermore, if a clause is only intended to prevent one or two things, usually it just prohibits said things explicitly (ie - "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."). If your interpretation was right, they likely would have just prohibited trade barriers among the states.
Try our water bill..the envy of the cablecos...
$84 for $3.71 worth of water :/
Makes me want to strangle the fools saying internet should be a utility :O
At least 50% of my internet bill is not for getting rid of waste bits.
You pay for a specific pipe already. If the ISPs and core routers enabled fair-service curve, each pipe would get a fair chance at the upstream pipe. Heavy users would then not swamp lighter users and lighter users would not subsidise heavy users. This eliminates all of the (somewhat technologically ignorant) objections raised by ISPs and by some of the posters here. Then you add in ECN, which instructs a machine to throttle back if it is behaving badly on the network (and blocks machines that won't play fair). Packet-dropping schemes like BLACK and PURPLE deal with
This isn't rocket science. Hell, these days even rocket science isn't rocket science. Neither of these suggestions would be difficult. They've been discussed in depth since the 1990 and have reached an amazing level of quality control that is fair to all users and equitable to all providers. Without raising costs.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
- Aint gonna happen - as someone (like probably a few of us here ;-) who has lived and struggled through days and nights of telephone cradles, x00 baud modems, all of this metred by the goddamn second, going back to pay per min/GB aint featuring in my horizon anytime soon.
Probably, the best thing that ever happened re: democratision of the interent was the introduction of widespread high-speed, non-metred access, be it ISDN, cable, xDsl, whatever. I probably actually use the Internet less than I did then, however, I undoubtedly now consume more bandwith, whether or want to or not. Going back to metered? - No Way, Joe - the only way you are getting that Genie back in the Bottle is when you prise this mouse from my cold, dead hand.
At worst, as long as there is a demand for unmetered access packages, someone is going to provide them - and, I'll be subscribing, whether I use them to the full, or not. Typical actually, now the public actually have that what they undoubtedly want, someone is busy trying to change the Status Quo - I blame the mobile providers personally, however, they can go jump as well.
I do not think that it would be such a bad idea. Water and electricity are charged the same way. The utilities don't tell me how to use those products. Data should be the same way. As long as the rates are cheap enough and they can't tell me what equipment to attach to the network
EVERY utility?
So my Aunt Ethel, who talks on the phone 3 hours a day, pays more than my Aunt Mildred, who makes 2 phone calls per month?
I bet they'd be surprised to know that.
I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...
It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Many/most electricity bills are being split: one part is production, one part is delivery. While most consumers use the same company for both, many opt for an alternative producer of those kWh different from the company owning/installing/maintaining the wiring for delivery. That industry has worked out the division, and worked out the billing (often onto one bill few examine).
Internet already splits that: you pay (often $0) the producer of those bytes (Google, CNN, Netflix, whatever) separate from the compan[y|ies] providing delivery thereof (Comcast, Clear, various "backbone" networks, etc.). With more customers demanding cumulative bandwidth beyond capacity (or will soon), the delivery companies are balking at the all-you-can-eat model. At some point they must implement some billing changes which will account for Gramma's occasional receipt of emailed grandkid photos vs. local kids downloading anything they can find plus demanding low-ping response times vs. families ditching cable TV in favor of streaming video, all in a manner fair (yes, "to whom?" being the obvious question) to all.
Upshot: data delivery services must, at some point, switch to metered delivery - if only to implement fair distribution of limited services via supply-and-demand pricing.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I for one am getting tired of the "pay a LOT more and get even less than you did before" trend that I'm seeing across multiple businesses now.
It seems like the trend is to pay us less but expect a h!@#$ of a lot more work, make us pay more for internet but "give" us extreme limits beyond what we have now, make us pay multiple times for what we used to only have to pay once for (books, music, movies, etc).
And they expect us to believe that a government agency will protect us from the abuse of this policy?
PLEASE as if the past few years of laws being written by corporate lobbies and pushed thru by their bought/paid for congresscritters haven't shown us how well THAT works.
I'm pretty disgusted by this whole mess.
Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.
Except internet access is generally not considered "utility", nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.
Other than periodic upgrades of infrastructure (pushed by higher demand for their services and increasing numbers of users) - costs for the providers ARE flat.
Now, overselling their capacity and then blaming their users for "hogging" - isn't that kinda like false advertising?
How was that covered in your "econ 101"? Or should the customers just "deal with it"?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If I inherited a family store that was founded in the 18th century and had been successful in large part because of a policy on a brass plaque at the entrance which stated "All those not gay shall receive services gratis", then I would probably consider rewording it to prevent being sued because the term 'gay' has such a different meaning now from when the plaque was first installed.
The same concept is true with the Constitution, but even more so. We cannot simply read the words to understand the meaning of this contract. We must look at what the parties in the contract considered to be the meaning. Reviewing things like the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional Convention, and the respective state conventions reveals that there is no sound basis for the argument that the Constitution grants the Federal Government the power you claim.
> The Necessary and Proper clause:
Sorry, you lose. Not only at Constitutional Law but at parsing English.
Material in the headings is mostly syntatic sugar anyway. Progs love to grab snatches of text out of context to read the Constitution as allowing them to do whatever the heck they want. But if you actually READ the thing it says something quite different. Your ilk reads it as saying the Feds can do ANYTHING "Necessary and Proper" by taking those three words and standing them on their own. To one who can actually read it says they can pass any law that is "necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers..." We read the whole sentence in context with the whole document. In other words they can pass laws to execute the enumerated powers, not anything they think proper. Were the headings removed and only the enumerated lists left the prose would suffer and the courts wouldn't have some helpful text explaining the reasoning behind the powers to imply further limits, but the legitimate powers granted would be pretty much identical.
Democrat delenda est
Like they have in a Canada.
I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars".
Trade wars are about commerce.
Free Martian Whores!
and the 2-3 min boot time + 30 min + guide load time on cables boxes after a power loss does not help as well.
Also what about HBO Why can espn be like HBO or even offer games on a PPV?
Really? I thought they were about Babe Ruth and a musical.
My issue wasn't with trade wars being commerce. It was with only trade wars being commerce.
Way to fail, Comcast
Why do you assume they failed? Maybe they advertised it to appease the current WHARGABL of the month, and then...just didn't implement it (or made it hard to find). Either one is not a failure*.
* Failure is oftentimes defined by point of view...
The fact of the matter is, data transferred outside of peak hours costs the ISP very little (approximately 0) per gigabyte; the pay-as-you-go charges should account for this.
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
offer a choice full speed at $ per KB or slower speed when you go over the limit.
Option 1 – If you may need additional throughput some months you may purchase an "unlimited" plan. With this option, you will be billed according to your service plan for any throughput in excess of the plan allowance.
Option 2 – If you prefer flat rate billing, you may choose a "limited" plan. If you exceed your plan's throughput allowance, your connection speeds may be slowed down until your usage is back in profile with the plan.
Mildred can probably get a low use, local only line if she wishes. Billed per call.
The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.
Telecommunications does not equal commerce. Nor does the Internet (a subset of telecommunications) equal commerce.
+ a line fee + fees to cover costs of headend / CO / RT / NODE.
Paying by the byte is no different than paying by the gigabyte or terabyte. If it's cheap enough, at least we could do away with the fictional "unlimited" plans, and heavy filesharers could simply pay their fair share.
Personally, I torrent anything that pops into my head and as it is I never get any grief from Comcast. If the ISP's have to pay by the byte, why not the customers?
I think a lot of people are assuming it will be very expensive. If it is, a competitor will come along at some point (hopefully!). Just saying maybe it's not a disaster.
expandfairuse.org
uncast at&t AT&T U-verse seems to work for TV
The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.
When I do business with an ISP it's not interstate commerce - its local. I'm paying for them to take my traffic and then hand it off to someone else who hands it off ad infinitum.
The ISP may be doing interstate business with their backbone providers, it may even be another division within the same company. But the business between me and the ISP is purely local.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
We need net neutrality now more than ever.
I bet the first thing that will happen with pay-as-you-go is that you'll get your ISP's traffic for free. Especially if it happens to also be your cable provider.
The regulated monopolies came mostly from the local governments that you "Limited Government" types love so much in preference to the Feds. A lot of the rest are because no telecoms want to pay to lay cable in places with lowish population densities unless they get guaranteed pay-back. Cox in Southern Louisiana was so bad that, after trying to get someone, anyone, to come in and compete with them, the local governments for a lot of little hick towns (and Lafayette, which is a mid sized, semi-hick, city) are at the forefront of fiber to the home efforts. I left Lafayette before they finished the build out, but you could already start to see the effects when I was leaving. Cox, which was notorious for poor service, lack of community participation, and reluctance to upgrade its network was suddenly improving in every area trying desperately to convince people that there was no need to switch to LUS (Lafayette Utility Service) Fiber.
Since there isn't, and can't be in most cases, any competition in most localities for broadband, we're pretty much stuck hoping the Feds will protect us.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The problem is, changing over to pay-as-you-go won't necessarily increase revenue for telecom or cable companies. I suspect that when the consumer pays a fixed cost per unit bandwidth, we'll find that demand for bandwidth is fairly elastic. Instead of paying more to maintain their current bandwidth usage, most people will cut back on their usage. Which, despite what the telecom companies tell the politicians, is the last thing they want. Rather, they want people to pay more while still maintaining their demand for bandwidth. The "our networks can't handle it" is merely the pretext under which they drag their feet on infrastructure upgrades while protesting "if we only had more money..." in order to perpetuate constant fee increases. If upgrading their infrastructure would increase revenue, they would have done it already.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Can you look over walls? Or wrestle poodles? And win?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
>Except internet access is generally not considered "utility"..
Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.
> nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.
Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC. All current Internet plans marketed to end users is based on over subscribing the bandwidth. Go price a T1. Now compare and contrast to a 1.5Mbps DSL line.
The T1 is symetrical while DSL is designed to lock you into a content consumption model. You also tend to get a good SLA on the T1. More importantly DSL service is almost always limited (either spelled out or they just silently throttle the hogs) while you can nail that T1 up all month and they don't care. In fact if your throughput drops below the rated speed your SLA will often kick in and refund cash to you. Compare the bills though. Yes that SLA adds some to the sticker shock but most of the difference is they are pricing the T1 expecting you to bang the heck out of it.
Democrat delenda est
Except that last-mile installation has historically been so expensive compared to what people are prepared to pay that you get a significant barrier to entry in any area that already has any service. This leads to natural monopoly, and consumer choice is boned from the get-go.
> It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it.
They might be pushing for it. But they have been pissed since the Internet appeared. What changed is Netflix and Hulu appeared. Pirates were always in the nethogs category; annoying but a managable problem. Now they face the prospect of EVERYONE becoming a nethog and blowing up the oversubscription model that has defined consumer Internet since it began. Every BD Player and most DVD players these days have an ethernet jack on em. Most higher end television sets are Internet enabled now. Something must give. We can argue about what needs to change but keeping things as they were isn't an option anymore.
Democrat delenda est
"Necessary and Proper" doesn't void the rest of the Constitution, even though the Democratic Party thinks it does (along with the Commerce Clause).
Morons like Stark are why we have a written Constitution in the first place.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The government's meddling in business is what has kept this from occurring ten years ago, champ. Note that this is the FCC considering a RULE CHANGE. If the FCC had never been around to create such a rule, we would have already seen this happen.
Having said that, I'm very, very, very cautiously optimistic that this will only have a short-term effect. Streaming HD (in my case, via Netflix) has gone from a "that would be cool" to something I do almost every day within three years, and despite my /. account, I'm not a bleeding edge type. The difference between "normal internet user" and "person who streams a shitload of video" is blurring and is probably going to disappear within the next 18 months. And people just aren't going to pay $200/month for internet unless there's a massive speed increase, and even then, probably not.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.
It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.
Now everyone thinks it means "Congress can do anything it wants.
1. No spam
2. No ads (popup,popunder,popover, etc.)
3. No having to wait for other advertisements on webpages (I hate seeing "waiting for adyieldmanager.com")
4. When downloading large files, I want constant download speed. Not when first downloading it is 230kbps to then later slow to 15kbps.
I could care less of broadcast TV, not much on it anyway these days.
And "surfing the web" or "googling" is becoming just as worthless. Not to go OT, I was trying to find where I can chop the upper and lower black portions of 4:3 video footage for a true 16:9, all the sites I found are bankrupt forums describing using the crop mode in Adobe Premeire (which doesn't work) or useless answer such as "google for instruction manual" (there is none).
Most websites I found are either ones I know of for past few years or from word-of-mouth.
mfwright@batnet.com
I do so love a challenge. Here's some examples of the theory:
And here's some examples of the practice with CISCO routers:
Other systems:
Now, tell me again that only a Marxist would believe that it's possible to have pipe-based fair-service on the Internet.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, but your paying for it does. Unless you only use an ISP based in your state to access DNS servers in your state to access websites hosted in your state. And even then, it's not likely (my first jump via tracert goes to Illinois, and I live in Wisconsin).
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Has it ever been forbidden to offer metered internet?
And actually, even then I fell for a red herring. Your ISP must only provide access to servers based in your state. Goodbye, backbone.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Hmm. You make a good point. I'm still not *entirely* convinced, but your logic is sound enough given the amount of effort I feel like putting into evaluating it right now, i.e., not much ;)
I hope all of you are liking the change.
Suckers!
Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource./p>
Quick thought experiment for you. What's the cost of stringing a Gigabit ethernet cable between you and your neighbor with a couple of switches on each end. Now, what's the monthly cost of maxing out transfer on that cable, 24/7? And what "resource" are you "consuming" when you do this? A miniscule amount of energy, that's all. Water and energy have a marginal unit cost of production that is far more proportional to the consumption of that resource. E.g. you use ten times as much energy, and ten times as much coal has to be mined and burned. Use only 1/10th of your ethernet cable, and the cost is approximately the same as maxing it out. Capital once-off costs are proportional to infrastructure size, while maintenance is a variable cost. "Duh" - I don't think you've ever come close to "econ 101", as these are basics. That doesn't mean bandwidth provision should be free, of course, but it does mean that the business models are different to utilities. You've just made the fallacy of hasty generalization. Oh it resembles a "utility" therefore it should be charged like a "utility". Or do you have vested interests in this game?
My other UID is three digits.
So how much would it cost me to play world of warcraft on a 'pay as you go' plan?
Oh, ok, so it's the Libertarian's fault that your internet connection isn't great?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
"the wealthiest would have the greatest access"
Isn't that the entire point? The wealthiest can go to more movies, in better theatres, and with faster downloads.
Why would it surprise, or upset, anyone to hear that the wealthiest spend more money on more things more often? And that the wealthiest make for better customers and easier markets, in part due to their smaller size?
If you want to see a society where the poorest have the same access as the wealthiest, you'll have to petition Disney for a new type of fairy-tale.
This just in: the wealthiest have greater access to food, cars, and travel too.
Really! Does the FCC really want to test the anger and rage of frustrated Americans right now? People are getting kicked around quite a bit these days and the last thing the agencies want to incur is wrath and the rage of the public. If anything we need to de-commercialize the net.
Then don't live in the boonies if you want the infrastructure benefits of an urban area. My grandpa spent thousands on a huge satellite dish and receiver system back in the 80s and never bitched about the cost because he felt the high cost of bringing in all those television channels was far outweighed by the benefits of living in a beautiful, rural area. If you're gonna live in the sticks, paying more for services and having less choice is reality.
But even that doesn't hold so much any more. The cable company wired his area back in the 90s and he's been on a cablemodem for 5 years. There's also a wireless provider that's been there for years (some sort of 802.x system), satellite for over a decade (from as many as 3 B2C providers at one time, in addition to the B2B providers), and, most recently, 3G service from several cellular carriers.
Honestly, with consumer grade two-way satellite available at a starting price of $50/month from multiple providers, there are very, very few areas in the US that only have a single source of entartube access.
Say goodbye to your online multiplayer video games. The MMORPG market should easily be crushed by this because you will not only be paying to access the services monthly, but also paying your ISP to access the service by the minute. And as the summary states, it would also create a bigger gap between those with money and not.
TODAY: if you have $30 available to spend a month you can get reasonable access to the net (limited to 10bps). If you have $5/month you can still get your email and work documents/applications from a dial-up ISP. If you want to play games you get the $50/month for 30bps.
TOMORROW: you have to pay a access fee between $5 and $40 for the link speed as before, except now you also have to pay $1 for every GB you transfer.
How the fuck is this helpful at all?
CAPTCHA: dopers, what the FCC are.
Cox Cable also has a (unadvertised) bandwidth meter. Currently, I get "We're sorry. Your bandwidth information is unavailable at this time. Please try again later."
Unfindable, unknown, or broken....fail.
To one who can actually read it says they can pass any law that is "necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers..."
Such foregoing powers include the following:
It might work good for a reasonably fair country like the US but in crap countries like mine where everything is run by cartels and everything is outrageously overpriced I can see myself paying equivalent to 2 dollars per gigabyte or so. Maybe more. And if America implements this the world will eventually follow.
I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...
It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!
I think this would encourage piracy. If a person has to pay as they go, wouldn't it be cheaper to download a single compressed file, maybe even of lower quality, instead of streaming with commercials & all the other crap?
'taking those three words and standing them on their own'... what are you smoking? I quoted the clause afterwards. The other person's post contains the rest of my arguments, and then a little.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
This article seems like normal life from a South African prespective. We have always, until recently, paid for usage. We buy our interent in amounts of Gigs. Yuo are charged from as little as R29 (ZAR) up to R59 (ZAR) PER Gig. Only recently have we had companies starting offering us "uncapped" internet. Furthermore, the amount to "top-up" your internet over your intial montly buy, is normally charged at a premium rate per gig. This is alright for home users, but look at SME's. Sometimes we will use 50 Gig a month. Sometimes we will use 52 Gig a month. The extra 2 Gig's we need to buy for that month, cost us almost double the price of our original amount per Gig.
Why should people in low population density areas be able to expect the same quality of service as those who live in high density areas without fronting up the additional costs caused by where they choose to live?
general welfare of the United States
That is in the Preamble.
It is also in the tax clause. I'll paste the entire tax clause here, with my emphasis: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States".
The word welfare didn't carry that additional definition when the Constitution was written.
Alexander Hamilton supported a broad interpretation of "welfare" in the tax clause, and case law supports this. What am I missing?
Sorry, you do not have the 'Right' to be made happy by enslaving your neighbor.
Then explain the patent clause. In at least one country with a legal system deriving from the same common law underlying the U.S. legal system, Monsanto successfully sued someone for patent infringement for growing patented glyphosate-resistant seeds by accident. So it's either buy Monsanto seeds or don't farm your land.
Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.
Government regulation or ANY regulation does not make a SERVICE a utility.
A good rule of thumb if something is a utility would be the answer to the question "Would child services found a home without X suitable for raising children?".
Electricity, running water, gas (heating) and sanitation (sewer) would have 'Yes' as an answer.
Phone, internet and cable TV would have 'No' as an answer.
Another question would be "Can you store X?". And yes, you COULD store electricity - it wouldn't be very practical but you could.
You can't store up on your phone calls nor can you pre-browse the internet no more than you can pre watch the next season of your favorite cable show before it airs.
Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC.
Uhh.. NO. It is NOT.
Just because they planned to oversell by 100% while their infrastructure can handle 50% at best, doesn't make the amount of the product they are selling finite.
In fact, their ability to oversell DEMONSTRATES that it is not a finite source. Just try doing that with electricity or water.
The reason they can do that at the first place is because you are not buying data or speed or internet access from them.
You are actually RENTING the use of their infrastructure.
Which they can rent out almost infinite number of times to almost infinite number of customers - only not at the same time and with decreasing quality of service (and price for such service) as the number of customers increases.
Somewhere in the middle of all that there is a "sweet spot" that would let them keep the number of customers as high as possible while providing the quality of service that they can charge as high as possible - and still keep all their customers.
The fact that they are overselling beyond that attainable "sweet spot" shows what they really are - greedy and bad planners.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Or just disconnect totally, as will be the point? I guess that's one way to squelch online 'speech', remove the 'citizens' from the medium.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If anything, this will be an incentive for ISPs to start trying to build out their networks and actually make an effort to deliver as many bytes as possible, since suddenly extra network capacity becomes extra earning potential, rather than something they just have to maintain in order to keep people from leaving.
The actual per-byte price will have to be competitive if they don't want to lose all their customers - but imagine if Comcast's engineers started looking at things like Netflix as a sales opportunity rather than a nuisance to their infrastructure!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Yeah; peering agreements between providers are definitely commerce.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
What are the costs of scaling this up to cover the infrastructure needed to handle an entire neighborhood, city, or state? What are the costs of supporting it, both in terms of technicians and people manning phone lines?
I suspect you're right, though, in that those costs probably don't scale as much with traffic as it does with subscribers.
I told you if the FCC get's the authority to regulate the internet, it would fuck it up just like it did the "public spectrum"
The FCC shouldn't have authority to regulate the internet. So how did it get the authority?
Since when has that been a concern for a monopoly?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but if ISPs started switching to this model, what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?.
Well, then that ISP would find that it has to buy enough bandwidth to service a lot of streamers, gamers and downloaders, but it wouldn't be able to offset that bandwidth cost by charging Grandma $45 a month for 10 or 15 SMTP and POP3 transactions. All those grandmas would be quite happy sticking with their (now much cheaper) ISPs, and you won't have their subscription money to help subsidize the hungrier customers.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I hear this a lot, but it doesnt seem to jive with my observations.
I am observing regulations that prevent entry into the market. If it was too expensive to enter the market, why the regulation?
"His name was James Damore."
Your sig makes you sound like a cunt.
The problem is what will happen in monopoly broadband markets. If there is no competition, they can still jack up the per MB rates so they get the same amount of revenue, or even higher until the network congestion is reduced because it costs so much to use. There is no infrastructure improvement incentive there, and no market forces to lower the price.
Maybe the FCC should limit the use of per-MB pricing to areas where there is actual competition and to no-cancellation-fee service. This would include most mobile services but exclude fixed installations in places where per-MB pricing would do more harm than good. It might even give an incentive for companies and governments to revoke some monopolies.
Woah, citation needed. I never heard, in all my years of being a lawyer and law student before that, that the CC was created exclusively to prevent trade wars!
Uh, living in the sticks has nothing to do with it. I live in berkeley, just north of frikkin silicon valley itself and I can see Google from my backyard. Guess how many broadband internet options I have? One, shitcast. My dad gets a better internet deal living in the Sierras.
None of this would be an issue - net neutrality, bandwidth charges, tiered pricing - if the FCC would just reinstate their line-sharing rules.
Force the telecoms to open their lines up, at cost, to competitors and there would be a breathtaking array of choices for consumers.
And as always, in a free market, competition would drive the price to the absolute bottom.
That's why it will probably never happen...
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
No, he was criticizing the misapplication of regulation. Regulation by the same government that has made IP competition illegal in some areas. Hardly an indictment of free market. And what does libertarianism have to do with local versus federal regulation? It's all still the government.
In all that was done to get the net going the pay as you go model will undermine it. FCC is approving this? My ISP already has then ONLY as the option, I live in a 1 ISP town and have no choice....
I do not play in the middle of the road
> Honestly, with consumer grade two-way satellite available at a starting price of $50/month from multiple providers, there are very, very few areas in the US that only have a single source of entartube access.
Satellite internet at any price is broadband for the damned and desperate. Even if cash were infinite, FAP didn't exist, and Hughes didn't take profound liberties with the definition of "tcp/ip", the speed of light and time it takes a radio signal to make a round trip through the Clarke belt would make it suck for most uses anyway.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3.
Cheers!
(This is a bad example to use for Congress/El Presidente abusing the Commerce clause. This is exactly the sort of situation it was intended for - interstate commerce. Now, exactly how Congress chooses to regulate it is an entirely different yet just as polarizing story.)
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
More than likely it went down something like this:
Founding Father A: No way man, commerce should be the States' business!
Founding Father B: I totally agree dude, but what if the states don't agree? What if they start trade wars and shit? That's bad news man, and we have no way to fix it! The Congress needs to be able put a stop to that man!
Founding Father A: Oh dude, you're right! I didn't think about that! How we make Congress the arbitrators of trade disputes?
Founding Father B: Alright dude, that sounds perfect!
Founding Father C: But what if something happens that we didn't think of though? Like, what if a State gets sneaky? Or what if a company gets so big it actually operates in more than one state? One state could get nasty and try to take all the business, and there isn't anything the other states can do!
Founding Fathers A & B: Oh shit, you're right man.
Founding Father A: Ok, so how's this? We already decided Congress should regulate international commerce right? Well, why shouldn't they regulate interstate commerce too?
Founding Fathers B & C: Brilliant! Next!
I'm certain that's how they talked back then too, I swear it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
It isn't obvious? I mean, the clause clearly states "to prevent trade wars".
Oh wait, no it doesn't. My bad.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Try reading his comment, in particular the " that you "Limited Government" types love so much " part whereby he tries to lump me into some group, as if he has a clue. Then comment, preferably after you log in.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
People don't choose where to live; they're born where they live. Even to the extent that people move, perhaps once in their lifetime, they almost certainly don't do it based on the availability of Internet access. You could just as easily ask why rural locations ought have sanitation, electrification, or any other utility. The great thing about society is that we as a people believe there are certain things which everybody should be able to enjoy, even if it requires a transfer of wealth to accomplish it. Whether or not you think Internet service is one of these is up to you, but don't try pretend that the only fair way resources can be distributed is every man for himself.
I am fully convinced that this model should not only be allowed, but be enforced, at least for high priority traffic. Right now flatrates are a bet on how much the user uses - and for sure the companies know better how much the average user uses than the average user. Its even better (for the company). If the user happens to be outside the main probability distribution peak (to higher usage), then his contract will be canceled with some strange argument (We never heard about that if he is outside the peak towards lower use). Having different prices for different classes of service, you could e.g. range from 1cent/GB for bulk traffic to $1/GB for real-time traffic (numbers are for illustration).
Right now, and that is the same for mobile and for the normal net, there is no incentive to use a good solution, instead of a solution where the average transfer is increased. I would even say changing this could drive providers to provide things free proxies (e.g. windows/linux and virus scanner updates would run much faster) and a web control panel where they can control what happens on their account (I always find it wonderful how people change from "this is to complicated to understand something" to "want to control every piece of it" if you attach a money tag to a decision.), because then this could be sold to the customer. Probably it would be faster then for the user, cost less traffic on the backbone, and there would be a monetary incentive to do it (Marketing: ultrafast free updates).
The users would learn to distinct between bulk traffic and other traffic - Maybe they would even consider to start a download for a movie a few hours ealier if its then only 1Cent instead of 1Euro. And Programmers would finally learn how to use the IP header flag indicating the service class - because then again, an download manager is not only "fast", but may be also "cheap". Believe me, the very same people who right now have the energy to find the fastest downloader (even if the difference is marginal) would invest their energy to make it cheaper.
Actual data connectivity is cheap, getting it to your premise is the expensive part. The local loop usually means you're using some monopoly telco and they can charge whatever they like.
I love that line 'Choose to live'... I live in a small town outside a big one not because I choose to live there, but it's the only place I can afford to live. The costs in the city are higher than my wage allows for. Moving to a higher 'density' area is frankly a overly expensive and downright stupid move. And in our current era information is power. I know I have to constantly keep my skills up our I'd be out a job...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Your argument is overly simplistic. From all the hours of discussion in those conventions specific resolutions were drawn, and they were drawn with an agreement that they have certain meanings.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Seriously. Odds are at least 40% of the people posting voted Republican last election, and they're the one's pushing this crap. Yeah, the Dems go along, but begrudgingly and only because they can't win reelection from you twits w/o a huge wad of cash to run votes.
Oh, and if you're 'independent' you're just part of the problem. Look at how you've voted the last decade. Notice how you vote for Dems when Reps are in and vice versa? Yeah, you're that easy to predict, and that easy to manipulate.
Start voting with your wallet and stop voting for the guy you want to have a beer with. Yeesh!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sorry, but if this becomes reality, much like existing bandwidth caps in some areas, it will become laughable to the knowledgeable. Of course it is an outright money grab, nothing less. But I am afraid it will stay that way, unless an outright miracle occurs and people disconnect their internet service in droves. Only then will we get to say "Ah, fucked up, didn't ya"
I have heard it claimed that "regulate" meant "to make regular" in ye olden days, not "control or supervise." That would be more in line with the intent to prevent internal tariffs and trade wars (which occurred before the passage of the Constitution).
SSC
For all of you congestion-mongers out there (sorry, when high speed internet has been available I've never experienced congestion related problems outside my point of contact).... why don't they just charge everyone a flat rate for unlimited transfer, then give you the option to pay more if you don't want to be congested (if the network calls for it)? That seems to solve everyone's problems. I'd gladly drop something off the $70/mo for 60Mb service and get put in queue 3 of 5... especially if that guaranteed me 1mb of unqueued service for requests and gaming. Can't we all just get along?!
I hate to break the news to ya friend, but the plan is already in the works and being tested as we speak. How do I know? Because I'm in one of the "test markets" for what I've been told WILL end up rolled out nationwide. Here is what you get: If you take cable and Internet it is $65 for 36GB, for the bundle with VoIP it is $106 and again you get 36GB for home, and if you buy the $150 "business package" which is the same damned thing as the other except for the cap you get a whole 76GB. After that it is $1.50 a GB!
Oh and let me tell you for some of the other "fun" you get. Use Vonage? You're fucked, it counts while THEIR VoIP don't. Use Linux or Mac OSX? You're fucked, as Windows Updates come from a local WSUS server and don't count, Linux and OSX does. Want to watch anything other than Youtube and Netflix? You're fucked, because everything else counts while Youtube and Netflix from what I've been told is gonna pull an Akamai and pay for the privilege of being allowed to set up local servers, everyone else? piss off if you don't bring a checkbook. And of course THEIR video on demand services? don't count.
So for all those "corporation yay!" and "free market rules!" types? Enjoy your future, which is the short bus on the Internet while the rest of the world gets 100Mb pipes and looks at us like a backwater. From what I've been told once this rolls out nationwide the others WILL follow suit, except maybe for Verizon FIOS, which if you've looked at the map they are pretty much cherry picking certain large cities and the rest of us are boned. And I'm sure I'll get the "vote with your dollars!" fanboys, to which I ask this question: How EXACTLY am I supposed to "vote with my dollars" when my choices are 1.-Get fucked by the cableco, 2.-Get fucked by AT&T by paying higher than the cableco for service on WWII era lines that max out at 200Kb for DSL and which they've made clear they will NOT be upgrading, or 3.-go WISP which has barely 300Kb and restrictions nastier than the cableco?
Sadly I think the only solution now is to just seize the last mile away from the duopolies and open up competition. We should tell them "You want a monopoly? Fine we'll give you a decade for every area you wire up with 50MB no limit FIOS, 2 decades for 100Mb, and the same 2 decades for those that don't have Internet service you wire with the 50MB plan. Otherwise STFU since we have given you a couple of decades to get your shit together and all you've done is gouge while letting the lines rot in any place you haven't decided is worth cherry picking. Maybe it is different in LA and NYC, but here in the flyover states we are getting screwed and from what I've been told it is to be nationwide by late Q3 at the latest. expect to see a big "heavy users are teh pirates!" campaign to make those that actually want decent service look like scum. Assholes.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well at least in my area the ISPs have learned the "fuck you with a contract" phone trick, and they learned it well. Want Internet? That is a two year contract for X dollars. Want to walk away any time you like, or when they start screwing you hard? Well that will be X+30%-45% and of course if you sign the contract and they screw you later the termination penalty more than makes up for the X+ they would have had you pay. Thanks to the duopoly it is already nearly $100 for DSL and the same for cable and that is with the contract and then tack on another $40 if you want to be able to escape. The FCC is a little late in trying to keep the poor from losing access because in my area the poor already can't afford it. I'm sure by the time this BS gets rammed through the middle class won't be able to either.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In order to provide you with better service, we are moving you from the Unlimited(tm)* plan over to our metered service. Our metered service will charge a dollar per gigabyte. A gigabyte can hold ten full length movies** or six hundred thousand songs***. We feel that this is fair pricing and if you want to use any more bandwidth you're free to go to dialup or start your own service provider.
*Unlimited means 250GB/month
** In 100x100 resolution @5fps
*** In MIDI format
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I don't know if Comcast's website is the same for every region, but, at least for me, the usage meter is on the "Users and Settings" page of their "Customer Central" website.
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
Welcome to how the rest of the world operates, you don't see us collapsing because of it.
"a USA provider" The rule is "a" before a consonant sound and "an" before a vowel sound. In this case "USA" is a "Y" sound. (and Y is a consonant here.)
But the resource isn't actually scarce. I paid for unlimited usage of a 30-mbps link.
That is a bit of a non sequitur, don't you think? What ISPs lie and mislead people about has no bearing on whether they have the resources to deliver on their promises. Think Bernie Madoff.
The market rate for actually (not just stochastically) unlimited connections in the 1 Gb/s range is somewhere around $10 / mbps / month in the United States. Plus local loop charges.
The fact that you are not getting charged at least $300 / month for a 30 mbps "unlimited" connection simply means that you either do not run your connection anywhere near capacity or you are being wildly cross-subsidized by much lighter users.
No, it's not anyone's "fault." It's a result of measures that, like everything else in this world, aren't perfect. My point wasn't that regulated monopolies suck, they don't always. The same local governments that "screwed up" granting those monopolies in Louisiana are also working to try and fix the situation, quite successfully in some cases. Though you probably wouldn't like their solution which is moving from a regulated monopoly to a government backed utility.
There is no perfect solution. The market can't or won't "fix it" in every situation. Federal regulation, local regulation, market forces, none of them exist in a vacuum and all of them have their places. Sometimes people rely to much on one or the other, and stuff gets screwy. When enough people feel like enough stuff is screwy then they start leaning on one of the other forces to fix it. Your original post seemed to imply that somehow Federal regulation and the current regulated monopoly situation in most areas were somehow one and the same. They're not, local governments create the monopolies; and for a great number of people, probably a majority of people, those monopolies are better or on par with the alternative.
Which is usually either nothing, or a government utility. Because big telecoms don't like to spend a fortune running cable to every home in a low population density area unless they can feel comfortable with a guaranteed ROI.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
really I do.
I'd like to shit in all of them and their employees mouths
Oh My Lord, it's Twitter and he is actually saying nice things about me! You DO know that I'm the "token Windows guy" on places like LinuxInsider that you love to hate? Yeah, that's me. BTW from what I've been told they really don't give a shit about MSFT and they ain't getting any "extortion' or big ole checks from Steve, but it is simply a case of any IT monkey can set up a "clicky clicky" WSUS server and Linux has about a bazillion repos spread all over hell's half acre. So I hate to break the news to ya old troll, but this one you can drop the blame square on FLOSS for not getting together and setting a common repo that all can use. As for OSX nobody uses it except the local college here who has their own backbone so the Mac guys won't care about us townies.
Sadly, and the world is probably gonna start spinning backwards for me actually saying this as a Windows guy, but on the rest I actually have to agree with you. Having competition at the local level would finally give us a REAL free market and allow REAL competition instead of the duopoly we have now. I can tell ya though that if this does roll out nationwide like I've been told it is gonna royally suck for you Linux guys. No more testing different distros, no more apt-get-shitload of updates, it is gonna be a major suckfest for you guys. The only hope I can see is if you get the local LUGS to all set up local networks and hope they don't get you for data that stays in the network, but even then that will probably cut you guys off from large sections of the flyover states as you don't see many LUGS in these small towns. Hey, maybe you Linux guys should cook up a "one size fits all" repo system that any IT monkey can set up on a WSUS server?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Your child services model breaks down using your own examples. Sure some of those things tend to be used as warning signs (rightfully or not) by the Child Services workers, however people living "off grid" are becoming more and more common in the US.
Electricity is just the most common thing people skip going off grid, and it is not just people in mountain cabins doing it surprisingly enough.
It can also include people providing their own drinking water, through rain catchment, ground wells, etc.
Sewage for a typical home can easily be handled by a composting dry toilet system
Sure this works better in some climates than others, but it is still possible in many areas to have a reasonably comfortable life without use of public utilities.
Of course there are also the extremist that decide by choice (not financial circumstance) to go live in a tent with their whole family.
Get over yourself, they don't care that you are using your internet connection to watch TV, what they care about is EVERYONE and their Grandmother that used to just check email once per week are about to use it to watch TV.
The problem is you just described your local modern cable system in a typical small to mid size city. They have the gigabit infrastructure running to the few thousand households around town, the problem is all those customers are sharing a single 100 "gigabit" capacity link to the larger city a hundred miles away where it plugs into a major internet backbone. This means that a small fraction of those thousands of local customers can soak the outbound connection if you don't do something to throttle it. Unfortunately the ISP marketing departments have spent years selling internet based upon bandwidth to the subscriber not capacity of the network.
By itself IPTV is not a problem. On-demand unicast streaming is.
If multicast is used the bandwidth usage splits nicely. Of course that works only for live feeds so there's little improvement over broadcasted TV.
Pay as you go internet... what neanderthal thought up THIS fragrant idea? Not to mention the added cost to the consumer for seeing ads, but here's a fun one. I pay $15 a month for an online MMORPG (no, not WoW). Guess what will be one of the first things cancelled if I have to start paying a per gig/meg/? fee in addition to my monthly internet service AND to the MMORPG? The sheer ramifications of having to pay on a per use basis boggles the mind. IF this load of shit goes through, here's my NEW pattern... Start the computer, check email very quickly, cut off the network connection, then maybe play something that DOESN'T require internet, etc. Blog? HA, you're funny. No more for me. Read/post to Slashdot? Don't hold your breath. I'll start buying a regular newspaper, bitching about not getting my phone book... essentially going back to say 1990, with a few small perks, IF I want to pay for them, like email, and online gaming. What a crock of shit...
Stone
There are two loopholes, though. The first is to realise that all commerce is interstate, even if it isn't, because it affects an interstate market. If you buy a widget from someone in your state, then you are increasing the demand for widgets, which will lead to a rise in prices in that state, which causes widgets to be imported from across state lines... so there is no such thing as a non-interstate transaction. The second is to use the power of federal spending, or lack thereof, to force states to impose what congress can't do themselves. Congress wants to pass a law that says X, but such a law can only be imposed at a state level - so instead they pass a law saying that only states with a law that does X passed may be eligable for federal funding of education/transport/other. States then have little option but to comply, or else face disasterous financial consequences.
The wealthiest already have the greatest access. I mean, it takes me an entire hour to illegally download a DVD and deprive starving MPAA executives of their hard-earned percentages, but that's only because I can't afford $100/month for something like FIOS.
"I've never much minded internet advertisements as long as they weren't popups, popovers, or popunders." - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)
How about malware laden attacks hidden in ad banners as well:
MICROSOFT APOLOGIZES FOR SERVING MALWARE:
http://apcmag.com/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware.htm
?
That's no first, & that's from as far back as 2007 (NYTimes had the same thing happen, & I've even seen it over at widely travelled forums like majorgeeks.com in their banners also (this one I actually have a screenshot of it to this day on this one as I used to go there & my browser refused to visit that particular site that day due to antivirus/antispyware warnings (the source of that one was canlimuzik.org iirc))
---
"But if I have to start paying for every bit delivered to me, my hosts file is gonna get big fast" - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)
Heh, since 1997, mine's gone from 27,000 entries up to 912,000 as of today, from reputable sites for that type of information listed in below...
However, I also haven't gotten a virus in more than 15++ yrs. online because of the use of such a large HOSTS file (in part, the rest is due to "system hardening" on any OS' I used in that timeframe + patching & more in "layered security fashion", ala -> http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000%2FXP%22&go=&form=QBRE ).
HOSTS files as blacklists, work in this capacity (you can't get burned by what you cannot touch, in other words).
---
"adblock and javascript blocking will become required addons for all my web browsers." - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)
They should be as well, for "layered security" (especially javascript blocks with by NoScript, or the way Opera does it, which is "BY SITE PREFERENCES" (leave javascript off globally, by default, & then turn it on for sites you CANNOT USE PERIOD, WITHOUT IT (such as say, online tests, or e-commerce related sites that use javascript for database accesses etc./et al)), only)
Even though HOSTS do just a better job than AdBlock does (see it below) here, because they cover more than just certain browsers only, & their built-in email programs, but NOT external to them email programs that are widely used such as Outlook Express/FULL MS Office Outlook for example (where HTML + scripted email can be a potential hazard for infestation also).
---
15++ ADVANTAGES OF HOSTS FILES OVER DNS SERVERS &/or ADBLOCK ALONE for added layered security:
1.) Adblock blocks ads in only 1 browser family (Disclaimer: Opera now has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc.).
2.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).
3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.
4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 4-7 next below).
5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw ->
If there were big class-action lawsuits for false advertising, nay, fraud, everytime an access provider tried one of these schemes to monetize packets or ports. You want to call it pay-as-you-go, crippleweb, or whatever, fine. Just don't bill it as Internet access.
The FTC should have weighed in on this a long time ago, like back when Earthlink and other ISPs started blocking port 25 outbound, but they don't, so it's going to be up to users. Hosting companies and big corps don't get this kind of shitty treatment; us lusers will have to band together.
Seems like a far more useful form of activism than DDoS voluntarism to me. But what the fuck does an old fart know? Now, get off my lawn!
assets of $112 billion since founding in 1963
one hundred and twelve billion dollars in assets
35 billion in gross revenue..
thats $112 for every person in the USA
Net! income-- 3.6 billion.....
thats a straight ten percent over the top after they have amortized and tax dodged and debt leveraged every dollar they reasonably can.
COMCAST HAS THE FUNDS TO BUY SPORTS TEAMS AND NBC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Acquisitions_and_joint_ventures
In case you missed it, I disagree and find offensive your assertion that their profit is 'regulated'
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I can see where you're coming from, but it's really the general welfare clause that Congress has taken for that license.
The copyright and patent clauses also drive, albeit sometimes indirectly, misintreprations and misapplications of the commerce clause, as well as being in blatant contradiction to the 1st and other amendments. You'll notice this issue has come up in the form of an argument on behalf of an industry which is effectively a vendor and gatekeeper of access to IP, posing as a communications service. It's not really packet passing they're selling; cable companies have always acted like they were selling something other than the service of delivering a signal, as if they also necessarily had some license on the signal content. Bandwidth really ain't the issue here. fraudulently maximizing profits is. Unfortunately this attitude has also begin to infect telcos, with the advent of digital TV, but the cable industry is still by far the biggest offender.
Plus, you're still subjected to unsolicited advertising after you've paid for the service. Where are the spam lawsuits so beloved by the "community"? Something doesn't add up.
While it only covers a small portion of the population, I see this being real a pain for some of us. I have to work from home from time to time so in turn my company covers the cost of my internet access since it's required for my job. So what, now do I need to install a second line? One for family use and the other for business? Iwish these guys would open their eyes. No customer likes pay as you go. While it's a little different, Netflix doent charge you per streamed movie and they're making money hand over fist. Make more money by having a better product and not by squeezing your customer until you get every last drop of blood out of them.
Yes, these ISPs want to create artificial scarcity to conform to a business model they are more comfortable with, and many people think this is okay because it's familiar. When will they learn that digital communications are quite unlike the old paradigm of physical communication? Even switched networks are very different because there are a limited number of lines: Not so on the Internet. These kinds of per-byte proposals are very disingenuous.
If it got as bad as I hypothesized, $200/month internet, I'd have to seriously consider switching back to dialup.
And in areas with true monopolies (in reality, I think the majority of the USA sees one single cable provider and several slow DSL providers) I think there would be enough people put off by that price that it would become economically feasible for a second or third competitor to enter the marketplace, or for those DSL providers to mature a bit and start offering cable-style speeds at more realistic prices.
In the end, I really think most cable companies will resist the temptation to charge per byte so that they can ensure they continue having a monopoly.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
that everyone who is here on slashdot, has a strong opinion about this and is a U.S. citizen is taking a few momnets to contact the FCC with their thoughts. It's easy enough to bitch about the way our society is going and how ignorant governemt agencies are but the truth is many civil servants do take input presented in an intelligent manner. Everything that happens in this country is brought on by the action or inaction of it's citizenry. Sadly inaction and complacency seem to have become the order of the day.
in reality, I think the majority of the USA sees one single cable provider and several slow DSL providers
Really? I'm seeing one single cable provider (Comcast) and zero DSL providers.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
No, that's covered by a separate provision of Article I, Section 10: "No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress."
The Commerce Clause was not intended to be a superfluous redundancy, it was, in fact, intended to give Congress a general power to regulate interstate and international trade beyond simply prohibiting states from imposing tariffs and the like.
There are certainly things that have been attempted to be justified with it that have little nexus with interstate or international commerce (some of which have been struck down on that basis), and certainly there may be arguments that--Constitutional or not--some uses of it have been undesirable, but that's a different issue.
she knows exactly who you are, and she's not being nice.
what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?
Well, the right answer is 'competition' but the States and Localities have granted monopolies to these corporations. In turn, the Public Utilities Commissions are supposed to get to set all those rates. But they're often corrupt.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And only pay when the TV is tuned in, even better... I only watch 3 hours of TV a week and the rest of the time it's off.
I seriously doubt that this will happen, as no users using your bandwidth,
no bills being paid, plain and simple, laws of demand, you make it too
expensive that too many people cant afford, you will have no on left using it....
internet would die a slow death, and companies would come back with better pricing then let their companies die....
it would last maybe a few months before the bottom line was hit too hard that they would recant their decision.
Regulate meant then what it does now: to keep things from going out of control, to normalize*. The uses of the commerce clause that keep the states from being too different in their trade practices when dealing with each other and with foreign entities are exactly what the commerce clause was for. The FCC has a reduced jurisdiction over cable because, unlike broadcasting, cable TV communications don't emanate across state lines (you can see pussy on cable in St. Louis Missouri not because you have to request the link but because your neighbor in East St. Louis Illinois isn't having that pussy broadcast into his TV too, and the FCC's usual rules about broadcasting pussy can't be applied). Unless you're a multistate corporation like Comcast or Cox, and then you're back in federal territory.
* - there's a slightly tighter meaning to the phrase "well-regulated" as used in the 2nd Amendment, since that idiom was more of a synonym for "fit for a purpose" and didn't invoke the sense of "controlled." Not so much the words "to regulate" as used in the Commerce Clause.
The Constitution is based on the real experiences of the founders, not strawman arguments.
However, your point, despite the logical fallacy, is correct. Words and phrases can change meaning over time. This word included. Just not in the way it's used in this context. See below. So your point, while correct, is irrelevant.
What are the costs of scaling this up to cover the infrastructure needed to handle an entire neighborhood, city, or state? What are the costs of supporting it, both in terms of technicians and people manning phone lines?
I already sort of covered that with: "Capital once-off costs are proportional to infrastructure size, while maintenance is a variable cost" though perhaps you didn't understand the terminology, these are standard finance terms (support/technicians etc. are 'maintenance costs' that are proportional to the number of users, that is basically the definition of 'variable costs', while capital costs are inherently once-off or 'now and again', i.e. the cost of 'covering the city' - you only need to pay it once anyway). The reason I didn't expand further on that is because my point is that those will *at worst* be comparable to the actual utilities ANYWAY, and are otherwise better for the reasons I mentioned - there is little "consumption" in the true sense of the word - as well as other reasons such as some types of broadband infrastructure not even requiring cable installation e.g. 3G.
My other UID is three digits.
I obviously wasn't claiming that stringing a cable to your neighbor is exactly equivalent to an ISP setup, that's why I called it a "thought experiment", in order to grasp why broadband is different to water and energy. The ratio of the capex to install the line between you and your neighbor, and the cost of maxing it out (a tiny, tiny amount of electricity, perhaps 1W) is simply MASSIVE. My point was also that if OP had even the faintest introduction to "econ 101", as he so arrogantly derided others for, he would understand this already, as these are BASICS. The 'support and maintenance costs' for your cable would be that every now and then you'll have to replace the cable e.g. if someone mowing the lawn clips it. These same principles apply on every level in the broadband supply chain too. Stringing a fiber cable under the ocean costs a fortune, perhaps a billion $ or so for a decent installation. But the cost of transmitting and receiving the light pales into nothingness compared to that cost. The main costs are of maintaining the line e.g. sending out ships if it breaks or replacing repeaters etc., and things like marketing. Investors seek to recover capex over some period of time. Covering a city with a shiny new telecoms network isn't easy or cheap, sure, but with water and energy you are transmitting 'something', it has to come from a dam or water treatment plant or coal must be dug from a mine, these things are extremely expensive, while with telecoms you are transmitting signals, which cost almost nothing to generate or transport. As for whether or not it should be a government utility, if you ask me, that's a moral argument. Personally I am neither a socialist nor a communist, it's not clear to me that there is any valid argument why the state should be granted an exclusive right to monopolise the telecomms market at the expense of human liberty.
My other UID is three digits.
My internet is provided by my cable company (Cox, but Comcast is basically the same). They're already delivering full-bandwidth HDTV to every one of my N televisions, each of which can be recording two channels 24/7/365.25. I actually pay more for the link to my computer than I would if it were just charged as another TV. By a disturbingly large multiple, come to think of it.
So you go get over yourself.
tl;cd (couldn't download).
Hi MR AC! Uhhh...who exactly is "she" and what does that link have to do with it? Because I actually checked it and it was talking about some bald guy that was hairy, or some guy that has little feet. If that is the best "info" this she person can come up with they ain't even close, as I have long hair halfway down my back and being 6 foot my feet sure as hell ain't little.
So maybe you could define who this she is and perhaps learn to Google correctly? Because a bunch of IRC chats about someone who has a hairy back really doesn't have anything to do with this discussion or me. They were all talking about Boycott Novell and I avoid that place like the clap, same as I avoid WinSuperSite. Having fanboys drooling all over each other really don't appeal to me. At BN it is all a global Illuminati conspiracy to make Bill Gates the secret king of all media, while at WSS the guy actually said Vista was a wonderful OS on release and ran fine on 1GB of RAM. Yeah, both are bullshit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As far as I know, there's no way for me (or you) to have any influence or input into the FCC's decisions. I would LOVE to have someone prove me wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong !!! Who or what do I phone or write to to get this horrible horrible idea to die quietly and without a funeral ?? If this were to happen, I may well have to cut my 'net off or risk going completely broke!! BOOOOO!!! Haven't they learned anything?? as cell phone companies are dropping pay-as-you go in favor of unlimited access, 'net providers are looking for pay-as-you-go. LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME!!! ..
of course, cyberpunk always predicted this ....
You're totally correct about my example. That was horrible. It was supposed to be more a matter of "everyone use the same kind of electrical outlets." I'm not having any luck finding it now, but I remember something in the Federalist Papers about how this clause is so meek and inoffensive that it was one of the only bits no one objected to.
Whether that memory's correct or not really doesn't matter much. Supreme Court Justices pretty much ignored it for around 100 years, then decided that it and the "necessary and proper" phrase were the only parts of the Constitution that had any meaning in the modern world.
Presidents have been packing the Court with Justices who love Big Government ever since John Marshall.
You should be especially suspicious when the campaign ads for a political proposition characterize some element of that proposition as meek, inoffensive, and/or non-controversial.
And you should recognize that the Federalist Papers were the centerpiece of a high-stakes 18th century political advertising campaign.
And you should recognize that the Federalist Papers were the centerpiece of a high-stakes 18th century political advertising campaign.
Or maybe the marketing campaign for a coup d'etat.
How's the weather in Satsuma Willy?