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FCC Chairman Will Reportedly Revise Broadband Proposal
An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he will revise proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, and is offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes. From the article: 'The new language by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to be circulated as early as Monday is an attempt to address criticism of his proposal unveiled last month that would ban broadband providers from blocking or slowing down websites but allow them to strike deals in which content companies could pay them for faster delivery of Web content to customers.'"
The language is too carefully chosen. I expect the same old sheet.
Wheeler seems too anxious to move fast."won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes" is a matter of interpretation. If you insist the slow lane is really not a slow lane, it is a meaningless statement.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And we all know it. Nobody gets to be head of the FCC and is so stupid they cannot understand how ANY PAID PRIORITY invalidates the whole concept of network neutrality. We need to keep hammering on these fuckers until we have (at least) retail ISPs under Title II and that's ALL there is to it.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The design of TCP is such that the way you throttle a connection is to drop packets. Therefore, isn't throttling just a measured block?
I choose to take this at face value, that he really has seen that We The People want net neutrality.
And that is because of you. You who signed the petition, sent letters to your legislators, sent comments to the FCC, emailed your friends, posted the issue on your social networks, wrote letters to the editor, and everything else you did. You did this. You saved the Internet from this attack by greedy cynics who would turn the Internet into TV for a few pieces of silver. You protected the most important advance our generation has built. Thank you, and congratulations!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
When half the people stopped voting and much of the other half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The chairman of the FCC and the other content cartel lobbyists hope you are wrong.
Voting has very little influence on this matter (not that it has much on other matters either). Do you elect the head of the FCC? Should you really bug the president for a problem at the FCC? Is that your definition of democracy?
Al Franken has earned my vote for pretty much any office he ever runs for, ever.
We haven't saved it yet, but we have been heard. Don't stop now.
Yeah, very agreed. I meant the "this attack" fragment to imply that it will happen again, but re-reading my post it doesn't capture that very well. Thanks for the addendum.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It dawned on me how they could work a fast lane within net neutrality rules. They don't even need to change anything.
It goes like this: Hey, we're douchebags and like to bleed our customers dry for slow Internet. We do this by overselling our transit capacity. But, if you want our customers to be able to use your service, our peering prices are $100/MB/month.
That's why Level 3 Wants To Make Peering a Net Neutrality Issue I guess. But should peering be a net neutrality issue? On the Internet, different pathways have different speeds. Your LAN and ISP network are usually a lot faster than general Internet access, and nobody said Netflix can't pay a premium to plug straight into your LAN.
In Romania you get gigabit links within RDS - a nationwide ISP, and if you run Linux, you're in luck because they peer with RoEdu (the Romanian education network), who mirror a lot of stuff, and that peer is fast as lightning if RDS is your provider. But mirrors who are in the country but not peered get Internet speeds - which are still faster than what I generally get in the UK mind.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
Don't forget the "I'm too cool to vote" mentality you hear around here ("both parties are the same", blah, blah, blah.)
Most of those folks don't advocate not voting - they just advocate for voting for somebody who isn't associated with the major parties.
What other choice do they have? Do we think the FCC would be doing the right thing if only a Republican were president?
From the synopsis:
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he will revise proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, and is offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes.
Hooray! Same thing it says at the beginning of the article, same thing that made me prematurely celebrate. You see, a bit further down in the WSJ article:
The new proposal will also seek comment on whether such "paid prioritization" should be prohibited altogether.
What? WTF do you think we mean when we say we want net neutrality? Yes, you idiot, we want paid prioritization to be prohibited altogether. ISPs should deliver every packet the customer asks for with the same diligence, without preference. Not delivering some packets faster. Not delivering some packets slower. Handing every packet the same regardless of the content or source. That is what net neutrality is. Are you stupid, or just pretending to be so you can keep doing what your lobby tells you to do?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Revised proposal from FCC:
We have heard your concerns and being the responsible and responsive agency that we are, we have revised our proposal. Companies like Netflix can now pay companies like Comcast to degrade data delivery for everyone else. See, we've completely reversed course. Thank you for expressing your concern. See what a difference you can make when you stay informed and involved?
"The FCC has so far not reclassified broadband as a utility, and providers have fiercely opposed such a move, saying it would cause innovation and investment to collapse."
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
You mean like in New Jersey where Verizon reneged on a contract to roll out fiber to all of New Jersey after the residents paid for it???
Mod parent "-1, the stupid, it hurts".
You do realize there isn't a problem. Any potential bandwidth issue can be addressed by companies broadening their infrastructure, which they have not done with their massive profits and tax subsidies.
We can look to the post office to see that neutrality does not limit a provider to one tier of service.
The standard post office service will get my letter across the country to another major urban centre in a few days for the price of a first class stamp. If I want to speed things up I can pay for expedited delivery to get it there tomorrow. It's increased service for an increased price but those tiers of service are still neutral. Anyone can walk in and get the same expedited service for the same price.
For me the important thing about net neutrality is not that all data is equal, it's that data is transmitted in a uniform and non-discriminatory fashion. Hello Netflix, looking for enhanced video service? Here's the pricing chart. No, we won't block your competitors, and they'll be paying exactly the same price as you.
An 'accelerated pathway.' Totally different from a fast lane.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm reminded of a story about a company that made soda vending machines. The company had a new vending machine they were marketing to amusement parks which would raise prices when the temperature got above, say, 80 degrees. A lot of amusement parks liked the idea and started buying the new machines, but the word got out to the public and there was a huge backlash of people complaining about deceptive pricing and basically cheating the customers. In order to save themselves, the vending machine company explained to the public that their machines were really lowering the price of their sodas when the temperature dropped below 80 degrees. Somehow that just sounded better to the general public. This thing with fast and slow lanes sounds a lot like the vending machine company. Allowing fast lanes and allowing slow lanes are the same thing, just worded differently.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Is this because we all called and complained, or is it because some tech companies called and complained? Who are they listening to? I don't mean to be a curmudgeon. I called all my reps several times. In my mind, those that don't even try shouldn't be allowed to complain.... but I am skeptical about who's voice got heard.
Instead of insulting people who ask a legitimate question, we can answer..... sheesh. This is already done. Look up QOS practices. No one has a problem with this. It is a neutral practice.
What Mr. Wheeler is saying is most probably a lie. On one hand, he is saying that he promises that his new rules would prohibit the creation of "fast lanes" to cull the public's favor. right after that, he says that he will allow the content companies to pay for faster delivery. Therefore, he must be engaged in doublethink.
that if I am willing and able to pay for higher priority I cannot be given it?
We can look to the post office to see that neutrality does not limit a provider to one tier of service.
The postal service has the price for postage regulated by congress. They have to get regulatory approval to raise prices even a penny on stamps. Internet Service Providers are under no such strict regulatory scrutiny and you can be quite sure the prices they charge would not be in the best interest of consumers or the public at large. Furthermore the Postal Service is not in the business of providing content as well as delivery. Several ISPs (Comcast I'm looking at you) have a built in conflict of interest which does not exist in your postal service analogy.
personally, i rail against any type of traffic shaping based on type.
protocol, sure. that's been around forever and works well.
but when ISP's start analyzing traffic it's a slippery slope.
one, for my money, i can't abide.
but i live in the US, in a region with a single regional monopoly and no possible alternative.
so i'm stuck with a 15 year old DSL @ 5.5m/768k and no possible alternative.
i'll echo what many others have said here:
reclassify ISP's as common carriers
open the network to competition
15 years ago, isp's offered quite a bit of "data" directly to their customers.
email, newsgroups, etc. -- that has changed.
the "data" in question has gone much further upstream and the ISP's are maintaining their status based on methods that are ancient by internet standards.
so their argument for not being common carriers was fine, 15 years ago, when it was first made.
it no longer applies.
and the regional monopoly status they were given came with the tax breaks and the requirements to improve infrastructure, which hasn't been done.
since 2001 the "improvements" have generally only happened in areas where there is competition. rural areas in the US are generally stuck with the same 15+ year old technology we started with.
so if the ISP's who were given stewardship over these areas are unwilling or unable to live up to the bargain, take it away from them.
but these are common-sense arguments, so of course will not happen.
If a business wants to get "fast lane" access among specific providers, why no co-locate servers at one of that provider's data centers or central offices?
That's exactly what they do. It benefits the ISP because it reduces the data that has to flow across their interconnects, it benefits the provider as they don't need to pay for transit across the internet and it obviously benefits the consumer. The problem Netflix has is that Comcast realizes that it benefits Netflix (plus, they are competing with Netflix) so Comcast said "Yeah, we'll allow you to place caching servers on our network, provided you pay us several million dollars per month". Netflix doesn't really have a choice, Comcast is about half of the US residential internet subscribers.
Comcast's business has long been about selling access to their customers. They sell the service to the customers then they sell the customers to advertisers. They now want to sell their internet customers to providers as well. This is blatant abuse of their monopoly position but since the political system in the US is designed to reward those with the most money nothing all all will come of this, other than the FCC asking Comcast if they should apply lube to the public before Comcast reams them (the answer is "No!").
Enigma
When half the people stopped voting and much of the other half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit.
If it was just poor schooling, private groups could step in and do something about that. The problem is that politians are on the payola, and they influence public policy, education, and they can even control the public conversation. People in the US are indoctrinated into "tribes" depending on where they were born and who their parents believe politically. I use the word "tribe" because it is far worse system than having a system of political parties where one can switch or choose. The core conservative "tribe" clings to their beliefs as closely as a religion, and so do the core liberal "tribe". A huge amount of people don't belong to either "tribe" although they may associate with a particular party. The problem is that these "tribes" have gotten so large and the indoctrination is so compelling that people in one tribe won't even talk to the other tribe rationally.
Keep in mind that when we think of the word "propaganda", most people imagine a the propaganda of other countries, and something which they are not susceptible to or influenced by. The more people recognize something as propaganda the less likely they are to believe it. But propaganda can be insidious and undetectable- in fact, that is the best kind. It can take the form of education, or "way of life" or nearly anything. It can originate in the marketing department of large companies, by lobbyists, or by the politicians themselves. Lobbists don't just influence politicians, that is only half their work! They also shape the national conversation and influence average people. We are all influenced by it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Lots of factors are involved, but the fundamental weakness is when people haven't been taught how to THINK. Well, thinking is dangerous to the status quo so of course you can trace some things back to various parties. The truth is though, most of it is just human nature. Human society is flawed because human beings aren't well-adapted to participating in a globe-spanning civilization such as our own. Its failure seems almost inevitable really.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
No, I've found that most of those ignorants SAY they are going to vote for a 3rd party and then usually go and vote for the Republican anyway because of Jesus and/or gay people.
Of course I live in the South and we have some very special ignorance down here.
The FCC has no authority to enforce rules on an information service. This has already come before the courts. They can make all the stupid little rules they want. They're completely shit unenforceable, and they must know this. Reclassify!
"in which content companies could pay them for faster delivery of Web content to customers"
This could be interpreted to allow Netflix (or whoever) to pay local ISPs to host content on local servers so that content doesn't need to go through the slow interwebs.
Honestly they should do some modified version of torrent format that prefers seeders on the same ISP so users can provide the hosting.
There was no real "tipping point," but rather a gradual erosion:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
People have been conditioned what to believe. Thought has nothing to do with it. People don't think like their parents, they believe what their parents conditioned them to and the defenses etc are just conditioning; not a single thought is required, if anything they are discouraged-- child asks "why isn't there any proof of god?" daring to think something and is immediately told rationalized beliefs to discourage any further thinking. A continued line of questioning leads to "just because" dead ends where faith is the only answer and thinking is wrong. I'm only using religion as an example, it applies similarly elsewhere.
Humans do not scale. Tribalism is inherent to humanity and my theory is that humans evolved BECAUSE of tribalism. We already have most the missing links and they all have tiny brains (except the last few) and dominated the food chain-- a growing population and competition forced tribes to compete with each other for resources and that resulted in evolutionary pressure for bigger brains. (If you are not up on the topic, look into it-- packs of humanoid apes running around in the plains of Africa able to run greater distances than any animal -- just like we can -- all our biological advantages are for running in packs... except our large brains.) Also there is plenty of psychology on how humans only handle a limited number of relationships etc. You are bound to identifying with limited size group; only with the power of abstract thinking can you exceed those tribal limits (but one still tends to think in tribal terms, your tribe is just abstracted into a larger group.)
Problem is what was our advantage is now hindering us. It takes considerable mental training and education to surpass our inherent nature. We also evolved to avoid extra work; hell, even your brain avoids learning by grasping for known patterns to classify stuff under because actual learning takes the whole brain and is an expensive operation (as brain scans prove, plus education research) not to mention if you had to learn everything we'd not be anywhere near as smart. Mapping is essential. Again, this characteristic works against us as we classify others, groups, policies, systems etc. It can help too but it's a double edged sword.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Let's overthrow American government. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I, as an end user on the network for *INSERT ISP HERE* am paying for an unlimited connection to the internet.
By that I don't mean "X-speed no matter what", though that can be thought of as a component of the service I'm paying for.
What I'm paying for is for my provider to fulfill my internet requests in the most timely manner possible (best effort).
If they're PURPOSEFULLY sabotaging traffic to try to hold a given content provider hostage for "protection money", that's the very OPPOSITE of unlimited.
Additionally, it's technically a breach of contract with the end user.
Coming to an agreement with a content provider for a dedicated peering arrangement is one thing. But sabotaging peering points (and not upgrading permanently congested peering points IS a form of sabotage) and QOS'ing traffic to degrade such services is something else entirely. And it should not be countenanced.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"Yeah. OK. We'll ensure this 'net neutrality' thing is protected, except when we don't. You know, like when lots of money changes hands between entities that actually matter to us."
...the military-industrial complex (that Eisenhower warned us against)...
Yeah, that speech would have meant something if he gave it during his inauguration instead of on his way out.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
problem is there is no one else to vote for.
there is no 3rd party choice.
the greens, the independent, etc, they arent even on the ballot in most places.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If done properly, such a box can be entirely automated, choosing what to cache based on recent local usage patterns, and evicting older items when the disk fills up, based on an LRU or LFU scheme. The device can phone home every so often to verify that it is working properly, and can include a copy of its cache list. The main servers can then verify that the device has phoned home recently, and can check for I/O errors on the disk (and other errors logged by the caching daemon). In the event of unexpected errors or deafening silence, the main servers can then switch the DNS for that ISP so that their customers are directed to the main servers instead, and raise an exception so that a human being can ship the ISP a new box.
Once you've built up such an automated setup, the incremental cost to add another ISP is minimal, particularly compared with spending hundreds or thousands of dollars every month for a dedicated trunk line.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And this is the crux of the problem. Comcast is a huge monopoly ISP that ought to be treated just like Ma Bell, and for precisely the same reason.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Insightful? Really? I completely agree with parent that public education is pathetic (look up the Harvard 1869 entrance exam if you don't believe me, and realize there was no wikipedia or calculators for those expected to pass).
But "when ... half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit" then what? What was it like before? When was this transition?
Are you trying to suggest that a government funded education run by government employees is the solution to teaching the population to tighten the reigns on the government? God I hope not. Or perhaps you've found out a way to educate people who don't want to be educated, and teach them to distinguish "truth and bullshit"? Well maybe we can create a government agency to decide what is truth and what is bullshit, and have it inform the school system.
If you are looking for blame or solutions in the school system, well I wish you luck with that. You won't be the only person trying to put his own political views into the schools, children are very impressionable, it can be very effective. I had quite a few teachers who tried to teach me to distinguish "truth" and "bullshit", but I was a very bad student, I really only liked math anyway.