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Net Neutrality Advocates To FCC: Put the Kibosh On Internet Freebies (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader cites a CNET report:Net neutrality advocates demand action. Representatives from Fight the Future, the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday hand-delivered a 6-foot tall package containing 100,000 letters of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission. They ask the agency to take action against AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and Verizon for violating the agency's Open Internet order by offering so-called zero-rating service plans. While the practice offers some benefits to customers, critics say it violates the agency's Net neutrality principles, which requires all services on the internet be treated the same. They claim it puts smaller competitors at a disadvantage and highlights the fact that data caps are unnecessary. Carriers say they are simply experimenting with new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers.
They're paid for by increasing the price on everything else, and they reduce your freedom by increasing the cost of making alternative choices.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But curling tho
I thought I had a pretty decent grip of the english language, but what's a kibosh?
Don't let the business definition of afford be conflated with the common interpretation. The objective of every business model to obtain the maximum compensation that you can afford for the proffered product... of course they want it more affordable.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Accept no substitutes!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now the "net neutrality" supporters are going to screw everyone with their demands that anything that isn't crappy, lowest-common-denominator service is a rule violation.
T-Mobile's Binge on does offer free streaming (both radio and tv) for qualified rate plans. But I was under the impression that any provider could opt in or out of the program once they met the technical criteria for the reduced bitrate streams. It saves the provider bandwidth to get the stream to T-mobile, and it saves t-mobile bandwidth to get it to the customer. There's no denying any service access to T-Mobile's customers, requiring bribe money to T-Mobile in order to be included in the service, nor prioritizing any service over another as far as I can tell (but could be wrong).
Is this any different really than Netflix's Open Connect for instance? It seems to be an advantage for everyone without being a detriment to anyone.
... their arguments and motives of the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday. They can all go kcuf themselves.
A free market is generally the most efficient way to manage resources. However, tragedy of the commons is a real phenomenon that has to be dealt with. We have responded by giving people "ownership" of the air - all of the air - in certain frequencies, in a way that is similar to IP laws like patents and copyright. It will always be an imperfect system, as the analogy between real property and granted "rights" is not perfect. We'll be forever dicking with the system, because we need to get it as close to a free market as possible without tipping into tragedy of the commons territory. I think we ought to give this "net neutrality" thing a fair shake. It's a regulation, but so is the whole concept of owning an entire class of electromagnetic particles, no matter where they came from.
"Gimme back my photons!"
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Using the most well-known example, Binge On delivers 480p video using adaptive bit rate around 1 Mbps. Regular ( non-Binge) Youtube is about 4 Mbps normally, 8 Mbps at highest quality.
By using Binge On, you agree to lower quality video (which still looks fine on a 4" screen), and in exchange they exempt it from caps. They actual cost of transferring 1 Mbps is much lower than the cost of 4 Mbps or 8 Mbps. There's not an increased price to pay for, it's a cost-saving system.
Binge On is an interesting pseudo-exception.
First of all, what I wrote still applies: it may not be increasing cost, but it's reducing the quality for the same cost, which is more-or-less equivalent. That's not to say it's a bad thing -- I, for one, love paying minimal costs as long as the quality is barely sufficient! I value-engineer my entire lifestyle, and plan to be able to retire 20 years early because of it. But I digress...
The problem -- and the reason I have Binge On disabled on my account as a matter of principle, even though I would be perfectly happy with compressed video -- is that it's implemented on a site-by-site basis. If I could ask T-Mobile to compress and zero-rate all video streaming, both from big providers like Youtube and Netflix and from any random small server (or when streaming video from the phone to elsewhere, for that matter), then I would have no objection to it whatsoever. On the contrary, it would be great! It would also then be categorized as "perfectly-acceptable QoS" rather than "a violation of net neutrality."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> it may not be increasing cost, but it's reducing the quality for the same cost, which is more-or-less equivalent.
It's NOT the same cost. On a phone (these are phone companies), it's providing approximately the same quality at much lower cost.
> If I could ask T-Mobile to compress and zero-rate all video streaming, both from big providers like Youtube and Netflix and from any random small server (or when streaming video from the phone to elsewhere, for that matter), then I would have no objection to it whatsoever.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that "any random small server" doesn't use the protocols, codecs, bit rates, etc that Youtube and Netflix agreed to. Maybe you can find a way to get everyone to agree on those particulars. Until then, it's used for video providers who use compatible settings.
"new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers."
That's the best joke I've heard all year. Prices only go UP, never down, with ISPs.
Yup...so smart that you choose to continue to live somewhere infested hellish mosquitoes, flies, during your only respite from humid sub zero winters. Way to think that one through. Pretty mountains and forest though.
"...new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers..."
Last time I checked the price of cable and data services has never gone down, ever. This is basically an alternative way of saying.
"...new business models that will increase our profit margins while harming the long-term needs of our customers."
Sure, maybe you can argue that they're helping it to not go *up* but that's a weak argument as well. The price will go up, and they'll keep taking a bigger slice of the pie. Dems da rules.
The problem is that net neutrality is more than one thing. My knee-jerk capitalist reaction to NN was that it was anti-capitalist and ultimately anti-consumer, and if I didn't like comcast charging Netflix for their service, then I could switch. But it didn't take more than a moment or two to determine that that was a crock - that I am comcast's customer, and that I'm paying comcast to deliver the netflix content; that netflix isn't pushing it's content anywhere, it's being pulled by comcast's paying customers. Charging third party content providers amounts to double dipping, and it's anti-consumer.
At the same time, the notion of charging third parties was anti-competitive because comcast was pushing it's own streaming services to it's customers, so it owned the content and means of delivery and meant to use one to boost the other in an anti-competitive way.
So... I support net neutrality for those things, but to punish T-Mobile, for example - or it's customers, really, by forcing T-Mobile to charge for data from third parties, and any company can sign up for it, when T-Mobile is offering that streaming for free certainly IS anti-consumer, especially when both the consumer AND the content companies have the choice of whether or not to join. It's literally the OPPOSITE of what comcast wanted to do. So it turns out that, like most government legislation, it's good intentions paved the way to hell because they didn't think about the consequences and they went too far.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Sorry but why can't software make optimum resource allocations? Or actors with access to dataand systems never before possible? The Era where we accept your claim at face value is over. The free market is not an efficient way to allocate resources. Just saying it doesn't make it true. I can demonstrate all sorts of inefficiencies many of which rectified by simple decree, increased total cost of ownership that are all cloaked by layers of middling business people. Take for example, construction, a very, very lightly regulated industry, that i call home, where effectively everyone is ripped off for sub standard buildings. Almost all economies on earth have more regulation, better buildings, and lower total cost of ownership than US. Also see civil infrastructure, cable, internet...
Also the free market is a fantasy, why do you insist on propagating myths and superstitions... in light of overwhelming evidence to its non existence.
Of course economic efficiency is not the goal of a capitialist because the easiest market efficiencies benefit everyone equally. Can't have that.
Sorry but why can't software make optimum resource allocations? Or actors with access to dataand systems never before possible?
You are projecting. I think technology may indeed make the traditional free market obsolete. But I remain skeptical until there is at least one example.
Almost all economies on earth have more regulation, better buildings, and lower total cost of ownership than US.
You don't seem to be arguing against a free market - you seem to be arguing for a free market with a different set of regulations. This is not an example of a computer-controlled command economy.
Also the free market is a fantasy
I am not an idealist - I'm quite pragmatic. I don't think I ever said there was an ideal free market, so you are building up a straw man.
Of course economic efficiency is not the goal of a capitialist
By definition, someone who does not want free markets is not a capitalist. Perhaps you mean people who falsely claim to want capitalism?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The connotation of one is totally different than the other.
Also the 'Free Market' is a type of economic utopia. The same as all the other utopian theories out there, none of them exist in the real world, and all attempts at creating one have failed miserably.
You can easily research what an actual Free Market is, if you can get around the B.S. and marketing trash from people that either don't know what it is or don't care.
Heh. It's funny watching people get upset when their rationale doesn't survive scrutiny.