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Tech Giants Rally Today in Support of Net Neutrality (theverge.com)
From a report: Technology giants like Amazon, Spotify, Reddit, Facebook, Google, Twitter and many others are rallying today in a so-called "day of action" in support of net neutrality, five days ahead of the first deadline for comments on the US Federal Communications Commission's planned rollback of the rules. In a move that's equal parts infuriating and exasperating, Ajit Pai, the FCC's new chairman appointed by President Trump, wants to scrap the open internet protections installed in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those consumer protections mean providers such as AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon are prevented from blocking or slowing down access to the web. Sites across the web will display alerts on their homepages showing "blocked," "upgrade," and "spinning wheel of death" pop-ups to demonstrate what the internet would look like without net neutrality, according to advocacy group Battle for the Net. But most of the pop-ups The Verge has seen have been simple banners or static text with links offering more information.
Im Modding so posting this anon.
In the first 20 years there were literally hundreds or thousands of providers. Changes to the FCC definition of a phone line removed them from the common carrier status as well as the requirements that the phone company provide the service to mom and pop ISP's. So back then if AT&T tried to block something everyone would simply change to another ISP.
I ran ISP's back in the 1990's and you would not believe how many times the conversation about "Common Carrier" came up. At the time all the ISP's I know of operated on the belief that it applied to them, especially when dealing with Usenet. Because it meant we would not be responsible for the content of usenet stored on our servers.
They can afford to pay AT&T whatever fees get extorted.
But they don't want to pay. Also AT&T can charge high extortion rates.
. If people can't access Google on AT&T they will switch to someone else. That can't be said for podunk rivals.
Switch to who? Most ISPs have monopolies in their markets.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The write-up this. If you wish to dispute it, you need to offer citations. When did the regulations about to be abolished come into effect?
Er? Please read up on the history before you comment.
How is this wrong?
Okay let's start out that everyone pays for a connection. Netflix pays Level 3. You pay your ISP. You pay for a Netflix subscription. Your ISP should deliver Netflix if you want; however, your ISP wants to charge Netflix to send you data that you and Netflix already paid to send. Is that simple enough?
So? Why should it be the concern of the government and the citizenry, what these private companies do?
Why should it be concern of the government if private companies are wronging the citizenry? Is that the exact question you are asking?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Nothing other than my switching to XFinity or someone else available in my area, you mean?
The good old competition argument. That would be great if there was actually someone else available. Most areas only have 1 or 2 ISPs. Both ISPs are probably content providers too, so they will both be violating neutrality. We won't have real competition on ISPs so long as they are tied to telecoms, which are natural and regulatory monopolies.
Point is, they are not "little".
No, you've taken the statement out of context and twisting words. The term "little guy" means customer and startup web sites. Yes, neutrality protects "big guys" too, but that doesn't invalidate the point or make the statement wrong.
Are you saying, YouTube became a thing after 2015? Seriously?.. Really?..
No. Smidge204 did not say that. Seriously, really. He didn't.
Sites across the web will display alerts on their homepages showing "blocked," "upgrade," and "spinning wheel of death" pop-ups to demonstrate what the internet would look like without net neutrality.
Interesting, that's not what the web looked like for the first 20 years when there were no net neutrality rules...
For the first 10 years maybe. But in the past 10 years or so there most definitely HAS been some level of fuckery with various internet connections.
We've seen all manner of source based traffic prioritization.
We've seen connections intentionally slowed despite there being no load on the pipe.
We've seen practices that are more fitting for hollywood blockbuster involving some black cars, Italian accents and lines which all but stopped short of saying "That's a nice video you're streaming there. It's a shame it is now counting to an arbitrary limit that I just imposed on you. But hey I'm here to help. Either watch that video from my advert laden site or give me $15 extra and I'll make your worries temporarily go away.
If you think this hasn't been a problem then you haven't been paying attention.
Bullshit. There are plenty of examples of violations of net neutrality from before and during the period when the FCC rule went into effect (and that's a very tiny list... it doesn't include Comcast throttling Netflix until Netflix paid up, ISPs who block or throttle BitTorrent, all the "zero-rating" games being played by wireless providers and a plethora of other violations.
Take your astroturfing somewhere else.
Yet, THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN.
Except when it does.
Not the first time either
Those are the things that caused Network Neutrality to become an issue. I'm sure there's more, more subtle examples that have been less widely publicized too.
Now imagine if there was explicitly no legal framework to prevent this. Imagine if it was not only expressly legal but accepted. There would be no competition for online services, no innovation, and higher prices for inferior service.
So when you say shit like this:
If a problem comes along, and it is a REAL problem, THEN regulate.
You clearly have your head in the sand.
=Smidge=