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Net Neutrality is Not a Pirates' Fight Anymore (torrentfreak.com)
Today millions of people are standing up for net neutrality and an open internet. The "Battle for the Net," backed by companies including Amazon, Google, and Netflix, hopes to stop a looming repeal of current net neutrality rules. While the whole debate was kickstarted ten years ago when torrent users couldn't download their favorite TV-shows, it's no longer a pirate's fight today, writes TorrentFreak: Historically, there is a strong link between net neutrality and online piracy. The throttling concerns were first brought to the forefront in 2007 when Comcast started to slow down both legal and unauthorized BitTorrent traffic, in an affort to ease the load on its network. When we uncovered this atypical practice, it ignited the first broad discussion on net neutrality. This became the setup for the FCC's Open Internet Order which was released three years later. For its part, the Open Internet Order formed the foundation of the net neutrality rules the FCC adopted in 2015. The big change compared to the earlier rules was that ISPs can be regulated as carriers under Title II. While pirates may have helped to get the ball rolling, they're no longer a player in the current net neutrality debate. Under the current rules, ISPs are allowed to block any unlawful traffic, including copyright infringing content. In fact, in the net neutrality order the FCC has listed the following rule: "Nothing in this part prohibits reasonable efforts by a provider of broadband Internet access service to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity." The FCC reasons that copyright infringement hurts the US economy, so Internet providers are free to take appropriate measures against this type of traffic. This includes the voluntary censoring of pirate sites, something the MPAA and RIAA are currently lobbying for. That gives ISPs plenty of leeway. ISPs could still block access to The Pirate Bay and other alleged pirate sites as a voluntary anti-piracy measure, for example. And throttling BitTorrent traffic across the board is also an option, as long as it's framed as reasonable network management. The worrying part is that ISPs themselves can decide what traffic or sites are unlawful. This could potentially lead to overblocking. Currently, there is no indication that any will, but the net neutrality rules do not preventing these companies from doing so.
...there will be an encrypted version of the internet available on another level.
Rest assured of it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Thinks they support this for YOUR benefit.
It is them using YOU for their own benefit.
All I see on Google's front page today is some tribute to a costume designer who died in 2012. Informing others about the recently deceased is apparently more important to Google.
Seriously? Accepting an article linking network neutrality to piracy? Fuck off, /.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
This issue has always had broad implications.
Twinstiq, game news
I got a pop-up message when I visited my web host provider, DreamHost, this morning.
Please upgrade your plan to proceed.
Just kidding. You can still get to this site *for now*. But if the FCC ends net neutrality, your cable company could charge you extra fees just to use the websites and apps you want. We can stop them and keep the Internet open, fast, and awesome if we all contact the U.S. Congress and the FCC, but we only have a few days left. Learn more.
Thinks they support this for YOUR benefit.
Who cares that they only support this for their own benefit? In this case, their and our interests align extremely well: we want to be able to choose from whom to purchase internet services and they want us to have the freedom to choose because their services are currently a consumer favourite. Give it a few years and their opinion may change if they suddenly find they are competing with a new startup but the longer net neutrality lasts the better established and harder to change it becomes.
I agree. Also, even if there were actually harms being done, it would still be a question of whether government involvement would be the correct action. I do not personally think that the government is the right arbiter in this issue. The government has never been in the business of promoting free and open anything. I hate Comcast as much as anybody, but these rules are going to hurt them at all.
There's no rule that says that there has to be a good internet connection. If you force all connections to be the same, then you're very likely forcing the lowest common denominator. Also, as the article summary points out, the ISPs will still be able to control connections by arguing that they are preventing piracy or other illegal activity. So, in the end, they may not be able to slow sites, but they will be able to block certain traffic outright and be able to claim that they are doing so to comply with the law. And the big ISPs win because smaller companies who cannot afford to route faster traffic to the more resource heavy locations (or afford to pay for the extra peering which will be mandated) will be forced out of business. So, less competition, more bureaucracy, and you'll still risk having sites or access methods blocked, but now with no recourse.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
I accuse YOU of ILLEGAL PACKET PRIORITIZATION for refusing to let me RFC 1149 pigeons land!
how cute, the thought that your sjws will still BE sjws 30 years down the road hahaha. oh ye have little knowledge and experience.
now that they see the profit that they can get with the internet, everybody and their neighbour want a (bigger) share of it. Copyright holders are building their own netflix-esque apps. We already pay ISP's for internet access, now they want to charge the providers for additional bandwidth.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Not quite. What net neutrality is trying to accomplish is not allowing Comcast (in this example) to throttle Netflix down to 100Kb/s and making it useless while Comcast's own content streaming service gets the full deal. Or to have Netflix traffic count against a consumer's data cap while Comcast's service is "free" against the cap.
Comcast traffic, Netflix traffic, Fox News traffic, Youtube traffic, whatever it is should be treated the same way. Comcast's job as an ISP is simply to pass traffic regardless of origin without preferential treatment based on who the company likes or who has paid a "toll" to get premium service on their network.
None of the companies allegedly supporting net neutrality is mentioning this on their home page today.
I have a big grey banner across the top of my Neflix screen right now that proves otherwise.
Amazon's major deal of the day was a notice about Net Neutrality.
Mark Zuckerberg's post would have been at the top of his 93million follower's feeds.
And Google while they didn't put it on their home page for search definitely put it on the top of their blog: https://www.blog.google/topics...
Wrong.
What you are saying is not what the legislation does. Its just what you wish it does, and while it may be what you may even think it does, it isnt what it does.
You've been told before. You were given a link to the legislation. Did you bother to read it?
"His name was James Damore."
Like I said earlier in another thread. The term Net Neutrality is a trap because most of the supporters don't have a clue that it means!!!
;) what a crock ;) lol
This is not "Net Neutrality" this is a ticket to traffic shaping and selective throttling of the packets anyway an ISP wants.
From the summary
"And throttling BitTorrent traffic across the board is also an option, as long as it's framed as reasonable network management. The worrying part is that ISPs themselves can decide what traffic or sites are unlawful. This could potentially lead to over blocking. Currently, there is no indication that any will, but the net neutrality rules do not preventing these companies from doing so."
I esp. loved this part , "there is no indication that any will" right this will never happen lol
I use BitTorrent alot and have only used it for open source downloads. ISOs for the most part.
True Net Neutrality means, any ISP that examines and routes packets based on their internal secret algorithms and business reasons is in violation of Common Carrier regulations under Title II, clear plain and simple!!
Nothing is going on that is preventing an open internet.
What? The Internet will never be perfectly open and free. It's more of a ideal we want to strive for. The closer we get to it the better. There legit real-world limitations though. VoIP is different then torrents, Omaha is closer than Kzhackistan. You could even argue that locking sites behind paywalls violates network neutrality, but hey, it's a purchase choice left to the end-users so no-one cares and it lets people sell services online. Power to the people and all that.
And actually, ESPN3.com (formorly ESPN360.com) is bundled into your Internet service. You don't get a choice about if you want to buy it or no. Your ISP is paying money directly to Disney and Hearst to give their users access to the content. An example of telecoms trying to bundle websites into ISP services and transforming the Internet into something more like cable TV where the networks get to decide what's available to watch. A clear example of a violation of network neutrality.
The worst thing to do is establish regulations where none are needed.
Right. But regulations are needed here. Because capitalism only works when there's competition. When there's no free market, shit sucks. Markets become less free in all sorts of ways. Markets with a high barrier to entry are just naturally less free. When an oligarchy of businesses refuse to compete and carve up the map into territories, the market is not free. And yeah, regulation makes markets less free. But if they refuse to compete, and start abusing the users, the proper response is to either bust up the companies into smaller chunks that will start competing again or to regulate what is and is not acceptable behavior. Like fucking over network neutrality.
Because of course we want a neutral network. That's how it's operated since it's inception. Everyone passes along everyone else's packets without fucking with them. When the telecoms start to try actively BREAKING network neutrality, then obviously something has to change.
Now the only reason that their first timid advances at breaking network neutrality were thwarted in the past is due to public backlash and the fear that the FCC would clamp down with regulation. And then they continued and the FCC did indeed clamp down. With the current head of the FCC blatently trying to kill off network neutrality (god, it'd be so much better if he just pointed out he wanted to remove regulation enforcing network neutrality, but no, I don't think he even knows the different), the threat of reprecusion is all but gone. But... 3 more years and we'll have another head of the FCC. Or sooner.
You aren't being blocked or prevented from engaging in legal activities.
BWAHAHAHHAaaa, oh. Ok, nevermind. I thought you had a serious complaint for a moment.
No, nothing is preventing you from subscribing to HBO and watching Game of Thrones. ...As long as you're willing to sign up for the premier cable package and shell out extra for HBO on top of that. If that's how you want the rest of the Internet to be made available to the masses, fuck off.
I don't think people emphasize enough the extent to which net neutrality is largely an antitrust measure.
When broadband is a 2 or 3 player oligopoly there are plenty of incentives for deals that aren't in the interests of consumers or web innovation. These are much like the exclusive dealing agreements which were one of the classic motivations for antitrust law in the first place.
If the market were competitive -- if customers had access to more than a dozen different decent service providers, as many did in the dial-up era of shared infrastructure-- then net neutrality would rarely be a concern. If a service provider tried throttling traffic and making back room deals with content providers to unthrottle them, content providers wouldn't listen to them and customers would migrate away.
We haven't taken antitrust law seriously enough as a nation for the last 30 years. We need to be more aware of the problems of noncompetitive markets and the times when, despite its limitations, government antitrust intervention can improve matters.
as afraid as I am to post this opinion on slashdot of all places, ... already has such strongly held opinions that they get angry at you for even asking in the first place.
Naw, no worries mate. You should never be afraid to ask. Don't let the maniacal group of fanatical, hammer-wielding zealots put you off.
As I understand it, net neutrality is a set of U.S. government regulations that prohibit an ISP like Comcast from charging, say Netflix, more per GB than they charge me per GB.
Network neutrality is how the Internet works. Network neutrality regulation is the governments attempt at keeping it from falling apart. There's been a pretty obvious political campaign to get the two conflated. The thing with extorting extra money out of specific services is one aspect of it.
Network Neutrality: It prevents ISPs from fucking with your packets in transit. It's fundamentally how the Internet works and has always worked since it's inception. The Internet is a bunch of networks interconnected all sharing and carrying each other's packets through a vast web. It's pretty cool. Small ISPs pay those above them for connections, and charge those under them, and "peer" with their neighbors on all their borders. So if JoeISP next door has a million packets last month that needed to cross your lines to get to something on the other side, and you had a million packets that needed to go through his servers, you're both square.
And neither of you fuck with those packets in transit. You don't slow down all of Joe's customers packets. You don't look through them and drop all the stuff related to cats. You don't differentiate if they're going to France or to Kansas. You don't care if they're smut or if they're stock orders. You don't care if it's netflix traffic or hulu traffic. It's all equal and you carry it as neutral as possible. (and, there's some exceptions like VoIP being treated differently than downloads, it's not a perfect system).
Now, if Joe was a real dick, he could go to Netflix and demand an extra $50 or he'd drop all their packets. Or make Google queries 10s slower than Bing searches. Or block anything going to or from China. Or block all porn. Or refuse web connections to a subset of the Internet unless the customer pays extra. All of that breaks network neutrality, and is a way for ISPs to make an extra buck on top of actually providing Internet service.
Netflix officially don't care anymore as they're too big to bully around. Could you imagine buying Comcast and simply not having that include Netflix? PFt, no. Customers would flock to alternatives. Netflix can play that game of chicken and double-dog-dare Comcast to shit all over their customers and give degraded service. Hell, they're international, they can weather the storm. 10 years ago when they started competing with cableTV, they really REALLY cared.
The FCC was trying to enforce network neutrality by classifying the Telecom giants as common carriers like Fedex. Which means they can't fuck with the goods in transit (and that they're not responsible for what people send). If business REALLY wanted to bitch-slap the telecoms for changing that, Disney could sue them all for all the piracy their services are aiding. But that's a legal nuclear option. Prior to the FCC pulling that trigger with classifying ISPs as common carriers is that the market consolidated and competition died off. Before, asshats like JoeISP didn't try to break network neutrality as the network would simply route around it, and everyone depended on everyone else playing nice. Now that there's only a handful of major ISPs that refuse to compete with each others territory, there's no free market, and capitalism is fucked.
but we're still talking about the government prohibiting a specific type of contractual agreement between two corporate entities - that almost never goes well for anybody except the incumbents.
Hmm
Out of all the cities that tried municipal broadband or equivalent, how many were not expensive trainwrecks that were scrapped before completion?
There is no new legislation. The FCC reclassified Telecoms as "common carriers", which was made by old-as-dirt legislation. As common carriers they would be barred from inspecting the contents of the packages they're carrying for you. (And they would not be responsible for what you send).
I mean, that's the current curfluffle. Are you bitching about the FCC's Open Internet Order? Because that's still not legislation.
The FCC doesn't make legislation, that comes out of congress. So... wtf are you smoking and could you send me that link?
Did you mean regulation? I know these things can be confusing. Who could have guessed?
As a GenXer, I have to say many of us did try to change certain things, and most of it failed, and even then we did more than millennials. The difference is social networking and the echo chamber make millennials feel more active, but really they don't do jack shit except once every few years maybe protesting and then going back home to play arm chair social activist. I mean the mere fact others in this comment thread think that they need the baby boomers to die to change things shows that even if they vanished tomorrow, they probably wouldn't know what to change, or how to change it, just demand "change."
I did when it was first released and not sure if this pdf is the same one https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
But a large majority of it covers cell phones.
Amazon, Google, and Netflix want to use the infrastructure as much as they want without having to compensate the people who paid to build it and maintain it. I wonder what Elizabeth Warren would say about this. "You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for."
Joel is this case is a major telecom company and ISPs are no longer small mom&pop shops.
when in reality, MAJORTELECOM has let his peer links saturate and/or severely imbalance
"Let his peer links saturate" As in, people are using their internet connection and MAJORTELECOM isn't upgrading their network. Their old business model depended on customers only checking email once a week. The world changes and now people found out they can use the service they bought. The bastards should invest in US's infrastructure to make their customers happy rather than throwing money at lobbyists and trying to squeeze more money out of people.
and won't upgrade the peer link and/or tolerate the imbalance without compensation.
Comcast bought back $5 Billion of their own stock this year. They made $20 billion in revenue and $12 billion in profit. Cry me a fucking river. They have a virtual monopoly and could charge whatever they want, except for town where they're actually facing competition from fiber, but they drop prices there to make sure Google and such don't make any money.
And bitching about peering imbalance? The peers they have to pay for traffic going out of their network is going to other ISPs. They have to pay the ISP above them just like I do. If they're bitching about their users using netflix, then charge them more. Trying to make a backroom extortion rather than letting the end-customer decide if it's worth the price is fucking bullshit. Power to the people.
And why is everyone in favor of the ISPs killing network neutrality an anonymous coward? Fucking shills.