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How the FCC Plans To Save the Internet By Destroying It
New submitter dislikes_corruption writes: "Stopping the recently announced plan by the FCC to end net neutrality is going to require a significant outcry by the public at large, a public that isn't particularly well versed on the issue or why they should care. Ryan Singel, a former editor at Wired, has written a thorough and easy to understand primer on the FCC's plan, the history behind it, and how it will impact the Internet should it come to pass. It's suitable for your neophyte parent, spouse, or sibling. In the meantime, the FCC has opened a new inbox (openinternet@fcc.gov) for public comments on the decision, there's a petition to sign at whitehouse.gov, and you can (and should) contact your congressmen."
It seems to me the lobbying forces on the part of the content providers, Netflix et al., would be pretty formidable—unless they think the price is worth it to suppress upstart competition. Which is it?
I'm mocked when I point out the blatant conspiracy between corporations and the FCC.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Capitalism is nice until corporations grow big enough. At some point they start to strive towards a monopoly and this is where the core idea of capitalism dies. It's the end of competition and consumers suffer the most.
The political spectrum in the US needs some new parties and fast.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-true-net-neutrality-protect-freedom-information-united-states/9sxxdBgy
They have the lobby money, they vote the way they are told to vote by the guys who have the nice suits and lots of money. Because if they don't, the Internet will fall to pieces for the entire country, nay the world. As the guys in suits have said it will happen, unless you choose them as your savior.
I should have included this in the summary: when you write to the FCC or your congressmen be specific - we need to reclassify Internet providers as common carriers. If you just say you're in favor of net neutrality they'll weasel around it again. They've already tried to redefine net neutrality as whatever it is that they're doing at the moment.
to do more, i pay more. well, that's what my three brothers-in-law say.
The Globe and Mail did a story on it the other day. I took a few minutes to put in a longish comment, thinking this would be yet another right/left shoutfest.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
I dropped back a few hours later to see who'd called me a commie, only to see it only got a few comments and was dropped off the main page already - presumably because the web server had noticed almost nobody was reading it.
If people don't pay attention to government, the bad guys generally win.
Tom Wheeler and other cable lobbyists should not and must not be in charge of any agency that purports to be for the public good.
sign this petition to target that very problem: http://wh.gov/lwhr8
I'm sorry, but even my CCNA certified girlfriend is going to get hung up on the use of TL;DR. I doubt my parents would read past it.
I have read Ryan Singel's article. It is NOT "suitable for your neophyte parent, spouse, or sibling."
Far too long and too complicated. My father (who is 76 and worked in insurance) would not understand any of it.
I think we all will have a very hard time explaining this to the public
The United States of America was founded on principles of justice and freedom for all.
o During the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, there were no special "carve-outs" for people of wealth. Every participant started racing at the sound of the starter's gun.
o When railroads were built, there were special coaches for first class, but they were part of the same train, going at the same speed, along the same route, to the same destination.
o While the rich can buy their own jet aircraft, the Air Traffic Control system that manages all aircraft in the skies give no special treatment to the jet aircraft, nor the lone pilot in a Piper Cub.
o When Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway system, he did not mandate special travel lanes for trucks or limousines; all traffic uses the same routes.
Every one of these historical innovations lifted up the poor, the middle class, and the rich. As a result, we became the world's most respected democracy, and the model for many other, newer countries to emulate.
Now, the FCC would like to change all that history and allow those who can afford to pay for a "special lane" on the Internet, crowding out other traffic, and making it slower. It will reward the oligarchs and penalize the common citizen.
I have been in the computer and electronics industry, from bench technician to CEO, since 1957. Now retired, I have watched as the very rich people, and the very large corporations have worked tirelessly in recent decades to destroy that equality of opportunity. If we are to survive as a nation, we must return to a democracy, with every citizen treated fairly and equitably.
We should, instead, be requiring our "common carriers" to expand their Internet capacity, robustness and security for all. Where there is plenty of reliable capacity, everyone will have the opportunity to use the Internet without disadvantage. The large carriers, like Comcast (which the FCC has misclassified), AT&T, Verizon, et. al., have been intentionally restricting their expansion of the Internet to make it slower and slower. Yes, they save the investments they should be making. But, deeper and more cynically, they have been intending to leverage those self-imposed restrictions into higher prices for these restricted servicesby adding a special lane for those willing to pay.
"Demos" is the Greek word for people; "kratia" is the Greek word for rule. Democracy puts the emphasis on people deciding how to rule. When appointed public officials usurp that decision-making to favor one class of people (or corporations) over another, it has violated basic democratic principles. The consequences will be uncomfortable for the citizens, and will erode our principles and the quality of our beloved nation.
You are a public, appointed official. I trust you will decide on the basis of democracy that the rich deserve no more preferential treatment than the middle class or the poor. We need to expand our Internet capacity for all, not make it available only to the highest bidders, driving all prices upward for the benefit of the already-rich.
You just didn't shop around. Don't assume that your current provider is the only one that can offer you new plans.
Here's a surprise - you all clamor for the government to control the Internet.
Once they do, the heavily corporate-entwined government does what comes naturally - act in the interest of some very large campaign contributors. They can do this because they have power over ISP's now.
If it wasn't this, it would have been something else. The speed of it surprises, me, but only a little.
Before both sides (ISP and providers) just worked things out. Now the FCC has decreed ISP's must be paid... this is what happens when you replace freedom with regulation.
The only way out of this is to REDUCE the control the FCC has over the internet. Yet you are all clamoring for more of the same. So why on earth would I sign a petition asking for another whipping down the line?
End the FCC's involvement with the internet, now there's a proposal I can get behind. Not popular though, so I've given up caring altogether and will just enjoy the schadenfreude of you all getting what you asked for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well we're all so glad millions of people could lose insurance and tens of millions more will pay more, so that your insurance situation is a little better!
We live to serve. You that is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The US has no concept of "foreigners". And the US citizens are spread around the globe. Why should a US citizen in France be denied the ability to sign a petition, when they can vote for president? So the petitions are (and should be) open world-wide, and the closing off of them should only be done in a way that identifies citizens, and I'm guessing that was "too hard" as there's no citizen list to check against.
Learn to love Alaska
Want to get behind a simple message that everyone can rally behind?
GET THE FCC (and government) OFF OUR INTERNET.
Any other message is inherently incomprehensible to everyone that matters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
........... In America.
Would love to vote/petition, but, seems the US wont accept the UK's input on this matter. lol :)
Half of prime time Internet traffic in the states was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming only service. Expectations evolve. Closed captioning. Multilingual dialog. High definition. 4K video. Theater sound. Original production. Live broadcast.
Internet radio is evolving as well
To the point where the WiFi radio can found at Walmart.
The target audience for these services are likely to be perfectly comfortable paying a little more each month to access the fast lane.
They may not even recognize the device they are using to access streaming media as a computer.
It's simply their phone, tablet. HDTV, e-book reader. radio or home theater audio system. They aren't thinking in terms of the Internet and the loss of "net neutrality" becomes an increasingly distant abstraction, hard to explain, and not easy to demonstrate how it will impact them personally.
The petitions may not have any direct impact, however, they can help raise awareness, even if it's only a little bit. It's still better than nothing.
Public awareness is the only hope net neutrality has. Lobbying from companies like Netflix and Google can't turn the tide. Lobbying is more about money, it's about connections too, and most of the telecoms have connections that stem back before Netflix and Google even existed.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
What we need to fix this lack of regulation is - PROPER REGULATION!
There, I fixed it. It's easy to see where ISP regulation went wrong in this country, the first point was in 2002 when providers were deregulated and, with nothing forcing them to sell wholesale, all the competition went away and the country was divided up into local monopolies. The second point was in 2005 when the FCC went the bullshit "third option" route, instead of just classifying ISPs as what they are: common carriers.
In other words, it's lack of regulation that has caused this problem and it's deregulation that keeps us from finding a market solution to the problem. You can't vote with your wallet when there's no where else to turn.
Congresspeople, many of whom are not men. Get with the 20th century, submitter.
Tom Geller
What is the possibility for another SOPA-level response? Some internet companies, like Facebook, might like this because they will happily pay for any chance to trounce fledgling competitors, but certainly other bastions of the Internet like Wikipedia would be quite hurt by it.
I doubt any senator (of either party) really gives a flying fuck, and would in fact support this change because their buddies^W^W^W^Wlobbyists^W^W^W^W^Wconstituents told them they should, so only a public outcry of such proportions would do anything to reverse it.
But be wary of their intervention: If they intervened they would put the kibosh on a "speed lane", but at the same time they would probably add a shitload of other things that benefits the NSA and/or "constituents". And funding for a few statues and other non-related issues for shits and giggles.
After signing that first one be sure and sign this one - its alot further along:
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
If they do their damned job this wont be an issue. If they think 'letting it burn' is a good plan, the entire lot of them should be fired.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
PROPER REGULATION!
Oh I see, Proper Regulation is just like communism - it's just never been done right before!
Never mind the FACT that you cannot have Proper Regulation, because anytime you centralize enough power to write said Regulation it will naturally become subverted, because Power has that effect - always.
Just like people are calling for more regulation now and what they will get is anguish until they figure out the root cause of the pain was in fact regulation...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Conspiracy" implies that the FCC has some active input.
> You are REALLY going to see the screws put in over the next decade in most of Europe (probably not Germany).
Been hearing that for the past four decades, myself. Still nada. In fact, even with the recent austerity measures, my health coverage and access to higher education well into the last quarter of my career is so much better than my US colleagues I can understand why you neocon nimrods are so desperate to try to discredit the European model.
You're wrong. You've been wrong for 40 years. You'll continue to be wrong. You won't accept this because you are more obsessed with your religious adherence to an economic model instead of looking at the actual data.
"Obamites"? really?
the petitions help in that the Administration necessarily responds to any petition that reaches the the threshhold. that means that they are forced to go on the record with a response that alone is enough to stir action out of inaction. even if the current Administration does not agree with the goal of a petition, the American people will know that position rather than having it swept under a rug, and can vote accordingly.
>Modded offtopic
I guess the endless editorials against net-neutrality by the WSJ are all off-topic?
--
BMO
Please note that this is a new petition, specifically stating The People's requirement that data carriers be reclassified as common carriers. Yesterday's petition only identified the need for net neutrality. I believe both are valid expressions of the best interests of our society, and have signed both.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I've said it from the start and I'll repeat it now:
The FCC's interest in "net neutrality"(1) was never about what you wanted, it was *always* about gaining control of the internet. When you have the power of regulation over something, you have all the power in the world at the barrel of a gun.
By trying to support their efforts, every single one of you was dooming the internet.
The USG frequently tries to fear monger online, always accusing others of militarizing the internet, when in fact they are the ones doing it. They started monitoring your phone calls in the early nineties, but of course it must have been because of 911. Go back to sleep you retarded fucks.
It's my fucking tragedy to live on a planet, in this meat suit that is all about tribes and sharing experiences with other meat suits, with a bunch of asshole Elois like you all. Worst of it, probably if you are capable of comprehending what I've just said you are the best of the best here. I live in an impressionist's landscape utopia, surrounded and crowded by the people of walmart.
Maybe some day I'll live in a community where people care about Freedom, Liberty, truth and exploring the universe (with science). We could have been traveling the stars, meeting others and re-inventing ourselves by now. Instead we squander and hold ourselves back with our archaic infighting to protect the power and privileged few.
1. Net neutrality has never been a problem. The internet is about freedom, this includes the freedom to make contracts with other parties that benefits both sides and the freedom to not make contracts that don't benefit you. The only problem is that it's not easy to dump comcast when it's your only option in some shit town. Fix that instead. Get the USG out of the internet regulation business. You're all victims of problem, reaction, solution.
The USG needs to be cut to about 1/1000th of it's current size. I believe something happen soon because the monetary system is unsustainable.
Liberty.
It's not even just a European model. Canada has had universal healthcare in some provinces as long as England has. You'd think that the US look just over the border and see how it's working for Canada, and realize it's not as bad as they think it is.
The government *already* controls the internet because it has granted monopoly access to ISPs in the majority of areas.
And you liked the monopoly so much you thought, hey lets see what happens if I give the ISP's even more government backed power!
Awesome.
This area *does* need regulation, as do the providers of food and water.
And already we are seeing the government step in and say small farms cannot sell raw milk, even to people who know how to deal with it.
Some regulation may be useful be have long passed that point. At this point calling for more regulation ALWAYS is doing more harm than good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought that saving the internet by killing it was deprecating IPv4 and forcing the world to adapt IPv6
Never mind the FACT that you cannot have Proper Regulation, because anytime you centralize enough power to write said Regulation it will naturally become subverted, because Power has that effect - always.
That's a ridiculous thing to say.
Our situation is transparently a cultural problem, not a problem with centralized power.
The culture in Washington doesn't see fit to aggressively fix the glaring problems with our regulators.
It's not like this is magic, there are books written on the subject and anyone who cares to learn the solutions, can.
It's patently obvious that when you have former lobbyists being elected head of a regulatory agency
and the former head of the regulatory agency taking over the job of chief industry lobbyist,
you're going to get regulatory outcomes that do a shit job of balancing industry and consumer needs.
Nobody could reasonably look at the situation and think "Ah yes, this is what will bring us Proper Regulation."
Not even an anti-regulatory ideologue like you.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Our situation is transparently a cultural problem
Exactly, which is why Regulation cannot work ever on a large scale. When the people writing the regulation are far enough away from those affected by it, the Regulation will be subverted - ALWAYS.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
true...per the NSA everyone is a "foreigner", since somewhere they have done some type of electronic access that might have eventually crossed outside of the US. Per their logic, if anything that can be remotely tied to you has ever crossed any international routers, then every single electronic signal you have ever sent is now open for recording, auditing, and data mining!
Again, the issue is not a matter of Black or White.
My relatives in Canada are constantly commenting on the delays and inefficincies of the heal care system. I have a some relatives who came down to the USA for bypass operations and transplants because they could get treated in a week or two instead of 6 months or more.
My relatives in Sweden have similar complaints.
My 96-year-old Mother might not be alive if she had to depend on Canada's National Health Service. At 92 she had a mitral valve replacement. In Canada, because of her age, she would have been put on a low priority. At 96 she drives herself everywhere, does her own shopping, goes to Writer's group, and has a pretty good life. She thinks that's better than being forced to die from lack of oxygen and energy over a period of a year or two.
The issue is not insurance. The issue is health care distribution for the most people, at the highest quality possible. For the last 30 years the USA has been the "Gold Standard" for health care. In just one year Obamacare has tarnished the standard, and, based on the experience in Sweden, UK, and Canada, it doesn't look like it will ever regain its luster.
There are a couple of moral questions that bother me: 1. Is it moral to steal from others (in the form of taxes) for your own benefit? And 2. Who has the right to make decisions on your health care?
Of course, even in the most Socialist countries the bureaucrats are going to be cared for even if the common populace is given short shrift.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
maybe we should print out the petition, wrap it around a brick, and throw it through our rep's front windows. Hard to ignore that, and you only need 1 person per state. I'll bet within 24 hours it would be all over the news world-wide...
If that's a real question: I created this petition because I thought one was needed. I have since seen the other and signed it, but frankly, and I realize I'm biased here, I think mine is better. The other petition lacks specificity - all it's asking for is "true neutrality," which the FCC and the ISPs can (and have) defined to mean whatever they want. There's also some weird language about an invading military... I don't know what that guy was thinking there.
There's no reason you can't sign both though, and you should. Here's another one that another poster in this thread mentioned:
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
there's a proven, simple way to let the public understand this: let all the telecom operators announce that from now on, you get only a basic internet connection. No skype, facebook, spotify or netflix.
Oh, you want those services? well, facebook is 5 euro, spotify 3, netflix 10. Oh, skype. hmm, thats annoying competition. 15 euro.
Here all major mobile telecom providers announced plans like this roughly the same time for their cellphone plans.
We had a law guaranteeing net neutrality in weeks.
Net neutrality can be approached with two purposes: ...), infrastructure providers are interested in blocking specific sites (netflix, ...): it is a battle for money.
- Be neutral about what is allowed on internet (Block specific content)
- Be neutral about who is allowed on internet (Block specific sites)
Content distributors are interested in blocking specific content (MCAA, RIAA,
Human nature dictates us to be creative to reach our objectives.
These laws will thus only accelerate the birth and growth of new networks, which their creators might surprisingly base on the shortcomings of what they miss in the existing one.
As users will be motivated to search for alternatives, demand will be raising, and while TOR is only a "first generation" secure network and its use remains marginal, these laws will help these kind of networks to go mainstream.
They will then try to block these networks, triggering further evolution, back to the chicken and the egg.
On the meantime, illegal organisations will benefit from those new mainstream technologies, and our dear agencies might need to gear up a bit ^^
Now for the funding: Taxes.
And this is how you lost the war for money, even if you did not buy their content or bypass their architecture \o/
When the Internet first became popular, I had to connect to it over a phone line which meant my data was protected by common carrier laws. Why should I be less protected now that I connect to it over cable wires rather that telephone wires?
Oh I see, Proper Regulation is just like communism - it's just never been done right before!
And gravity doesn't work -- because I waved my hands in the air and said so.
I'm holding back a huge list of regulations that do work. But keep praying that planes don't fly into each other, people stop at stop lights, and drinking water that doesn't have amoebas in it. The idea that you could get karma to be marked insightful, is more of a testament that Slashdot has lowered the bar.
The FCC is being driven by corporations now -- and most regulation these days is created by corporations for corporations. Who likes Sarbanes-Oxley? Big financial institutions who can produce mounds of paperwork nobody can read that solves nothing so that small companies cannot do financial services.
So you can say there is good and bad legislation, based on who pushed it forward -- but to say "regulations cannot be good" is like saying Hammers are all bad because you just gave them to psychotics in the super max prison.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
You Would Post as AC.
Who created that petition? They should correct the grammar error in the first sentence. A comma is used where a period and new sentence would obviously have been a better choice. Of course, that's probably impossible at this point. For god's sake, why don't people proofread these things??
Two questions, did she pay for this herself, or was it paid for by the Canadian healthcare system? Was her followup provided by the US doctors or the Canadian healthcare system?
Do you think that she would have been able to afford it if she had been paying for all her other healthcare at US prices? Do you think there will not be any private practice if the US reforms it's system?
OK, more then 2 questions.
Cheap storage VM.
"I pay my ISP for a certain bandwith. They should provision for that." ... there aren't enough people willing to pay the amount this would cost to make such a business feasible. The internet works, and is more or less affordable, precisely because you share the backbone capacity with your neighbors.
The critical assumption behind this article is that the ISPs "slow lane" - i.e., the general internet - will degrade to the point where it isn't usable.
Now, the FCC claims to be planning regulation to prevent this, but it's unsurprising that people don't trust them.
However: the "slow lane" is still going to be most of the internet. The question becomes, will enough of a typical ISPs customers use *only* those mainstream, big business web sites able to pay the ISP's bribes (and assuming that they are willing to do so) that it is feasible for the ISP to lose the rest?
I find it doubtful, but if anyone has statistics it would be interesting ...
Ditto up:
My middle daughter went to a US public university and came out with $30,000 in tuition debt. My youngest is going to a Dutch university and pays 1250 Euro per semester tuition, receives a stipend to live on and pay rent and supplies, and her final cost per semester is under a thousand Euro since she lives cheap and she uses the extra money to pay down the tuition. After 4 years total cost: 8,000 Euros.
Tell me that socialism is bad for the "people" when the Dutch have an increase of 13% in income for the middle class and we are shedding middle class jobs/people like a snake sheds its skin!
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.