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Killing Net Neutrality Could Be Good For You
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup write that everyone assumes that cable companies have all the market power, and so of course a bigger cable company means disaster. But content owners may be the real heavyweights here: It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa and it was ESPN that first proposed to subsidize its mobile viewers' data usage last year. 'We need to move away from the fear-mongering and exaggerations about threats to the Internet as well as simplistic assumptions about how Internet traffic moves. The real problems online are far more complex and less scary. And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.' The debate is really about who pays for — and who profits from — the increasingly elaborate infrastructure required to make the Internet do something it was never designed to do in the first place: stream high-speed video. 'While many were quick to assume that broadband providers were throttling Netflix traffic, the explanation could be far simpler: The company simply lacked the capacity to handle the "Super HD" video quality it began offering last year.' A two-sided market means broadband providers would have an incentive to help because they would receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees). 'Unfortunately, this kind of market innovation is viewed as controversial or even harmful to consumers by some policy and Internet advocates. But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,' conclude Szoka and Skorup. 'Bottom line: The FCC should stop trying to ban prioritization outright and focus only on actual abuses of market power.'"
bullshit!
"No, you shouldn't worry about prioritization, in fact it can help startups."
What? Wasn't that what everyone was worried about to begin with? That those with all the purse strings would be able to lock out these very startups you're claiming will benefit the most from this setup?
Of course, Comcast owns NBC and Universal Studios.
"A two-sided market means broadband providers would have an incentive to help because they would receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees)."
Thus it would be a disincentive to carry any data where they could not do any double billing for the bandwidth revenue. Is Berin Szoka an industry shill?
1. How much bandwidth does a Super HD stream require?
2. How much promised bandwidth are you paying for?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Content owners has the biggest possible competitor: piracy! They need to compete and they need to be reasonable. Case in point: Netflix. ...
On the other hand, pipe owners
I'm not sure Net Neutrality as it stands now is anything but a free pass to abuse said power?
everyone assumes that cable companies have all the market power, and so of course a bigger cable company means disaster. But content owners may be the real heavyweights here
So big content providers (the "real heavyweights") can lean on ISPs to exclude access to small content providers (or at least to get better access than small content providers). That's what network neautrality is intended to stop.
When ISPs where Mom and Pops shops doing things for the neighborhood, they got some special protection and the FCC kept their hands off.
Now ISPs are huge companies and SHOULD be considered common carriers. If they start inspecting packets to see where they come from, to assign priority, they will lose the shield of common carrier. They will be expected to know more about the contents of the packets that get sent. So that Bin Laden or kiddie pron video will be on THEIR network. Do you want them to know more about the contents of what you put on the web?
pathetic is an understatement http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paid+shills&sm=3
Things like polluted air and water, sugary drinks, strychnine, high crime rate, police state, etc. could also be good for you. Except that they are not.
reading this is just disgusting
The internet is a dumb system of pipes with the intelligence at the edges, specifically so we can do things with it that non-techies don't think we can do.
Streaming video is easier than downloading large programs, as you only need to ship a certain amount per second, rather than ship it all and only be able to use it when the last byte has arrived. For real-time broadcast, which causes massive numbers of synchronized transfers, you can use multicast directely, as well as to "prime" a content delivery network node close to your particular edge.
davecb@spamcop.net
The SECOND they allow companies to do this sort of thing, the Internet will quickly turn into balkanized fiefdoms... Oh, you prefer using Google for searches instead of Bing? Tough, you're on Time Warner and we got paid a ton of money from MS to route all search traffic through Bing. Don't like it, find another provider. Oh there AREN'T any other providers in your area? Oh well...
NO NO NO NO!
Find a better way for the companies who provide the content to pay (oh wait, they ALREADY DO by having to pay for their own bandwidth......)
This is just the typical case of greedy cable companies wanting more and more of the pie when they are really nothing more than wire providers.
I think it works the same..
What a load of crap
"Unknown Lamer" is right. Not about what he says, but about his handle. His nonsensical endorsement of the looming cable monopoly couldn't be any "lamer." Are you sure this isn't just a very lame joke?
Mr. Szoka, Mr. Skorup,
How much did Comcast/Time Warner/Verizon etc. pay you for your lip services?
Read the damn title
Shouldn't we instead at some point focus on the fact that streaming itself is a silly and wasteful thing? So much more efficient to download something once and watch it to your heart's content. But then how to keep it under control...
That is where the real danger lies: stacks: the joint ownership of or collusion between content providers and transport providers. If the interests of a specific content provider overlaps with those of a specific transport provider, there is an opportunity to screw the customers and competing content providers. Net neutrality aims to prevent such practices, and rightly so. You don't want to be locked out of DuckDuckGo (or even Bing) because Google have paid off your ISP.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Sure, the Internet was not designed to stream HD videos, but neither it was designed to play games, or make telephone calls. The only thing they designed it for in the beginning was simple http. But all those things work now. The Internet is flexible. The companies want to kill net neutrality because the Internet is a strong competitor in many services they have a stake in too. Examples: Skype can replace telephones. Netflix can replace cable. And the Internet allows for people to create new, better solutions at any time and over the already established infrastructure. Having a tenth of my download rate as my upload is already a spit on my face, and now they want to control what services I can properly use or not? That's not acceptable.
Besides, if they charge more to not limit Netflix bandwidth, most people will likely pay for it and keep using the same amount of bandwidth, only now the ISPs are getting some money for that. This is only about profit, that they have more than enough.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Exactly. If they receive revenue from two major sources (i.e. double billing for the same bandwidth) then they have a disincentive to carry any data that they cannot charge twice for moving over their pipes. Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup are abviously industry shills or completely clueless. Simplistic assumptions what a load of bullshit...
It appears to me like thay are paid shills of the Telecommunications Industry hiding behind "non-profit" "think tanks"
Berin Szoka used to work for the PFF: (from Wikipedia)
The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) was an American market-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C. that studied the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. Its mission was to educate policymakers, opinion leaders and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets and individual sovereignty.[1]
PFF was funded in part by the digital media and communication industry.[2]
Brent Skorup works for the Mercatus Center: (From Wikipedia)
Washington Post columnist Al Kamen has described Mercatus as a "staunchly anti-regulatory center funded largely by Koch Industries Inc."[3] Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist, has called it "ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”[2] The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center "the most important think tank you've never heard of."[2]
The Mercatus Center was founded by Rich Fink as the Center for the Study of Market Processes at Rutgers University. After the Koch family provided more than thirty million dollars[2] to George Mason University, the Center moved to George Mason in the mid-1980s before assuming its current name in 1999.[2] The Mercatus Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit and does not receive support from George Mason University or any federal, state or local government, but rather is entirely funded through donations, including some from companies like Koch Industries[3] and ExxonMobil,[4] individual donors and foundations. As of 2011, the Center shows that 58% of its funding comes from foundations, 40% from individuals, and 2% from businesses.[1]
All I've got for this one is that this is the biggest heap of bullshit I've ever read. How did this get on the front page?!? I find it even more fascinating that whom ever wrote this article actually used an article that argues FOR net neutrality and argues against the exact statements made here, as a references for this baseless hyperbole.
Absolutely priceless.
This was clearly written by some shill working for the ISPopoly.
So the answer to bandwidth saturation is charge us more (or ad spam me) and throttling. How about allowing torrents that link to strategic file nodes that store popular content? With the right algorithms the high demand content could be shared at low peak hours and then distributed from there. Of course that would mean admitting there is a cheaper solution to something they could monetize. I can't help but feel the original article had an insidious agenda.
In the early 2000s, the federal government gave tax breaks to the then-leading communications giants to install an open high-speed data infrastructure throughout the country. The amount of taxes they didn't collect averaged $2,000 per household. Shortly after that, the companies began sales and mergers. TechDirt.com published an article detailing this scam as recently as 2013.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
trying to make something horrifying into good. Good luck !
Even with net neutrality, it's already bad enough for content providers.
Stop with the BS.
No, The Free Market will solve all that. Unless Government interferes.
Youtube, I don't Netflix, I don't Linux-distro, I don't porn, I don't warez, I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I sure as HELL don't want to pay for you doing any of those.
> The SECOND they allow ...
The second it's allowed, eh? So since the 1980s when the internet was invented? There never has been a net "neutrality" protection law, and what you predict hasn't happened.
Companies looking for a new law have invented an imaginary problem and convinced people who don't think things through that it'll inevitably happen. ISPs didn't do that in 2013, it didn't happen in 2012, not in 2011 ... not in 1997.... Why would it suddenly happen in 2014? You've been played, my friend.
"The FCC should stop trying to ban prioritization outright and focus only on actual abuses of market power."
That hits the nail on the head. The frequently stated fear that cable providers will lock out Netflix to push revenue to their own on-demand services can be handled with antitrust law. In fact it may already be illegal.
As far as charging more for better service, that practice is as old as sailing ships. Think first-class airfare, overnight express delivery, etc. What's so scary about that?
In what way? There is not a free market in broadband because the incumbents interfere, meaning that it cannot be solved without government interference.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The problem is lack of competition which currently prevents people from voting with their wallets. When you can only choose between crap and downright evil, what choice do you really have? In most markets where there are only two providers, duopolies are the norm and they don't bother trying to compete, they just split the market and continue to raise prices with no incentive to increase bandwidth, quality or infrastructure. Currently the only protection against outright blocking of non-paying sites are the net neutrality rules, a captive audience without those rules would be force fed whatever the providers deem fit instead of what the customers actually want.
Fix the competition marketplace before you throw out net neutrality and I'll probably agree with this. At least then I have a choice to switch to a provider which doesn't prioritize things based on who pays the most, ignoring their customer desires.
Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
Caution, this is a rant:
People want to be able to download as much as they want from anywhere they want for a flat rate. This is childish.
I believe completely in net neutrality. The ISPs are in fact common carriers and should be treated as such.
However net neutrality does not come cheap. People have to pay for what they use in bandwidth the same way they pay for what they use for electricity, water and fuel. Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month and they should be able to use 100GB if they can afford it.
This is not a social issue. A poor child doing their homework doesn't need a gigantic feed. It's for people who have nothing better to do than watch netflix and play games.
sorry, but I feel better now...
Net neutrality is important, both to keep the big players from keeping small players out of the game but also to keep people informed that this is something they should really worry about.
If the internet providers are unhappy with providing roads to the internet perhaps they should divest into content. But i have no inclination to pay twice.
HTTP/1.1 400
He's not talking about a "two-sided market", he's talking about an industry that is trying to double bill. The end user pays for the delivery infrastructure, and if they need to build more capacity, it should come out of the huge profits these companies are realizing. *That's* how Economics 101 works. Saying "I'd really hate something bad to happen to your bits on the way to your customer...maybe you should pay me a little something to make sure that doesn't happen" and then claiming "I need the money because bandwidth" is simply extortion. Utter bullshit, every word of it.
8 Unknown Lamer stories in a row, are even the editors leaving for Soylent News?
It's warm and feels good to let it flow.
But after a while you realize that in the end you will stink and be dirty.
Don't do it!
Just saying it like it are.
> Disclosures: The authors’ work is supported by both broadband and edge providers.
The problem with BIG network companies is that they control which data can be transmitted and how fast it can be transmitted. If they cannot do that, the net is an equal space which can be used by everybody, depending on his or her connection speed. This allows any business to use the net as a medium to eliminate distance between data users. A thing which brought us voice over IP, media streaming, education, and knowledge in every home (which can afford connection fees).
The big network companies form an oligopol for data transportation. As any oligopol, they must be regulated otherwise they misuse their power. The same applies to content delivery companies like netflix. There are also only a few companies available which provide streaming services. It is also hard to enter that market and therefore they must be regulated. Actually they are just on a higher level in the ISO-OSI layer architecture.
But content owners may be the real heavyweights here: It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa
Netflix except for a few shows it funded, is mostly a distributor. Also if you read up on what really happened, Netflix found itself with steep interconnect fees due to the actions of Comcast. So it built their own network that the ISP could join. However, any ISP that joined and did what Comcast did would find itself under scrutiny by the FCC. Time Warner wants to spin it as Netflix "withholding access" when really it is Netflix protecting itself.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So, let's say we embrace the end of network neutrality and allow content distributors to fight with content producers over control of the "tubes" to our homes and the data flowing over them. You know what'll happen? We'll end up exactly where we are now with Network Conglomerate X fighting with Cable Provider Y over bundling of channels and how much is charged/paid per viewer per channel.
You know who gets screwed in this scenario? The consumer.
It's like two rabid animals fighting over a piece of meat. Either way, we get eaten.
Do these people claiming allowing ISPs to charge providers even understand how the internet works? Providers buy bandwidth from one ISP. Consumers buy bandwidth from another ISP. Those ISPs then decide amongst themselves who has the more valuable network, and one ends up paying the other for access. If consumer ISPs think they deserve more for access to their customers, they charge their peers, and those peers in turn charge Netflix and their ilk more. Charging them directly would constitute triple dipping.
I call bullshit on this articles attempt to misdirect people from focusing on the clear monopolies of internet, cable and telephone distribution. What we need is local or state run fiber infrastructure that peers to the service providers. This will create competition as it has in other countries. Right now there's no incentive for Comcast or Verizon to improve their services simply because their customers have nowhere else to go, or in some cases they can choose between two providers who collude in their pricing. It's anti-competitive and a failure in capitalism.
The issue is lack of real competition in the market.
If the market were truly competitive then they would not be any need for Net Neutrality laws. If a provider fails to deliver a high quality service their customers can vote with their wallets. Unfortunately the US telecoms market is far from competitive, so regulation is required to provide what customers want, rather than what the telcos want to give.
Netflix isn't the only content provider out there, and most of the others are also service providers. Net neutrality is often about keeping the behemoths from giving their own content preferential treatment, bandwidth-wise. Laissez-faire inevitably leads to consumers getting a raw deal. Are these guys the shills they seem like, or do they just not understand economics?
Sure they did its called the NSA Network. That said when are our elected officials going to do something about the scam unless its not a joke and it really was the NSA network.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Having worked at an ISP during the 1990s, I can tell you this didn't happen because the people working there had RESPECT for the neutrality of the traffic. They had no desire to prioritize anything and it was considered bad form and, ultimately bad business. If you start caring what the content is going through your wires and even go further and filter then someone could do it to YOU in return.
What we have in 2014 is several heavyweight "ISPs" like Comcast who 1) have shown to have no respect for anything or anyone and 2) are big enough to bully others.
Need I say more?
ESPN should go and fuck itself, sideways. In the past they forced net operators to pay them in order to make online streaming accessible to their customers.
That's right, you probably sponsor Joe Shmuck's ESPN habit even if you are not interested in watching the fucking 'football' or baseball. And now they want me to sponsor his mobile data?
The argument that the poor carriers are being bombarded by all this data (when our endpoint bandwidth is much less than other places in the world) is completely absurd. It's not because the internet wasn't "designed" for video, it's because competition hasn't spurred more development by the carriers. They've been living on capital rents.
This piece is naive in the extreme: it assumes implicitly that the only players are major content providers, carriers, and "consumers", and never speakers, telecoms, and citizens.
Nothing has killed net neutrality yet.. Seeing as he was speaking to the second they kill it, we still have not reached that point.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
They kind of did back then. Remember, in the past, you usually logged into something like CompuServe, which acted as an Internet portal, but also contained its own network.
But I think the simple reason net neutrality wasn't such a hot topic was because the internet just wasn't big enough yet. It is hard to compare the internet from the 80s with the one from today. In the 80s it was still very research and university/DARPA centric. Today.... not so much.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Yet it’s important to remember that subsidy programs are a conventional business practice that brings down the cost of services for consumers. Nobody’s access is degraded. In an increasingly connected world, it’s a welcome development that carriers and ISPs are proposing market-oriented solutions to bring more people online while gaining a new revenue stream for network upgrades.
Is this a joke? Subsidy programs don't bring down the cost of services, ever. Access is 'degraded' by overselling services after the big ISPs use their subsidies for piecemeal upgrades that only pad profits, instead of actually improve the entire infrastructure. Carrier and ISP's market-oriented solutions are to bring more profits with the least amount of additional expenditure, and network upgrades are an accident of necessity. New revenue streams are about profits.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
But you're still morons.. without net neutrality, internet access will cost 10x to 100x more than cell service.
Think about it without your wallet open for *donations* for spewage of the wrong sort.
Decrying govt interference is a lame & ignorant excuse when it is the govt grant to "public good" rights of way & frequencies that create monopoly to begin with. Govt should push for equal access in layers 1-3 across WAN, MAN, LAN boundaries.
I actually assumed that the biggest losers in TW/Comcast Hookup would have been the cable content producers, who have to negotiate where their programming is carried. But I checked and Viacom at least saw it's stop spike up on the news of the merger (NASDAQ: VIAB), and Disney follows the same exact spike (NYSE: DIS) Then I figured wait, they are a big enough corporation that the end of Net Neutrality must be even better for them than the merger of Carriers is bad for them.
CNN reports that perhaps the merger will provide support to reverse the end of Net Neutrality http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/20... I think the "good news" logic would be that the more big corporations monopolize, the more hope that someone will do something in the future to correct it. I
Gently reply
> The only thing they designed it for in the beginning was simple http.
In the beginning, when the internet was designed, http wouldn't be invented for another 15 years. Http has only been around for half as long as the internet has.
Streaming was originally set up to allow a 1:1 dialog between the content owner, in both audio and video formats, with the person receiving not permitted to make a copy - Hah, that lasted 11 minutes and now we can copy a stream at will.
So we are left with the relic of streaming, and zero benefit to the content owners or to the buyers (who suffer buffering, etc), and the content owners must marshall the resources to send tens of thousands of streams of the same content, on scattered time phases, which blocks any possible efficiency of scale.
How can this be rectified?
I believe a form of torrent should be made that allocated a unique hash number to each transmitted block, so that the blocks could be seeded to many hosts and when the receiver wants them his torrent program marshalls them in the correct order to play a stream.
In the best case a 1-2 minute buffer would serve, a worst case would need a deeper buffer.
When a client signed up for "The Gladiator", if he was the first to buy, the system would start to stream these sequential blocks, and know where they were. It would also assess the network the data would traverse and present the customer with a screen display that said, "building stream and buffering - stream will play in x seconds", and if nothing changes that x seconds buffer would be deep enough so the client would never break out of the buffer. As more clients came on board, they would also start to stream and also have access to closer and prior streamers and they could use their data in sequence = a smaller buffer time. Overlaid on this is the clients "last mile", on which the depth of his buffer would be determined. He knows his last mile and will accept this.
The content owners have been so screwed over (only in their minds) by torrents that this would need a new name, like "sequential multi cast", or some such to make it palatable to them.
This method might be the saving of the industry. In fact, it seems so obvious that it must have been thought of and be in use already?
I am not decrying interference, I think you are targeting the person above me.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It's wrong to say the internet wasn't engineered to deliver video, it was. Multicast
Unfortunately for this to work seamlessly service providers and backbones would have to implement the standard protocol. This would enable streaming what we currently consider cable TV much easier. It does not solve on demand problems, but would create a similar experience to current viewing habits.
But I don't see it ever happening, because if you are in the business of selling data you don't want to make delivering data exponentially more efficient.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
>> Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month
> your pricing structure is way off. There is a physical infrastructure that must be maintained regardless of whether you're using 1GB/mo or 1TB/mo.
This is cheap infrastructure to keep in place for 1 GB. There is expensive new infrastructure to buy for 1 TB.
24 port 100 Mbps switches cost about $15
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...
24 port 10GbE switches cost about $450 - $3200
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...
So in fact the infrastructure cost DOES scale with bandwidth. In fact, it's more extreme than that. Lower capacity infrastructure is already installed.
To higher usage per user, new infrastructure has to be installed.
Net neutrality was a fiction. It was equal access in 1983 that started WAN competition, dramatic cost reduction, horizontalization of voice that gave data its commercial foundations to explode in the 1990s when the www/html/mosaic stack hit. Computers II/III protected the nascent SIPs from vertical, anti-competitive bundling. Furthermore Bells opened door inadvertently by expanding flat-rate calling areas to protect voice monopoly from competitive WAN. Everything started reversing after farcical Telecom Act 96. Bottom-line is that equal &/or open access should be applied multilaterally in layers 1-2.
In what way?
In the whooshy way, I expect.
Years of charging more than the rest of the world and offering arguably inferior service has proven to the public that the big telecoms obviously have our best interests in mind. Lets not forget the massive subsidies and suing local start ups out of business. Yeah giving up on net neutrality sounds like a smashing idea.
He said "the second it's allowed". It's ALWAYS been allowed, modulo Sherman and similar existing laws. ... Well, it's not illegal today, it's never been illegal, and his predictions haven't come true.
He's claiming that the moment it's not illegal
Given that the scare mongering is clearly bullshit, then it's time to ask "who is trying to sell us net neutrality using these transparent scare tactics, and what might their actual reasons be?" Clearly the stated reason is BS because we ALREADY live in a world with no net neutrality laws and tragedy has not befallen us.
I run a very small WISP. We have around 200 residential customers. Most other alternate ISP (not Comcast or CenturyLink) will not sell residential Internet. Why? Less money, more bandwidth. Streaming video uses up to 100 times more bandwidth that typical web surfing does. Comcast gets Level3 (Netflix's bandwidth provider) to pay them extra to deliver there video streams to there customers. We are so small, how are we supoosed to get Level3/Netflix to compensate us without getting laughed out of the room?
The situation is bad enough that we are considering discontinueing our sales of residential Internet.
At least if Comcast was not allowed to charge Level3 for the delivery of there streaming data (Shouldn't Comcast customer my fees cover this?), net neutrality, they would have to pass that expense on to the customer. If there rates went up so could ours. Level playing field.
"priority bandwidth" does not mean faster bandwidth, it means slower for the others and the customers have no choice in this. Shut up and support net neutrality!
who paid you to believe this?
It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa
Netflix withheld SuperHD from everyone not on OpenConnect, not just TWC, not to mention that TWC was bitching about the 1mb/s SD streams, yet alone 8mb/s SuperHD streams. TWC is two faced. I one moment they say that Netflix is overloading their networks, and in the next they say that Netflix is holding back customers by not offering SuperHD. They flip-flop stances depending on which one suits them.
The debate is really about who pays for — and who profits from
WTF does this mean? The customer ALWAYS pays in the end. Let customers pay for their bandwidth to the ISP and let the ISPs sort everything out. Get rid of this "Gate keeper" monopoly bull. If the customer pays for a 30mb line, then don't bitch when the customer uses 4mb/s of it. Costs too much? Then increase the prices!
The funny thing, when people push for deregulation, the government itself becomes more deregulated, and thus more evil - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If the US wasn't so afraid of regulation, the banks would never have gotten away with screwing everyone over and the government would never have gotten away with all of this spying bullshit.
The funny thing is, you never heard the "if you haven't got anything to hide" argument being applied to regulation. The only reason US companies and government are so anti-regulation is because everyone would find out how fucking corrupt they really are, and they'd have to stop lining their pockets and actually start doing their fucking jobs.
There used to be a tiny bit of competition and the majors did not have as much vertical integration as they do now. There was actually a reason for them to court others to use the system rather than competing against them. The drive for being a monopoly within your market is very high regardless of the venue and this just happens to be one where there are few, very large players. Something like those banks that were too big to fail.
Having no laws against something is not the same thing as allowing it. There are regulations, Comcast is required to have net neutrality for x years due to merger and the like.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa
AFAIK, Time-Warner wasn't allowed to.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
RFC2474, which was one of the earliest standards published for differentiating traffic (thus enabling QoS/Traffic-shaping) wasn't even published until December 1998. So the technology enabling the death of "best effort" routing and thereby network "neurtrality" wasn't even properly DEFINED until almost 1999, much less available in market ready production quality switching and routing equipment. Let's not pretend spiking network neutrality was even viable in the early 80s, throughout the 90s, or even into the mid 2000s. It wasn't until the mid-2000s before QoS became viable. And lo and behold, that's about the time network neutrality became a topic of discussion.
But the reason ISPs haven't implemented prioritized traffic based on who's paying them premiums is because the ISPs have been busy maximizing profit based on the original business model while they build the infrastructure (from the actual capability of traffic shaping to identifying which/whose traffic to shape, to tying it all into billing and support systems) they'll need to do so.
Now that returns are leveling off in the old business model, and the infrastructure is in place to allow them to charge Netflix, et. al., more to carry their traffic, they will use the avenues to continue bringing in more money if allowed. It's obvious and simple, really: QoS-ing someone's traffic into oblivion unless they pay to get onto the higher priority tier will be the new normal because (a) the technology is mature enough now, and (b) mo' money, mo' money!
... OP is a faggot.
The fear-mongering and exaggerations are quite evident in the comments to the article. You may not agree with the premise behind the article, but the lack of net neutrality does not spell the end of the Internet or any sort of doom and gloom. Comcast still has to keep it's customer base happy enough to stick with them because unlike what some people believe there are other options nearly everywhere. I don't buy into the doomsday talk and I do agree that, similar to the IPv4 doomsday talk, there is a a lot of FUD surrounding this issue and people seem to be talking about it with their emotions and not looking at it logically.
You mean like they already have? I don't want to be on Comcast for my broadband, but that is the only non-wireless choice for me unless I want to go with a $700+ a month leased line and have more then 0.5 M/s upstream.
Killing Net Neutrality Could Be Good For You
Killing shipping neutrality would enable Amazon to pay UPS for prioritized shipping, which could result in more Christmas packages arriving on time.
But the maximum societal value of carriage networks comes from their operators being common carriers; from all who need package transport, large and small, being able to ship the same size package for the same price and knowing that it will receive equal priority as the incumbents. It is a test that has been run on real economies, worldwide, over and over again. We already know the answer that maximizes long-run GDP growth. (as an aside, the most beneficial outcome also involves less competition than we would want for pure market-based optimization, because having enough independent carriage networks to overcome discriminatory profit-seeking would require a cost ineffective level of capital investment in competing networks)
Also, beta sucks. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors. If you kill the authors, you will kill your content. Ask yourself this question, Dice: Do you have the writing chops to compete with Ars Technica on their turf? Has any article on SlashBI generated the same traffic as a mediocre comment thread on Slashdot? Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Make the right business decision.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Who ever said anything about 10Gb ethernet switches? First, this is long range communications where copper ethernet simply doesn't function. We're talking more expensive DSL or DOCSIS gear, or much more expensive PON gear. Second, 1TB/mo is only around 3Mbps. The average broadband internet connection these days is going to be many times that, regardless of whether they're using 1GB/mo or 1TB/mo.
And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.'
Bullshit. This is an argument being made by very large companies who would like nothing better than to extract economic rents from other companies to maximize their own profits without any consideration for whether this benefits consumer or the economy as a whole. They do see the opportunity to charge extra to google and amazon and to throttle potential competitive threats like Netflix. They can simultaneously limit competition to their own content and charge extra to competitors who will have no choice but to go through them to reach vast portions of the public.
But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,'
Again, bullshit. This presumes that we have no insight into the likely behaviors and consequences of eliminating net neutrality. We know EXACTLY how companies like Comcast will act if they are allowed to charge discriminatory pricing and we also know that it is extremely unlikely to benefit consumers. Frankly Comcast doesn't give a rat's posterior about me specifically because I am a teeny, tiny fraction of a rounding error of their revenue stream. No action I could possible take as an individual is likely to have any meaningful effect on their behavior. But there is a LOT of money to be made for them without net neutrality.
Your metaphor is off and is the point that ISPs are trying to use to exploit customers. Netflix is the product that I am purchasing. They could charge people who consume 10x as much 10x the amount ,but they choose not to. ISPs are nothing without content providers.
ISPs are just the roads that Netflix delivers the product to me on. There are costs to build and maintain that road. I pay a monthly amount to make sure those roads are up and functional so Netflix can deliver. Whether I choose to use those roads or not they are still there. The only problem comes up when too many people are using those roads concurrently. ISPs have made what I believe to be a fair compromise by setting a limit on how many deliveries I can order at once(bandwidth) to make sure everyone gets their deliveries on time.
Long story short roads are a much better metaphor for ISPs business. But if you have to use pipes remember that ISPs are not the ones producing the actual utility.
Killing Net Neutrality Could Be Good For You.... Says Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
No, The Free Market will solve all that. Unless Government interferes.
Ahh, yes. Sprinkle a little Free Market (tm) pixie dust and every problem will go away like a fart in the wind. After all, corporations are benign entities that only have our best interests at heart. That Evil Government (tm) however is always trying to force them to do things that benefit those Undeserving Consumers (tm) who don't realize that what is best for them is to hand over most of their money to corporations for safe keeping.
[/sarcasm]
That is where the real danger lies: stacks: the joint ownership of or collusion between content providers and transport providers.
Agreed. It's also not a new problem. Back in the 1940's there was a problem with movie studios owning theater chains, which of course only showed, or at least gave preference to, that studio's movies. Of course back then antitrust law was actually enforced (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.), which allowed for real competition. Nowadays corporate rent seeking is called the free market. While we're at it, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
Who here is with me in thinking that Hugh Pickens is a bigger cancer on Slashdot than Beta?
You are blaspheming against the True Religion. The Market solves everything. Obviously if the incumbents can interfere that means that Government must have given them an unfair advantage. Everyone Knows that all you have to do is provide better quality cheaper service than anyone else that you will instantly skyrocket to Olympian success unless that evil old government interference prevents it. It's right there in the Free Market Bible, available everywhere at market prices. Copyright (C) John Galt Publishing Company.
Geez. How am I supposed to earn my own bridge if people take me seriously?
much more expensive PON gear
Don't make me laugh. Optics is much cheaper than copper for with the lines and the equipment. The only benefits gained with copper is less immediate training and lots of existing lines. DOCSIS and DSL head units are much more expensive up front and to operate and upgrade.
This isn't news--this is an opinion piece, and it's a bad opinion piece at that. The bulk of it is not only wrong but eye-wateringly wrong and factually incorrect.
Whether or not ESPN wanted to monetize their viewers or not has nothing to do with Net Neutrality or a lack thereof. ESPN is an over-the-top provider in this case just like dozens or other companies. This argument is just thrown in to confuse people and pretend that there is precedent for the argument the morons are trying to make.
That quote deserves special contempt because it's not only bullshit but is also a shamefully ignorant statement to make. Not only was the Internet designed to route traffic without passing judgement, IPv6 (the protocol broadband would be moving to if they weren't so busy punting around) handles all sorts of data in special ways to facilitate these sorts of things. Furthermore, multicast, bitches. It was designed for doing things like streaming video something like twenty years ago.
As to this stuff about a "two-sided market"... it's simply a load of nonsense. Broadband providers don't need a special incentive to "help". What they need is actual competition so they'll stop goofing off, actually invest in upgrades like any healthy technology company should, and stop paying people to write shillery like this. The fact that they're already being paid by their customers at rates higher than almost everywhere else in the world, for notably slower connections should be a big red flag that they're negligent in this obligation.
We're not "assuming" broadband providers are throttling Netflix--we can prove it, because unlike paid shills, we can actually analyze and diagnose networking issues. Fifteen minutes of Googling will readily turn up multiple reports (from both skilled individuals and capable technical organiztions) demonstrating that the broadband ISPs are throttling the traffic.
If you want abuses of power, this article is one. It's nothing but a pack of lies designed to muddy the waters. Are we going to start seeing reposts of the stupid shit FOX News says now?
Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month and they should be able to use 100GB if they can afford it.
I'm a cost accountant professionally and your analysis of the economics here is complete nonsense. You are assuming that delivering 10GB/month costs 10X as much as delivering 1GB/month. In reality it doesn't work like that. There are two types of costs, fixed and variable. Fixed costs are things like electricity and salaries and rent that you have to pay every month regardless of how many customers you have or products you produce. Variable costs are things like raw materials or data interchange fees that scale with each unit of product delivered. For companies like Comcast, fixed costs hugely outweigh variable costs, meaning that it costs them only fractionally more to deliver 10GB than it does 1GB. The equipment used is the same, the salaries of their employees are the same, their electricity costs are the same, etc. The cost to serve a customer is generally not affected greatly by the amount of data they use in most cases once the infrastructure is in place to serve them.
What these companies are doing is in many cases creating artificial scarcity and engaging in price discrimination to maximize revenues while minimizing costs. Investing in infrastructure (a large fixed cost) is expensive so companies don't want to do it if they don't have to. Furthermore they know that some people are willing to pay $100 per month while others only $30 so they are using the fact that there is a minor difference in variable cost for data delivery to extract more money out of those who are willing to pay more for faster/more data. Companies like Comcast don't like companies like Netflix because Netflix customers start demanding more out of their existing infrastructure which screws up their cost models and forces them to invest in infrastructure (big fixed costs) soon than they intended.
If you want to charge differential pricing based on usage, then you need to have a flat access fee based off the actual (fixed) cost of providing the service (plus some profit for the ISP) and then you charge a per-byte usage fee for the variable cost of delivering the data. The variable cost in this instance should be a relatively small amount compared to the flat access fee. Right now by paying a flat fee, users who use less data subsidize those who use more.
"Bottom line: The FCC should stop trying to ban prioritization outright and focus only on actual abuses of market power." - FTA
Bottom line: Women should stop trying to prevent rape outright and focus on recovery from an actual encounter.
"Are you familiar with the old robot saying 'Does not compute'?" - Bender Bending Rodriguez
> Second, 1TB/mo is only around 3Mbps. The average broadband internet connection these days is going to be many times that, regardless of whether they're using 1GB/mo or 1TB/mo.
If 10,000 customers average 3 Mbps each, the ISP needs 30,000 Mbps of infrastructure for them. The instantaneous peak "up to" speed in the advertisements has nothing to do with it. If they use 1 GB, that's 1 GB the infrastructure has to carry. If they use 1 TB, the infrastructure has to carry 1 TB. Infrastructure for TBs costs a lot more than infrastructure for GBs. I'm certain of this because I've purchased both.
Yes, most of it will be optical, not copper . The same price difference applies. Most Slashdot readers aren't familiar with $10,000+ switches so I i
used analogous equipment that most nerds are familiar with. A Cisco router for 100 Gbps average usage costs less than one for 1,000 Gbps.
In the 80's I could choose between 4 dialup providers if not more. Now, I have a 'choice' of one ISP.
I was prioritizing traffic in 1997, when I owned a hosting company. You don't need a standardized RFC giving an industry-wide standard method for doing something before you start doing it. In fact, RFCs frequently codify how people have already been doing things. The 1999 RFC shows that by that time , it had become common enough that the method needed to be standardized.
Customers who want high priority get it, spammers get deprioritized. It's been done forever and it hasn't been a catastrophe.
So in fact the infrastructure cost DOES scale with bandwidth.
Yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run. You purchase it once and the cost of maintaining it is essentially unchanged. What happens is that the additional fixed cost of the new equipment gets amortized over the units (of data) sold. So the payback time is longer but eventually the fixed costs per unit sold go down asymptotically to a good approximation of zero. In time the difference in cost between the two devices is so small as to be insignificant. The only question is how long it takes this to occur.
hands off my QUAKE damnit
The only thing they designed it for in the beginning was simple http.
We can tell you don't work with Internet technology. HTTP is a Web technology, not the Internet. You'd be a more plausible pundit if you didn't get telling details like that wrong. You would have been more correct to have said "TCP", but you would also have been wrong.
In point of fact the entire purpose of the Internet has changed multiple times already. 1982 was a watershed moment, with the introduction of SMTP and TCP/IP, but keep in mind there was a decade of networked computing before then. Usenet was another era, the 'dumb' web before the Browser Wars yet another, and now we are come to the age of Web Applications. Netflix is not really shaping the 'Net in any major way; if they did not exist some other company would be eating up US bandwidth.
Skype does not have a complete advantage over POTS. Availability, sound quality, and latency are not generally improved by VOIP. Also, I am sure that your ISP would be more than happy to have you on a symmetric line, with an SLA to boot, which is pretty necessary if you have a server providing services to the outside world. Due to the way TCP and basic logic work, content consumers don't need symmetric connections, as they will use much more downstream bandwidth. As a web professional, the idea of hosting content or services from one's home is more than a little sketchy. Hosting companies and server farms are much better equipped to ensure that your systems are reliably accessible than even the above-average home user. You may have completely legitimate reasons for wanting to do this, but it really sounds like you're a pinch-penny pirate with an overgrown sense of entitlement. The pirate part I have no argument with, but if you need the upstream, pay for it, aight?
I respect the point you're trying to make, and I think I agree, but next time maybe take a few more minutes to fact-check, rewrite your prose, and refine your argument. You might be forgiven technical inaccuracy in other fora, but here I am afraid that it reflects on your credibility.
Just stop watching. 99% of the content is garbage anyways....
Off topic, but I'd reverse that example to make it more convincing to more people. "You won't be able to use bing, you'll have to use google!" = blank stare. "You won't be able to use google, you'll have to use Bing!" = hulk mode.
Netflix should ask them for money for their content like all the networks do on cable TV. Careful what you wish for douche bags. You already make like 96% profit on the lethargic connections you sell at a premium. While taking billions in tax subsidies and not providing the promised improvements for which those subsidies where given. In short you are some of the worst scum known to the American consumer.
The only potential savior is perhaps Google fiber., As our government is pretty much entirely compromised by industry lobbyists at this point.
There is no commodity they produce that is consumed.
Sure there is - a byte of information. The unit price on this commodity is small but it is measurable and it is consumable too. Information has value and it has cost to create and deliver.
If the pipe sits dormant or if its working at capacity, there is no material difference in cost to the provider...
You're forgetting about a whole host of variable other costs beyond simply the physical cost of delivery. There are interchange fees, content license costs, customer support, and more. Granted, the fixed costs dominate but that doesn't mean the variable costs here are negligible. The variable costs are relatively small but definitely not zero.
If government hadn't created the Internet and instead left it for the free market to develop we wouldn't be in this position, now would we? Therefore any "market failure" concerning the Internet is actually a government failure.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
> "Net neutrality simply shifts who is paying"
No - it does not. In addition to simply shifting who is paying it also creates an opportunity to hide the practice of selectively turning off content that -for whatever reason or no reason- the ISP doesn't want us to access. That is why it is a problem. Clearly, if the ISPs have been lying to us all along about how much bandwidth we've actually been paying for, they need to come clean. If we need a conversation about actual cost of billing, perhaps it is time to regulate the monopoly ISPs like the utilities they are.
Magically, all the ISPs in Austin started rolling out high speed internet when Google Fiber came to Austin, TX. I expect the only reason that Google is able to do this is they have enough weight to work the political process. I do not trust ISPs to server their Customers any more than the minimum based on this evidence alone.
Two issues here:
First, no one wants to leave the power in the hands of the cable companies. In most areas they have a monopoly and they can basically do what they want. (Queue the South Park episode where the kids went to talk to their local cable company)
The second issue is the FCC tried to step in where it never had authority before, the courts ruled that they didn't , and threw out the case. We really don't want the government regulating anything to do with content. Just witness all the "protections" Britain is getting right now because theirs is regulated.
What the FCC tried to do and what the cable companies are likely to do are bad things.
If they really want to fix this, break up the monopolies that cable companies have in local areas, and get some price wars going.
And making the interstate system all private toll roads could be good for me too.
What you said is true for say, a building. ISPs's networks are not "you purchase it once" items.
You say "yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run", and that's right, infrastructure costs are only particularly important for equipment that is kept in service for less than 10 years - such as networking equipment.
Disclosures: TechFreedom is supported by foundations, web companies, and both broadband and edge providers
According to TechFreedom's Form 990, TechFreedom has received $1,056,560 in contributions that were not from government grants, federated campaigns, membership dues, or fundraising events. As a 501c3 TechFreedom does not need to disclose exactly who is making these contributions and in what individual amounts, but by now it should be obvious where the money is coming from. See here: http://990finder.foundationcen...
... Freedom ... Foundation, a "market-oriented think tank" that received funding from the telecommunications industry. From http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... :
And prior to TechFreedom, Berin Szoka was part of The Progress And
According to Common Cause.org, The Progress and Freedom Foundation’s list of corporate donors "reads like a who’s who list of the telecommunications industry. Telephone companies like AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon; technology companies like Microsoft and Intel; telecom trade associations like the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Entertainment Software Association; cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner; cell phone companies like T-Mobile and Sprint; and broadcasters like Clear Channel Communications and Viacom19 have all helped fill PFF’s coffers to the tune of a $3 million per year operating budget."
These organizations really shouldn't be considered "think tanks" at all. They're just avenues through which crony capitalists can affect legislators/policy and public opinion by leveraging their massive stores of wealth. This is not "free speech." This is free speech amplified by wealth, which is wrong. Without their contributors' backing, they would just be a bunch of noisy shmucks that no one listens to--just people like you and I.
It doesn't even matter whether or not people like Berin Szoka truly believe the bullshit that comes out of their mouths and onto paper/keyboards. In either case the only reason they're even given an ear is because there's a shitload of money backing them. This is not how a democracy should be run. Wealth should not determine the penetration of your message.
The Internet wasn't originally designed to handle MOST types of traffic it handles today. Never-mind the streaming video thing.... It certainly didn't envision VoIP telephony or P2P sharing protocols. I don't think anyone even thought about such things as IPSEC VPN tunneling back then.
In reality, the Internet should handle pretty much anything we can conceive of that can be sent over it following the basic rules of TCP/IP, as long as bandwidth is sufficient and latency low enough for the purpose.
If a business tries to offer a service (whether HD video streaming or anything else) that it lacks the Internet capacity to provide reliably, the whole problem lies with them and their implementation.
To abuse the ever-popular automobile analogy once again? Sometimes it's as though a company decides to build a vehicle so wide, it occupies 6 lanes of traffic. Then people start having a discussion about the problems it causes when it takes up an entire highway including a couple of lanes designated as "HOV" only. (I see the net neutrality arguments here as being somewhat like folks arguing over if the company building this super-wide vehicle should or shouldn't be allowed to buy a special permit to occupy the HOV lanes, so it can get through.)
The better question is probably asking why they decided to build something so darn wide in the first place? Maybe building it extra long, or just using multiple, smaller vehicles would have been a better design choice from the start?
If you're having issues pushing streaming SuperHD quality video reliably? Maybe you should quit concerning yourself with whether or not you can purchase a higher QoS over the existing infrastructure so it transmits better, and start asking if you're just trying to do something that's not technically advisable in the first place. We've come a long way with such things as improved video compression methods. There might not be a lot of room to squeeze more out of that... but maybe this is one of those areas where the existing cable TV infrastructure starts making more sense? (If you want to keep cable television subscriptions viable, morph them into super/ultra/whatever HD quality services delivered right to your set-top box over all that bandwidth the cable network has, and let people use the regular Internet to stream the lower resolution stuff.)
this whole argument is total bullshit
streaming video is just like any other traffic....the capacity exists and works fine
This is about ****ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY****
that's all the cable companies are ever doing....artificial scarcity
the whole 'video streaming' argument is a total smokescreen
Thank you Dave Raggett
This slashdot story violated the "bullshitpropaganda" compression filter. Try less corporate lies and/or less BULLSHIT
If the providers get their way, we'll all have to select a specific internet "package" we want to subscribe to. Want google? That comes in our basic package. Youtube? You'll have to upgrade to our Extreme package. Netflix and streaming media? You need our Premier internet package at $300/month. Oh and if you want to be able to VPN into work, you'll need a commercial package for a cool $500/month.
This is what is best for you after all...just ask your elected officials and cable execs.
User bobstreo posted the best analysis yet of this so called "news" - reproduced below. Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup are almost defiantly industry shills:
It appears to me like thay are paid shills of the Telecommunications Industry hiding behind "non-profit" "think tanks"
Berin Szoka used to work for the PFF: (from Wikipedia)
The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) was an American market-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C. that studied the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. Its mission was to educate policymakers, opinion leaders and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets and individual sovereignty.[1]
PFF was funded in part by the digital media and communication industry.[2]
Brent Skorup works for the Mercatus Center: (From Wikipedia)
Washington Post columnist Al Kamen has described Mercatus as a "staunchly anti-regulatory center funded largely by Koch Industries Inc."[3] Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist, has called it "ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”[2] The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center "the most important think tank you've never heard of."[2]
The Mercatus Center was founded by Rich Fink as the Center for the Study of Market Processes at Rutgers University. After the Koch family provided more than thirty million dollars[2] to George Mason University, the Center moved to George Mason in the mid-1980s before assuming its current name in 1999.[2] The Mercatus Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit and does not receive support from George Mason University or any federal, state or local government, but rather is entirely funded through donations, including some from companies like Koch Industries[3] and ExxonMobil,[4] individual donors and foundations. As of 2011, the Center shows that 58% of its funding comes from foundations, 40% from individuals, and 2% from businesses.[1]
What you said is true for say, a building. ISPs's networks are not "you purchase it once" items.
Sure they are from a cost perspective. They do NOT replace all their equipment every 3 years. Don't take my word for it, look at their financials statements. Hell, the phone poles outside my house were replaced last year for the first time in 45 years. They are NOT going to buy a switch expecting to replace it in 12 months. They might buy new equipment but they aren't ripping out the old stuff for a pretty good stretch of time. My father worked for the phone company for 30 years in engineering so I got to see a lot this first hand. Why do you think it has taken so long for a lot of places to get even 100Mbit networking? The switches have been available for decades but I couldn't get service that fast to my house until the last 2-3 years and I don't expect to see gigabit speeds for another decade where I live. They might add capacity but they aren't ripping out old equipment until it has seen quite a few years of use.
You say "yes it does scale somewhat but only in the short run", and that's right, infrastructure costs are only particularly important for equipment that is kept in service for less than 10 years - such as networking equipment.
"Short run" in this case is based on how long it takes to amortize the fixed costs. This is typically a matter of months to a few years in most cases. Certainly we're not talking 10+ years except in rare cases. If a company doesn't recoup its investment on assets within 3-5 years, in most cases they'll be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
What is important is how much is planned versus necessary outlays. All other things equal, a company like Comcast is going to want to minimize infrastructure investment to maximize profitability. Most of their costs are going to be fixed costs and their profitability depends almost entirely on how long they can keep the assets they have before they have to replace them. Given that fact, do you really think they aren't going to plan ahead and buy equipment they won't have to replace every year?
They are trying to create scarcity where none need exist. It sounds like straight up extortion for more tax subsidies to build out infrastructure. But why would we foot the next bill when the carriers are trying to monitize what by any defintion is a public utility. The people funded the initial research, the people funded the initial build out, and the people have continued to subsidize expansion. Why can't these megacorps come up with new business models through innovation instead of being leeches on the public dollar?
There is no free market in communications in the United States. I know you probably thought you were being witty but you come off like an asshat.
So in fact the infrastructure cost DOES scale with bandwidth. In fact, it's more extreme than that. Lower capacity infrastructure is already installed. To higher usage per user, new infrastructure has to be installed.
High capacity fiber infrastructure is so cheap, that the break-even point is only 3-5 years out. Using old copper infrastructure is expensive.
This, in essence, is why I am opposed to net neutrality. I hate comcast. I hate the government more. I can trust comcast to act in their self interest -- which is shaping traffic in a way that generates the least number of angry customers.
Contrastingly, I can't trust the government to do very much right. And I can be assured that whoever will work at the FCC that gets put in charge of policing ISPs will be one of two types of people:
Total fearmongering unsupported by evidence. The government that supposedly can't "do very much right" has regulated voice telephony under common-carrier rules for about 90 years. And before that it was the telegraph services, and before them the railroads. Common-carrier was instituted to regulate the abuses of the rail barons. We have a long experience with government common-carrier regulations, and it seems to me that they have worked out pretty well.
For a taste of the alternative, consider what would happen if your local phone company said to American Airlines, "none of our customers can call your reservation center unless you pay us 5% of the ticket sales. After all, you're using our wires for free! And if you don't pay, your callers will get a busy signal 90% of the time." Suppose that, like almost everyone on US broadband, you had no alternative of using another phone company. Pricing based on the apparent value to the customer of the traffic would be a disaster. It was, in the case of the old railroads. And in both cases, it was possible only because there is no effective alternative carrier.
The free market only works when there actually is a market.
Did some big evil company buy you and your a piece of propaganda shit now? wtf is going on here?
Poe's Law.
I want some of what he's smoking...
I propose the following solution to this whole net neutrality issue.
First, we remember that free speech is one of the most basic rights of all US citizens. See the Bill of Rights and First Amendment to the Constitution.
Second, we recognize that the Internet (as an entity), television, telephones (including mobile), and radio are the modern means by which we speak.
Third, we reclassify all companies which carry the content from speech producers, to speech consumers, as common carriers. The separation of speech producers/consumers from carriers must be absolute. No content carrier can be a content producer.
As a result of this, no speech can be given preferential treatment.
Pro-Comcast apologists point out that ESPN (owned by Disney) is so expensive and exerts so much market control, but fail to mention the fact that Comcast owned Weather Channel has actually been dropped by DirecTV because Comcast wanted too much money for it. So Comcast is providing its own example of what the world will be like when Content and Cable are vertically aligned. The Comcast and Time/Warner Merger means less choice for consumers. Where non-Comcast cable and satellite providers won't be able to afford Comcast's content and Comcast will disadvantage non-Comcast produced content.
And as far as I know Disney doesn't actually own any Cable Networks, but Comcast does have its own alternative sports channel that competes directly with ESPN. So Comcast can give its own content a leg up, placing it right next to ESPN in the lineup. All this combined market power is just too much and really should be restrained more effectively by regulators who seem asleep at the wheel.
Breathing asbestos might be good for you.
Licking lead-painted walls might be good for you.
Going to church might be good for you.
What's the lesson here? When people say something is good for you, they're usually wrong and have ulterior motives.
Uh, sorry but the cable companies are the ones with the power because they own the pipes. You cite Netflix as a content owner. Several years ago, that wasn't the case -- they just distributed others' content. Well, unless Netflix cooperates with the 800-pound gorilla, the gorilla may become a content producer, just as Netflix did. And the current content owners will, of course, find one less outlet to shop their programming to.
Oh, please. Genocide, raping public lands, company stores, monopoly; an honest look at US history shows *this* is the actual 'spirit' of the nation.
Seriously? The guy who founded it was named Rich Fink? How appropriate.
Except the "Free Market" is defined as one in which "the forces of supply and demand are not controlled by a government or other authority". If any participant is big enough (the extreme being, of course, a monopoly) they can unilaterally affect the supply or demand. Therefore a real "Free Market" must consist of multiple players, none of whom has too large a share of the market. This is not even close to what we have now.
> their profitability depends almost entirely on how long they can keep
> the assets they have before they have to replace them.
Exactly. Their cost is largely a matter of how long they can continue to use the equipment they purchase and install. If users switch from viewing Facebook to watching Netflix all night, ISPs need much more capacity, which means replacing XGbps plant with 10XGbps equipment before it has worn out.
As you correctly pointed out, the XGbps equipment would continue to work just fine, delivering up Facebook for years. Infrastructure sized for Facebook pictures isn't sufficient for streamlining high definition video. As you said, replacing that equipment with faster equipment is a major cost.
If government hadn't created the Internet and instead left it for the free market to develop we wouldn't be in this position, now would we? Therefore any "market failure" concerning the Internet is actually a government failure.
I'm sure that if we just see clearly we'll see that the Internet was actually a Free Market invention that succeeded despite government interference just like everything else that's good in the world. After all, Al Gore was involved. Doesn't that automatically invalidate things?
The cable companies were granted local, regulated monopolies by cities and counties across the country. The cable companies agreed to this regulation in the form of a contract. These same companies later got higher governmental bodies to create laws that "deregulated" them, basically allowing them to be an unfettered monopoly. So much for a free market. It never existed.
Now that cities and counties are trying to get their citizens some relief in the form of publicly supported, high speed internet access these companies are getting state governments to outlaw municipal internet projects altogether.
The one thing these companies abhor the most is an actual free market with actual competition.
Except the "Free Market" is defined as one in which "the forces of supply and demand are not controlled by a government or other authority".
Then it's a false definition. If no competition exists and the product is essential, most of us wouldn't call it a Free Market regardless of whether some other authority is controlling commerce.
I believe in markets, but even absent third-party interference, few of them exist in the real world and many will grow in directions that cause them to no longer be free even without external interference.
What I am mocking, in fact, is the widely-held conceit that markets would be free and monopolies would not exist solely by the removal of all government interference. In short, silver bullet one-size-fits-all solutions.
...brought to you by the Cable Industry of America. "We bring you the best service you'll ever get."
Having no laws against something is not the same thing as allowing it. There are regulations, Comcast is required to have net neutrality for x years due to merger and the like.
There's an agreement about certain practices based on Comcast's purchase of NBC Universal. I'd be curious to see if there's a loophole that will allow them to say that due to the merger the prior agreement is null and void. I also wonder if the net neutrality provisions were spelled out directly in that agreement, or if there was a "pointer" to whatever the current regulations are at the current time.
How can I mod a story -1 Troll?
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
n/t
if there's no competition, then the one supplier is an authority controlling the forces of supply and demand, so it's not a free market. I agree with you completely.
Notice how the article does not use the word "utility" any place? Guessing that didn't fit well into this dribble of an op-ed. "Net Capacity"... gag me... sounds like focus group tested. "Focus on Net Capacity, Not Net Neutrality"... Did Frank Luntz contribute to this fluff too?
are part of the problem.
That's not the original definition of a free market. That's a new one created to distort and confuse debate.
If you honestly believe this, then you fall somewhere between ignorant and idiot. Comcast doesn't have many happy customers. They are multiple-year-holders of the distrinction of being America's most-despised company. However, what they *do* have a bunch of monopolies. Entire regions - large ones, all over the country - where they are the only game in town for low-latency, high-bandwidth Internet service (and I don't mean "run a game streaming service" levels of high-bandwidth-low-latency; more like "be able to play games online, including downloading their patches in under a day"). They have absolutely no incentive to keep those people happy; it's their way or the highway. Creating a competing startup isn't even an option; Comcast controls all the fiber and cable. All that Comcast have is an incentive to do is gouge their locked-in customers for every cent they can right up to the point that those people would rather put up with dial-up.
You want to give them *more* tools to do this with? You sound like you work for them!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
People who KNOW better can see what the P.R. companies are up to in this modern age of online social marketing and perhaps do something to counter it besides simply post comments on /. At least we know the arguments they are paying to be made at this critical time so when we run into them being used it won't be as much of a shock.
In addition, we can become more aware of the talking points being promoted and then identify the paid shills or gullible suckers.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Instead of pretending that the toll bridge operator that throttles traffic and charges exhorbitant tolls from the taxis coming *and* going isn't the problem, let's instead eliminate the toll bridge operator all together and let the "free market" decide which taxis it wants to use.
Minus the bad analogy: the communications infrastructure shouldn't belong to the communications service provider, and any service provider should be allowed to operate on the infrastructure. The federal government should purchase all the cable and fiber as part of regulating commerce and tax service providers for usage of the infrastructure.
To me, communications infrastructure is like the highway system. I also don't think healthcare, emergency services, or disaster relief should be for-profit, so maybe I'm just a damned socialist?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Reject the secondmost letter of the alphabet known to the Greeks! Soy has Lent a better News product - made out of people!
Except the "Free Market" is defined as one in which "the forces of supply and demand are not controlled by a government or other authority". If any participant is big enough (the extreme being, of course, a monopoly) they can unilaterally affect the supply or demand. Therefore a real "Free Market" must consist of multiple players, none of whom has too large a share of the market.
Size or marketshare isn't the issue, read your own damn quote, "government or other authority". A gang could be an authority or even private police forces can be an authority. Simply being big or popular in the market doesn't constitute an "authority" in that context. The use OR threat of initiated FORCE is the "authority" in question.
I state this because people intentional mistate the requirements of a free market to prove it can never exist. It is usually their desire to see it never exist and instead of arguing the merits, they lie their asses off.
a "net neutrality" law. So all this screeching that we will all be plunged into big corporate monopoly hell without a "net neutrality" law are quite simply and already proven FALSE. I'm personally supportive of a net neutrality law provided it is very breif, explicit, clear, NEUTRAL, and does not create any new government entity. Unfortunately, nearly any new law on this is likely to be another NAFTA/Obamacare/"comprehensive immigration reform"/"farm bill" .... in other words: a big bill written by congressional aides and corporate lobbyists that is designed to make some people into billionaires and/or help some political group become more powerful, while creating a new agency of government that will be enabled to write all the new regulations it wants with no accountability to the citizens and an ever-increasing budget.
Those of us who want fast, low-cost internet access would be FAR better served to be pushing for local governments to eliminate all barriers to new access providers entering and providing competition; the average American is currently harmed more by having only one (usually cable TV company) high speed provider than by having some carriers throttle or prioritize packets.
If we can have a two-page bill that creates NO new government, requires ALL internet data packets to be handled in a neutral way, and yet also provides the proper incentives so that the people building/maintaining the infrastructure continue to keep up with demand, then we ought to consider it. If we are simply talking about supporting a big bill (that none of us has read) that is pushed by "progressives" simply because they say it is "net neutrality" and they promise it will let us "keep our free internet" (like we were promised we could "keep our insurance" and "keep our doctors") then we are probably better-off doing nothing or even voting for something that is the opposite. One of the core principles of "early 20th century progressivism" (which modern progressivism is simply the undead version of) is "the ends justify the means" and lying about legislation to get people to support it is just a means to an end.
War is peace, ignorance is strength and poverty is wealth.
Industry shills shill for industry, film at eleven. This newscast will not be streamed.
This is one reason why I'm not comfortable seeing Netflix coming out with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Will they be available on other content providers eventually?
Netflix is new, shiny, and friendly. So was Google, once.
All the companies involved are guilty of promising one thing in their advertising to customers and delivering less.
If the free market had been allowed to function unimpeded we would now have multiple competing internets to choose from.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Content Owners have always had the ability to provide content or not, and their incentive to provide content is money they can make from anyone connecting to the internet from anywhere. ISPs have a competitive incentive to provide good speed to as much of the internet as they can. If I pay for an internet connection, I expect to be able to view content hosted anywhere as long as it is connected to the net in some way. If ISPs are allowed to demand money for access to content from both providers and customers, then the internet connection I pay for may only be able to access the content of providers who can pay the gatekeepers (ISPs), and some content owners may pay some ISP for priority but not others, so some content may be unavailable with some ISPs. Also ISPs could charge way more money for or outright block content they don't like. Explain to me how that is a good thing? It would kill choice, access, innovation, and turn the internet into another TV network. That would suck. I do not want my internet chosen for me. I want to pay for access, then have the content owners have incentive for me to see their content, and have the ISP have incentive to provide as fast a speed as possible to that content, so I can choose what I access.
When I pay for airfare, it doesn't matter if I fly first-class or coach, I will still arrive at the same place. That's what net neutrality does for people who pay for internet access. I can pay for 1mb/sec or 100mb/sec, but I can still use that connection to access the same site. Losing net neutrality would be like if I paid to fly coach, but because I didn't pay enough the airline decided to drop me off somewhere else than my actual destination. What if I pay for the minimum connection speed, and then all of a sudden I can't access the site I need? Why? Because the ISP decided that to access that certain site either I need to pay more money or the site owner need to pay them for me to get access to it. Is that what you want? 'Cause that's what net neutrality prevents. the FCC should absolutely continue to bad all prioritization outright, as there is no need for it and trying to figure things out piecemeal would just be more of a headache and still a loss for the end consumer.
If the free market had been allowed to function unimpeded we would now have multiple competing internets to choose from.
Comcast AND Time-Warner!
if there's no competition, then the one supplier is an authority controlling the forces of supply and demand, so it's not a free market. I agree with you completely.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of free-market proponents who ignore that fact. "Free to Starve" isn't free, for example, and it really grinds my gears when they pretend like it is.
Comcast is both a cable company AND a large content provider. (They own NBC and its associated cable networks, and Universal's movies and TV productions.) That is why any merger involving them is a special concern; they would both have a huge amount of control over the internet AND the ability to privilege their own content. I would have had less trouble with Time Warner merging with Charter, though I would still have worried about their amount of control over the internet.
WTF is "high-speed" video? Oh, you mean multicast. Okay, carry on. Although it might be worthwhile to point out that some corporate entities ARE building out network capacity (looking at YOU Netflix) to handle their own traffic and thus decrease the load on others. And they offer it for free to companies whose infrastructure might be adversely affected by Netflix traffic. Of course there are also companies who don't WANT Netflix's charity (looking at YOU Verizon) because it might interfere with their ability to offer a monopolistic "alternative" to Netflix's product. Apparently those companies feel that Netflix isn't gouging its customers sufficiently.