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Taking The Profit Out Of Killing 'Net Neutrality' (cringely.com)
Robert Cringely has a plan to ensure that internet providers will never profit from the end of net neutrality:
We are being depended upon to act like sheep -- Internet browsing sheep, if such exist -- and without a plan that's exactly what we'll be. The key to my plan is that this is a rare instance where consumers are not alone. There are just as many or more huge companies that would prefer to keep Net Neutrality as those that oppose it... Those companies in favor of Net Neutrality obviously include the big streamers like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and a bunch of others. They also includes nearly every big Internet concern including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Those are some pretty big friends to have on your side -- our side...
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
So I suggest we all join ZeroTier (ZT), a thriving networking startup operating in Irvine, California. There are other companies like it but I just think ZeroTier is presently the best. ZeroTier is a very sophisticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) company that has created a Software Defined Network that goes beyond what normal VPNs are capable of. To your computer or almost any other networked device (even your smart phone), ZT looks like an Ethernet port, whether your device has Ethernet or not. Through that virtual Ethernet port you connect to a virtual IPv6 Local Area Network that's as big as the Internet itself, though the only users on this overlay network are ZT members.
The trick is to get all those big companies that are pro-Net Neutrality to join ZT. The most it will cost even Netflix is $750 per month, which is probably less than the company spends on salad bars in their Los Gatos HQ. Embracing ZT doesn't mean rejecting the regular Internet. Netflix can still be reached the old fashion way. I just want them to add a presence on ZT, too... What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
...to ZT that was so thoughtfully removed in the summary.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Running away from walled gardens to another walled garden is not a solution to the net neutrality problem and certainly doesn't "take the profit out" of it. It just moves that profit to another company. /vertisement.
The internet is not for sale by any pseudo owner. Fuck them. This is the commons and we can control it if we organize.
This approach (tunneling traffic to avoid the ISP slow lane) is too simple for a reason- it is trivial for the carriers, or anyone with simple flow data, to detect tunneled/VPN traffic and then route it prejudicially (even if the carrier cannot read the encrypted payload). Itâ(TM)s what PRC and other totalitarian regimes have been doing for years : penalizing tunneled traffic by default.
No, Google and Amazon don't want network neutrality. They want network dominance.
..from Zero Tier, because it "promotes cyberattacks." What do you do then?
Why woudn't throttling this be practical? If the ISPs are free to throttle everything else, and they don't mind their customers suffering, why would they stop at a VPN, especially a VPN that is meant to stop throttling. In fact they can throttle it much more than any other type of content, since it just means that the users will stop using it and switch back to accessing their content directly.
Yeah, lets solve this buy paying ZT a ransom instead of AT&T or Verizon.
No, I don't think so. This is just a (very) thinly veiled ad for yet another company trying to make a profit off providing access to services people are already paying for.
Seriously slash, this is absurd. This is not a solution they simply refuse to carry your packets. Game over.
What the ISPs won't like about this plan is that ZT traffic can't be read to determine what rules or pricing to apply. They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical.
If they can throttle popular destinations like NetFlix, or protocols like BitTorrent, why wouldn't throttling a VPN be practical?
Once all the video companies are on ZT, followed by social media and search, (don’t forget gaming!), that’s probably 80 percent of all Internet bandwidth.
For fast-paced games, low latency is very important and any kind of additional layer will add latency.
So everyone in the country should send their traffic through a single VPN? How does that scale to 300m citizens, and what will stop the VPN company from throttling webpages that don't pay their internet baksheesh?
Somebody doesn't know what Ethernet is apparently. I don't know what Cringely was trying to say, but nothing upstream knows about or cares if your system connects via Ethernet, WiFi, ATM, Token Ring, or IPoAC. Ah ... this explains it ...
"The sex symbol, airplane enthusiast and adventurer continues to write about personal computers and has an active consulting business in Silicon Valley, selling his cybersoul to the highest bidder." - [Emphasis Added]
After seeing this, he should really drop the "L" from his last name.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
To simple block all access to ZT, and every other VPN. If they cannot know what you're doing, to monetize it, they may as well just block it.
So overall, ZT cannot do anything.
I don't think they'll throttle traffic down... I'll think they'll say "your monthly cap is 2/5/10GB... and you can pay $10 per month for 50 extra GB of access to video streaming (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube)". So using a VPN will just affect your basic cap...
There is not information here, no news, nothing funny just a blatant add for a company with a really expensive and really dubious sounding VPN. I view slashdot as my source of all news that is not fake. What went wrong here. @cowboy_neil - we need answers.
1) Blatant slashvertisement. Seriously. Stop it.
2) "They could throttle it all down, but throttling that much traffic isn't really practical."
If they can throttle the entirety of the Internet, except Netflix, they can certainly throttle all of ZT too.
Seriously, this was a giant ad for a VPN provider, which are dime a dozen. What is the point?
Hulu doesn't support net neutrality. They ban VPNs from using their service.
No, really, Just No.
1) This approach just puts all the eggs into one easily taxed basket.
2) Does NOTHING to combat last mile access issues, which is the real thorn in the side here (The same people that control the last mile, and thus prevent competition in their blocks, are the very same people behind wanting to murder net neutrality. They will just deny you access to this service over their network/refuse a peer relationship with them/charge you a shitload of money if they detect packets for this network originating from your home.)
3) As others have pointed out, this does nothing to "take the profit out". What WOULD take the profit out, would be competing infrastructure and cessation of franchise monopolies, which is exactly why Pai is working so hard to stop states and municipalities from doing exactly that, by saying they cannot enact their own legislation to impose net neutrality anyway within their borders.
No, you want to stop this shit, you need to get Congress to fucking do something other than fellate the ISPs.
This is just geek internet fantasy. It's a cause to support without knowing a thing. Which is typical leftist behavior. Create a fake crisis, then hammer opponents with it.
Ro Khanna, prominent advocate of net neutrality, actually illustrated what's likely going to happen: your all-you-can-eat plan gets broken up into smaller packages and you pay for each of those. Notice how full access costs pretty much the same under both "net neutrality" and "no net neutrality". It's unclear why he thinks this is not in the interest of "consumers".
Yes, and they favor this because they don't want to have to pay for the extra infrastructure costs that their services impose on ISPs; instead, they want to spread out those costs evenly among all Internet users, even those that don't stream. Net neutrality is a means by which they can make that happen. Without net neutrality, Netflix and Netflix users need to pay slightly more on average, but others need to pay slightly less.
Netflix traffic either goes directly to Netflix servers or through some VPN. Each of those implies different wires for it to travel over. ISPs not only can easily "throttle" based on this, they actually already have to account for it differently in their peering/transit arrangements with other ISPs. They don't need to look inside packets and they don't really care. What they care about is that a lot of traffic goes over particular wires. If those wires go to some VPN provider, then they will likely charge more for transit to that VPN provider in the future and the costs and prices for the VPN provider will go up. Arguably, that is as it should be: Netflix or some high traffic VPN require a lot of infrastructure to support, and repealing net neutrality allows ISPs to charge those companies more.
I see people on social media saying "I pay for da interwebz, I'll do whatever I want and oh btw, I'll do it at the full speed I was 'sold.'" A lot of these are people that should know better, who should know that they were never sold a package with a QoS agreement with the ISP. The reason you can afford 75mbps+ at a rate that is supportable on a few bucks above minimum wage is precisely that "up to $Xmbps" in the contract and the other stipulations that make it clear they can impose QoS policies to give the best service to the most people. Turns out streaming 4k NetFlix to 1% of their users might not fit that description.
Thanksgiving morning, I tried to download an update to IntelliJ which is about 500MB of data. My FiOS connection was slow probably because my neighborhood, which is pretty large, were all home streaming NetFlix, Hulu, etc. waiting for Thanksgiving dinner. Anything I tried to download over an ordinary HTTP connection was slow, but NetFlix was just fine for my kids... So as far as I know, I was on the losing end of bandwidth prioritization.
To me this wailing that streaming users might be discriminated against is like hybrid drivers complaining that they might face additional alternative taxes to cover the fact that their cars put the same wear on the roads, but don't fund it properly through the gas tax. It may not be fair, but those shared resources (private or public) are not elastic. It costs money to maintain them and keep the same level of service as usage patterns change.
They damn well CAN throttle that much traffic. AT&T, Comcast, and the rest of the big ISPs all dream of the days of yore when there was AOL, CompuServe, and GEnie. Nothing but a few walled gardens, and the paying customers lived inside and almost never ventured out.
THAT is what they want, and how they will throttle. Comcast vs non-Comcast traffic is how it will be played. They'll prioritize THEIR VoIP over companies like Vonage, implicitly harming competition. Want NetFlix? Well, Xfinity Streaming is just like Netflix, but faster and cheaper!
These companies desperately do not want to become only transport providers, or dumb pipes. The money is in the content -- what the roads lead to, not the roads themselves. The ISPs was the return of the Company Town, where they own the roads AND the stores, and a big toll gate leading out of town.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This is not a solution, this is paying more for a new unproven service with an opportunistic ad.
First of all, Netflix or other services joining it is just wishful thinking. Come back when you have the vast majority of them already paying for it. This isn't how things works out there, throwing low prices thinking these companies will fish - you have to go directly at them and make a business proposition. If you didn't bother to even do that, how can you think people will buy it?
Pay us and the services will come. Heh, fat chance.
They can claim they have better tech and whatnot, plus an Ethernet box, but it's still a middleman that you have to trust. They'll be assigning the addresses, controlling what goes on behind the scenes, maintaining service. You know, the stuff we already pay ISPs for.
Net Neutrality is about not having extra middlemen interference.
Doesn't matter if they made it easier by assembling routers or switches, this is not something the vast majority of people will pay for. Heck, this is not something most people that are already paying for VPNs will pay for.
Blah blah they can see the traffic they won't be able to throttle. Again, this isn't how it works. Ever heard of whitelisting? Yep. It's not only the idea that ISPs might block or throttle speeds on specific services, it's the idea that they'll throttle everything and dedicate free fast lanes to their own. Throttling everything is plenty practical, they already do it.
This sounds like a crowdfunding pitch. Oh wait, it is exactly that, isn't it... left out this little detail not to show what this really is:
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...
Yep.
One way to combat the consequences is to prohibit those who throttle or block services from advertising themselves as "ISPs" (which would only be fair) or relying on the special legal status of an ISP (if it exists in the law) and make them list explicitly in their public communications what and how they provide access to without using references or small print.
The FCC wants to roll back imperial fiat which should have been legislated properly. The FCC also doesn't want to have to regulate ISPs as common carriers, because that's an incredibly expensive piece of work. Your internet is no different with the rollback of this fake "network neutrality" then it was for the 8 years Obama was in office and it was okay. And, for the record, nothing about this "network neutrality" prevented anything you feared happening to the internet. It would only have changed the words that ISPs use to throttle traffic. Instead of "throttling Netflix" they would just "throttle encrpted video playback" but still could have given preference to their data which is a live stream.
You got suckered.
The idea is sound but, as is too often the case, Big Telecom will lobby to make these kinds of VPNs illegal or restrict them. When something is about to cut into their profit margin, the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are not above using the courts to get their way or lobbying for laws favorable to them.
So now they control and monitor all the traffic instead? I can switch ISP's, but if services all use the same VPN, I would still be screwed not matter what if they decided to collect data or they get hacked and someone else does it or if they get DDoSed or if there's malware to contend with. Those that stay informed need to stop compromising and thinking it's ok for non-technical people to pick the easier option just so they can go further down the third-party reliance rabbit hole. It's being done because it's a royal pain in the ass to explain the importance of taking more control of your computing experience and because of that neglect and profit minded article submissions, we are greatly paying for it. Plus, if you're already smart enough to take precautions, a VPN over a VPN might not work out so well. Netflix already prevents video playback if it detects you are using VPN.
They need to use the napkin to wipe up the spill from laughing so hard at the re-invention of 30% of the dotcoms.
Has anyone else noticed this over the last 2 years? *Every* failed dotcom business plan is popping back up. They have much gentler growth curves in their business presentations, but it's like a bad episode of Shark Tank out there. Every half-baked Internet scheme is coming back, in force. I just saw *six* different startups at a local business tradeshow, *all* trying to re-invent Hubspot in the same city.
Kids, use those napkins with the business plans to mop up the crumbs, and *stop trying to re-invent the Internet". Most of you can't even spell DNS. And the one of you who can, well, I already hired him.
Rather than everyone joining a universal VPN, which as the parent mentioned they could just block, here is my proposal.
If you have a reasonable state, have the legislature create net neutrality rules in the state. All packets within the state must obey network neutrality. For the most part, this will take care of the problem within the state, as the Internet routes around the bullshit. You might need to have the state encourage a few key nodes to be located within the state as well.
This is not a 100% solution, but technically this is only affecting traffic in a state, so should not be subject to the FCC whining. At the very least it could get to court.
You could possibly combine the VPN approach such that the traffic between states in the network neutrality compact VPN all the packets between their states, so the bastards at the boarders have the choice between sending the packet or not since they have no information to prioritize on.
Of course red states would still be hosed. It is a pity I live in one..
How much does bob have invested in ZT?
a peer to peer VPN service? that is another cost that i would have to pay?
This guy is a narcissist and a fool, 30 years in the industry and hes trying to sell vaporware?
Slashdot, you disappoint once again.
The idea is sound
why don't you just tell us that you are mentally defective, more straightforward
There's just no arguing with billions of dollars.
Cringely used to be worth listening to. Americans pontificate about the Common Man but they genuflect before the icons of Gates and Bezos under their pallet.
Activating a VPN does little to nothing to solve the throttling issue. The throttling is done against the upstream services, at the routing or "network layer", where the ISP's organize connections to local hosts. Simply making that connection from another host in a preferred region leaves the connections to that remote region sill simply leave the remote region throttled, as well, especially if this "single solution" VPN solution is detectable at the routers or firewalls and can be preferentially throttled itself.
The tools to do this kind of throttling are already in place at the major ISP's. They're used to protect Quality Of Service for voice and streaming applications for their services they own, and protected channels for critical services. They're related to the tools that throttle customers who've paid for less service, so these throttles are not going away. Ignoring them and claiming that an extended VPN structure will somehow avoid service throttling is disingenuous at best, and may even be fraudulent.
I'd be intetested to hear what ideas those big players might come up with. If ad money and tracking should suffer I expect even ideas including hardware, finance and politics may be considered well within fair play. Drone and balloon meshes, a Youtube VPN, PACs to remove incumbents, federal lawsuits and hostile takeovers are all potential tools for such juggernauts. It just has to hit their bottom line, so they can then turn around and do the same favor for Pai's crowd. There should be people already wargaming it. The danger is that corps may not think it is painful enough to act.
Perhaps a more practical way to kill the profit from the ISPs is to reduce our dependence on them. If we all spent less time in front of a screen, went outside more, and engaged in hobbies then we can watch the ISPs bleed as no one uses their branded shit.
I call it "don't feed the trolls," and it works like this. The moment an ISP starts throttling someone, this coalition of content providers blacklist that ISP. Anyone on that ISP gets a black screen telling them what's going on and contact their ISP to stop the throttling. No paid fast lanes, just the black screen.
This will work because which ISP wants to be the first one to lose Netflix, Facebook, Google, and so on?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The plan is that large websites will pay some amount to each ISP, or else the ISP will block or throttle that website for there customers.
But ISP's are not the only ones who can block or throttle websites! The website owners can also throttle or block specific ISP's, and demand a payment from ISP's to give them (fast) access to there website.
The nett figure will depend on how much a specific website is in demand by the customers of a specific ISP. Small websites will probably need to pay, or won't pay because there budget is below what would be financially interesting for ISP's. Large popular websites can ask any price they want, so I don't see this ending well for ISP's.
Imagine Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet demanding each 30% of the ISP's profit, including all profit from payments from small websites, or else the customer of that ISP would not be able to connect to Microsoft, Apple or Google.
In locations where ISP's have a monopoly, they could switch to SpaceX satellite internet or make a lot of political fuss to end ISP monopolies.
Another advantage of throttled websites is a new interest in the size of websites. A less bloated site will remain working fast even when throttled, while a "cheap" bloated website will cost more since the throttle ransoms must be paid to keep the website usable.
I stropped reading at 'Robert Cringely has a plan'
Another problem with this proposal is that only 0.01% of the population can understand what ZeroTier does, so even if ALL of them adopt it, they won't have a significant impact on the network. Also, they'll still be paying Comcast et al for their bandwidth, plus paying something to ZeroTier for support, and taking on a little extra overhead for their "obscurity". Thanks, I'll pass.
Have you read my blog lately?
When will you folks just go away, and leave the rest of us to enjoy life finally?
Same thing will happen with internet.
I already see it happening with services I use. My ISP bumps up my speed 5-10% every 12-16 months and keeps the price the same or drops it slightly.
My cell service keeps adding services that cost me no data. Binge On through T-Mobile for something like 100 online sights and apps. It covers enough things that I like that I rarely even dip into my actual data. The data I don't use on the phone mostly ends getting used for a hotspot. All with no contract at a fairly cheap price.
You want to see the end of stupidity with data services hit your local politicians and end the practice of local monopolies for cable and internet. Stop worrying about the major websites and ISPs, they will vanish as soon as people discover something better. Remember Compuserve, EarthLink, Prodigy, etc? How about Geocities, AOL, MySpace, ICQ? How about Xerox, IBM? No? people all thought they were going to take over the world. That didn't happen. Some still exist, but their roll in the world has been either greatly diminished or left behind by the new players.
Here's another link, in case the first one doesn't work.
#DeleteFacebook
When your ISP only connects you to people on their own network, and you need another service to connect to people who are customers of a different network operator, what does that remind you of?
Somebody recently suggested just this sort of thing: https://slashdot.org/comments....
Oh wait. That was me. Only, I didn't suggest a single company benefiting.
A natural consequence of ISPs trying to negotiate individual deals with content providers is that the content providers will ally to increase their bargaining power. I suspect the ISPs will be in for a rough surprise if say the top 20 content providers (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Wordpress etc.) join forces to "negotiate" because if one site is slow that site has a problem. If users feel all the big ticket sites on the Internet are slow, the ISP has a problem. The only question is if they'll let the smaller sites on board or whether they'd like to throw their weight around. I don't think this will be the goldmine for ISPs they seem to think it is.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'd say the future of Net Neutrality is likely going to involve some "Nuclear" options/ultimatums. Though perhaps more for show to keep the 'trust your megacorp overlords' narratives in place. Imagine a few months from now, some ISP starts some politically unpopular enough practice. Then Google/Facebook/Netflix/Twitter gang up and put a 'nuclear' option/ultimatum on the table- They form a (rosy named) Foundation which defines 'Net Neutrality' exactly as they want it (same as today, in other words with server/vpn/tethering taxes, monstrous 'reasonable network management' loopholes, ToS blocking/use-restrictions, etc). They also say that any ISP that doesn't play on those terms will get blacklisted/null-routed from their routers/servers.
The narrative plays out that Google and big friends came and saved the Net Neutrality day, and that it was silly that anyone's faith in their overlordness waivered even slightly.
Welcome to 2018, Trumpland year 2. Yippee.
If something can be done about cable companies winning the last mile by default it would throw a wrench into the whole monopoly/duopoly system and force real competition.
My best guess how this might be done is to build scalable mesh networking into a cheap readily available commercial product you install or have someone install on roof/mast.
Each unit will have three or more auto-pointing PTP transceivers operating over FSO or 60ghz ISM with some low frequency RF for discovery. They will contain forwarding hardware capable of forwarding 10gbs or more over each transceiver with minimal power consumption and latency.
Will be fully autonomous self-organizing mesh where anyone on the network can advertise an "off-ramp". Off-ramps are virtual circuits all of a users data ends up. Off-ramp advertisements support cryptographic signatures and E2E authentication procedure yet otherwise it is assumed all nodes are behaving themselves. Each unit can only select one off-ramp for itself.
ISPs could do phased deployment where they start in a neighborhood, win a few customers and once deployed those customers open up access to more and more customers.
Local communities could organize small deployments. The more the technology is deployed by one or more entities the better overall network becomes.
It isn't good enough simply to provide access. The quality of that access has to beat what is offered by cable monopoly.
Such systems would likely prove worthless in low density areas and terrains and be highly susceptible to malicious interference. The point is deflating cable monopolies.
If you really think they won't just throttle all of it you're mad.
This pro-net neutrality anti-throttling consortium might work... it is one of two schemes that has a chance. The other is to cancel your internet services NOW, before the repeal of Net Neutrality.
If the big ISPs - Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, et cetera - all see a sudden decline in customers who cite "repeal of net neutrality" as their reason for cancelling, then they might tell their patsies at the FCC to back off. Might.
They're more likely to assume we'll come crawling back, because who are we kidding? It's 2018 and if you don't have internet access you're effectively a pariah.
Service providers view consumers as a resource. Data providers like Google, Netflix, etc. also view consumers as a resource. So we're supposed to believe corporations in the latter category will come charging to the defense of consumers and start a war with a rich, exceedingly powerful enemy?
Yeah, right.
Far more likely: one group of rich, powerful corporations form an alliance with another group of rich, powerful corporations to shaft consumers more vigorously, more thoroughly and with even greater gusto.
Everybody wins. Well, everybody important, anyway.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What the FCC proposes to end in December isn't network neutrality; it never was. It's an impostor masquerading as network neutrality because some influential wonk put that label on it and legions of ignorant fools propagated it.
Meet the real network neutrality: citizens owning the very same physical network that they use. It's time for eminent domain to be applied against that network and get rid of this chatty impostor once and for all.
The ISPs will block VPNs claiming they are maleware sites. They won't even need to go to the effort of throttling, you simply won't be able to reach your favorite VPNs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sure the big ISPs can't see what type of data you're sending, but they could check to see if the traffic is routing to ZT's network and just bill it at the highest rate.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
America is doomed to be a thirdworld shithole like Somalia. They already have equivailent gun ownership & infant mortality rates. Enjoy the ride into hell!
Instead of all this cat and mouse, how about voting out the corrupt politicians? Doesn't cost you anything, much less 750 bucks a month... And please, save your breath on the excuses. They are all stupid, redundant, blame passing bullshit.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I predict that people who need those online services will use their cell phones or pay for VPNs to bypass the blocks until they have setup their community broadband ISPs. It will be wonderful, at least where such competition is legal.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Is this a sponsored press release for Zero Tier VPN? I know it's Robert Cringley, I know he makes passing reference to other VPN providers, but this reads like an ad.
Ken
Then consider the irony of this guy talking about profits and corruption.
Regardless, the solution is not VPNs but rather last mile competition. It is what it has been from the start and it will continue to be that.
Look at the trouble Google Fiber is having getting Right of Way to the poles. If one of the largest and best capitalized and most politically connected corporations in the history of the planet is having a hard time... what chance does the small guy have?
The corruption is evident. its mostly state and city corruption but its consistent and national.
Either that gets dealt with... or the entire discussion is just hot air.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Just day or two ago I was called all sorts of names for not understanding that lack of net neutrality will entrench monopoly of big players like Amazon, Netflix, Google and such and will kill competition on the market of internet services.
Now this article is saying that all big players are advocating for net neutrality. Which one is it? Should we now believe that big corporations all of sudden stop thinking of profits and vote for net neutrality just out of good will?
If you're going to advertise (seriously, keep it to HN), would you mind at least telling us what is the difference from the P2P vpns which work perfectly fine, ie tinc and cjdns?
To avoid having to pay a premium for Internet access and not be left in the slow lane we all just have to sign up to a premium service, including companies, so we don't get left in the slow lane... by having all our traffic go through a single point and have it slow down.
This... this isn't a paid advert? Legit question, I have a confuse.
As someone who thinks the repeal of NN will be a good thing, I applaud efforts by voluntary, market-based actors to take control of the situation through business and innovation. That is exactly as it should be.
However, this plan seems rather impractical. Looking at the ZeroTier website, I doubt its infrastructure is capable of handling this undertaking. Would it not make more sense to just refine and use high-grade commercial VPNs to prevent traffic analysis and throttling?
The reality is that nowadays a LOT of workers use VPN's form home to do work, so no ISP can realistically block VPN traffic.
ISP's blocking this or that is everyone's worst fear of having no NN but every time an ISP has tried for any content (even torrents) they have quickly reversed course.
Personally, I am pretty sure that if you use a service like this your traffic is almost certain to be collected by the government (as they would probably capture a lot of juicy material to hold over people). So I've always seen it as a choice as to whole you want knowing what you do with your connection - an ISP or the government. I know which I trust less (yes, even over Comcast).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
..they could just completely block Zero Tier unless you pay for "premium" internet access. Zero Tier is not the solution to net neutrality, it is its potential victim.
Not that I've ever done more than glance in Tor's direction, but, sounds sort of like the competition in the tor-verse of choosing which relay and exit nodes to deal with. Or using a big web of ssh tunnels the same way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I predict that people who need those online services will use their cell phones [] It will be wonderful, at least where such competition is legal.
You read my mind. The cartel thing seems likely. To the extent that the FCC wasn't always just a legally codified cartel to begin with (cough, free speech mandate, cough). I was already planning on dumping my fixed broadband connection the day of the repeal, and learning to live off low-bitrate services on my mobile phone, like I presume much of the world does. This could actually be really awesome as a revival of low-bitrate functionality. The only people who, with a little further FOSS evolution properly motivated by circumstance, really are effected by throttling in today's high speed age are those that use high bitrate video 4k/hdtv/720p/etc and bloated as fuck web services (shuffling a dozen megabytes of advertising and crap while in the process of reading 100k of news text and a mb or two of images).
This could end up being really fun to watch. Not that I'll enjoy seeing all the stupid crap the ISPs do. But... it could still have some pleasant side effects. As far as the low hanging 95% of what the internet accomplishes for humanity in a positive way, it can totally be done on a low data cap mobile plan- *once the marketplace demand for such effecient low-bitrate services is in place*.
I feel a little bit dirty, but optimistic ;)
If you people think that ISPs are a serious threat and you'd prefer to have some greater level of control, I do have a recommendation. It won't be easy to accomplish, but if widely implemented, would give us a lot more power as individuals. More importantly, it does not depend upon politicians or "favorable" corporate interests, so there is little to hinder other than personal unwillingness:
Set the Internet aside and set up a decentralized network. Use devices which you own and control, try to keep your dependencies as local as possible and come up with a way to agree with others in your area as to what services are essential, how to finance it, and how local network(s) should operate. I recommend at a minimum, a network which is capable of providing e-mail, software updates, certificate validation, audio streaming, and [maybe] some level of integration with local emergency services. A direct connection to the Internet is not required, but should be relatively simple to obtain.
Standard WIFI devices are readily available and suitable for this purposes. Other options involve physical Ethernet cables, transmitters which operate on visible spectrum, microwave links, HAM radio, etc. In somewhat extreme cases, loading data onto USB drives and sharing it in-person can also get a lot accomplished.
It might be worthwhile to have an open source project to establish some baseline standards for an "off-grid" decentralized network (so that visitors and travelers with a suitable device & software can interact with a network without relying on an ISP for a connection).
Any plan that starts with "we all" with respect to the entire nation may as well stop right there. "We" probably didn't read your article to in the first place, and most of the "we" who did will stop caring as soon as they realize it takes more than one or two clicks worth of effort, never mind when it costs money.
Its the same reason why you'll never prevent climate change by suggesting people drive less.. even if they agree with you, they simply won't do it. They'll excuse themselves for one reason or another or they'll decide that their personal contribution isn't enough to matter or so on.
If you want a significant number of people to follow your plan, you have to make it worth their immediate while. Or alternately, enforce an immediate punishment when they fail to follow the plan. Being immediate is the big thing though -- people are just way too good at finding excuses if the pros and cons are too vague or too far in the future.
Companies like Twitter aren't required to support my Constitutional freedoms because "they're companies, they aren't the government bro!"
That's why you support the people you don't like being silenced, right?
It's about time we deplatform these companies who have been deplatforming us.
Burn it all down.
...and with a sniff and a snap of his hanky, he flounces off into the night!
This whole thing is based on an unfounded fear that ISP's will miraculously decide to band together and start throttling traffic to the likes of Netflix, Youtube, etc unless you are willing to pay more money. The chances of them working together to that extend is slim to none. Also, no one is taking into account that they can already throttle your traffic if they want, they just won't do it at the ISP level. There is nothing stopping Verizon from paying Netflix to implement QoS at their border routers to give their traffic priority over another ISP's. There is nothing stopping Google from doing this with Youtube either.
The reason Pai is against NN is because it treats ISP's different then other Internet companies. The part no one talks about is that NN prevents ISP's from selling your browsing history. Which everyone is all "YEAH!" about. Except they don't realize that 90% of Google and Facebook's profits come from doing just that. In other words, the federal government eliminated Google and Facebook's competition for them.
Pai has also specifically said he is for NN in the sense that ISP's can't throttle traffic. He doesn't agree with making ISP's fall under Title II because it will, not might but will, severely slow the advances in network technology. If anyone thinks otherwise, simply look at how much cable or landline technology has changed over the years....barely at all. The major changes to cable backhauls came about due to advances in Internet and "last mile" infrastructure. Verizon didn't lay a bunch of fiber lines so people could enjoy better quality football games on their TV. They installed fiber lines so people could better stream porn on their computers.
Fuck no. Just because they want the same thing NOW does not mean they are on our side. They are on their side and for NOW it might be that we want the same thing, but do not confuse that for being on the same side.
The fact that it would make a difference is what is fucked up. The government should be on the side of the people. It should be "Is this good for the people or not? OK, it is not" and that should be the end of it REGARDLESS of wich company want what.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Those who live to serve themselves would be more appropriate y located if ostracized from society. A self serving person, by limitation of self serving thought framework s cannot ,in any likely hood, interact successfully with others without directly or indirectly taking advantage of others, and therefore to maintain freedom of all, it is nessasary to baniah them from society and send them somewhere they cannot effect others. A selfish person isolated is ethical, because someone who serves themselves deserves no help from others. There fore we don't trade with them, we don't talk to them and we don't allow them in our population. If they can't interact with others or our counttries resources then whatever the outcome for that individual at least they are finally honest. What they have came from them, with no access to help from others or our nation's resources, whatever they generate would be from the sweat of their own brow only and thus they would finally have legitimate claim to what they have.
I mean, it's all well and good to decide "I'm going to act to side-step the FCC and the ISPs." It feels good and you can act immediately.
However shouldn't this type of decision actually require a policy debate? And the people who act, enforce and regulate, should have to justify what they do and do not do?
Maybe we need new law, to make packet carriers behave like the postal carriers they are replacing:
"Internet packets specifically addressed to the recipient's individual device are the private property of the addressee, from the instant they are presented to the carrier network, through delivery to the device. The address, return address, and the contents may not be inspected nor recorded nor tabulated nor kept by the carrier, nor inferred by external observation, except as immediately and temporarily needed only to accomplish delivery."
Seals the envelope, I think. But are their other ways, other packet fields perhaps, that need to be "sealed" too, to preserve Net Neutrality? Or is this enough to prevent throttling, prioritizing, spying, and data mining?