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Roku Has Hired a Team of Lobbyists As it Gears Up For a Net Neutrality Fight (recode.net)
Roku appears to be arming itself for the coming net neutrality war. From a report on Recode: The web video streaming and hardware company has plenty at stake as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to pull back rules that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. For Roku and others in the business, an end to the Obama-era protections could make it harder -- or, in some cases, more expensive -- to offer content or services to customers at top download speeds. That's why Roku has hired a pair of Republican lobbyists through an outside government-affairs firm, according to a federal ethics reports filed this week, specifically to focus on net neutrality. It's the first time the company has ever retained lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Many in the tech industry support the Obama-era FCC's net neutrality rules, which currently subject telecom companies to utility-style regulation. To Democrats, it's the only way to stop the likes of AT&T, Comcast, Charter or Verizon from blocking competing services or charging media companies for faster delivery of their content.
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I wanted to play mp4s on it, so I put them on a USB and plugged it in.
It could only play some of them. It had to encoded just the right way, because Roku is too cheap to get acceptable codec support.
Fuck Roku.
The Obama era net neutrality rules were a disaster in the making. They checked all the buzzwords, but had the correctly bought weasel clauses so that Comcast could throttle all competition to their services. The just couldn't throttle particular competition. It was a lie, and you fell for it.
"To Democrats, it's the only way to stop the likes of AT&T, Comcast, Charter or Verizon from blocking competing services or charging media companies for faster delivery of their content." Not just to Democrats - pretty much anyone who understands networks just how evil these non-competing, money-stealing, progress-inhibiting ISP's can be.
Because when you exist in the Trumpsphere, you either have had one, or need one.
American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress
Many proponents of net neutrality are mainly concerned about the cost of their video streaming. This puts a big demand on infrastructure and not everybody watches streaming video. I may not want to subsidizes your Game of Thrones addiction.
COE
Vertical integration results in monopolies (regional ones at least) and consumer abuse once the consumers no longer have reasonable alternatives to turn to.
The carrier and the content provider can not be permitted to have agreements to suppress competition.
Bits are bits, and while in the case of an Internet connection I think there's room for ISPs to enforce SPAM/botnet/DOS protection strategies, to provide generic tiered traffic (to say, minimize delay on real-time traffic over other types not so sensitive to jitter)... but NOT to say that media provider A gets priority over media provider B because A ponied up some extra cash to block a competitor.
Fight this, or you're going to have a much, much shittier Internet in a few years.
So switch to another ISP if yours is blocking or slowing your traffic. That's what a market-based solution would dictate.
The real problem is that we have allowed ISP monopolies. I live in the third largest city in the United States and my only choice for Internet access via cable modem is Comcast. There are other cable providers in certain areas of town and for large multi-dwelling buildings, but only one choice in my neighborhood of single-family residences.
If people had a choice of providers then they could just switch to the one that's most customer friendly. Instead, due to monopolies, we are at the mercy of the ISP and the politician resolve our complaints.
Far better would be for Twitter, Facebook, Apple, maybe even Microsoft, to invest in Google's fiber as well as SpaceX's Sat projects. In doing so, they can then expand the projects in HUGE ways and attack the companies that remove net neutrality.
It would be cheaper and more certain than having GOPs do the right things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In spite of all the high speed internet economic development hype, it is video which is the biggest use of high speed broadband for the average person. The corporate Net Neutrality proponents are video, or audio, streaming (Netflix, Spotify, now Roku). You don't hear random LOW BANDWIDTH sites lobbying for net neutrality. It's always the big data guzzlers whom complain about net neutrality. Has Verizon tried blocking access to MSN, in favor Yahoo and the Huffington Post?
The scaremongering of the net neutrality ideologues for mom and pop websites has yet to come to pass.
In this day and age, internet access is a public necessity, not a luxury. Because of this, I strongly believe ISPs should be regulated like utilities, like water, gas, and electricity.
There is no demand on infrastructure. Stop the trolling.
Many proponents of net neutrality are mainly concerned about the cost of their video streaming. This puts a big demand on infrastructure and not everybody watches streaming video. I may not want to subsidizes your Game of Thrones addiction.
That is much less a net-nutrality issue and much more a monopoly issue.
Until it becomes legal for any network provider or ISP to run their own wiring through a city, you get exactly the same choice as the rest of us do - none.
It's the fault of laws that enable a single ISP to be a monopoly that are why you have no choice but to subsidize our video streaming addiction.
Fix that and you'll find those of us that want to pay more for the bandwidth to stream video will flock to an ISP that allows it, and people such as yourself who don't care about streaming video can flock to an ISP that provides less bandwidth and charges you less for it.
If you rabid net-neut proponents don't watch it, we're going to end up with ISPs that bill by the byte.
This is an incredibly common result of touchy-feely regulations. Remember the days when if your credit was good enough you could get a prime-plus-a-point-or-two credit card, and even with just ok credit you could get 10% or less? The CARD Act sent that the way of the dodo bird -- average introductory rates are now pushing 20%. Remember how Dick Durban was going to stick it to the banks by forcing them to not charge "exorbitant" transaction fees? Banks just found other ways to make up the fees that disproportionately impacted lower-income people.
What in the world makes you think this latest moral crusade is going to end any differently?
Content providers should just refuse to pay ISPs extra for the bandwidth that their customers already pay for. Customers already pay their ISP for a service, and will soon change ISP if their service is degraded by ISPs who want to be paid twice for this bandwidth.
Why aren't the same people pushing for net neutrality also pushing of road neutrality (no more tolls). I guess politicians don't like other people getting money.
Here is were I find the problem...
If actually using the 100mbps they have sold me puts so much strain on the infrastructure that it can't be sustained without charging more then why sell it to me in the first place.
So if you have a 100mbps connection and a 1TB data cap charged on a monthly basis you would only be able to use your connection at top speed for less than one day out of the month.
Of course video puts a bigger burden on infrastructure than email. In fact, before there was streaming video, people were happy with 64kbit modems. How is that trolling?
Can I Get a Lobbyist?
It's more effective to BE one. Also cheaper.
Instead of keyboarding your complaints to public fora like Slashdot, type them onto a postcard and mail it to your representative and senator.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The solution is simple: separate content providers from internet providers. That way the service provider has no interest in the end users content.
A company that produces both content and internet service is a monopoly and should be broken up. Like Verizon yahoo.
Dude should just go Avatar State on these fools.
The net non-neutrality problem is not technical, so the solution to isn't FCC rulemaking.
The problem stems from two aspects of monopoly/cartel control of the market, so the solution is FTC, DOJ, and antitrust.
The two aspects are:
- Vertical integration of ISPs into conglomerates that make most of their money from selling "content" that can be transported over the internet. This gives them massive financial incentives to have their ISP divisions penalize services competing either with their entertainment divisions' online services on the same ISP, or their offline / on other ISPs marketing. Services competing with their own products are penalized unless they pay enough extra to more than make up for their impact on the profit from the conglomerate's own product. "No-neutrality" is one of the manifestations of this anti-competitive tie-in.
- A limited number of competitors results in monopolistic / cartel levels of pricing and service. (The FCC historically considers two providers to be "competition" - though a minimum of three, and usually four or more, competitors are necessary before market forces have good effects on either prices or service levels.) On the service-level side, the incentive is to engage in "rent-seeking" by providing as little service as necessary and charge as much extra as possible, from whichever player can be soaked, for more than a token minimum. (If they don't like it, who will they go to?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
See you haters! Donald J. Trump's administration just helped create more jobs. Greatest jobs president ever!
maybe Capitalism, plus some accountability, integrity, and actual workers' rights? or Capitalism, minus its corrosive effects on political systems? or Capitalism, plus actual competition (rather than vague, wishy-washy promises of it) ?
FTC is specifically forbidden by law to regulate ISPs.
FTC is specifically forbidden by law to regulate ISPs.
FTC is specifically forbidden by current/b. law to regulate ISPs.
This is something that is subject to change. (It's a one-liner either way.) It's also something that people in the Trump administration are already on the record of having mentioned.
If enough congressmen can be convinced that the problem for them will go away if they do it that way, they could easily do it in a few weeks.
And if the pro-network-neutrality people can be convinced that moving this from the FCC to the FTC would solve their problems, or the bulk of them, without breaking the Internet in the process, they have enough lobbying power to override even the multi-billion-dollar entertainment conglomerates' lobbying against such a move.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way